HC Deb 19 November 1953 vol 520 cc1948-64

Question again proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."

5.36 p.m.

Mr. Langford-Holt

As I was in the process of saying, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) has raised this matter as a particular constituency matter, but I think it applies, on the other hands, to the whole country, because it is a problem which we must face. As the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. J. Taylor) said, we are a large number of people cramped in such a small space. Before continuing with what I want to say, I should like to ask the Under-Secretary of State one question. My hon. Friend the Member for Louth spoke a great deal about the damage being done in his constituency. Without discussing the rights or wrongs of that any further, may I inquire what right of insurance, redress or compensation—and I repeat the word "right," as opposed to privilege—is possessed by those who suffer damage or loss as a result of these activities, whether by negligence on the part of a pilot or pilots, or as the result of quite understandable accidents? What right of compensation have these people?

My hon. Friend the Member for Louth spoke of the effect of this bombing on his constituents and his constituency. May we know exactly what sort of bombs are being dropped? In my experience they used to be in the nature of 8–10 lb. smoke bombs. I am assuming for the moment that they are still of that order and that they are practice bombs. A practice bomb, of course, has no form of safety device to render it harmless if it is accidentally dropped.

Mr. Osborne

I understand that the smoke bombs which are used today are much heavier than those which my hon. Friend mentions. By night I understand they are using fire bombs.

Mr. Langford-Holt

I am speaking on this matter because I am not without experience. Apart from having dropped these bombs in various parts of the kingdom during the war, I was at one time in command of several bombing ranges which were carrying out practices of this precise nature. It is not much good, I feel, for the Air Ministry to fiddle about, so to speak, considering whether they will make some slight alteration in a certain part of my hon. Friend's constituency. I say that with the greatest respect. The assessment of drops on ranges, and of the effectiveness and accuracy of these drops, used to be measured by two quadrants taking bearings on a particular target. By taking a cross-bearing, one would get the fix on the target. As my hon. Friend the Member for Louth said, aircraft today are flying faster and higher, and all the indications are that they will go on flying faster and higher.

The point I wish to put to the Under-Secretary of State is what exactly is the policy of the Air Ministry with regard to these bombing ranges, because it is not only a question of how it affects Louth. In future, it is going to affect my hon. Friend's constituency to an even greater degree, and also every other inland bombing range in the country. We are going to have a greater distance error due to the higher speeds and greater heights at which aircraft fly. Therefore, I want to know what the policy of the Air Ministry is going to be.

My hon. Friend suggested that these ranges might be set up in certain parts of Scotland and in certain parts of Wales. I was very relieved to hear that he did not suggest that they should come to Shropshire. But that suggestion is not an answer in itself. As I said, the old method used to be to take two quadrant sights, that is, on a puff of smoke.

Since those times we have gone a great deal further with the development of radar. Is there no possibility of using a radar service with which to judge range and distance from one point on to a target out at sea? I know that this would present problems with regard to shipping lanes and sea transport, but it is surely much easier to overcome such difficulties than to accommodate these ranges on land.

Mr. Osborne

No matter how perfect the instruments may be, if aircraft are flying at 30,000 feet and are travelling very fast, no range ought to be within two miles of the centre of a village.

Mr. Langford-Holt

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I have tried to make the point that they are travelling very much faster and higher than they used to travel. The margin of error from the aircraft may be smaller due to the accuracy of the bombing sights, but the actual margin of error on the land may be very much greater.

This not a matter of just one bombing range in one village in Lincolnshire. It is a matter which the Air Ministry must sort out. They must recast the whole of their bombing policy. In conclusion, may I again ask the Under-Secretary of State whether my hon. Friend's constituency has any right to compensation, and whether there is not a wide field of development which we could open up through the use of radar.

5.44 p.m.

Sir William Darling (Edinburgh, South)

I must say that I have always been an admirer of the English people, and of Englishmen in particular, and I greatly admire them this evening because of their phlegm and lack of sensitiveness. Here we have an hon. Member telling us that his constituency has been bombed continuously since 1943, and is being bombed even tonight, so far as I know.

