HC Deb 02 December 1963 vol 685 cc940-50

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

11.12 p.m.

Mr. Emrys Hughes (South Ayrshire)

I wish to draw attention in this short debate to a Home Office pamphlet advising the householder on protection against nuclear attack. For many years, I have been appealing to the Government to initiate a full-length debate on civil defence, because ultimately all defencs should be considered defence of the civil population. But though we have had many days discussing strategy, independent nuclear deterrents and all the aspects of nuclear warfare, we have had very little opportunity to find out what is the Government's policy on civil defence.

The Home Office has recently been under a certain amount of criticism for publishing a pamphlet called "Advising the Householder on Protection against Nuclear Attack". I should like to know what are the intentions of the Home Office about the pamphlet in view of the criticisms to which it has be2n subjected. Will the Home Office revise it or withdraw it? This pamphlet has incurred the censure of the Estimates Committee. If it has been condemned by Lord Russell or the C.N.D. or the Committee of 100, one could have understood, but here is a criticism of a civil defence pamphlet by a Committee presided over by the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington). This is what the Estimates Committee said in paragraph 56 of its Report: Your Committee do not feel that this pamphlet achieves any useful purpose …Your Committee do not feel that many householders will purchase the pamphlet from the Stationery Office, nor do they feel that those who do will be convinced of the effectiveness of the measures proposed therein. In the opinion of Your Committee the average householder who reads what to do in the event of imminent nuclear attack, and is told, if driving a vehicle, that he should 'Park off the road if possible; otherwise alongside the kerb", will not form the impression that the civil defence measures taken by the Government are of any value whatsoever. Your Committee are anxious that the public should be aware of the steps that are being taken to protect them, and they feel that this pamphlet creates entirely the wrong impression. They therefore recommend that Civil Defence Handbook No. 10 should be withdrawn. What are the main features of the pamphlet advising the householder on protection against nuclear attack? It contains some remarkable understatements. On almost the first page we are told: The explosion of an H-bomb would cause total destruction for several miles around; the size of the area would depend on the size of the bomb and the height at which it was exploded. Outside this area survival would be possible but there would be three dangers…". When the authors of this pamphlet say that there will be total destruction for several miles around, are not they understating the whole problem that would arise?

During the debate on the Polaris missile we debated the probable result of a hydrogen bomb dropped over the west of Scotland, and the hon. and gallant Member for Bute and North Ayrshire (Sir F. Maclean) said that if a bomb were dropped over Glasgow it would mean the total destruction of everything within a radius of 100 miles. When, therefore, we are told that there will be total destruction for several miles around if an H-bomb is dropped, it appears that there is a tendency to underestimate the effects of such a bomb.

It is my guess that four H-bombs delivered by rocket would destroy everything in the country, but apparently the Home Office works on the assumption that, with some kind of air raid precaution similar to that obtaining during the last war, it will be possible to prevent that happening. Throughout this pamphlet there is a sense of illusion; a sense of deception; and this has incurred the critcism even of Members of the Estimates Committee.

We are told that 500,000 copies of this pamphlet have been published. They are sold at 9d. each, and are not distributed free to the civilian population. The protective measures include the provision of a fall-out room in people's houses. Immediately following the suggestion that everybody should have a fall-out room stocked and fitted out as the booklet suggests, we are told: If you live in a house, choose a room on the ground floor with as little outside wall as possible. The further you are from outside walls and the roof the better the protection. A room shielded by neighbouring buildings is better than one overlooking open space. Then we read that a person who lives in a bungalow has small chance of survival compared with someone who lives in a tenement or slum, and that single-storey prefabricated dwellings give little protection— If you could arrange to join neighbours who live in more substantial buildings you should do so. If not, you should follow the instructions on pages 9 and 10 for providing a shelter 'core' in your home. Then we have a series of elaborate instructions about choosing a room and bricking up the windows or using sandbags. One paragraph says, Put sandbags or earth-filled containers outside the windows. If you cannot do this, block the windows from inside with bookcases, chests of drawers or other large furniture packed tightly with earth, books, or other heavy material. This presumes that there will be a considerable time for preparation. Then there is the alternative. You can Remove the frames and put boards, planks or doors across outer and inner sills as shutters. Bolt or wire them together. Fill the intervening space with hard-packed earth or sand as the work proceeds. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) has asked what arrangements have been made for the earth and sandbags, and the bricks. Is it a serious instruction to householders to make these preparations now. Does not the Ministry think that these elaborate measures would tax the ingenuity of a very good general contractor? Can they possibly be put into operation in the short time that would be available in the event of a short air-raid warning?

