HC Deb 10 May 1961 vol 640 cc526-50

7.50 p.m.

Mr. Donald Chapman (Birmingham, Northfield)

I beg to move, in page I, line 7, after "assistance" to insert "and information".

The Deputy-Chairman

I think it would be convenient to take both this Amendment and the Amendment in page 1, line 8, after "assistance", to insert "and information".

Mr. Chapman

Thank you, Sir William. I think that would be convenient.

I am moving this Amendment for two reasons. First, we should like to be able to get as careful a definition as possible of the actual powers, functions and duties of this new Ministry. Clause 1 (1) is full of long and high-sounding words, but it does not give a precise definition of how far the Ministry can go in helping the development of other countries.

The second reason for this Amendment is that on Second Reading there were divergent views between the two sides of the House as to the precise powers and functions that the new Ministry should have. As several hon. Members said, we were anxious to be a little more ambitious than the Financial Secretary appeared to be in his definition of the new Ministry. When the Bill was mooted we hoped that something like a Ministry for Aid would emerge to co-ordinate capital assistance as well as mere technical assistance for developing nations.

The Financial Secretary defined the powers and functions of the Ministry by referring to paragraph (9) of the White Paper, and said that technical assistance covers training in the United Kingdom and overseas, the provision of experts, administrators and other professional men and women; the provision of advisory technical and consultant services and expert missions, and the supply of equipment for training, demonstration, pilot schemes or surveys. What the hon. Gentleman said was that, as opposed to our idea of a broad Ministry for Aid, the Government envisaged the Ministry as mainly providing men and women to given expert advice. That was the sum total. On Second Reading I advanced a view which was, to some extent, a compromise between these two extremes, and it is to give expression to this compromise that I have brought forward this Amendment.

The compromise that I suggested was that this new Ministry should not be confined merely to providing technical experts but should also, when these technical experts had ascertained what developing countries were needing, be able to guide, counsel and advise where they would find the money from the many varied sources available, both in this country and through international agencies. I wanted to see a Ministry gathering and providing information on how the money could be found for the various needs disclosed by technical studies. I wanted a Ministry which would build a fund of information and experience which it could put at the disposal of the developing countries after the technical experts had made their diagnosis.

I was encouraged in this view by some words uttered by Lord Perth when this matter was debated in another place. He said that one of the questions which had been asked about this new Ministry was whether economic aid was to be included. He added that the whole question was still being studied but, whether it was included or not, the great thing was to make a start. From the whole tenor of his speech, I sensed that the Government were in two minds on how effective and strong this Ministry could be. In the end, the Government came down on one side, but they clearly had an open mind about the precise borderline of the Ministry's functions. Therefore, I hope that when I say we need to be a little more pushing in our definition of the aims of this Ministry it will not be misunderstood or taken amiss by the Government.

Having explained that, may I give some examples of what could be done if the Amendment were accepted? Let us take the example which I mentioned on Second Reading of construction and mortgage finance, which is often needed in a developing Colony in a backward country. I see that this has recently been recommended as the next stage of development in Cyprus where construction will be badly needed to push the economy through a significant stage of growth. That requirement having been diagnosed by experts and technical assistants, people in Cyprus—or, for that matter, in any other country similarly placed—need to know which firms have been active in that sort of development, which have built up a fund of expert knowledge that can provide mortgage finance in such cases, which international agencies have assisted in this field, which public bodies in this and in other countries have put up that kind of money, what is the policy of international bodies which have specialised in mortgage finance, and what has been learned about a construction boom and its problems in other countries so that all this experience can be applied expertly in Cyprus.

I was, and still am, anxious to get an assurance that this opportunity to draw advice and information can be given to this new Ministry so that the needs, once uncovered by the technicians, can be more easily satisfied in the resulting investment and provision of capital. This would apply similarly in the field of social service. If technicians find that certain social services are needed in a developing country, this Ministry ought to be able to tell that country what is the experience in other countries similarly placed. In addition, this Ministry ought to be able to encourage all such countries coming under its purview to undertake a consistently applied development plan, and should be able, therefore, to guide, counsel and advise them on how to draw up such a plan and begin to put it into operation, whether by means of its own capital, British capital or any other capital, and where to obtain the capital. Those are some examples of how I think this Ministry could act in a more ambitious way than I understand has so far been contemplated. In my view, a huge Ministry-will not be required to do it. I should imagine that what is needed is a small corps of specialist staff who will, perhaps, build up a reference library on development which could be applied in any country.

8.0 p.m.

