MALTA

HC Deb 26 April 1963 vol 676 cc672-84

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. M. Hamilton.]

4.1 p.m.

Sir William Teeling (Brighton, Pavilion)

I have been lucky enough to have an Adjournment debate on the Colonial Office and Malta. Obviously, this is a very wide subject and there is very little time to deal with it. I cannot help remembering that, on 13th July last—a well-known date in the political history of this country when a lot of Ministers ceased to be Ministers—Dr. Borg Olivier, the Prime Minister of Malta, and others happened to be my guests at a reception here in this building. Half way through the evening, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Sir R. Robinson) came to me and said that he thought that the Prime Minister of Malta would wish to know that the Secretary of State for the Colonies had become Chancellor of the Exchequer and that someone else had become not only Secretary of State for the Colonies but Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations as well.

Poor Dr. Borg Olivier looked very sad and said, "Oh, dear. This is the third Colonial Secretary with whom I have had to deal within the last few weeks, and I have got to start all over again". Then his face suddenly brightened and he said—I remember his words very well—"But Mr. Maudling did say that he could not do anything for me as Colonial Secretary because of the Treasury, and now he is the Treasury, so perhaps everything will be all right". Unfortunately, nothing at all happened after that, as far as one could see, and he did not get very much assistance.

Dr. Borg Olivier had, in fact, been over here earlier in the year, just after he had become Prime Minister, as my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) reminded us earlier this morning, and nothing very much came of that meeting. Nothing very much more came of the next meeting, and he finally went back feeling, as, I believe, all the Maltese feel at the present time, that they have in some way been forgotten and left out. As one Minister said to me, "After all, the great difficulty is that the Colonial Office is apt to put Malta at the bottom of the list". That is what the Maltese themselves are beginning to feel.

I have looked up the record of debates on Malta. We used to have many, but I find that the last full debate in this House on Malta was on 2nd February, 1959, and in another place there was one organised by the late Lord Winterton on 24th October, 1961. Otherwise, there has been only one Adjournment debate which I happened to have on the Tourist Board on 19th May, 1961. Apart from that, it has all been by Question and Answer. Frankly, this is not really satisfactory for a Colony which is at the moment more than a little worried about its own financial position, about the run-down of the Services, and what is to happen to it in the future, especially when those of us who remember the debates in the past realise how important a subject it was considered to be in those earlier days.

I remember so well when Mr. Lennox-Boyd, as he then was, was not only trying to get Malta integrated with us, but was promising the Archbishop and the Prime Minister and everyone else that if we did not integrate a large sum of money would. nevertheless, be given to Malta. Now we are told that, because Mr. Mintoff rounded on us, which indeed he did, and decided not to stay with us and finally the Constitution had to be abrogated for the time being, and Dr. Borg Olivier would not take over the premiership because he honestly felt that he had not been asked by his country to do so—then, because of all that, Malta was refused the financial offers this country promised earlier.

This is not the occasion, during a short debate, to go into these very worrying details for this little island. They should be raised in a more serious and longer debate in which the Colonial Office can say why it feels, as the present Colonial Secretary has indicated, a moral but not a legal obligation to help Malta. Having said that the Colonial Office has a moral obligation, the Colonial Secretary then says that he is not sure what he can do. He wants to help but cannot make up his mind about what to do. I am in no way blaming my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for this because I know that he had very little to do with this problem before Christmas, since when he has quite a lot to do with it.

But before that others were trying to deal with it. Then came this problem of our own Prime Minister deciding that it was time that the Colonial Secretary and the Commonwealth Secretary should be one and the same person.

As far as I can see, the net result has been that many Colonial Office problems have been put aside, not only because of the amalgamation of the two offices but also because of the Common Market problem. My right hon. Friend was far more worried about what was happening in New Zealand, Australia and Canada than about what was happening in the lesser Colonies. Consequently, we had the problem of Brunei and problems in Africa and elsewhere, which arose later, pushed ahead of poor Malta, which was left at the bottom of the list.

In the meantime, the problem concerning the dockyards developed. I have been interested in Malta for years and I have always felt that there are certain members of the Colonial Office staff who, when dealing with Malta, feel, that they must have a hate against somebody. It first started with an affection for Mintoff which inevitably meant that there had to be a slight hate for Miss Strickland and Dr. Olivier. Then when the Mintoff issue was more or less over and he had stepped into the background the Colonial Office staff had to switch their hate to somebody else, and then there was the slight hate for Dr. Olivier. After that came the general election when, much to the surprise of the Colonial Office. Dr. Olivier got in. The Colonial Office had not been in the least prepared for this and therefore it had to indulge in a lot of stalling in order to keep him off because it had made no preparations to deal with him.