It is not difficult to think of many parts of the country where the inhabitants have no spare room at all. In my constituency most of the municipal houses have families in every room. That observation applies to almost the whole of industrial Scotland. But in the suggested fall-out room the basic furniture and equipment is to consist of Mattresses, pillows and blankets, tables and chairs, plates, cups, knives, forks, spoons, tea-pot, tin-opener, bottle-opener, kettle, saucepans, portable stove and fuel, portable radio set and spare batteries, torches, batteries, candles, matches, face flannels, towels, sanitary towels, soap, tea towels, rubber or plastic gloves, clock, books and magazines, toys for children, notebook and pencil, box containing personal papers, e.g. N.H.S. medical cards, savings bank books, birth and marriage certificates, first aid kit.

Mr. Cyril Bence (Dunbartonshire, East)

And a copy of HANSARD.

Mr. Hughes

In addition to that, in this room there must be sanitation. We are told You could not rely on being able to use your W.C. There might not be enough water to flush it or the sewerage system might be damaged. Keep the things listed below in the fall-out room or within easy reach outside the door: Large receptacles with covers and with improvised seats for use as urinals, and for excreta. Ashes, dry earth, or disinfectant, toilet paper, clean newspapers, brown paper or strong paper bags (to wrap up food remains and empty tins), dust bin with well fitting lid for pets. Keep a box of earth or ashes. Those are elaborate instructions for a fall-out room. But, in addition, while the room is being prepared there is also the instruction Whitewash your windows; those at the top of the building matter most. The whitewash will greatly reduce the fire risk by reflecting away much of the heat, which would have passed by the time the slower moving blast wave arrived. The blast might shatter the glass, but keeping out the heat-flash for those few seconds would prevent countless fires. I have quoted some of the passages from this pamphlet which resulted in the Estimates Committee treating it with a certain amount of incredulity, and the substance of the advice of that Committee was to scrap the handbook altogether, to withdraw it, because it was serving no useful purpose. In his reply, the Secretary of State said: Over half a million copies have already been distributed or sold. Judged by its proper purpose as a training manual, there has been hardly any criticism of it by those who use it. I wonder how many of those there are. The Secretary of State does not agree that commonsense advice of a simple kind has no relevance to the conditions of nuclear war … Does the Under-Secretary think that the passages which I have quoted are "commonsense advice of a simple kind"? What proposals has he for either withdrawing the pamphlet, or deleting the passages which resulted in such incredulity? The recommendations of the Estimates Committee can be summarised thus, "This thing is phoney; this thing is rubbish; put it in the waste paper basket".

The Committee's comment on the Home Office reply was: Your Committee feel bound to inform the House that in their opinion these Observations are unsatisfactory. In particular, several of the Observations do not attempt to meet the reasoned arguments made by the Committee but merely repeat points already made in the course of the enquiry, points which the Home Office for unspecified reasons considers that the Committee have not understood. There are many other questions which I should like to raise about what could be done in the event of civil defence being necessary. For example, what progress is being made with plans for the evacuation of 6 million civilians? Certainly in Scotland we do not know to where they are to be evacuated, and how far people can be evacuated from the centre of London is a mystery which has yet to be explained.

I have some sympathy with the Under-Secretary because I know that these problems are gigantic—I think that they are insoluble. However, now that the Estimates Committee, an impartial body with a majority of Conservative Members, has issued this Report, it is up to the Home Office to tell us precisely what it intends to do about this pamphlet which has resulted in this criticism.

11.38 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. C. M. Woodhouse)

Although the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) frequently calls for debates on civil defence, he seldom attends them when they take place. I should like to call his attention to two debates earlier this year in the report of which he will find answers to a number of the questions which he has put tonight. There was one on 1st March in which I dealt with the circulation of Civil Defence Handbook No. 10, the subject he has raised this evening. There was another on 27th June when I dealt with questions relating to shelters and with dispersal policy. It will save time if I refer the hon. Gentleman to those debates, although I should like to answer him in more detail on the questions he has raised tonight, particularly the criticisms by the Estimates Committee.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

I am the most regular attender of these debates. In fact, the hon. Gentleman's predecessor thanked me for giving him an opportunity to make a speech.

