HC Deb 18 March 1963 vol 674 cc120-31

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a further Supplementary sum, not exceeding £1,600,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1963, for expenditure beyond the sum already provided in the grants for Air Services for the year.

Schedule
Sums not exceeding
Supply Grants Appropriations in Aid
£ £
Vote
5. Movements 200,000 650,000
7. Aircraft and Stores 1,400,000
Total, Air (Supplementary), 1962–63 £ 1,600,000 650,000

7.53 p.m.

Mr. Wigg

This is a very important Supplementary Estimate, as it contains an item for the cancellation of Skybolt. There is something about this which we should like to know. On the subject of Skybolt, the Conservative Party is a little touchy. Just as it has been explained to us in the course of today's debate that, if one does not say that any British aircraft, whether it exists or not, is the most wonderful aircraft in the world, one is in danger of being charged with high treason—that is the formula we had this afternoon—equally to mention Skybolt one must sing "God Save the Queen ", "Rule Britannia" and "Down with the Americans" all at one and the same time.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

And "Lead kindly light".

Mr. Wigg

I am now in the rôle of leading kindly light, because in our previous Skybolt debates we have only ever known what the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence have cared to tell us. Now we have a little more. My good friend, although I have never met him, Mr. Robert McNamara, in his statement to the House of Representatives, tells us a little more about Skybolt. He says this: In 1960, the United States entered into an agreement with the United Kingdom to make available, under certain conditions, Sky-bolt missiles if we proceeded with production. Just in case the Under-Secretary thinks I am a little naive in not mentioning the date, this is Mr. Robert McNamara on 30th January, 1963, and I gave the Under-Secretary advance notice of this.

The first question I therefore want to ask is, what were those certain conditions? Mr. McNamara goes on to say this: We undertook to bear the entire cost of the Skybolt development. The British undertook to bear the costs of adapting the missile to their bombers and their warheads. The entire agreement was contingent upon the successful development of the missile and its use by the United States. We have never been told before that the agreement into which the Government entered with the United States was under certain conditions and was conditional upon two factors—first, the successful development of the missile, and, secondly, its use by the United States. We should like to hear from the Under-Secretary, whether the Government, through his mouth, accept what Mr. McNamara says. If they do, why were we not told this in the Bahamas White Paper? Why did not the Prime Minister tell the House of Commons this? We should like to hear any other comments the Under-Secretary cares to make.

Mr. McNamara goes on in this way: In the event that we found it undesirable to complete the programme, the British would have the right to continue further development at their own expense. The President, wishing to assist the United Kingdom in every possible way to adjust to our cancellation of Skybolt, explored with the British Prime Minister at Nassau a number of possible alternatives.

The Deputy-Chairman (Sir Robert Grimston)

I think that I should intervene at this stage. It win not be in order during this debate to go into the merits of the agreement at Nassau or indeed into the merits of Skybolt. What we are concerned with, as the hon. Gentleman realises, is the cancellation charges, how they arise, how they are being used, and so on. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman may wish to give a little background to his case.

Mr. Wigg

I fully accept the letter and the spirit of everything you say, Sir Robert. I am complying to the very fullest extent with your Ruling. Clearly we cannot ascertain whether this £1,600,000 is right, unless we relate it to conditions the existence of which up to this moment we have never known. It may well be that it should not be £1,600,000. Perhaps it should be £1,500,000. Perhaps it should be only £50,000. Perhaps we are being mean and not paying enough. In fact we have had revealed through Mr. McNamara's statement to the House of Representatives a number of conditions which the Prime Minister in his concern for our feelings has never before revealed. I am just going through them one by one and asking the Under-Secretary to tell us what those conditions are so that we can see whether the bill is right.

Perhaps I may continue. I was making the point that the President of the United States had said that there were a number of possible alternatives which obviously affected the size of the bill. Mr. McNamara continues: As one alternative, the President offered to continue the development of Skybolt as a joint enterprise with the United Kingdom with each country bearing equal shares of the future cost to complete development, after which the United Kingdom would be able to place a production order to meet its requirements. This offer went considerably beyond the original agreement, under which the United Kingdom would have had to stand the full cost of further development, but the British Prime Minister decided not to accept it in the light of the uncertainties involved in the product. Another alternative suggested by the President was the use of the Hound Dog missile.… Over the weekend there was an occasion on which the British Ambassador to the United States, obviously at the expense of the British taxpayer, took in a personal friend of his family, a man who in fact in another capacity is the correspondent of the Daily Mail. He has revealed, in that courteous way which exists amongst the upper crust families in this country, what was said at a private meal. He has revealed that the President went up the wall when he heard that there was criticism among Tory Members of Parliament of his offer at Nassau.