We have one Scotsman and three Englishmen on the Opposite benches and almost an equal number on this side of the House. If this had been a matter of a dog which had been knocked down and cruelly treated on the Parade at Brighton, or some trade unionist who had been improperly dismissed from his employment, or even some shopkeeper who had been faced with some disagreeable experience which was out of the usual run in his life, this House of Commons would have put down 10 Questions on the Order Paper.

What surprises me is the self-contentment of my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne). I have frequently heard him become excited upon subjects which seemed to me to be less important. I have heard him deal with what he calls the "dollar gap" with much eloquence. But I must say that he does himself less than justice when on this occasion, having a cause which ought to be ventilated throughout the whole length and breadth of the country, he comes with such a temporary and technical statement.

This is an amazing matter. It is the kind of thing about which the House of Commons ought really to rise up in wrath and demand from the Air Ministry and from the Ministry of Defence a statement of their plans to meet this particular case. The fact that the House does not do so forces my hon. Friend to suggest that this is one of the troubles with which England cannot deal, and that it should be transferred to Scotland where they can grapple with anything from bombing to any other trouble afflicting the mind of man.

Mr. Osborne

It is not a question of the capacity of Scotland to deal with everything, but the fact that in Scotland there are vast waste spaces in which even Scotsmen will not live.

Sir W. Darling

I happen to know that Scotland has no vast waste spaces, but a very great culture. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman's daughter attends a Scottish university. Therefore, his suggestion that we should transfer this bombing practice to Scotland or to Wales, though rather a left-handed tribute, is none the less a tribute to the capacity of these two remarkable races to deal with things with which Englishmen cannot deal. His suggestion is that bombs which are an inconvenience to Lincolnshire should be sent to Scotland or to Wales, because the Scots and the Welsh know how to deal with them.

I hope that this debate will provoke more and more speeches from hon. Members, because I am afraid that the next subject which we are likely to discuss has far less interest than this one. Consequently, I hope that some of my hon. Friends and some hon. Members opposite will find it possible to discuss this question which has been raised so sharply by my hon. Friend, that Scotland and Wales should be the places to which this bombing practice should be transferred.

My hon. Friend is really dealing only with the mere fringe of the matter, although I must admit that I am alarmed to think that this admirable village about which he has told us is being destroyed by smoke bombs by day and fire bombs by night. My hon. Friend should not be content with the protection of his own constituents, and I hope to offer him some advice in that direction. It is quite right that he should bring up this matter, and my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Langford-Holt), speaking with the detachment of a Shropshire county, says that this is a question to which the Air Ministry and the Government must give wide and detailed consideration.

I wonder whether this is what is called "pattern bombing," a subject to which reference was made only yesterday when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies was able to explain what it was. He said that it consisted of four Lancaster bombers—

Mr. Osborne

Lincoln bombers.

Sir W. Darling

Yes, Lincoln bombers, so they come from the same county. I wonder whether this is part of pattern bombing, and if so, what is the pattern in the exercise to avoid this village being hit. It seems that up to now the endeavours to avoid it have consisted of trying to hit it. I suggest that the process should be reversed, thereby avoiding hitting it.

In this connection, I want to ask whether there is any reciprocity in this matter. We are engaged in a great international defence organisation which has, of course, the support of this House. Is there any opposite number to these Lincolnshire targets? Do some people go from Lincolnshire to the coast of France, or is it entirely a one-way traffic? Is it entirely from France that these targets are bombed, or do we have some chance of reciprocity? There was a good deal of reciprocity in that we bombed Heligoland, but we have given up that practice, and we now confine ourselves to accepting the things rather than delivering them elsewhere. I am familiar with the description "cannon fodder," but to be electoral fodder, which is apparently a modern substitute, is not a use to which voters should be consigned.

