Commons Sitting of 19 December 1960

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  MINISTRY OF HEALTH

    Cancer Research
    Commander Keransasked the Minister of Health what percentage of money under his Department's vote is allocated to cancer research.
    The Minister of Health (Mr. Enoch Powell): Cancer research in the National Health Service is carried on in the course of treating patients. It is therefore impossible to estimate the expenditure on it separately.
    Commander Kerans: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask whether he agrees that the Government spend very little money generally on cancer research and that most of it comes in voluntary contributions from the British Empire Cancer Campaign and other funds? Would not my right hon. Friend consider a greater allocation from Government sources to this very worth-while research and a possible reduction in spending by other Government Departments, say on the British Council, in order to increase the money available for this purpose?
    Mr. Powell: My hon. and gallant Friend will appreciate that his Question referred to my Department's Vote. The main Government contribution to this purpose is under the Vote of the Medical Research Council and that has been steadily and rapidly increasing.

    Smoking and Lung Cancer
    Mr. Liptonasked the Minister of Health whether, in view of the increased Press advertising of cigarettes from
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    £1,400,000 during the first nine months of 1959 to £2,200,000 in 1960 and the increased expenditure on tobacco from £274 million in the third quarter of 1959 to £301 million in 1960, he will take further steps to publicise the connection between smoking and lung cancer.
    Mr. Skeffingtonasked the Minister of Health whether his attention has been drawn to the greatly increased recent expenditure on tobacco advertisement, some of which is directly aimed at teenagers; and whether he will take powers to control advertising of this type.
    Dr. Strossasked the Minister of Health what recent further action he has taken to further the campaigns of the local health authorities which are aimed at discouraging young people from smoking; and what success these campaigns are having.
    Mr. Powell: There is good evidence that people in this country are widely aware of the risks involved in smoking. The health education measures of local authorities are largely directed to the young and should ensure that this awareness is maintained and intensified. I consider this approach to the problem is the right one.
    Mr. Lipton: But does not the right hon. Gentleman think that the efforts of local health authorities to educate children in this matter and to persuade them not to start smoking are completely overwhelmed by the fantastic amount spent, as indicated in the Question I put to him? Does it not show that smoking has gone mad, and that the Government must do a little more about it than they are doing?
    Mr. Powell: I have no reason to think that the facts are not reaching the public, and not reaching the younger members of the public, but they must be regarded as responsible people who take their own decisions.
    Dr. Summerskill: Every day we see propaganda on behalf of the tobacco interests directed at young people. I asked the Minister a similar question last week about another matter. Can he tell us what form his propaganda is taking to counter the pernicious effects of the business interests?
    Mr. Powell: Local health authorities have their methods of local health education, and material of all kinds is provided by my Department for their assistance.
    Mr. Pavitt: In view of the recent report of the Joint Tuberculosis Council on this subject, and also the results of the inquiry in the City of Edinburgh on the effect of local authority propaganda, will the Minister look at this question again and, instead of passing the buck to local authorities, see if he can take direct action from his Department.
    Mr. Powell: There is no question of passing the buck. This is the responsibility of local authorities. The evidence obtained from surveys is that the public are widely aware of the effects of this matter.

    Tortoises (Import)
    Mr. Dribergasked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the possible danger to human health arising from the import of tortoises that have been exposed to radioactivity; and what steps are taken to ensure that these animals, on their arrival in Great Britain, are free from this and other infections.
    Mr. Powell: I am advised that there is no hazard from radioactivity from imported tortoises—[Laughter.]—and no evidence of infection arising from them which would justify control measures.
    Mr. Driberg: Quite apart from the question of cruelty to these animals—which is not funny, but which is perhaps not the responsibility of the right hon. Gentleman—is he aware that the reassuring Answer that he has given is completely contrary to the opinion expressed by the Director of the Medical Research Council's Radiobiological Research Unit at Harwell?
    Mr. Powell: I have no evidence which leads me to think that there is danger from radioactivity in these tortoises.
    Mr. Driberg: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the point I put to him in my supplementary question? Will he look at it again?
    Mr. Powell: Information from that as well as other sources has been obtained.

    Drugs (Prices)
    Mr. K. Robinsonasked the Minister of Health arising from the new drug price agreement, of how many drugs the price will be directly negotiated, and what provision there is for the list to be expanded; whether the export price criterion remains the average export price; and whether the definition of new drugs lies within his control.
    Mr. Powell: Negotiations will be opened at once on the prices of a few widely-used drugs which together account for nearly half the value of those satisfying the export price criterion. Other drugs in large demand by the Health Services will be considered from time to time. The export price criterion remains the weighted average export price. New drugs in this context are defined in the scheme.
    Mr. Robinson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, as the major purchaser of these drugs in this country, he is in a position to drive a harder bargain with drug manufacturers than he appears to have done? In the light of the very considerable criticisms that were made by the Public Accounts Committee, does he not think that at least he could have obtained the lowest export price as the export price criterion?
    Mr. Powell: No. I do not think that it would be right to accept the lowest export price, in view of the fact that there will be instances where, with small quantities, an abnormally law price is quoted on an export contract.
    Mr. Lipton: Will the Minister give an assurance that these arrangements will not prevent any hospital group or region from buying drugs on the Continent if that group or region so wishes?
    Mr. Powell: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to my Answer to an earlier Question.
    Mr. K. Robinsonasked the Minister of Health on what date he reached agreement with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry on the renewal of the voluntary price regulation scheme; and what savings he estimates will result from the modifications on the basis of current expenditure on drugs.
    Mr. Powell: On 14th December. The savings cannot yet be estimated.
    Mr. Robinson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that one cannot help being a little bit suspicious about the timing, since last Monday he was unable to tell me even what the proposed changes were but on Wednesday a Question, perhaps inspired, was put down by the noble Lord the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) and answered on Thursday; but I will do my best to submerge the suspicions that arise. Can he give no estimate whatever of the savings that will be made as a result of these changes? Surely, some calculations must have been done by the Department?
    Mr. Powell: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman need hesitate to submerge his suspicions. No decision had been taken on this matter until 14th December, and before that time there was nothing that I could tell the House. The reason why I cannot yet estimate the savings is that, as I told the hon. Gentleman in answer to a previous Question, the negotiations which the new agreement will make possible have not yet begun.

    World Health Organisation (Malaria Eradication Fund)
    Mr. Prenticeasked the Minister of Health whether, in view of the fact that contributions have now been made by the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and many other countries to the malaria eradication fund of the World Health Organisation, Her Majesty's Government will now reconsider their decision to make no contribution.
    Mr. Powell: No, Sir. The Government remain convinced that the campaign to eradicate malaria should be maintained on the regular budget of the World Health Organisation, to which our contribution is the third in size.
    Mr. Prentice: Has the Minister seen the statement of the Director-General of the World Health Organisation that it is technically possible to eradicate the malaria-bearing mosquito within a few years, and that if this special campaign fails it will only be for lack of funds? Is he aware that many other nations have contributed to this special fund, and that some of them are much poorer than we are? Will he reconsider his decision? Does not he think that it is an exciting,
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    worth-while project that should succeed, and that the Government should do something extra to help it along?
    Mr. Powell: I have made an inquiry into the matter and I am advised that there is no question of this work being held up through lack of funds. The Executive Board of the World Health Organisation is recommending to the Conference, when it meets next February, that more and more of this expenditure should be brought on to the regular budget, and that the Government believe to be right.
    Dr. Summerskill: Does the Minister think that in the African countries which are malaria-ridden our reputation is enhanced by our refusal to give one penny to the ad hoc malaria eradication fund?
    Mr. Powell: The World Health Organisation ought itself to be the means of deciding the channelling of funds to its various purposes and, as I have reminded the House, we are the third largest subscriber to that Organisation.
    Mr. Arbuthnot: Will my right hon. Friend also bear in mind the considerable activity of the Ross Institute in this respect?
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: Will the Minister propose, in the Assembly of the W.H.O., that the budget shall be increased by an amount adequate to eradicate malaria?
    Mr. Powell: Again I must say that I am not aware that the funds available for this campaign are the limiting factor. My advice is that they are not.
    Mr. Noel-Baker: Is not that contrary to the evidence of many people who are principally concerned, given in the last few months?
    Mr. Prentice: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter at the earliest possible moment.

  HOSPITAL

    Dartford (Ronald Meloy)
    Mr. Doddsasked the Minister of Health what progress has been made in arranging the transfer of Ronald Meloy from a Bognor hospital to a Dartford hospital, to enable this badly-disabled youth to be near his friends and relatives.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Miss Edith Pitt): I was informed last week that Ronald Meloy will be transferred to a hospital near his home on a day to be arranged.
    Mr. Dodds: Is the hon. Lady and her right hon. Friend aware that this is the best Christmas box that the Meloy family and their friends could possibly have? I have just seen the father in the Central Lobby and I am sure that he would like me to thank the hon. Lady and the right hon. Gentleman for all they have done to get him this wonderful Christmas gift.

    Junior Medical Officers
    Mr. Boydenasked the Minister of Health how many citizens of India, Pakistan, West Africa and the West Indies, respectively, occupy junior medical officer posts in hospitals; and what percentage these doctors form of the total number of hospital junior medical officers.
    Mr. Powell: I regret this information is not available.
    Mr. Boyden: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the valuable services given by these citizens to this country is partially hiding the shortage of English-born and English-trained doctors in the hospital services? What steps is the right hon. Gentleman taking in conjunction with the University Grants Committee to stimulate an increase in the supply of doctors both in training and taken into the service in a few years' time?
    Mr. Powell: I agree that these doctors furnish very valuable help, though of course in return a good deal of training which is valuable to them later on in their own countries is obtained. My information is that the number of medical students is on the increase.
    Dr. Summerskill: In view of the information which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given me about the disproportionate number of women who are refused admission to the London medical schools, can the right hon. Gentleman tell me whether there is any follow-up of these very bright students who would make good doctors, in order to see that they are found vacancies in other hospitals and are not lost to the profession?
    Mr. Powell: I should like to consider that in detail if the right hon. Lady will allow me.

    St. Andrew's Hospital, Billericay (Christopher Disley)
    Mr. Gardnerasked the Minister of Health (1) what action has been taken in the case of the doctor responsible for prescribing an overdose of xylocaine, equivalent to almost three times the normal dose for a child of four years of age, to Christopher Disley, who died in St. Andrew's Hospital, Billericay, as a result of the overdose given to relieve the pain of a fractured wrist;
    (2) what instructions for use were given by the manufacturers of the drug, xylocaine, from an overdose of which Christopher Disley died in St. Andrew's Hospital, Billericay, on 25th August.
    Mr. Powell: A claim against the doctor by the father has been made and settled. The doctor had already resigned before the accident and his resignation took effect shortly after. As a result of the accident, fresh guidance on local analgesics by the Group Medical Advisory Committee has been brought to the notice of all medical staff in the Group. I am sending my hon. Friend copies of the manufacturers' instructions.
    Mr. Gardner: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that Answer, may I ask whether he can say whether the doctor who made this elementary and fatal mistake will be given refresher training in the safe use of drugs like xylocaine before he is allowed to prescribe them again? Can my right hon. Friend say whether any hospital to which this doctor may be appointed will be given notice of his present inexperience?
    Mr. Powell: I have not got the information that my hon. Friend asks for, but it is the duty of boards and committees to acquaint themselves with the qualifications and record of anyone whom they consider appointing.
    Mr. K. Robinson: Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that it is extremely difficult for boards and committees to acquaint themselves with the record of people they are appointing and that matters of this kind are very seldom referred to in references from previous employers?
    Mr. Powell: But it is the duty of these authorities to assure themselves that the references they obtain are adequate to ensure that they are aware of the qualifications and the records of the people they are appointing.

    Drugs
    Mr. Liptonasked the Minister of Health to what extent hospitals buy drugs from the Continent rather than British and American drugs; and what savings are effected thereby.
    Mr. Powell: Purchases of drugs from overseas by hospitals are very small. I regret that precise totals are not available.
    Mr. Lipton: In view of the fact that expenditure by hospitals on drugs amounts to about £13 million a year at the moment, will the Minister at least encourage hospitals to buy their drugs on the Continent if in that way they can save public funds?
    Mr. Powell: Of course, these purchases are likely to raise questions of royalties and other matters arising out of the Patent Acts.
    Mr. Arbuthnot: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the long-term effect which the action which is being urged on him could have on the future of the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in the light of the conclusions reached in paragraphs 257 and 258 of the Hinchliffe Committee's Report, which stress the importance of patent protection to the country's export markets, the discovery of new drugs, and the cost of prescribing?
    Mr. Powell: I agree with my hon. Friend that this is a very complex matter, and that a one-sided view must not be taken of it.
    Mr. Lipton: Is the Minister aware that the Crown has very important powers under the Patents Act, 1949, which should induce him not to be too afraid of what the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Arbuthnot) has just said?
    Mr. Powell: The points which my hon. Friend has made are some of the considerations, but not all of them.

    Building Projects
    Mr. Boydenasked the Minister of Health the average length of time which elapses between a regional hospital board approving a building project and the commencement of the actual building work.
    Mr. Powell: The dates of approval by boards do not come to my knowledge.
    Mr. Boyden: Is it not a pity that the right hon. Gentleman's advisers did not tell him that this summer was a wet one so that under-spending on the hospital building programme could have been to some extent anticipated? Is he not aware that a hospital in my area which wants to put up a changing room for nurses will not be able to do so because of the re-allocation due to under-spending? Should not he have taken action much earlier?
    Mr. Powell: I will be glad to look at the instance mentioned by the hon. Gentleman.
    Dr. Summerskill: In view of the fact that every hon. Member has a right to come to the Minister to ask him about lapses of time between the initial approval and the starting of the building, is it not a little curious that he is never given any information about the approval in the first place?
    Mr. Powell: Some of the projects do not require action on my part, so the approval by a board does not come to my official knowledge at all. But where the project does require my approval, as I say, I am not aware of the date on which the board approves the project.

    Elderly Patients (Convalescent Homes)
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Minister of Health what steps have been taken to provide more convalescent homes and accommodation for elderly patients after their hospital treatment; if he is aware of difficulties in finding such accommodation; and approximately how much of this accommodation is available for this type of ex-patient in the North-Eastern Hospital Board region.
    Miss Pitt: In the North East Metropolitan Region about 150 convalescent beds are normally occupied by elderly

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    patients. There are no figures to show how many elderly convalescents are in accommodation provided by the local authorities. Arrangements for convalescent accommodation are to be improved following a recent working party report.
    Mr. Sorensen: Is not the hon. Lady aware that in some cases where the patients are over a certain age they are rejected by convalescent homes? Cannot something be done to try to persuade these institutions to allow elderly patients to be received for convalescent purposes, and not barred?
    Miss Pitt: I think that the hon. Gentleman is probably referring to voluntary convalescent homes, though it is true that some of these are used on a contractual basis by regional boards. We are following up this question of the adequacy of convalescent accommodation, and I will certainly take note of the hon. Gentleman's point.

  SIMPLIFIED TRAVEL DOCUMENT
  Mr. Doddsasked the Lord Privy Seal if he can yet make a statement about simplifying and reducing the cost in the present passport system for holidays abroad.
  Mr. Mathewasked the Lord Privy Seal whether he has now reached a decision on the question of simplified passport arrangements.
  The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Edward Heath): Her Majesty's Government have now decided to issue a simplified travel document for the use of British nationals making short visits to certain European countries.
  This Tourist Passport, which will be in the form of a two-page card, will be obtainable from Labour Exchanges and will be valid for twelve months from the date of issue.
  The price will be 7s. 6d, and it will be available at no extra cost as a family passport. That is, it will cover husband and wife where desired, and children under 16 may also be included.
  If the necessary arrangements with other countries have been completed it is hoped that the cards will be available for use by Easter, 1961.
  Mr. Dodds: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that is splendid news, which will be welcomed by perhaps millions of ordinary people who like a fortnight abroad? Can he say whether or not, in order to be able to qualify for one of these simplified cards, there is no need to read through a long application form, as there is in the case of a passport? Generally when a person has read through the application form he is too tired to go on holiday. Will it be necessary to comb the countryside in order to find some distinguished gentleman to sign it, knowing full well that a criminal does not have any trouble in doing so?
  Mr. Heath: The whole process will be greatly simplified. No person will be required to vouch, but there will be penalties if false information is given.
  Mr. Mathew: I thank my right hon. Friend for this welcome if somewhat modest step. Will he confirm that this is only a first step in a resolute campaign to sweep away the tangle of frontier formalities which separate this country from its neighbours, and to which I and other hon. Members drew the attention of his Department in an Adjournment debate at the end of July?
  Mr. Heath: We shall have to review this after a period, and will then see how it has gone.

  NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANISATION (DEFENCE EXPENDITURE)
  Mr. Ginsburgasked the Lord Privy Seal if he will publish comparative figures of defence expenditure per head for the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, excluding Turkey and the United States of America, for 1955 and 1958.
  Mr. Heath: The figures in the form for which the hon. Gentleman has asked are not available. Figures expressing comparative defence expenditures as a percentage of the gross national product have, however, been published in a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation newsletter issued in August, 1960. With permission, I will circulate these figures in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
  Mr. Ginsburg: I look forward to these figures with interest. Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the figures which have been published on this subject by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, in July, 1960, show that in 1958 expenditure per head on defence was over twice as high in this country as in Germany? Are Her Majesty's Government satisfied that Germany is bearing her fair share of the financial burden of Western defence?
  Mr. Heath: I will certainly study the figures that the hon. Member has mentioned and, if possible, circulate them in the OFFICIAL REPORT later.
  Following is the information:
  Extract from N.A.T.O. newsletter, August, 1960:

  PROPORTION OF NATIONAL PRODUCT AT FACTOR COST DEVOTED TO DEFENCE (CURRENT PRICES)

  Country

  1955

  1958

  1959

  Belgium

  3·8

  3·6

  3·8

  Canada

  7·6

  6·1

  6·1

  Denmark

  3·6

  3·3

  3·2

  France

  7·7

  8·4

  8·9

  Germany

  4·8

  3·5

  5·3

  Greece

  6·4

  5·8

  6·0

  Italy

  4·6

  4·4

  4·1

  Luxembourg

  3·6

  2·1

  1·9

  Netherlands

  6·2

  4·9

  4·3

  Norway

  4·4

  4·0

  4·0

  Portugal

  4·6

  4·5

  4·7

  United Kingdom

  9·3

  7·9

  7·7

  UNITED NATIONS

    South Cameroons (Plebiscite)
    Mr. Tilneyasked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will consult with Mr. Hammarskjoeld about action to be taken in view of the campaign of one political party in the South Cameroons that wants independence from Nigeria and the Cameroon Republic and is urging the electorate to spoil their ballot papers.
    Mr. Heath: The United Nations has charged Her Majesty's Government, as the administering authority, with the responsibility for conducting the plebiscite in the Cameroons on the basis of the political choices laid down by the General Assembly, as well as for ensuring that the people there are aware of the reasons why the plebiscite is being held. This will be done during the "enlightenment campaign" to be held in January.
    Mr. Tilney: Although the economic development of the South Cameroons will probably be best served by that country becoming a self-governing region of the Federation of Nigeria, is my right hon. Friend aware that there are probably a large number of Cameroonians who want union neither with Nigeria nor with the Cameroon Republic? What are they to do?
    Mr. Heath: This has been laid down by the United Nations Assembly, and the electors must make up their own minds about the choice they make.
    Colonel Tufton Beamish: Is it too late for the United Nations to consider this matter again? Is it not curious that, the trusteeship having been brought to an end, this territory is not being offered a chance to choose complete independence?
    Mr. Heath: The actual details of the matter are for my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary but, as I understand it, the arrangements are now firmly made.

    Gaza Strip
    Mr. Wingfield Digbyasked the Lord Privy Seal what was the contribution pledged by this country to the United Nations Organisation to meet the cost of the Gaza Strip Operation; whether it has yet been paid; what contributions by other countries, including Russia, are outstanding; and what are their amounts.
    Mr. Heath: As the Answer contains a number of figures I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Wingfield Digby: Is there not an increasing tendency for rather vocal members of the United Nations not to pay their dues? Can my right hon. Friend explain how it is that the Soviet Union, which, I believe, has not paid on this occasion, should not have done so in view of its alleged sympathy for the Arabs at the United Nations?
    Mr. Heath: I would have to examine all these figures very carefully in order to produce a graph which indicated tendencies. A large number of these contributions are not paid. I cannot explain the reason why the Soviet Union does not pay some of its dues.
    The following is the Answer:
    Since 1957, Her Majesty's Government have paid towards the cost of the United Nations Emergency Force their assessed contributions totalling £2,056,830. They have paid additional voluntary contributions of £732,658. Contributions owed by other countries amounted to approximately £6,250,000 on 30th September, 1960.
    The unpaid contributions of the Soviet Union, Byelorussia and the Ukraine amount to $8·77 million. The other members of the Soviet bloc owe an additional $1·85 million. Other defaulters owe about $6·8 million.
    Fuller information on outstanding contributions will be found in United Nations Document A/C.5/824, a copy of which is in the Library of the House.

    Human Rights Commission
    Mr. Dribergasked the Lord Privy Seal if he will propose in the United Nations a revision of the practice under which the Human Rights Commission does not discuss or take action regarding alleged violations of human rights in particular countries, since this practice tends to diminish the usefulness of the Commission by preventing it from taking cognisance of all alleged violations wherever they occur.
    Mr. Heath: No, Sir. The present practice has obtained since 1947 when the Human Rights Commission recognised that it had no power to take any action in regard to complaints concerning human rights in particular countries. This principle was approved by the Economic and Social Council at the time and has, as recently as 1959, been restated by the Commission and reapproved unanimously by the Council.
    Mr. Driberg: But is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that only a few years ago the Commission on Human Rights began a new programme described as a "programme of concrete action"? How can any concrete action be taken usefully if the Commission cannot even discuss alleged violations of human rights, such as allegations of French atrocities in Algeria or whatever they may be?
    Mr. Heath: There is quite a profitable sphere open for the Commission's work.
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    That is a matter for the Commission, which less than a year ago decided that it did not want to make this change.

    European Residents, Stanleyville
    Mr. Tilneyasked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will bring to the attention of Mr. Hammarskjoeld the reluctance of the United Nations troops in Stanleyville to endeavour to keep order or protect citizens of the United Kingdom and of other countries from being maltreated by Congolese soldiers.
    Mr. Biggs-Davisonasked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will make a statement about the outbreak of violence at Stanleyville in the Congo, in the course of which Miss Daphne Parks, of Her Majesty's Embassy in Leopoldville, was among those maltreated; and what action has been taken by Her Majesty's Government in concert with other countries affected to seek redress.
    Mr. Heath: Early on the morning of 27th November the European residents of Stanleyville were rounded up by Congolese soldiers, ostensibly for the purpose of checking identity documents, and some were subject to humiliating treatment and detained. Miss Park, First Secretary at Her Majesty's Embassy at Leopoldville, arrived in Stanleyville that day. In spite of her diplomatic status she was detained for some hours with the other passengers at the airfield; she was searched and slapped several times by Congolese soldiers.
    These and subsequent events in Stanleyville were immediately taken up with the United Nations authorities in both New York and Leopoldville. The United Nations has now undertaken to provide protection for Europeans in Stanleyville.
    Mr. Tilney: May I ask whether that protection is now really being provided? Will my right hon. Friend watch the situation lest any sudden withdrawal of national contingents from the United Nations Force should jeopardise British lives?
    Mr. Heath: Yes, Sir. I understand that these responsibilities are now being carried out by the troops in Stanleyville. We will, of course, watch the matter mentioned by my hon. Friend.
    Mr. Grimond: Are Her Majesty's Government making any proposals for strengthening the contribution of the United Nations in the Congo, or any proposal at the United Nations for the handling of the Congo situation?
    Mr. Heath: There is a Question later on the Order Paper on the subject raised by the hon. Gentleman in the latter part of that supplementary question. The matter of the United Nations Force in the Congo has always been handled by Mr. Hammarskjoeld, and we have always offered any influence that we can to meet his requirements.

    Disarmament
    Mr. Hannanasked the Lord Privy Seal what proposals Her Majesty's Government have submitted to the United Nations General Assembly for the resumption of disarmament negotiations, either in the Ten-Nation Committee or in some other body.
    Mr. Heath: Her Majesty's Government have joined in sponsoring a Resolution recommending various principles which should guide disarmament negotiations and urging that negotiations should be resumed as soon as possible. In addition, the United Kingdom delegate has tabled a Resolution setting out the proposals of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on the establishment of expert study groups, and recommending their appointment with the minimum of delay.
    Mr. Hannan: The Minister will be aware that there have been other proposals that the Committee of Ten should be extended to a committee of fifteen. Will he assure us that he will not take up an inflexible attitude on machinery since disarmament is, of course, the prime purpose?
    Mr. Heath: We are not in the least inflexible, as I think the action we have taken at the United Nations shows and as an Answer to a Question shortly to be reached will demonstrate. I think that the proposals mentioned by the hon. Member are a complete change in the nature of the Ten-Power Committee and we have said that we are prepared to consider such changes.
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: Can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that, in
    870
    view of the most unsatisfactory nature of the negotiations in Geneva in the Committee of Ten, we shall propose drastic changes in its composition in order to bring in some of the so-called neutral or uncommitted voices?
    Mr. Heath: I am answering a Question about that a little later.

    Security Council
    Mr. Brockwayasked the Lord Privy Seal for which nominations for the non-permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations the United Kingdom delegation voted; which were elected; and how many votes each received in the last ballots when votes were recorded.
    Mr. Heath: The ballots for these elections are secret and I cannot therefore reveal how the United Kingdom delegation voted.
    Chile and the United Arab Republic were elected for two-year terms, each with 74 votes, to replace the Argentine and Tunisia respectively. Turkey, which also received 74 votes, was elected to serve during the year 1961, to replace Poland.
    Mr. Brockway: In view of the fact that The Times and many other newspapers have given details of these votes, is the right hon. Gentleman in a position to deny that the British vote was given for Portugal, which denies all our democratic principles both in Portugal and in its colonial administration?
    Mr. Heath: With great respect to the hon. Member, I think he is mistaken in saying that a newspaper published the details of these votes, because they are not published in the United Nations. There were seven ballots in the particular case he has mentioned, and I do not think anyone has given the details of those ballots. It was well known, of course, that we were broadly in support of Portugal, and we did so under the arrangement by which each area of the world supports a particular country that is generally agreed. We adhered to that arrangement.
    Mr. Healey: Is it not increasingly obvious that all these so-called gentlemen's agreements, frequently honoured in the breach by Her Majesty's Government

    871
    in the case of the East European seat, are totally out of date and that we shall get no order in the Security Council until the Peking Government is seated there and the Afro-Asian countries get the representation which they deserve in the light of their position in the Assembly?
    Mr. Heath: That is a much wider question.
    Mr. Callaghan: Did the British Government give their vote to Portugal in return for the vote Portugal gave us on the resolution on South-West Africa yesterday when we were in a minority of three? How does the Minister explain this link-up in a situation in which he as a member of the Government promised us that the Government would take action in the United Nations and then failed to vote yesterday?
    Mr. Heath: That is a different question.

    Congo (Mr. Lumumba)
    Mrs. Castleasked the Lord Privy Seal whether it was with the authority and consent of the Security Council that Mr. Lumumba was arrested in the Congo; and how the United Kingdom representative on the Security Council voted on this matter.
    Mr. Heath: The arrest of Mr. Lumumba was an internal Congolese matter which did not derive from any action of the Security Council. The United Kingdom voted against Russian and Polish resolutions which inter alia called for the release of Mr. Lumumba. These resolutions were rejected by the Council.
    Mrs. Castle: Is it not intolerable that the Parliamentary immunity of any M.P.s in the Congo should be violated in this way by either side? Is it not clear that constitutional government cannot be restored in the Congo until there has been the release of Mr. Lumumba and the recall of Parliament, as advocated by moderate neutrals such as Nigeria and Ceylon? Will not the Government co-operate with those neutral nations to this end, as the first step towards getting new constitutional talks among all the leaders in the Congo?
    Mr. Heath: I understand that Mr. Lumumba was arrested on the fiat of Mr. Kasavubu, the head of State, and
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    that it was on charges which his Parliamentary immunity did not cover. [HON. MEMBERS "Oh"] That is what I understand. It is not for me to decide what the law of the Congo is, but I understand that that is the position. As for a meeting of the Parliament, I have no doubt that when law and order and stability are restored in the Congo, it will be a very good thing for the Parliament to meet.
    Mr. Stonehouse: Will the Minister tell us the source from which he has obtained his facts?
    Mr. Heath: I will certainly make them available to the hon. Member if he wants them.
    Mrs. Castle: Is it not clear that law and order can be restored in the Congo only by the United Nations putting its strength behind the constitutional authority and that by this policy of nonintervention it is allowing the situation to drift until there is a danger of civil war breaking out? Is it not a question of the United Nations making up its mind on the correct constitutional policy? Will not the Government co-operate with the moderate neutral nations in their assessment of the situation?
    Mr. Heath: The United Nations has made up its mind on the correct constitutional authority by seating the head of State, President Kasavubu. Apart from that, there is obvious confusion about the constitutional authority in the Congo.

    Algeria (Referendum)
    Mr. R. Edwardsasked the Lord Privy Seal how Her Majesty's Government voted at the United Nations General Assembly on 14th December, 1960, on the resolution calling for United Nations supervision of the referendum in Algeria.
    Mr. Heath: This resolution, the text of which is in United Nations document No. A/C.1/L.265 of 9th December, was put to the vote in the First Committee on the 15th of December. The United Kingdom delegation voted against it.
    Mr. Edwards: Will not the Minister agree that, after seven years of bitter war in Algeria, a peaceful solution should be sought through the United

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    Nations? Will he not agree that the resolution against which we voted was in complete conformity with Article 17 of the Charter, to which this Government have subscribed? Has his attention been drawn to a statement by the Acting-Secretary of State in the new Administration in America, in reply to American trade unions, in which he states that the solution of the Algerian problem can be achieved only by self-determination? In the light of these facts, how do we justify voting against such a resolution?
    Mr. Heath: We have devoted all our efforts to trying to find a reasonable and peaceful solution, and we shall continue to do so. It is the acknowledged effort of General de Gaulle to achieve a solution through self-determination, but we were quite certain that this resolution, which would impose a referendum on Algeria against the wishes of the French Government and which the United Nations had no power to impose, was certainly not the best way of getting it.

    Colonial Countries (Resolution)
    Mr. R. Edwardsasked the Lord Privy Seal how Her Majesty's Government voted at the United Nations on 14th December, 1960, on the resolution embodying a declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples.
    Mr. Heath: The United Kingdom abstained on the Afro-Asian draft declaration.
    Mr. Edwards: Has the Minister's attention been drawn to an article in The Times of 15th December which stated that the Prime Minister intervened to get the support of President Eisenhower when the American Government had intended to vote for the resolution? Is he aware that we are in bad company here and that we abstained with Portugal, Spain and South Africa? May I remind him that this resolution followed the defeat of the Soviet Union's amendment and made no reference whatever to Colonialism? Is he aware that it is a very moderate resolution along lines to which all parties in the House have been subscribing for many years?
    Mr. Heath: In abstaining on this resolution we did what we believed to be
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    right, and I am sure that the United States did the same.
    Mr. Callaghan: In view of the Government's lamentable record in the United Nations this session, is it not high time that our policy was reviewed? How does the Minister explain this series of abstentions, the latest of which was yesterday, when a resolution was carried by 90 voles to none, with three abstentions, of whom we were one, deprecating the policy of apartheid in South Africa? Why could not the Government vote for that, having accepted the Motion in the House on Thursday?
    Mr. Heath: The Question which I am answering is about a completely different resolution, and I do not propose to answer questions about yesterday's debate. I do not believe that hon. Members opposite could have supported many of the statements in the Afro-Asian resolution on colonialism, on which we abstained.
    Sir R. Grimston: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many people are getting very tired of seeing these resolutions which are sponsored and supported by Russia, in which we are put on the defensive, when nothing is said about Hungary and similar matters? Is he aware that we are continually put on the defensive at the United Nations by these ridiculous resolutions?
    Mr. Callaghan: Is not the Minister aware that I am not raising only the question of yesterday's debate but the whole question of the Government's policy on these resolutions and that—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. That is all out of order, because it raises a very different question.
    Mr. Callaghan: I am raising the lack of consistency on the Government's part. They were very willing to condemn what happened in Hungary, and did so when the motion was put on the agenda, but they fail to condemn other nations in a similar state. What is the reason for this inconsistency? The Government supporters may have a bad conscience, but that will not prevent the facts from coming out.
    Mr. Heath: We certainly cannot accept that the resolution on which we abstained deals with countries in a similar

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    state to that following the Russian attack on Hungary. There are very good reasons why we abstained on the Afro-Asian motion on colonialism, which was against the whole tenor of British colonial policy under many Administrations.
    Mr. Callaghan: What is the difference—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I call the Minister of Agriculture, to answer Questions Nos. 71 and 74.

  PASSPORT PHOTOGRAPHS
  Mr. Brockwayasked the Lord Privy Seal in what circumstances Her Majesty's Government provide foreign Governments with photographs supplied to them for passport purposes by British subjects without informing the persons concerned.
  Mr. Heath: I am informed that copies of passport photographs have, on occasion, been transmitted by the police to police forces abroad for the purpose of investigating crime.
  Mr. Brockway: In view of the fact that these photographs are provided for a document that promises protection for Her Majesty's subjects, is it not contrary to that promise that they should be provided without an assurance that the identification methods in the other country are consistent with British justice? Secondly, should not they be used only in serious cases, such as in respect of extradictable offences?
  Mr. Heath: The passport is to provide protection, but this arrangement was made for the purposes of investigating crime. The question of the methods used in the country concerned is a very important one, and I will look at that.
  Mr. Fletcher: Is not this scandalous? Surely the right hon. Gentleman should give an assurance that photographs provided to the Government to enable the Government to issue British passports ought not in any circumstances to be supplied to any foreign Government.
  Mr. Heath: This is a process which have been in operation for a considerable time.
  Hon. Members: Shame.
  Mr. Snow: In any event, what constitutes a crime in this country is regarded in a very different light in some others. Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that, though a photograph may be obtained on the pretext of being used in the case of an ordinary felony, it may be used for something entirely different—for penalising people—when it gets abroad?
  Mr. Heath: It is a question of the definition of an offence, and the police must be the judges of that. Whether or not a case is a rightful one for the police to provide a photograph is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
  Sir G. Nicholson: Would it not solve the problem if these photographs were never sent except in cases of extradictable crime?
  Mr. Heath: I will examine that suggestion.
  Mr. Brockway: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the reasonably satisfactory Answer I have received, I cannot, for technical reasons, give the usual notice to raise this matter on the Adjournment, but I should like to have an opportunity to return to it at a later stage.