The hate then had to move to somebody else, and it fell on the dockyards. Various questions were asked about what was happening and there was a general dislike of the Bailey regime as a whole. Today, whenever Malta is mentioned, people say, "You are going to talk about the dockyard, are you?" Some people are inclined to feel that the Colonial Secretary is delighted that the dockyard provides a smokescreen covering the tricky problem of the rundown of Forces which will take place over the next few years and which will cause endless financial trouble for the island and a great deal of worry for our own consciences.

I should like to switch for a moment to the Governor's speech on Candlemass Day. It is an interesting new development that some of our Governors are beginning to make speeches which rather kick against the policy of our own Government. We saw it at the opening of Parliament in Salisbury not long ago in respect of the Governor-General.

This is what our own Governor in Malta said; The logic of the future presents us with problems and possibilities. Our problems are jobs, income and revenue; our potential lies in agriculture and horticulture, in the dockyard, in new industries and in tourism. Our outlets lie in emigration and employment in Europe. Our challenge is independence. First, jobs. We have heard about the number of those who are likely to be discharged from the Services Establishment in the next few years, but this is only the beginning of our problem, and I do not think most people yet appreciate how serious this is likely to become. If present policies continue, the position will be thus: assuming that in new industries and in tourism we can make 4,500 new jobs over the next four or five years—still only 900 new fobs have so far been created over the last three years; assuming that we can persuade some 2,000 workmen to enter employment in Europe—and there are none as yet. but the first are already leaving; assuming that we can find opportunities for emigration at double the present levels—that is, some 22,000 people would leave Malta in the next few years, of whom about 10,000 would be workmen; then, by 1967 I am advised that we may still easily have almost 20,000 people out of work here in Malta. Our income is the other half of the same walnut. Our national income is about £45 million a year mostly based on, and generated by, spending from the British Defence Services. We only export £5 million worth of goods, but our imports cost us £29 million. The money to pay for this we earn from the Defence Services. If industries, the dockyard, agriculture and tourism can be developed, as I suggested earlier, so that after four years they are earning for us some £4 million of new money, then by 1967 we shall still have to face a reduction in our national income, which is likely o fall by nearly one-fifh. He goes on in further detail and, to sum up, he says: One could say that by 1967 it is possible that nearly one-fourth of our people might be nut of work, one-fifth of our national income would have vanished and one-sixth of the Government revenue would have fallen away. That is a very serious problem for an island which has a population no larger than the City of Nottingham—a little over 360,000 people. What can we suggest as a possible solution? The dockyards are undoubtedly the main problem in the island. Only the other day a leading hon. Member, who is a prominent lawyer, told me that what was happening there rather reminded him of what happended to Hitler and the Jews when the trouble started for the destruction of Jewry. He said that they did not want to confiscate the Jewish property but they decided that it would be a good idea, if at all possible, to take over that property and to run it for the Jews.

That is what has happened in the last few weeks in Malta over the dockyards. As the House heard, the Secretary of State announced that he had taken over the dockyards for the time being. It has been done, he says. because the Government want to try to improve the situation and to develop the dockyard without the owners having any say in the matter. This matter is about to be dealt with by the law courts and I will, therefore, not go into it in any way, but in his statement here my right hon. Friend put his side of the case and said that the other side of it must be put outside the House.

The other side says that if it did so it would be had up for libel almost at once, not having Parliament's immunity. and it therefore has its hands tied behind its back. No doubt that will come out when the case is tried, but in the meantime we have this main issue from the point of view of employment in the island of how the docks are to be developed and how the workers are to be found employment, and from what I hear there is little doubt that at the present time the organisation running it is not properly informed of what the previous organisers were trying to do. The owners have offered to have every document they hold photostated so that both sides can see what is going on, but naturally they want to keep their own papers.

As the months go by we shall be kept waiting longer and longer for more and more jobs that could go to the island and which not unnaturally Baileys want provided there because they make a profit out of them.

In the meantime a new organisation is to come in, and about £100,000 a year is to be paid to these people out of money belonging to Baileys who have unwillingly been forced out. It seems that all this needs clearing up. That is only one side of it, and yet another proof of why we must have a much more serious and much longer debate.

There are a few things which I ask my hon. Friend either to deal with now or to look into later. One is the question of emigration. There is no doubt that if the money for emigration could be taken from a capital budget rather than from the local budget in Malta it would considerably help the Maltese, because we must get more people to emigrate. Only this morning it was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice that there is in this country a fund for emigration which is not being fully used. If it is not being used, and if the Maltese Government are asking that it should be, should not the two Governments do something to get together on that subject and help, because it is vital that something should be done to remedy the unemployment situation, which is now 8 per cent. of the working population?

The same remarks apply to technical education, because if we could use money to provide the Maltese with technical education, working class people of Malta could be trained to go abroad to work and then return to the island later.

