Commons Sitting of 7 March 1966

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
MESSAGES FROM THE COUNSELLORS OF STATE

  SINGAPORE (GIFT OF A BOOKCASE)
  The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported the Answer of the Counsellors of State to the Address, as follows:
  We, Counsellors of State, to whom have been delegated certain Royal Functions as specified in Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm dated 25th January, 1966, have received your Address to Her Majesty praying that Her Majesty will give directions for the presentation on behalf of Your House of a bookcase containing Parliamentary and Constitutional reference books to the Parliament of Singapore and assuring Her Majesty that you will make good the expenses attending the same.
  It gave us the greatest pleasure to learn that Your House desires to make such a presentation and on Her Majesty's behalf we will gladly give directions for carrying your proposal into effect.
  Elizabeth R.
  Richard.

  SARAWAK (GIFT OF A SPEAKER'S CHAIR)
  The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported the Answer of the Counsellors of State to the Address, as follows:
  We, Counsellors of State, to whom have been delegated certain Royal Functions as specified in Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm dated 25th January, 1966, have received your Address to Her Majesty praying that Her Majesty will give directions for the presentation on
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  behalf of Your House of a Speaker's Chair to the Council Negri of Sarawak, and assuring Her Majesty that you will make good the expenses attending the same.
  It gave us the greatest pleasure to learn that Your House desires to make such a presentation and on Her Majesty's behalf we will gladly give directions for carrying your proposal into effect.
  Elizabeth R.
  Richard.

  SABAH (GIFT OF A MACE)
  The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported the Answer of the Counsellors of State to the Address, as follows:
  We, Counsellors of State, to whom have been delegated certain Royal Functions as specified in Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm dated 25th January, 1966, have received your Address to Her Majesty praying that Her Majesty will give directions for the presentation on behalf of Your House of a Mace to the Legislative Assembly of Sabah, and assuring Her Majesty that you will make good the expenses attending the same.
  It gave us the greatest pleasure to learn that Your House desires to make such a presentation and on Her Majesty's behalf we will gladly give directions for carrying your proposal into effect.
  Elizabeth R.
  Richard.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES

    The Wash (Barrage Scheme)
    Sir G. de Freitasasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources whether he has completed his study of the desirability of building a barrage across The Wash to turn it into a large freshwater reservoir to serve the dry counties of the East Midlands and of East Anglia; and whether he will make a statement.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources (Mr. Arthur Skeffington): Not yet, Sir. The Water Resources Board has been asked to consider the Wash scheme in the context of its South-East studies as a whole and to give its advice as soon as possible. Until my right hon. Friends have received that advice it would be wrong to take a decision one way or the other about a feasibility study. The Board's study is making good progress.
    Sir G. de Freitas: Will the Minister do all he can to see that there is no avoidable delay because, although we have a lot of lovely rain, this area—Anglia and the East Midlands—at any time can suffer from a severe shortage of water?
    Mr. Skeffington: My right hon. Friend is very well aware of the urgency about the position on this scheme, particularly in East Anglia.

    National Parks and the Countryside (White Paper)
    Mr. Peter Millsasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources if he will now publish the White Paper on the future of National Parks and the Countryside.
    Mr. Skeffington: The White Paper was published on 28th February, 1966.
    Mr. Mills: Will the Minister, while considering the future of our National Parks, bear in mind the very real need of certain areas, such as Okehampton on the fringe of Dartmoor, which are seeking to explore for tin which would be of great benefit to the area, but which are frustrated at every stage?
    Mr. Skeffington: If the hon. Member would care to let me have details—or the Minister of Housing and Local Government where this comes into his sphere—we should, I am sure, be glad to investigate the matter.
    Mr. Ennals: While congratulating my right hon. Friend on the White Paper Leisure in the Countryside, may I ask if he will give particular support to the campaign referred to by the Civic Trust to remove eyesores from the countryside? In particular, apart from securing the
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    support of voluntary organisations and local authorities, will he secure the support of the Ministry of Defence in removing some of the barbed wire and concrete obstructions which spoil some of the coastline, particularly the Channel coast?
    Mr. Skeffington: My hon. Friend will notice that in the White Paper we pay particular attention to the part played by the Civic Trust and also to clearing those areas. My right hon. Friend is having discussions with all the Departments concerned.

    Abandoned Railway Tracks
    Sir G. de Freitasasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources whether he is aware that nature reserves, nature rides and nature walks can be made out of abandoned railway tracks after the rails and sleepers have been removed; and if he will seek power to encourage the acquisition of tracks for such purposes.
    Mr. Skeffington: My right hon. Friend is aware that in some cases abandoned railway tracks are well suited to the purposes mentioned, but is satisfied that adequate powers already exist under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act, 1949, the Local Government Act, 1933, and the Open Spaces Act, 1906. The Nature Conservancy and local authorities have power to make agreements for the use of any land as nature reserves and to acquire the land if necessary. Local authorities have power to create rights of way on foot or on horseback without acquiring the land.
    Sir G. de Freitas: As so many public bodies have these powers, may I ask the Minister to do everything he can to encourage them to use them?
    Mr. Skeffington: This will be one of the ways in which we think the Countryside Commission can take a part in stimulating activity.

    Development Charges (Dorset)
    Mr. Evelyn Kingasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources if he will estimate how much Dorset people will have to pay by way of development charges in the coming year on the assumption that the value of developments carried out is as in 1964.
    The Minister of Land and Natural Resources (Mr. Frederick Willey): I have no estimate of the value of developments carried out in Dorset in 1964. So I regret that I cannot help the hon. Member, beyond reminding him that no levy will be payable until after the appointed day.
    Mr. King: If this figure were to be estimated, would it not simply represent an additional tax on Dorset people who seek to build their own houses, and would not this add to their difficulties and inconvenience?
    Mr. Willey: No. On the contrary, the people of Dorset, like people in other parts of the country, will have the advantage of the operations of the betterment levy and the Land Commission.