What I have put is, as I explained, a compromise of sorts between the view which I understood the Financial Secretary to give and the more extreme view advanced by my right hon. and hon. Friends. It may well be that all I have been saying is covered by the Bill as drafted. I do not know. I shall be delighted if it is. In his speech introducing the Bill, the hon. Gentleman said that the Ministry would have a staff of 1,000 and the Minister would be a spokesman at international gatherings. Presumably, if he is to have a staff of 1,000 and be a spokesman at that sort of level, he will have more functions than just sending out technicians to various parts of the Commonwealth and to the other developing countries. I hope that the indications already given will have led us some way along the path I have been sketching.

In the definition of the Ministry which the hon. Gentleman took from the White Paper, there is a reference to the provision of advisory technical and consultant services. Can that be stretched to cover the building up of the fund of information which I advocate?

On Second Reading, the Financial Secretary was kind enough to mention with sympathy what I had said about our Commonwealth having, perhaps, only ten years in which to show the rest of the world that we could develop our Commonwealth under our free system as well as Communism could ever claim to do. For this purpose, we need a more ambitious approach to the new Ministry than we have seen so far. All my experience in the developing Commonwealth has led me to believe that the greatest problem is that, as soon as one starts development in any country, aspirations, expectations and demands for improvement run ahead of opportunities of satisfying them. People become excited as soon as there is economic advance; they think that they should share in it immediately. Jam today, not jam tomorrow, is what they want.

In the circumstances, in a developng community, one has to move fast. One has to provide opportunities quickly. One has to provide capital which goes to the right places at the right time to give the right sort of development as soon as may be. Miss Barbara Ward has made exactly that diagnosis of what is happening in India. Aspirations quickly run ahead of opportunities. I agree with her and apply the same judgment to the whole of our developing Commonwealth. It is in that spirit that I press the Government to establish as powerful a Ministry as they can within the confines of the decision they have taken about its limitations so that it may be able to help to the full in all the work which is necessary.

Dr. Alan Thompson (Dunfermline Burghs)

I wish to carry on from where my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) left off. I shall try to be equally cogent and brief. I underline the point he made about India and about how aspirations can be thwarted, India is engaged upon a five-year plan the aim of which is nothing more than achieving a national income per head of 10s. a week. Even this modest aim is being frustrated because of two factors, lack of skill and lack of capital. Because India has not the skills, it cannot get the capital. Because it cannot get the capital, it cannot develop the skills. That, in a nutshell, illustrates our argument in pressing for a slight enlargement of the functions of the proposed new Department.

As my hon. Friend said, we are really trying to do what the Bill itself is designed to do. It is said several times in the Bill that the object is to provide assistance in economic development. Our point is that the narrow aim of providing technical assistance cannot on its own help economic development. The Ministry will need to have the wider functions which have been suggested.

My hon. Friend has said that we want information about where to obtain money. For investment I suggest that we need also much more information about where to spend the money. Economic development, as we have seen, does not spring from any one factor on its own. It comes from a combination of technical assistance and the quantity of investment. The problem, which has not yet been fully faced, is not only one of investment but of what kind of investment. We are apt to assume that conditions in backward countries are so awful that any kind of investment will do. We satisfy ourselves by adding up the amounts of investment, without looking to the purposes to which the investment has been directed.

There is a danger that foreign capital entering a newly developing country is likely to be guided in its line of investment more by a knowledge of existing markets than by conjectures about the domestic markets in the country which it is designed to help. I will give an example from American sources to illustrate this. All the vast quantities of American investment abroad are judged chiefly according to what is helpful to America rather than to the countries to which the investment goes. One-third is for petroleum, to satisfy the demand in world markets for petroleum. Less than one-third is for manufacturing. One-tenth of American investment is in mining. The United States hardly invests at all in public works and utilities and such things as irrigation. American investment goes principally to the extractive industries, and some goes to manufacturing industries.

We must do a great deal of research or this question of investment. We must ensure that we invest not only for the good of the country which does the investing. We ought to be looking to the needs of the newly developing countries. In the long term, more benefit may be derived from studying their needs and domestic markets than by expanding investment along well-known lines of guaranteed world markets in such things as petroleum. In other words, we must have diversified investment. Clearly, this can be done only if we have a great deal of information to hand.

I said earlier that economic development does not flow only from capital or only from technical assistance. It flows from a combination of the two. We must acquire a great deal of knowledge about the nature of the countries in which our investment can help. We ought to know, for instance, about the mobility of factors of production. We ought to know about transport facilities and about the various forms of social organisation. One of the troubles in Kenya, for instance, is caused by the obsolete system of land tenure as a result of which no one has any enthusiasm for cultivating the land properly because, at the end of the year, the village headman redistributes the holdings, allocating everyone's plot to someone else. We must know about the system of land tenure and about social conditions and attitudes, for example, the attitude of the workers towards their work. In the absence of knowledge about any of these things, our capital will go to the wrong places and to the wrong people. In the absence of comprehensive knowledge of the countries in which we wish to invest, foreign capital will bring prosperity to a few but leave many in poverty.