This is a very broad as well as a very old question, and I have not forgotten the arguments we had in this House and elsewhere whether the London County Council might be allowed to use the public parks for the training of young cadets. There has always been great reluctance on the part of the average citizen to give up his private or public property for defensive purposes. Although I understand that point of view, I do not sympathise with it, because we must accept the risks of the generation to which we belong and of the dangerous and difficult world in which we live.

We must be prepared to make very substantial sacrifices in order to secure adequate training, which our citizens require to defend themselves if attacked. I do not know whether that training can be done adequately in this country. That was obvious during the war, when we trained air crews in Rhodesia, Canada and elsewhere. This little Island is all too small for those great responsibilities, and that is all the more reason why the Ministry of Defence, and in particular the Air Ministry, should survey this question with the closest attention. We have seen that there are possibilities.

When I heard my hon. Friend referring to the disadvantages, I looked to see whether there was anything to be said from the other point of view, of effective training. How effective it is, I cannot say, but there are some other aspects which might be worth considering. I am prepared to follow the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. J. Taylor) in his reference to Scotland and I quite seriously take up the view that there may be in this island, and possibly in Scotland, suitable targets of this character. I remember that during the war one village in the North of Scotland was entirely destroyed. The farms and villages were evacuated and the place was bombed away altogether. I cannot recall the name. Then there was Slapton Sand in Devonshire. The Americans used the Scottish village as part of their installation for training, and the village was entirely destroyed. In spite of these disasters and the destruction of property, advantages might accrue.

I have always found that when the Army, Navy, or Air Force go to Scotland they are very careful about what they do. The road system of Scotland is indifferent, but the best roads we ever had were made by the Romans in order that they might quell the spirit of those somewhat lonely Scottish people. Where the Army go they give us roads, telephonic communication, huts if not houses, and centres of population. Where the Army goes population almost invariably follows. The development of the south-west of England has been conditioned by the long attachment of the Army to Salisbury Plan. The development of Portsmouth and Plymouth has been conditioned by the attachment of the Navy to those ports.

Apart from the advantages to the peace-loving civilians of having Army, Navy and Air Force establishments in the neighbourhood, do not let us forget the extensive economic benefits. I wish we had a first-class naval establishment in Scotland, a first-class Royal Air Force establishment in Scotland and an equal distribution of the Army. I repeat that where they go a large measure of development of civilisation follows. If we had a large training centre in the North of Scotland, would we not almost immediately have a Forth Road Bridge, a Tay Road Bridge and in addition considerable flying facilities which at the moment hardly exist at all? I beg my Scottish colleagues, and the hon. Member for West Lothian, in spite of his denunciation of the use of Scotland for this purpose, to remember all the substantial advantages which he and I would rejoice to have, and that would come if we could have in Scotland suitable establishments for the training activities of the Army, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy.

There is a second example which I should like to give of the advantages which might flow from bombing. I am not speaking of the bombing of pleasant, healthy places like the one in Lincolnshire, but of the breaking up of the land in other parts of the country. I have seen the effect of what is called opencast mining, and that has impressed me with another recollection. I saw the land—many other hon. Members saw it as well as I did—in the area from the Ypres Salient down to the Somme from 1914 to 1919. It was wrecked, tortured and destroyed by heavy bombardment. The field drainage was destroyed and every natural feature was eliminated. Small hills disappeared and the valleys became small hills. It was wrecked and devastated as no part of the land ever was in the history of mankind.

By 1920, that desert had blossomed, and today it is not the least of the fertile parts of France. I therefore say to my hon. Friends that if suitable places in this country, which are rocky, barren, lonely, unfriendly and peat-covered could be subjected, after suitable preparation to intensive bombing, there might well accrue agricultural opportunities which would not be without advantages to our people, who would know how to turn them to good account. I suggest that that is not an unlikely possibility, and would certainly be no less advantageous than the operations of the National Coal Board in the field of opencast mining.