    Common Land (Registration)
    Mr. Hazellasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources when the registration of common land will begin; and if he will make available to intending applicants a simple explanation of the Commons Registration Act.
    Mr. Willey: Registration is expected to start in January, 1967. My Department has prepared an explanatory booklet which will be obtainable free next month, on application to any council office or clerk of a parish council or any main post office.
    Mr. Hazell: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that reply. I hope he will ensure that the widest possible publicity is given to the issue of the booklet.
    Mr. Willey: My hon. Friend can rest assured that the widest publicity will be given to the booklet.

  Development Levy
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources whether, in the light of the abandonment of this Session's Land Commission Bill, he will, in order to prevent a hold-up in the supply of land for building, withdraw the proposal to impose a levy on developments started between 23rd September, 1964, and the present date.
  Mr. Willey: The right hon. Gentleman is in error. There is no such proposal.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Will the right hon. Gentleman read his own White Paper
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  and consider the indication there given that transactions starting after 23rd September last should be subject to levy? If such a degree of retrospection is right for a Bill intended to pass into law this Session, must it not be wrong in respect of one which can only appear in a new Parliament, it at all?
  Mr. Willey: As I have said, the right hon. Gentleman is in error. He is not up to his usual standard. He has even made a mistake about the date.

  Development Levy

    Recreational Needs and Resources
    Mr. Blenkinsopasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources whether he will take steps to promote research into recreational needs and the resources available to meet them without waiting for the establishment of the Countryside Commission.
    Mr. Skeffington: I hope that local authorities will now review their recreational needs and will evolve proposals for meeting them. Certain qualitative research is already being carried out by my right hon. Friend's Department, with the help of the Advisory Committee on Natural Resources.
    Mr. Blenkinsop: While welcoming my hon. Friend's Answer, may I ask him if he will follow this matter up, possibly through the newly established Council for Social Research and, indeed, through the Sports Council? We know extraordinarily little about this.
    Mr. Skeffington: Yes. One of the difficulties facing us in this work, as in other work, was the almost complete absence of data. In addition to the studies I have mentioned by the Advisory Committee, investigations into certain aspects are being made by the Department of Economic Affairs, by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, and by the tourist associations. We shall be in contact with all these bodies and shall try to assist wherever possible.
    Mr. Blenkinsopasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources whether he will initiate regional and local discussions between user and resource interests in land-and water-based recreation in the countryside to help overcome conflicting claims and to establish major needs.
    Mr. Skeffington: There will certainly need to be extensive discussions at all levels and between different interests in working out the proposals which were announced in the recent White Paper on Leisure, in the Countryside. The initiative for local discussions will primarily lie with the interests concerned, but my right hon. Friend will be ready to assist in arranging them with the help of the Countryside Commission, if this appears to be necessary.
    Mr. Blenkinsop: Is my hon. Friend aware that the White Paper proposals are welcomed very warmly? In order to give effect to them, many of us are very anxious that these discussions should start straight away. There should not be any hold-up. If my hon. Friend's Department could help to initiate discussions, we would welcome this very much.
    Mr. Skeffington: My right hon. Friend is very gratified at the reception of the proposals in the White Paper. As the White Paper itself stresses, there are a great many things which can be done, even at this stage, without waiting for legislation which has to follow in certain instances. We will bear my hon. Friend's point very much in mind.

    Ordnance Survey (Staff)
    Mr. Leadbitterasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources what steps he has taken to recruit extra staff for the Ordnance Survey to bring up to date the backlog of large scale mapping.
    Mr. Wiley: There has been a net increase of about 100 in the staff of the Ordnance Survey during the last six months and the Department is aiming to recruit a further substantial number later in the year. My objective is to increase the staff by about 20 per cent. over the next 10 years or so to complete the re-survey of the country by about 1980.

    Country Parks (Facilities)
    Mr. Hazellasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources what facilities will normally be provided in the country parks outlined in Command Paper No. 2928.
    Mr. Skeffington: In all country parks there will be an agreeable area to walk or sit in, and space for parking cars. The extent to which these basic facilities are
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    supplemented by others, of which there should certainly be a wide range, will depend on local circumstances and on demand and this must be left largely to the discretion of the Countryside Commission and the authorities planning and creating country parks. Paragraph 20 of the White Paper gives examples of facilities which might be provided, including restaurants, boating lakes and paddling pools, ornamental water and space for organised sports.
    Mr. Hazell: I am very grateful to the Minister for that lengthy reply. Will the area known as the Norfolk Broadland area be included in such a scheme?
    Mr. Skeffington: Discussions are still going on in relation to this, but it is thought unlikely that the whole of this area would be a country park. Discussions are going on with the various local authorities at present about its future and a decision about the area is much more likely to be the result of discussions between the local authorities.
    Mr. Peter Mills: Will the Minister bear in mind that what is also needed in National Parks is toilet and washing facilities and particularly very large bins or receptacles for waste paper and rubbish?
    Mr. Skeffington: Yes, I entirely agree. These seem to be elementary requirements, but it is surprising how often they have not been provided, largely, I suppose, because it has not been anybody's statutory duty until now to do so. We hope that the whole emphasis now contained in the White Paper will result in a very considerable improvement.