  WESTERN EUROPEAN UNION (RESOLUTION)
  Mr. Holtasked the Lord Privy Seal in view of the fact that on 30th November, in Paris, the Western European Assembly passed a resolution, supported by the United Kingdom delegates, that Great Britain should join the Common Market, Euratom, and the European Coal and Steel Community, to what extent this now represents Her Majesty's Government's policy; and what steps he is taking to implement it.
  Mr. Heath: The recommendations of the Western European Union Assembly are not proposed by Governments and are not binding on them, but we regard this particular recommendation as a welcome gesture of European solidarity.
  Mr. Holt: Can the right hon. Gentleman clear up one point? Are the Government still giving their time to trying to find ways and means by which Britain may associate with the Six, or

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  are they now on a different policy of trying to solve some of the problems which would arise by Britain's applying for membership?
  Mr. Heath: We are exploring the possibility of an association between the Six and the Seven.
  Mr. Healey: In view of the fact that the Six are due to take a large number of steps on 1st January next, which will considerably complicate this problem, will the Lord Privy Seal ask the Prime Minister to make a detailed statement on the present state of negotiations when he addresses the House tomorrow in answer to a Question which I have placed on the Order Paper?
  Mr. Heath: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister answered a Question on this subject last week. There are no negotiations going on of any kind at the moment between the Six and the Seven. There are confidential exploratory talks in order to see whether a reasonable basis for negotiation can be found. The changes on 1st January will not make the problem any more complicated, though they may make it more difficult to solve.

  BAHRAIN (PRISONERS, ST. HELENA)
  Mr. Stonehouseasked the Lord Privy Seal if he will now state when he intends to release the Bahraini prisoners now detained on St. Helena.
  Mr. Heath: The Ruler of Bahrain has reviewed this matter at the request of my noble Friend and, after consideration, has asked that the prisoners be returned to his custody in Bahrain. Arrangements for this are now being considered.
  Mr. Stonehouse: Is it not outrageous that, having been kept in detention for so long, these men should be returned to the Ruler of Bahrain, who had them convicted on trumped-up charges in a feudal court? Would it not be better to release them and allow them to go to any country they choose?
  Mr. Heath: They were sentenced under the Ruler's jurisdiction and detained under an agreement by which, at the Ruler's request, they could be returned to Bahrain. He has now made that request.
  Mr. W. Yates: If the prisoners ask for political asylum, what will my right hon. Friend answer?
  Mr. Heath: There can be no question of political asylum for the men who are detained.
  Mr. Healey: Is it not the case that these men are now under the sovereignty of Her Majesty's Government, and that the Government are now in a position to accede, if they so desire, to any request they may make? Can the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that if these men request political asylum he will, in consonance with long British tradition, consider their request very sympathetically?
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The latter part of that supplementary question is out of order, because it is hypothetical.
  Mr. Heath: These men were detained because of their sentences under the Ruler's jurisdiction. When they were taken to St. Helena it was by an arrangement that, at his request, they would be returned to him.
  Sir G. Nicholson: Can my right hon. Friend say anything about the conditions in which these men will be detained or imprisoned in Bahrain?
  Mr. Heath: The conditions in Bahrain were recently examined by Her Majesty's Judge of the Chief Court in the Persian Gulf. He has assured us that the conditions there are good.
  Mr. Stonehouse: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether, when these men are being returned to Bahrain, they will have sufficient time in which to consider their position? Will he make a further statement to the House about this before the Recess?
  Mr. Heath: I shall have nothing further to say to the House before we rise for the Recess.

  NUCLEAR TESTS
  Mr. Healeyasked the Lord Privy Seal if he will make a statement on the suspension of negotiations for a ban on atomic tests.
  Mr. Frank Allaunasked the Lord Privy Seal what proposals he has to break the deadlock in the nuclear test ban discussions.
  Mr. Hannanasked the Lord Privy Seal if he will make a statement on the session just concluded of the Geneva Conference on the discontinuation of nuclear weapon tests.
  Mr. Masonasked the Lord Privy Seal if he will now make a statement on the progress being made in the Geneva talks to obtain a permanent cessation-of-tests agreement.
  Mr. Heath: The Nuclear Tests Conference went into recess on 5th December and will resume its work on 7th February. As regards the position reached at it, I would refer to the reply I gave to the right hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson) on 14th December.
  Mr. Healey: As there is growing urgency for an agreement on a test ban, in the light of the multiplying reports that various other countries are on the verge of being able to conduct atomic tests, will the right hon. Gentleman seek the first opportunity of discussing with the new American Administration whether the Western Powers cannot make a new approach to the Soviet Union when the Conference resumes?
  Mr. Heath: I can certainly give that assurance.
  Mr. Hannan: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the remaining difficulties are relatively smaller? Will he take the initiative during this intermission to approach the other Powers to see whether, by diplomatic negotiations, we could come to agreement before the reconvening of the Conference?
  Mr. Heath: We hope to be able to deal with the remaining problems. As to the last part of the hon. Member's supplementary question, I think that the Soviet Government itself feels that it would be better to wait until the new American Administration has come into office before trying to make further progress.
  Mr. Mason: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that recent reports have shown that deaths from leukæmia in every age group have increased and the intake of strontium 90 into children's bones has trebled over the past two years? Are not these deaths and increase in disease a direct result of
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  nuclear tests by ourselves and other atomic Powers? Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House whether any pressure is being brought to bear by the atomic Powers on new Powers, such as France, with a view to restraining them from the next series of atomic tests?
  Mr. Heath: I think our views are best shown by our own suspension of tests.
  Mr. Fletcher: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that this problem has assumed new and serious urgency in view of today's report that the French are proposing to supply the Government of Israel with atomic weapons? If these atomic weapons spread throughout the Middle East the position will become increasingly grave. In view of that, is it not of the greatest urgency that negotiations should be resumed?
  Mr. Heath: No one doubts the urgency of the matter, although I cannot comment on the matter raised by the hon. Member. All three Powers are agreed that the best hope of making further progress will be after the new American Administration comes into office, and that is why the adjournment finishes on 7th February.

  NUCLEAR WEAPONS (CONTROL)
  Mr. Shinwellasked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will instruct Her Majesty's Ambassador in Washington to enter into discussions with the United States President-Elect on joint control of the use of nuclear weapons.
  Mr. Heath: No, Sir. Her Majesty's Ambassador in Washington is accredited to the President of the United States, and it would be improper for instructions to be issued in the sense suggested by the right hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Shinwell: Will the right hon. Gentleman take this suggestion into consideration so that at the appropriate stage discussions can take place? Is he not aware that there is considerable misunderstanding in many quarters on this subject of control of nuclear weapons and that there is need for clarification? Will he take that into consideration?
  Mr. Heath: Yes, I am quite prepared to take that into consideration, but there has been a large number of cases in recent weeks in the House when my

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  right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence have made statements on this subject. The Prime Minister has expressed himself satisfied with the present understanding.
  Mr. Shinwell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that doubts still exist as to whether effective control can be exercised in this regard? Is there not, therefore, a need for further clarification so that all these misunderstandings and doubts can be removed?
  Mr. Heath: I shall certainly examine the need for further clarification.

  LAOS (INTERNATIONAL CONTROL COMMISSION)
  Mr. Warbeyasked the Lord Privy Seal whether, in view of the increasingly disturbed situation in Laos, he will now invite the Soviet co-Chairman of the Geneva Conference to join with him in reconvening a meeting of the Geneva Conference.
  Mr. Healeyasked the Lord Privy Seal whether, in view of the present situation in Laos, he will take steps as co-Chairman to reconvene the Geneva Conference on Indo-China.
  Mr. Zilliacusasked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will bring the situation in Laos, where Soviet arms are being supplied to the Government and United States arms to right-wing insurgents, to the attention of the United Nations Security Council under Article 34 of the Charter, as a circumstance affecting the good relations between States on which peace depends.
  Mr. Swinglerasked the Lord Privy Seal by what means he intends to satisfy himself that there is no hope of the Laotians settling their problems on their own before taking international action as co-Chairman of the Geneva Conference on South-East Asia.
  Mr. Pavittasked the Lord Privy Seal what reply he has sent to the communication from Mr. Nehru proposing the re-summoning of the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Laos.
  Mr. Heath: My noble Friend is considering whether the vital task of
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  restoration of law and order in Laos would be hastened by the return of the International Control Commission as Mr. Nehru has suggested. The Commission could only function, however, if it received co-operation from both the Government and the rebels. As a first step, therefore, he has instructed Her Majesty's Ambassador in Vientiane to inquire whether the provisional Administration which Prince Boun Oum has formed on the invitation of the King of Laos following the withdrawal of confidence from Prince Souvanna Phouma by the Laotian Parliament, would accept the return of the Commission. If the Government's reply is favourable he will approach the Soviet Government, to whom he has already expressed his serious concern at the situation. Meantime, my noble Friend is not contemplating any other action in the international field.
  It has always been the policy of Her Majesty's Government to try to encourage the formation of a Laotian Government of national unity, and Her Majesty's Ambassador in Vientiane has been instructed to make strong representations that early steps should be taken to form a broadly-based Government and include in it all those who are willing to co-operate.
  Mr. Warbey: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether it is still the aim of the British Government, as has been stated before, to achieve the establishment of a Government which is dedicated to a neutralist policy in Laos and that Laos should remain neutral as well as independent? Secondly, in view of the very serious deterioration in the situation in Laos—while welcoming the belated action of the Government in suggesting the recalling of the International Commission—may I ask if it is not time to go beyond that and re-summon the Geneva Conference itself in order to discuss the whole situation?
  Mr. Heath: The aim of Her Majesty's Government is, as I have said, to see there a broadly-based Government whose position will be that defined by the Geneva Protocols. As to the last part of the supplementary question, I think it would be better first to see what happens on the steps which my noble Friend is taking.
  Mr. Healey: May we take it from the answer of the right hon. Gentleman that Her Majesty's Government have no intention whatever, as has been reported in the Press, of recognising the rebel Government in Laos? In the second place, can the right hon. Gentleman say if he will consider consulting the Soviet Government, which is co-Chairman of the Geneva Conference, in view of the obvious and very wide international implications which the present conflict in Laos already has?
  Mr. Heath: Recognition goes to the king as head of the régime and there has been no change in Laos in that. It will be a question of working with the established Government, which is a provisional Government. I said that if the reply is favourable about the Control Commission my noble Friend will approach the Soviet Government.
  Mr. Zilliacus: In view of the fact that American supplies of arms and money to the right-wing insurgents have led to their overthrowing the neutralist Government and starting a civil war, will not the right hon. Member protest to the American Government and make it clear that in no circumstances will this country be involved in hostilities in the Far East? Will he not bring the whole matter before the United Nations as a threat to international peace?
  Mr. Heath: The way which I have described is, I think, the best way of handling it. American supplies were sent to Prince Souvanna Phouma's Government until 29th November, at his request. When he asked them no longer to supply such arms, they ceased.
  Mr. Swingler: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that last Wednesday he described the Government's policy, in an Answer to me, as seeking the establishment of a neutral and independent Laos? May we have that confirmed? In view of the fact that the Geneva Conference decisions, not only on Laos but on Vietnam, have again and again been flouted over the years, surely it is time to seek the reconvening of this Conference to survey the whole situation?
  Mr. Heath: I have described the Government's object as the status which is covered by the Geneva Protocols, and I
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  think that that is the best way of describing it. As for the suggestion of reconvening the Geneva Conference, it is better, first, that the initiative which my noble Friend is taking should be completed. The reason that the Commission was not able to implement its terms of reference is that it did not receive co-operation from the rebels.
  Mr. Pavitt: In view of the highly inflammable nature of this conflict, will the right hon. Gentleman treat this as a matter of extreme urgency and expedite any further communications made in accordance with his first Answer?
  Mr. Heath: It is very difficult to expedite replies from people to whom one has written.
  Mr. Gaitskell: Do the Government accept their special responsibility in this matter, in view of their position as co-Chairman of the Geneva Conference? Secondly, would it not be wise to approach the other Chairman, namely, the Soviet Government, before going any further in this matter? What will be the position if the existing rebel Government decline the proposals put forward? Are we then to assume that the Government will wash their hands of the whole thing?
  Mr. Heath: The answer to the last part of the supplementary question is, "No". Her Majesty's Government have no special formal position now, following the Geneva Conference and the documents which emerged from it, but, naturally, we have a particular interest in it because of the part which we played in that conference and of our position as joint-Chairman of the Conference. My noble Friend is already in contact with the Soviet Government. He has expressed to them his anxieties about the situation and has also made a request that the supply of arms to those who are the rebels should cease.

  SPAIN (CULTURAL CONVENTION)
  Mr. Jegerasked the Lord Privy Seal whether he is satisfied that there will be no censorship of books and periodicals sent into Spain under the Cultural Convention signed in July last; and whether he will withhold ratification until he receives adequate assurances.
  Mr. Heath: There is no clause in the Anglo-Spanish Cultural Convention—nor in any other cultural convention to which Her Majesty's Government are a party—whereby books and periodicals sent from this country are exempted from censorship, where such exists. The second part of the Question does not therefore arise.
  Mr. Jeger: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that Article 2 of the Convention lays it down that each contracting Government shall grant every facility within the limits of its legislation? Is it not well known that the legislation of Fascist Spain is both brutal and repressive? Will he therefore take such steps to get a liberalisation of the legislation of Spain as are open to him within the limits of the Convention?
  Mr. Heath: We naturally hope that as many books and periodicals as possible will be imported into Spain, but a convention drawn on the lines which the hon. Member has mentioned obviously gives us no reason to protest, providing that it remains within the legislation.
  Mr. Kershaw: To what extent are books and periodicals in English allowed into the Soviet Union without censorship?
  Mr. Heath: I cannot answer that supplementary question without notice.
  At the end of Questions:—

  AGRICULTURE

    National Farmers' Union (Talks)
    The following Questions stood upon the Order Paper:
    Sir ANTHONY HURD: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the policy discussions recently held with the National Farmers' Union; and when a White Paper will be published.
    Mr. GEOFFREY DE FREITAS: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will now make a statement on his talks with the National Farmers' Union on a long-term policy for agriculture; and whether he will now give the House the information on these talks which was circulated to all branches of the National Farmers' Union on Thursday, 15th December.
    The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Christopher Soames): The talks with the leaders of the Farmers' Union were intended to clarify some of the problems confronting the industry. They have resulted in a much clearer understanding between the two sides and a substantial measure of agreement has been reached. Both sides have found the talks most valuable, and I should like to pay a special tribute to the skill and vigour with which Mr. Woolley and his colleagues have represented the interests of the argicultural industry. A full report on the talks is being published in a White Paper, copies of which are now being made available in the Vote Office. The talks have taken place in a constructive spirit and discussion on some of the topics which require further examination will be resumed after the 1961 Price Review.
    In reply to the second part of the Question of the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas), I am informed that no information has been circulated to N.F.U. branches.
    Sir A. Hurd: While welcoming the constructive spirit of these talks, may we take it that they have served to reaffirm the essential feature of Government policy in developing and expanding the competitive strength of British agriculture? When these talks are resumed after the February Price Review, may we also take it that there will be a fresh look at the various methods of agricultural support in order to see that both farmers and taxpayers get still better value for money?
    Mr. Soames: In answering the first point of my hon. Friend, that is certainly so. They have taken place in a constructive spirit with a view to improving the understanding between the Government and the unions. In answer to the second part of the question: yes, that is what we have in mind.
    Mr. de Freitas: Obviously, until we have read the White Paper we cannot ask detailed Questions on its contents, but there are three general points. Does the Minister recall that the Leader of the Opposition at the beginning of the Session asked for a debate on agriculture? If we are to have it before the Price Review, we must have it very shortly after Parliament reassembles after the Christmas Recess.

    887
    Secondly, as regards information to the National Farmers' Union, did not 50 or 60 chairmen of county branches receive an outline of the White Paper on Thursday? If so, why were not hon. Members given similar information on Thursday, especially as there were Questions down to the Minister of Agriculture which were reached?
    Thirdly, does this White Paper meet and tackle the basic problem on which there has been such a lot of divergence of opinion between unions and the Government, namely, on production policy?
    Mr. Soames: Taking the last part of the hon. Gentleman's question first, on production policy, he will find a statement in the White Paper saying that the Government and the unions agree on the broad outline of what our production policy should be.
    In answer to the second part of the question, on the unions being informed, these were talks between the Government and the unions. The objective was to reach agreement on a number of outstanding points, and though there was no question of the White Paper being circulated to the branches of the union, Mr. Woolley addressed a meeting of the Council of the National Farmers' Union, which it was essential for him to carry with him in order for me to be able to report to the House whether or not there was agreement reached between the unions and the Government.
    As to the debate in the House, I am aware of what the Leader of the Opposition said about an agricultural debate. The timing of debates, as the hon. Gentleman is aware, is not a matter for me but something which is carried out through the usual channels. We shall be getting very close to the Price Review when the House reassembles.
    Mr. Bullard: Will my right hon. Friend say whether agreement has been reached about the future of annual assessment for improved efficiency, which has always been a great source of trouble at all Price Reviews?
    Mr. Soames: Yes. The hon. Member will find a paragraph of considerable length on that topic which, I hope, will please him.
    Mr. Grimond: Is the agreement set out in the White Paper likely to affect
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    Scotland? If so, were there any consultations with people which might represent the interests of crofters, marginal farmers and hill farmers in Scotland, because they are worried about the issue of agriculture in the North?
    Mr. Soames: The consultations have included consultations with the leaders of the National Farmers' Union in Scotland.
    Mr. Deedes: In view of the value of these talks, does my right hon. Friend think this kind of thing may happen again, or does he regard these as once-and-for-all talks?
    Mr. Soames: I think it is profitable for both sides that there should be talks from time to time on such matters, especially where there are outstanding differences, as there were after the last Price Review, and that there should be full co-operation and discussion between the Government and the unions. I do not regard this necessarily as an exception.
    Mr. W. Hamilton: Would the right hon. Gentleman say what steps he is taking to meet the point made by his hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Sir A. Hurd) as to whether the public are getting value for money from the various methods of price support now being paid to farmers?
    The second point is a point of order for you, Mr. Speaker. It concerns again the question of an English Minister answering for the Scottish Office.
    Mr. Speaker: Shall we deal with the point of substance first and the point of order afterwards?
    Mr. Soames: I will deal first with what you, Mr. Speaker, have been kind enough to refer to as the point of substance. When the hon. Gentleman reads the White Paper he will find some paragraphs stating categorically that both the unions and the Government agree that, nationally speaking, great benefit is derived from the policy of support for agriculture which the Government pursues.
    Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member wishes to raise some point of order.
    Mr. Hamilton: I want to raise a point of order which, Mr. Speaker, you may

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    recollect I raised a fortnight ago on another matter. We had an English Minister answering on behalf of the Scottish Office. Scottish Members are thereby precluded from putting their Questions to the Secretary of State for Scotland. The same thing has happened today. It has been increasing for some months past, and I want to protest on behalf of my hon. Friends at this continuing and extending practice.
    Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman may make protests, but I do not think that makes them into points of order. At the moment, I do not follow how it is a point of order for the Chair.

RAILWAYS

  Glasgow Suburban Electric Services
  Mr. Strauss(by Private Notice) asked the Minister of Transport whether, following the explosion and fire which has led to the withdrawal from service of Scottish electrified lines, he will initiate an immediate investigation into new electric rolling stock in other Regions as a safeguard against similar occurrences.
  The Minister of Transport (Mr. Ernest Marples): An inquiry is being undertaken into the explosions which have led to the withdrawal of the Glasgow suburban electric services. This inquiry will be opened at Glasgow on 22nd December by the Chief Inspecting Officer of Railways, whose report will be published. I am informed that the particular type of equipment involved in these particular incidents is not used elsewhere on British Railways. To reassure the travelling public, however, certain precautionary measures are being taken on other electrified services. The lessons learnt from the inquiry will be applied in Scotland and in other Regions as necessary. I am discussing with the Commission whether a wider investigation is needed.
  Mr. Strauss: That is acceptable as far as it goes, but as British Railways are frequently and often unjustly blamed for everything that goes wrong with its services, will the Minister state categorically that they can be in no way held responsible for the faults which have occurred in the transformers, which were delivered to British Railways by private firms?
  890
  Secondly, as during the period when these lines were electrified they carried about 400,000 passengers a week, compared with an average of 170,000 previously, will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that this regrettable setback will not be used as an excuse for holding up any of the electrification schemes in the modernisation plan?
  Mr. Marples: The answer to the first part of the right hon. Gentleman's question is that I do not think it would be right to pre-judge the issue of an independent investigation. I advise hon. Members to await the result of the investigation. When the conclusions are published, we shall see where the fault lies. I assure the House that the conclusions will be published. In answer to the second part of the right hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, I do not think that one would allow this incident to prejudice one unduly against modernisation.
  Mr. Cooper: The specification for this equipment was issued by British Railways. What tests were undertaken by British Railways before they accepted the equipment?
  Mr. Marples: The equipment was tested exhaustively over a long period. When it came to be put into everyday use accidents happened. I believe that we should wait until the investigation has been completed.
  Mr. C. Pannell: In view of the wide publicity this matter has received, does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that his answers just will not do? Why did equipment which appears to have run perfectly well on railways abroad fail at home? Will the right hon. Gentleman make it crystal clear, in answer to my right hon. Friend, that this is no fault of a nationalised industry? This is something which has gone wrong in the firm which provided the equipment. We appreciate that inquiries must be made, but the right hon. Gentleman should at least come clean on the matter of principle and indicate whether it would not be better to have a wider inquiry, bearing in mind international experience in this matter.
  Mr. Marples: I am discussing with the Commission whether there should be a wider inquiry. On the narrow issue of

  891
  the Glasgow electrification services, which is the subject raised in the right hon. Gentleman's Question, it would be wrong for anybody to prejudice or prejudge the issue. It will be investigated independently, and I do not think that anything more than that can be satisfactorily done at the moment.
  Mr. Popplewell: Is the Minister aware that this is not the only incident? Is he aware that the failure of locomotive-building firms to produce correct motive power units capable of doing their job is having a serious effect? I instance the failure of the G.E.C. in its supply on the Eastern, the North British supply, and now the A.E.I. supply. Will the right hon. Gentleman assure the British Transport Commission that, whatever loss it sustains, he will support it in a claim for compensation against the firm involved?
  Secondly, will not the Minister now agree that this presents him with an opportunity to insist that the Commission shall carry out its own tests and research, instead of being dependent upon the six private concerns which build motive power units? Is he not ayare that this is history repeating itself and that his policy is preventing the Commission from building its own units, as was done when the railways were in the hands of private enterprise?
  Mr. Marples: I am not sure that these questions will help either the Commission or private industry. Having the Chief Inspecting Officer of Railways to go into this in greater detail and take evidence from all parties, including any hon. Member who wishes to present it, is as much as can be done safely at the moment.

ISRAEL AND ARAB STATES
Mr. W. Yates: Mr. Speaker, you are aware that I attempted within the rules of order of the House to obtain a statement from the Lord Privy Seal on the headline in the Daily Mail this morning—
Mr. Speaker: I have had occasion to remind the hon. Member before that Private Notice Questions which are not allowed are not to be mentioned.
Mr. Yates: I do not mention it as a Private Notice Question. I am pointing out that I was unable to obtain a statement from the Minister within the rules of order of the House because the House rises on Wednesday.
In those circumstances, and with your permission, Mr. Speaker, I desire to move the Adjournment of the House—which is the only remedy left to me as a back bencher before Recess—under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the obligations of Great Britain, a co-signatory of the 1950 three-Power Declaration, concerning the state of armistice between Israel and the Arab States, and also her obligations outlined in her foreign policy statements of the arms embargo to the Middle East, in view of the fact that the French Government, likewise a co-signatory and a member of N.A.T.O., are unilaterally re-equipping the Israel Army and Air Force and are believed to be giving Israel the necessary technical aid to convert a reactor, given to Israel by the United States for peaceful purposes, to that of the manufacture of atomic weapons.
The first thing to decide is whether the matter is urgent. I submit that, in view of the genuine efforts made by this country to bring about disarmament and because we do not wish to see the supply of atomic equipment extended beyond the Soviet Union, the United States and ourselves, it is automatically a matter of urgency.
The second question is whether it is a matter of importance. As we are co-signatories of the Declaration, which guarantees the present status quo between Israel and the Arab States, I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that it must be a matter of importance and one in which Her Majesty's Government have a definite responsibility. Either their foreign policy is an arms embargo or it is not.
For those reasons, and for others, I submit to you that this matter should be debated here and now before the Christmas Recess as a matter of definite and urgent public importance.
Mr. Speaker: Will the hon. Member be good enough to bring me his Motion?
The hon. Member has asked for leave to move the Adjournment of the House

893
under Standing Order No. 9 for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance; namely:
"the obligations of Great Britain, a co-signatory of the 1950 three-Power Declaration, concerning the state of armistice between Israel and the Arab States and also her obligations outlined in her foreign policy statements of the arms embargo to the Middle East, in view of the fact that the French Government, likewise a co-signatory and a member of N.A.T.O., are unilaterally re-equipping the Israel Army and Air Force and are believed to be giving Israel the necessary technical aid to convert a reactor, given to Israel by the United States for peaceful purposes, to that of the manufacture of atomic weapons."
I am afraid that I cannot hold the hon. Member's Motion to be within the Standing Order.
Mr. Yates: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the rising of the House, I think it would be polite if I gave notice that I will not vote for the Adjournment of the House until Her Majesty's Government make a statement on this matter.

BILLS PRESENTED
  AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH ETC. (PENSIONS)
  Bill to provide for contributory pension schemes in respect of persons employed at certain agricultural institutions and colleges financed wholly or partly out of public funds, presented by Mr. Soames; supported by Mr. Maclay and Sir E. Boyle; read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 51.]
  DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITIES (CONFERENCES WITH COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES AND REPUBLIC OF IRELAND)
  Bill to provide for conferring certain immunities on representatives of Governments of Commonwealth countries and the Republic of Ireland attending conferences in the United Kingdom and on their staffs, presented by Mr. Sandys; supported by Mr. Alport; read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 52.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)
Ordered,
That this day Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten o'clock.—[Mr. R. A. Butler.]

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  SUPPLY
  [3RD ALLOTTED DAY]
  Order for Committee read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair.—[Mr. Redmayne.]

  GUIDED WEAPONS (REPORTS FROM COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS)
  3.50 p.m.
  Mr. Harold Wilson: I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
  "this House takes note of the Second Report from the Committee of Public Accounts in the last Session of Parliament, and the Special Report from the Committee of Public Accounts, with particular reference to paragraphs 25 to 45 of the Report which relate to Development and Production of Guided Weapons."
  Today's debate, Mr. Speaker, is a new departure in Parliamentary practice. There are no precedents to guide us, but I am sure that we all hope that it may be the beginning of a development which, within rather restricted limits, may be useful both to the House and to the Government, and, therefore, to the taxpayer, in controlling Government expenditure. I am sure that I speak for all hon. Members—I certainly know that I speak for all members of the Public Accounts Committee—when I say that I do not regard this debate as one that should take place on party lines.
  Although I am speaking from my accustomed place, I am speaking today, not on behalf of the Opposition but as Chairman of the P.A.C.—a Committee representing the whole House—and, in my view, the confrontation in this debate is not between Government and Opposition but between the House of Commons, with its traditional responsibility for controlling the public purse on the one hand and the Government on the other.
  Though it may be that in future years—today we are feeling our way—some future chairman or members of the P.A.C. or other Members of this House

  895
  may wish to use any Report of the Public Accounts Committee for a stinging attack on Government profligacy and waste—as any such Report can always be used—I want now to examine the problems raised by the survey of last year's expenditure, and, in particular, the problem of controlling expenditure on research and development contracts, which the Committee has highlighted in this year's Report.
  Before I come to this rather special problem, I should like to say a word or two about the general problem of controlling Government expenditure and the contribution that these Reports and these debates can make to that end. For some years there has been growing concern about the level of expenditure. It was emphasised particularly by a group of hon. Members opposite, including the noble Lord the hon. Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke), immediately after the election, and particularly after the publication of the 1960–61 Estimates last February, showing an increase of over £320 million over the previous year.
  The feeling was then expressed that Parliament should do more to assert its control over expenditure. I think that that would be generally agreed, but it is important to distinguish between what Parliament can do and what it cannot do. One thing that, in all sincerity, it cannot do is to vote one year for increased social or military expenditure and then complain in the following February if the total Estimates have gone up. Another thing that cannot be done in this modern world is to think that we can control expenditure on a day-to-day or even on a year-to-year basis. Many of the spending programmes with which we are concerned are inevitably committed for several years ahead.
  One can think of two examples in that connection—education and roads. During the debate on the Crowther Report last year, the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Education referred to educational expenditure, then running at £700 million, and said:
  "Making no allowance for any of Crowther's recommendations, this £700 million, as we continue the drive to put the present policies into effect, will have risen by the end of the decade by one-half and, by the middle of the 1970's by four-fifths."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st March, 1960; Vol. 620, c. 54.]
  896
  that is, about £1,300 million. On that occasion, the only criticism from all sides of the House was that that increased programme expenditure was not sufficient.
  The Financial Secretary, who I understand is to reply to the debate, will recall the words that he used when dealing with the problem of Government expenditure. During the Budget debate last April, he largely turned his back on this side of the Chamber and addressed his hon. Friends who had been raising questions. The hon. Gentleman then said:
  "… It is just no good thinking that we can, as a House of Commons, approve a major step forward in social reform and ensure it, without the expenditure of a great deal of public money … when we introduce a large social reform, we must expect the cost to go up over the years … We have long been used to doing a certain amount of forward looking in regard to capital spending, but we shall have to get used to the same concept in relation to revenue spending as well."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th April, 1960; Vol. 621, c. 588–90.]
  I think that the hon. Gentleman was quite right in saying that. We cannot, therefore, expect to control the level of expenditure year by year because so many programmes go for a long period ahead. The plain fact is that this places a very severe limit on any hopes hon. Members may have about what the House of Commons, as such, can do to control this expenditure. In that connection, I quote words that have echoed round this Chamber now for over a hundred years: "Expenditure depends on policy."
  I think that it was in 1862 that Disraeli said:
  "I have so often maintained it in this House that I am almost ashamed to repeat it, but unfortunately it is not a principle which has yet sufficiently entered into public opinion—expenditure depends on policy."
  Robert Lowe, in 1871, said:
  "Finance is the handmaid of public policy."
  Again, Haldane, in 1904, said:
  "It is no use having an enquiry into expenditure; it was a matter of policy."
  After the First World War, when the Select Committee on National Expenditure in 1922 had called for some very stringent measures of public control of finance, Sir Robert Horne, in 1927, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, said:
  "When we come down to bedrock, the cause which is chiefly responsible is the policy of the

  897
  Government. It is policy upon which expenditure is founded."
  I do not think there can be any doubt that if anyone in any part of the House wants to make a significant change in the level of Government expenditure he has to attack policy and not the administration of the expenditure. It is clear, therefore, that unless this House is prepared to call in question major programmes of Government policy, whether in the social or in the military field, it is unable to make a serious impact on the volume of Government expenditure.
  In fact, I would doubt, having regard to some of the continuing programmes I have mentioned, which are due to rise from year to year, whether anything we as a House can do in present circumstances can hope to prevent a rise in the total level of expenditure. All we can hope to do is to moderate the rise that is already inevitable, and to see that—and this is where the House really has a job to do—as far as humanly possible we get value for money in that expenditure.
  I do not intend to go into the different rôles of the two principal Committees which have been given this duty or to comment on the important new duty given to the Select Committee on Estimates in respect of comparing each year's Estimates with those of the preceding yeas and accounting for any changes. Although the duties of the two Committees are different and are quite clearly laid down in our instructions from this House, I should like to dispose of one elementary fallacy that we hear very frequently; namely, the view that while the Estimates Committee looks to the future, the Public Accounts Committee looks only to the past and is concerned only with inquests on a fiscal corpse.
  The Public Accounts Committee, of course, spends a great deal of time—roughly from December to May in every year—examining Government spending of the twelve months that ended in the previous March. It is true that when its Report is published in the July or August of any given year it is usually reporting on expenditure that ended some sixteen or seventeen months earlier, but the continuing nature of very many Government spending programmes means that the Committee's comments,
  898
  criticisms or recommendations on the expenditure in any given previous year are directly relevant to current spending activities and future spending activities. In many cases the criticisms and recommendations which the Public Accounts Committee make, arising out of its examination of the past year, are designed to produce reforms in the system of expenditure control for the future.
  If one takes the Report which is at present before the House, amongst other items it deals with specific and general expenditure programmes covering such things as hospital building, the continuing rise in expenditure on proprietary pharmaceutical products, missiles and missile testing, the building of motorways, charges to consulting engineers for supervising road construction, fertiliser subsidies and other agricultural subsidy programmes, aerodrome accounts and certain aspects of atomic energy. Every one of these is a continuing programme, and in every case the recommendation which the Public Accounts Committee has made arising out of its examination of the previous year is designed to cut out waste and promote economy in the future.
  Year by year the Committee, and I am sure the House as well, expects every recommendation that it makes either to be accepted by the Government and to be told so in the ensuing Treasury Minute, or at any rate to have a very good explanation why it is not being accepted. That explanation has got to be good. In many cases the remedy is forthcoming even before the Committee reports. The grilling of the Accounting Officer of a Department often leads to speedy action, even before the Committee has produced its Report. Often, indeed, the publication of criticism in the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report leads to anticipatory action so that by the time the Accounting Officer comes before the Committee he has his answer all ready on what he has done to put matters right.
  I do not think anyone could underestimate what I have called the in terrorem effectiveness of the Public Accounts Committee in preventing waste. I am sure the Financial Secretary will agree that its very existence is a powerful weapon in the hands of the Treasury