I must say that I have considerable sympathy with the President. He entered into an agreement to help this lot out over the cancellation of Blue Streak. He laid down carefully defined conditions. The Tory Government, for their political purposes, ran it as hard as they could that Skybolt was to succeed and then, when it was perfectly clear that it was not facing up to the hopes which had been placed in it, they did to the President what they tried this afternoon to do to me. In other words, it means that anyone who does not say and do just exactly what suits the Conservative Party at any given moment is guilty of everything under the sun.

The truth is that far too many hopes were vested in Skybolt and that, clearly, they have not come off. Now the Government, instead of footing the bill and telling the country the truth, have gone on behaving in exactly the same way in the next round—about Polaris—as they did over Blue Streak and Skybolt. They hope it will come off. They are sure that their new hope is going to. It may or it may not, but the bill for it will be £400 million. It will be a colossal bill for Polaris and I think that the Civil Lord should pay attention to blondes and spies. That is much more up his street than a serious defence debate.

The Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. C. Ian Orr-Ewing)

I gave the figure in my winding-up speech the other night and, although it was nearly midnight when I did so, I am sure that the hon. Member would not now wish to be £100 million out.

Mr. Wigg

If the Civil Lord said £300 million then I would add another £75 million for certain and the other £25 million for luck. I am reasonably certain that Polaris, when it comes out of the wash, will be much more expensive than the Government say. They are engaged in giving a political figure.

But Skybolt is my business tonight, and it is certain from the statements made by Mr. McNamara that there was a much more detailed agreement, with more specific conditions, and that they were interpreted in the interests of this country because Mr. McNamara bent over backwards to recognise the special difficulties not only of this country but of the Conservative Administration. I urge the Government to allow the Minister to tell the Committee the full truth on this subject.

I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate he will remember the important question asked by the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) about whether there was any "know-how" or terms left about which we have failed to negotiate to the fullest possible advantage. If we are passing £1,400,000—a small sum after the £254 million we passed with about 10 hon. Members present—important principles still remain. If the business of Skybolt is learned and applied—expensive lesson though it might have been—it might be worth while, not least of all for the Conservative Party, to remember that one cannot use weapons until they exist and that it is fatal, whether one is backing horses or weapons, to put one's money on a horse or a weapon when one must win. The trouble is that the moment one must win one will lose.

8.7 p.m.

Mr. Bence

There are some facts I would like concerning the £1,400,000 cancellation of Skybolt and I hope that we will not be given the usual sort of reply we get from the Government, or any remarks about our being patriotic or unpatriotic, because those remarks are unwarranted in an important debate such as this.

I am reminded of a story told by an old friend of mine—he is almost 90 now —who disliked the Tory Party intensely because of something told to him when he was a young man. In his earlier years he had been told, when he was in the West Country, that the Tories used assiduously to go round the churches and chapels saying that Mr. Gladstone was the son of the devil. "If you ever saw him on the platform you would see the horns coming out of his head," they used to say, he told me; and the effect that had in the churches and chapels was surprising, simply because of that slur on Mr. Gladstone.

The Under-Secretary has been at it tonight, slurring my hon. Friends. I can assure him that just because we criticise we are not unpatriotic. We are dealing with the Douglas Corporation's Skybolt, which was a failure. We cancelled it. Or did the American Government cancel it? I do not know how much the Americans paid in compensation, but I do know for certain that we are paying £1,400,000. Are we paying that in pounds or dollars and to whom are we paying it? It was not our fault that Skybolt was a failure, so why should we compensate someone for it?

Are the Government not aware that this project has been discarded with the result that thousands of men in Scotland are being made redundant? They do not receive one penny in compensation, so I would like to know who will be getting the £1,400,000. Is it the Douglas Corporation, the American Government, or someone else? After all, Skybolt was an American project. manufactured and developed there. The Americans do not want it and I assume that they are paying compensation. We cannot afford to buy it so I suppose that we, too, are paying compensation. My hon. Friends and 1—and the unemployed in Scotland —are entitled to know. I hope that I am not being unpatriotic in asking these questions and that I will not be thought to be criticising the R.A.F. I am revealing the ineptitude and stupidity of the Government.

8.8 p.m.

Mr. Malley

My hon. Friends have rightly drawn attention to the amount of information we need before we can allow this Supplementary Estimate to pass. I should point out that my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) was a little inaccurate in suggesting that it was not our fault but that of the Americans. He must remember that, technically, Skybolt did not fail. It had to be stopped because it had reached such a stage of technical progress that if the American Government had not stopped it then they would not have been able to stop it at all.