    Access to the Countryside
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources what further steps he will take to provide better access to open country for walkers and holiday-makers.
    Mr. Skeffington: I would refer my hon. Friend to the recent White Paper on Leisure in the Countryside, which announced the Government's intention to ask all local planning authorities to submit revised plans, based on the vigorous use of their powers, for securing public access to open country. The White Paper also announces the decision to pay Exchequer

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    grant at the rate of 75 per cent. throughout the countryside towards expenditure on the purchase of land for access, on compensation and on a warden service.
    Mr. Hamilton: Is my hon. Friend aware that those proposals are extremely welcome? Will he indicate whether steps are being taken to give special attention to the surrounding areas of the big industrial towns and cities, because there the need is greater than anywhere else?
    Mr. Skeffington: One important aspect of the policy announced in the White Paper is the provision of country parks fairly near to the great urban centres in order that these facilities shall be available without long and tiring journeys by car or in any other way.
    Mr. Carol Johnsonasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources whether he is satisfied that the proposals contained in Leisure in the Countryside will lead to a speedy increase in the number of access agreements, and the enlargement and strengthening of public rights in regard to footpaths and bridleways; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Skeffington: I am confident that the local authorities will make energetic use of their powers to secure access to open country, especially with the help of the 75 per cent. grants which we propose to make payable throughout the countryside.
    My hon. Friend will know that we propose some simplification of procedure in respect of footpaths, and this alone should make for more rapid progress in ensuring that footpaths and bridleways continue to be available to all who want to use them.
    Mr. Johnson: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Is he aware that there are large areas of open country, including areas of outstanding natural beauty like Abbeystead Moors and the Forest of Bowland, where public access is still strictly prohibited? Will he give an assurance that no large-scale attempt will be made to close footpaths, on the ground that they are falling into disuse, without consultation with people who use them?
    Mr. Skeffington: My hon. Friend will know, because he himself has been
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    closely concerned in this, that there has been a long struggle to get access to areas even when they have been preserved from the wrong kinds of development. This is what we have very much in mind in the countryside proposals in the White Paper. With regard to the closure of footpaths, we thought it wise to make provision for the abolition of footpaths which are not necessary; but our own view is that increasingly nearly all footpaths will become necessary with the growth of motor traffic.
    Mr. Lipton: On the question of access, will my hon. Friend take steps to ensure that authorities concerned do not sell to private interests disused railway railway track which could be made use of in this connection?
    Mr. Skeffington: My hon. Friend may have noticed that in my Answer to an earlier Question I pointed out that these tracks would often be very suitable, either for access or for other purposes, and that powers under three Statutes are available for this purpose.

    Land Commission
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources whether, in view of the abandonment of this Session's Land Commission Bill, and in order not to incur nugatory expenditure for which he has no Parliamentary authority, he will suspend preparations for the setting up of a Land Commission.
    Mr. Willey: No, Sir.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: In view of the abandonment of this Bill, can the right hon. Gentleman say what statutory authority there is for this expenditure?
    Mr. Willey: Yes. It is provided for in the Appropriation Bill which will shortly, I imagine receive Parliamentary approval.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Surely it is without precedent when expenditure has been started under a Bill which has subsequently been abandoned simply to seek authority under the Appropriation Bill? Can the right hon. Gentleman cite any precedent for this?
    Mr. Willey: Of course. Meanwhile it is covered by the Estimates.

    Countryside Commission
    Mr. Carol Johnsonasked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources if he will state the size of the proposed Countryside Commission; what bodies he proposes to consult before appointing its members; whether its members will be full-time or part-time; and when he will announce the name of the Chairman of the Commission.
    Mr. Willey: Although I have no statement to make at present, I expect to be able to make one before long.
    Mr. Johnson: In view of the extra duties and responsibilities which are being placed upon the new Countryside Commission, does not my right hon. Friend think it desirable that in this case there should be a number of full-time members on it? Secondly, as it is essential that the Commission should from the start enjoy the confidence of all people interested in it, will he at least informally consult the open air and amenity bodies as well as those who live and work in the countryside?
    Mr. Willey: I assure my hon. Friend that I will certainly consider what he has said. For myself, at the moment I think it is more likely to be a part-time body, but certainly I would not rule out the possibility of its being full time. In making appointments to the Commission we will bear in mind the different interests concerned in the countryside.

  PUBLIC BUILDING AND WORKS

    Building Control
    Mr. PeterWalker asked the Minister of Public Building and Works on what date he expects the machinery for building licence applications to be in operation.
    The Minister of Public Building and Works (Mr. Charles Pannell): I hope to make a statement about building control tomorrow.
    Mr. Walker: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there has been considerable frustration amongst business men who have been trying to apply for building licences and have been told that there is no machinery by which they can do so? Will the right hon. Gentleman
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    ensure that in his statement there is reference to some facility for making application?
    Mr. Pannell: The hon. Gentleman should be aware that I made a statement on 1st November and there can have been no dubiety about the situation since then. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I have already this morning had this out with somebody who felt the same as the hon. Gentleman does, and who is very interested in this matter. People have either had a definite negative or an affirmative. One could not be straighter than that.
    Mr. Chichester-Clark: Why could not we have had the statement today? Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the situation to which the statement of 1st November related is not the same as the situation today, because alterations have been taken out of the Bill? Does not the right hon. Gentlemant remember telling us that it was so vital that the Bill would be the first to be introduced in the Parliamentary Session? It then started 21st in the race and now, owing to the Minister's humiliation by his colleagues, it has been scratched altogether?
    Mr. Pannell: I cannot imagine what sort of people would humiliate me. I am not the sort of Minister who takes humiliation, anyway. I can only tell the hon. Gentleman that what is dimly apparent to him has always been daylight clear to me.
    Mr. Chichester-Clarkasked the Minister of Public Building and Works whether he will now make a statement about the position arising from the abandonment of the Building Control Bill.
    Mr. C. Pannell: Yes Sir. I hope to make a statement tomorrow.
    Mr. Chichester-Clark: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we look forward to the daylight which he will throw on the subject?