This thing has gone on since 1932 and it is going on apparently twice-nightly. I want to know if there are clearly defined provisions for compensating the civilians who suffer. I should want it to be made very clear that there are positive compensations which are beyond dispute for the citizens of any area affected in this way. The first of these compensations must be for disturbance, an intangible thing.

Lieut.-Colonel Marcus Lipton (Brixton)

The hon. Member has outlined many great advantages that already accrue to people as the result of the establishment of naval, military and Air Force bases, plus the additional advantage they get by being bombed and blasted. Is he not being a little unreasonable in asking for further advantages?

Sir W. Darling

The hon. and gallant Member asks me whether I am not a little unreasonable. It is difficult for an hon. Member to follow the whole of my argument when he has only listened to two minutes of it. With an obscure and somewhat tortured intelligence at best, I am sure I would find it impossible to grasp a whole subject in two minutes' audition—but I do not want to discourage the hon. and gallant Member. Let him try again. I had been outlining some of the advantages, and I am now referring to the disadvantages, which are many and obvious, and I am saying that there should be a clearly recognised and clearly defined arrangement made to meet them.

The first disadvantage is disturbance. I do not know in what way people should be compensated for the intolerable noise of aircraft, quite apart from bombing, which occurs during the day and night, but there should be some compensation for the disturbance of one's peace. It may be that the remedy lies in insulation, in the supply of devices to hinder hearing, or there may be actual monetary compensation. If the Defence Forces of the Crown require to disturb the peace of the country's citizens in a particular area, those citizens should be compensated for disturbance, and the nature of the compensation should be known.

Secondly, there should be a well-established means by which people should be able to claim compensation for loss of property. There has been minor damage, as my hon. Friend said, but it may well be that there will some day be major damage. It should be clearly laid down and made known to whom such claims should be made, by whom they will be paid and the nature of the restitution that is offered. That is the least that can be done.

Thirdly, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth suggested that it might soon happen—though I hope he is mistaken—that there may be loss of life. When a life is lost, it is difficult and tragic to argue about compensation, and I suggest that it should be laid down quite clearly that certain compensations have been established as a matter of right to cover disturbance, actual loss or damage to property and also compensation for loss of life. The nature of these claims and the right to make them should be made known to all citizens in these threatened areas, and they should be met promptly and generously.

In this way, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who discharges his great duty and responsibility for the effective training of troops and airmen, may also combine with this primary duty concerning training a duty to the civilian population. I agree that the convenience of citizens is a trivial matter as compared with his primary responsibility, but, having discharged his prime duty, he might see to his responsibilities to ensure that civilians are dealt with equitably, and I am sure that it will be his wish to discharge that duty to the fullest possible extent.

6.2 p.m.

Mr. Raymond Gower (Barry)

I wish to address myself to a very narrow point. It is perhaps presumptuous of many hon. Members to intervene in a debate about one constituency, but the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) suggested that something might be done by diverting this bombing, firstly, to Scotland, and secondly, to Wales. His suggestion was rejected by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Sir W. Darling), speaking on behalf of the City of Edinburgh, and, I presume, on behalf of Scotland as a whole.

Just as sincerely, I wish to say that it would be most undesirable if the limitations of view of many of our English colleagues regarding the natural conditions and characteristics of Scotland and Wales were allowed to govern this case. Far too often our countries seem rather wild and rough parts of the British Isles, but I think it would be most undesirable for the Air Ministry or any other Department to decide that all the most unattractive aspects of Departmental duties should be foisted upon Scotland and Wales.

There is a project to extend a bombing practice range in the vicinity of Porthcawl in the Bristol Channel area, and I would ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, in his wider consideration of the matter, to consider that this place is predominantly a health resort, which could fairly be described as one of the few playgrounds for the large industrial area of South Wales I appreciate that this particular case is outside the terms of this debate.

However, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South said, these things have to be done somewhere in the British Isles, and I should imagine that citizens in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Louth will have some advantage over those in other constituencies, in so far as they have been gradually inured to this kind of thing for 20 years, and presumably many people have gone to live in that area knowing full well that this kind of thing has been going on for a very long time.