  899
  every year when dealing with spending Departments who have exaggerated ideas of what their Estimates should contain.
  Next April the Public Accounts Committee celebrates its centenary. It was, in fact, one of the earliest of Gladstone's financial reforms, and it is one of the reforms which have stood the test of time. Its success and, I believe, its indispensable contribution to the working of our financial system is due to three things—first, if I may say so, the dedication and devotion to hard work of its members. I have been a member of the Committee for so short a period that I think I can say that without anyone thinking that I am claiming any great credit for myself.
  When we read, as we have done in the past weeks, strictures about Members of Parliament not attending to their duties, about Members' laziness and all the rest of it, I would invite some of the newspapers concerned to study the 3,957 questions which were put by members of the Public Accounts Committee in last year's Session and to recognise that these questions were not put without a good deal of understanding and hard work behind them.
  In saying this, I am sure I am speaking for the whole Committee. I would pay tribute particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson), who has been a member of the Committee for over thirty years—practically one-third of the life of the Committee. [An hon. Member: "A record."] Yes, I am sure it is a record. His Chairmanship was noteworthy for the development of the Committee as an essentially non-partisan body, which was a change from only a few years ago, producing Reports the authority of which has been immensely increased by the fact that they were agreed unanimously. I do not think they have lost anything in consequence.
  The second reason is the inspired work and devotion to duty of the Comptroller and Auditor General and his highly expert and dedicated staff. Other countries have copied us in appointing an independent Comptroller. Two months ago I had the pleasure of attending a function connected with the gathering in London of Comptrollers and Auditors General from the entire Commonwealth.
  900
  But although we welcome that spreading and have noticed that even some of the newest countries in the Commonwealth have appointed their Comptrollers and Auditors General and Public Accounts Committees—I believe that in one country the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee is in prison; not a precedent, I hope—I doubt whether the House as a whole, and certainly the taxpayer, fully realise the debt that we owe to Sir Edmund Compton and to his predecessors in office.
  The third reason that I think the Public Accounts Committee has this successful rôle is that through the Public Accounts Committee this House reaches out direct to the Accounting Officer of the spending Departments. This is an unusual and, I think, typically British breach in the pure theory of the separation of powers between the Legislature and the Executive. Accounting officers, almost invariably Permanent Secretaries, are responsible, in fact, not only to their Ministers but also to the Public Accounts Committee and, through the Public Accounts Committee to this House.
  It has been my privilege, as a civil servant and Minister, to work with some of the greatest public servants of the past thirty years. I can think of some of the strongest personalities in the British Civil Service who never feared the toughest Ministers of either party, but who did lose sleep before facing the Public Accounts Committee.
  When discussions were taking place last summer about these debates the members of the Public Accounts Committee, especially the most experienced members, were concerned that nothing should be done to break down this century-old direct relationship between the Committee and Accounting Officers, nor the responsibility of the Treasury—and I emphasis the Treasury—to reply to the Committee's observations through the Treasury Minute, a Minute which is itself the subject of examination and cross-examination in the following year. I myself strongly pressed that the Treasury's reply to this debate should not be regarded as a substitute for the annually published Treasury Minute on the previous year's Report. I am glad that our views have been accepted, not only in that regard but also in the fact that the Financial Secretary and not a

  901
  Departmental Minister is to reply to this debate.
  Our business in the Public Accounts Committee is with the Treasury, because our business is with the mechanism of controlling public expenditure. But the Financial Secretary will be the first to recognise that his Treasury Minute, which was recently sent with comments on the Public Accounts Committee's Report, and any reply that he may give today to the points raised in last year's Report, will not be accepted by us as final, because, as I have said, the Treasury Minute is itself to came before the Committee in the next few months.
  Having said this by way of a rather lengthy introduction, I now turn to the specific problems highlighted in the Amendment. The House might have expected that in the first of these debates—this is the first debate of its kind in the hundred years in which the Committee has been sitting—we should have dealt more generally with the problems raised in the Report, some of which I have mentioned. It is a mark of the special concern of the Committee about what is really a new problem in public finance that we have chosen to devote this first debate not to a general discussion but to one special and so far unsolved problem, namely the control of expenditure on research and development programmes, particularly in the field of guided weapons.
  Here I would quote from paragraph 45 of the Report of the Public Accounts Committee, where we state:
  "Your Committee feel bound to draw attention to the large sums spent in recent years in the development of new and experimental equipment under contracts providing for payment of a contractor's cost plus profit. Indeed development contracts on the present scale are something new in the financial history of this country: open as they inevitably must be to abuse, they clearly call for new methods of supervision and co-ordination at the highest level."
  We say, therefore, that developments on this scale are something new in the financial history of this country. Indeed, I would go further. Speaking for myself, and not necessarily carrying the Committee with me, I believe that this problem, involving expenditure running into hundreds of millions a year, and so far completely defeating any system of control, is in danger of breaking down the whole system of control of public expenditure under which we work. If
  902
  this problem is not solved, future Public Accounts Committees, this House and the Treasury will be in the position of carrying out a meticulous examination of the expenditure of pennies—what Gladstone referred to as the "candle-ends"—whilst, owing to this problem of cost plus research and development contracts, the hole in the public purse is letting through hundred of millions of expenditure.
  Traditionally, the work of expenditure control, whether by the holy inquisition of the Public Accounts Committee itself or the secular arm which the Treasury represents, has always been with identifiable objects of expenditure. Until the last year or two the Reports of the Public Accounts Committee have referred to expenditure on identifiable objects—a hospital, a post office, a cable-laying operation, the provision of telephones, a Royal Ordnance Factory, a quantity of pharmaceutical drugs, a quantity of army boots or clothing, a rifle, a tank or a battleship. In every case one knew not only what the items cost but what one got for the money. In the case of every bit of identifiable hardware, one knew at the end of the operation what it cost. If the Treasury had given approval for £1 million for the hardware and it cost £1,100,000, then the full powers of the inquisition were invoked through the Public Accounts Committee and somewhere the person or persons concerned appeared at the next auto da fè held by the Treasury.
  But now we have a quite new problem. It began, I suppose, with aircraft. Previous Public Accounts Committee Reports have noted the growing problem—that when a cost-plus contract was given for, say, a fighter with this speed, that rate of climb, some specified fire power and the rest, this expenditure began to get out of hand. But with guided missiles the problem is now completely out of hand.
  I can illustrate this by reference to a recent personal experience. We know that throughout the field of Government expenditure, apart from the expenditure which I have mentioned, there is the most meticulous examination of every penny. Hon. Members who go abroad to Colonial Territories know haw detailed is the control of expenditure, particularly in Colonial Territories where the names

  903
  of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the name of the Public Accounts Committee are perhaps even more fearsome weapons than they are in Departments here. Recently I was in Malta where I was impressed to see the detailed control over every penny of expenditure exercised by the Government Departments there—the Colonial Office, the Admiralty and so on. They were arguing over bills for £1, £1 10s., £2 10s. and so on. However, on a trip round Malta harbour I saw the missile testing ship "Girdleness", which was concerned with the missile testing Seaslug weapon, on which the Public Accounts Committee reported last year. I must confess that when I saw the ship—it is an ugly looking vessel—I felt that if it had been built of platinum it would not have cost more, because the total amount of the programme looks like being about £70 million. There is no Treasury control whatsoever over that expenditure. Yet, as I have said, in the Malta dockyard a mile from there there was, and rightly so, full Treasury control over every expenditure of £1 or £1 10s.
  This is a new and unsolved problem, and this is how I hope we shall look at it in this debate. I will not use the words "scandal", "waste", or "inefficiency", which might be appropriate to a more normal Supply Day when the Ministry itself is before us and when we are concerned with any errors of omission or commission by individual Departments. What we are concerned with here is a problem which none of us has solved. The Report contains many pieces of evidence of individual mistakes by Government Departments in respect of the missile programme, and I may refer to one or two of them in passing. But all I am concerned with—I think today the House also is primarily concerned with it—is not with human errors in the normal sense which are always found in Government Departments and everywhere else but with a general problem of expenditure control. That is why I am glad that it is the Treasury and not the Ministry of Aviation which will be replying to the debate.
  I will not go over in detail the relevant pages of the Report or the many hundreds of questions and answers. It is all set out in the Report before the House.
  904
  We were concerned with three weapons: Type A, known familiarly as Seaslug; Type B, originally known as Red Shoes but in its operational manifestation as Thunderbird; and Type C, first known as Blue Jay and later known as Firestreak. I must make it clear that Blue Streak has not been before us—yet.
  I will not make too much of the discrepancy between the original estimates and the latest estimates, figures which are given in the Report. I will merely say that Seaslug was estimated at £1 million to £1·5 million expenditure, and, as the Committee reports, the latest estimate of the direct cost of developing the missile and its control and guidance system is £40 million, while the total estimated all-up cost is £70 million, including the ship-borne radar developed by the Admiralty.
  Thunderbird's original estimate was £2·5 million, and the estimated total cost now is £40 million. Firestreak was originally estimated to cost £4 million, and the total cost is now estimated to be £33 million plus an additional £20 million for the cost of the Mark IV variant.
  I am ready to accept, as the Committee does, the great difficulty confronting Ministry experts at the outset of a programme of this kind where one was embarking on entirely unknown ground. There is, of course, no party point here on the question of the estimation of the cost, because some of these missiles were started under the Labour Government and some under the Conservative Government. Whatever Government it was, one had that great problem of estimating what the cost would be. But that is the problem—that, having made one's estimate, it is entirely impossible to keep to whatever estimate has been made.
  I do not intend to go this afternoon, though other hon. Members may wish to do so, into some of the specific mistakes on which the Committee commented. I will merely summarise what they are without comment. The first was the failure to give Government Departments and Government research establishments more responsibility for weapon development instead of handing it over too quickly on a rather loosely controlled system to private firms. Secondly, there

  905
  was the serious failure of the Seaslug contractor—I quote the Committee's Report:
  "to provide competent leadership and to co-ordinate the work of other firms developing equipment for the project."
  The third was the five-year delay in the estimated delivery date. Indeed, delivery of the weapon was five years behind the programme. Fourthly, there was the action of the Ministry on Thunderbird, when the Ministry's funds were restricted, in accepting the offer of the contractor, English Electric, to put up £750,000 of its own money, the Ministry of Supply promising to reimburse that money either out of the cost of the weapons when they were delivered or as some part of cancellation compensation. The Ministry of Supply did all this without consulting the Treasury, which was justifiably annoyed when it found that it had to pay on delivery or cancellation a sum of £750,000 to which the Government had been committed without Treasury approval—a most unusual eventuality.
  Fifthly, there was the placing of a contract on Firestreak which failed to incorporate any specifications whatever and which was so vague that work started on Mark IV under the financial authorisation relating to Mark I and went on for fifteen months without any contract authority. Here I quote the Report:
  "The Ministry stated that the terms of the original contract were such that work on different Marks of the weapon could properly be carried out under it. The separate contract placed later was made for the Ministry's convenience. It did not contain a specification, but required certain preliminary work to be carried out in a given period to the satisfaction of and in accordance with a programme approved by the Ministry's Controller of Guided Weapons. A detailed specification was not incorporated in the contract until January, 1960."
  That was eight years after the programme had begun—for eight years it was operating without a detailed contract—and during the eight years tens of millions of pounds had been spent.
  These specific points to which the Committee drew attention are partly errors in administration, but they are partly endemic to the problem with which we are dealing. I think it is important now to summarise, before I sit down, the main reasons for anxiety
  906
  about the whole system. Here again, I am making no party point, nor, subject to the detailed questions to which I have referred, am I being particularly critical of the Ministry. I am trying once again to outline the problem which we as a House of Commons have to solve.
  The first general reason for anxiety is that, unlike the hardware that I mentioned—the battleship, the hospital and so on—the orders about which we are talking are not, when originally placed, related to anything specific or anything capable of specification. They are open-ended cost-plus contracts. The ultimate cost, and even the ultimate prospect of success, is very much a question of guesswork at the best.
  Secondly, this system—let us be frank about it, because the Committee recognised it and said so frankly—is wide open to abuse. Though the Committee was not in a position to obtain direct evidence of where it has been abused, money is paid, very big money, by the Government on no more than a monthly progress report, on no more than a contractor's certificate, which says that the amount which he is claiming is no more than is payable under the contract. Usually, the contract, and very often the work, proceeds without even a contract, but with an "Instruction to Proceed", and the contract or the I.T.P. is thus open-ended, so that we have a situation in which the money being paid out in accordance with a contract which itself says nothing about how the money is to be spent. We know that proposals are being introduced currently involving a quarterly report, which brings in the technical people from the Ministry as well as the financial people. We hope that when the Financial Secretary to the Treasury replies he will tell us how it has worked out.
  It would be unfair, because of the possibility of abuse, to say that there is any real racketeering or the presentation of chits which cannot be backed by real and relevant expenditure, but it must be said that there were very frank statements in another place last Session, which suggested that the system was being grossly abused. I will, however, mention one example which I have learned from outside sources and not from the work of the Committee, not involving actual dishonesty, but certainly putting an undue burden on the Ministry.

  907
  In the case of one of the missile contractors, who was faced with a shortage of draughtsmen, as often happens when firms are short of draughtsmen, it put some of its draughtsmen's work out to contract, which is more expensive than employing its own draughtsmen. Every time this contractor had to put work out to draughtsmen it was the Ministry's work that was put out, and thus the cost was much more per unit of output, whereas the ordinary civil, profitable work was retained. This is one simple example. There must be many others in which there is this swing between Government authorised expenditure and contractors' expenditure. No doubt, this example could be multiplied, but when the House considers the meticulous checking which has to be given before a penny can be paid out, say, in a Colonial Territory, or a Service Department, or on a normal munitions contract—or the check that is made on dentists and medical practitioners—I am sure that the House will feel that the disbursement of tens of millions of £s on a signed chit in respect of a Government cost-plus contract is a grave breach in our whole system of financial control.
  Thirdly, we have here a system where financial control on behalf of the taxpayer is exercised, not by trained civil servants with a lifetime of experience in these things, but by private contractors whose training is quite different and whose enthusiasm for saving the taxpayers' money may be less than wholehearted. We have this graphically illustrated in the case of the Spadeadam waste, on which the Committee also reported. This horror story is set out in full in Questions 1,282 to 1,400, and I will refer only to one or two aspects, but I am bound to say that I almost felt Gladstone spinning in his grave while the evidence was being given. Here we have this Spadeadam Testing Station, this monstrous edifice erected on a desolate peat bog in Cumberland, 25 ft. of bog, devoid of access roads for the mammoth weapons which had to be taken there, an erection consisting of the 70-ton buckets, the 120 ft. towers capable of withstanding 80-mile-an-hour gales, with little idea even of the ultimate design of the structure when the work was begun. Every one of us has sympathy for the Ministry of Works in hav-
  908
  ing to embark on this operation at the request of the responsible Department.
  The problem for us today is the system of financial control, and that has happened to this thing costing over £20 million. The Ministry were little more than consulting engineers. The contractors were the British Oxygen-Wimpey consortium, working on a prime cost basis, and they were in fact, the financial controllers of the operation, controlling the sub-contractors, of whom the two principal ones were British Oxygen on the one hand and Wimpey on the other. It was clear from the evidence that the financial relations between the main contractors and the sub-contractors were haphazard and chaotic and made any control by the Ministry quite impossible. In Question 1397, the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee put the following Question:
  "It does seem that you have had these firms acting both as joint consultants with you in planning the whole thing, and as main contractors, in one case as a sub-contractor, and in one case as financial controller. The same people have had to fulfil all these very different rôles, and the Ministry of Works have been trying to maintain in face of great difficulties the other end of this tug-of-war rope?"
  To which the answer was:
  "I am afraid there is some truth in that, yes."
  My last point relates to the question of efficiency, and a whole series of questions was put by the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett), together with the answers. I do not need to refer to them, but would refer the House to the Questions and Answers from Question 3065 onwards, which would seem to indicate that in some of these weapons the big technical break-through was achieved by Government establishments. I understand that the actual missiles were produced, and that it was only after it was handed to private firms that all the difficulties involving costs and delays began to mount, while at the same time the degree of financial control inevitably diminished to vanishing point. This is a question as the Committee itself recommended in paragraph 27, to which I have already referred, whether this work might not with advantage have been carried much further by Government Departments. However, if the hon.

  909
  and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East succeeds in catching your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, he may wish to make that point with much greater authority than I can command.
  I do not apologise for going into all this detail of research and development. I do not claim, nor does the Committee claim, that we have any solution to this problem, but I understand that there has been a Government committee sitting on this problem for some two years, first under the late Sir Claude Gibb, and now under Sir Solly Zuckermann, and I hope the Financial Secretary will be able to tell us whether it has now reported or when he expects it to report, and whether the Government feel that they have an answer to the problems which I have been outlining.
  Certainly, neither the Committee nor the House can leave matters where they are, because, I repeat, again quoting the Report of the Committee, that we are dealing here with a problem which presents—
  "—something new in the financial history of this country"
  and, if it is not solved, the whole edifice of Parliamentary, indeed governmental, control of expenditure is imperilled, and solutions of a far more radical character, going far beyond the scope of the present debate, will have to be sought.
  4.29 p.m.
  Mr. Airey Neave: I warmly congratulate the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson), as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, on what he has said in outlining this very considerable problem of public expenditure, and I also congratulate the Committee on its Report.
  My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, in the debate on the control of Government expenditure at the beginning of this Session, said that insufficient tribute had been paid to the work of the Public Accounts Committee in the past. I think that is very true, and I must congratulate the Committee on the very proper occasion which it has chosen to bring before the House this major problem, and also congratulate it on the 3,597 questions which it asked. I happen to know that work very well, because I was myself a member of the Public Accounts Committee until the end of
  910
  1956, under the chairmanship, and the very agreeable chairmanship, of the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson), to whom tribute has already been paid by the right hon. Gentleman. Those were the days of a distinguished Comptroller and Auditor-General, the late Sir Frank Tribe, whom we should remember during the course of the debate. I associate myself with what the right hon. Member for Huyton also said about the present Comptroller and Auditor-General.
  Speaking therefore as an ex-Member of the Committee of Public Accounts, I applaud the decision to have this discussion. It is quite clear that the question of controlling development and research into aircraft and guided weapons has got into a glorious mess. There is no doubt that it has bedevilled our financial system for some time. While I shall have something to say about the question of whether we are getting value for money, I believe that the Committee has performed a very proper duty in emphasising the need for far more businesslike and far stricter methods than in the past.
  The whole system of our expenditure, as the right hon. Gentleman said, is involved, because this is an entirely new feature of our public finance. At paragraph 42 of its Second Report the Committee lay down certain principles, which I commend to the House and to the Financial Secretary, for the control and examination of estimates in regard to guided weapons. The House will note that the firms concerned and industry in general did not give evidence to the Committee, and I may want to say something about their point of view. However, I believe that there are talks going on between industry and the Ministries concerned and that broad agreement is likely to be reached, with the Ministry of Aviation, on a new control system for expenditure on research and development in guided missiles. I hope that the Financial Secretary will say something about that.
  Despite the urgent need for control, which nobody will dispute, one has to remember that the manufacture of guided weapons—and I think that the Committee realised this—cannot be studied except in terms of a continuing process of research and development. This is not something which one can

  911
  necessarily divide up into mathematical formulæ. As the right hon. Gentleman said, this expenditure does not often concern identifiable objects. It is subject to changes in defence policy and in technology—as one will see from reading the evidence on guided weapons referred to as types A, B and C.
  I and other hon. Members stressed in the debate on Blue Streak that in this technology there are bound to be modifications and disappointments. I see that the Public Accounts Committee seems to realise this, and the right hon. Gentleman himself mentioned it. At paragraph 43 of its Second Report, the Committee states:
  "Your Committee have noticed an additional defect. The instructions to the main contractors responsible for the guided weapons projects were in such general terms that difficulty must have been experienced in ensuring that all the work paid for was properly directed to the objects desired by the Ministry."
  The Committee recommended that there should be more supervision and said that the Ministry was seeing to it that it was the responsibility of the technical staff to see,
  "that any variations due to technical developments are properly examined and justified at the earliest possible stage."
  In my short experience of Government in this connection, that sentence sums up the whole problem of development contracts in a highly experimental subject. It is vital that from the Ministry point of view "any variations due to technical developments are properly examined and justified at the earliest possible stage".
  The right hon. Gentleman instanced a number of items from the evidence to the Committee when costs ran on for a long time because no decision had been made at an early stage about the variations and modifications which were required. Variations and modifications are bound to be required in this work. Particularly were they necessary at a time when these early weapons were being developed. I do not believe that budgeting for guided weapons is possible with any semblance of accuracy unless the objectives are clearly defined. One of the difficulties about that is that one can very seldom clearly define the objectives of a guided weapon until one has done some preliminary studies, and those studies may vary from a paper assess-
  912
  ment to a prolonged investigation into the feasibility of the guided weapon. The cost of such studies is a major factor.
  I said that the whole thing had got into a muddle, but if we are to reach a sensible system of collaboration between industry and the Government in controlling these costs, both sides will have to appreciate what I have just said. If one takes once more the example of type A, or Seaslug, then it is proper to ask how far the objectives of Seaslug as a naval weapon were clearly defined to the industry as far back as 1948, at a time when experience in this matter was extremely limited.
  I am not clear from the evidence how far that is so. Presumably, the original figure of £1 million to £1½ million did not relate to the whole weapons system. Did it relate only to the part which the firm was to play in the contract for the cost of a simple test vehicle for the experimental stage? If it did, that is entirely relevant to the whole question of assessing whether subsequent development costs in this case were surprising, in view of the lack of central control of expenditure and, as the right hon. Gentleman said, the surprising lack of technical supervision.
  I believe that the system designed for the future is to be that the supervision will be the responsibility of the technical branch of the Ministry. I believe that to be essential, and I am sure that the industry will be glad to co-operate in that way if it is asked. I should like the Financial Secretary to say something about that matter, because I am not clear from the evidence whether any attempt was made between 1948 and 1957 to make a total estimate of the cost of Seaslug.
  I do not want to go into too much detail about the evidence which was given, except in the proper fashion adopted by the right hon. Gentleman as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, but it is fair to say that, although it took 13 years to bring to operational standards, Seaslug may prove to be a very effective guided weapon. That its financial history seems very vague from the evidence and very unsatisfactory none of us can doubt, but it was one of the very early weapons when there was little experience in time scales,

  913
  which are very important. I hope that any measures taken as a result of the strong recommendations of the Committee will avoid that sort of situation in future.
  When one considers these high costs—and they are high costs and need explaining—one ought to look at the problem of guided weapons as a whole. In the last three years, £750 million has been lost through abandoned weapons in the United States because of cancelled weapon systems. This is a tremendous problem of public finance, but there is no reason, why we should not tackle it. We must tackle it if the whole thing is not to get entirely out of hand. The United States can afford a vastly wider field of experiment than we can, but I believe that our industry can produce effective weapons more economically than the Americans, and we shall do that especially if we follow the recommendations of the Committee.
  Of course, this question of guided weapons is important from the point of view of employment. There is a large and increasing number of people employed in this industry, and in that connection, having made mention of employment, we must remember that, for instance, in the case of a weapon like Seaslug, the average salary in 1948 of a design artisan was £9 10s. a week and today it is £19 5s. a week, and the average productive labour rate was half what it is today. Of course, these items are only on the fringe of the problem which we have been discussing, and I have already accepted the need for much stricter technical supervision, but speaking in general terms and not only in relation to Seaslug, I think we can say that the Government must clearly recognise in their discussions with the industry the shattering results of serious modifications which may be ordered at any time and the need for quick decisions, and I think the industry in their turn must inform the Government of the effect of such modifications on the costs.
  It is often said—indeed, it has been said in the newspapers as a result of the publication of the Public Accounts Committee's Report—that weapons are obsolescent by the time their development is finished. I think that that is an oversimplification. Some techniques may have become out-dated, but it does not
  914
  follow that the weapon will not be the best available at its completion date. I think one does not want to over-simplify too much.
  I have tried to put these two points of view before the House. I think that both sides should follow very closely the recommendation contained in paragraph 43 of the Report. I welcome the way in which the right hon. Gentleman treated this as a House of Commons matter, as, indeed, it is. I hope that the Report and the debate will lead to substantial and effective collaboration between industry and Government Departments, and that, in particular, it will lead to quicker decisions and better value for money.
  4.42 p.m.
  Vice-Admiral John Hughes Hallett: I am sure that no one on this side of the House will quarrel with the way in which this debate was opened by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson). I should like as, I think, an even newer Member of the Public Accounts Committee than he is himself to pay my tribute to the way in which he followed the precedent set by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) in keeping party politics out of our proceedings. After all, the efficiency of the Public Accounts Committee depends entirely on that being done. We in the Committee examine senior civil servants, and it would clearly seem wrong to use their evidence as a basis for attacking Ministers whom they serve.
  Indeed, the Public Accounts Committee has always filled me with awe since my student days. It has always seemed to me to be a rather interesting example from a constitutional point of view of the fact that there is some limit to the all-embracing nature of Ministerial responsibility, at any rate in the realm of finance. We recognise that a measure of responsibility is retained by the accounting officers and their immediate subordinates, or, to put it another way, that senior administrative civil servants are something more than purely advisers, in exactly the same way as we always recognise that to be true of senior officers in the Fighting Services.
  It may well be that the realisation that the Public Accounts Committee's Reports are not really entirely suitable as vehicles

  915
  for tremendous attacks upon the Government of the day that Parliament has in the past taken so little interest in them. I was refreshing my memory yesterday about the past history of the Public Accounts Committee and I found an interesting quotation from Professor Berriedale Keith's standard work, "The Governments of the British Empire". After describing the constitution and organisation of the Committee, he goes on to say:
  "Parliament itself treats the Reports of the Committee with indifference born of the reluctance of any Member of Parliament to economise. Efforts to insist on discussion of the Committee's Reports have failed to achieve success"
  So this is a rather historic debate and it is one which, I think, ought to give some satisfaction at any rate to my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) who was so active in the moves which led to this debate.
  The Amendment in particular calls attention to the paragraphs which dealt with the development of guided missiles, and I am sure that the House will agree that it is right that this should have been so on this occasion. After all, this development covered a period which varied from 12 years in the case of Seaslug to, I think, eight years in the case of the most recent weapon, and considering the cost of the three projects together we find that the Treasury was originally advised that the total expenditure would amount to some £4 million compared with the current estimate of £143 million. That is the alpha and omega of this story: £4 million at the beginning, £143 million at the end.
  I hope that it will be in order if I digress for a moment to say a little about the Treasury control in general. The House will recall that the Sixth Report from the Select Committee on Estimates for the Session 1957–58 dealt particularly with this subject. I want now to link up that Report of two years ago of the Estimates Committee with the present Public Accounts Committee's Report. The earlier Report contained certain criticisms and warnings which, I must say, are most strikingly illustrated by the Public Accounts Committee's Report dealing with missiles.
  916
  As the House knows, there is no single method of Treasury control. It is a continuing process, but it can roughly be divided into four stages: firstly, control at the time when the policy decision is made; secondly, control when some new project arising from the policy decision is sanctioned; thirdly, control when the annual Estimates are being prepared; fourthly, control when any large items of continuing expenditure on projects which have already been begun are sanctioned.
  I would submit that in the case of these missiles the first and third of these stages are hardly relevant. The policy was simply to develop a guided missile or controlled rocket as it was originally called. That was a decision made early in the war which I do not think anyone would call in question. The annual Estimates, on the other hand, so far as projects of this magnitude are concerned, simply reflect decisions which have been made from time to time as they continue.
  Therefore, I think we must first ask whether it was right to have sanctioned those development contracts in the first place at the time and in the manner that they were sanctioned. In the light of what we now know, the answer must surely be in the negative. Ought this to have been clear at the time? How many senior officials realised ten or twelve years ago that they were advising Ministers to embark upon expenditure which was to bear no relation whatsoever to estimates which had been given?
  Here I should like to read one or two sentences which are highly relevant from that Report of the Estimates Committee on "Treasury Control of Expenditure" as a whole. In paragraph 46 the Committee pointed out that
  "The Treasury do not themselves employ professional or technical experts …. The value of prior sanction control depends to a large extent on the effectiveness of the 'lay critic'"
  That was an expression which was repeatedly used in the evidence before that Committee. Then at the beginning of the next paragraph the Committee pointed out:
  "Nevertheless, this reliance on laymen has its drawbacks. It possibly encourages, and certainly makes possible, attempts to blind the Treasury with science in relation to some types of project."

  917
  In the next paragraph—this is the one to which I particularly invite the attention of the House—we said:
  "One other feature of this technique causes some doubts about its effectiveness. Laymen may be examining proposals submitted by laymen, while the technical officers who initiated the proposals and who really understand the details, remain behind the scenes. This may mean that the Treasury are not as well informed as they should be about the subject and also that the technical officers really concerned are not sufficiently associated with the financial decisions."
  After one or two other sentences, the paragraph concludes:
  "An awareness by technical officers of the financial implications of their proposals seems, to Your Committee, to be an essential feature of a system which places a large measure of economic responsibility within spending Departments."
  In the case in question, we had laymen at the Treasury examining proposals submitted to them by laymen at the Ministry of Supply, as it then was. That, surely, is the fatal weakness of the system in projects of this nature. What possible chance have classical scholars and the like—I make no reflection on them—of achieving a true understanding of the immensely complicated engineering and scientific proposals which are involved?
  On the other hand, I cannot believe that the technical officers who were behind these projects originally were quite so naive. If they really believed that their estimates were accurate, all I can say is they were not fit for the positions they were occupying. At the same time, I feel quite sure that they never dreamed for one moment that expenditure would be twenty times in excess of the estimates first given. Their failure probably lay in not understanding big business. Once the contracts had been let, I think that a lot of the scientists and production engineers employed by the Government were lost like the babes in the wood. The only difference was that this was a golden wood provided by the taxpayer.
  The next question we have to ask is what should have happened when things began to go wrong, when the months turned into years and when the millions turned into tens of millions of pounds. Here again, I feel sure that the chief trouble must have lain in the inability of the accounting officers who hold the legal responsibility to challenge the
  918
  views of the technicians and scientists who held the moral responsibility.
  One imagines two or three senior civil servants, desperately anxious at the way things were going, going home at night, perhaps sitting down by the fire, closing their eyes and trying to picture where and how all these vast sums of money were being spent—and trying in vain. One pictures equally harassed technical officials being asked to give their support to costly ramifications which probably they themselves did not full understand, conscious the whole time that if they were too obstructive or too critical, a hint might be dropped in the Minister's ear that they were rather difficult people.
  I believe that the action that has already been promised by the Treasury to tighten up the financial control—to impose, if I understand it aright, a kind of continuous costing—will go some way towards keeping all this sort of expenditure under better control, but it will not by any means go the whole way. At best, it will make firms and the officials who deal with them anxious to try to give a truer estimate in the first instance. Whether that estimate is unduly high will not greatly be affected by arrangements for more up-to-date information while the money is being spent. Bolder changes are needed, as is made clear from paragraph 45 which the right hon. Member for Huyton read when he opened the debate.
  I want now to turn to the sort of changes that might be made. In doing so, I must make it clear that I am giving my personal views and not those of the Committee. To begin with, wherever possible—this was touched on by the right hon. Gentleman—development should be carried to a further stage at a Government research establishment when an entirely new project is under consideration. In my experience, the ideal is, if 'possible, to defer placing a development contract until the Government establishment has produced and tested a satisfactory experimental model, with the result that the contract need only be, in effect, for a redesign on lines suiable for quantity production and in a form suitable for operational maintenance. Such a contract, subject to the design being successful, can often, and with great advantage, include a firm order for the first batch of the weapons

  919
  required. Contracts of this nature need not necessarily be on a cost-plus basis.
  A good example of a weapon that was produced, not exactly on those lines, but more or less on them, and which is no longer on the secret list, is the antisubmarine mortar called Limbo, which came out about ten years ago and which, I think investigation will show, was produced as economically as any of the post-war generation of rather complex weapons have been produced. I do not, however, claim that this is a method which would have been possible in the case of guided missiles, although the Committee, as the right hon. Gentleman has pointed out, was inclined to think that the Government establishments might well have been associated to a greater extent with the subsequent development.
  However, I should like to make the additional point that if Government research establishments are to play their part in this way, they must be so managed that the operational or user officers can exercise as much direct influence on the way they work as is the case with the Admiralty experimental establishments. The right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) often criticises these establishments. I do not wish to pursue the matter in detail, but it is relevant to the question of the control of development to observe that the set-up in the Admiralty and the Ministry of Supply and Ministry of Aviation establishments is far from being identical.
  I well remember that the late Sir Henry Tizard, whom many hon. Members will recall and who was an extremely practical scientist, greatly preferred the system that had been developed by the Admiralty. I mention this because one of the most deplorable features of the present story, which wasted years of time and millions of money, was the decision to start developing these missiles with liquid fuels. Hon. Members will find extensive reference to this in the Minutes of Evidence.
  I do not blame the Treasury or the Accounting Officers for that, but I think that the decision reflects discredit on the Service Departments if their operational side were aware of it. Whether that was so, I am inclined to doubt. Even
  920
  if the liquid fuel missiles had been successfully developed, there would have been the gravest possible operational objections, to embarking in ships, or having in mobile units with the Army, missiles depending upon these peculiarly obnoxious and dangerous fuels.
  Granting, however, that development must often be done by contract—for instance, in the case of aircraft—and granting also that there must also be contracts on a cost-plus basis, the question then arises of what now methods of supervision and co-ordination are required. Ideally, I believe that one man should be appointed and made responsible to act as the liaison between the Government and the firms concerned, a man of sufficient stature to be able to work on the Ministerial level. Unfortunately such men are rare, although they appear from time to time. I can think of contemporary or almost contemporary figures. Sir Henry Tizard was one, and I suppose that one could include Lord Reith and Lord Fisher earlier in the century. The trouble is that by the time their names become known they are otherwise occupied and are not available for a task of this nature.
  Yet the alternative which was actually adopted in these contracts was a complex of project officers, of controllers general, and controllers, and a little mass of co-ordinating committees. That proved hopeless. I stress that I am speaking for myself, but I suggest that the supervision of any new major projects on this scale—those costing over £10 million—which must go forward on a cost plus basis, should be supervised by a triumvirate of Government officials.
  One of them should be a senior operational authority appointed by the user Department, a man with the power to resist changes in staff requirements half way through and who can, if necessary, push through relaxations in staff requirements when it is obviously necessary and common sense to do so. The second member—I am not putting them in order of precedence, for I regard them as being jointly responsible—should be appointed by the Ministry responsible for placing the contract, and should be the member with the scientific and engineering knowledge to understand what it is all about. The third member should be appointed by the Treasury to watch the financial