    Blenheim Palace
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Minister of Public Building and Works on what grounds a substantial grant has been given for the preservation of Blenheim Palace.
    Mr. C. Pannell: I have a duty to safeguard the nation's architectural heritage. In the furtherance of this and on the advice of the Historic Buildings Council for England, I offered this grant. Blenheim is in need of very extensive major structural repairs.
    Mr. Hamilton: That may well be, but has my right hon. Friend any evidence that the owners of this palace are in one of the pockets of newly-found poverty in this country? Cannot he apply the principle of a means test to applications for these grants? Has my right hon. Friend any assurance from the owners that public access to the palace will be greater now that the need for the half crowns from taxpayers is less?
    Mr. Pannell: The answer is that all these people have to submit to a pretty stringent means test. It has happened in this case. As a matter of fact, in all such cases it is the practice for the Council to examine the financial position of the applicants. In this case, to make doubly sure, and probably in anticipation of my hon. Friend's Question, we had the assistance of a firm of chartered accountants.
    Sir A. V. Harvey: Is it not a fact that the owner of this property put up an amount equal to the grant? Also is it not a fact that the British people will expect the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill to be maintained?
    Mr. Pannell: The hon. Gentleman will understand that I am bound not to disclose all the financial arrangements and those sort of things. It is equally true that I cannot bandy words across the Chamber about the financial settlements which are made. Of course, the owner has paid very considerable sums towards the repairs.
    Mr. Marten: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is a great national monument built for the nation and that it gives great pleasure to a great number of people regardless of party politics? Therefore, we must not let it fall into decay as is implied by those who hold by the political opinions of the hon. Member who put down the Question.
    Mr. Pannell: The hon. Gentleman must not imagine that sensitivity to our architectural heritage or to the history of
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    this country is the prerogative of hon. Members on the other side of the House.
    Mr. Robert Cookeasked the Minister of Public Building and Works what are the facilities for public access to Blenheim Palace; and what was the estimated total number of visitors to Blenheim for the last five years.
    Mr. C. Pannell: Blenheim Palace is advertised as being open to the public on four afternoons a week from Easter to July, and in October; and on six afternoons a week in August and September. The total number of visitors during the last five years was 672,729.
    Mr. Cooke: Will the right hon. Gentleman make sure that the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton), who detests the place so much, knows about it, so that he may perhaps be encouraged to visit it?
    Mr. Pannell: My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) does not detest historic buildings. He is concerned with their economical use and ensuring that there are proper proportionate payments My hon. Friend exercises the scrutiny of public expenditure proper to the Chairman of the Estimates Committee.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Has my right hon. Friend had an assurance from the owners, as a result of this public expenditure, that public access to the building will be increased?
    Mr. Pannell: I think that public access is good enough, but I will write to my hon. Friend and tell him of the pros and cons of Blenheim Palace. Then perhaps he will be able to return to the subject with greater knowledge on some future occasion.

    Concrete (Lightweight Aggregates)
    Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Minister of Public Building and Works how many cubic yards of lightweight aggregate for concrete, excluding clinker, have been used in his Department's contracts during the past four years; and what steps he is taking to encourage the more extensive use of artificial aggregates in the construction industries.
    Mr. C. Pannell: The first part of the Answer would take too many cubic yards of HANSARD at too great a public cost.

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    The Government are encouraging the more extensive use of lightweight concrete by publishing information and technical guidance on its use.
    Mrs. Short: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is at the moment a dichotomy between the production and use of lightweight aggregate materials, in that we are now producing more than we are using and the Building Regulations do not help in this respect? In three to five years' time there may be a shortage of these materials. Therefore, will my right hon. Friend take steps to encourage builders to use them so that manufacturers are encouraged to produce more?
    Mr. Panned: Yes. No doubt, my hon. Friend will reply to the letter which I have already written to her on the subject. Any information and help that we can give will be given.

    Historic Buildings
    Mr. Hamlingasked the Minister of Public Building and Works what principles of Government policy govern the grant of assistance from public funds towards the preservation of historic houses.
    Mr. C. Pannell: Grants can be made only for buildings of outstanding historic or architectural interest.
    Mr. Hamling: Should not these buildings of historic importance which are receiving grants from public funds become public property?
    Mr. Pannell: There may or may not be a case for that, but I am proceeding under my powers to see that we do the best we possibly can for them and that both the State and the owner make a just contribution.
    Mr. Robert Cooke: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House how much it would cost the taxpayer if the Duke of Marlborough gave Blenheim Palace back to the nation?
    Mr. Pannell: The hon. Gentleman can work out his own sums for himself.
    Sir P. Agnewasked the Minister of Public Building and Works what was the total sum expended by his Department on historic buildings in his charge in each of the years from 1960 to 1965.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Mr. James Boyden): £1·2 million, £1·4 million, £1·5 million, £1·6 million and £1·9 million respectively in round figures.
    Sir P. Agnew: Can the Parliamentary Secretary say whether these figures represent an increase in real terms, divorced from the general fall in the value of money, and whether the sums spent have been matched each year by an increasing number of the public making use of the facilities accorded as a condition of the grants?
    Mr. Boyden: Yes, Sir. For 1965–66 the provision is even better. It is £2·1 million. The revenue from admissions has also gone up—from £250,000 in 1960–61 to nearly £500,000 in 1964–65.
    Sir Knox Cunninghamasked the Minister of Public Building and Works what public events are planned to take place at historic buildings in his charge during 1966.
    Mr. Boyden: Thirty have been agreed and two are being considered.
    Sir Knox Cunningham: Could the hon. Gentleman give a little more detail of what is included in these 30? Although it is a very long list, one would like a little more information about it.
    Mr. Boyden: I will write to the hon. and learned Gentleman. The list ranges from an exhibition in the Abbey Chapter House to a single performance by a madrigal society at St. Andrews Castle, Scotland, and includes celebration of 1066 and all that.
    Mr. Blakerasked the Minister of Public Building and Works what new facilities for public access to historic buildings in his charge will be available in 1966.
    Mr. Boyden: Improved parking, better sign posting, earlier seasonal opening, better approaches—as for example at the Tower of London, to mention only a few improvements.

