§ Mr. Harold Wilson (Huyton)In accordance with the courtesy traditionally extended to Ministers who have resigned, I ask the indulgence of the House to say a few words. I will be brief and, as far as is compatible with the position in which I find myself, uncontroversial.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) made clear yesterday, the issue on which both he and I have felt it necessary to tender our resignations is not a narrow issue. It is not a matter of teeth and spectacles. It is more fundamental than that. The Budget of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was based on a series of Estimates which included a re-armament programme which I do not believe to be physically practicable with the raw materials available to us. I am myself, and I am sure this is true of the vast majority in the House, strongly in support of an effective defence programme. With whatever degree of reluctance we may have come to that view, it is a fact which has been forced on us by the state of the world today.
But if the financial programme for rearmament runs beyond the physical resources which can be made available, then re-armament itself becomes the first casualty, the basis of our economy is disrupted and the standard of living, including the social services of our people, is endangered. That, I believe, to be the position today. Recent statements in the House by the Minister of Supply and myself make it clear that we are not getting enough raw materials to maintain our economy, our essential export trade and the size of the re-armament programme that we have announced.
We embarked on this re-armament programme as part of a joint effort by the members of the Atlantic community and of the Commonwealth. We embarked 229 on the basis that our partners would make available our rightful share of the materials available. We have not bad our rightful share; I hope we may still get it. But today British industry stands disorganised and threatened by partial paralysis. The American Government and people have got to choose between their partners' defence programme on the one hand, and their own stockpiles and the level of their own restrictive civilian consumption on the other. Until the right choice is made our defence programme remains an illusion.
But my right hon. Friend's Budget was based on the full estimates for defence expenditure. An integral part of his Budget proposals involves the first cutting-in to our social services, which we have built up over these past years, and which represent a system in which all of us rightly take great pride. It is a minor cut I agree, but I cannot believe it to be necessary. Thirteen million pounds out of a Budget of £4,000 million is well within the margin of error of any possible series of estimates. But it carries with it, in a time of rising prices, the danger—I should have said the certainty—of further erosion of the social services as year succeeds year. The principle of the free health service has been breached, and I dread to think how that breach might be widened in future years.
I have expressed in places where it was appropriate to do so my opposition to this, as I did a year ago when, even before re-armament the same breach was in contemplation. I have tried in every way open to me to find some means of avoiding the situation which has now come upon us. I should have thought that even after my right hon. Friend's Budget speech, it would have been possible to re-examine the financial basis of our national accounts in the light of the changed re-armament position, and then after that to come to a decision on their implication for the social services and their implication for a fairer distribution of the burden. I should have thought that it would be possible to examine even the current expenditure that is now going on on re-armament. Who can say there is no possible wasteful expenditure there which could not be pruned without injuring the effectiveness of the programme.
I should have thought again that the Bill, if it must be proceeded with, could have been delayed in operation until these 230 examinations, which will in any case be necessary, are complete. I should have thought that the apprehensions of a number of my hon. Friends could have been partially allayed by a provision in the Bill that this was a temporary Measure strictly limited in time. But these efforts to provide an acceptable solution foundered on the determination to proceed with the Bill with all haste and with no compromise.
In these circumstances, believing as I do that the principle of collective Cabinet responsibility requires from each Minister a full and wholehearted acceptance of the measures decided upon by the Cabinet and of the policies underlying them, I felt it was not right either to my colleagues in the Cabinet or to myself that I should remain a Member of the Government.
I cannot conclude this statement without saying that, although a matter of principle, as I believe it to be, now severs me from my colleagues in the Cabinet, I should at the same time wish to express my deep sense of the privilege it has been to have had an opportunity of serving with them, and in however modest a way to have played a part in the real and concrete achievements of the Government in these past few years—achievements in our economic and social life, I believe, without parallel in all our history, and achievements in work for peace and the cause of democracy, to which history at any rate, if not our contemporaries, will give their full meed of tribute.
I particularly wish to say how upset I am personally that this crisis should have arisen in the absence of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, an absence we all so much regret and the cause of which we all so much regret. I should have thought that there was no need for urgency in pressing on with this legislation, and that the whole matter could be left until my right hon. Friend returned and we could have had a full examination of the defence programme carried out under his authority. But this was not thought possible.
This issue may have divided us, but, this issue apart, there is no division on this side of the House in our desire to preserve and to carry still further the social revolution of our time, a revolution based on social justice and fair economic oppor- 231 tunity. On that we are united. Where I and those who agree with me differ from our right hon. Friends is in our belief that the social services should have their own priority; that they have a contribution to world peace no less real than an unattainable re-armament programme.
What we have achieved in the social services and in other ways has been of far greater significance than can be measured by its effect on the lives of our own people, for in a wider sense it provides to the world another way based neither on Communism nor on the harshness and brutalities of unregulated free enterprise. It provides the means by which people can have a fairer share of the rewards of their labours and a fairer chance of a full life.
Whatever divides us we are agreed on this—that this way of life both here and in the countries overseas whose destinies we can influence, must be preserved and extended. It is in the hope and unshakeable confidence that the great Labour movement will always keep this before them and will come once again to a proper balance of priorities between arms expenditure and social expenditure, that although I personally find it necessary to leave the Government I intend inside and outside this House to do everything in my power to support the party and the Government in the difficult times that lie ahead.