HC Deb 01 August 1963 vol 682 cc645-7
Q11. Mr. D. Foot

asked the Prime Minister if he will arrange for the United Kingdom to be represented by a Minister of the Crown during the remaining stages of the present meeting of the Security Council and throughout the forthcoming meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The Prime Minister

My noble Friend the Foreign Secretary will be attending the General Assembly for about 10 days towards the end of September, and the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs will also attend for part of the session. I do not consider ministerial representation at the current meetings of the Security Council to be necessary.

Mr. Foot

Does not the Prime Minister consider that when issues of the highest international importance are being considered by the Security Council or the General Assembly the views of Her Majesty's Government would be much more appropriately expressed by a Minister of the Crown than by a civil servant, however eminent the civil servant may be? Might it not be an advantage if there were a Minister resident at the United Nations in much the same way that the Prime Minister himself was resident at the Allied headquarters in North Africa during the later stages of the war?

The Prime Minister

So far as I know, it is not the practice of any members of the Security Council to be represented by Foreign Ministers.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke

Is it fair to expose civil servants to the glare of public debate in the way that they are exposed on the Security Council at the moment? Does not the theory of the constitution demand that civil servants should be nameless, anonymous and faceless? Would not we get into trouble sooner or later if we departed from that theory?

The Prime Minister

As far as I know, it is the practice on the Security Council for all the countries to be represented by ambassadors or by representatives of their Governments of that kind. At the Assembly, it has been the practice for Ministers to take part and sometimes Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries, and so forth.

Mr. H. Wilson

The Prime Minister is aware, is he not, that Governor Stevenson, who heads the American delegation to the United Nations on a permanent basis, is a member of President Kennedy's Cabinet?

The Prime Minister

That is quite true, but he is not a Foreign Secretary. He is a special representative of the President because the American Cabinet system is a very different organisation and has a different structure from our own.