RHODESIA (Hansard, 23 June 1966)

§ Q8. Mr. Sandys
asked the Prime Minister if he will give the best available estimate of the expenditure incurred up to date by Her Majesty's Government in connection with the imposition of sanctions on Rhodesia, including military and financial assistance to Zambia, and of the effects of this policy on Great Britain's visible and invisible exports and her balance of payments.

§ The Prime Minister
The total expenditure incurred up to the latest date for which figures are available is about £8½ million. The total cost to the balance of payments is more difficult to assess and no reliable estimate is possible. In the first five months of 1966 British exports to Rhodesia were about £11½ million lower than in the same period of 1965.

§ Mr. Sandys
Will the right hon. Gentleman consider giving, perhaps in the OFFICIAL REPORT, a much fuller statement of the economic and financial effects of sanctions? Does he not think that it is quite a good thing that the African Governments, who all the time are complaining that we are not doing enough, should be aware of the extent of the 913 burden which we are carrying? Is it not also right that the British people should know what sanctions are costing?

§ The Prime Minister
Yes, Sir, and to the extent that these figures may be amplified, we shall certainly consider doing what the right hon. Gentleman suggests. Other Commonwealth Governments in Africa are being regularly told by us of what it means and that we are following the policies necessary to carry out the principles laid down by the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues and by us on the question of the future of Rhodesia. I did not think—I hope that I am right in this—that the right hon. Gentleman was suggesting any withdrawing from giving effect to the principles which he and we have laid down.

§ Mr. Molloy
Will my right hon. Friend acknowledge that while many hon. Members opposite are concerned about Her Majesty's subjects in other Dominions, there are many of Her Majesty's subjects in Rhodesia who are suffering the burden of being under an illegal régime? Does he not agree that some attitudes of hon. Members opposite are incongruous with the traditions of a democratic society?

§ The Prime Minister
That raises an issue more suitable to debate than to a short answer, but certainly hon. and right hon. Gentlemen of more than one party opposite who have asked us to take a firm line with sanctions, for example, must recognise that it would be impossible to do what we have done with the airlift to Zambia or the supply of Javelins to Zambia if we had scuttled on the basis of what the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal Party was suggesting a few moments ago.

§ Mr. Grimond
Does the Prime Minister realise that this harking back to old questions convinces me of the extreme pertinence of my question, which has obviously troubled the right hon. Gentleman a good deal? To turn to the current Question; would he not agree that however heavy the expenditure, and no one under-estimates it, it would be quite disastrous, having accepted all this, if we were to go back on principles generally agreed for a settlement with Rhodesia and that, having spent all this money, we must ensure that we stick to the principles which have been laid down and agreed 914 by all parties? Will he give an assurance that there is no going back on that?

§ The Prime Minister
I am happy to find a point on which the right hon. Gentleman and I are in agreement. I fully endorse what he has said—that, of course, there can be no going back on the principles laid down by successive Governments and approved by at any rate a very large majority of the House every time we have debated them. I would also so that there would have been no hope at all of making a reality of these principles—and heaven knows that it is difficult enough—if we had not vigourously pursued the sanctions policy introduced by this side of the House and supported by the right hon. Gentleman and some other hon. Members opposite.

§ Mr. Philip Noel-Baker
Does the Prime Minister consider that it is more costly to abandon a principle, as the Tory Government did when they proposed—[Interruption.]—the withdrawal of sanctions against Mussolini over Abyssinnia in 1936? [Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. There must be a limit to the width as well as the length of Questions.

§ The Prime Minister
For that reason it will be very difficult to quantify the answer to my right hon. Friend's Question. Certainly I would say that, even in terms of hard cash and economic interest—quite apart from the very deep principles involved in this issue—if we had given in on these principles last November, I believe that it would have cost this country far more in terms of our economic position, as well as in the loss of principle and loss of standing in all our dealings with the world.

§ Mr. Heath
Whatever the views on policy may be—

§ Mr. Philip Noel-Baker
On a point of order. May I respectfully ask that you should look at my question tomorrow, Mr. Speaker. You will see that there were very few words in it and that its length was due to interruptions from the other side of the House. Will the Prime Minister consider that the cost of what was done in 1936—[Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I would not want the right hon. Gentleman to misunderstand my observation. I was not complaining about the length of the question, 915 but the fact that he was going back in history, to the time of Mussolini—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why Not?"]

§ Mr. Philip Noel-Baker
Further to that point of order. Is it not relevant to cite a case in which sanctions were withdrawn, when the whole purport of the Question by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) was that sanctions should now be withdrawn?—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I only had the opinion that the right hon. Gentleman might draw his analogies from a much more recent period in history.