  921
  side. This body should have the sole task of supervising one of these big contracts or, possibly, a group of closely related big projects.
  Meanwhile, the House will recall that the Estimates Committee's Report on Treasury control recommended that a new committee should be set up to examine the working of Treasury control as a whole. The Government accepted that recommendation and a committee has been set up. We were promised that Parliament would be informed of the Government's decisions in due course. Can my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary tell us what progress has been made and whether Parliament will be given an opportunity to debate this matter further when the Government's decisions are announced?
  Sir Harry Legge-Bourke: My hon. and gallant Friend has made an interesting suggestion about a Minister's responsibility for placing contracts and having a representative on his triumvirate. Would he agree that there may also be reason for doubting whether the system of Ministerial responsibility itself is all that it should be, in view of the extraordinary relationship between the Minister of Defence and the three Service Ministers? Would he also agree that it might well be an improvement if the Departmental Minister were given rather more responsibility to see the job through instead of its being left to the Minister of Defence?
  Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I think my hon. Friend has misunderstood me. When I talked of Departmental responsibility I had in mind the Ministry of Aviation, or the War Office—which has now taken over some research and development work—or the Admiralty. I do not see that the Ministry of Defence should come into the picture at all. I suggest that staff requirements are on a lower level in the Service Ministries. Obviously the first two members of the triumvirate would sometimes come from the same Ministry—that is to say, Departments which are self-supplying, like the Admiralty, and, to some extent, the War Office.
  I beg Her Majesty's Government to recognise the importance of their approach to major research and development contracts from the point of view
  922
  of British industry as a whole. A change of outlook is needed. I believe that we have been corrupted by the example of America, which can afford methods of research and development which are immensely extravagant and wholly unsuited to a country like ours.
  It is too readily assumed that modern weapons systems—whether missiles or aircraft or anything else—must inevitably cost vast sums to develop. That is true if one proceeds by the method of setting up enormous teams of rather mediocre young men to carry out development. It can be done like that. We were taught that if we had a quintillion monkeys banging on a quintillion of typewriters for a quintillion years, they would produce all the great works of literature. Presumably if they produced all the great works of the past then they could produce all the great works that have yet to be written.
  The present method should be scrapped. There is another approach, which is more traditional to this country, more economical and more likely to keep us in the forefront. We should look for those few men of imagination tempered with judgment, who possess ability and flair, to produce results silently and quickly without a lot of advertising. These men also are very rare, because they have a touch of genius. Nonetheless, they exist.
  It was my privilege to know one such man, Commander Stoker, more than 40 years ago, who worked with a small band of associates at the Greenock torpedo factory. None of them earned four-figure incomes, but they produced the first steam torpedo which, with one stroke, put this country years ahead of the rest of the world.
  It is depressing today to consider all the money sunk in torpedo research and development over the years and to realise that it has had very little effect on the modern propelling machinery which is not very dissimilar from that produced by Commander Stoker during the First World War. Such men cannot be conjured up merely by offering bigger salaries or such things as concessions on Surtax. They will reappear if we can find a better way of promoting and controlling research and development. That is why this Report and the debate today are so important.
  5.8 p.m.
  Mr. John Cronin: The hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) has made his usual thoughtful and helpful contribution. I particularly congratulate him on the idea that more of this work should be done by Government establishments, and I shall develop that idea further.
  The Government were fortunate that my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) spoke purely in his capacity as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, and for that reason felt bound to speak of the situation with great moderation. He might well have said, like Robert Clive, in thinking of his opportunities
  "My God … at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation,"
  We have reached an extraordinary state of affairs. Members on both sides of the House will agree that there has been a complete breakdown of Treasury control of expenditure of £150 million. This is not the first instance which has been brought to our attention. We have heard in the Report, and have heard again from my right hon. Friend, of how estimates of £1½ million were translated into £70 million; of how £2½ million became £55 million, and how £4 million became £53 million.
  These figures surely indicate an extraordinary disorganisation on the fiscal side in the Government. Normally, the Treasury directs all the Government's financial traffic, but on his occasion it seems that it has became a sort of robot traffic light with the contractors operating the buttons. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury must be very unhappy about this situation and I have no doubt that it has repercussions throughout the Government. It is certainly a tremendous breakaway from the condition of strict Treasury control which we have had for well over a century. If the Financial Secretary goes to the Chancellor's room and looks at that famous portrait of Gladstone, I think that he will find Gladstone's features contorted with fury.
  There are aspects of this matter, however, other than the purely financial ones. For instance, one is astonished by the apparent extraordinary indifference
  924
  or lack of knowledge on the part of the Ministry of Supply, at it then was, about what was going on.
  Mr. Frank Tomney: That is not new.
  Mr. Cronin: That may be so, but the time has come when we must take serious steps to prevent it. The contract for Seaslug was signed in February, 1949. A progress committee expressed dissatisfaction in 1953 and then in 1954 members of the Ministry of Supply expressed dissatisfaction to the contractors concerned. In 1955 there were even complaints by officers of the Ministry to the group which controlled the contractor, and it was in 1956 that the Ministry finally assumed the responsibility for supervising the carrying out of the contract. All through the years while this was happening, according to the minutes of the proceedings of the Committee of Public Accounts, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry was meeting the heads of his Department in committee regularly. A footnote on page 312 of the Committee's Report makes it quite clear that at no time did this committee of heads of Department make any note of the serious situation that was going on and of the increasing dissatisfaction that was felt at the way the contract was progressing.
  One is rather astonished also that there is such inadequate supervision of the actual expenditure of money by the contractors. One finds that there has been no way of checking for certain what moneys the contractor has spent on labour and materials. This is an extraordinary situation when gigantic expenditure of this nature is involved.
  In the actual expenditure by the contractor on Seaslug there must have been some capital items of equipment such as sheds, store houses and machinery. I do not think that anybody would suggest that all this capital equipment was used exclusively or could only be used exclusively on work on Seaslug. Obviously it could be used for other purposes, but again there was no evidence before the Committee of Public Accounts about the ultimate disposal of these items of capital equipment. There is no specific answer to the question put on that very point in paragraph 3187 of the Minutes of Evidence.

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  Another aspect of this matter which we must consider carefully is the complete lack of co-ordination there has been in the production of these various guided missiles. We have Seaslug produced by one firm of contractors with numerous sub-contractors. Then there is Red Shoes, another guided missile, produced by an entirely different firm, Bloodhound produced by a third firm, and Firestreak by a fourth firm, and all these firms have their groups of sub-contractors. Thus we have four guided missiles being developed and constructed by four entirely different firms with their sub-contractors.
  Surely there must be some point of similarity in the development and construction of these missiles. Seaslug and Red Shoes are both solid-fuel missiles. One homes on a target located by radar and the other homes on a radar beam. Bloodhound is a ram-jet missile which homes on a target, and Firestreak is either a ram-jet or a solid-fuel missile.
  All these missiles have considerable overlaps of similarity and yet four different sets of contractors are engaged in producing them. There must be a terrible overlap of research work and ideas. All four firms appear to have been working by themselves in a vacuum with no co-ordination of ideas and know-how. It seems very odd that there could not have been more co-ordination and that the Ministry could not itself have acted more as a leader in doing this work.
  Another aspect of this problem is the use of other types of missiles. We have heard of another missile, Terrier, produced by the United States much more cheaply and in a much shorter time. This was available when the work on Seaslug was only about half way completed. Would it not have been more economical for us to have purchased Terrier, or the information available about it, from the firms that were constructing it in the United States? That would have saved an immense amount of money.
  As far as one can see, there has been no attempt to rationalise the requirements of the various Armed Forces. There appears to be a great similarity between Seaslug and Bloodhound in their operational function. Would it not have been possible to have some kind of missile which would have served both Services?
  926
  I know that numerous technical considerations are involved but there is no evidence that these considerations have been thought about. The missiles seem to have been kept entirely in airtight compartments by two firms when one would have thought it possible to have used a common missile for both purposes. One cannot see, from an inspection on the North coast, why the Bloodhound missile could not have been equally well mounted on Her Majesty's ships.
  Mr. Basil de Ferranti: This has been considered, but it is impossible for the very simple reason that it will not fit. Obviously a ship is a form of construction which imposes very severe limitations of length and diameter on any missile that can be used on it. Unfortunately, Bloodhound simply does not come within that specification.
  Mr. Cronin: I am very interested to hear the hon. Gentleman's views. I have no doubt that he has special information of an authoritative nature. Bloodhound seems to be no higher than Mr. Speaker's Chair. It seems incredible that some ships could not carry a missile of that nature, but I am happy to accept the hon. Gentleman's correction, which I presume is based on authoritative information.
  I should like to suggest a constructive solution to some of these problems. My suggestion may not be entirely pleasing to some hon. Gentlemen, but it ought nevertheless to be considered. The hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East touched on this. He suggested that much more of this work should be done by Government establishments. If I understood him correctly, he said that much more of this work should be done in the public, rather than in the private sector. This seems to me to be a principle which could be considerably extended in the production of guided missiles. In other words, I suggest that the time has come to give serious consideration to public ownership of the means of producing guided missiles.
  This would have numerous advantages. First, it would eliminate the anxieties that we have about financial control. If these missiles were designed and produced by Government establishments, the Comptroller and Auditor-General could send his officers to the various

  927
  places where the missiles were being produced and thus ensure that every penny that was spent was spent on the equivalent units of labour or the equivalent units of materials. This is particularly desirable in a situation where large sums of Government money are spent without any clear physical results. As, I think, one or two hon. Gentlemen said, there is no possibility of getting effective control of purely developmental expenditure when it is in private hands.
  Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: The hon. Gentleman is rather mixing up design and production. They are two different things. It is fair to point out that the condition to which the various Government establishments had been brought at the end of the last war would have enabled them to have continued with this work. Why I think the hon. Gentleman should keep this on a nonparty basis is that it was the Labour Government of the day who decided on the original policy of putting this on to private firms.
  Mr. Cronin: I appreciate the point, but the hon. and gallant Gentleman must be aware that when this was discussed before the Committee of Public Accounts it was made clear by the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Aviation, when he was being cross-examined, that these various Government establishments which were left over after the last war would not have been suitable for the production of guided missiles. They were suitable for what they were used for then, the production of guns and shells, but they were not suitable for the production of guided missiles. I think that answers the hon. and gallant Gentleman's point. I am glad that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is still with me, that much of this work should be done directly under Government auspices.
  Another argument in favour of my suggestion would be that it would lead to increased co-ordination in research. If one Government Department were responsible for the production and development of all these missiles, it could pool its research and "know-how," and clearly there would be an economic advantage from the large-scale production of these weapons. I do not think that anyone would seriously suggest that a Government establishment engaged on
  928
  the production of these missiles would be any less efficient than the firms which have so far done this work, because we have heard a most melancholy tale about the inefficiency of these firms, particularly in one case.
  It is often suggested by hon. Gentlemen that if the means of production is invested in public ownership one loses the profit motive which tends to produce greater efficiency. I think that argument might apply in many forms of public ownership, but in this kind of private work, where there is a cost-plus basis, the profit motive can only work against efficiency, because obviously it is in the interests of the contractor to spend as much money as possible because his profit is calculated as a percentage of what he spends. He is, therefore, the last person with any real desire to do the work as economically as possible. The profit motive works against the public interest in the development and construction of weapons. It therefore seems to me that there is a case for the development and construction of guided weapons to be carried out entirely under the auspices of public ownership.
  I know that this idea is probably unattractive to hon. Gentlemen opposite, and at this season of amity and amicability I do not want to say anything to upset them. I will, therefore, not put it more strongly than to suggest that the Government should carefully consider the desirability of extending the sphere of public ownership to the production of weapons, at least to some position half-way between that of the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East and myself. In other words, there should be an extension of public ownership in the production and development of guided weapons.
  Hon. Members on this side of the House are worried about the lack of control over expenditure during the last few years. I know that many hon. Gentlemen have the same feelings. It is very unfortunate that every few months we hear of another instance of extravagance and uncontrolled expenditure by the Government. Only a few months ago we heard about £100 million being thrown away on Blue Streak. We find, after some years of abuse, that the Ministry of Health has suddenly realised that American firms are selling us drugs on a

  929
  70 per cent. profit basis. One constantly comes across what my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton referred to as profligacy in expenditure.
  This is causing everyone who thinks about it the most serious anxiety, because never before have the people of this country paid so much money in direct and indirect taxes. Never before have so many people contributed to the Exchequer in the form of taxation. Never has Government expenditure reached such an all-time high. There are good grounds for a detailed examination by the Government of methods to achieve real economies, particularly in armaments, and to achieve effective control over expenditure. To parody the words of the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), "never has so much been spent for so little result."
  5.30 p.m.
  Mr. Basil de Ferranti: In view of the festive time of year I do not want to pursue the last suggestion of the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin), that these weapons should be produced in a nationalised industry, nor do I wish to introduce any kind of discordant note into what has been a most satisfying and agreeable debate. Many hon. Members have made some interesting suggestions, especially my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett), but I want to try to show that some of the things that have been suggested are not so easy to carry out. In fact, this could be said of practically all the problems in this field. I shall speak from the narrow point of view of the manufacturer of these weapons, and in accordance with the traditions of the House I must here record my interest in the manufacture of guided missiles. I hope that this will not be interpreted by any hon. Member as a commercial.
  This is a field in which angels would fear to tread. I am no angel, and I am therefore treading with great care and trepidation. It is right that I should do so, because I am in the fortunate position of knowing something about the matter, having lived with the problem that we are discussing for about ten years.
  The one point of real substance made in the admirable Report by the Commit-
  930
  tee of Public Accounts was that the cost of these projects exceeded the orginal estimates by 30 per cent., 10 per cent. and 6 per cent. respectively. The Committee went on to deduce that there had been a lack of financial control. That would appeal to be the case, but in logic I am not sure that it is the correct deduction to make. The first deduction is that the original estimates were wildly out, and that they should not have been accepted by the Ministry—and certainly they should never have been accepted by the Treasury.
  It is clearly desirable that estimates for expenditures of this kind should be correct. If they had been correct in this case the Treasury may well have said that the country could not possibly afford to undertake this work, and the contracts and developments would not have been proceeded with. This would have saved a lot of money. However, it simply is not as easy as that. It is all very well to say that these estimates should be accurate, but as these weapons systems become more and more sophisticated it becomes impossible even to use past experience as a basis on which to improve estimates. One is venturing into wholly unknown territory, and the only thing one can state with any certainty is that whatever estimate is produced it will be wrong. That has been my experience over same years of association with this matter.
  There is no way of getting round the fact that, if the nation decides to have this sort of weapon in its armoury, no matter what sort of suggestions are made or what techniques are used to control expenditure the nation is, in effect, signing a blank cheque. But if changes are to be made—and I certainly accept the criticisms of the Public Accounts Committee that changes would be desirable if they are practicable—there is something to be said for building an incentive into the contract, so that it is in the manufacturer's interest to produce his weapon system as cheaply as possible. That follows up the remarks of the hon. Member for Loughborough.
  One way in which this could be done would be by phasing the work. First, a development study contract could be placed—perhaps partly in a Government establishment and partly in industry, depending upon who has the

  931
  necessary expertise. This would be a comparatively inexpensive effort, but it would enable the state of the art to be examined more carefully. After that stage several development contracts, in series, could be placed with the manufacturer, taking him as far as the existing knowledge of the subject could be seen to enable him to go. These development contracts would have an agreed maximum sum placed on them, and if the manufacturer exceeded that maximum sum he would be able to get paid for the work only when the production contract was eventually placed. This would mean that he would be out of pocket, which could be a very serious matter in regard to contracts as large as these. He would have a real incentive to keep the cost below the maximum sum stated at each phase of the contract.
  This sounds rather easy to carry out, but it is just another suggestion of the kind upon which I commented earlier. We should then have the problem of what to do about modifications. In the case of one weapon system I know of there were well over 2,000 modifications, some of which were small but others of which were very important. It is appallingly difficult to try to fit this aspect of the work into a phased contract of the type I have described, but I am sure that it is worth trying, and I am sure that the Public Accounts Committee was right in drawing attention to this matter. If this method is tried I hope that it will prove successful.
  Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: When my hon. Friend talks about "modifications" is he referring to modifications arising from changes in the staff requirements? If so, does he agree that these should be resisted at all costs?
  Mr. de Ferranti: I am thinking not in terms of modifications arising from Changes in staff requirements but of modifications either to the specification or to the detailed design of the missile itself. These are bound to occur. We are exploring the frontiers of knowledge, and both the customer and the manufacturer are trying to edge their way towards a weapons system which will be satisfactory. Each stage in the process involves a modification of original ideas in order to try to get to the next stage, it is a fantastically complicated, difficult
  932
  job to develop these sophisticated weapons. It must have been dfficult enough with the steam torpedo, of which my hon. and gallant Friend has some knowledge, but these weapons are of an incredible order of complexity, and modifications are inevitable to the design. What slightly frightens me is the thought that if we were to use this type of contract we might find that it would merely become an additional burden on the Ministry and the manufacturer in their performance of a most difficult task, and might well prove to be a real threat to the possibilities of the success of the overall scheme.
  The Public Accounts Committee said that there should be more financial control. I would differentiate strongly between financial supervision and financial control. If there were financial control it would mean that the manufacturer, at innumerable stages in this complex process of development, would have to get permission from the Ministry for the next phase, and the length of time it takes to perform a development contract varies almost directly in proportion to the number of decisions required from the Ministry. If we built in a system which required innumerable decisions from the Ministry the job would not get done at all—or, if it did get done, it would cost a great deal more money.
  It may be that things are not so bad as to necessitate drastic measures. The cost of the development of these three has admittedly been £143 million. But let us look at the other side of the picture.
  The Army, the Navy and the Air Force have all got viable weapons to use which would be operable in the event of an attack. Compare this, with respect, with the American position. The Americans must have spent well in excess of five times as much money as we have in this matter, and they have been able to produce only two more or less operable weapons. One is able to intercept only one aircraft at a time and the other has so short a range as to make its use in war time extremely limited. On the other hand, with a fraction of the expenditure, we have been able to provide our Armed Services with first-class weapons.
  Frankly, I think that credit it due to the Socialist Administration who first negotiated the majority of these contracts

  933
  and, of course, to their advisers, for the way in which they have been able to produce a system of working which has been successful. Were I to be asked for any one reason why these contracts have been successfully executed. I would say that lack of control is one reason. If we have a team of creative engineers performing an extremely difficult task, we cannot expect to succeed if we are continually messing them about. For one thing, they will leave the job and do something else. The type of man referred to by my hon. and gallant Friend would be the first one to leave a development contract if he found that his work was being continuously interfered with. These people are "prima donnas". We must give them a job, and leave them to get on with the work. Of course, there must be financial and technical supervision, but if we try to impose rigorous control, far more of the taxpayers' money would be wasted than might be imagined possible.
  I think it worth while to look at another aspect of this matter. Not only has the programme produced three technically successful guided weapons; it has also made a substantial contribution to our balance of payments, in that we have been able to sell several weapon systems to overseas countries, particularly to Sweden and to Australia. It is to be hoped that we shall be able to sell more in the future and, speaking personally, I am sure that we shall be able to do so.
  Even more important than exports is the purely incidental contribution which development programmes have made to development in the civil sphere. Everyone knows of the civil developments, which, as a matter of course, have come out of the war-time armaments programme.
  Mr. Tomney: With commercial benefit.
  Mr. de Ferranti: Certainly to the benefit of the consumer and the taxpayer. Whether the manufacturer makes any money out of it is a matter for considerable speculation, as I know from personal experience.
  To try to excite the imagination of the House I should like to mention some of the things which have come out of the guided-missile programme. First,
  934
  there is the method of controlling processes in real time. Obviously, a missile when on the way to the target requires a computer in the loop as it were. This computer has to work in real time and has to do all the calculations during the flight of the missile. One can use a similar type of computing technique to control large chemical plants, and, for instance, the start-up sequence of boilers in a power station.
  These applications can save many millions of pounds over the years, and just that one application, I think, would amply justify the entire expenditure of £143 million on this programme. One has to save only 1 per cent. of the operative costs of, say, a large chemical process or the boilers of power stations in the United Kingdom to realise that £143 million is quite a small sum in comparison with the sort of saving which might be effected. Other things which have resulted have been advances in some techniques in the field of semiconductor devices and, what is perhaps most important, a reservoir of highly-skilled people whom we should probably have been quite unable to train by the normal commercial processes in industry.
  I have tried to show that the Governments involved in this have nothing to be ashamed of. I have tried to show that they should be careful not to jeopardise a system which, on the whole, has worked well. There seems to be a feeling that the work of this sort of programme should not proceed until the whole thing has been lined up and planned in detail. I have tried to show that, from the very nature of the work, it cannot be lined up and planned until after the development is finished. It is not possible to do it before. Elaborate arrangements can be made to produce paper estimates; but, no matter how elaborate are those arrangements, the estimates will still be wrong in the future. The point is that the development of these vast weapon systems is a highly complex business—a sort of creative excursion over the frontiers of knowledge—and, by definition, must be unplannable.
  To meet the criticism of the Select Committee and to do all the things which the Committee would rightly like to see done would be like asking Einstein how long it would take to produce the

  935
  general theory of relativity. It would be a question of that type. It is not practicable. For what it is worth, my advice to the House is that if we really want to save money, we should follow the line of reasoning of the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson). Expenditure basically depends on policy. If we wish to save money in the sphere of guided weapons, we must decide not to have particular guided weapons at all. If we try to save money by fiddling about, the only result will be that such weapon systems as are decided on and proceeded with will never produce a workable result.
  5.47 p.m.
  Sir George Benson: This is the first time in this century that the House has decided to debate a Report of the Committee of Public Accounts and, as an old member of the Committee, I am not sure whether to take that as a slight or a compliment. However, I am glad that we are debating these Reports because I think that the work of the Committee is vital to the economic and efficient running of our great Civil Service machine.
  Originally, the function of the Public Accounts Committee was to see that the expenditure of the Government Departments fitted closely with what were known as appropriations; in other words, that the Departments kept strictly within the limits of their estimates. In the old days, before the war, when expenditure was extremely repetitive from year to year, the job of the Committee was mainly to deal with what now seem rather niggling and technical points relating to accountancy. Today we are spending vast sums. Not only are the sums vast but there are great swings in the direction which the expenditure takes, and the function of the Committee has become not the rather narrow function of seeing whether expenditure and appropriation are analogous, but whether the Departments are spending these sums efficiently and economically.
  The small size of the Reports indicates pretty well that we have a highly efficient Civil Service. True, we always have something to do, but I wonder what kind of report would be issued to the shareholders if the activities of ordinary limited companies were subjected to the
  936
  same detailed investigation and scrutiny as is given to the Civil Service by the Exchequer and other audit Departments. The fact that we report on so little is, I think, a great compliment to the efficiency of our Civil Service.
  One thing I must emphasise is that it is not the job of the Public Accounts Committee to curtail expenditure. That is a matter for the House. Our duty is to see that expenditure has been made on what has been permitted by the House and that the expenditure has been made with adequate economy. If we find that a Department has fulfilled both those functions, we have nothing to say. The best thing a Department can hope for from the Committee is that it should be ignored. A great deal has been said about the chaos of missile development. The lesson to be drawn is that this entirely new development into regions about which we have little or no information throws into sharp contrast the efficiency with which the Civil Service runs. It is a tribute to our Civil Service.
  The Public Accounts Committee is a non-party Committee and of that I think we are entitled to be extremely proud. We are the only Public Accounts Committee in the world which functions really effectively. It does so because it is a non-party Committee. My experience as chairman was that I probably had more trouble in controlling the severity of Government members than the severity of Opposition members. We work as a team, and I am very proud of that.
  When, as sometimes happens, representatives of foreign Public Accounts Committees or finance departments of the Colonies ask if they may sit in, we always give them permission to do so. I always emphasised, however, what I think is the most important contribution we have to make to other Public Accounts Committees—that this is a non-party Committee. I remember a lady, who represented a colonial administration, coming to the Committee. I told her the usual tale, that we are completely non-party, but she was entirely sceptical. I said "All right, you shall sit in and afterwards I shall ask you if you can recognise which member is a member of the Conservative Party and which member is a member of the

  937
  Labour Party." I listened very carefully to the attitude adopted by my colleagues and I must say I thought they came through with flying colours. I expected that.
  Then I asked the lady, "Did you distinguish?", and she said, "I think so. I think the gentleman who sat there was a Conservative and the gentleman who sat there was a Conservative"—and she was right. I was horrified. I said, "How on earth did you distinguish?" She replied, "I thought their clothes were better cut." I am certain no one but a lady would have thought of that. I think it as high a compliment as anyone has paid to the Public Accounts Committee. Although I have been a member of the Committee for a long time and was Chairman for many years, I feel that we are entitled to be proud of the Committee.
  5.55 p.m.
  Sir Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: This is a very agreeable debate in which to take part for several reasons, above all because it gives one the opportunity to pay tribute to that devoted servant of this House, the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson).
  The hon. Member talked about the non-party feeling in the Public Accounts Committee. That is something felt on both sides of this Chamber in respect of the hon. Member however high party feeling may run. It has been particularly agreeable today because the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) started on such a satisfactory note. He referred to the fact that it is policy which makes expenditure. Perhaps the fact that we have not been discussing policy directly today accounts for there being a rather empty House. However, as the right hon. Member suggested in his conclusion, the policy by which our expenditure is handled is liable to have a very marked effect on our future deliberations and on our entire financial position.
  If I may refer to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Mr. de Ferranti), I cannot help feeling that a complete surrender of control by this House would run counter to anything we have ever known in peace time or that we could possibly tolerate or agree to in peace time. Unlike most hon. Members who have taken part in this debate, I have not the honour to
  938
  be a member of the Public Accounts Committee, but I am a member of that other group, the Select Committee on Estimates, whose members will be rising to catch your eye very shortly, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.
  The right hon. Member for Huyton referred to the Public Accounts Committee as the Holy Office whereas the Treasury conducted the auto-da-fe. I was trying to see how the Estimates Committee comes into that framework, but my knowledge of theological organisation is not as close as his. I have no direct suggestion to make, but I remember an organisation during the war which was known as the General Headquarters Reconnaissance Unit, or "phantom", and described as a small body of men entirely surrounded by officers. It was in fact represented in this House not long ago. The object of that organisation was to bring information direct from outlying units to G.H.Q. I cannot help feeling that the Estimates Committee, in its inquiries, may serve a similar purpose.
  I wish to refer to the Sixth Report of the Estimates Committee in the Session 1957–58, on Treasury Control of Expenditure conducted by a sub-committee presided over by my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson) in which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) took a leading part. That Committee looked into the question of Treasury control, raised certain doubts and questions and was rather reassured by the replies of the Treasury and other Departments which gave evidence. I wish particularly to quote paragraph 24 of the Report of the Select Committee, because it sets out a state of affairs which the members of the Committee were very pleased to hear about, but which appears not altogether to tally with the matters we are discussing today.
  Paragraph 24 runs:
  "An important development has recently taken place in the control of defence expenditure by the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury. 'Forward looks' or forecasts for three years ahead are prepared each summer, on the basis of current policy, of the total and major features of defence expenditure. These are prepared primarily for planning purposes so that the Treasury may see what they are committed to by the policy. As a result of such a 'look' modifications may be sought in the policy."

  939
  This is the key sentence:
  "The forecast for the next year becomes, when approved by the Government, the defence budget which is the foundation for that year's defence Estimates."
  The Committee adds the qualification,
  "This technique is still being developed".
  We are debating some of those developments.
  The Committee was very impressed by this technique and said,
  "Your Committee find this development most interesting, and are disappointed that there seems to be little parallel effort on the civil side".
  In fact, it is rather fortunate that there has not been parallel effort on the civil side with what we have seen on the defence side. Had there been, the size of the figures which we are discussing would have been very much larger.
  In examining the evidence given to that sub-committee by the Ministry of Defence, one is struck by the fact that the Ministry of Defence controls very little money indeed. The total Vote was only £17 million, of which 90 per cent. was on contributions to N.A.T.O. and other bodies and only 10 per cent. was on its own administrative expenses. The Ministry also gave evidence that the costings were reliable and that certainly the estimate came to a manageable figure.
  When the Treasury was called upon to give evidence it touched on the question of underestimating, which it considered unavoidable at times, and referred particularly to the establishment of a committee under the chairmanship of the late Sir Claude Gibb, a committee of which I understand Sir Solly Zuckerman has now assumed the chairmanship. I hope that in the case of Sir Claude Gibb it was post hoc but not propter hoc and that in the case of Sir Solly Zuckerman it will have no damaging effect on his activities.
  The Treasury reported on the question of post-mortems, using the word "post-mortem", having borrowed it from my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East. I can only say that some of the corpses must have been somewhat odorous. In any event, the Treasury was satisfied that the post-mortem procedure was satisfactory.
  Even that did not altogether satisfy the Estimates Committee, but in reply to its
  940
  comments the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury replied as shown in the Seventh Special Report from the Select Committee on Estimates, 1958–59, which was printed on 17th June, 1959, presumably at a time when these matters now being debated were well known to the Treasury. The Treasury replied:
  "My Lords have difficulty, however, in concurring in the Committee's view that the Treasury 'appear to have little control over, and perhaps too little interest in, the costs of procurement orders for military equipment' How far the Treasury should assist responsible Departments in this field by increasing Treasury control is under discussion; but more is done already than was perhaps appreciated by the Sub-Committee."
  Those words should go on record because, if more were done than was appreciated by the sub-committee, it still suggests that a great deal more could have been done without yet achieving the objects which the Treasury had in view.
  The logical conclusion of our debate, perhaps, has been put by my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale. No less a person than the Minister of Defence, at the N.A.T.O. Conference this week, said that, in this field, if it works it is out of date. Perhaps one should go on from that to say that if its costs can be accurately estimated, it ought never to have been begun. Frankly, I do not know the answer to these questions, but they have been posed by responsible people. One is reminded of the remark of the late Mr. Pierpoint Morgan, when he was asked by a friend what was the cost of running a yacht. He replied that people who want to know the cost of running yachts cannot afford to run them.
  There is a moral for us in that. As a House and a country, we are devoted to Commons control of Governmental expenditure. My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale probably knows more about the technical side of this matter than any of us here, and he certainly knows a great deal more than I know. I was impressed by his words that the only way to control this form of expenditure is not to go in for it at all. Perhaps that is not the object of this debate, but I feel that the debate has served a most useful purpose particularly, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Chesterfield, in indicating, on the whole, how extraordinarily well our finances are run. It has drawn attention

  941
  to this situation, which has certain elements of the chaotic about it, and focussed the attention of the House on this problem—can we afford to go in for a programme which cannot be satisfactorily run under present Governmental methods of accounting?
  6.7 p.m.
  Mr. J. Grimond: Like the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid), I am sure the House is obliged to the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson), not only for his work on the Committee, but for the speech with which he introduced the debate. He mentioned Mr. Gladstone. I am not sure that Mr. Gladstone would always approve of the right hon. Gentleman's fiscal views, but so amiable was the right hon. Gentleman's speech this afternoon that it would have received a celestial pat on the head from the Grand Old Man himself.
  I want to make a point at the outset. The debate has been largely concerned with a special problem. Of course, the Report of the Public Accounts Committee goes much wider than this special problem, and indeed the whole problem of the public control of expenditure should exercise this House, in matters more definite perhaps, easier perhaps, but certainly as important as that which we are considering. The right hon. Member for Huyton quite rightly said that the amount of money the Government spend depends upon the policy. I wholly agree with him. But I am sure that he in turn would not dissent if I said that this does not absolve the House from exercising supervision over administrative expenditure. The public are very concerned about administrative expenditure. When I say "supervision" I do not necessarily mean cutting down expenditure. I mean seeing that we get value for money. I thought that the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson), in a most interesting speech, made an important point when he said that the Public Accounts Committee was not concerned to cut down expenditure but to see that it was proper and that we were getting value for the money spent.
  Two questions arise on the special subject which we have been considering. First, there is the question of how it
  942
  happens that the original estimate was so far out. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Mr. de Ferranti) made a valuable contribution. The House is lucky to have him here this afternoon. It is said that the House of Commons always finds somebody, even on the most abstruse subjects, who is an expert, and that has been proved today. He pointed out that it was an almost superhuman task to estimate for development of this kind. Nevertheless if estimates were made—and they were in this case—the House is right to inquire why they were so very far out. The figures were £4 million against £143 million. That is the first question. But, as a layman, whether there was waste is much more interesting to me. Did we get value for money? It has been suggested by the hon. Member for Huyton that there are indications that some waste may have occurred. There were no contracts in some cases and in other cases the contracts were open-ended. There is no evidence that some of the firms were desperately concerned in keeping down costs. It is on the subject of waste that I believe the people who are concerned with our deliberations will be most interested.
  What are we going to do about that? The House has been no more able to make concrete suggestions on this question than have the various committees which have considered this from time to time. The suggestions set out in paragraphs 42 to 45 of the Report seem good to me. I hope that the Government are going to follow them up. But I must say that when it comes to suggesting that the initial estimates should be made by the technical staff and that they should then be criticised by the financial staff, I am not sure that it carries us very much further. The original estimates in this case appear to have been made by the technical staff, and, presumably, were criticised.
  I thought I noticed a slight look of terror come onto the face of the Financial Secretary when the hon. Member for Morecambe and Londsdale indicated the problems we would be concerned with included computers running through the real time in a loop. We know that the Financial Secretary can tackle almost anything, and I am sure that the question of a philosophy of this sort will

