HC Deb 07 July 1959 vol 608 cc1297-314

Considered in Committee.

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

1. Whereas it appears by the Navy Appropriation Account for the year ended 31st March 1958, that the aggregate Expenditure on

SCHEDULE
No. of Vote Navy Services, 1957–58 Votes DEFICITS SURPLUSES
Excesses of Actual over Estimated Gross Expenditure Deficiencies of Actual as compared with Estimated Receipts Surpluses of Estimated over Actual Gross Expenditure Surpluses of Actual as compared with Estimated Receipts
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
1 Pay, &c., of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines 444,514 17 7 — — 49,580 2 5
2 Victualling and Clothing for the Navy — 160,656 19 1 491,192 18 4 —
3 Medical Establishments and Services 85,920 7 0 — — 24,099 14 7
4 Civilians employed on Fleet Services — — 38,187 0 1 10,835 0 5
5 Educational Services 5,249 15 8 61,213 14 11 — —
6 Scientific Services — 38,664 15 2 379,411 12 3 —
7 Royal Naval Reserves — — 99,530 7 8 318 14 2
8 Shipbuilding, Repairs, Maintenance, &c.:
Section I.— Personnel— 93,760 1 7 — — 132,399 8 7
Section II. — Matériel — 67,060 3 9 446,138 1 6 —
Section III.— Contract Work — — 1,165,020 10 5 1,704,731 12 2
9 Naval Armaments — 1,032,754 13 10 27,537 1 11 —
10 Works, Buildings and Repairs at Home and Abroad — 90,998 6 2 696,133 10 5 —
11 Miscellaneous Effective Services — 105,666 18 6 379,547 7 11 —
12 Admiralty Office — — 36,590 2 3 4,298 13 5
13 Non-Effective Services 368,790 7 5 — — 74,807 7 1
14 Merchant Shipbuilding and Repair 2,829 5 3 — — —
15 Additional Married Quarters — 56,401 4 3 56,401 4 3 —
— Balances Irrecoverable and Claims Abandoned 16,293 3 0 — — —
1,017,357 17 6 1,613,416 15 8 3,815,689 17 0 2,001,070 12 10
Total Deficits: Total Surpluses:
£2,630,774 13s. 2d. £5,816,760 9s. l0d.
Net Surplus £3,185,985 16s. 8d.

Navy Services has not exceeded the aggregate sums appropriated for those Services and that, as shown in the Schedule hereto appended, the net surplus of the Exchequer Grants for Navy Services over the net Expenditure is £3,185,985 16s. 8d., viz.:—

£ s. d.
Total Surpluses … 5,816,760 9 10
Total Deficits … 2,630,774 13 2
Net Surplus … £3,185,985 16 8

And whereas the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury have temporarily authorised the application of so much of the said total surpluses on certain Grants for Navy Services as is necessary to make good the said total deficit on other Grants for Navy Services.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the application of such sums be sanctioned.—[Mr. Simon.]

12.15 a.m.

Mr. George Brown (Belper)

Are we not to have any explanation of this Motion? I am bound to say that I do not quite understand what we are doing at this stage. No Service Minister is here, although there are many Service Ministers and Under-Secretaries. Not one of them is here.

This Estimate, dealing with the Navy, shows a net surplus of £3 million. I find it difficult to understand. We ought to have an explanation. I gather that we have failed to spend moneys which the House intended the Government to spend upon such very goods things as naval armaments, in which respect the Government have failed by over £1 million to spend the money provided. The Government are using money which they did not spend on the armaments for Her Majesty's ships to carry over to other things. I understand that I cannot query the purpose for which the money was originally voted, but I am a little bothered why we have not spent money on armaments for Her Majesty's ships and have turned it to some quite different purpose. The hon. and learned Gentleman, even though he has had a long day explaining such things as usherettes or asherettes and other things that I do not understand, should tell us something about this.