I urge the Minister to consider the need—perhaps he is considering it already; it was stressed often enough on Second Reading—to employ a good deal of economic and statistical research. It was stressed on Second Reading that, already, one of the perils of faulty investment has developed. This is what economists call the international demonstration effect—that is, backward countries embark on grandiose capital projects modelled on those current in rich countries. They imitate what we have demonstrated, although it may not be suitable for them at their stage of development. This can lead to investment in extravagant schemes which do not add as much as they should to the productive powers of the countries concerned. These schemes technically are perfect. The engineers, architects and scientists employed on them have done their job well. They may fulfil the criterion of technical assistance, but they do not fulfil the criterion of the best economic investment.

I therefore suggest that the Minister, in employing his staff, should pay a good deal of attention to the economic and statistical implications of his Department. The other day I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer about how many economists and statisticians would be employed in the new Department. He said that he could not say. I do not know whether the Financial Secretary to the Treasury tonight is in a position to give this information. However, I hope that we shall hear something encouraging from him.

The capital which is at the moment flowing into the under-developed countries is about 5,000 million dollars a year. If we want to raise the national income of these countries by only 2 per cent. per year—and, as I have said, the objective in India is to have a national income of only 10s. per person per week—we must step up this investment to 14,000 million dollars a year. We must also give a great deal of consideration to where this investment should go.

In this spirit, I support my hon. Friend's proposal. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will consider enlarging the functions of his Department so as to encompass information on the wider objectives which we have stressed.

Mr. H. A. Marquand (Middlesbrough, East)

I support the Amendment and I hope that the Government will accept it. It is an Amendment, as it has to be at this stage of the Bill, which does not seek to expand the scope of the Bill in any way. It merely seeks to ensure beyond doubt that the collection and dissemination of information is part, and a very necessary and essential part, of technical co-operation.

During the Second Reading debate, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said: … about half the proposed staff, in number about 550, will come from the directorates of the Overseas Services"— I doubt whether that is exactly what he said— and the Overseas Geological Surveys."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th April, 1961; Vol. 639, c. 349.] I cannot help thinking that the word "services" was a stenographical error and that he in fact referred to the Directorate of Overseas Surveys, which are described on page 34 of the White Paper, which is our main guide to technical co-operation. This is a clear indication that a large and substantial part of the staff of the new Department will be engaged in collecting information. It will be engaged in research work and the collection of information about geodetics, geology and mineral resources. Will all the work now conducted under the auspices of the Overseas Research Council be regarded as falling within the ambit of the new Minister?

It would take too long to expound all the various activities co-ordinated by the Overseas Research Council. They are listed at great length in the White Paper. I am sure that the Committee in general has a good knowledge of the range which they cover. These institutions, which come under the general oversight of the Overseas Research Council, cover a wide range of activities. Some of them are already under the supervision of Ministers who are not overseas Ministers, but many fall within the range of activity of the overseas Ministers. We should like to know whether it is intended that this sort of survey and research work should be brought under the umbrella of the new Department as well as the work of the geological surveys and of the geodetic services, as we have been told already.

8.15 p.m.

If this is so, and if it is intended that the new Minister shall broadly be the responsible Minister for the oversight by the Overseas Research Council of the collection of necessary data for action overseas, will it be possible for the new Minister to take over the responsibility which now rests with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to which reference is made on page 35 of the White Paper? We are told in the White Paper that the Tropical Products Institute is a station of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. It became such in April, 1959. To most people, the D.S.I.R. is known as an organisation for stimulating, encouraging and financing research in British industry within this country for the purpose of developing industrial efficiency and exports, and things of that kind. On the other hand, the work of the Tropical Products Institute is surely very far away from that. Would not this be an opportune moment to bring it into close touch with the provision of overseas technical assistance with which it obviously must be very closely connected?

The same applies to the Colonial Pesticides Research Institute and the Anti-Locust Research Centre. Some uses of pesticides are at home and in Europe, but many and the most important of them are in the under-developed countries. Will it be possible for the Minister to take, not merely an interest but some responsibility for ensuring that the work of these institutes is directed to his purposes and to the purpose of assisting development in under-developed countries.