  943
  be within his capabilities. However, I think we are put in a difficulty as to how the staff is going to make sense of the extremely technical propositions put before them.
  There is a simpler point I wish to make, and that is that any financial control is made far more difficult in times of inflation and inflation is the cause of the unsatisfactory cost plus system. The difficulty of control is greatly accentuated if we are bound to have inflation. I hope we shall be told something about the progress of this review of the Treasury. It is obvious that the jobs which the Civil Service in general and the Treasury in particular are now being asked to undertake are very different from a hundred years ago. They are no longer concerned with just supervising expenditure on definite projects but they enter into partnership in commercial or scientific enterprises in which exact supervision of a type common one hundred years ago is impossible.
  I wonder whether we have not to look again at the type of Treasury official and Civil Servant that we have. We are extremely proud of them, and I have no doubt that they are still by far the most expert service in the world. However, when they are being asked to undertake totally new jobs we should consider whether some new form of training or experience is not required. It might be useful if from time to time members of the Civil Service and the Treasury were to take a year or two off and go out into the commercial or scientific world.
  But the crux of the matter is responsibility. Responsibility not only in the special case of guided missile development but over the control of expenditure in general. Where there is no responsibility control vanishes. The hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) also spoke of responsibility. I was not, however, quite certain to what sort of responsibility he was referring. He went on to say that the sort of man he thought would be valuable today to take responsibility was someone like Fisher. That is not the sort of responsibility I have in mind. Fisher was a man of very strong personal prejudices. If he had been responsible for this sort of problem before the war there certainly would not
  944
  have been any mines, because he did not approve of them. It was made clear by the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) that it is fatal to allow ultimate responsibility to fall entirely into the hands of experts. It is not only part of our Parliamentary system but historically the way to get the right decisions to see that responsibility remains with Ministers, even though they may be laymen on a particular subject. The responsibility has been leaking out of the hands of Ministers into committees, into the hands of experts, and so on, and we shall never get proper control of these projects, proper supervision of expenditure, until it is squarely fixed on the Minister and, through the Minister, on other people in the Ministry; but not hived off, so to speak, to a committee in the way the hon. Member suggested.
  If we have done nothing else this afternoon we have, as the hon. Member for Chesterfield said, by debating this Report of the Committee on Public Accounts, shown to the public, if the public is interested in these matters at all, that the House of Commons is keenly concerned about public expenditure. We shall have given some publicity to the work done by these Committees of Public Accounts and to the very detailed, accurate and important work which goes on behind the scenes. Very often this is not appreciated, and the more we can do, both to give it some currency and also to persuade the Government to give their views on it and assure us that steps are being taken to implement its recommendations, the better job we shall do for our constituents.
  6.16 p.m.
  Sir Colin Thornton-Kemsley: Although I have been a member of the Public Accounts Committee longer than most, in the very short speech I shall make this evening I propose to abandon what I might call the ordinary Public Accounts Committee point, and deal with two matters only, which go rather wider than the kind of questions which the members of that Committee can put to an accounting officer.
  First of all, I want to talk about what, for want of a better word, I call

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  "perfectionism". Secondly, I want to talk about co-operation with the United States of America. As to perfectionism, the House will remember, from the course of the debate this evening, that the missile which was known, first of all, by the code name of "Red Shoes" and later as the "Thunderbird", was originally an Air Force and Army project. Later, two different operational requirements became obvious and, for reasons given in the answer to Question 3232, the Army went for the Thunderbird and the Air Force for the Bloodhound. I am not convinced that the deterrent effect of these weapons is lessened appreciably by a lack of absolute perfection in the finished article. We are producing deterrents, but I am not sure whether we need them, to the exclusion of considerations such as cost and the time taken, to achieve absolute perfection.
  As the accounting officer for the Ministry of Aviation pointed out to the Committee, there is always a struggle between the ideal and the need to produce something technically acceptable at a reasonable cost. The point was made by the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin)—and I am not sure that I agree on this point with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) in his retort to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke)—about the part the Ministry of Defence should play in these arrangements.
  I understand that there is a body called the Defence Research Policy Committee set up by the Ministry of Defence. I would welcome some reference being made to that kind of co-ordinating committee concerning the requirements of the three Services for weapons of this kind. We are, perhaps, needlessly going for perfection and sacrificing economy and time in our search for the ideal.
  Sir H. Legge-Bourke: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for referring to the intervention which I made in the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett). Does my hon. Friend realise that at present there is a good deal that the three Service Ministers are never told by their Departments, for
  946
  reasons of security? If any Minister knows, it is the Minister of Defence. Does not my hon. Friend agree that this is a matter which should be looked at? How can a Minister possibly control a development which is so secret that he cannot be told what it is?
  Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley: I am not convinced that the details are not known at the highest Ministerial level, which is what counts in cases like this.
  Turning quite quickly to co-operation with the United States, this country took about eleven years to produce Seaslug, at an all-up cost of £70 million. The American Terrier, which is generally admitted to be not quite so good as Seaslug, was produced in eight years at a very much lower cost.
  I have a question, not far the Public Accounts Committee, but for the Government. The more this question is asked in the House, particularly from this side of the House, the better. When shall we learn to pool our resources with our American allies? Today the House has discussed three weapons—Seaslug, at an all-up cost of £70 million; Thunderbird, at an all-up cost of £40 million; and Fire Streak, at an all-up cost of £33 million, making a total of £143 million. We have not yet looked at Blue Streak.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) said that the United States has spent £750 million on abandoned weapons. One day we shall be driven by the mere force of economics to collaborate with our allies. The sentries at Buckingham Palace have now been put behind the railings, and no one can imagine why it was not done years ago. Before long, we shall wonder why it took us so long to work out a system of full collaboration with our friends the United States of America as regards these other and far more important defensive arrangements.
  6.23 p.m.
  Mr. James H. Hoy: I apologise to my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) for not being present during his speech. Despite all the developments which have taken place in the last decade in ballistics and space research, aeroplanes still cannot take off or land in fog. If the firm with which the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Mr. de Ferranti)

  947
  is associated could do something about that, it would be a public benefactor.
  I want to take this opportunity to pay a tribute to the public servant—the Comptroller and Auditor-General—who performs such a wonderful service on the Public Accounts Committee. The present Comptroller, like his predecessor, has been of tremendous value to us. We could not do our work competently without his assistance.
  I also want to take the opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson), who has been associated with the Committee for a third of the century that it has been in existence and has presided over it for many years. Hon. Members will understand my desire to congratulate my hon. Friend when I explain that I am second in seniority on the Committee.
  We have been discussing this afternoon only one facet of the work of the Committee. Such a Committee must cover all forms of public expenditure. It is worth while reiterating that there are two things for which our Committee is not responsible. First, it is not the job of the Public Accounts Committee to lay down policy for this or any other Government. Secondly, it is not the responsibility of the Committee to vote any money.
  I remember one discussion we had in the Committee on the expenditure being undertaken by universities. The chief of one British university launched an attack on us. He said that, if the Public Accounts Committee had its way, it would not vote any further money for university work or would seriously curtail it. That is not the duty of the Committee. It is the duty of the Committee to ensure that what has been voted is efficiently and economically spent by Government Departments.
  It is perhaps for that reason that the Report takes such an interest in the development of missiles. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale made an interesting speech, but he was not quite consistent. He said that it was very, very difficult to estimate the cost. He went on to say that it would be fantastically difficult to make up an estimate of the cost. He then said that, if the correct estimate had been made up and submitted to Whitehall, Whitehall would
  948
  have sent it back and said that it would not accept it. If it is so difficult for experts, how can the men in Whitehall know better than the experts who prepared the estimates? That is the difficulty.
  What we were faced with was that the expenditure of public money ran into millions and millions of pounds. At the end of the day the Public Accounts Committee must prepare its comments on whether the money has been spent efficiently and wisely. Whatever faults we may have, what we are doing is in the interest of the taxpayer. Because the Treasury felt that there had been some inefficiency in supervision, not only over expenditure but perhaps over the preparation of accounts, one contractor had to repay about £40,000. The Treasury felt that there had been an over-charge or lack of control.
  That is one thing which has followed on from the war period. Throughout the whole of my service on the Committee I have opposed the cost-plus system. I do not believe that it makes for careful and good management over the whole field. It may be necessary when a new missile is being developed, when it is very difficult to control expenditure, because of the very novelty of the project. I am prepared to admit that, but in the main the cost-plus system is bad, not only for the Government, but for contractors, because it may lead to carelessness which would not otherwise take place. It is the Committee's job to ensure that the taxpayers' money is efficiently and economically spent.
  I had hoped that even in this short debate we should have heard some remarks about the Committee's comments on the working of the Independent Television Authority. The Committee's unanimous Report contained some comments about the profits being earned. It questioned whether the Authority was fulfilling its part of the contract and paying certain surpluses over to the Government. This has gone on for a considerable time.
  In its last report the Independent Television Authority stated the reasons why certain people are selected. The Authority rejected the Committee's suggestion that competitive tendering should take place for the granting of contracts. The Committee's point of view was that

  949
  there should be competitive tendering only if the Authority was convinced that the contractors were technically and economically sound and in other ways efficient enough to do the job. I see that in its last reply the Television Authority says that not only has it to think of this but the public standing of the people concerned, and their influence on public opinion. I thought that that was the very thing that arose in the case of the closing down of the News Chronicle. Perhaps the Financial Secretary would like to say a word or two about that.
  On behalf of all members of the Public Accounts Committee, I want to say how grateful we are to the House for discussing this Report—the first occasion on which it has been able to—in this, our centenary year. We are grateful to hon. Members in all parts of the House for the kind things they have had to say. We can only hope that as a result of our work, whether it be on guided missiles, groundnuts or the wearing apparel, male and female, of the Army, we have at least made a contribution towards seeing that public moneys are expended economically.
  6.31 p.m.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle): We have had an interesting and useful debate, though whether it can quite merit the description of an historic debate, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) said at a quarter to five, I leave the House to judge.
  The debate started with what I thought, if I may say so, was a very balanced and helpful speech by the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) in his capacity as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, and I am sure that we were all particularly glad also to have had the service of the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) to whom tributes have been rightly paid. I hope that when people outside this building judge of our work in the House of Commons they will remember those who, like the hon. Member, Session after Session have done very great work as Members of Parliament behind the scenes. I would only add that I was interested to note, after listening to the hon. Member, that I would not apparently be mistaken for a Conservative
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  Member of the Public Accounts Committee.
  I am sure that the House is glad of the chance to consider the work of the Public Accounts Committee. There have been quite a number of discussions in recent months, and a very considerable interest shown, both in this House and outside it, in the whole subject of the control of Government expenditure. It is more clearly recognised today than ever before that it is not only a job for the Government but must also be a matter of great concern to the House of Commons to make a forecast of the economic resources likely to be a ailable in the years to come, and of the main claims that will be made on those resources.
  Perhaps I may, by the way, be allowed to say to the right hon. Member for Huyton that I remember very well that time five years ago when he was lambasting me night after night for what he was pleased to call "Boyle's Law". Today, for the first time in my recollection, he quoted a new "Boyle's Law", with which he felt able to agree.
  This is, of course, the season of the year when hon. Members in all parts of the House—and Ministers, certainly—are particularly aware of the problems of Government spending, and the very notable contributions by the Committee on Public Accounts to ensure that we get the best value for money, and improve and strengthen the system of financial control, have not, as far as I know, been brought formally before this House in this way for a very long time. As this is the Committee's centenary year, it is very apposite that we should now be considering its work.
  It has always been realised that the House cannot undertake those detailed inquiries that Select Committees, with skilled assistance, can undertake, and perhaps the House would not take it amiss if, for the next ten minutes or so, I made a few general remarks about the Public Accounts Committee and its relations with the Departments and with the Treasury, before coming to the special subject of paragraphs 25 to 45 of the Committee's last Report, which paragraphs relate specifically to the development and production of guided weapons.
  As the right hon. Member for Huyton said, the Select Committee on Public

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  Accounts will be 100 years old next year. It is a fair generalisation to say that in our national history there have been two really great periods of administrative reform. The first was under one of the greatest, and certainly one of the most maligned Englishmen, Thomas Cromwell, in the sixteenth century, who, for the first time, established bureaucratic Departments and offices of State. Roughly speaking, his system, with developments, lasted a very long time. It is a remarkable thing that even in the eighteenth century, while there were considerable experiments in the field of government, we did not then have any uniform system of public accounts—and still less any method for bringing them under Parliamentary scrutiny.
  It was not until 1857 that a Select Committee recommended the extension of a regular system of appropriation accounts to the Civil and Revenue Departments, and it is my belief that the third quarter of the nineteenth century, which brought us the modern system of public accounts and a professional Civil Service—and, incidentally, the beginning of our modern political parties—was one of the great formative periods in our modern history.
  It was in 1861 that, under Standing Orders, the Public Accounts Committee was established, and the framework of the whole system of Parliamentary audit and control as we now know it was finally completed with the Exchequer and Audit Departments Act, 1866, which laid down in considerable detail the system of accounts to be maintained by Departments, and provided for the appointment of a Comptroller and Auditor-General.
  The further amending Act of 1921 laid on the Comptroller and Auditor-General the duty of satisfying himself, in regard to every appropriation account that
  "… the money expended has been applied to the purpose or purposes for which the grants made by Parliament were intended to provide and that the expenditure conforms to the authority which governs it."
  It is really since that Act was passed that the Public Accounts Committee as we know it today has been working, and I should certainly like to join in the tributes that have been paid in this de-
  952
  bate today to successive Comptrollers and Auditors-General. I know what valuable work they have contributed to the Committee, and I was very glad to hear the tribute specially paid to the present Comptroller and Auditor-General, Sir Edmund Compton, with whom I was fortunate enough to have personal dealings when I was previously at the Treasury.
  It is fair to say that the Public Accounts Committee has, throughout its history, shown a considerable flexibility of attitude and methods. It has been found a valuable instrument for its purpose, despite the revolution in the whole function of Government and the problems of public finance. Quite obviously, the type of scrutiny appropriate to the total of Government expenditure at the start of the century, or even thirty or forty years ago, would not be suitable today. Not only has the amount of money voted by Parliament increased very rapidly but the scope of Government expenditure, its objects and its whole impact on the economy have changed out of all recognition.
  This has naturally had very profound effects on the way in which Departments and the whole of the Public Accounts Committee approach their task. For instance, the problems of controlling social service and defence expenditure, with which the Committee finds itself constantly grappling, are different in kind from those that engaged much attention even up to the beginning of the last war. I think that the right hon. Member for Huyton was quite right, both in his article in the Guardian and in what he said this afternoon, that paragraphs 25 to 45 of the present Report deal with a completely new problem, to which I shall come in a few minutes.
  The limits of the responsibilities of senior officials who appear before the Committee are well understood, and I know that the sometimes tricky line of decision is conscientiously respected by all members of the Committee, on whichever side they may sit. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman was right when he spoke of the seriousness with which Permanent Under-Secretaries approached the Committee, and I was interested in the suggestion of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East who said that, in a

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  way, one could almost say that the Committee constitutes some limit on Ministerial responsibility. In strict accuracy, I am not sure that that is not going a little too far, but it is certainly true that the Public Accounts Committee is the means whereby this House gets into absolutely direct contact with the accounting officers of public Departments.
  As regards the way in which the Public Accounts Committee and the Executive work together, I am sure that neither the Committee nor Parliament would expect the Treasury or the Departments to feel themselves absolutely bound by recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee made in circumstances quite different from those of today. But the general principles of control remain as valid as they ever did, and so, indeed, do certain tenets of prudent financial administration, even though the types of activity and expenditure to which they are now applied have changed so very greatly.
  Perhaps I may now say a word about the Committee's relationship with the Treasury. I think it is well known to the House that the relations between the Committee and the Treasury have always been very close, and I think they have worked extremely well. Of course, the Treasury's very important responsibilities for the control of expenditure are founded on the authority of Parliament. As the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) and others have so rightly said, the Public Accounts Committee is in no sense a committee for the control of public expenditure. The Treasury's responsibilities are one aspect of my right hon. Friend's concern with the well-being and the balance and growth of the whole economy.
  It is not for me to deal with this matter at length this evening, except to say that Government expenditure is by no means the sole claim on the economy. We have to consider all the great obligations of demand on the resources that we produce and to see that a balance is kept between the total of those demands and the total of our resources. Obviously Government expenditure has this unique importance from the point of view of the Executive, that it is the one component of demand that is basically and directly within the Government's own control.
  954
  Conversely from what I have been saying, Parliament has for a long time recognised that it must delegate to the Treasury many duties of financial control and management which it could not possibly undertake directly. None the less Parliament has the duty to assure itself, so far as it can, that this control is exercised efficiently and in accordance with its own views.
  May I say that we are today considering whether money has been spent wisely and whether there has been some degree of waste. Those are questions that Members have asked. But I hope that they will not forget the important aspect of the Public Accounts Committee in considering the propriety of the expenditure—whether expenditure has been made, whether it is a large or small sum, in accordance with what Parliament has decided.
  That question of the propriety of Government expenditure is a highly important one which we should never forget when considering the functions of the Committee. The Committee can each year examine very carefully only a comparatively narrow front. Particular topics are selected from the whole examination of the accounts and relevant papers by the Comptroller and Auditor-General which are thought to bring out problems of financial administration which seem particularly to merit scrutiny. Then, within the limits of agreed policy, accounting officers of the Departments must be prepared to answer any question on the way that their Departments have carried out the operations in question.
  After due consideration of the evidence, the Committee issues its Report, including its conclusions or recommendations on the specific matters that the Committee had had under review. These recommendations are very carefully considered by the Departments and the Treasury in consultation, and the Executive's comments, in the traditional form of a Treasury minute, are conveyed to the Committee and published by the Committee as a Special Report, as the right hon. Member for Huyton said.
  I should like to emphasise that the Treasury minutes are, as it were, the Executive's comments on the Report. They are not just Treasury comments. They are the comments of the whole Executive.
  Mr. H. Wilson: When the hon. Gentleman says that they are the comments of the whole Executive, I hope that he is not in any way derogating from the fact that the Treasury accepts responsibility for the comments before presenting them to the Committee?
  Sir E. Boyle: Not at all.
  Mr. Wilson: I ask that because there was considerable concern last year about a Treasury minute which was no more than a quotation of some words cooked up by the Post Office or the I.T.A. or somebody, and the Treasury passed on the words in inverted commas. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Public Accounts Committee and the House of Commons expect the Treasury to act as a Treasury and not as a Post Office?
  Sir E. Boyle: When I said that they were the comments of the Executive, I did not mean to derogate from the responsibility of the Treasury. I merely wanted to point out that the terms of the minute are drafted after careful consultation with the Departments concerned. I shall have a word to say on that matter of the Independent Television Authority at the end of my speech.
  I now wish to say a few words about the question which we have been discussing, namely, paragraphs 25 to 45 of the Report which relate to the development and production of guided weapons. We are not having an Estimate debate today. Therefore, it is not for me to reply on issues of policy. I know that if my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation were here and were speaking in the debate he would have a number of comments to make, and he will be only too willing to answer an Estimates debate on this subject on another occasion.
  The only point to which I wish to draw attention is this. Some of the cost comparisons that have been made today have struck me as a little unreasonable and, indeed, as going rather beyond paragraphs 25 to 45 of the Report. It is true that the initial estimates for these guided weapons were understated, but they were, by the custom of the time, related only to development up to the production of a prototype. The heavier part of the expenditure falls in the long period of testing and proving after the prototype. That is why I do not think it is fair to compare £4 million with
  956
  £143 million. I think that a fairer comparison, in a sense—and this is implicit in the words of the Report—is to compare £1 million to £1½ million for the original estimate for Seaslug with a figure of something like £9 million. Indeed, I am not sure whether £6 million would not be a fairer comparison, because some of these contracts were placed before the big rises in prices which took place in the early years of the last decade. I say this not in any way to mitigate the seriousness of the issues but to show that we do not strengthen the case by comparing like with unlike.
  Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Is my hon. Friend suggesting that in 1948 the Ministers were aware that there was going to be this greater expenditure in testing prototypes?
  Sir E. Boyle: This is not within my own sphere of responsibility, but I am told that the initial estimates were, by the custom of that time, related only to development up to production of a prototype.
  I should like to say a word or two on this matter from the point of view of the Treasury. The Committee outlines the financial history of three guided weapon developments, and the main faults that the Committee finds with the whole history of the development can be reduced to two. First, the original estimate was so far from reality as to be useless for purposes of financial control, and, secondly, the Minister's control over firms was not as complete as it ought to have been. The Public Accounts Committee comments, in general, that control in the past was seriously inadequate.
  I think one can say that the Treasury reply does two things. First—and here I refer to a paragraph on page 7 of the Special Report of the Public Accounts Committee—it accepts that the financial management of guided weapon development projects was deficient during the first decade, and it also points out that this field must be a difficult one in which to forecast costs accurately.
  Let me explain that point in a little more detail. The arrangements between what used to be the Ministry of Supply—now the Ministry of Aviation—and the Treasury for the control of guided

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  weapon expenditure have, I believe, been considerably improved during the last year or two. Until a year or two ago, what happened was this. The Ministry of Supply, having obtained Treasury authority to undertake the development of a guided weapon at an estimated total cost of, say £X million, would then, as part of the ordinary estimate scrutiny, notify the Treasury each year of the latest estimate and the total cost of the project; but it did not need to obtain Treasury approval before continuing this project even if the estimated cost increased.
  The right hon. Member for Huyton, in his Guardian article and in his speech today, put his finger, quite rightly, on the whole trouble. When the Government are spending money on, it may be, a battleship or a school, there is something identifiable to show for the money when the project is completed. The trouble about our old system, however, was that at the end of each year there was nothing to show for the money except, as the right hon. Gentleman fairly said, a chit that so much money had been spent. It is clear from paragraph 44 of the Report of the Public Accounts Committee that this system has to some extent now been changed. Indeed, it was in process of being changed even before the Committee began its investigations.
  What happens nowadays is this. A Treasury authority for development is tied to the estimated cost of the work, and as soon as that cost rises by either 10 per cent. or by £1 million, whichever is the lesser, fresh authority has to be sought. In that event, the Treasury normally requires all the Departments concerned to conduct a thorough review of the total cost involved—that is to say, not only the cost of the development but also the cost of production and deployment.
  What the Ministry of Aviation is now trying to do is to make sure about each step before going on to the next step. This starts with a precise definition of objectives, and the process goes on through feasibility studies and a fuller scale design study, from which emerges a detailed costing programme for the whole development. The Treasury, in other words, requires all the Departments to conduct a thorough review of the total cost involved, and to consider
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  at, perhaps, Ministerial level, in the light of the current assessment, the importance of the operational requirement which the weapon is designed to fulfil, in order to establish whether this increased expenditure is justified by the military need under current economic conditions. That, I believe, is the right way to proceed.
  We are here dealing with a sector in which the Government are themselves making direct claims on scarce economic resources. It is absolutely right at each stage of the operation to see whether this claim on scarce resources is justified. I am sure that in Government, as in business, there are times when it must be right, as it were, to cut a loss and not to go on with a project which both costs greatly more money than originally was expected and which is not justifying the scarce economic resources which it is using up.
  Sir H. Legge-Bourke: My hon. Friend is speaking very fast and I am trying to take in as well as I can what he is saying. May I have an assurance that we shall not revert to what happened all too often before the war—that is, that the Treasury will now have the power to reverse a decision taken by the Defence Committee of the Cabinet?
  Sir E. Boyle: What I said was that the Treasury will require all the Departments concerned to conduct a thorough review. These matters must be important Ministerial decisions. There is no question at all of the Treasury coming in as a sort of grand joker in our economic system and cancelling out decisions taken by Ministerial authority. It must be a Ministerial decision whether a certain project is proceeded with.
  I was a little worried at my hon. Friend's remarks earlier this afternoon when he came close to saying either that we do not go in for the guided missile field at all or that we must simply give a blank cheque for whatever expenditure is needed. That is too pessimistic a view. It may be perfectly right to embark on a project and to develop to a certain stage and then, perhaps, to discover in the course of development that the project is costing considerably more than was expected, not simply in terms of money but also an unjustifiable amount in terms of the scarce resources which it is using up.

  959
  In parallel with the question of Treasury control, the Ministry of Aviation has itself thoroughly reviewed and, I believe, improved its own internal procedures as well as its procedures for controlling expenditure by contractors. All of these improvements, coupled with the accumulated experience of ten years in what must be regarded as a novel and difficult field, ought to mean more satisfactory control in the future. At the same time, we must recognise that probably the basic form of Treasury control—that is to say, measuring performance against estimate—can never be 100 per cent. effective in this sort of work.
  I agree with the right hon. Member for Huyton. We are dealing with a completely new field and it is no good pretending that our methods here can be exactly as successful as those dealing with a simple and identifiable project. Development is an extended process of invention which involves the examination of technical problems and experiments to find means of solving them. By its very nature, development means moving all the time into unknown or into only partly-known territory.
  Both my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I have served together at the Ministry of Supply. I well recall the White Paper published at that period in which we said that development in this field might be described as all the time creating new scientific capital. That is a fair way of putting it. Any estimate of the cost of work of this kind is, of course, liable to error, as the Committee's Report makes clear. By the increased use of preliminary design studies and very careful administration, I hope that we have improved estimates techniques, but there must always be an element of uncertainty. Both the Ministry and the Treasury will have to be alert to seek new ways of ensuring that rising costs are known as soon as possible, and that the utility of the end product is repeatedly measured against the resources which will be needed to get it into the hands of those who will use it operationally.
  I should like to say a word to those hon. Members who have talked about technical advice. I am not sure that
  960
  sound administration in this field is simply a matter of getting more technical experts. Those of us who are concerned at all in this field, whether as officials or as Ministers, need some degree of familiarity with technical questions. I have always believed that the best adviser to a Government was somebody who had at least a sufficient amount of technical knowledge of his own subject, coupled with sound judgment and other qualities that are needed for any job in Government. Perhaps the same goes for Ministers, too. I am not, however, necessarily convinced that the best advisers will be those who are trained as technical experts.
  The right hon. Member for Huyton asked a question about the Zuckerman Committee and one or two hon. Members asked about the Plowden Committee. The Zuckerman Committee hopes to report before the end of March, that is to say, before Easter. The question of whether its report should be published must be a matter for consideration when the report has been received. The initial public announcement of the report must be a matter for my noble Friend the Minister for Science as the Minister who set up the Committee. In any event, I am certain that when the Committee's report has been completed it will help to reinforce the measures already taken to improve control of expenditure on defence research and development and to ensure getting the best possible value for money.
  Concerning the Plowden report, I can only repeat what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said in October when he told the House that the work of this Committee is continuing, and it remains the Government's intention to announce to the House in due course their conclusions based upon the advice contained in the Plowden Committee's Report. My right hon. Friend went on to say:
  "I am not yet, however, in a position to give any indication when this might be or to indicate what bearing the fruits of the Committee's deliberations might have on the subject now before the House."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th October, 1960; Vol. 627, c. 2259.]
  The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Hoy) asked about the Treasury minute on the Third Report of the Public Accounts Committee concerning the

  961
  Independent Television Authority accounts. The Report notes the Treasury's explanation why we did not express any views on the dispute between the Committee and the I.T.A. I simply repeat the assurance which we have given that the Government will take the Committee's previous Report into account when considering what to do in this regard on the expiry of the Television Act in 1964. After all, we now have a high level Committee studying the whole subject, and the Committee's recommendations will be taken into account.
  In my concluding few moments, I want to say a few words about the relationship in financial matters between Departments and the Treasury because this seems very relevant to the work of the Public Accounts Committee. I think the time has long passed since finance and economy could be regarded as exclusively the concern of the Treasury. It must surely be a cardinal point of administration that policy and finance at all levels and at all stages cannot be separated into watertight compartments.
  I believe, indeed, that nowadays as between Departments and the Treasury, the emphasis ought to be on co-operation in securing value for money and the right balance of expenditure between the various objectives of policy. There are times when the Treasury has to say to a Department "No, the money is not available," and, in answer to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the
  962
  Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) it is then for the Government corporately to make a decision on the issues at stake. I would say that what cannot be right is for Departments to pledge themselves to increased expenditure without Treasury approval and without Ministers having considered the matter. Any important matter involving Government expenditure must be a corporate Ministerial decision.
  So far as is possible, the Treasury hopes to carry Departments along, even in less welcome decisions. Given the great and continuing pressure on resources, not only by the Government but by all the components of demand in our economy, it is all the more important that the Government should get the best possible value from the money they are spending. From this point of view, I believe that in the long run the interest of the Departments, the Treasury, the Committee of Public Accounts and this House is really identical.
  Mr. H. Wilson: In order that the House may now proceed to debate the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates, without expressing an opinion one way or the other about the adequacy of the hon. Gentleman's reply, which will obviously have to be examined further, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Main Question again proposed.

  COLONIAL OFFICE (REPORTS FROM SELECT COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES)
  7.3 p.m.
  Sir Godfrey Nicholson: I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
  "this House takes note of the Fourth Report from the Select Committee on Estimates in the last Session of Parliament, and the Fourth Special Report from the Estimates Committee, relating to the Colonial Office."
  It falls to me to move this Amendment in which we ask the House to take note of two Reports from the Estimates Committee relating to the Colonial Office. The right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) who initiated the last debate, said that it was without precedent, meaning that the affairs of the Public Accounts Committee had not been considered hitherto in a full-dress debate in the House. He also spoke of the devotion of the members of the Public Accounts Committee and of its non-party nature. All those remarks apply in equal measure to the Estimates Committee.
  This may or may not be a significant and important occasion, but it is an historic occasion for the Estimates Committee, the younger brother of the Public Accounts Committee, for, as far as I can tell, this is the first time when a day or part of a day has been devoted to one of its Reports.
  The right hon. Member for Huyton opened his speech by giving a short account of the work of the Public Accounts Committee, and I am afraid that I must do the same for a few moments in regard to the Estimates Committee. I do not think the public find much difficulty in grasping the functions or understanding the reasons for the existence of the Public Accounts Committee, but I do not believe that one in a thousand of the general public has the faintest idea what the Estimates Committee is or does. It is wrapped in mystery and the public mind is full of misconceptions. So far as they do think of it, they imagine it to be a Committee which studies the current year's Estimates, and with shears or a pair of scissors snips off bits of expenditure here and there.
  964
  Of course, the truth is very different. The Estimates Committee cannot hope to have any effect on the current year's Estimates; indeed, except for the subcommittee which was this year set up to deal with Supplementary Estimates, its relationship to the normal year's Estimates is rather tenuous. It deals with the future in rather a limited field. Each sub-committee takes or has allotted to it a definite Vote or collection of Votes to which it confines its attention. There are occasional exceptions to that. Sub-Committee D, with which I am connected, two years ago investigated the whole question of Treasury control. Apart from that, I think it is true to say that one sub-committee always deals with one confined and limited subject.
  The Estimates Committee has two main lines of approach or function. The first is actual cuts or economies, recommending actual cuts in expenditure or reduction in the Votes. On the whole, that is not often a very fruitful field. I think its main function is in the direction of what I would call true economy, that is, in securing or trying to secure greater efficiency in the way of better value for money. In the concluding sentence of his speech a few moments ago, my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury referred to that. I believe that the function of this House in the control of finance is more in the direction of getting more value in every direction, than in trying to secure actual cuts in expenditure to which, in many cases, a Department has already been pledged.
  But this is a very delicate job. Before one knows where one is, one is involved in questions of policy. And the Estimates Committee is forbidden to involve itself in questions of policy.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: What is this Report?
  Sir G. Nicholson: If my hon. Friend will listen, he will hear. The point is that there has never been any definition of policy. I have heard witnesses trying to claim that any act or intention of a Government Department is policy. That is a narrow definition, on the one hand. On the other hand, it is said that nothing is policy unless it has been definitely decided by this House. Let me give my personal suggestion for a definition of policy, which is anything with a political

  965
  content. It is not an offical definition, and it is rather a dangerous one. We are properly concerned with what I may call administrative policy. It very often happens in the course of an inquiry that the whole inquiry and the recommendations of the Committee are meaningless unless some of the basic assumptions under which a Department works are reconsidered and questioned. It is a very delicate task, almost a tightrope performance. If we are successful, we can be very useful, but, on the other hand, if we overstep the mark, it definitely harms the whole reputation of the Committee and detracts from the services which it can render to this House. It is a question of the judgment of the Committee and that is obviously fallible. I hope to show that, in this particular case, we have not overstepped the mark, and I hope the House will think that we have done a useful service in making this Report.
  I wish now to say a word about the machinery of the Committee. It used to have thirty-six members, but from the present Session it is to have forty-three. It used to be divided into five subcommittees of eight members each, and it is now to have six sub-committees of eight members each. The Chairman of the full Committee is automatically a member of each sub-committee, hence the discrepancy between the figures. I have been Chairman of Sub-Committee D for nine years. As to the modus operandi, the Committee makes inquiries, considers memoranda, examines witnesses, and then deliberates, and drafts a Report, which is adopted by the subcommittee, and is finally adopted by the whole Committee.
  The only point I should like to make there is that the most important part of the Committee's work, namely, the deliberation and the drafting of the Report, tends to be telescoped, owing to the fact that we try to get our Reports adopted by the end of July, or in that part of the Session. If there is a great criticism to be made of the Estimates Committee it is that it does not have enough time to give that consideration to each subject which is its due. Finally, I remind the House that while a Report is the Report of the Committee as a whole, generally speaking it represents the work and views of the Sub-Committees.
  966
  As to the ultimate fruit of our labours, the Department into whose vote we are inquiring in the course of time produces a series of replies to each of our recommendations. Until recently, there used to be a considerable time lag, but this time some of the replies have already come in. The effect varies. Some Departments are more and others less responsive. On the whole, up to now it has been rather disappointing and rather difficult to assess, because the fruit of our work is largely negative in the sense that our work prevents things being done. It is rather difficult to assess the extent to which that is a real economy or not. I am satisfied that up to now the Committee has done good work and that under the new dispensation, that is, with debates in the House devoted to the Committee, it will do even better work.
  With some nine years' experience, I have found the work interesting and satisfying. I know that I have contributed to the saving of public money. There is a sense of achievement in that which is heightened by the fact that, at any rate up to now, our work has been more or less anonymous. It is one of the few things which Members of Parliament can do—together with P.A.C. work—which gets no publicity and no credit. That heightens any sense of satisfaction. Above all, it is a non-party Committee and a happy Committee. I do not think that any witness has ever been able to tell to which party a Member belongs.
  I must finally speak of the great debt which we all owe, particularly the Chairman of the Committee and the chairmen of the sub-committees, to the Clerks. I have learned to value the assistance, the loyalty, and the friendship of the Clerks assigned to the Committee and the sub-committees more than I can say, and I know perfectly well that I speak for all the Members of the Estimates Committee, past and present, in saying that.
  The Fourth Report of the last Session and the special Report of this Session deal with the Colonial Office. I am very sorry that this debate has occurred at a time when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is overwhelmed with work of the utmost importance and significance. It is not our fault that we are very sorry about it. I venture to hope