While it is properly a matter for the Americans to decide whether or not to buy a weapon for their own Air Force, it is remiss of Her Majesty's Government to suggest that, somehow or other, it was someone other than our Government who decided not to give Skybolt to the Royal Air Force. It might have been a right decision but, judging from the past speeches of Ministers, one would have thought that we would have received a much fuller explanation as to why they changed their minds. It was a unilateral decision on the part of our Government to the effect that the R.A.F. could not have Skybolt, with all that means for Bomber Command, and so on.

We need to know something about the background and circumstances of how the cancellation charges came about for, after all, had it been someone else's decision to stop Skybolt, would those cancellation charges have arisen? Obviously, we had the option of going ahead with Skybolt, as my hon. Friend for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) pointed out, and this was set out in the Nassau Agreement. The United States Government, rather generously, undertook to pay half the further development costs for a weapon which they did not wish to buy. Before we can form a balanced view on this matter we should be told the exact costs involved.

There is obviously no security risk here, because we are not to have any Skybolts anyway. Can we be told, therefore, how many Skybolts the Government had contemplated buying? Were there to be 100, or 50? There is no security aspect about this, because we are not to have these missiles now. Could we not, therefore, be told what it was envisaged this weapon would have cost?

The cost touches very much on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley following an intervention the other day by the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) about "know-how". Had we wished, we could have brought the whole project to Britain, providing work for the aircraft industry. Had we wished, we could have completed the Skybolt missile ourselves. I understand that it would have required about 200 personnel from Douglas to come here, and that they would have been very willing and anxious to come. It would have meant employment and "know-how" for our own industries. What would have been the cost—not that I advocate this course, and, in any case, it is now too late—to finish the 100 Skybolts if we had had them?

We must have that information and weigh it against the enormous bill—whether it be the £300 million mentioned by the Civil Lord, or the £400 million, as my hon. Friend says—for Polaris. If I were the Civil Lord I would not stick too hard to the £300 million, because if Polaris comes out right it will be the first thing that any of the three Services has ever produced for the estimated initial sum. Therefore, were I he I would not put the whole of my political reputation on £300 million when there is every precedent to show that one should add a nought rather than my hon. Friend's 25 per cent., to the initial figure for this kind of development scheme.

Before we pass this Supplementary Estimate we should be given a balance sheet, as it were, of the whole transaction, so that we can see the extent of the Government's folly in the way they have carried out this operation.

Mr. Ridsdale

I am concerned only with the cancellation charges under Vote 7. These charges arise on the Skybolt training equipment that we ordered from America in 1962 for delivery in 1963–64. In order to have trained personnel available to handle the missile when it came into service, it was essential for this equipment to be available in good time beforehand. The United States Air Force was placing similar orders at the same time, and there were production advantages from placing the two orders together. Since we have to reimburse the Ministry of Aviation for the cancellation charges in the financial year in which they fall due rather than wait for the year in which, but for the cancellation, delivery could have been expected, we had to make financial provision in 1962–63.

In answer to various questions from hon. Members opposite, the Air Ministry pays the Ministry of Aviation, and the Ministry of Aviation pays the Americans. This will be a dollar transaction, and the main payments will be to the United States contractors. The rest of the ques- tions asked by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) are outside this Supplementary Estimate, but no doubt he will have an opportunity to ask them on another occasion.

Mr. Mulley

We now have to remind the Under-Secretary that he is not in the Chair as well as at the Dispatch Box. It is not for him to say what is or what is not in order. To see how a cancellation comes about one has to go a little behind things, as it were, and the hon. Gentleman has not even told us whether the Secretary of State for Air or the Air Ministry was even consulted in any of these operations. Is it a State secret, or can we be told whether a representative of the Air Ministry was present at Nassau, or even at the talks between Mr. McNamara and the Minister of Defence in London?

Perhaps the best way of describing the Air Ministry's operations in this matter was that described by one of the consultants of the Pentagon, when referring to Nassau and to another aspect. He said that he had so much to do with it that the first he knew of Nassau was three days later, when the New York edition of the New York Times hit Washington. Is it that the Secretary of State has no responsibility for the cancellation of a weapon that was to be the salvation of the Air Force? Is that what the hon. Gentleman means by saying that it is outside this Vote?

I wonder, too, whether we shall have other Votes coming along for adaptations of the planes. Have all the contractors been told about this? The Government took a little while to tell the contractors to stop fitting the Vulcans for Skybolt—are we to have another expense for the planes changed for Skybolt being changed back in order not to take Skybolt? We need to know much more before we finish with the Skybolt saga. Whether the hon. Gentleman chooses to tell us on this Vote, or whether we have to take other steps to get the information, we shall not let the Skybolt story rest until we really know what happened.

8.16 p.m.