I now wish to say a few words about the conferences to which reference is made on page 37 of the White Paper. A list of some of the conferences organised under the auspices of the Colonial Office for dependent territories from 1957 to 1960 is given. Many of these conferences were concerned with technical assistance. One of them was particularly concerned with technical education in the Colonial Territories. One was concerned with radio in education. One was concerned with the administrative aspects of community development. One was concerned with rural economic development. They all involved technical assistance. There were discussions among experts of the method of rendering technical assistance in those spheres.

If the Amendment were accepted, it would be possible for the Minister to take an active interest in these things. It would be entirely reasonable that in future this kind of study work and conference should come under his auspices and not under the direct auspices of the Colonial Secretary or the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations.

It is clear from what we know already and from what the Financial Secretary has told us that it is the Government's intention to make the Department more than a post office. It is to be not merely an employment exchange, a place collecting demands for skilled professional service and then trying to satisfy those demands from its lists of available persons. It is going to do more than that. If it is to undertake and be responsible for, as we are told quite definitely it is, such matters as mineral surveys, will it also be able to extend its area of authority to conducting economic surveys?

Surveys of economic potential are an evident close partner of the provision of technical assistance. The two must go together. Indeed, we cannot have a survey of economic potential unless we recruit the experts who will provide the particular form of technical assistance in making the survey. The direction of the survey must be aligned to the need for development, and the findings of the survey must provide the basis on which the new technical assistance is to be made available. So I suggest that the conduct of surveys of that kind must surely be the responsibility of the new Minister, and we want to find out clearly tonight whether that is so.

A long list of overseas missions is given in the White Paper from page 38 right over to page 41. Again, it would be foolish to quote a large number of these, but very many of them, perhaps the majority, were economic surveys. Others were related to education, others to labour questions, some to local government, some to marketing and so on. All, or nearly all, were directly related to what we commonly know as technical assistance.

It was clearly admitted in the Second Reading debate that the new Minister, in performing his duties, would have to operate some system of priorities. Everyone knows that the kind of manpower with which he will be concerned is scarce manpower, and that the demand exceeds the supply again and again. Therefore, he will have to have a system of allocations and priorities. He will have to say, "I have only one expert in this field; I have two employment opportunities from which to choose, and I must make the choice." He can make that allocation of skilled manpower and determine the priority only if he can assess the relative importance of the different projects.

Therefore, it seems to me that it is essential that he should have the power to arrange the surveys, either directly or through other agencies, to determine what surveys need to be made, and to study the results of those surveys. It is an essential part of his job, it seems to me, that he should collect this highly relevant information. He is responsible for a much wider field than the Commonwealth alone, to which reference has been made by my hon. Friends who spoke earlier. That is why the Foreign Secretary is one of his superior Ministers.

He will have requests, not merely from the Commonwealth, but from foreign countries, and, I suppose, from the United Nations itself, because the United Nations seeks to provide technical experts through the Technical Assistance Board and the Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance. It will have to come to him from time to time and say, "What can you provide?" in a given direction, and so, it seems to me, he would need to collect similar information in this respect. He will want to know what the United Nations' needs and projects are, and what kinds of special experts it may have available, so that he can call upon them as often as they call upon him.

If there is need to centralise the supply of technical aid, there can be no sense in the separate collection of information. The Colonial Office has a great deal of information about all these matters about which I have been speaking. A great deal of what is contained in the White Paper is already done by the Colonial Office. It collects the necessary information for these purposes, and so, presumably, does the Commonwealth Relations Office, though the latter's sphere in the matter is more limited, because its power is more limited, since it is dealing mainly with independent countries. So, presumably, must the Foreign Office be collecting information from the United Nations.

In regard to the United Nations, there are innumerable agencies at work. There are the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association, the Development Finance Corporation, the United Nations Special Fund and the Technical Assistance Board. Outside the United Nations proper, there are organisations like the Development Assistance Group, the Organisation for European Co-operation and Development, which is closely linked with study groups set up by the European Economic Community, and there is our own Colonial Development and Welfare Fund, the Commonwealth Development Corporation, the Special Commonwealth Aid for Africa Plan and the Colombo Plan.

All these organisations are at work in this field, and, somehow, whoever is working for the British Government has to know about their activities. It seems to me that it would be wrong in future to suggest that contact with all these agencies, the collection of information about their activities, and their needs should continue to be carried out by three separate Departments—the Colonial Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Foreign Office.

The collection of all this information should now be the job of the Minister for Technical Co-operation. He should maintain a corpus of information about what all these agencies are up to. He should be the one central source of information with a large library and plenty of dockets and files so that the information can readily be turned out, and he should have plenty of personal contacts with similar people working in the field for all those other agencies.