My first question is why we switch £1 million from naval armament to all sorts of things that look to me to be things we could do without. And why do Her Majesty's Government have £100,000—or it may be millions—for effective services which they did not spend? And why should they be transferring £300,000 to non-effective services? I am all for Her Majesty's Government spending money on effective services, but I just cannot see much reason for spending it on non-effective services. I should like to know why Her Majesty's Government are transferring money Parliament has voted for effective services to non-effective services. It seems to be an issue not only of money but of principle. On the whole, one would like expenditure to be effective rather than non-effective.

If I switch from the thing labelled "Deficits" to the thing labelled "Surpluses", I again find myself, if I may say so, in a complete fog. Under "Surpluses" we have a column headed "Surpluses of Estimated over Actual Gross Expenditure." I want to know how we can have such a thing. It is not a surplus at all. It really means that Her Majesty's Government did not manage to do the job for which the Minister of Defence took credit. I should have thought it a deficit if the job was not done.

I look further down and find—under "Shipbuilding, Repairs, Maintenance, &c."—"Section III—Contract Work." There we have a surplus of estimated over actual gross expenditure—meaning that we did not do the job—to the tune of £1,165,000, while, on the other hand, we have a surplus of actual as compared with estimated receipts of £1,700,000. I do not quite know what we are doing. I assume from that that we did not repair Her Majesty's ships but did repair a lot of other people's ships, and I must ask why we should, in fact, spend our time in the dockyards working on other people's ships and earning some money, and not working on Her Majesty's ships, and then switching the one to the other

There are a number of explanations needed. I have contented myself with asking three questions. It is only because it is now early in the morning that I ask only those three; but before I am prepared to allow this Vote, I feel that we should be given some explanations.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. J. E. S. Simon)

I gladly respond to the right hon. Gentleman's invitation, though he is in error when he thinks that I have been speaking about usherettes. It must have been some other Treasury Minister speaking in the debate on the cinema duty whom the right hon Gentleman has in mind. I had nothing to do with that.

The Motions before the Committee seek the approval of the Committee for the Treasury's provisional virement between one Vote and the other. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, in the Appropriation Act each year the Treasury is given provisional power to use the surpluses which arise from underspending on one Vote in relation to an Armed Service to meet any overspending that may occur on another Vote.

The reason why the Service Ministers are not present now is that any matter that calls for a reply for them would be out of order. All we are concerned with now, under the rules of order, is, as I understand it, a pure question of accountancy: namely, was the Treasury correct in exercising the virement in the way it did within the discretion given to it by the Appropriation Act?

In fact, the Treasury exercised the very wide discretion given by the Appropriation Act within certain rules that have, over the decades, been agreed with the Public Accounts Committee, and I do not think that it is necessary to go into those. It is sufficient to say that the Treasury's provisional exercise of virement is reported to the Public Accounts Committee yearly. As regards this year, the Public Accounts Committee, in its Second Report, Session 1958–59, says that it sees no reason why Parliament should not sanction the virement temporarily authorised by the Treasury in relation to the Army and Air Services in their Minutes laid before the House in February, 1959". The deficits involved are not out of scale with the amounts for which Parliament has given the authority requested in previous years. In fact, none of the deficits is of an unusual nature.

In the actual accounts, the first column shows the excesses of actual over estimated gross expenditure, and, therefore, it relates to the overspending. The third column shows the underspending, the surplus of the estimated over the actual gross expenditure. Inevitably, in each year, certain of the Votes are overspent and others are underspent. Provided that the total at the bottom of the third column is in excess of the total of the first column, virement can properly take place. There is no particular amount appropriated between any one Vote which is shown in the third column in relation to any one Vote shown in the first column. It is the total of the underspendings which are appropriated to the total of the overspendings, provided, that is, that there is no deficit of an unusual nature which would need to be reported specifically to Parliament. The same thing, mutatis mutandis, applies to the second and fourth columns. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be content with that explanation.