The point I want to make is that I believe that this practice should be carried on in places which are remote from centres of population, and also remote from places where people work and sleep. Every attempt should be made to arrange that this bombing is carried on where there will be the minimum of danger to amenities and to human life, and in this connection I think my hon. Friend the Member for Louth has not only done a service to his constituency in raising this matter, but a wider service to us all.

6.6 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. George Ward)

The House will realise that it is for geographical reasons that a large number of Royal Air Force airfields are situated in the Norfolk and Lincolnshire areas, and therefore a good deal of operational training must be carried out in that part of the country. Part of this operational training inevitably includes practice bombing, and the least objectionable area for such practice is obviously on the coast, where at least part of the danger area, being over the sea, normally presents no difficulty.

In choosing the sites for bombing ranges, the Air Ministry, for operational reasons, have been compelled to look at areas which are reasonably near to the Lincolnshire and Norfolk area, because ranges which are more than about 50 miles away from the associated airfields would entail very expensive flying time, besides being much more difficult to use intensively. Over the years, we have been constantly trying to find more suitable ranges, but we have so far failed to find any more suitable places which would serve the Norfolk and Lincolnshire areas.

They cannot be too far out to sea, which was one of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne), because the fall of the bomb has to be accurately determined in order to find out its accuracy in relation to the target, and this can only be done, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Langford-Holt), who knows these matters from personal experience, by observation from two fixed points. As the smoke flash is relatively small, the observation points have to be close to the target; otherwise, one would not see them, especially in conditions of low visibility at sea, in which a small flash would be very difficult to observe from a long distance.

Donna Nook and Theddlethorpe ranges have been in use by the Air Ministry for about 25 years. I wish I could have a pound note for every practice bomb I have dropped on them myself; I know them very well. Although naturally they are not ideal, because they are so near to Saltfleet, we have not been able to discover, nor has anyone else been able to suggest, any more suitable places, even in Scotland or Wales, if we wanted to go there, which, for the reasons I have given, we do not.

The main reason is the distance from the Lincolnshire airfields, which would be very uneconomic and wasteful. Of course, there are also technical reasons why we could not use the very remote parts of Scotland. It is within the neighbourhood of the Lincolnshire and Norfolk airfields that we have such things as the radar facilities, which are used as part of this bombing training. These facilities would not be available in the very remote parts of Scotland and Wales. In war-time the aircraft would be operating from Lincolnshire, and it would clearly be very wasteful to have all these facilities installed in remote parts of Scotland and then have to install them in Lincolnshire for war-time use.

I do not think it is contested by any hon. Members, or indeed, I think, by the good people of Lincolnshire themselves, that we must have bombing ranges of some sort, but local interests very naturally tend to suggest, as the hon. Member for Louth did tonight, that the ranges should be situated elsewhere. It is a hard fact, which we come across not only in this context but in others as well, that inconveniences of this sort are always better placed in someone else's constituency than in one's own.

Mr. Osborne

We might have fair shares—turn and turn about.

Mr. Ward

Yes, but as I have pointed out, the ranges are only in Lincolnshire and Norfolk because that is where they must be situated for strategic reasons.

There are two live targets and four practice targets in this area. In the Saltfleet area the live targets are over a mile away, and the practice targets are 1,000 yards away from land other than Air Ministry property. Most of the complaints have arisen from No. 2 practice bombing target and the live bombing target at Donna Nook, which are, at present, only one and a half miles from the village of Saltfleet. No. 2 practice target, which is nearly rive miles from Saltfleet and three miles from North Somercotes, is not at present being used. It is not in fact usable, because it was damaged in the floods in the early months of 1953 and at the moment there are no proper target illumination or range facilities there. But we are investigating the possibility of bringing this target back into use as quickly as we can in order greatly to reduce the need to use the practice targets which are nearer to Saltfleet. We cannot bring this target back into use until various things, such as rebuilding and reconstruction, have been done, but I will undertake to see that a decision is made as quickly as possible, and that there is no unnecessary delay in bringing this target into use. This will greatly ease the position.