On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson) referred to surveys and asked: Will the new Department be free to go ahead with new ways of finding out and of doing things? The Financial Secretary to the Treasury replied: Most certainly, the answer is 'Yes'."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th April, 1961; Vol. 639, c. 285, 346.] I regarded that as the most encouraging and most important statement in the debate.

The new Minister can only do this, he can only think of new ways of doing things and he can only be finding out if he is in possession of the central corpus of information which I have attempted briefly to describe. If he surveys and collects the results of his surveys, he is bound to come up with new ideas. This is where the new ideas will come from. They will not come from thinking in a vacuum or even by reading some of the numerous learned works which the Financial Secretary reads. We know that he reads them, because from time to time he quotes from them effectively.

It will not be an affair merely of personal reading. It will be an affair of having available a vast corpus of information about what everybody in the field is doing. Out of that knowledge will come the new ideas. Then, the Minister will be able to produce his ideas, go to it and develop something new, which may not be done by him—it may have to be done by another Department; but he will be the originator of the new idea. New ideas are needed. We have not thought of everything that needs to be done or of every way of tackling the problem of under-developed areas. Certainly, thought must be given to the problem, and the thought must be based upon informed advice. That means, in the words of my hon. Friend's Amendment, information.

Let me give one example. Take the problem of protein starvation in the under-developed areas and the disease known as Kwashiokor, from the red hair which it produces very often in sufferers from this disease, especially in Africa. Here is a disease of protein starvation which prevails widely in the underdeveloped areas and especially in Africa. It is a debilitating disease, very often a killing disease. In hospitals which I have visited an under-developed areas, I have seen several pathetic examples of little babies dying from this disease. There is no more agonising sight.

8.30 p.m.

This is a widely prevalent disease. Scientific research has shown that it can be treated by supplying the sufferer with dried milk. On the other hand, in the Western world, in our own country and in most of the countries of Europe, we have a plentitude, if not a surplus, of milk. Countries of Western Euprope, and New Zealand as well, which conducts a similar agricultural economy because it has a similar climate to our own, can grow grass and raise cattle easily, effectively and efficiently. They have had centuries of cattle breeding which now results almost in a bath of milk in every one of these countries.

Half the problem of whether the European Economic Community can go forward and of whether the producers of farm products can adjust themselves to that new community arises from the fact that we can produce from our farms in Western Europe enormously more of almost every agricultural product than we readily can consume. The competition of these various forms of farm products for the consumer's shilling is one of the central features of the difficulty of our adherence, and the adherence of other nations like Denmark, to the European Economic Community.

Here is a situation, therefore, where there is need to collect the information about the availability of increased production of milk from these countries which are so well situated to produce it, and the information about Kwashiokor and protein starvation. Putting the two sets of information together, a solution might come. It might be possible to same innumerable lives, and to render innumerable more lives pleasant instead of miserable, if we could combine our ability to produce milk, dry it and send it abroad with the needs of these countries to have it. This is quoted only as an example of the sort of problem which confronts men and about which so far we know comparatively little and concerning which there should be more study.

This is an example of what we mean by saying that we hope that the new Ministry will not be content merely with studying requests from overseas countries for technical assistance, studying its existing resources of technically qualified people and matching one with the other, but will look into the future and look at the problems which arise from the very work of the technically expert people with whom it is dealing. We strongly hope, therefore, that the Government can accept the Amendment or, it may be, tell us that its purpose is already included in their plans and that this is what they want to do. If this is what the Government want to do, the Bill is worth while.

In our last debate we were accused by the hon. Member for Surbiton (Mr. Fisher) of rather decrying the Bill. All we said then was that we wished that it had been of wider scope. Now we are saying that, granted the scope is limited, let us make the best possible use of it. Let us create it into an inspired Ministry. Let us give the Minister an inspiring job to do. Let it be something which will exercise all his talents, qualities, and abilities. Let us give him an exciting and worth-whale job to do and thereby contribute notably to the solution of the major problem with which we are concerned.

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson (Stirling and Falkirk Burghs)

I support the Amendment. I am sometimes appalled by the amount of information which is collected and by the amount of additional information which back benchers continually ask the Government to collect about this, that or the other subject. If the pieces of information which are collected were put end to end, the result would stagger everyone, but in this case there is no doubt that information is bound to be one of the bases of action and of ideas.