Again, there is worry over developments with regard to the Colonial Office and the Treasury for forthcoming work on the island. There is tremendous delay, and if anything could be done to shorten it this would be of immense help.

The Maltese Government have received a loan from the World Bank for a water distillation project. The Admiralty has an area which is needed for this project and which it acquired for £25,000. The Maltese Government are being asked to pay £100,000 for the land. This is the sort of thing on which both parties could get together to solve the difficulties.

There is also a feeling in the Admiralty that it is being asked by the Colonial Office to spend money to get the dockyards going so that there will be no unemployment in the area, whereas the Colonial Office should deal with the Treasury on that matter instead of asking the Admiralty to spend the money.

Professor Stolper, called in by the Malta Government, has for some months been working on a plan for developments in the island. He says that it will take ten years, and not five years, to carry this out, and that it is up to our Government to do their level best to help. I fully agree.

My last point is with regard to civil aviation. B.E.A. has raised the cost of its services by 5 per cent. generally, but the cost of flights to Malta has been raised by 10 per cent. When fares were last increased by 5 per cent. about two years ago, no increase was made on the London to Malta flight. This was to please the then administration, which was British, and to try to attract tourists. The saving made then should not have been made good now, because this will have an adverse effect on the tourist trade, and 10 per cent. is too steep. So far as I can see, the reason can only be that the British Government feel that they are no longer responsible, and so they should double up the cost of what it was before for ordinary British tourism to Malta.

My hon. Friend has made a sign to me—with which I could not agree more—that it is time for me to close. This is just further proof that we must have a proper debate on this matter. Malta is a loyal island which has done a lot for us in the past and it wants to continue to do so. I should like to talk about Sir Eric Millbourn who has taken over and has had various documents from me on this subject. There is a feeling that he does not really know about everything going on behind the scenes and everything done by his juniors. He may or he may not. Be that as it may, I feel that we must take the situation about this island more seriously, or else there will be a most awful crash and crisis. It is further proof of what was said earlier today by my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice, that it is early days to have the Colonial Secretary and the Commonwealth Secretary as the same person.

4.21 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Nigel Fisher)

In 20 minutes my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Sir W. Teeling) has ranged widely over many matters. I shall do my best to reply to as many of them as possible in the 10 minutes which remain.

My hon. Friend will appreciate that the question of a longer debate on Malta is not a matter for me, but one to be decided through the usual channels. I was surprised to hear that we had not debated Malta since 1959. But, alas, there are many Colonial Territories which we never debate at all, and we ought certainly to do so.

I should like to say a word about the visits to this country of Dr. Borg Olivier, particularly the one in the summer of 1962, to which reference has been made. The then Secretary of State made it clear in correspondence that he could not accept the proposals that the Malta Government had submitted. Despite that, Dr. Borg Olivier arrived on 26th June, and saw the Secretary of State the next day. The Secretary of State explained that we could not accept these proposals, because £12 million still remained unspent from the United Kingdom funds already available. Dr. Borg Olivier stayed until the middle of August and saw many Ministers here on a number of occasions.

It is quite true that the Ministerial changes in July made the visit somewhat longer, because of my right hon. Friend's prior commitments in Brussels and at constitutional conferences. But he saw the Prime Minister again in September and December, when agreement was reached about the preparatory arrangements for an independence conference. We shall arrange a date for this conference as soon as the Malta Government and the political parties there are ready to hold it. Nothing we have said or done is holding it up in any way.

Meanwhile, our relations with Dr. Borg Olivier are very friendly and we are working closely with him on a number of important matters connected with the future of Malta. The fact that Malta has important problems is due partly to our defence run-down and the strategic changes which led up to it. The rundown, coupled with the population growth in the island is bound, as I readily acknowledge, to have serious effects on the economy of Malta. I regret that very much, as, indeed, we all do, and particularly the Navy after its long association with Malta. We shall do all we can, in co-operation with the Government of Malta, to help relieve the unemployment problem in the island.

As my hon. Friend knows, we undertook a joint study with Maltese officials to ascertain the factual effects of the defence run-down on the economy of Malta. The study group was not asked to make recommendations; but its assessment was made available to Dr. Stolper's United Nations Economic Mission, which has just completed its work and which will make recommendations. Publication of this United Nations Report is a matter for the United Nations and the Government of Malta, but I do not imagine that my hon. Friend will have long to wait for the information he wants. Then he will see, in the context of the remedies proposed, what the precise position is. In the meantime, we are doing all we can to help Malta, and that is quite a lot.

My hon. Friend criticised the Government for not giving Malta the money promised by Lord Boyd, when he was Secretary of State. There are two answers to that charge. First, the money was offered in quite a different context, the context of integration.