    Paymaster-General's Department (Office Equipment)
    Mr. Allasonasked the Minister of Public Building and Works what sum was expended on office equipment for the Paymaster-General's Department for 1963–64, 1964–65 and 1965–66.
    Mr. C. Pannell: The work of the Paymaster-General's Department covers banking and pension services. The expenditure figures on office equipment and furnishing in this context are £27,117 in 1963–64, £37,213 in 1964–65, and £31,302 in 1965–66 so far.
    Mr. Allason: Are we to understand that there is another context? Has there been any significant increase in the expenditure on tape recorders and listening devices—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister cannot answer for the other context.

    Building Regulations
    Mr. Allasonasked the Minister of Public Building and Works why the Explanatory Memorandum on Fire Stairs Space and a General Index, necessary to the understanding of the Building Regulations, 1965, was published only one day before the regulations became operative.
    Mr. Boyden: These explanatory memoranda are an aid and not a necessity for the understanding of the Building Regulations. It was necessary to give first priority to work on the Regulations themselves and the general introductory guide, which were published in July.
    Mr. Allason: Is it not a fact that architects have found extreme difficulty in interpreting the Building Regulations without this memorandum? Would it not have been better to have published the memorandum some considerable time before the Regulations came into effect, even if it meant postponing the introduction of the Regulations, in order to ensure that they are properly understood?
    Mr. Boyden: In reply to the first part of the question, the answer is, no. The preparation of the technical memorandum required as much care as the Regulations, and accuracy could not be sacrificed for speed.
    Mr. Channonasked the Minister of Public Building and Works whether he is satisfied that all the statutory consultations required before making any building regulations were fully carried out in the case of the Building (First Amendment) Regulations, 1965; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Boyden: As I said on 21st February and again on 24th February in this House—Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Channon: Does not the hon. Gentleman think it a little curious that these Regulations have attached to them the statement that they were made after consultation with the Building Regulations Advisory Committee when, as the hon. Gentleman said earlier, they were not?
    Mr. Boyden: The first amending Regulations consisted of corrections of errors detracting from the intended effect of the proposals endorsed by the Committee and embodied in the main Regulations. No new points of substance were contained in the amended Regulations and my right hon. Friend was given legal advice that there was no need for him to have fresh consultations to comply with the Statute.
    Mr. Graham Page: Is not this a serious matter? The Act with authorises the regulations requires the Minister to consult the Building Advisory Committee before making any Regulations. Has it not now been admitted that he made no such consultations? Are not the Regulations ultra vires, therefore?
    Mr. Boyden: No, Sir.

    Building and Construction Industries (Overseas Work)
    Mr. Channonasked the Minister of Public Building and Works what was the value of work obtained by the building and construction industries overseas during 1965.
    Mr. Boyden: £198 million for the year ending 31st March, 1965.
    Mr. Channon: Would not the hon. Gentleman concede, therefore, that the building industry make a very important export contribution not only in this way but in building for manufacturing industries on whose competitiveness we depend? Is it not rather unfortunate when we are trying to encourage exports that the building and construction industries should be excluded from the Government's new investment incentives?
    Mr. Boyden: The answer to the first part of the supplementary question is, yes, Sir. But without belittling the efforts of the export side of the building industry

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    I must point out that not all the money that the industry earns is a net export, because a lot of the money is spent abroad. However, I agree that one should encourage exports, and the builders in that year have done very well.
    Mr. Lubbock: Since the new investment grants apply to manufacturing industry and not to construction, how is the industrial building section of the construction industry going to be treated?
    Mr. Boyden: That was announced in the White Paper.

    Bricks
    Mr. Kershawasked the Minister of Public Building and Works (1) what was the stock of bricks at the latest convenient date; and what it was 12 months before that date;
    (2) how many bricks were produced in each of the last five quarters years.
    Mr. Chichester-Clarkasked the Minister of Public Building and Works whether he will make a statement about the brick situation.
    Mr. C. Pannell: Fewer bricks were put into stock in January than in December. Brick stocks at the end of January, 1966, were 709 million, about one month's normal usage compared with only five to six days' stock in January, 1965—140 million. Production figures for each of the last five quarters ending with December, 1965, were 2,058, 1,991, 2,032, 1,940 and 1,905 million.
    Mr. Kershaw: Is not that a disgraceful situation? Why did the right hon. Gentleman stimulate the brick industry to work so much harder with the result that bricks are now accumulating in such numbers because of the shortfall in demand?
    Mr. Pannell: I stimulated the brick industry—if that is the right word—in order to meet demands over the next four years, and the stocks are not astronomical. In 1963, they were very much higher but were down to normal by June. I imagine that the same sort of thing will take place again this year.
    Mr. Chichester-Clark: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that until very recently these figures were always available on
    1706
    the 23rd or 24th of the following month? Why is he holding them up? Does not he want to throw daylight on this situation? Surely he is also wrong in his statement about the winter of 1962–63. Is not he always taking refuge in that alibi, despite the fact that that was a terrible winter when building activity stopped for three months?
    Mr. Pannell: The hon. Gentleman's supplementary question carries the innuendo that I have concealed something. A similar charge was made by his hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) during the Second Reading of the Building Control Bill. The hon. Member for Southend, West had to withdraw it.
    Sir P. Roberts: Is not this muddle the direct result of Socialist planning?
    Mr. Pannell: There is no muddle. If the hon. Gentleman had been in on this argument before, he would know that when I came to office there was no more than a two to three days' supply of bricks and that bricklayers were idle. The building industry could not escape the measures which have affected the whole economy. However, we have good reason for optimism because no fewer than 444,000 houses were under construction in 1965 and new housing starts both in the public and the private sectors are showing a good upturn at the present time.
    Mr. Channon: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that my reason for making the allegation on the Second Reading of the Building Control Bill was due to the incompetence of his Press Office, which could not give me the figures?
    Mr. Pannell: That is not true. If the hon. Gentleman had known his way about the House of Commons he would have known that the figures were in the Library at the time.
    Mr. Chichester-Clark—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. We must get on.