My right hon. and hon. Friends have given a number of illustrations, much more learned and informed than I could possibly give. I will give a simple illustration which I came across during the last few days. Somebody said that at a particular spot such and such people were needed but that the chap in charge could not get hold of them. Somebody else said, "If we had known that at the time we could have supplied them without any difficulty". If that happens often, and I would not be surprised to hear that it does, it reduces the effect of the technical assistance which can be given. We need a considerable amount of information which must be co-ordinated—I think "processed" is the modern word—to make sure that we get the right end product where it is needed.

I want to ask one question, undeterred by the fascinating but not very informative reply which the Financial Secretary gave on Second Reading. The Report of the Oxford Conference on Commonwealth Education made one recommendation which I think fits in with the possible programme of this Department. It suggested the setting up of an information centre. The Report was a little restrictive about the use of such a centre. It was to be for the use of more or less authorised inquiries—inquiries by Governments and official bodies. Such a centre should be provided for the benefit of individuals and organisations. This Department would be an excellent home for that kind of centre. This country would be the proper one in which to set up such a centre. I know that the Financial Secretary has been asked an enormous number of questions, but can he tell us what has happened about that proposal?

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle)

I think that I shall be able to go a long way, if not the whole way, towards reassuring the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman), the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) and other hon. Members who have spoken.

First, let me make it clear that the new Department is not intended to be merely a post office. The Minister or Secretary when he is appointed will not be simply an underlord. The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East was right to take this point. The Minister will not qualify for a new version of the statue of Rodin's Thinker. He will have a job to do. That was once said about Lord Percy of Newcastle when he had a co-ordinating job in the 1935 Government. This is not a co-ordinating job. That is what one might term a purposive job.

The right hon. Gentleman asked many questions. I should like to look at them in detail, but I think that the answer to the overwhelming majority of them is "Yes". I can say this to him, that the Overseas Research Council is not itself responsible for expenditure from Exchequer funds, but the new Department will, in general, take over the research work in the United Kingdom which is now financed by the three overseas Departments, and in particular it will take over certain research work now financed from Colonial Development and Welfare funds.

Incidentally, the Amendment would provide for arrangements for furnishing countries outside the United Kingdom with technical assistance and information … Many speeches this evening have stressed the importance of the new Department having ample sources of information, and I entirely agree about that. It is a mistake for Government Departments to hold too much information which can quite easily be obtained from outside, but it is important that the Department itself should be well-informed. The idea is that it should be able to give advice and information in response to specific requests made to it—for example, information regarding skilled personnel or equipment, or about the building of a dam or a railway.

In answer to the point raised by the hon. Member for Northfield, as I see it it will be absolutely within its terms of reference for the new Department to give advice and answer questions on possible sources of finance for certain projects. Whether I go all the way with what he said depends on whether more stress is to be laid on one sentence of his Second Reading speech than on another. I do not want to quibble about this, but there is a distinction to be drawn here. I agree with him when he says: It would be one Ministry to which these territories could come for advice and help in finding the right source of capital. But a little earlier in his speech he said that there was a need for a Ministry which having got the assessment of the problem could guide, counsel and advise the particular territory as to whether and where it was most likely to get the capital to satisfy its requirements."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th April, 1961; Vol. 639, c. 276.] I would stress the "advice and help" rather than the "guide and counsel".

I am not sure whether, in the first instance, it is the primary job of the Department to tell overseas territories whether they should make a point of trying to obtain Government aid or whether they should content themselves with trying to obtain aid from some other source, but it will be the task of the Department to be as helpful as it can in response to questions as to what possible sources of finance there might be. I can assure the hon. Member for Northfield that information of that sort is certainly one of the forms which technical assistance takes; in fact, it is subsumed in the words "technical assistance" as defined.

There are one or two other aspects of information that I should mention. First, it is desirable that the new Department should give a certain amount of overseas publicity to its technical assistance work. This is only one aspect of our overseas aid, and one would have to be careful about duplicating the Overseas Information Services. But I can assure the Committee that the new Department will have a small information branch, and the job of the information branch of the Department will be an important one.

One question that was not raised by hon. Members opposite but which I include for the sake of completeness is whether the new Department should provide information not only about the sources of finance available in this country but about what other countries are doing in the way of technical assistance, and where it can best be sought. That is a point that we would like to examine further. There is something to be said for the idea of setting up a kind of clearing house. On the other hand, we must remember that last year the Commonwealth Economic Consultative Council advised against doing this. I would rather suspend judgment on that point, and simply say that the question whether we should have a clearing house—collecting information about what other countries are doing as well as what we are doing, and where technical assistance can best be sought—is a matter which the Government are still considering.

Mr. John Tilney (Liverpool, Wavertree)

Can my hon. Friend say whether that information would include particulars of insurance and private investment overseas?