Mr. G. Brown

No. That sounds wonderful, but I have never heard more words used to less purpose in my life. [Laughter.] If hon. Members now beyond the Bar would come into the Committee we should be delighted to have their help in this matter. I am doing my very best to understand this. I see in the first column of the account relating to Navy Services Votes that there is a figure of £1,032,000 odd. It is Vote 9, Naval Armaments, and the column is headed, Deficiencies of Actual as compared with Estimated Receipts". So we expected to arm somebody to the tune of £1 million and we failed to arm whoever it was. I presume it was not ourselves. Whom did we expect to arm to the tune of £1 million, and, having failed to arm him, how can we transfer that to somebody else? If we did not arm Colonel Nasser to the tune of £1 million, how can we transfer that to some ships of our own? What have we done with it? I am bound to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to explain exactly what this means. What £1 million have we got, from whom have we got it, and to what purpose have we put it?

Mr. Simon

I will try to help the right hon. Gentleman, although the actual details of how that sum is arrived at are really not within my purview. That sum of £1,032,000 odd is a deficiency of receipts, in the sense that we estimated in respect of receipts that we, should be receiving a sum in excess of that which was actually received, and the difference was £1,032,000.

Mr. Brown

Oh.

Mr. Simon

I will send for the Estimates themselves, although, of course, it is open to the right hon. Gentleman, just as it is open to me, to look up Vote 9 in the Naval Estimates. I find that the explanation of the difference that appears in the Appropriation Account, Navy Services, 1957–58, is that the volume of repayment work for other Governments was smaller and settlement for work completed was slower than was anticipated.

Mr. Brown

It does not mean Nasser?

Mr. Simon

I cannot tell the right hon. Gentleman what the work was. It does not appear on the face of the Estimates. If the right hon. Gentleman wanted to know, he would have to put down a Question to the Service Minister concerned.

All we are concerned with on the Resolution is the pure accountancy of it. In so far as there was a deficiency in a receipt, that can be totalled up with the other deficiencies in receipt, and provided that the surpluses in the receipts on the other Votes in the fourth column exceed the total of the deficiencies in the receipts in the second column, virement can take place.

Mr. Brown

This is nearly making a farce of the proceedings of the House of Commons. If it is a completely automatic arrangement, I cannot see why, at half-past twelve in the morning, we are brought here to approve it. If it appears on the Order Paper, one would have thought that it was for the purpose of enabling us to check what the Government are doing. We have a Minister who is one of the most friendly, pleasant, attractive, helpful and efficient, but with all the good will in the world he cannot deal with this matter. He has no clue why this is so; he cannot tell us. He simply says that all we are asked to approve is the accountancy.

This seems to be a misuse of the arrangements of the House. I want to know to whom we were expecting to sell armaments and failed to sell them, and why, having failed to sell armaments, that should create a surplus that can be used to deal with things for which we voted money. We voted money for other good purposes for the Navy, which money was not spent. We thought we would get money for armaments, which money we did not get, and we rather exchanged these items.

This seems to the Opposition to be a peculiar proceeding. I still do not have any idea where we made money and where we lost it. We are presented with this virement. If we have to do it at this time of morning, it makes no sense at all. I am bound to protest at its being taken at this hour. I protest that the Ministers who might know about it are not here tonight. We are exchanging figures in accounts that make no sense either to the Minister or to ourselves.

Mr. Simon

I need only add this in courtesy to the right hon. Gentleman. The procedure which we are adopting this evening and the general procedure of virement between one Vote and another is of long standing in the House of Commons. It has been considered to serve a useful purpose and it has recently been reviewed by the Select Committee on Procedure. No doubt, there will be an opportunity to discuss whether it is a worth-while procedure when the Report of the Select Committee is discussed.

As I said earlier concerning the details, the actual work contained in each of the Votes is a matter for the Service Minister, but it is not discussable on the Monk Resolutions. It is not discussable on this Motion. There is a great safeguard here in the review of the Treasury's exercise of virement, by the Public Accounts Committee, which goes into these matters in great detail and has said that there is no reason why the House should not give its approval.

Mr. John Dugdale (West Bromwich)

In all my experience at the Admiralty, I never knew a time when a Service Minister was not present at the discussion of these Resolutions. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) has said, it is extraordinary that there should not be a Service Minister present today.