    Portland Stone
    Mr. Evelyn Kingasked the Minister of Public Building and Works how many contracts have been let by his Department, or by other statutory bodies or Ministries which work under the aegis of his Department, which involved the use of

    1707
    Portland stone products in 1964 and in 1965, respectively.
    Mr. Boyden: I regret that the information is not available and that the cost of obtaining it would be more than would be justified.
    Mr. King: Will the hon. Gentleman see that it is the task of someone in the Department to make the figures available? Does not the hon. Gentleman understand that the whole prosperity of Portland depends on them? Is it not a fact that, when the Government stopped office building in London, they did so without even considering the effect—which has been powerful—that it would have no Portland?
    Mr. Boyden: The implication of the supplementary question is that the Ministry discourages the use of Portland stone. That is not so. The stone is used in a great many buildings when architecturally desirable.

    Westminster (Government Offices)
    Mr. John Smithasked the Minister of Public Building and Works how many square feet of office space is occupied in the City of Westminster by Government and other official bodies for which Her Majesty's Government have responsibility; and what is the average rent per square foot paid for such of this space as is rented.
    Mr. C. Pannell: A total of about 6 million sq. ft. of office space. The average rent for the leased accommodation is about 23s. sq. ft. The Post Office is excluded from these figures.
    Mr. Smith: Would it not be better for both the taxpayer and the ratepayer if some of these bodies could be moved out of central London and the premises put to economic use?
    Mr. Pannell: I happen to believe that Government offices are put to economic use. It is usually very much better to use Crown offices than to use leased accommodation, which is much more expensive. If one takes into account the number of civil servants, one can see that we are better off doing it this way.
    Mr. Channon: Is it not Government policy to move Government Departments out of London wherever possible? Has
    1708
    not this been the continuing policy? Does it not remain so?
    Mr. Pannell: I so much agree with the hon. Gentleman that I do not have to contradict him.

    Public Buildings, London (Floodlighting)
    Mr. Geoffrey Wilsonasked the Minister of Public Building and Works what public buildings in London will be floodlit during 1966 additional to those lit during 1965.
    Mr. Boyden: The Victoria Tower of the Palace of Westminster, so far as this Ministry is concerned.
    Mr. Wilson: Is that enough? In view of the great value of the tourist industry as a dollar earner, should we not do more floodlighting, which adds greatly to the attractions of public buildings?
    Mr. Boyden: Another thirteen buildings which are the responsibility of the Ministry are floodlit as well as other buildings which are not our responsibility.

    Palace of Westminster
    Mr. Robert Cookeasked the Minister of Public Building and Works what steps he proposes to take to clean the exterior of the Palace of Westminster.
    Mr. C. Pannell: I have already considered this and rejected it. I am writing to the hon. Gentleman, telling him all the considerations.
    Mr. Cooke: Ought not the right hon. Gentleman to think again about this? Has he been too busy throwing whitewash in other directions? Will he now tell the House why he rejected the idea?
    Mr. Pannell: If I listed all of the considerations that brought me to this decision I should be in a great deal of peril from you, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Gentleman had better wait for the letter, when he will be able to ask his questions with knowledge rather than with a degree of ignorance.

    Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings (Tickets)
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Minister of Public Building and Works how many season tickets to ancient monuments and historic buildings were sold

    1709
    in 1965; and what consideration has been given to making available a ticket which will admit overseas visitors to National Trust properties as well as to those in his own care.
    Mr. Boyden: Over 7,000 more than in 1964—27,655. From 1st April a new ticket will be on sale to visitors from abroad which will admit to all Ministry sites and to the properties of the National Trust and the National Trust for Scotland. It will cost 21s., be valid for one year, and will give entry to nearly 400 places.
    Mr. Hughes: Can the Minister say why such tickets are not being made more readily available to foreign visitors, in the interests of education and world peace?
    Mr. Boyden: This ticket is being issued for foreign tourists.
    Mr. Gresham Cooke: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether these tickets are well advertised in this country? My information is that the Americans know more about them than do the British people.
    Mr. Boyden: They are for foreign tourists and they are being extensively advertised by the B.T.H.A., by tourist agencies and so on. When the scheme is fully under way I am quite sure that a great many people will take advantage of them.

    Government Buildings, Admiralty House (Alterations)
    Mr. John Smithasked the Minister of Public Building and Works what is the cost of the alterations to the Government buildings adjoining Admiralty House; and to what purpose the buildings will be put when the work is completed.
    Mr. C. Pannell: £230,000. The accommodation will provide offices for the Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury and some other staff.
    Mr. Smith: Will there be any living accommodation for Ministers in these buildings?
    Mr. Pannell: That is not contemplated.