Sir E. Boyle

I am sure that that point will be included in the subjects for consideration.

In general, we expect that when the new Department is set up it will have to deal with many inquiries from all parts of the world. These will include inquiries regarding skilled personnel and equipment and, no doubt, about possible sources of finance. It will quite clearly be one of the major responsibilities of the new Department to see that it is well placed to give as helpful answers to these inquiries as possible.

8.45 p.m.

The hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson) asked a question about education. I should like to make it plain that education is not outside the scope of the new Ministry. The term "social services"—in winding up on the Second Reading I may have given a false impression—is specifically inserted in Clause 1 (1) to cover education, which is one of the most important—perhaps the most important—of all the social services. The new Department, with its strong corps of educational advisers and its close links with a great number of outside bodies dealing with education, will be able to help in a wide educational field.

I will not add to what I said in the Second Reading debate about the boundaries of this work between the new Department, the Ministry of Education and the British Council. But I should like to make clear that it is intended that the new Department should establish close relationships with bodies like the Inter-University Council, the Council for Overseas Colleges of Arts, Science and Technology, and all the other outside educational bodies with which the Colonial Office has for so long been closely associated.

Having given that explanation of the purposes of the Bill, and having tried to deal specifically with the point raised by him, I hope that the hon. Member for Northfield may feel able not to press the Amendment.

Mr. Marquand

Does the hon. Gentleman say that this Minister will feel that from time to time, although not a member of the Cabinet, he must be able to put to the Cabinet some new proposals in this field?

Sir E. Boyle

I think that the head of this new Department will have to do a good deal of forward thinking. Quite apart from the specific departmental responsibility, he will obviously have a voice in a great many questions at what one might call Cabinet Committee level with which all overseas Ministers will be concerned. I think that point must be quite evident.

Mr. Chapman

I think that the whole Committee is greatly obliged to the Financial Secretary. This debate has taken us a great deal further than on Second Reading. The more precise definition which the hon. Gentleman has given us today is extremely welcome on this side of the Committee.

The hon. Gentleman was good enough to refer to what I said on Second Reading. He said that the difference between us was on whether this new Ministry should guide, counsel and advise or whether it should be a Ministry to which territories could come for advice and help in finding the right sort of capital. I think that what he means is that this new Ministry should not be proffering advice and trying to guide and counsel but should be available to do so if particular territories asked for it. If that is the only difference that divides us, I am sure that we shall not quarrel about it. We shall be grateful if the definition he has given is carried out.

I think that the hon. Gentleman will understand the reason why we felt bound to put down this Amendment, if I may, in turn, refer him to his own speech. When he reads his speech I think he will agree that he gives the impression, perhaps inevitably in trying to gallop through a lot of the functions of the new Ministry, that this Ministry is a sort of employment exchange for technicians. That is all that is mentioned in the three or four columns defining the work of the new Department. Of course, I will gladly ask leave to withdraw the Amendment. Clearly this Ministry will be a far more exciting place than I had thought. My own Second Reading speech was made partly because of the narrow definition of its activities which the hon. Gentleman gave. But clearly it is to be a Ministry with many more positive functions and with more constructive work to do in connection with the development of our Commonwealth and other territories.

It is rumoured in the newspapers that the hon. Gentleman himself is to be appointed the Minister. We on this side of the Committee would be delighted if that proved to be the case. Of the "bunch" on the Treasury Bench the hon. Gentleman would be the best who could be chosen, and I mean that as a compliment. If it does happen, and if when appointed the hon. Gentleman is able to follow out the lines of the information which he has given us, we on this side of the Committee shall be delighted. In the circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr. G. M. Thomson (Dundee, East)

I wish to take this opportunity to ask the Minister for further enlightenment on an important statement which he made in his recent speech. We are grateful to the hon. Gentleman for going out of his way to correct what he felt might have been a false impression which he gave regarding the work of the new Ministry in helping with education overseas. Certainly during the Second Reading debate we gained the impression that the responsibility of this Ministry in that connection was a great deal more limited than would appear to be the case.

Can the hon. Gentleman tell us a little more about how the Ministry will operate in this very vital matter? I am thinking of the description of the operations of the Ministry which he gave during the Second Reading debate when he said, in effect, that a great part of the work in the new Department would be concerned with the responsibilities and functions which are at present divided between the overseas department of the Foreign Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office. If, as he says, this Ministry will have a responsibility for the expanding assistance to education in the underdeveloped territories, does that mean that it will take over what is in effect the overseas section of the Ministry of Education?