Question put and agreed to. II. Whereas it appears by the Army Appropriation Account for the year ended 31st day of March 1958, that the aggregate Expenditure on Army Services has not exceeded the aggregate sums appropriated for those Services and that, as shown in the Schedule hereto appended, the net surplus of the Exchequer Grants for Army Services over the net Expenditure is £4,766,640 0s. 0d., viz.:—

£ s. d.
Total Surpluses … 21,091,193 0 11
Total Deficits … 16,324,553 0 11
Net Surplus … £4,766,640 0 0

And whereas the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury have temporarily authorised: (1) the application of so much of the realised surplus on Vote 8 for Army Services as is necessary to meet the net deficit of £422,944 4s. 9d. on Vote 11 that would otherwise have been met by issues out of the Consolidated Fund under the Armed Forces (Housing Loans) Acts, 1949 and 1953. (2) the application of so much of the remainder of the said total surpluses on certain Grants for Army Services as is necessary

SCHEDULE
No. of Vote Navy Services, 1957–58 Votes DEFICITS SURPLUSES
Excesses of Actual over Estimated Gross Expenditure Deficiencies of Actual as compared with Estimated Receipts Surpluses of Estimated over Actual Gross Expenditure Surpluses of Actual as compared with Estimated Receipts
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
1 Pay, &c., of the Army 4,435,602 7 7 — — 482,884 0 2
2 Reserve Forces, Territorial Army Home Guard and Cadet Forces 1,351,263 13 9 — — 108,316 5 0
3 War Office 61,795 6 3 — — 5,918 16 10
4 Civilians 834,053 15 5 382,543 9 1 — —
5 Movements 2,590,806 3 3 — — 101,799 10 3
6 Supplies, &c. — 2,975,487 2 1 3,210,666 4 2 —
7 Stores — — 8,506,602 6 11 3,537 292 7 2
8 Works, Buildings and Lands — — 2,629,454 0 0 885,734 9 7
9 Miscellaneous Effective Services — — 1,168,277 15 5 63,491 15 2
10 Non-Effective Services 2,893,442 13 2 — — 63,699 15 0
11 Additional Married Quarters — 750,000 0 0 327,055 15 3 —
— Balances Irrecoverable and Claims Abandoned 49,558 10 4 — — —
12,216,522 9 9 4,108,030 11 2 15,842,056 1 9 5,249,136 19 2
Total Deficits: Total Surpluses:
£16,324,553 0s. 11d. £21,091,193 0s. 11d.
Net Surplus £4,766,640

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the application of such sums be sanctioned.—[Mr. Simon.]

12.30 a.m.

Mr. G. Brown

I am sorry, but I am bound again, with your permission, Sir Charles, to ask a question about this Estimate. Here again, I suspect that we are going to be in the same difficulty. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Financial Secretary will not know why it happened, but it appears that we had a surplus of estimate over actual gross expenditure, which extraordinary language means that we did not spend the money that we should have spent on stores for the Army to the tune of £8½ million. That really means that we failed to give the Army the trucks, the guns and the other things it needs to the tune of £8½ million.

We appear to be transferring this sum to things like movements, moving men to make good the remainder of the said total deficits on other Grants for Army Services. up and down the world—which, on the whole, is a bad thing—and all sorts of other things. I cannot quite understand why the Committee should approve the accountancy of transferring money that is voted for the effective end of the Army to be used for the ineffective end of the Army. I should like to know why £8½ million—

Major H. Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

On a point of order. Could you please advise the Committee, Sir Charles, whether or not the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) is in order, because if we are allowed to ask why one Vote is different from another we are surely dealing with matters normally raised on the Estimates. I thought that my hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary had made it clear that he was merely following the precedent of many years' standing. It makes it very difficult for us to know whether what the right hon. Gentleman is doing is in order or not.

Mr. Brown

I am raising the question of accountancy. I understand from the Financial Secretary that the issue is the accountancy involved in exchanging one Vote to cover another Vote. That is the only point which I am raising. I am asking why the money on one Vote is transferred to another Vote. I submit with great respect, Sir Charles, that that is what the virement Resolution intends.

