HC Deb 26 November 1957 vol 578 cc988-9
45. Mr. G. Brown

asked the Prime Minister whether the statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 29th October that improvements in pay and conditions of service must be financed by reduced activities applies to the Armed Forces.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler)

I have been asked to reply.

My right hon. Friend has no statement to make on pay and conditions in the Armed Forces today.

Mr. Brown

That is not the Question I asked. May I invite the Lord Privy Seal to look at the Question on the Order Paper, which is to ask: whether the statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 29th October that improvements in pay and conditions of service must be financed by reduced activities applies to the Armed Forces and whether we are moving towards a highly-paid Army with nothing to do?

Mr. Butler

The latter remark by the right hon. Gentleman must be taken to be untrue. In regard to the substance of his Question, I must remind him that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence has already announced that the pay and conditions of service in the Forces are being reviewed. It would be wrong for me to try to make any forecast of the position until we have the results of the review. At that time, we will be able to answer the right hon. Gentleman's Question. In reply to his main point about my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, nothing that I have said should be taken to detract from the statements of my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Brown

Will the right hon. Gentleman make clear what he has just said? On the one hand, nothing in what he has said detracts from the statement by the Chancellor that reduced activities must follow improvement in pay. On the other hand, nothing in his statement, he says, prejudges what the Minister of Defence will say. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman, as the best Prime Minister we have today, to say firmly whether the Minister of Defence is being forced to reduce the activities of the Armed Forces in order to finance improvements in pay?

Mr. Butler

I cannot go further than the Answer I gave. Until we have the results of the review, it would be imprudent and, indeed, impossible to give an exact answer to the right hon. Gentleman's Question.

Mr. Gaitskell

Will the Lord Privy Seal be a little more fothcoming on this question? Will he tell us whether the Civil Service circular, which states that any increase in the pay of persons employed by the Government in a particular Department must be offset by corresponding economies within that Department, applies to the War Office or not?

Mr. Butler

As was stated by more than one of my right hon. Friends in the course of debates on the economic situation, it is impossible to forecast exactly what would be the state of a wage claim ahead. It is impossible to answer a hypothetical situation and it is impossible to give an exact answer to the situation about Service pay and conditions until we have the result of the review which is being undertaken.