Mr. Woodhouse

I am glad to join in thanking the hon. Gentleman again, but, unless I am mistaken, I did not see him on either occasion throughout the debate. As to Handbook No. 10 itself, the hon. Member has put—I will not say he is guilty because that is an unkind term—an element of misrepresentation in his Motion on the Notice Paper which I can best correct by pointing out that between the words "handbook" and "advising" he should have inserted "entitled" and then put all the subsequent words in capitals. He would then show that this is the title of the handbook and does not purport to be a handbook which is directly advising the householder.

There is I think no excuse about not being clear about the purport of the book because it is clearly set out inside the cover. It is a training publication for the civil defence, the police and the fire services with the aim of indicating to their members the sort of advice which should be given in a period of alert by all available means to the general public about what they might do in their homes or out of doors.

It is, I repeat, a training manual. Some people chiefly those who have not read it or who have read mischievous misrepresentations of it, have been puzzled about its purpose because they have been misled into thinking that it is directly addressed to householders advising them of what to do in an emergency, and that is why they have found it difficult to understand why it has not been circulated to the public.

But its purpose is the more limited one of stating to people concerned with civil defence the sort of advice which, in the present state of knowledge and resources, which will be revised from time to time, would need to be given in a period of alert to the general public. That advice is concerned with the sort of precautions which the ordinary man in his home: could take on a "do it yourself" basis.

The handbook does not purport to contain a formula which would guarantee complete protection against the effects of nuclear attack. That is an impossibility. We have always said that if this catastrophe happened the damage would be on a vast and practically unimaginable scale, although I am bound to say that some of the figures the hon. Member quoted did undoubtedly, on our information, contain a very substantial element of exaggeration.

Nevertheless, it remains true that in an area close to a burst, several miles from it certainly, most people would be killed instantaneously and nearly all buildings would be completely destroyed. But outside such an area the destructive effects would diminish and precautions could mitigate them still further. It is with these precautions, which the ordinary man and woman could take at home or out of doors, that the handbook is concerned.

This is perfectly clear in the handbook and, I think, apart from omitting the introductory remarks, the hon. Member has clearly stated it very carefully and I do not need to go over the scope of it in detail.

It has been asked, naturally, how people would be warned and what they should do in an immediate threat of war. Many people are uninformed now; many people never will be fully informed, although we shall always do our best to help to reduce their number. There are some who profess to believe that our evidence is that these precautions could be taken within a period of four minutes, which is absurd and has never been suggested by anybody.

What is important is to distinguish between the four minutes tactical warning and a strategic warning which could be a period of several days, during which precautions could be taken and preparations brought to a state of immediate readiness. It might well be that the period of alert would be so short that all the desirable measures could not be taken in time but that is no ground for failing to make plans and preparations on the assumption that some advantages could be taken of a period of alert.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

Does the hon. Member suggest we shall have several days warning of an H-bomb attack?

Mr. Woodhouse

Several days warning of the possibility of war such as we would have had, for instance, during the Cuba Crisis, had it been necessary to take these measures.

I want to say a word about the practicability of the advice mentioned by the hon. Gentleman and the Estimates Committee. When the handbook was published in January it was already our view that the measures recommended in it were within the ability of most householders. We have since been carrying out practical tests at greater length to establish that point. They are not completed, but, so far as they go, they fully confirm our initial belief.

The handbook gives several alternative ways of improving protection against fall-out. I emphasise that it is fall-out, because against the effect of an immediate explosion there could be no protection. The methods would have to be varied from place to place, according to the circumstances and what was available. But we believe that one or other of the methods described in the handbook would be found practicable in the particular circumstances of almost every household. We are talking, of course, of a desperate emergency in which extreme measures would have to be improvised, but they could be taken, and, if it were a matter of life and death, they would be taken.