The Chairman

The Question I have to put is—

Mr. Brown

I have had the pleasure of knowing you for a long time now, Sir Charles. I was in the middle of deploying an argument when I was interrupted by the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) on a point of order which was obviously not a point of order, because you did not reply to it.

The Chairman

I will reply to the point of order. The merits or demerits of the expenditure do not arise. The fact that irrelevancies may have been allowed in the past does not make them relevant now.

Mr. Brown

I quite agree with that, Sir Charles. The point to which I should like an answer is simply why we should switch money which we were prepared to vote for the Army to different things which are not so effective from the point of view of producing a good Army, and much of it going into movements. I am not going into the relevancy of one thing or the irrelevancy of another, but it seems to me that one ought not to make this switch. In fact, if money is saved on the armaments of the Army that may be a good thing or a bad thing. I would think that it was a bad thing. I do not think that we should switch this money and use it for moving troops up and down the world. I shall be glad to hear why that switch was made.

Mr. Simon

There was some underspending on Vote 7 on stores, a surplus of estimated over actual expenditure, which means that the total amount that Parliament voted for stores was not spent. The reason why it was not spent and whether it should have been spent is a matter for the Service Minister, but not on this Question, as I understand the procedure. We simply start with the fact that there was a surplus on that Vote. It is not discussable on this procedure. On certain of the other Votes in the first column there was a deficit. Again, it is not for us to discuss whether that deficit was wrongly or rightly incurred. The only question is whether the deficit was of such a nature that it ought not to be covered by the virement—by the use of the surplus on some other Vote.

None of the deficits in column one, or indeed column two, is in any way extraordinary, nor is the total amount which is vired in this account in any way extraordinary. The Public Accounts Committee has said there is no reason why virement should not take place which has been provisionally agreed by the Treasury under the authority of Parliament. Therefore, with respect, I ask the Committee now to agree to this Motion.

Mr. G. Brown

That is not an answer. All that the hon. and learned Gentleman says is, "I do not know why the surplus has occurred. I do not why we spent more than we should. Anyhow, it is not my business." Then he says, "The Public Accounts Committee seems to be satisfied and that should be the end of it." If it should be the end of it, then it should have ended with the Public Accounts Committee, but it is now brought to the Committee of the Whole House because we here have to take the responsibility for it.

I am bound to say, speaking for myself—and I am not making fun of this at all—that if we failed to arm Her Majesty's Forces to the tune of £8½ million I do not see why it should be transferred to pay for rather more movement than we thought was going to occur. It seems to me that this transference is extraordinary. I must not go into the merits. That obviously puts me at a disadvantage, but every single debate we have had, Sir Charles, as you well know, about the state of Her Majesty's Forces has dealt with their ill equipment, the fact that they are not properly armed, and that they have not proper mobility.

It is asking me to do too much to agree that money which could have been spent, which should have been spent, should be switched to pay for things I would rather not have had. I would not have liked to have had so much movement up and down the pipeline. I should have liked to have had more aeroplanes. I should have liked to have had more guns. I should have liked to have had more business end for the Army.

We are put in an impossible position. The thing is so narrow. I must ask the Committee, and hon. Gentlemen on the other side, such as the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke), who should be, and I am sure is, very concerned about this, to say that it is wrong to cheat the Army of the armaments and the stores which it ought to have and then to switch the money to a thing called movement which, I suspect, is a thing which it ought not to have had. I am not prepared to allow the switch to be made.

Question put and agreed to.