  967
  that he will not feel that it has been entirely wasted time. If he makes the sort of reply which I shall suggest that he should make, I am sure that he will not feel that the time has been wasted.
  The Report is only fairly typical of the work of the Estimates Committee in that there are no recommendations for making actual cuts or direct economies. Financially, we gave the Colonial Office a clean bill of health. We found no actual waste or extravagance, and our financial recommendations cover only methods and not direct economies.
  The first four recommendations are purely financial. The next ten cover what I call "personnel" at home and abroad, an extremely important subject at a time of considerable unease in the ranks of Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service. I do not have time to deal with that matter tonight and I leave it to other hon. Members. Those fourteen recommendations have already been answered by the Department, not unsatisfactorily; at any rate, to my satisfaction. The full history of those recommendations and the Department's replies are open to hon. Members to read and digest at their leisure.
  I shall direct my remarks to the last three recommendations, which are of much greater significance. They deal with the recommendation to set up an inquiry to consider the establishment of a Commonwealth Advisory and Technical Service and the recommendation that the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office should be merged. In fact, we recommend a fundamental change in the relations between this country and the Commonwealth, based on the simple axiom of our conviction that the Commonwealth is one and should be treated as one. This is not a proposal which we claim to have originated, but we hope to have given it added impetus and it is a proposal which may well have far-reaching results.
  There are arguments for and against such a merger, many of which we have sammarised in our Report. What I call the "pros", the arguments for, are obvious and I will deal with them only briefly. As I have said, they are based on the fundamental consideration that there is only one Commonwealth, that
  968
  we are all children of the same family in different stages of development. It is a source of pride to every hon. Member and to the whole country when one of our children attains its majority, by which I mean when a Colonial Territory becomes independent.
  If I may be permitted a digression, I should like to refer to Nigeria. I had the very great honour of leading a delegation from both Houses to the independence celebrations in Nigeria, and I want to put on record—and I have some faint hopes that my words may be reported in Nigeria—not only our gratitude for the lavish hospitality that was placed at our disposal, but our emotion at the ceremonies which then took place. I was proud to be British, and proud of our colonial record, and proud that my country was now to march hand in hand with a free and equal Nigeria.
  We believe that the dichotomy which is constituted by the division of our relations with the Commonwealth into the Commonwealth Relations Office and Colonial Office is harmful. The actual words of the Committee were:
  "They believe that the continued existence of two separate Departments of State to deal with the affairs of a rapidly developing and changing Commonwealth leads to a dichotomy of thought and approach that militates against the unity of the Commonwealth."
  Those are very wise words. In fact, I wrote them myself. [Laughter.] Seriously, the whole Report is based on that conviction.
  Then, the Colonial Empire is contracting, as is the work of the Colonial Office. We hold that a marriage one day between the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office is inevitable, and it is a marriage to which the Colonial Office will bring a considerable dowry. By "dowry" I mean the men, the experience, the expertise, the "know-how" and the traditions of what used to be called the Colonial Service and what is now called Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service. Every day that that marriage is put off, the value of the dowry dwindles. We say that if the marriage is inevitable one day and the dowry is dwindling, the sooner the marriage takes place, the better.
  A new Commonwealth is emerging. To date, several emergent independent Commonwealth countries have been both politically and economically viable, but we

  969
  feel that in the new Commonwealth which is emerging there may be States which are not entirely economically viable and it is those as well as existing independent States which need the sort of help which the Colonial Office can give and which the C.R.O. cannot.
  The functions of the C.R.O. and the Commonwealth Office are already overlapping more and more. The Colonial Office is becoming quasi-diplomatic, while the C.R.O. administers some Territories as if it were the Colonial Office.
  There are many more arguments in favour of a merger. I am not going to elaborate them. I believe that any Member of this House or any member of the general public who has given this subject any serious consideration knows these arguments and can study them and evolve them for himself. I repeat that they are all founded on the basic consideration that there is only one Commonwealth, not two Commonwealths; only one Commonwealth, and that the dichotomy is artificial and, we think, should be ended.
  The list of pros, of arguments in favour, is formidable, but I am much more concerned with the main argument against—which, if sound, would be decisive—that the merger would be repugnant to the independent members of the Commonwealth. If sound, that argument is overwhelming and the Committee is the first to recognise this. I believe that the arguments for a merger represent, if I may put it like this, a very strong hand of cards, and that if the principal argument against is well founded, it is the ace of trumps which will take all the cards in our hands. I do not believe that it is, and I shall tell the House why.
  First of all, I must admit that this is a most understandable argument. I have sympathy with those who put it forward, and with the people who feel these emotions. It may well be argued that there are independent territories, territories of long independent standing, which think that to deal with a Department which deals with the Colonies is for them a downgrading, and that the new ones may be tempted to feel the merger to be what the Report calls
  "a subtle attempt to retain some measure of control over the affairs of territories that had been declared to be completely independent."
  970
  Report says that that suspicion
  "would be disastrous."
  Nevertheless, I believe that if the arguments in favour of the merger appear to us here to be valid, they will appear valid to reasonable people from whatever part of the world they come.
  But clearly the Government are in a dilemma. I believe—I have reason to think, rightly or wrongly—that the Government accept the idea, and that in urging them to accept it I am pushing at an open door; but they naturally feel strongly that they must never jeopardise the unity of the Commonwealth by ignoring Commonwealth opinion. I ask the Government to say outright, do they want this merger or do they not?
  I suggest that, as always, frankness is the best policy. I believe that there is everything to be said for the Government tonight coming out into the open and testing public opinion both here and overseas. They should say in public and now that they believe that the proper way for our relations with the Commonwealth to be conducted is through one single Department. I can see that my right hon. Friend tonight may be severely tempted to hedge, to hide behind the forthcoming Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, and to say that that is the place where the idea should first be adumbrated.
  I say to him that if the Government do not agree with the merger then they should say so, and say so now; if they do agree with it, let them come out into the open, come into the open in public, because in the long run it is public opinion throughout the world that matters and not Governments; and to come out now, because I believe that public opinion here and overseas is ripe for a decision now and that there is nothing to be gained by delay.
  After all, delay may be interpreted as merely meaning cold feet. Hedging and delay never helped reputation whether of a man or of a Government, and will not help the reputation of the Government now.
  I repeat that the basic assumption which the Committee built upon in this case is that public opinion in the Commonwealth is just as capable of appreciating reasoned argument as we are. The Select Committee confidently made

  971
  that basic assumption, but it gave much weight, I hope full weight, to the main argument against, and it concluded that the whole question is one of presentation, of how the idea shall be put to the Commonwealth.
  I suggest that the way the Government should proceed is this. They should announce, genuinely and sincerely, that nothing will be done without the agreement of the independent members of the Commonwealth. That is basic and fundamental. They should state the pros and cons of the merger idea as we see them and clearly put to the whole Commonwealth the advantages. They should make clear that in any merged Department the Colonial Office would be the junior partner.
  I want to go a little further than the Select Committee went, because we drew up our Report in July, and I certainly have been giving a lot of thought to it since, and I have two additional proposals I should like to make to the House.
  I believe that there is room for an intermediate Department, a Department common to both the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office, which would cover all the services which the Colonial Territories and the new territories may require from this country, and, indeed, which non-Commonwealth territories may require from this country. I think that that Department should be set up at once. It may be regarded as a link between the Departments, or the nucleus about which the merged Department could coalesce. Secondly, I believe that we could do a good deal to set the apprehensions of independent members of the Commonwealth at rest by stating officially and formally, what already is in some measure a reality, and that is that in future the Commonwealth Prime Ministers should, as of right, have direct access to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and not have to pass through any Department, whether the Commonwealth Relations Office or any other.
  We have time for only a very short debate and I do not want to make a long speech. This Report makes no claim to providing all the answers. Its
  972
  real object is to direct attention to the problem and to cause discussion. That is being achieved tonight. The House may be relieved to know that I am not going into an emotional peroration about—
  Mr. James Callaghan: Before the hon. Gentleman comes to his peroration, may I ask him if he would deal with this point? He has outlined so far the administrative advantages and has described a number of arguments for and against this, and there is a lot in his case, but if he is going to put this to the Commonwealth itself he will have to go a little farther. A number of territories, we all know, I think, are opposed to the merger. Surely, to encourage them to change their minds he must show them what the positive advantages of this will be, which will accrue to them from this merger. I doubt if he will really carry conviction till he does that.
  Sir G. Nicholson: I think that the hon. Member is on rather dangerous ground by automatically assuming that if the arguments appear to us here to be valid, and if they are put fairly and squarely to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers, they will be automatically rejected by them. I should say that the first thing is to put the arguments fairly and squarely before them and to point out that we believe that in these fundamental facts, firstly that the Commonwealth is one; secondly, that it is changing and developing day by day, that the Commonwealth Relations Office is not really best fitted for rendering services to the newly emerging members of the Commonwealth which they will require. I think the first thing is to put the arguments as we see them. We do not have to sell the Commonwealth to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers. They do not need to have it sold to them. They believe in it. But we have to point out that in a changing world the Commonwealth must change and move with the times. I am not offering anything to the Commonwealth except better relations with this country, and a more direct approach to the Prime Minister.
  Mr. Callaghan: I am sorry to persist with this point, but, with great respect to the Select Committee, this is not a

  973
  new idea. To my knowledge, the arguments have in fact been put to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers, certainly by many of us in private conversations, and maybe officially; but they persisted, however eloquently they were put, in saying that they did not want this. What I am saying is that if the Select Committee is to do a really useful job the positive advantages, the economic advantages, it thinks will flow from the idea should be put to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers to make them change their minds.
  Sir G. Nicholson: I think that the approach must be not only to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers but to public opinion within the Commonwealth countries.
  I have heard it said that the Prime Minister of Canada will not look at this idea. Yet I have seen in the Canadian Press articles praising the idea and agreeing with it completely. I believe that in so far as the Commonwealth Prime Ministers are opposed to the idea—I have no knowledge of private or public approaches to them—they may well be reckoning without their own public opinion.
  What I am asking the Government to do tonight is to throw their hat into the ring and say, "That is what we want. If public opinion in the Commonwealth is against it, the Government will drop it. But this is what we think to be the best way for the Commonwealth to develop, and we ask the Commonwealth to consider it. We want it to become a matter of general discussion within Commonwealth countries. If they reach a verdict against it, the idea has had it." As I have said, I am confident that arguments which appear valid to us will appear valid to reasonable public opinion overseas. I appreciate the desire of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) to be helpful, but I believe that he is, most unusually, showing a lack of imagination.
  Mr. Callaghan: Perhaps I may make just one more interruption. I suggested this idea—I was not the first to put it forward—in a debate in the House about four years ago. It was shot down by the Government. I pursued it privately after that. I must say that it was not lack of imagination but lack of encourage-
  974
  ment that altered my mind about some of these things.
  Sir G. Nicholson: I did not claim to be the first to put the idea forward. In fact, I said that we were not the first to think about it. I should be delighted to think that the Select Committee has breached the shy and bashful nature of the hon. Gentleman and given him a little encouragement.
  I repeat that this matter must be further discussed, and that is what I hope we shall be doing tonight. I was saying that I was about to reward the House for its patience by not making an emotional peroration about the Commonwealth. I say that because I feel too deeply about the Commonwealth to cheapen it by making a peroration about it. I will merely give the House just one quotation. It was by Mr. Nehru who said, "The Commonwealth has a healing touch." I would remind the House that never before in history has the world so sorely stood in need of one.
  7.33 p.m.
  Mr. Robert Woof: As a new member of the Select Committee on Estimates, I am glad to have the opportunity to take part in this important debate.
  The hon. Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson) has just given the House a good exposition of the valuable work of the Select Committee on Estimates, and he has also advanced reasons for the decisions taken by it. I think that this is an appropriate time for us to extend our sincere acknowledgment for the way in which he has piloted Sub-Committee D through its deliberations as its chairman. I should also like to add my sentiments to those in which he expressed a tribute to the Clerk of the Committee, who gave us valiant service.
  I shall confine my remarks to one or two aspects of the Report. As hon. Members will know, colonial development and welfare aid is granted to assist the economic development of Colonial Territories and the welfare of their peoples. The current Estimate provided for under this Vote is about £25½ million. The Committee was concerned principally with the effect on a newly-independent country of the cessation of colonial development and welfare aid on

  975
  independence day, to the extent that the benefits of past colonial development and welfare aid should not be lost to these countries because of shortage of current funds with which to continue colonial development and welfare work.
  At present, no aid is granted for purely development purposes after independence, although the Colonial Development Corporation is permitted to continue aid until an enterprise or project is completed. The Committee, therefore, viewed this problem from the angle of how aid already allocated to independent countries should be offered in order to encourage them to reap the benefits of past colonial development and welfare grants. The Committee believed that to cut off assistance for development projects in the new States might be false economy and that the apparent saving gained might be illusory, and to this extent attention is called to the need to search for a solution to this problem.
  As the rate of achievement of independence accelerates, the position of staff in the Colonial Office becomes more and more uncertain. This was a problem which caused the Select Committee on Estimates some anxiety as reductions in the Office were expected in the near future. As one can see, the choice before the present staff is: first, to remain at the Colonial Office, which only a few can do; secondly, to transfer to the Commonwealth Relations Office and accept a new liability to serve overseas; and, thirdly, to transfer to other Government Departments.
  On this point, the Committee recommends that future recruits should accept liability for overseas service, a recommendation accepted for a trial period by the Colonial Office pending a decision on whether the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office should be merged. The Committee also recommended that present staff should be asked whether they would be prepared to serve abroad, and the Colonial Office has accepted and implemented this recommendation.
  It appears that the prospect of work in a drastically reduced office will probably not appear attractive to recruits of a suitable standard, although more candidates offer themselves than can be
  976
  accepted at the present time. This factor led the Committee to recommend a merger of the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office in order to ensure a future for the office and for some at least of its present staff.
  The Committee undertook its inquiry into the Colonial Office when the future of that Office was uncertain. As its tasks are diminishing, so those of the Commonwealth Relations Office are increasing, and this led the Sub-Committee to examine the functions and relations between the offices. This examination was carried forward in an awareness of the radical changes occurring in the structure and nature of the Commonwealth, particularly in Africa, and awareness of these changes encouraged the Sub-Committee to think in general terms of the future relationships between the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth countries.
  Its conclusion was that, given the asset of independent Commonwealth countries, the most economical and practical instrument through which to conduct these relations would be a Commonwealth Office, formed by a merger of the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office.
  In reaching this conclusion, it was seeking not only obvious economies of expenditure, such as would result from the elimination of duplication and overlapping of functions, but also the prevention of wasteful dissipation of trained and experienced men and women out of the public service. Further economies would result also from more effective administration of aid to Commonwealth countries.
  No reply to the recommendations on a merger has been received from the Colonial Office. We hope that this implies that the Government still have an open mind on this subject and will take the view of the House into consideration before reaching a decision. Obviously the gathering of the views of the Commonwealth Governments will take some time, but the Report was published almost three months ago, and the Committee stressed the importance of achieving an immediate merger if the full advantages were to be obtained.
  In reply to questions on 13th December, put by the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) and my hon. Friend the

  977
  Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse), the Prime Minister said that he was considering, in consultation with his right hon. Friends the Commonwealth and Colonial Secretaries, the recommendations we are now discussing. We are reserving our thoughts in the hope of some decision being advanced shortly.
  The arguments put before the Sub-Committee for and against a merger are summarised in paragraph 65 of the Report. The strongest argument against a merger adduced to the Sub-Committee was that independent Commonwealth countries would regard it as a reactionary step to be associated with a Department exercising direct responsibility for the Colonies.
  The Sub-Committee took evidence on this very point, as it realised that the case for a merger must fall to the ground if independent, and particularly newly independent countries, feared that a merger would be used to cloak an attempt to retain control by the Colonial Office over their affairs. Such an important witness as Lord Twining expressed the opinion that the merger scheme could be presented in such a way that it would be difficult for even the most sensitive of newly emerged territories to have any responsible objection to it.
  The Committee therefore adopted the views of most influential witnesses and concluded that the difficulty was almost entirely one of presentation. Such a visionary scheme of reorganisation, properly presented to all Commonwealth countries, would, in its opinion, evoke no serious opposition.
  From the point of view of economy of expenditure, the Committee believed that a merger must have advantages. There would be a slight immediate saving in overall expenditure, which would be increased as the Colonial Office was run down. There would be a considerable, though not apparent, economy in the sense that the funds of experience, knowledge and understanding of the colonial staff and advisers would be available if required to serve dependent and independent countries, rather than being dissipated.
  While the Commonwealth service would benefit from this, and the future of the colonial staff would be determined, the important point which we urge upon the House is that, failing a
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  merger, the Colonial Office will continue to decline slowly, losing the valuable service of experts and advisers, while the Commonwealth Relations Office struggles to find new men to undertake its new responsibility.
  In addition to these facts I would only add that many strong reasons may be adduced for delaying for two or three years, but such reasons can always be found to justify delay in making changes. The advantage of a merger lies in administrative efficiency, the preservation of the services of experts in overseas countries and a unity of approach to the Commonwealth on the part of the United Kingdom.
  We believe that there are great advantages which should only be permitted to be set aside if the Commonwealth countries are opposed to a merger. The Committee also believes that the form of presentation of a merger can ensure its acceptance or rejection by these countries. But we urge the Government to carry through an imaginative and forward-looking reorganisation which will win acceptance overseas and inaugurate a new period in relations between the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
  7.48 p.m.
  Mr. Henry Clark: I thank you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for calling me so early in the debate, because I have a very deep interest in this subject. Until the middle of last year I was a serving officer in the Colonial Service, and the problems of that service and of those who are still serving in it are very close to my heart.
  The main recommendations of the Committee—with which I agree—are for a merger of the Commonwealth and Relations and Colonial Offices, and the possibility of an Advisory and Technical Commonwealth Service, to be investigated by a committee. My only regret is that the Committee did not go a great deal further. In reading its Report, one can see between the lines that all the time its members were thinking in terms of a full-scale Commonwealth Service, which is what I should like to see, comprising all functions now carried out by the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office.
  It would be a service which would include the High Commissioners and

  979
  their staff, the officers now serving in newly independent territories in an advisory capacity, officers now administering the High Commission Territories in South Africa, and those who would continue to administer fortress Colonies and Colonies awaiting independence.
  This service could be built up into an organisation with its own staff list, regulations, a unified salary system, esprit de corps and a sense of unity of object. It would have three branches. First, the diplomatic, with the High Commissioners and their staffs. Secondly, it would have an advisory branch and technical branch to advise the newly independent territories. As has been said, it could also advise other underdeveloped territories in the world. Thirdly, it would have the administrative branch of the old Colonial Office, which would continue directly to administer some territories.
  One great advantage of a service of this sort would be that although its officers would probably continue in the Department to which they were first recruited it would be possible to cross-post and cross-promote them so that every officer in the service would have in his knapsack the baton of the Governor of St. Helena or a High Commissioner or a Governor-General. If a service like that were created the best interests of this country and of the Commonwealth would be served.
  As the Report pointed out, there are three objects which we want to achieve. The first is the proper transaction of Her Majesty's business, and I am certain that Her Majesty's business with the Commonwealth today would be administered very much more efficiently and economically if it were administered by one and not two Departments, which at the moment duplicate many functions and between which there is undoubtedly jealousy and hard feelings at certain levels. The Colonial Office occasionally feels that the C.R.O. takes over too many of its functions, and the C.R.O. feels that the Colonial Office hangs on to its functions a little too long.
  The advantage of a joint office would become much more important as the difference between a self-governing Dominion and a Colony grow less. That
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  is happening already. It has been mentioned that many of the new self-governing countries are not fully viable, economically, and continue to need a great deal of assistance. A very good example exists in West Africa. There is Sierra Leone, which becomes a self-governing Dominion early next year and, not far away, the Gambia, which few people can see as having any prospect of becoming a viable self-governing country. It seems ridiculous that Sierra Leone and Gambia should be dealt with by two different Departments. It is obvious that they should be dealt with by the same Department. Some people in Sierra Leone may feel that there is a certain stigma about being looked after by a Department which looks after Colonial Territories, and some in the Gambia, which will certainly make a reasonable constitutional advance, may think there is a stigma about being looked after by a worse Department than the C.R.O. If we are to respect the feelings of Sierra Leone we should also respect those of the Gambia, and we should have a first-class Department to deal with them and at the same time deal with great countries like Canada, Australia, Nigeria and the Federation. This is a very important point. We must boost these small fortress Colonies by giving them a proper Department without that old and rather unpleasant word "colonial".
  The second object mentioned in the Report is that of fostering and strengthening the very special ties which exist between this country and the Commonweath—and particularly between this country and the newly emergent territories in Africa. Those ties can be strengthened most by having a unified service made up of officers with experience gained from living in all parts of the territories in which they have served and who, over the years, have gained a knowledge of the language and made acquaintances and friends all over their territories. This country is unique in possessing these people, with a knowledge of the less-developed parts of the world, and unless a unified service, containing very solid prospects for them is formed quickly, they will drift away and their services will be lost to Great Britain.
  The third and by no means the least important object of forming a unified

  981
  service is to solve some of the problems of Her Majesty's Colonial Service, and to give it a square deal. It is in a very bad position at the moment. I belonged to that service, and I still have very close connections with it. I do not want to sound as if I am blowing my own trumpet—I am one of those who got out—but this country owes it a great deal. It has created independence, but when independence has come its officers have been pushed out, or if they have stayed on, their jobs have become stop-gap jobs and their career prospects have gone. An independent country will obviously always prefer a local man to an expatriate officer.
  When the officers leave they receive a pension, and we hear a lot of cynical talk about people waiting for the lump sums and choosing territories which are soon to be independent. Lump sums are not much compensation for the loss of a career for which one has worked all one's life, and which suddenly disappears before one's eyes. The Colonial Service has been a pretty average Cinderella over the years. It has worked extremely hard, but its officers have not had remarkably good pay, and usually the only credit it receives is that meagre credit which is handed out rather tactfully to the man on the spot.
  I submit that part of the answer, especially to those who want to stay on in the territories in which they have served, is to recruit these people into a unified Commonwealth service such as I have outlined, in which they can be promoted to High Commissioners' offices, act in an advisory capacity in another territory, or go to the High Commission Territories of South Africa or St. Helena. There should be a unified service, with career prospects. That would help to solve many of the problems of the Colonial Service.
  Two arguments have been put forward, in the Report and elsewhere, against any union between the C.R.O. and the Colonial Office. They are arguments equally against a joint Commonwealth Service. The first comes mainly from spokesmen from the Commonwealth Relations Office, who tell us that they and they only have studied independence, and that they and they only can tend that fragile plant. I do not agree. The
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  C.R.O. shudders at the thought of rough colonial officers trying to work in the newly independent territories. It thinks of those in the Colonial Service as people who have been working under palm trees and meting out rough justice for years and years.
  There may be same truth in that argument. We have our Blimps in the Colonial Service as every other organisation has, and there are men whose arteries are hardened and are unable to learn new tricks; they are incapable perhaps of turning from proconsuls into ambassadors. This taint of colonialism, which colonial officers might have even if they change their name and job, can be exaggerated to a ridiculous extent. The Colonial Service has changed a great deal since the days of Sanders of the River. Its officers have prepared the ground for independence, and I am certain that they are not unqualified to help tend that fragile plant we hear so much about.
  If the argument about taint has any validity it is completely wiped out by the advantages of having and using people with knowledge and experience, especially of the African countries. The C.R.O. almost destroys its own argument. In South Africa we have a High Commissioner who is also a Colonial Governor. How does the High Commissioner in South Africa escape the taint of colonialism when he administers Bechuanaland and Swaziland? The C.R.O. says that this is the exception which proves the rule, but that is a saying which I have never understood. It has never been an argument, to my way of thinking.
  A further argument against a Commonwealth service is that it would be difficult to work out exactly what the demands on it would be, and what its scope would be. It is said that it would therefore be impossible to guarantee a career for a person recruited from the Colonial Service or the High Commission staff. The Committee has answered this argument more than adequately. At the present time we are quite incapable of guaranteeing careers for a number of people to whom we owe an obligation. We are incapable of guaranteeing the careers of a large number of Colonial Service officers, particularly those who will lose their jobs when independence comes.

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  It is not a problem which will be solved by the creation of a Commonwealth Service, but it is not the Commonwealth Service which makes that problem. The problem was there already. But I believe that to work it out within the scope of the Commonwealth Service is not impossible. It could be an expanding service and there could be fine careers for the people who enter it were the thing organised properly and plenty of initiative shown.
  As well as the recommendations of the Committee on the merging of the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office and the recommendations about the Advisory Service, there are others regarding the future of the Colonial Service about which I wish to speak. I was a member of the Service, as I say, and I feel strongly about its problems.
  I wish particularly to stress the problems confronting a mid-career officer who will soon lose his job. Such a man is probably in his thirties. He has a wife and family but no career before him. He joined ten or fifteen years ago when he thought that the Colonial Service would give him a satisfying and worthwhile job to do. He thought that he would receive a reasonable salary and would have reasonable prospects of promotion, but promotion prospects are being completely wiped out. He could have a stop-gap job, possibly for a number of years, in the territory in which he is serving. But any such officer has found that he is a good deal worse off than his contemporaries who decided to play safe and get jobs in this country. Members of the Colonial Service still work a six-day and sometimes a seven-day week. Their salaries do not compare with those of junior business executives in this country of the same age. I am certain that we must offer these officers something, because they have something to offer the country and we need their services.
  So far, I have spoken only of the Colonial Service and I have deliberately not mentioned that other organisation, Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service, because I wanted to keep my terms clear. Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service is an institution which was started in 1954 and is more of a club than a Service. The Colonial Service is the body to
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  which all Civil Servants in Colonial Territories belong. I joined it in 1951 and resigned last year. In 1954 I applied and joined the Overseas Civil Service. I received a cyclostyle chit, bearing a squiggly signature at the bottom which stated that the Secretary of State had taken notice of my application and was reviewing it favourably. Since then I have heard nothing.
  So far as I know, I am still a member of Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service. I never resigned, and certainly I was never kicked out. It is a service with no regulations, no staff list, and certainly no salary. All we have had is a lot of woolly promises and, to add insult to injury, quite a number of members of the Colonial Service have been told that they are not entitled to be members of the club. Particularly is this so in Kenya, where some officers are allowed to be members and some are not. If the Government cannot do the various things we want them to and form a Commonwealth Service, at least I ask them to create something a little less wishy-washy than Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service. Let us have some body which is really concrete and of which one can know whether or not one is a member. And let us make certain that it includes all the people who deserve to have implemented for them the promises which have been made—woolly as those promises are so far. If that can be done, some of the lost confidence will be restored.
  If these officers are to continue in the territories where we need them badly they must receive better pay. There is a Salary Commission sitting in East Africa, and unless it produces recommendations for increases of salary by about 30 per cent., within a short period, more than half the officers of Her Majesty's Colonial Service will have left East Africa to take up personnel management jobs in this country, and their knowledge and experience will be lost.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker, three months ago the Economist wrote an article on the subject we are discussing and painted a picture of British colonial officers coming home and buying their bowler hats while at the same time commissars from Moscow were coming to London to buy khaki shorts and shirts. That was

  985
  rather a fantastic picture. The huge influence of Great Britain in Africa still dwarfs completely all the efforts made so far by Iron Curtain countries. But if we do not take responsible and positive action as suggested by the recommendations of the Committee, it is very possible that commissars in khaki shorts will start to outnumber British officers in khaki shorts.
  8.5 p.m.
  Mr. John Dugdale: We all enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Mr. H. Clark) and I think that none of us feels that he is either a "Colonel Blimp" or that he suffers from "hardened arteries". He appears to be an example of the type of person we are discussing in this debate.
  I wish to refer principally to the people themselves and I shall strike a slightly different note, because I view with a certain amount of dismay the general idea of "Let us amalgamate the Services and everything will be all right." It may be or it may not, but I feel slightly hesitant about it, and I should like to voice my hesitation.
  There are today this large number of men—14,000 I believe, in the Overseas Service and 2,500 in the Home Civil Service, although these figures may have altered since I got them and I give them merely as a guide. The Report says:
  "This change of outlook has been, in Your Committee's opinion, induced by the uncertainty in the minds of the Colonial Office staff regarding their future. The Office faces an inevitable decline in size and responsibilities and the capacity of the Commonwealth Relations Office to absorb ex-Colonial Office officers is limited by the need to safeguard the careers of Commonwealth Relations Office staff."
  That is a very interesting point. It looks as if the Commonwealth Relations staff will come first and the other people will have to be fitted in. It may not mean that, but it looks like it. What can we do for these men who, unfortunately, unlike the hon. Member for Antrim, North, are not able to get another job—even though the job of a Member of Parliament is surely no more secure than that of a colonial civil servant.
  Mr. John Stonehouse: It is less secure.
  Mr. Dugdale: It is our job, then, to get security for these people even though we have not that security for ourselves. What are we to do about it? Many of these men have shown great administrative skill in running outlying territories. In some cases they have been the only white man in the area and have administered justice and run a small territory on their own. Of what use is that experience if they are thrown out of work and come to this country looking for a job?
  I recall the words of a man who was looking for a job on coming out of the Army. He said: "I know how to wash dishes and make fires when there are no matches. I know how to fight guerilla warfare. I know how to slit a man's throat, but where do I go from there?" Such qualifications are no use in ordinary business life as a general rule, and the qualifications of the people in the Colonial Service will not necessarily be the best for business. They will not all become Clores and Cottons, though they may in due course be responsible for setting up organisations in some free territories which will serve as a useful base for black Clores and black Cottons—
  Mr. Stonehouse: We do not want black Clores and black Cottons.
  Mr. Dugdale: Maybe not, but if the free countries have a capitalist organisation, that is what will arise from it. They have no business skill and they cannot, alas, do what the ex-Colonial Secretary has done, retire and manage very successfully a large firm.
  But let us hope that they can become technical assistants. There are jobs in the United Nations Organisation and there are, or should be, many jobs in the C.D.C. I hope that when the Government are considering the overall question they will take note of the great importance of allowing the C.D.C. to function with no inhibitions at all in free territories so that the services of some of these men can be used in it. I welcome also, although I would be out of order to dilate upon it at great length, the proposals to grant £15 million to make up the differential and holiday pay for many who opt to serve with colonial Governments. We have, however, had some warning words by the Prime Minister of Western Nigeria, who seems to

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  have grave doubts about having expatriate people working there. He appears to think that his first duty is to remove them all and fill the posts with Nigerians. I hope that he will pause a little before pursuing that policy too far.
  It is almost a truism to mention it, but we have the example of the Congo and we know what can happen when people lack the political advice of civil servants with experience who can prevent a situation like that arising. We hope that will never happen in the British Commonwealth. I was once very impressed by seeing in Pakistan a school for the amking of civil servants. There was a British officer in charge of British civil servants and Pakistanis as well. They were trying to build the great traditions of the Indian Civil Service into a new Pakistan Civil Service. That is a very valuable thing which I hope could be done by our Colonial Civil Service if it were given the opportunity to do it. I also hope that we might be able to start some kind of schools in this country, as well as abroad, to which people might come as students to learn something about the British Civil Service and British administration which could be used in their own countries.
  Mr. R. W. Sorensen: Or through the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
  Mr. Dugdale: I have never been on a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association visit during the whole of my fifteen years' service in this House, and I cannot comment on my hon. Friend's interjection.
  I turn to the main question, which is the amalgamation of the C.O. and the C.R.O. Is it too much for one Minister? From my experience I have had I should say that it is not too much. It is not more than the work of the Foreign Secretary. A very large amount of the work of the Colonial Office is in detailed administration. If we assume that more and more countries will become free, there will be less and less detailed administration and more and more general political work to do. I do not think it would be too much for one Minister provided that he had a Minister of State and an Under-Secretary to help him.
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  What about the susceptibilities of free countries? That seems a very vital matter which we cannot dismiss. If they feel that somehow there would be a loss in prestige for them to come under the Colonial Office we must find some method of getting round that feeling. I do not see how it could be done, but we must find some way of doing it.
  Major Sir Frank Markham: The suggestion was not that they should come under the Colonial Office, but under the Commonwealth Relations Department or a new Commonwealth Office.
  Mr. Dugdale: I understand that, but there is a difficulty in personalities. If one sees a man who previously was one's Colonial Governor or Chief Secretary going out as a High Commissioner, one tends to say, "What is this man? Previously he was my boss. Is he really suitable to be the representative in this country? "I am putting the difficulties which I should like to see overcome, and I say that there is difficulty in the question of personalities.
  Another point made by the hon. Member for Antrim, North was about the dichotomy in the position of the High Commissioner for the Union of South Africa, who also administers certain Territories. He therefore has double loyalties, which is quite fatal to any man and he is bound to suffer from that fact. What I am mainly concerned about, if I may reverse the Biblical story, is pouring old wine into new bottles. We are going to pour a large and well-run Colonial Civil Service into a small Commonwealth Relations Office which has very little experience. It may be possible to do so, but it is not something which can be done easily. Before any Minister decides to turn his Department over to a smaller and newer Department he should think very carefully to see that, in fact, the new Department can absorb it. It may not be easy. I do not know.
  Interesting suggestions have been made by the Permanent Under-Secretary to the Colonial Office who, of course, has immense experience. I do not know whether the Colonial Secretary has experienced the same as I found at the Colonial Office. I found that it had an excellent organisation. When I began