Sir W. Teeling

No.

Mr. Fisher

Well, it was. When that proposal lapsed, the offer lapsed, too.

The second answer, which may be more convincing to my hon. Friend, is that the original capital assistance offer for a five-year period was £25 million. In fact, in the five years from 1959 to 1964 we shall have made available over £29 million in grants and loans. It is a very large allocation by any standard and one of which we have no reason to be ashamed. It is, indeed, very doubtful whether Malta could have spent more than this, and it is even doubtful if she will be able to spend as much as this in the period. If she does not spend it, I can assure my hon. Friend that the money will not be lost to Malta.

Meanwhile, 24 new industries have already been started in Malta, 13 new factories have been built by the Government and grants have been approved for nine hotels. During this last month alone we have approved a grant from C.D. and W. funds of over £600,000 to establish a large textile concern, and a grant of £375,000—which is 50 per cent. of its capital cost—for the erection of the new Hilton Hotel there. This should make a really significant contribution to the development of the tourist industry in Malta.

But, apart from these developments, I quite agree that there is still an absolutely imperative need to step up the. Maltese emigration rate. My right hon. Friend attaches great importance to that, as do the Government of Malta, and we are together seeking new outlets and higher immigration quotas in many Commonwealth countries and in Europe. We shall certainly look sympathetically at my hon. Friend's suggestion of British financial assistance to subsidise Maltese emigration overseas.

In addition, my right hon. Friend has recently secured the agreement of my right hen. Friend the Minister of Labour to second to the Malta Commission's Office in London a senior official from the Ministry of Labour who will be responsible, in co-operation with the Malta authorities, for facilitating Maltese emigration to, and employment in. the United Kingdom within the framework of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act. That initiative will, I think, he somewhat on the lines of the Barbados scheme which has been so helpful to the nationals of that country in finding jobs in Britain, and Dr. Borg Olivier has expressed his appreciation to my right hon. Friend for this suggestion.

My right hon. Friend told the House not long ago that we hoped to send H.M.S. Troubridge to Malta for a major refit. I have the First Lord's permission to announce that, subject to the contract which is now being negotiated, the "Troubridge" should reach Malta by the end of May. She will be there for about a year, and will provide employment for several hundred men during that time. All these things, in their different ways, will be helpful to the economy of Malta.

Hon. Members may also like to know of another development which, I think, has been announced by the War Office today, and that is that the Royal Sussex Regiment will be sent to Malta to undertake training there. That is also agreeable to Dr. Borg Olivier and, inci- dentally, will be of some assistance to Malta.

My hon. Friend seemed to imply, if he did not actually say so, that we in the Colonial Office were not interested in Malta and were not doing much to help her. This is not so: there is no Colony in which my right hon. Friend takes more interest than he does in Malta. Indeed, he has given me the task of preparing every single week for him a Malta progress report and we do not do that for any other Colony. He and I, and my noble friend the Minister of State, all give a high proportion of our time to Malta, and it really amazed me to hear my hon. Friend say in that context that the Secretary of State has not enough time to deal with it. I think that my hon. Friend under-estimates the capacity for hard work of my right hon. Friends and also the amount of time that we all, Ministers and officials alike, spend on Malta.

Very quickly, I now turn to other matters. Air fares are mainly the concern of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation, who is already looking at the matter very urgently and is well seized of the problem. But I might say that even at the increased levels the fares to Malta are still the cheapest in Europe. My right hon. Friend has already indicated to Malta that increased expenditure under the heading of technical education is eligible for C.D. and W. assistance.

With regard to the Candlemas speech, the Governor of Malta is a constitutional Governor and takes the advice of his Malta Ministers. That speech was not written in the Colonial Office. I have no doubt that the Governor had his own sources of information, and it is not for me to comment upon it.

Lastly, the dockyard—the lifeblood of Malta. I have not the time to talk about the Baileys except to say that it is not true that the firm could not make its case. It has made it again and again in the national Press and also in an enormous number of documents sent to Members of Parliament. However, the case is sub judice and I have neither the time nor, frankly, the inclination to deal with it today. It is a separate subject.

Today, we have in the saddle a very distinguished Council of Administration whose task and determination it is to run this dockyard with efficiency and integrity, and to attract to it the maximum amount of commercial work for the benefit of its employees and for the benefit of Malta. Subject to some minor technical details yet to be settled, tile Council hope to announce the formal appointment of managing agents on Monday. I am quite certain that the House will approve wholeheartedly the name and qualifications of the firm which has accepted this responsibility.

I am sure that the administration will make a great success of the dockyard. and I am convinced that the people of Malta, with the help which we shall continue to give them and by their own resource and courage, will solve their problems in peace as gallantly as they did in war.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Five o'clock.