Commander Maitland

Will the hon. Gentleman announce that decision as soon as he has made it?

Mr. Ward

Yes, certainly. As soon as we start work on rebuilding that target. I will see that my hon. Friend is informed.

There is one point I should like to stress here. Hon. Members, some of them perhaps in the exuberance of their oratory, have talked about these occurrences being twice-nightly and so on, but in fact the proportion of what we call irregular releases is less than one in 2,000. From March 1952 until 12th November this year, which was the date of the incident on Mr. Allwood's property which my hon. Friend mentioned, and, including that incident, the total number of such incidents has been 16.

Mr. Osborne

Will my hon. Friend agree that four of them took place in the period from 5th October to 12th November?

Mr. Ward

Yes, but the point I am trying to make now is that these incidents, while far too numerous, I agree, are not by any means the twice-nightly occurrence that some Members have been trying to assert.

The hon. Member for Louth quoted from correspondence which he and I have had; he also quoted the steps which I have told him we were taking in the matter and pointed out that in his opinion, and in the opinion of his constituents, those steps were inadequate to meet the situation. If the steps of which I informed him in my various letters, from time to time, were the only ones we had taken, or were taking, I should be inclined to agree that they were inadequate; but there are other steps that we have taken, which I have not listed before because we have generally dealt with one point at a time. I should like to outline the main steps which we have taken, and are taking, to try to ease the situation.

First, we have very considerably tightened up inspections to ensure that faulty equipment is detected before it goes into the air. Nearly three-quarters of the incidents in recent months and, I think I am right in saying, all those that have occurred very recently, have been caused by technical faults. This is something we feel we can put right, and, in consultation with the United States Air Force, who are doing the same thing, we are arranging for more rigorous inspection. We are not going to use the target which is closest to Saltfleet village until we have moved it 700 yards to the north, but we cannot move that until we have been able to lay the submarine cable which will illuminate it for night bombing. I am hoping that it will not be very long before we can get this cable laid.

Next we have reviewed bombing instructions, and revised them considerably, in order to reduce the possibility of aircrew errors. Aircrew errors have not been the cause of a very large number of these irregular releases, but, in order to eliminate any that have so happened or may happen, we have revised our bombing instructions, and also our methods of briefing before crews take off on these practices.

I have also checked to find our exactly what the American Air Force are doing and I find that they have taken steps similar to ours—with two additional steps. They have given instructions that all approaches to the ranges should be made from over the sea and that, whenever possible, attacks should be made on a line parallel with the coast, so that the number of aircraft approaching the ranges from overland will be very small in future. They have also arranged that, as from 1st September last, the use of the Theddlethorpe range should be restricted. They are not going to make nearly so much use of it, and will make up for the consequent loss of practice by the increased use of synthetic bombing devices.

Commander Maitland

I imagine this business of bombing parallel to the coast would also decrease the amount of interference and annoyance that is being caused by noise, would it not? The hon. Gentleman said that that is what the Americans are doing, but can he also assure me that we are doing that as well?

Mr. Ward

I am afraid I am not sure about that, because I only got the infor- mation about the American Air Force just before I came in and have not been able to check up with Bomber Command to see whether they are doing the same, but I will certainly do so.

Mr. Osborne

Can my hon. Friend say whether we also follow the same policy?

Mr. Ward

I cannot say offhand, but I will discuss it with Bomber Command.

The hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. J. Taylor) asked why we cannot do our bombing in America. The answer is that even if it were possible, it would be terribly expensive, and the climatic conditions are quite different. We must obviously train our crews in the weather conditions with which they are likely to have to contend in war-time in this theatre; besides which it would be quite impossible to train crew replacements, for example, every time a navigator dropped out, by sending one out to America to get practice with the rest of the crew. That is not a practicable suggestion. We must give crews facilities for continuing their training here, and I think that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Horncastle (Commander Maitland) appreciated that point.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Horncastle also asked about some of the recent incidents which have occurred in his constituency. The one which occurred in May of this year was caused by an error in the bomb computor mechanism of the aircraft. After the incident, all the aircraft were grounded until the defect had been remedied and it had been made quite sure that it would not occur in other aircraft. The compensation claim arising from the incident on 28th May, when a bomb fell near Mablethorpe High Street, was settled by the United States authorities in October.

I have now armed myself with some more stop-press information, which is that all high-level bombing by the Royal Air Force is already done parallel to the coast.

Mr. Osborne

I am much obliged.

Mr. Ward

My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury asked what right of compensation had the people living in the danger areas, and that question was also raised most strongly by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Sir W. Darling). The answer is that we accept full responsibility for all damage, and while I cannot say without notice exactly what the legal position is, normally claims are settled quickly.

Mr. Langford-Holt

Does that apply also to the United States Air Force, or only to the Royal Air Force?

Mr. Ward

It applies to both. I was asked what sort of bombs were used. All the Royal Air Force live bombs are 25 lb., and the United States Air Force live bombs are a little bigger—about 50 lb. The practice bombs contain a small spotting charge or smoke flash. Of course, they are not large ones. I should like to make it quite clear that we have not used any fire bombs; that is an expression which crept into the debate, but it is, in fact, a misnomer.

I was then asked what is our policy in view of the increased speed and height of modern aircraft, and how are we going to avoid these errors which would naturally be more serious at higher speeds and greater heights. The answer is that, in step with the advance in speed and height of modern aircraft, there has also been progress in the accuracy of bombing aids and in the number of bombing aids which are available to the pilot. In fact, I can say from my own knowledge that the bomb sight which I used before the war was far more of a danger to people on the ground than the present modern accurate bombing aids, particularly when one bears in mind the use of new electronic devices. The United States Air Force are also considering the use of radar, and putting in a radar tracking installation to help even further.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South will forgive me if I do not follow him into his consideration of the advantages and disadvantages to Scotland in this policy. The reason is that, as far as I know, we have no intention of going to Scotland, and so the point will not arise.

Sir W. Darling

That is what has discouraged me.

Mr. Ward

My hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) referred to Porthcawl. I am afraid I cannot give him a snap answer to that question, but I will look into it. I know that range well. During the war, when I used to throw things about on it, it did not seem to upset the amenities of the place at all. I thought it was a most pleasant place. However, if my hon. Friend is worried about it, I will look into the matter.

I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and his constituents that I have the greatest sympathy for them, and I am not trying to minimise the very natural anxiety which they have felt. I do, however, assure them that we have looked very carefully at this matter and have given it very deep consideration, but there is no reasonable alternative if we are to do this training and do it in the most efficient and economical way.

Mr. Osborne

If, as my hon. Friend says, there is no alternative but to have this bombing in my constituency near these villages, will he give some undertaking, so far as he can, that steps will be taken to obviate such incidents as occurred on 5th, 10th and 27th October and 12th November, which rather suggest that things are getting worse? We feel that things are getting worse instead of better. Will he give an undertaking that this kind of thing will not go on as it is at the moment?

Mr. Ward

Certainly; I will give an undertaking that I shall do everything possible to put these things right. As I said earlier, the recent incidents have been all technical faults, so far as we know. As to the last one on 12th November, the investigation is still in progress and it is too early to say exactly what the cause was. I refer to the bomb which fell on the airfield. The others have been technical faults and, as I say, I believe that the steps we are now taking to tighten up the inspection of these instruments will go a long way to help. If they do not help, we shall have to try something else, but I assure my hon. Friend that we are very conscious of this matter. We shall do all we can to help, but we cannot move away. I hope my hon. Friend's constituents will accept what I have said in this spirit, recognising that they are making a very real contribution to the defence of this country, upon which so much depends for all of us.