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  to think of methods by which it could be changed I found it impossible for I found that the organisation suited it and worked particularly well, especially in the division into (A) countries and (B) subjects. It seemed to work out well in practice, and I could see no way of improving it. I do not know how the Commonwealth Relations Office works. Its organisation might be excellent, but it is a newer body and a smaller one. It might not have quite so good an organisation as the Colonial Office has.
  Mr. Harold Davies: This is one of the things we considered on the Estimates Committee but the (A) and (B) dichotomy of which my right hon. Friend spoke was something of which we were fully aware. As the geographical functions contract others—economic, advisory and so on—are expanding. On that ground we thought there should be the possibility, after some thinking and constructive advice, for this merger to take place. When one looks at it a little more narrowly one finds that the great difference between the old Colonial Office—a term I no longer like—and this new body which we should like to see set up is not so very much, but we are searching for an answer to the problem of this dichotomy.
  Mr. Dugdale: I think we are all on the same sort of search. I can see many advantages, but I can also see difficulties. All I urge is a certain amount of caution. I generally find myself on the side of advance, but this time I am perhaps rather on the side of caution Colonialism has now become almost a dirty word—
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Nonsense
  Mr. Dugdale—in the minds of many people, but that word never applied to colonial civil servants and they must not suffer by it. Nor must they suffer by the fact that they had tremendous success in building up territories which have reached the point where they can be free. Their punishment for that must not be that they are thrown overboard. I know the Colonial Secretary will bear that in mind and that he will see both that the best of the structure proposed and that the men who run it are not thrown overboard.
  8.20 p.m.
  Sir Anthony Hurd: I know that many hon. Members wish to take part in the debate and I will not detain the House for more than five minutes, I welcome the approach of my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson) and other hon. Members of the Select Committee to the problems which they have been considering. I am particularly interested in them because I have business interests in Australia, a very independent member of the Commonwealth, and also in the Falkland Islands, a Colony and not an independent member of the Commonwealth.
  The Select Committee has said that a merger of the functions and responsibilities of the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office would be repugnant to the independent members of the Commonwealth. I do not believe that. I find that my friends in Australia, New Zealand and Canada are pretty adult in their thinking in these matters. They no longer think that there is anything dirty about the word "colonialism". They have listened at the United Nations. They know what is going on in West Africa. They realise, perhaps more clearly than we do, what a good job our colonial administrators have done, and they know perfectly well that if we were to merge these two Offices of State here, it would not be with any idea of putting the independent Commonwealth countries into any kind of leading strings. They would not stand for it for a moment, and they know that we are not so foolish as to imagine that they would. I think it is a little old-fashioned to parade the possible repugnance of the Dominions to our altering our form of administration.
  A response by the Government and the Colonial Secretary to the anxieties of the Select Committee about the present position and the prospects of staffs serving in territories overseas is to be found in the White Paper, "Service in Overseas Governments", Cmnd. 1193. It shows a useful approach, and if we have the courage to go far enough with these proposals, when we come to legislation, this may be helpful not only to the men and women who serve the Commonwealth so well, far away from their homes, but also to the territories themselves. They will be able to keep,

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  at any rate in the interregnum as they became independent and possibly for a good deal longer, men of experience who are respected in their areas and who can give a much fuller sense of confidence to the local people that there will be continuity of decent order and decent administration. I am sure that it is right to go all the way with this White Paper, and perhaps a little further.
  I want to ask the Colonial Secretary to clear up a point which concerns little communities like the Falkland Islands. The Falkland Islands community is not pressing for independence; it is not emerging into anything. It is a sheep-farming community. But we want to provide good facilities, technical scientific and economic, so that this little community in the South Atlantic may share in the advances which we are making at home and elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Incidentally, this community of the Falkland Islands consists of white people, although that is not a point in this issue.
  We want to enable these small communities to share in the advances which we make, for example in education and in medical services, and in the opportunities for a fuller life which we can offer. The proposals in the White Paper refer particularly to territories emerging into independence, and the intention is to ensure that the right men will be attracted to and will stay in the services of those territories. I hope that the Colonial Secretary will assure the House that these arrangements will also apply to the communities—I have mentioned the Falkland Islands as an example—which are never likely to emerge into independence or to coalesce with any other territory because there is no other territory near enough to join in a federation.
  These poor communities still need good medical and educational services and dentists. We had great difficulty, as the Colonial Secretary knows, in getting a dentist to serve the children and the hospital in the Falkland Islands, because the pay which the Falkland Islands Government could offer was not enough to attract even the most junior, newly-fledged dental practitioner coming out of hospital here. The same difficulty applies in obtaining all medical staff and teach-
  992
  ing staff in a little Colony like the Falkland Islands.
  We want to treat them fairly, and I hope the Colonial Secretary has this kind of problem in mind and that we shall deal with these little dependent, often far-away, Colonies in the same way as we are dealing with the problems of the African Colonies emerging into independence. Independence is very much in our minds today, and it will be in the months ahead. There are many little communities which are proud to belong to the British Empire. I want to see the House treat them fairly.
  8.26 p.m.
  Mr. Arthur Creech Jones: There is an opportunity tonight to discuss some of the problems of the Colonial Service, but as an Overseas Service Bill will be before the House in a few weeks time, I prefer to concentrate for a few minutes on the issue which has been dominant in the debate—the amalgamation of the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office.
  I recognise that the term "colonial" is today a term of opprobrium. Few people like it, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Mr. Dugdale) said, it has become almost a dirty word. We should, however, pay tribute to the extraordinary work which the Colonial Office has done. Particularly in the years since the war, it has shown itself an enlightened Office, pressing on with the needs of the overseas territories and performing extraordinarily important constructive functions. In education and in political advance, and in the guidance which it has given on economic problems—in a whole variety of spheres—it has done its work astonishingly well. At the outset, therefore, I pay my tribute to the enlightened administration of the Office over which the Secretary of State presides.
  But time presses on, and it may be that there is now some case for a revision of the relationship of that Office to the Commonwealth Relations Department. Indeed, in general principle there seems only one answer—that an amalgamation should take place. But personally, I should regret such a merger as rather precipitate in present circumstances. The Colonial Office exists to do a particular kind of job, and I cannot

  993
  see the Commonwealth Relations Office at present carrying the responsibilities which are demanded in respect of the Dependencies. As has been pointed out, a merger undoubtedly would bring certain gains in regard to economy. It would prevent duplication in some limited respects. There exists a further argument that with the changes which have come over the world, with the lessening of the number of territories for which the Colonial Office is responsible, there is a greater need for joint machinery in respect to the functions which are now discharged by the two offices.
  My apprehensions, however, are chiefly because I do not regard the work of the Colonial Office to have come to an end. It is all very well for us to argue that there has been considerable geographical restriction over the last few years. Among other territories, Cyprus, Malaya, Nigeria and Ghana have gone, and in the course of the next year or so other territories will also become independent. I remind the House that quite a number of considerable problems will remain for an office such as the Colonial Office to tackle in the immediate future. There are territories such as Central Africa. The future of East Africa has to be worked out. There is the future of Malta. There are the problems in Fiji. There is the future of Hong Kong. There are certain social problems in Mauritius. There is the question of the future of Uganda. There is a large variety of problems of very considerable difficulty which need to be tackled with great care and a degree of delicacy.
  I do not join the chorus of denunciation of colonialism, although there have been innumerable abuses associated with colonial administration. I have always paid tribute to the high standard of British colonial administration and I feel that the administration we, as a metropolitan country can give to the territories which are still moving to independence—some of them at a very slow pace; some of them more rapidly—is still of vital importance. The services that we can render and the continuation of the protection of these Dependencies is of vital importance and I want to see that work well done. While I appreciate the arguments that may be advanced with respect to a merger between the two offices, none the less in the work which remains in our Dependencies I want to
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  see all the resources, the skill and the experience which are accumulated in the Colonial Office at their disposal in helping them forward in the future. That means the skills, the techniques, the experience and the traditions which have been built up in the Colonial Office are still indispensable for the territories which continue as dependencies of this country.
  There are more apprehensions which I want to express. First of all, the outlook of the Commonwealth Relations Office is fundamentally different from the outlook of the Colonial Office. The Commonwealth Relations Office is primarily concerned with relations of free and independent nations. It is perfectly true that there is an anomaly so far as the South African High Commission Territories are concerned and it may have been better if right from the start those territories had been under the direction and in the responsibility of the Colonial Office. The whole approach to the problem which the Colonial Relations Office has today is different from the Colonial Office, which is fundamentally concerned with executive action in building up the social, economic and political life of the territories in its charge. That is a responsibility which is not carried by the Commonwealth Relations Department. I think this difference in outlook is of very great importance in the consideration of this problem.
  Moreover, I have a fear that if the two Departments were merged the Dependencies would always be at the end of the queue. Consideration would be given to them last. It is probable that the independent free territories of the Commonwealth would receive the Minister's first attention. I am so concerned that there should be continuity in helping forward the Dependencies that I do not feel inclined to risk seeing the Department make the Colonies a kind of Cinderella.
  Another consideration should be noted. It is not only important to have a Minister in charge, but he should be a man of responsibility and experience. This is largely so because the duties of the Colonial Office are of a practical executive character, involving continuous remedial and progressive action in respect of the territories under the supervision of the Secretary of State. That means

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  that there should be a Minister of Cabinet rank. That Minister finds himself at times in conflict with other Departments, because he has to maintain his special responsibilities towards the people of the Dependencies.
  I will give one or two instances to illustrate the point. When the problems of Palestine were under consideration, there was sometimes a conflict between the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office. In the case of the Protectorates of South Africa, I again remember a conflict between the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office about the wisdom of the policy to be pursued on behalf of the inhabitants of the Protectorates.
  I cannot imagine that the Colonial Office threw its weight behind the demand of the Federal Government in respect of the decisions taken in Central Africa a few years ago on the recommendations of the African Affairs Board. The natural reaction of the Colonial Office would always be how to ensure that the safeguards offered to the African people were properly operated. It is therefore important not only to have a Cabinet Minister, but to have someone who will stand up for his responsibilities in conflict with other Departments, which might make excessive demands.
  Above all, it is important that there should be a tip-top Minister who is accessible to the representatives of the colonial peoples when they come to London He should be able to preside over their conferences and instill in them the confidence that their problems receive attention at the highest possible level.
  We have reason to proceed with this proposal with great caution. The Permanent Under-Secretary of State suggested that three functions might be brought together in a single office. He suggested that there might be a tripartite arrangement. The Commonwealth Office might be responsible for the function of "relations", the Colonial Office work would continue, and there would be the function of maintaining the general machinery which has been created for the development of the Commonwealth countries
  I would ask the Secretary of State not to take too precipitant action in this
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  matter; not to concede, until he is fully satisfied that the utmost consideration can be given to the inhabitants of the Dependencies. The Colonial Office has carried a great and splendid responsibility, and it is discharging its duties with great skill and honour. Therefore, I would not like to see anything happen that would weaken the responsibility of the Government in London to the peoples who have the completest confidence in the work a British Administration is required to do.
  8.41 p.m.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: It was Dr. Johnson who said of a performing dog, "Madam, what is remarkable about your dog is not that he does not perform better—indeed, his antics fall very short of perfection—but that he performs at all."
  I am sorry to break the thread of the debate for a few minutes to offer some fundamental criticism of the fact that the Select Committee on Estimates has reported in the sense that it has, but I have the introduction from the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson), who detailed the characteristics and history of the Committee from the beginning. What is remarkable is not that the Report, and the speech of my hon. Friend, were not better expressed, but that they were made at all.
  I have to read to the House the terms of reference of the Select Committee on Estimates. They read:
  "Ordered, That a Select Committee be appointed to examine such of the Estimates presented to this House as may seem fit to the Committee, and to report what, if any, economies consistent with the policy implied in those Estimates may be effected therein, and to suggest the form in which the Estimates shall be presented for examination."
  Of the recommendations in this Report, only four effect any economies at all. The remaining thirteen recommendations propose, if anything, increases in expenditure. I am amazed that the Select Committee has thought it to be its proper duty to engage in policy, and to desert its terms of reference. If, in this debate—which is the first debate on the Reports of the Select Committee on Estimates ever held in this House—we do not say that the Committee has exceeded its terms of reference, we may slide altogether into

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  a new form of practice without knowing where we are going.
  Of the twenty-eight subjects that have been inquired into in the last five years by the Select Committee, nineteen are subjects in which public opinion would, on the whole, regret any large-scale reduction of expenditure. I think that the Select Committee has neglected its opportunities in going for those Departments where expenditure is, by general consent, on an even level.
  Five subjects out of the twenty-eight are those in which the public could, in all consciousness, he said to expect a vast expansion in expenditure: this Report, the Commonwealth Relations Office and Colonies; the Atomic Energy Authority in its Report for 1958–59; Trunk Roads, which sub-committee was presided over by my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson); the Development Areas for 1955–56; and Civil Aerodromes for 1955–56.
  It seems to me to be outwith the general expectation of what the Committee's responsibilities are for it to proceed to make detailed Reports, examining into the questions which everybody in the country believes should be greatly enlarged. It is not giving the right representation of the devolution by Parliament to its Select Committee if that is done.
  Per contra, the Committee has deserted certain fields where many people, certainly the Conservative Party which now has a majority in the Select Committee expect the State to retrench drastically. Such matters as arise under the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the Inland Revenue, the Arts Council and the University Grants Committee are all subjects where, if State expenditure were reduced, the individual could by private payment very largely take up the loss created.
  Looking at the recent record of the Committee—and, in my opinion, it compares most unfavourably with the Public Accounts Committee which we have been discussing earlier—one has to ask oneself where we are going with the Select Committee on Estimates.
  Mr. Harold Davies: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Is the noble Lord in order? I understand that we are discussing the Amendment
  "That this House takes note of the Fourth Report from the Select Committee on Estimates …"
  The noble Lord is running through all the Reports and the policy for the whole of the Estimates Committee. I submit that his argument is in order in so far as he keeps to the Fourth Report, but the rest of his speech would seem to me to be out of order.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): I think the hon. Member makes a point. It was occurring to me that the noble Lord was going too wide in discussing the whole range of the work of the Select Committee on Estimates.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I was making the point, Mr. Deputy-Speaker—and I can do so by reference to the present Report under discussion—that we must ask ourselves whether the Select Committee on Estimates is becoming a policy maker or whether it is going to continue with its duties as a watchwdog on public expenditure. If it is a policy maker, as this Report would seem to indicate, and if it deserts altogether any recommendations about the amount of public money which can be saved one way or the other, then the Estimates Committee ought to go for those Departments which are spending the money that the taxpayer could spend for himself, which is not the case with the Colonial Office.
  Such things as the land-grabbing proclivities of local authorities, or the replacement of private and voluntary church schools by State schools, or the whole vast field of subsidies are things which the Select Committee ought to go for—
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. I hope the noble Lord will not proceed along that line, because we are discussing the Fourth Report from the Select Committee on Estimates and also the Fourth Special Report from the Committee relating to the Colonial Office.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I think I have concluded what I wanted to say on that subject, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

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  The Estimates Committee, if it is to be a watchdog, which everybody expects it is, must inquire closely into what economies can be made in the various Departments selected for inquiry consistent with the policy which has been announced by the Government. I maintain that it has deserted that duty in this latest Report and in previous Reports to which I have referred.
  Therefore, this is a waste of a Supply Day. On going into Supply, we ought to be discussing the Reports which deal with economies. If we are to discuss a policy suggestion emanating from Members of Parliament, it should be discussed on a Friday in Private Members' time. This is very largely an academic debate. But this is a Monday—the sort of day in the week when, on a normal Supply Day, we ought to be discussing value for money in the Department concerned.
  Mr. Harold Davies: Because this debate has followed the trend of two points in the Report, the noble Lord has missed some fundamental points. I could refer him to Questions Nos. 705 and 695 concerning our watchdog functions. I wish that the noble Lord had taken the trouble to read the Report fully before making these criticisms.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I have read the Report as carefully as I could in the time since this debate was arranged. All our business is always notified to us far too late for any Member of Parliament to inform himself as fully as he would like to do. I have, however, done my best and I have read all the Questions and Answers which are under reference in the Report, and a great many others besides.
  Mr. G. R. Mitchison: On a point of order. Is this a Supply Day, Mr. Deputy-Speaker?
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: My impression is that it is the Third Allotted Day.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: That is the point I am trying to make. Here we are wasting our precious Supply Days when we should be looking into the details of expenditure of the Government. These arrangements that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House was so good as to make earlier this Session in
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  response to the demand of many of us on this side are already beginning to break down, because this is a misuse of a Supply Day. I want the House to realise that completely.
  Returning to the main current of the debate, I should like to express in a few words my opposition to the merger suggestion. The three most distinguished outside witnesses who came before the Committee—Sir Arthur Benson, Lord Twining and Lord Howick—all showed the most lukewarm interest in the whole thing. They spoke of the necessity for an adequate presentation of the matter to the older Dominions and, indeed, to the international public at large. They showed no enthusiasm whatever for the suggestions that were made. The Sub-Committee presided over by my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham, and about four other members of it, entered the inquiry with preconceived ideas.
  Sir G. Nicholson: What does my noble Friend mean?
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: They put questions to witnesses throughout the Report—it is all too apparent from reading it—in the sort of way which I used to recall from my Latin classes at school as "nonne" questions, questions expecting the answer "Yes".
  My hon. Friend the Member for Farnham, in a brilliant passage in Question No. 1637, asked Sir Arthur Benson:
  "… you want a big flash of vision?"
  and then went on about the idea of a merger. The poor witness, Sir Arthur Benson, what is he to say, sitting there—
  Sir G. Nicholson: May I—
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: No. What is he to say, sitting there partially terrified by this interrogation and at the same time exhilarated by the verbiage of my hon. Friend, except, "Well, yes, I suppose so, but it is a matter of presentation"?
  Sir G. Nicholson: May I ask the noble Lord to be a little fair in these things? I did not use the words he said. The answer to the previous question by Sir Arthur Benson was:
  "In all these things I think it is the grandeur of the scheme and the presentation of them which is important."

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  He stressed that, and I said:
  "In other words, you want a big flash of vision?"
  He said, "Yes." I suggest to the noble Lord that if he does not want to take part in the debate he should allow other people who do to speak.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I have not nearly finished, and my hon. Friend is going to get a great deal more from me.
  Let us turn to the jejeune and very badly set out arguments in the Report.
  Mr. Stonehouse rose—
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: No, I cannot give way. There are too many others who want to follow, and there is only a short time.
  Mr. Stonehouse: The noble Lord has done an injustice to Sir Arthur Benson.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: No, I do not think I have; I have a great respect for that great man.
  There are eight short arguments given for the merger, elaborated a little in the Report, but not embellished in any way. The first argument is that there would be a net economy. In the questioning on that point, my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham admitted that the economy was chicken feed. What is the Select Committe on Estimates doing when it comes across a proposition from one of the Departments of State in which any economies are "chicken feed?" Most people would turn from that part of the inquiry and go in for something that would really save the taxpayers' money. The hon. Member for Farnham used it as an excuse for the brilliant flash of vision of combining the Commonwealth Office and the Colonial Office. The Report goes on to say that it would assure the future of the staff of the Colonial Office. The future is assured now. [An HON. MEMBER: "Is it?"] We had much evidence throughout the Report that whenever any particular Colony leaves its colonial status and becomes independent, previous to that, sections of the Colonial Office are trained to move over to the Commonwealth Relations Office to take them on as they arrive. The same thing applies in the case of the Commonwealth Relations Office—
  "which would gain correspondingly,"
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  It is gaining now.
  Fourthly,
  "The functions of the two Departments would have close affinities."
  That is not an argument for amalgamation. The functions of the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office have close affinities, but nobody thinks that they should be amalgamated. The functions of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force have close affinities, but nobody suggests that they should be amalgamated.
  Hon. Members: They are amalgamated.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: We are told in paragraph (e), as an argument for the merger, that—
  "There are disadvantages in the use of the term 'Colonial Office'."
  I am surprised that a Select Committee of Parliament with a Conservative majority should echo the words that come from the other side of the House about colonialism being a dirty word. There is nothing wrong with the use of the terms Colonies or Colonial Office, except with people of the United Nations or Radically-minded type. Then, we proceed:
  "The transition of dependent territories to independent would be facilitated."
  Why should it be facilitated? Why should it be facilitated by the merger of these two offices? If they are to be given independence, it will be from their own indigenous circumstances and the skill and wisdom of the officials, of whom my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, North (Mr. H. Clark) spoke so brilliantly. It will be due to changing world circumstances, and it does not depend in the least degree on the amalgamation of these two offices.
  According to recommendation (g)—merger
  "would ease many economic and technical problems during the transition to independence and afterwards."
  That is already covered by what I said earlier about the future of the staff of the Colonial Office. Finally, in recommendation (h)—
  "It would provide for unified representation of independent countries and dependent territories in the international economic field."
  Who says that the independent countries want a unified representation through the Commonwealth Relations Office? If

  1003
  anything, independent countries want that representation for themselves and are showing no anxiety whatever to come under a general British umbrella Department. I will not bother to deal with the arguments against the merger because the evidence which the Select Committee has adduced and presented as arguments for a merger are weak enough in themselves.
  I find from the Report that while some of the minor recommendations, which, incidentally, save no money at all, are on balance worthy, I agree wholeheartedly with only one statement, that made by Sir Hilton Poynton, who in answer to Question No. 50 said:
  "But the fact that more and more countries are becoming independent is having a very unsettling effect on the staff of the Colonial Office."
  My hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, North indicated the unsettling effect of what is now transpiring on the people in the Colonies for whom he spoke.
  I have just returned from a two months' visit to Africa and in 1,700 miles, from the Limpopo River to the sources of the Nile, I found that current British colonial policy was causing widespread dismay and apprehension, not only among moderate Africans who had already entered Government service, but right up the grades through district commissioners, provincial commissioners and chief secretaries themselves. Without the slightest hesitation and without fear of the consequences, they told me that never in all their careers had they been so appalled by the speed at which the Colonial Office and my right hon. Friend were forcing the pace upon them.
  Money is leaving Africa today at the most alarming rate. The details are given in a leading article in the Financial Times today. In the old days the flag followed trade. It was the City of London and the resources of the nation which went first. The flag came in to buttress them up when they got into difficulties. My right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary has taken the flag far in advance of the battlefield. He is waving the Union Jack at half mast in the middle of Africa and he has no friends beside him in the economic and in the financial sense. They are desert-
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  ing the field. Money is fleeing away from East Africa to India, and to the City of London from East Africa and from Central Africa.
  Mr. Harold Davies: To take up what the noble Lord has said about the leading article in the Financial Times on the outflow of money from Africa; does he not see that the very policy consistent with the Report's recommendations—helping technical and other developments—is what he himself wants?
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I am sorry I cannot deal with the hon. Member, but I have exceeded my time. I must draw to a conclusion.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, North spoke of what would happen if we withdrew prematurely. I came across direct evidence to show that both the Russians and the Americans were calling increasing attention to the disastrous dissociation between British political policy in the Colonial Empire and the willingness of the private investor and of the resources of the City of London to follow hard upon that policy. They said, "Wait for the day when you get your independence. We cannot act now because the British are still in charge, but wait for the day when you are independent and we will come in with very large loans and very large grants to assist you on your road." Each in their separate languages, that is what they said.
  The Colonial Secretary ought to turn his attention immediately to what is happening in the City of London and organise as swiftly as he can the reflation of the economy, establish a central bank in East Africa, send out economic doctors, Keynesian expansionists, to try to recover the ground. Parliament ought to be voting vast sums of money today to increasing the salaries of the colonial administrators, and to enlarging development schemes, to try to overcome the inhibitions from which we are suffering.
  Mr. Harold Davies: The noble Lord is contradicting himself.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: That is why this Report is so inadequate and so untimely. At the very moment when we should be recovering by very large

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  expenditure a position lost through mischance and indeed, mischief in past political policy, this Report comes out and attacks the Colonial Office instead of going for other Departments of State where great economies can be made for the public good.
  9.6 p.m.
  Mr. R. H. Turton: As I am probably the last Member of the Select Committee on Estimates to take part in this debate, I should like to thank the Leader of the House for having made this arrangement, and I think that the number of Members of the House who have been anxious to get in, even though they have not got in, shows how valuable and interesting has been this debate.
  With the exception of the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke), I think that everybody has appreciated the subject. I rather feel that he would have appreciated it a little bit more if he had had time thoroughly to read the Report. The function of the Select Committee on Estimates is to examine the Estimates as they come, to see whether there is any administrative waste or extravagance, and to report to the House our findings. I noticed that the noble Lord chided us for having examined the Colonial Office Estimates, and he gave a list of other Departments whose Estimates he would have liked us to have examined—all of which we have either examined or are now examining, with the exception of the expenditure on housing by local authorities, which is not really within the function of that Committee.
  I dismiss that argument of the noble Lord, if I may, and turn very quickly to what we were recommending. I want to mention in particular two parts of this Report which have not been mentioned today. I want to mention them because they affect the financial side. We found that there had been some deliberate underestimating of grants in aid, and we recommended that that practice should not be followed in future. I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary for having admitted frankly that that had been the practice in the past, and for giving us an undertaking that it would not be followed in future.
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  In the Supplementary Estimates in February this year there were three Supplementary Estimates for grants in aid, and it would appear that they were the result of the policy. As we are now examining the Supplementary Estimates, it will be the function of the Select Committee to pick out those estimates which are the result not of emergencies but of some looseness in financial control. This new change of policy will assist us in this work.
  Secondly, I want to draw attention to the fact that in dealing with the grants in aid we found that the Treasury stepped into the arena very early and negotiated with the Colonial Office—sometimes jointly with the War Office—on a particular estimate. That means that the Treasury is not fulfilling the function which it should, that of a lay critic coming in after the Estimate has been built up by the accounting officer of the Department. We recommended that the Treasury should review and change that procedure. It has told us that it has reviewed it but will not change it. I hope that further attention will be given to this matter. I think it essential that the accounting officer of a Department should be given the right to examine his own expenditure and be made responsible for it, and the Treasury should come in as an informed lay critic afterwards and not take part in the negotiations; otherwise I do not believe that one gets proper control.
  I turn now to the question of merger which has occupied the attention of the House. I think that what was made quite clear by the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Woof) has been overlooked by many hon. Members, and that is that we are really dealing with a problem of an increase of staff where responsibility is diminishing. If I may give the House the picture very shortly: in the last six years, while the responsibility of the Colonial Office has been diminishing with Malaya and Ghana becoming independent and many other countries moving towards self-government, there has been an increase in staff in the administrative, executive and clerical branches of the Colonial Office of six at home and 133 overseas, a total of 139. Clearly, that is due a great deal to the fact that as one gets nearer to a merger the burden of work in that Office gets greater. If one looks at the other side

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  of the medal, one finds in the Commonwealth Relations Office there has been an increase of 74 in the staff at home and 446 in the staff overseas, a total of 520.
  I want the House to realise that one of the problems that we face with this division of responsibility is that as the responsibilities between the Departments are changing, so the number of staff is increasing. One is reminded of the celebrated phrase of Professor Parkinson, "the rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson's Law and it would be much the same whether the volume of work were to increase, diminish or even disappear".
  That is the point that I wish to emphasise here. A very good instance was given in Question 6 in the Evidence, when it was pointed out that when Malaya became independent we still had the same volume of work in the functional departments dealing with rubber and tin because Nigeria also produced rubber and tin. That is why I am sure there is a great economy in manpower and money in the idea of a merger. My hon. Friend the noble Lord said that the economy was mere chickenfeed. I feel sure from his attitude to this matter that he has never kept hens. If he had done so, he would know what a very great burden the feeding-stuffs for his poultry would be.
  The right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) has not really studied what we are recommending on the merger. I remind the House of what our recommendation is. It is that from the point of view both of economy and efficiency there should be a Commonwealth Office presided over by a Minister of very senior Cabinet rank. I have heard somebody outside say that the post should be described as "Chancellor of the Commonwealth".
  The Minister would have three Departmental Ministers, one in charge of the dependent territories, one in charge of Commonwealth Relations, and the third dealing with technical and advisory services for the whole of the Commonwealth. That is the build-up. Just as the Minister of Defence looks after the Admiralty, the War Office and the Air Ministry, so would the Commonwealth Minister be looking after these three Departments.
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  We believe that that would mean a saving in personnel and a great increase in efficiency.
  I say in reply to the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), who intervened, that there would be great gain for the Commonwealth countries. At the present time, as a Colony goes into independence it loses a great deal of technical advice and technical aid just at the moment when it most needs them. I believe that there would also be a great gain from the point of view of international economic conferences. At such meetings as those of the G.A.T.T. Powers, or other international bodies, help could be given by one Minister advising both independent and dependent countries of the Commonwealth. We received a mass of evidence that even when countries had become independent they had gone back for advice to the Colonial Office because there they had their friends and felt that they could rely on them.
  I want to thank my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary for the way in which his witnesses gave evidence before the Committee. I have never met a better example of the British Civil Service at its highest in their patience, their frankness, and their courtesy. Our Report shows how efficient this Department is in many ways, but we believe that if all that valuable work, both in the Colonial Office and in the Overseas Civil Service, is to be retained for this country, and if the great reputation which we have in the world for administration and technical advice is to come to fruition, this step of a merger and of creating a Commonwealth technical and advisory service should be taken now before it is too late.
  Mr. Stonehouse: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. With great respect, may I draw your attention to the fact that no hon. Member has been called from this side of the House who is not a member of the Estimates Committee or a former Minister in the Department concerned? May we ask for more time for this debate in order that there can be greater participation by back benchers?
  Mr. Speaker: I regret that it has not been possible to call every hon. Member who wished to speak. The question of whether more time is available is not one for me.
  9.15 p.m.
  Mr. G. M. Thomson: The hon. Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson) and his Committee deserve the thanks of the House for providing us with this debate on the future of the Colonial Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and indeed of our whole relationships with the emerging Commonwealth. If I needed any evidence that he and his recommendations were on the side of the angels, it was provided for me by the speech of the noble Viscount the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke).
  Having paid this compliment to the Committee for its labours, perhaps I ought to say that there seems to be one major defect in the immense amount of valuable work done. I am sure that the Committee is conscious of it. It took no evidence from any African or Asian witness. It heard no evidence from spokesmen of under-developed territories as to exactly what kind of aid they want, and how it can be given in a way acceptable to them.
  Perhaps this is an inevitable defect. I do not know what the rights of the Committee are in calling for that kind of witness but I should have thought that it would have been possible, and certainly interesting, to hear evidence, perhaps, from Mr. Mordecai, the head of the Federal Civil Service in the West Indies, or from Sir Solomon Hochoy, the new Governor of Trinidad, to mention only two. However valuable the labours of this Committee may be, it is as well to bear in mind that there are severe limitations to the effectiveness of a group of white people sitting in London discussing what their attitude to Africa should be. The important aspect of this problem is what the Africans themselves want.
  I hope that this Report will be regarded by the Government as only the starting point for wide discussions with the leaders of the independent and emergent Commonwealth on the complex problems of granting, receiving and organising aid.
  Sir F. Markham: Surely the hon. Member is aware that the Select Committee on Estimates has no right to call witnesses from outside this country. It is a Committee of Estimates. I would
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  have expected that the hon. Member would have looked this matter up before he made his speech.
  Mr. Thomson: I am sure that if the Committee had cared to invite some of the people I have suggested there would have been no objection to hearing evidence from them. It may be true the Committee has no right to summon them.
  This is partly a problem of money—and the Committee had some interesting things to say about handing money out to the under-developed countries of the Commonwealth—but it is even more a problem of men. Money can be found quickly enough if there is the necessary political will, but it is impossible to conjure up the men required overnight. The kind of men the Service requires build up their experience over a lifetime. Expert knowledge of the problems of Africa and similar areas is built up painfully, out of experience. It takes years to accumulate, as it has accumulated in the service of the Colonial Office, but it can be lost and dissipated very quickly. Unfortunately, a good deal of that precious and unique experience has already been lost to us, partly because the Government have not been quick enough in dealing with the problem. On page 46 the Committee says:
  "this problem might have been largely solved had the foundation of the Overseas Civil Service in 1954 been more than just a change of name."
  Hon. Members on this side of the House give a general welcome to the new arrangements announced by the Colonial Secretary in Cmnd. 1193 for assisting overseas Governments to continue to employ members of the Overseas Civil Service. This seems a particularly useful and acceptable way of giving aid to the emergent nations of the Commonwealth. But I hope that the Government will take up, as a matter or urgency, the recommendations made by the Estimates Committee in connection with a Commonwealth and Technical Advisory Service. This should not be seen simply as a British-based scheme but as a piece of Commonwealth mutual aid. I take as my example the Commonwealth education plan, in which there is active participation from other Commonwealth countries. Any such scheme should be linked closely with similar United

  1011
  Nations bodies. This would have a number of advantages. It would allow countries like the United States to be closely associated with the project and would increase the number of openings for those in the Service. It would help to meet the fears of the newly independent countries of neo-colonialism. I think that this sort of service ought to be used as a centre for a secondment scheme to encourage private and public employers in this country to send people out for a period of a few years and to ensure that such a period of service is counted for promotion purposes when they come back to this country.
  A great deal more needs to be done in terms of providing training for administrators in the African Territories. In dealing with the Commonwealth Technical and Advisory Service it is easy to fall into the error of believing that there would be more openings for administrators as such than is likely to be the case. I think that the opportunities for administrators from this country are probably limited in time to a few years. The need over a longer period will be for specialists. But, again on the analogy of the Commonwealth education scheme, I should have thought it well worth while to get some of the administrators now finding themselves redundant to go out to the African Territories and there set up emergency schools of administration, and take an urgent and active part in training as many African administrators as quickly as possible.
  There is a good deal of evidence in the proceedings of the Committee about the inadequacy of the arrangements made by the Government for the difficult transition from dependence to independence. Mr. Kenneth Younger, the Director-General of Chatham House, told the Committee that his information was that nobody in Whitehall knew in advance how aid given before independence was to be given after independence. I must confess that anyone concerned about this would not get a great deal of reassurance from the evidence by the Treasury witness to the Committee. He said, bluntly and in the best Treasury manner:
  "I am being a bit obstinate about this, I am afraid, but I do feel rather strongly about
  1012
  the responsibility for running government services. If that is not a mark of independence, I am not clear what is."
  The Treasury witness was being questioned about Tanganyika, a country which is very close to independence and where at present there are 2,000 overseas officers and only 350 locally recruited officers.
  Last year, the Committee was told that in Tanganyika, with a population of about 8 million, only 273 boys and girls reached school certificate standard so that there will be a great deal of need for continuous assistance to a country like Tanganyika beyond the point of independence. Yet the Commonwealth Relations Office, in its evidence, told the Committee it regarded the point of independence as being the absolute watershed between the previous colonial status and the new status that was acquired.
  I think that in this case the C.R.O. takes too much of a black and white view of the matter. It reminds me of the complaint which George Bernard Shaw used to make of people in the early Socialist movement whom he called "purists and impossiblists." Their view was that we could have capitalism in full swing on Friday, bloody revolution in full swing on Saturday and the millenium in full swing on Sunday. It seems to me that the C.R.O. believe that we can have colonialism in full swing up to one minute to midnight on the date of independence and full independence from a minute after midnight. The Minister of State nods his head and I realise the difficulties about his position. I understand that the situation changes in a significant way at the moment of independence, but I should have thought that it was now common ground that independence came to countries at a time when they were not necessarily yet fully independent in the economic sense or in the sense of being able to maintain their own public service. That is the problem to which we must address ourselves.
  The job of the Government is to try to maintain some sense of continuity in the social and economic planning right through the process of reaching independence. Yet as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. Woof), the Colonial Development Corporation is considerably restricted.