May we also know whether the adviser on education to the Colonial Secretary, a man who has done immense work in this sphere, will have his responsibilities transferred to the new Ministry, or will the Ministry carry on its educational responsibilities alongside the advisory work of the Colonial Office? It is important that we should be clear about how the new Ministry will operate in this regard. The Minister will be aware that there are many important and exciting developments going on especially since the Commonwealth Educational Conference, and it is felt that there exists a good deal of chaos, confusion and overlapping between the existing governmental institutions. If the new Department can do something to sort things out and make sure that decisions are taken at one centre, and if we can come to the new Minister for information, that will mark an immense step forward. Can the Minister give us a fuller picture of what will be the Department's responsibility in relation to education?

Mr. Ede (South Shields)

The speech of the Financial Secretary awakened one echo in my memory when he alluded to the appalling fate of the noble Lord who started as the younger son of a duke and wound up by being a peer in his own right. When he was Lord Eustace Percy, he was appointed by a Prime Minister to an office which was wide-ranging and he was generally alluded to in this House as "The Minister for Thought". After a few months of office he resigned on the ground that there was nothing required of him in a Conservative Government. He retired and was out of office for several years.

I hope the hon. Gentleman will be able to impress on whoever takes this job—and with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman), I hope the hon. Gentleman accepts it—that thought is required. But thought must be followed by action, particularly in fields like this, if it is to be of any value and if this office is to be justified. We want action in all the spheres which have been mentioned tonight. My hon. Friend said that on Second Reading the Financial Secretary galloped. I do not think he is built for galloping. If whoever has the office can show stamina and initiative in his post and that he will not easily be put aside by some preliminary disappointments, this will be a job which any man with an eye to the future might envy.

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson

I wish to thank the Financial Secretary for clearing up a question about education. I could hardly believe that the answer would be any different from that which he has given, but by the end of the Second Reading debate there was need for clarification. I am grateful to him for giving it.

I wish to ask another specific question, also connected with education. It is an important question concerned with the distinction between capital and equipment. I suppose that in the technical sense equipment is itself capital, but there arises a question of where to draw the line. Can the Financial Secretary tell us—if not, perhaps he will let me know later—whether a school building will be regarded as capital or equipment in relation to the new Department? This is an important matter for the development of education. Presumably the books and other objects in a school would be regarded as equipment, but we do not know whether a building, costing perhaps £1 million, would be treated as part of the equipment or as capital.

9.0 p.m.

Sir E. Boyle

I shall try to answer the questions which have been raised. In view of what was said about Lord Percy, it is perhaps worth recalling, since we have almost a majority of Scots hon. Members in the Committee, that after retiring from his post he wrote quite the best life of John Knox that has been written.

In answer to the question about the Ministry of Education, the Ministry is not responsible for policy in assistance to overseas education. That is the responsibility of the overseas departments at present. The Ministry is in a position to help the overseas departments in the field of education, and will continue to provide that service for the new Department. I cannot add to what I said on Second Reading on this subject, but it is not true that the Ministry of Education under the new arrangement will not have a continuing and important work to do overseas. There is, in the first place, the Ministry of Education's important and continuing work in Europe with such bodies as the Council of Europe Cultural Fund.

When British teachers take part in exchanges with Commonwealth teachers it is a very valuable habit that on a number of occasions the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Education has spoken to those teachers before they have gone abroad. I can think of many ways in which the Minister of Education helps overseas departments and will help the new Department in the future. The Ministry of Education will still be the Department responsible to the House for the work of UNESCO.

The hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson) asked about school buildings. The provision of school buildings would be capital aid, but it seems to me that there may be a number of occasions on which technical assistance might be provided in connection with school buildings, for example in the provision of equipment and advice on educational matters.

Mr. Chapman

And in design.

Sir E. Boyle

And in design. We can all feel that school building is one matter in which we can take national pride since the war. Furthermore, whatever our differences, the organisation of public education in this country is a subject in which we have long experience and in which we might be able to give technical advice and assistance overseas.

On Second Reading my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) made a helpful contribution, and he then asked that the Government should make it clear that professional people of all sorts who went out to work overseas should not lose their place on the ladder when they returned home and should not suffer as the result of the time they had spent out of the country. I assure my hon. Friend that the Government are fully seized of the need for professional people of all types to regard it as natural that they should spend part of their working lives out of this country. The Government hope that an increasing number of firms and employers, both public and private, will recognise this also, and that, far from penalising the individual for the time he has spent away from his normal work, they will regard it as an advantage that he has had an opportunity to work abroad. I am glad to have the opportunity, I hope within the rules of order, to answer that point. I think that those are the only points raised by hon. Members.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.