I turn now to the criticisms of the Estimates Committee. With all respect, I find it impossible to take those criticisms at their face value because the Estimates Committee proposed that the handbook should be withdrawn without proposing that anything should take its place. I cannot believe that it was literally the Committee's intention that the civil defence services should simply be deprived of training, and the public of advice, in this crucial field. What I think must be assumed is that the Estimates Committee thought that something better could, and should, replace the handbook, something which would not be open to the charge it made of being of such a general and simple character that it will be of little value to members of the Civil Defence Corps. But on the way in which it should be improved we were given no guidance by the Committee, apart from the express disapproval of one sentence, which the hon. Gentleman quoted, a sentence which, incidentally—as he will see from the handbook itself—was not quoted in full even in the Committee's Report. We shall certainly revise and improve the handbook from time to time, in the light of experience, but we shall, equally, not withdraw it, for the reasons which my right hon. Friend gave in his Observations to the Committee.

We believe that, in issuing this handbook at the time we did, we were right to make available simple and straightforward advice which could be used for the purposes of training by the civil defence services and be transmitted in an emergency to the public. We believe that we were right to go as far as we have gone, and no farther, at this stage. We believe that this handbook makes a useful contribution to our civil defence preparations, which, as I have said, have a very wide scope, a great deal wider than the field covered by the handbook.

I return to an earlier point and put this to the hon. Gentleman. No one disputes that a nuclear attack on this country would cause immense devastation and chaos, but those who are opposed to what we are trying to do in civil defence must answer certain questions. Do they believe—I think that the hon. Gentleman purported to believe it, but I question whether, on reflection he seriously can—that it is certain that there would be no survivors whatever of a nuclear attack? Or does the hon. Gentleman say that the survivors would not be worth bothering about? If he does not say that, does he say that we are to make no preparations to ensure that the injured and the sick receive some care and treatment?

Is no attempt to be made to get food and water to those who would survive? Is nothing to be done to mitigate the after-effects of nuclear explosion for those who survive the initial attack? Are more people to die than need die, if we take no precautions? Are we to do nothing to provide starting points from which those who survive could attempt to build up some form of ordered life again? So long as there remains the possibility of nuclear war, is nothing to be done? Let it not be forgotten that this question has no connection with the particular deterrent policy of the present Government. There is no conceivable foreign policy or defence policy which could enable the Government of this country to declare that there is no risk whatever in any conceivable circumstances of nuclear attack upon us.

For as long as this remains the case and we have not nuclear disarmament by international agreement, it is no more than prudent and a humanitarian duty to take out such insurance as we can against its effects. Civil defence is not and never can be a comprehensive insurance. The extent of it depends on the premium, we can afford, having regard to our other commitments and on our assessment of the likelihood of this disaster, which I am glad to say at present appears remoter than it has for many years.

We hope and believe that this possibility will remain remote, but it is a possibility which we cannot ignore, and it is against that background that we have done what we have done in the matter of this small handbook which we have debated tonight.

11.40 pm.

Mr. William Ross (Kilmarnock)

I think that the Minister has done less than justice to the Estimates Committee. After all, it was the Estimates Committee's point which my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) raised. The Committee is just as anxious that the public should know civil defence and the measures which can be taken for protection as anybody else. What the Committee is concerned about is whether this handbook will create the right impression. This is indeed what the Committee says at the end of its recommendation: Your Committee are anxious that the public should be aware of the steps that are being taken So protect them, and they feel that this pamphlet creates entirely the wrong impression. The hon. Gentleman gave entirely the wrong impression when he elaborated and put his series of rhetorical questions. We have debated these matters, and the Labour Party has supported many of them. In respect of this one, there is every justification for what the Estimates Committee said. The hon. Gentleman gave the impression that this v/as not a matter for the general public at all but for the civil defence services. Sir Charles Cunningham, giving evidence before the Estimates Committee, said in reply to Question No. 1701: This was not intended to be a technical handbook at all, but we hoped a fairly clear indication to the householder of what he could do to help himself in an emergency. Everyone knows what a training manual is. Training manuals are not generally issued to the public. That is probably the mistake which was made here. Training manuals are supplanted as knowledge increases.

Mr. Woodhouse

Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to correct him on one point of information? All the civil defence training manuals are equally on sale—

The Question having been proposed after 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 accordingly at eighteen minutes to Twelve o'clock.