  1013
  It is not allowed to engage in any new projects in countries which have become independent. I hope that the Colonial Secretary will pay attention to the views of the Committee on this and that the Corporation will be able to carry on new operations in independent countries. On this point may I say, in passing, that there have been disgraceful delays on the part of the Government in dealing with the future of the Colonial Development Corporation.
  The Sinclair Committee published its recommendations about its future as far back as the summer of 1959. The Government have still not come to final conclusions on this. In so far as we have information on those conclusions they look like being the wrong ones. We must try to make institutional arrangements in this country and with the rest of the Commonwealth that will allow the kind of scarce expertise, which is the real importance of a body like the Colonial Development Corporation, to go on being used, especially in countries which are coming towards independence at the present moment.
  That brings me to the question of the merger recommended between the Colonial Office and the C.R.O. The real test is not our administrative convenience and tidiness nor even economy in this country because, of course, it is possible to save some thousands of pounds in administrative economies in a matter like this and in the long run to lose many millions of pounds in terms of our relationships with the new Commonwealth. What is important is to do the kind of thing that will best assist our future relationships with the new Commonwealth. There is not great vision in itself in reuniting two Departments which were finally separated only as recently as 1947.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) spoke out of immense experience of this subject, both as an occupant of the Colonial Office and as someone who has been a student of these matters for a long time. He urged caution on us and we are bound to take a great deal of account of what he said out of his experience. I thought, however, that it is important to realise that there are three distinct groups of countries involved. My right hon. Friend was particularly concerned
  1014
  about the future of the dependent territories which are likely to go on being dependent for some considerable time. Certainly any changes which are made must ensure that their welfare is absolutely safeguarded. The services built up for them must be preserved intact.
  Then there is the question of the attitude of the independent Commonwealth countries, both the older Commonwealth countries and the newer Commonwealth countries. That is a very important consideration. But what the Committee was particularly concerned about, and I certainly would agree, was the middle group of countries—Tanganyika, for example—which will achieve independence very soon, but which are not going to be in a position fully to stand on their own feet in terms of providing themselves with administration. There is a need for an imaginative concept to provide them with some of the kind of services which up to now have been associated with the Colonial Office. I hope that in discussing this matter the Colonial Office and the C.R.O. can get together and that there will not be a tug of war between them, nor too much lobbying from one side or the other. I hope that the C.R.O. in particular will take a positive view of this matter.
  In reading the evidence I sometimes felt that when the C.R.O. referred to what is called the "Colonial Office people" it was using the tones of an anthropologist discussing a backward tribe with somewhat embarrassing rituals. Whatever arrangements finally emerge, I think it beyond doubt that the Commonwealth Relations Office itself has to make very big changes to meet the needs of the newest members of the Commonwealth. It has got to do more than it has done in the past. Sometimes it has seemed to be a sort of cross between a post office and a finishing school in diplomacy for Afro-Asian students. I understand that the Commonwealth Relations Office has to deal with the psychology of independence here, but I hope that it will be possible for it to approach these problems in a much more positive and constructive frame of mind than it sometimes seems to me to have used in the past.

  1015
  Some of the divisions which are put forward between the Colonial and non-Colonial Territories are somewhat artificial, as one sees in the case of the High Commission Territories. The C.R.O. has taken over from the Colonial Office, on independence, such people as the information officers and the British Council officials. I do not see why it cannot take over the educational and agricultural advisers and use their services fully. Indeed, it sometimes seems to me that the divisions between the Commonwealth and the Foreign Office are no longer as definite as they used to be. The C.R.O. has a Foreign Office man in Delhi and the Colonial Office has another Foreign Office man as Governor in Aden. And the Foreign Office will badly need the Colonial Office African experts to help deal with the Congo or the new African nations of the former French Empire.
  This Report has raised one of the most important problems that faces us today—how we adopt our Governmental machinery to meet the needs of the end of Empire and the birth of a real multiracial Commonwealth. In the Congo we have seen how a Western nation can go about the problem in the wrong way. There we see only too clearly today that the price of failure in Africa may be the creation of a second Korea. We are rightly proud of the fact that at the time the Congo was slipping into administrative chaos, Nigeria was becoming independent in peace and friendship. But it will not be so easy in some of the countries which are coming up in the queue for independence. I hope that the Government will take up with vision and imagination at the forthcoming Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference the very fruitful ideas which are contained in this Report.
  9.37 p.m.
  The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Iain Macleod): I am sorry that the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) had to cram into such a short time what he had to say on this extremely interesting subject, and I am even more sorry that other hon. Members who would have liked to contribute to our debate were not able to do so. I am afraid that it will also be necessary
  1016
  for me to try to do a great deal in a very short time, but may I first say how delighted I was by the very generous tributes, and I like to think well-deserved tributes, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) paid to the officers of the Colonial Office who gave evidence in this matter. As I am sure those who are members of the Committee know, 1960 has been a very difficult year for us, and this was an additional burden, but it was one which we shouldered gladly, and it makes it worth while to have such a Report as this and to have such a heart-warming tribute paid in the House.
  Oddly enough, the debate has not concentrated on the fourteen recommendations to which I have replied, I hope adequately, but on the three recommendations about which I have said nothing. I could not help feeling that my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke)—I am not sure whether he was in order or not—had a point in this matter; if he will allow me to say so, it was almost the only point in his speech with which I agreed. I think that we may need a definition of policy at some time because if those last three recommendations, particularly centering on merger, are not policy, I cannot see what else they are. But I will do my best to meet the wishes of the House and to reply upon these matters.
  Before I come to them, there were a few matters about the other recommendations with which it would be right to deal. My right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton referred to the first recommendation and the undertaking which we have given that we would try to make more accurate assessments of income and expenditure. I should like to make it clear, as I think our observations made it clear, that there is not a policy of deliberate underestimating, and the evidence quoted from a Colonial Office witness is directed to the point that sometimes from experience we find it necessary to deflate the figures which are given to us because of a tendency in the Colonial Governments to overestimate, in particular, the work which they can achieve on their works programme.
  Mr. Dugdale: When the Labour Government left office there was an Economic Advisory Committee in existence. It was scrapped by the present Government. Is it possible that they will reintroduce it?
  Mr. Macleod: I will look at that point. I had no idea that a Committee of that nature existed. If it is valuable I will certainly consider the possibility of resuscitating it.
  The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Woof) mentioned recommendation No. vii. That recommendation is that for a trial period only staff who are prepared to serve at home and abroad should be recruited to the Colonial Office. It was also recommended that a questionnaire should be taken from the present staff of the Colonial Office as to whether they would be prepared to do service abroad in the event of their being transferred to a Commonwealth office.
  That questionnaire is now complete and I have the results. There is a small overall majority willing to accept liability for overseas service. There is, in fact, a majority prepared to do overseas service in every age group except those between 30 and 40 years of age. That age group, naturally, is one when education and other matters weigh most heavily. If the House is interested in the detailed figures of that questionnaire I will make them available in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
  One more, but important matter, was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Sir A. Hurd) when he asked, in effect, if this great new scheme—Command 1193—which I agree was conceived mainly with an eye on East Africa and other African Territories—will be of real benefit to smaller Territories. The hon. Member instanced the Falkland Islands. The answer is, "Yes, I am sure that it will be." That was one of the matters I had very much in mind. We will have the report of the East African Salaries Commission within the next few days and that will give us a guide as to salaries. I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, North (Mr. H. Clark), that it should be not only for East Africa but that it should serve as a yardstick for other teritories as well.
  What the Government will try to do, to take the specific example of the dentist
  1018
  in the Falkland Islands, which the hon. Member for Newbury mentioned, will be to try to make up to the dentist, in what might be called pocket pay, a reasonable salary. It will not then fall heavily upon the resources of these small Territories, and they will not have to distort their whole salary structure by raising salaries for two or three jobs beyond what is justified by the local market and local resources.
  I hope the answer is clear that, apart from being of great benefit to the Territories where there are so many officers, this will be of very real value indeed to the outlying territories which find it so hard to get the services they require.
  I turn to the recommendations proposing the establishment of a new Commonwealth Office to replace the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office, and a Committee of inquiry into the establishment of a Commonwealth Advisory and Technical Service. I am not going to give the advantages and disadvantages of the merger in detail except to make a couple of points on it. I think one thing is clear, and that is that our present policy of leading the dependent territories to full independence as early as is compatible with their educational, political and economic development, is bound, before long, to lead to a stage when there is no longer justification for a separate office headed by a Secretary of State to conduct our relations with the few small remaining dependencies. The hon. Member for Dundee, East is quite right, that it is a matter to which the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference will wish to return, and it will not surprise me if it figures regularly on the agenda for some time.
  It is some way from the main stream of my argument to reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, North on the desirability of a Commonwealth Service, which is a different thing, but I think that if the hon. Member will study his speech, he will find it contains the seeds of its own destruction, because he suggested—and it sounded very attractive, that cross-posting and cross-promotion could take place in such a service. That is precisely what cannot be done. The Government cannot cross-post, because they do not control the establishments. They cannot promote, because

  1019
  they cannot control the career system in independent countries. That is what independence is about. All the independent countries have set up their own methods of recruitment.
  My hon. Friend used another phrase which, on consideration, he will again see has a destructive effect on his argument. He said that independent countries naturally always prefer the local man to the expatriate. If that is so, it would not be possible on that basis to build a Commonwealth Service.
  I am more concerned with answering the points made about a merger. I have said that there is no question that the time will come when the Colonial Office will in effect disappear. In the short run, there are two arguments which we must consider, which seem to us of real, and perhaps overriding, importance. First, the burden of work which at present falls on my right hon. Friend and myself in our respective spheres is too great to enable it to be put on the shoulders of one Secretary of State.
  The right hon. Member for West Bromwich (Mr. Dugdale) said that the appointment of more Ministers of State or junior Ministers might help to lighten the load to some extent. In practice, the politicians in the dependent Territories—I am speaking for the moment of my own sphere—rightly expect that the important decisions and the conferences which lead towards independence should be taken by and attended by the senior Minister of the Crown responsible for their affairs.
  I will tell the House, as an example, what has occurred today. I do not do this because I am in any way motivated by self pity, because I have enjoyed today. I spent the whole of the morning at Lancaster House in the chair at the Northern Rhodesia Confernce. I spent the whole of the afternoon in the same pursuit. I have spent the whole of this evening without pause listening to this debate. In what the I.T.A. call "natural breaks", if there are such things, I have managed or tried to see a great number of people and carry out the ordinary work of the Department.
  At present I do not believe that I could add to that. To put it the other way round, I do not think that my right hon. Friend could add to his enormous burdens those of the other Secretary of
  1020
  State. I do not think that there is at present a practicable way of reducing that burden of work.
  The hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) made a very good point indeed. It is true that geographical responsibilities contract, but that does not mean that now or for at least a year or two ahead the volume of work in my Department contracts. On the contrary, as countries go towards independence it means a very much increased volume of work.
  The second consideration relates to the future of the staff of the Colonial Office and of the services which the Office at present renders to dependent members of the Commonwealth. Many Territories are becoming and will become independent in the next few years. They will continue to require in their Government services expatriate officers from this country in professional, technical and administrative posts. This is the idea behind the White Paper, Cmd. 1193, to which reference has been made this evening and which we shall shortly debate in the form of the Overseas Service Bill.
  The supply of such officers concerns not only the Colonial Office but also the Commonwealth Relations Office. Similarly, the continuing needs of Territories which are becoming independent are becoming increasingly apparent in fields where the Colonial Office has built up splendid services of technical assistance and advice—for example, in the sphere of education, research and surveys.
  I would therefore put the matter in this way. We think that we are faced with a position in which, ultimately, the solution of these problems may very well lie in the bringing together of the two offices which the Select Committee recommends, but in our view it is clear that that cannot be done now; that in certain fields of activity the two Offices are already engaged in similar tasks, but that there are, at the same time, very compelling practical arguments against an immediate merger.
  What, then, should be done now? I have talked about the long run, and I have mentioned the problems that we have in common. The Government have come to the conclusion that we should

  1021
  look most closely at the field of technical aid because, after all, it is here through the White Paper that we have recently made a very great contribution indeed. We have, therefore, initiated a study of the possibility of creating a joint Department under a Minister who would be responsible to myself, to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and that this Department could bring together under a single direction many of the forms of technical and advisory assistance which this country can provide to overseas countries, whatever their status. It could serve, that is to say, not only our dependent territories, but the independent countries of the Commonwealth, and foreign countries as well.
  Examination of these matters is still in progress, and I cannot tonight define the scope of the proposed new Department more exactly than I have done, but it is the Government's intention, if the outcome of the examination shows that it is practicable to establish a joint Department of this nature, concerned with these problems of technical aid, to lay our detailed proposals before the House in due course.
  What I am really saying is that we should carry forward into the field of technical aid what is described in the White Paper as
  "… a vast scheme of technical assistance."
  that I mentioned a short time ago. Although we may not be as wealthy as some other countries, we have one priceless asset, and that is the experience and "know-how" of our men and women—and the best of all forms of technical aid is people. I am certain that it is in this sphere that we can and should make an important contribution.
  I should like to turn to the recommendation of the Sub-Committee that a Committee should be set up to examine the possibility of establishing a Commonwealth Advisory and Technical Service. In view of the announcement I have just made of the study that is being undertaken, I am sure that the House will feel that while we are engaged in that examination we should defer further consideration of the proposal to set up the committee of inquiry that the Report envisaged. The way in which technical and advisory services can best
  1022
  be provided for overseas territories will manifestly be influenced if we can manage to concentrate into one Department the efforts that are now dispersed in several Departments—
  Mr. Turton: Before my right hon. Friend leaves that topic, can he say whether it is his idea that some of the functional departments of his office and of the Commonwealth Relations Office should be hived off to form a new Department; or will a new Department be created and, therefore, add to the number of people doing this work?
  Mr. Macleod: No. I can speak only for my own office. The examination of this is not complete, but many of the functional, as distinct from the geographical departments would become—my right hon. Friend is quite right—members of this new Department. Thus, we would be able, I hope, to do something that the House has always wanted to do; to preserve the very special character and abilities of so many of the advisory services that we have.
  I should like to say just a word about the officers of the Overseas Service. I must say that I disagree flatly with some of the things that were said about the Colonial Service and colonialism. However misguided other people may be about the achievements of British colonialism, I do not think that we should lend our countenance to that in this House, because the officers of the Overseas Service are doing a grand job, often under very trying conditions. I am sure the whole House is with me in saying this.
  We all deeply regret that many of them will no longer be able to complete in the Overseas Service the full career which they have so richly earned. But it has always been a policy of all Secretaries of State of all parties to lead our territories forward in this way. It is no cause of regret that we are seeing the fruition of this policy over the years. But it does mean hardship for many people. It means that there is a great duty on us to make certain that we do everything we can to minimise this hardship.
  In particular, I have heard it suggested that the employment of these Overseas Service officers in other parts of the world may be difficult because it

  1023
  is said that they are "tainted" with colonialism. I use that word with the most emphatic inverted commas that I can express, because this is nonsense. These men and women and their predecessors, many of whom have lost their health, and many, indeed, their lives, in the service of the Colonial Territories, have a magnificent record of service of which we can be truly proud. It really would be a tragic waste if the experience of the present generation could not be used elsewhere under similar conditions whenever the opportunity offers.
  The function of the modern Colonial Service is not one of Imperial domination. It is the constructive and the practical task of helping countries forward in their development towards nationhood. I claim that we have the finest organisation in the world for providing professional and technical assistance to under-developed territories. In fact, we already have the kind of service for which the United Nations is now groping in handling the problem that has been thrown up in the Congo. I am sure that, whatever we may disagree upon, we should at least agree that we should send to those people a message of our pride in the work that they do.
  I hope that the House will take not only the White Paper which will come before us in the form of legislation, but what I have said today, as an earnest of my determination and the determination of Her Majesty's Government that all their needs will be understood and will be met. They ought to know, as I think the new scheme which I have outlined tonight should show them, that we are continually seeking to improve the means whereby, through technical assistance, we
  1024
  can bring help to the under-developed countries not only of the Commonwealth but of the world as a whole.
  Sir G. Nicholson: Before seeking leave to withdraw the Amendment, I should like to thank my right hon. Friend for his speech and to express the hope that he has thought the debate worth while, as I am sure the House does.
  I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Main Question again proposed.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Martin Redmayne): I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Committee Tomorrow.

  CONSOLIDATION, ETC., BILLS
  So much of the Lords Message [15th December] as communicates the Resolution, That it is desirable that all Consolidation Bills (including Bills for consolidating Private Acts), Statute Law Revision Bills and Bills presented under the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act, 1949, in the present Session be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament, to be considered forthwith.—[Colonel J. H. Harrison.]
  So much of the Lords Message considered accordingly.
  Resolved,
  That this House doth concur with the Lords in the said Resolution.—[Colonel J. H. Harrison.]
  Message to the Lords to acquaint them therewith.

  VIETNAM AND LAOS
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Col. J. H. Harrison.]
  9.59 p.m.
  Mr. John Baird: I am glad that I have an Adjournment debate at this most appropriate time, because I have just been reading on the tape a speech by the Foreign Secretary in another place on the question of Laos. I was rather shocked when I read the terms of that speech. The first thought that entered my mind was—
  It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Noble.]
  Mr. Baird: My first thought was how far we could go in crawling to the Americans in our foreign policy. The Foreign Secretary said that the trouble in Laos had arisen as a result of the Pathet Lao insurrection. To put it in Parliamentary terms, that is a completely misleading statement. Indeed, it is the opposite of the facts. Either the Foreign Secretary, being new to his job, does not know the history of this troubled area, or, if he does know its history, he is completely and deliberately misleading Parliament and the country about the true facts of the case.
  There are two major danger areas in the world where the cold war might become a hot war. It is rather a peculiarity that they are both ex-French colonial territories—Algeria and Indo-China. I want tonight to deal with Indo-China, especially with South Vietnam, and Laos. I bad the privilege of being one of the few Members of this House who have visited that area in recent years, and I think I can speak with some authority about the position there. I hope that the House will not think me presumptuous if I deal first with the background, because many hon. Members do not understand the problem.
  Twice in recent years, the United States of America has threatened the use of atomic power against nations which did not have atomic power themselves
  1026
  and against nations which were not at war with the United States. It was this concept of a holy war against Communism which, I believe, inspired the Americans to try this action. In Korea, they wanted to bomb Manchuria. It was our then Prime Minister, Mr. Attlee, who flew to America and did not mince his words. He told the Americans what he thought and said that we would have nothing to do with it. We stopped that threat of atomic warfare against China. Then, in 1954, when the Vietnamese guerrillas came out of their forests and were winning the battle of Dien Bien Phu, once again the Americans threatened to use atomic warfare against the guerrillas.
  I am glad to pay a compliment to Sir Anthony Eden, who was then Prime Minister, because he stood up to the Americans and said that we would not have anything to do with that. It is true that his record afterwards was blackened at Suez, but he showed great courage at that time. We cannot, however, expect that kind of courage from the present Prime Minister. Reading between the lines, I sometimes feel that the Prime Minister was more responsible for Suez than was Sir Anthony Eden.
  As a result of the stand taken at that time, however, the Geneva Conference was called to bring about the pacification of Indo-China. That Conference was attended by the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, France, representing South Vietnam, China—People's China—and North Vietnam. America was there as an observer. It was agreed then to set up a Control Commission to supervise peace in Indo China. The Control Commission was a very neutral commission, consisting of Poland, India and Canada. I do not think we could get a more balanced Commission than that. It was supposed to stay there in all the areas of Indo-China until the pacification of that area. It was solemnly declared at the same time that free elections should be held in Vietnam by 1956. We know what has happened. There have been no free elections, and there are no postal facilities even between North and South Vietnam at the present time.
  The Control Commission was to function in all the territories of Indo-China, North and South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Laos and Cambodia were

  1027
  also there and also signed the agreement. America, while not signing the agreement, agreed to accept it in principle and to abide by it. I am very sincere about this, and I ask the Minister to look at it sincerely. Can there be any nation in the history of the world that has been more hypocritical in its public statements than the United States has been in this area? In the Sunday Times yesterday we read that the United States has sent a note of protest to the Soviet Union about its intervention in Laos, in which they say:
  "The Soviet Government and its agents have attempted to carry out this latest grave action clandestinely under cover of delivering food and petroleum products."
  They are also sending arms into Indo-China it is suggested. The report continues:
  "While America was determined to maintain the independence of Laos, she denied the Russian allegation that the Laotian Army had been armed 'recently' with United States weapons."
  The words "recently" is in inverted commas.
  Tanks and howitzers were supplied long before 9th August."
  Of course, there has been an American military build-up in South Vietnam and Laos not for months, but for years.
  The first question I want to ask the Minister is what right have the Americans to be in Indo-China at all? There has been an arms build-up by the Americans since 1955. France withdrew her troops from South Vietnam between 1954 and 1955, and created a vacuum there. The people of Vietnam wanted a united Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, but the Americans stepped in to prevent it. We have all sorts of organisations set up since then. Perhaps the Minister read the book "The Quiet American", which is a novel, I admit, but historically and basically it is fundamentally true, dealing with the concept of a holy war and the American right to intervene anywhere to prevent the spread of Socialism and Communism.
  There is an organisation which they introduced into South Vietnam known as T.E.R.M.—Temporary Equipment Recovery Mission—which was supposed to go there to collect arms supplied to the French in their wars. It is still there now, five years later. There is
  1028
  M.A.A.G.—Military Aid and Advisory Group. It was a temporary organisation, too, and it is still there. There are 2,000 American military technicians advising South Vietnam, and they are spending 160 million dollars a year on military equipment in South Vietnam at the present time.
  Now they are infiltrating into Laos as well. Why? I ask the House to treat this matter seriously. Is it to protect the United States of America? Is this a defensive movement? It is a long way from America, but someone living in South Vietnam or China would say that this was an aggressive military infiltration designed to destroy the Governments of North Vietnam and China. That is all it can do. Otherwise, why should there be this military build up?
  The Americans had their first success in 1958. The Prime Minister of Laos at that time, Prince Souvanna Phouma, was a neutralist, neither pro-Soviet nor pro-American. He wanted to keep out of both camps. He came to a compromise with the Pathet Lao forces, which were led by his cousin. They agreed to form a united Government which would be neutralist in the cold war. In return, the Pathet Lao forces were to disband and the leaders were to enter the Government, as they did.
  However, under American pressure of all kinds, economic and military, the Laotian Prime Minister was forced to resign. His Government disbanded and a reactionary Government under American control came in. The Pathet Lao leaders were arrested and thrown into gaol and the troops, who had been disarmed, were sent to concentration camps. When the Foreign Secretary says that this trouble was caused by Pathet Lao insurrection, does he not realise that the Pathet Lao leaders honoured their promise and agreements with the legitimate Government of Laos, but in return were thrown into prison?
  That is not all. This reactionary Government demanded the withdrawal of the Control Commission from Laos. What did we do when the Laotian Government demanded the withdrawal of the Control Commission? It should be remembered that Laos signed the Geneva Agreement along with ourselves and that we and the U.S.S.R., as joint

  1029
  Chairmen, were responsible for seeing that the Control Commission functioned. The Foreign Secretary said that we could not have the Control Commission functioning if the Government of Laos did not want it, but the Government of Laos signed a solemn undertaking to accept the Control Commission. In that case, why has it been withdrawn? What possibility is there, as the Foreign Secretary seems to suggest, that a Government of similar tendencies will recall the Control Commission? We must use all our diplomatic pressure, especially on the Americans, to see that the Control Commission returns to Laos as soon as possible.
  Since then, there has been another coup d'etat by young officers who wanted once again to follow a neutralist foreign policy, but again the Americans have intervened. Not only the Americans, but, under American pressure, South Vietnamese troops and officers have entered Laos and that other puppet of the United States, Thailand, has closed its frontiers with Laos, so that both military and economic sanctions are being imposed by the Americans. It was only then that the Russians intervened. The Laotians could not get petrol. They could not get food. The Russians sent them petrol and they sent them food. It is quite possible that they also sent them arms, but while the Americans have been sending arms for five years, the Russians have been sending them for only five weeks. Who is the real aggressor? I should like to know what the Foreign Secretary thinks and what his spokesman in the House here thinks.
  On the basis of the facts, can the Foreign Secretary really claim that this trouble in Laos was caused by the Panthet Lao insurrection? Of course not.
  Finally, I say that the war is not yet over. Let us face up to it. The forces of progress in Indo-China are still well organised in Laos and in other areas of Indo-China. The guerrillas who at one time under Panthet Lao leadership were based on the two northern provinces are now spread throughout the country. That is not all. China and North Vietnam both feel themselves menaced by the America build-up so near their frontiers. Remember that North Vietnam has perhaps the greatest guerrilla leader of modern times in General Giap, whom both my hon. Friend the Member for
  1030
  Leek (Mr. Harold Davies), and I have met. He is not a professional soldier. He is a professor of history, but he is the greatest guerrilla leader produced over the last ten or fifteen years and his advice would be available to the guerrillas—I hope so anyway—in Laos.
  I warn the House that—
  Mr. Speaker: I wonder if the hon. Member can help me? I have been waiting for him to say something for which there appeared to be Ministerial responsibility. Could he help me about that?
  Mr. Baird: Ministerial responsibility? The Foreign Secretary is joint Chairman of the Geneva Conference which is responsible for the Control Commission in Indo-China.
  Mr. Speaker: I know that he was co-Chairman of the Conference which came to an end, but I want to go a stage further than that, if the hon. Gentleman will help me.
  Mr. Baird: The Conference has not come to an end. The Conference adjourned. The Conference set up a Control Commission for the whole of Indo-China. It still functions. Its reports are presented by the Control Commission to the Foreign Secretary and to the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union and are available in the Vote Office regularly every year, sometimes twice a year. Therefore, the House has directly responsibility for this. There is no question about it.
  Mr. Speaker: I would welcome assistance from the Joint Under-Secretary of State. My ignorance is perhaps misleading me, but having given the hon. Member as much rope as I could in the context, I would welcome assistance from the Under-Secretary of State. I am unaware that the co-Chairmen by virtue of being Chairmen can give any direction to the Control Commission. I do not follow quite how the hon. Member is attaching Ministerial responsibility. Perhaps I am wrong, but I should like some help.
  The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. J. B. Godber): My understanding is exactly that, Mr. Speaker—that the co-Chairmen have no special position in this regard. It is

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  perfectly true that the Control Commission reports, but the co-Chairmen have no executive power at all.
  Mr. Harold Davies: On a point of order. Would it be out of order for the House to discuss documents which appear in the Vote Office and when the co-Chairmen have power to recall the Conference?
  Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Member had been urging that the Conference should be recalled I should not have had to interrupt.
  Mr. Baird: Yes.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has not yet said that.
  Mr. Harold Davies: That is exactly the point. This is a trick.
  Mr. Baird: We have discussed the question on numerous occasions in the House before.
  Mr. Speaker: But not perhaps on an Adjournment debate. We have special rules to apply in an Adjournment debate.
  Mr. Baird: We have raised this subject on the Adjournment more than once previously.
  I want the Minister to tell us what the Foreign Secretary is going to do. Will he demand the recall of the Geneva Conference? I believe that it is the only way to prevent another Korea and perhaps another world war. Or are the Government going to remain the lackeys of the United States and carry out the United States' policy? I believe that if Great Britain really wants to play a good part in this area of the world, she must demand, along with the Soviet Union, the recall of the Geneva Conference at the first and earliest opportunity.
  10.21 p.m.
  Mr. Denis Healey: Before the Joint Under-Secretary of State replies, might I ask him to answer two questions which arise out of the Lord Privy Seal's Answer to a Question on this subject this afternoon? The Lord Privy Seal said that Her Majesty's Government were now consulting what he called the "provisional administration" in Laos to see whether it would agree
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  to the return of the Control Commission. This provisional administration, as the hon. Gentleman knows, was formed as the result of armed action by a general who was armed and supported from abroad and whose open purpose was to overthrow the Geneva Agreement, to which Her Majesty's Government are a party.
  My first question is whether Her Majesty's Government consider that this provisional administration has the right in itself to veto the return of the Commission. The second question is whether the hon. Gentleman can tell us whether the United States Government are now supporting the policy aim of Her Majesty's Government as defined by the Lord Privy Seal this afternoon, namely, to try to negotiate the formation of a Laotian Government of national unity.
  10.22 p.m.
  The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. J. B. Godber): I am afraid that I have not much time in which to deal with the various points which have been raised, but I will try to touch briefly on such of them as I can. I think it would be profitable if I confined myself to the position in Laos, although the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Baird) referred to Vietnam.
  Mr. Baird: They are both in the same position.
  Mr. Godber: Yes, to some extent they are. However, I think the House will agree that the situation in Laos is the really critical one at the present time, and that was the cause of the statement made by my noble Friend in another place and my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal in the House today. There is general agreement, I am sure, that it is a grave situation, and I think it is important to get the facts of the matter correct, particularly in view of some of the things which the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East, said.
  I would remind the House that in July last year the Pathet Lao abandoned the path of legality after having been invited to go into the Government, and went back into a period of insurgency. Since then they have been in open rebellion against the Government, with support and assistance from North Vietnam.
  Baird: That is not true.
  Mr. Godber: Yes, it is true. In August this year, the then Laotian Government under Prince Somsanith was overthrown by Captain Kong Lae, and in due course a new Government under Prince Souvanna Phouma was formed. Unfortunately, however, the authority of this Government was never accepted by the revolutionary committee which was set up by General Phoumi in Savannakhet. Nor was it able to complete negotiations which it entered into in order to re-integrate the Pathet Lao into the national community. There was an attempt to get the Pathet Lao back in the Government, which I am sure hon. Members would have wished to have seen. For three months Laos was divided into three parts.
  I should like to deal with the particular allegations which the hon. Member has made in regard to the Americans arming General Phoumi in order to enable him to attack Prince Souvanna Phouma's Government. What happened was that the Laotian Army was no longer under a proper unified command and great difficulty was experienced in getting various units supplied in order to maintain them in being and to enable them to defend themselves should they be attacked by the Communists. The Government in Vientiane were not in a position to distribute pay and weapons themselves, and they arranged with the American Government for supplies to be sent to the individual units direct.
  Mr. Harold Davies: I was there at the time. It is not true.
  Mr. Godber: It is true.
  Mr. Davies: It is not true.
  Mr. Godber: By the end of November it became apparent to the Prime Minister that his attempts to bring General Phoumi and the revolutionary committee into a Government of national unity had broken down and that the general was preparing an attack on Vientiane. He asked the Americans not to supply further arms, and the United States Government at once suspended the supply.
  I have been asked what right the Americans had to send these arms at all. They have been supplying arms at the request of the legitimate Government in
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  each case. The Communists have been supplying them to the insurgents. That has been the difference, and it is a distinct difference which must be borne in mind.
  Mr. Davies: The Indian Embassy told me differently from Laos.
  Mr. Godber: I have only a few minutes in which to reply, and I want to answer the questions raised by the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). He asked whether the provisional administration had the right to veto the return of the Commission. Certainly they have not the right to veto it, but I think it was right that we should ask them what their attitude was and that we should then consider, in the light of their reply, what the position was. It is true that they are a provisional Administration. We do not know how the situation will develop and must assess it as we go along. We do not feel that they are in a position to exercise the veto, but I think that the Commission could not go back against the wishes of the people with whom it had to work. That is the difficulty which must be faced.
  His second question was whether the United States Government are in line with our views. We have been in touch with the Americans and I think I can safely answer "Yes" to that question.
  Mr. Baird: Will the Government recall the Geneva Conference?
  Mr. Godber: We have made clear in the statement today what our position is about the Commission. It has been set out in my noble Friend's statement and that of my right hon. Friend—that there may be merit in reconstituting the Commission if proper agreement can be obtained, but I do not see any point at this stage in going beyond that to recall the Geneva Conference.
  Mr. Baird: Why?
  Mr. Godber: Because we think that the most useful thing here, if any outside help is to be given, is for it to be given through the Commission. It is more appropriate for the Commission to be involved here than to go back and recall the Conference, which would be a lengthy procedure. We see no definite benefit arising out of that.

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  The hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) referred to the position of India. It was Mr. Nehru himself who suggested this particular course, and I hoped that that might have commended it to the hon. Member.
  Mr. J. J. Mendelson: If the provisional authorities were to reject the suggestion, would that mean that the Foreign Office would not continue its attempt, or can we have an assurance that it would still demand a recall?
  Mr. Godber: I have already tried to answer that point, which was previously framed in a different way. Obviously I could not commit the Government at the present time about how the position will develop. We must see what the reactions are. It is our hope that we shall be able to make progress in this
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  way, and in the light of that my noble Friend has been in touch with the Russians already about this matter.
  We are trying to find some way to solve this problem. We are just as anxious as hon. Members opposite to see this unhappy position resolved. It is no good seeking to blur the facts by putting a one-sided view, as did the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East. I am sorry that he did so and even more sorry that I have not been given enough time in which to reply to the debate properly, but I hope that the House will give me the opportunity—
  The Question having been proposed at Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at half-past Ten o'clock.