§ Mr. Sandys
On a point of order. Is is not quite improper for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, South (Mr. Philip Noel-Baker), when rising on a point of order, to try to impute to me a motive in asking a particular Question?

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is not going to get too sensitive when political criticisms are made across the Floor of the House.

§ Mr. Sandys
I am not more sensitive than anyone else in the House. All that I was objecting to was the use of a point of order to make a point of that kind—[Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
The Chair is neither dismayed nor encouraged by noises of approval or disapproval. The Chair intervened when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, South (Mr. Philip Noel-Baker) went wide in making his point of order.

§ Mr. Shinwell
On a point or order—[Interruption.] It is a perfectly valid point of order—at least I hope so. Is it not very embarrassing, and to some extent improper, to probe into the past of the Tory Party?

§ Mr. Heath rose
——

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, would you mind clarifying your Ruling that we must not go back in history to 1935? If that is the case, what happens to Erskine May?

§ Mr. Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising, under the guise of a point of order, what I must regard as a rhetorical question.

§ Mr. Heath
May I ask a question without being on a point of order? If the Prime Minister is going back to consider his right hon. Friend's point, will he also look at the history of that time of the defence policy of the Labour Party and the effect that it had?

§ Mr. Speaker
Perhaps the House will now see why I ruled about the width of supplementary questions.

§ Mr. Heath
I am grateful to you for extending the same liberties to this side of the House as you have done to hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The right hon. Gentleman misundersood me. I did not give the right hon. Member for Derby, South the liberty that the right hon. Gentleman is now seeking.

§ Mr. Heath
I am now on a point of order. It is quite obvious that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have had the liberty of making a considerable number of political points without reply from this side of the House. I am, therefore, perfectly entitled to suggest to you that I should be allowed to say to the Prime Minister that he ought to examine his own party's record on defence in answer to the point made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, South.
If we may return to the original point of the Question, which is one of considerable importance for people both inside and outside of this country, as the Prime Minister has been unable to give a factual reply with any degree of accuracy, will he now consult the National Institute which has worked out a figure, I believe with a considerable degree of accuracy, of the cost of the Rhodesian policy, which is far greater than that which the Prime Minister has given this afternoon?

§ The Prime Minister
I presume that I shall be in order in replying to all of the series of questions, Mr. Speaker? Since the right hon. Gentleman wants to go back to pre-war with my right hon. Friend, I will go back with him.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The Prime Minister may go back equally briefly with the Leader of the Opposition.

§ The Prime Minister
Briefly, then, the relevance of the Abyssinian question 917 raised by my right hon. Friend—[Interruption.] I was asked about this by the Leader of the Opposition—the relevance of this was, as Sir Winston Churchill pointed out, that if the then Conservative Government had shown any resistance and there had been effective sanctions, World War Two would not have happened.
With regard to the second part of the question relating to Rhodesia, the figures which I have given the House are the best figures which we have in a situation in which it is difficult to estimate. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was suggesting that they were inaccurate or that anything calculated by the National Institute with less access to the facts than we have is likely to be more accurate. These are the most accurate figures we have. The right hon. Gentleman refers to the cost of the sanctions policy. Perhaps one day he will tell us whether he supports this policy.

§ Mr. Heath
Let me tell the Prime Minister perfectly clearly that if he had paid any attention at all to the views of other people in the Rhodesia debates he would know that we supported him in that policy—[Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Hon. Members must listen to the expression of opinions with which they do not agree.

§ Mr. Heath
I asked the Prime Minister to recall the past Rhodesian discussions and to note that I supported the policy of sanctions even when sometimes in disagreement with my right hon. and hon. Friends. In the attempts which we made to get a national policy, we have had nothing but derision from the Prime Minister himself.

§ The Prime Minister
I recall the right hon. Gentleman's speech on 12th November, which he can look up again. I recall that with each additional sanction which we announced, he got up in heat and rage and came round to it only the next day. If that has been his position, will he at some time take time off to tell the House why he did not vote for the oil sanctions?

§ Mr. Heath
I will tell the Prime Minister perfectly clearly why I did not support the Government in the Lobby. I supported them by my voice here, as he 918 himself has done on many occasions in the past when he supported the Government of the day but did not go with the Opposition into the Lobby.

§ The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman will recall that on that same day he voted against the Government on Rhodesia policy, and when hon. Members were asked to stand up and be counted on the oil sanctions he sat in his place and did not vote. Is he aware that on this, as on other things, we might have had action and not words in support of the Government?

§ Sir Harmar Nicholls
On a point of order. I was wondering, Mr. Speaker, whether we could be told to which Question these exchanges relate.