  PENSIONS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE

    Disabled People
    Sir B. Jannerasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she will consider adding to the benefits under National Insurance an allowance to men with young children where the wives are permanently disabled or incapacitated.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Norman Pentland): I can assure my hon. Friend that the needs of all permanently disabled people, including those of permanently disabled wives and mothers, are receiving the Government's close attention.
    Sir B. Janner: While thanking my hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask him to take into consideration the extreme difficulty in which this type of person is placed and the expense to which he is put? Will he try to bring about a speedy remedy?
    Mr. Pentland: All these considerations are being taken into account by the Government.

    Mentally Handicapped Young People (Allowances)
    Mr. Carter-Jonesasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she will seek to increase the National Assistance allowance paid to mentally handicapped young people who are receiving industrial or other training.
    Mr. Pentland: I have no reason to think that the provision made by the existing National Assistance rates which, as my hon. Friend will appreciate, are at present higher in real terms than ever before, is in any way deficient in such cases. But if my hon. Friend has an individual case in mind, I will gladly look into it.
    Mr. Carter-Jones: While thanking my hon. Friend for that Answer, and for his sympathy, may I ask him to reconsider this matter in the light of the fact that handicapped children and adults have the problem of extra cleaning and breakages, which are a burden upon the parents and the individual? Would he please reconsider this?
    Mr. Pentland: Yes. If there are special needs arising out of the industrial occupation of the mentally handicapped, then the National Assistance Board would either make a special addition to the weekly grant or it would make a lump sum grant to cover the additional cost.
    Mr. John Wells: Is the Minister aware that there is a special zone containing a number of children who scarcely fall within his orbit, yet very nearly do so? Will he make special steps to liaise with the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Education and Science about this handful of cases, because only National Assistance can provide for them? Will he go out of his way to see that the normal National Assistance disregards do not apply in the case of these mentally handicapped young people?
    Mr. Pentland: Yes, Sir. We are looking into all these matters.

  HOSPITALS

    Hospital Physics Technicians
    Mr. Howeasked the Minister of Health whether he is satisfied that hospital departments of medical physics and regional radiotherapy departments are adequately staffed; what representations he has received about rates of wastage and levels of payment for hospital physics technicians who work in such departments; and whether he will make a statement.
    The Minister of Health (Mr. Kenneth Robinson): Numbers have continued to increase, but hospital boards need more technicians for this expanding service. One centre has recently reported a net loss, but mostly to other hospitals. On 28th February I met at their request, representatives of the staff side of the Whitley Council who were concerned about the progress of pay negotiations. I understand that negotiations are being resumed at once on a proposal for a current pay increase and that the comprehensive review of the salary and grading structure already in hand and the subsequent pay negotiations will be pursued as expeditiously as possible.
    Mr. Howe: In view of the fact that, as the Minister told me last week, there are vacancies amounting to about 30 per cent. at the radiotherapy units in the Liverpool, Newcastle and Birmingham Regional Hospital Boards, and in view of the fact that the pay scales for these important people working on the new frontiers of mental science have lagged behind those of comparable medical technicians, can the Minister assure the House that the negotiations which he has mentioned will be pressed forward with the utmost speed to prevent any further shortfall in the number of these people?
    Mr. Robinson: Yes, Sir. I can certainly give that assurance, which was contained in my original reply. I should tell the hon. and learned Gentleman that the numbers have increased by about 10 per cent. a year over the last five years.

    Boston Hospital
    Sir J. Maitlandasked the Minister of Health on what date the final plans and costings for Boston Hospital will be ready, so that a decision may be given to begin building.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Charles Loughlin): Progress is being made, but I cannot yet give a date.
    Sir J. Maitland: Is the Minister aware that we are not getting very far, because last year the hon. Gentleman said in answer to a Question of mine that he was getting out these figures as soon as he could, and that the moment would arrive when the hospital building could begin? We do not seem to have got any further. Cannot he hasten matters a little?
    Mr. Loughlin: I am aware that there has been a long and difficult history about this hospital, through 1957 and other years during the last Administration. There is difficulty now. The hon. Member knows that under the original plan the hospital was to cost £2 million plus. It is now at the figure of £5 million plus, and my right hon. Friend is considering the costing of it at the moment.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH

    Preventive Medicine
    Mrs. Joyce Butlerasked the Minister of Health what reply he has sent to the Patients' Association's request for the formulation of a national policy on preventive medicine.
    Mr. K. Robinson: I have confirmed the policy described in previous correspondence between the Patients' Association and my Department, and have pointed out that my Department and the Medical Research Council are taking the leading rôle in initiating and financing research to establish the value of particular screening procedures. I have sent my hon. Friend a copy of my letter to the Association.
    Mrs. Butler: In view of the large amount of hitherto unsuspected illness which has been uncovered by the limited screening campaign so far undertaken and the consequent benefit to the health of the nation by increasing these campaigns, as well as the saving on the National Health Service, would my right hon. Friend speed up this examination, with a view to introducing a much more comprehensive preventive health service?
    Mr. Robinson: I intend to encourage presymptomatic preventive screening only for conditions in which research has shown that there is a valid test capable of detecting true disease at an early stage, and for which there is an effective treatment. Screening which does not fulfil these conditions could be wasteful of resources and could well do harm.
    Sir K. Joseph: Is the Minister aware that we will thoroughly support any extension of the use of reliable screening techniques? Will he tell the House whether the Government are going to increase the allocation of money to march hand in hand with the practicability of increased checking techniques such as he has been discussing?
    Mr. Robinson: We are increasing the allocation of money generally to hospital authorities; but if the right hon. Gentleman means, are we going to make special allocations, then he knows very well that this has not been the practice in financing the hospital services, under this Government or previous ones.