SCHEDULE
No. of Vote Navy Services, 1957–58 Votes DEFICITS SURPLUSES
Excesses of Actual over Estimated Gross Expenditure Deficiencies of Actual as compared with Estimated Receipts Surpluses of Estimated over Actual Gross Expenditure Surpluses of Actual as compared with Estimated Receipts
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
1 Pay, &c., of the Air Force 209,302 18 11 — — 246,417 10 0
2 Reserve and Auxiliary Services — 4,398 11 8 60,112 7 11 —
3 Air Ministry — 18,810 12 4 7,822 12 1 —
4 Civilians at Out-stations 85,702 12 7 46,665 16 0 — —
5 Movements — — 226,578 0 2 272,067 8 4
6 Supplies 646,165 8 4 — — 273,539 14 4
7 Aircraft and Stores — 563, 153 4 1 1,796,220 10 5 —
8 Works and Lands — — 9,244,689 14 11 832,473 13 2
9 Miscellaneous Effective Services — 417,915 5 10 1,072,036 6 3 —
10 Non-effective Services — — 777,088 11 9 40,307 2 7
11 Additional Married Quarters — 1,800,000 0 0 177, 244 8 1 —
— Balances Irrecoverable and Claims Abandoned 21,837 8 4 — — —
963,008 8 2 2 850,943 9 11 13,361,792 11 7 1,664,805 8 5
Total Deficits: Total Surpluses:
£3,813,951 18s. 1d. £15,026,598 0s. 0d.
Net Surplus £11,212,646 1s. 11d.

Motion made, and Question proposed, sanctioned.—[Mr. Simon.]

III. Whereas it appears by the Air Appropriation Account for the year ended the 31st day of March 1958, that the aggregate Expenditure on Air Services has not exceeded the aggregate sums appropriated for those Services and that, as shown in the Schedule hereto appended, the net surplus of the Exchequer Grants for Air Services over the net Expenditure is £11,212,646 1s. 11d., viz.:—

£ s. d.
Total Surpluses … 15,026,598 0 0
Total Deficits … 3,813,951 18 1
Net Surplus … £11,212,646 1 11

And whereas the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury have temporarily authorised:—

  1. (1) the application of so much of the realised surplus on Vote 8 for Air Services as is necessary to meet the net deficit of £1,622,755 11s. 11d. on Vote 11 that would otherwise have been met by issues out of the Consolidated Fund under the Armed Forces (Housing Loans) Acts, 1949 and 1953.
  2. (2) the application of so much of the remainder of the said total surpluses on certain Grants for Air Services as is necessary to make good the remainder of the said total deficits on other Grants for Ac-Services.

That the application of such sums be

Mr. G. Brown

Here we have the same thing. I am sure many hon. Gentlemen want to get home, and to them it must seem tiresome that one should go on with this—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear"]—but, Sir Charles, one does this for the good of the Services and for the good of the defence policies of the country.

Here again, we come to exactly the same problem. I put it to the Financial Secretary again. Clearly I shall receive no sensible answer, but it seems to me that my job is to put it on the record. When we on this side of the Committee become the Government, which will happen quite soon, hon. Members opposite can use my argument against us. I use the argument quite seriously, knowing that that will happen. It is a peculiar and ridiculous situation. Here again, we have saved money; that is to say, we have failed to spend money on aircraft and stores. I would hazard a guess that there is no hon. Member present who does not think it an absolute disgrace that we have failed to give the Air Force the aircraft it should have.

Here we take a credit for aircraft and stores to the tune of £2 million and we switch it to all sorts of other things, including provision for civilians at out-stations. I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman, knowing very well that he will be able to give me no reply but will do it as charmingly as he can, why we failed to spend £2 million on aircraft and stores which the Air Force badly needs and on which the House wanted to spend money and we then switched the money to something else.

Under this arrangement is being hidden a very considerable sin. The Secretary of State for Air should explain why he failed to spend the money on aircraft and then asked for a little more money for other things. But the right hon. Gentleman ducks out from under. He does not explain why he did not get the aircraft which the Air Force ought to have had, and he gets away with the other money, which I do not much mind his having. But this matter should have been dealt with properly so that we would have had a Service Minister accounting to the House of Commons for the failure to give Her Majesty's Air Force the aeroplanes it should have had. This is the sort of problem that arose all through the 30s when the Government, of the same party, failed to give the country the aeroplanes that it should have had.