Mr. Eden

It is a little unfair to press my hon. Friend on the lines of the questions asked by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley). As the hon. Gentleman well knows, these are largely questions outside the strict limitations of this Vote. Admittedly, if looking for background information, one can go back for years and bring in all matters of high State policy, and goodness knows what else, but we are here dealing with aircraft and stores, and the cost arising from the cancellation of the Skybolt project.

As a Member who is being asked to vote this sum of money, I agree that we should seek information on it, but in any industrial project involving working on a particular contract—particularly where there is involved the development of a project that is not yet on the production line—if the project is cancelled, certain cancellation charges must inevitably arise. I should have thought it absolutely pertinent in questioning my hon. Friend on the details of this Supplementary Estimate to ask him the nature of the cancellation charges, but, with respect, I submit that it is going a little far afield to range over the whole past history—

The Temporary Chairman (Dr. Horace King)

I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not questioning the capacity of the Chair to see the debate is continued in order. The hon. Gentleman can comment on the pertinence and the rightness of comments made. He must leave it to the Chair to decide what is in order.

Mr. Eden

I leave the matter entirely in your hands, Dr. King. I well understand that you will ensure that this debate is kept on the straight and narrow line. I was only seeking to reply to some of the points raised by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Park, because, as far as I can understand, they bring in an enormously wide range of topics.

Mr. Mulley

Having failed to discharge the duties of the Chair, the hon. Gentleman should not take on the duties of the Under-Secretary, either.

8.19 p.m.

Mr. Wigg

The Under-Secretary is trying a new tack. Earlier, it appeared to be quite unpatriotic to criticise anything we thought wrong about an aircraft. The hon. Gentleman, for his part, is perfectly entitled to attack the alliance between this country and the United States and charge the United States with being unfair in relation to Skybolt, but when we have in the Vote an item like this that causes hon. Members to ask a number of questions based on views expressed at the highest level in the United States, we get no reply.

We then have a violent attack made on the Chair—couched, of course, in very courteous language, but an attack—

The Temporary Chairman

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's kindness. The Chair is quite capable of defending itself.

Mr. Wigg

I know only too well the Chair's power to protect itself, but the hon. Gentleman on this occasion has indulged in a diversionary activity. I have the greatest sympathy with the Under-Secretary. We have exchanged hard words. He has said some wounding things about us and we shall go away and console ourselves as best we can. But basically the hon. Gentleman has been asked to make bricks without straw. He has not the least idea of what he is saying on any of these subjects. He reads his brief with great skill and I think that a Shakespearean actor has been lost in him. He has read his brief better than I could ever have read it, but he has wandered a little when his brief has run out. However, the hon. Gentleman has done his best.

This is a Supplementary Estimate for aircraft and stores and an Explanatory Note states that this sum of £1,400,000 is in respect of Cancellation charges falling due as a result of the termination of the Skybolt project. This was what brought my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) into the debate, and this is what has kept me here. I thought that this was publication for the first time of the amount to be paid over to the Americans as a result of this cancellation, and this has turned out to be the case. One would have thought that if this was so and we were winding up the whole affair there would have been a few gracious words thanking the Americans—or would that have caused a major split in the party opposite?

The Temporary Chairman

The hon. Member has now got a little wide of the Supplementary Estimate which we are discussing.

Mr. Wigg

With great respect, Dr. King—and I shall have to be careful or I shall find myself in conflict with the Chair—when the Supplementary Estimate is for "Aircraft and Stores" I should have thought that if we were to pass the Vote I should not be out of order in saying that, in addition to approving the money, we should say to the Americans, "We thank you very much". A little courtesy would not have been out of place in view of the hard words which have been said by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden). Nobody has been more violent than he in sowing the seeds of dissention between this country and America.

The Under-Secretary of State has not the foggiest nation what all this is about. He had a note from his Department to say Sign this Supplementary Estimate" and he signed it. He has no idea what he has signed. He could not say anything at the Dispatch Box until his brief came over to him, and his Parliamentary Private Secretary had to run the last 20 yards with the brief.

As I have said, the hon. Gentleman has not the foggiest notion what this is about but I forgive him, and I certainly forgive the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West. He has nobly realised that his party is on a sticky wicket. He has done what I did several times many years ago, and it will not be long before I have to do it again. When our Front Bench was in difficulty I staged a diversionary act. It is the oldest trick in the world. The hon. Member's act was needed, because the Under-Secretary was on the stickiest wicket that he could possibly be on.

We have exposed the fact that the only answers the Tories have when asked the sticky question about the expenditure of vast sums of public money is the same answer as was given by Dr. Johnson, even though they do not put it to us quite strongly, and I certainly do not mean the last words: Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That further Supplementary sum, not exceeding £1,600,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1963, for expenditure beyond the sum already provided in the grants for Air Services for the year.