Major Legge-Bourke

That comes very well from the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Brown

Yes, indeed, quite well from me, but jolly badly from the hon. and gallant Member, who supports a party which failed to give the country the defence which it should have had before the war and sent the troops in 1939 into battle with only 30 tanks for all the money which the Tory Party spent on defence.

Sir James Duncan (South Angus)

The right hon. Gentleman's party was against armaments all the way through.

Mr. Brown

Maybe we voted against expending the money, but the party opposite failed to spend the money on the purpose for which it was voted. I would point out to the hon. Member for South Angus (Sir J. Duncan) that the issue tonight on the question of virement is whether the money was spent on the purpose for which is was voted. The point I am making is that before the war we voted money for tanks which was not spent on tanks. [An HON. MEMBER: "The party opposite did not."] We were not the Government. The result was that our chaps went into battle as a result of the policy of the party opposite with only 30 tanks between them and the whole German army.

I object to this virement tonight because I suspect that the same thing is happening. This is a serious argument. We are invited by the Minister of Defence to vote money for ships and for tanks and, in this case, for aircraft, and then the money is not spent on those things and the men in the Forces are starved. The hon. and learned Gentleman comes along with his charming, smiling face to say that it is all right and that we are switching the money to something else, and we all agree because it is late at night or early in the morning.

12.45 a.m.

The truth of the matter is that everybody thinks that we have bought the aircraft to the tune of whatever was the figure for which we voted, whereas in fact we have bought them to the tune of £2 million less than that. I do not see why we should be cheated of the provision of £2 million worth of aircraft and yet not have the Secretary of State for Air or the Minister of Supply here to tell us why the aircraft have not been bought. It is no good switching the money from effective to non-effective ends and then saying that it is merely a matter of accountancy. This cloaks a complete breakdown to that extent.

If the House of Commons is to do its job properly, we cannot vote money for aircraft and then switch it to other things and kid the House and the country that we are following the purpose for which the money was voted.

The hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery), whose father played such an heroic and noble part in these matters in the years before the war, when there was all this nonsense, knows exactly what I am talking about. At the cost of keeping hon. Members from their beds, I object to saying that failing to give the Air Force "teeth" is a matter of accountancy. Hon. Members opposite think that they can get away with it without giving any explanation, but I very much object to the whole procedure.

Vice-Admiral John Hughes Hallett (Croydon, North-East)

In dealing with these very small sums which appear in these accounts, is it right to assume that there was in fact a shortfall of so much money in the material actually delivered? Could it not equally well be accounted for by delays in settling the accounts?

Mr. Simon

Yes, my hon. and gallant Friend is correct. There are many reasons why there might be an underspending. There is no question of these matters being hidden from the House of Commons, or from the public. They are reported in the Appropriation Accounts, which show exactly what the underspending or overspending is. They are reported to the Public Accounts Committee and reported on by that Committee. Indeed, the whole thing appears on the Order Paper this evening. The explanation of the Vote to which the right hon. Gentleman referred is given on pages 17 and 19 of the Air Appropriation Accounts.

What it comes to is that the right hon. Gentleman does not approve of the principle of virement. He does not approve of the fact that a surplus on one Vote can be used to make up an overspending on another. Of course, that issue does not arise this evening. It is a matter of the procedure of the House of Commons. It has stood for over a century, and perhaps it is a little late at night to call it into question.

Mr. G. Brown

It is not enough to say that it has stood for over a century. That is a good Tory attitude to life and in a way it is part of the business of progressives, like those who sit on this side of the Committee, to challenge things which have stood for over a century.

My point, to which I think that I should have an answer, is that it is wrong to transfer money which was intended to provide aircraft and stores, that is, the business end of the Air Force, to Votes which are not the business end of the Air Force. In general and in principle it might be all right to transfer money from one account to another. I am asking the hon. and learned Gentleman to justify this transfer. I would be in favour of transferring money for one non-business end to another non-business end.

I think I am entitled to invite the Committee not to approve this proposal unless the hon. and learned Gentleman can explain why £1¾ million voted for the business end of the Air Force has been transferred to a non-business end.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolutions to be reported.

Report to be received this day.