    Cervical Cancer Screening Clinics
    Mrs. Joyce Butlerasked the Minister of Health when he expects to send a circular to local authorities in regard to the establishment of cervical cancer screening clinics.
    Mr. K. Robinson: Many local health authorities have already started a screening service in areas where the hospital laboratory can support routine screening for cervical cancer. I am considering the issue of a general circular of guidance.
    Mrs. Butler: As a number of local authorities are awaiting some guidance from the Minister on this, would he consider sending out the circular very soon? It is a matter of great concern to women throughout the country that this service should be started in their areas as soon as possible.
    Mr. Robinson: I will certainly consider what my hon. Friend has said. Perhaps I should tell her that 78 local health authorities have so far taken powers under Section 28 of the 1946 National Health Service Act to participate in smear taking.

    Kidney Machines
    Mr. Ginsburgasked the Minister of Health what further progress has been made in the provision of facilities for the treatment of chronic renal failure by intermittent dialysis.
    Sir E. Erringtonasked the Minister of Health (1) how many kidney machines are in use in hospitals; and what steps are being taken to increase their number;
    (2) what steps he is taking to increase the number of trained operators of kidney machines in hospitals or elsewhere.
    Mr. K. Robinson: Within the past year the use of kidney machines for treatment of chronic renal failure has emerged from the research stage to become recognised as a form of treatment which the Health Service ought to provide. Ninety-five patients are now being treated through 33 machines in hospitals and nine in homes in England and Wales. I hope to provide facilities for not less than 100 additional patients within the next 12 months. I will, with permission, circulate a more detailed statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Ginsburg: I thank my right hon. Friend for his encouraging reply. Will he press on with developments in this respect? How does this country compare with other countries in this field of medicine?
    Mr. Robinson: I do not think that any country has made more progress in providing this treatment than we have—certainly not the United States.
    Mr. Wood: Can the Minister say what is the cost of these machines in hospitals, and whether modifications to them are being considered to make it possible to use them outside hospitals?
    Mr. Robinson: Some patients are already using these machines in their own homes. I should not like to answer the right hon. Gentleman's question about cost without notice. There are indications that the cost is coming down and I am not sure what the latest figure is. Perhaps he will be interested to know that I have sanctioned the extension or establishment of renal dialysis units at 10 hospitals since 1st January this year, and a further six are under consideration.
    Following is the information:
    The number of patients currently being treated, proportionately to population, com pares favourably with that in any other country in the world.
    The use of kidney machines for chronic treatment involves new, difficult, and still imperfectly developed techniques, skill in which can be attained only by experience; it also requires specialised equipment, important parts of which at the present time have to be virtually handmade, which needs much further development both to make it safer and more effective in use and to simplify and speed its manufacture.
    Vigorous efforts are being made by the Department's Working Party to overcome the technical problems, and by hospital authorities to establish as quickly as possible a network of treatment facilities, initially one or perhaps two full scale units in each hospital region. These units will provide both for the assessment and treatment of patients and progressively for the training of more skilled staff. Within the past two months ten schemes designed to provide ten-bed units have been sanctioned by the Department, six others are being considered in detail by the hospital authorities concerned, and one had already been approved before the end of 1965. Facilities for not less than 100 additional patients will become available within the next twelve months and many more in the succeeding months.
    1716
    Home dialysis offers special problems which it is important to evaluate before it would be wise to commend widespread extension of home treatment. A pilot study already in progress in London with the object of evaluating these special problems is being extended and a further pilot trial in the North of England has been sanctioned.

  MINISTRY OF LABOUR

    Labour-only Sub-Contractors
    Mr. Urwinasked the Minister of Labour what discussions have been undertaken by his Department with the appropriate bodies regarding the continuing employment of labour-only subcontractors for house building purposes; and what has been the outcome.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Ernest Thornton): My right hon. Friend's National Joint Advisory Council agreed at its last meeting in January that our Ministry should make inquiries into labour-only sub-contracting. Discussions have been held with representatives of trade unions and employers' associations in the construction industry and of the Construction Industry Training Board. A report will be submitted in due course to the Council.
    Mr. Urwin: I thank my hon. Friend for his reply. Would he try to speed up the discussions which are taking place? Also, would he agree that as this system operates largely in house building it is not in the best interests either of the industry or of the consumer? Can he give an assurance of speedier action in this regard?
    Mr. Thornton: We certainly pay close attention to this matter. As soon as the report is made, my right hon. Friend will decide what action it may be necessary to take.

  FAR EAST
  Mr. Zilliacusasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what political commitments with regard to support for United States policies in the Far East Her Majesty's Government has incurred as a result of its discussion on the sharing of defence costs and facilities in this area; and whether he will give an assurance

  1717
  that Her Majesty's Government will not support United States policies for containing China.
  The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Michael Stewart): No commitments were incurred. With regard to the second part of the Question, our main objectives must be to find peaceful solutions to the present conflicts and tensions in Asia. It is only if we fail in this that we must be ready to resist aggression.
  Mr. Zilliacus: But will my right hon. Friend confirm not only that our main objective is to seek a peaceful solution, but that a major object is in no circumstances to be associated with the so-called containment of China policy of the United States?
  Mr. Stewart: I think that I dealt with that matter in the foreign affairs debate recently If, as I trust, China wants to live on good terms with her neighbours, that is something which would be very much in line with our policy and which we should, as far as we could, help. I do not think my hon. Friend would wish me to assume that Chinese policy would be of a different kind.
  Mr. A. Royle: While welcoming the support which Her Majesty's Government have so far given to American policy in the Far East, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will make certain that Her Majesty's Government's views are listened to by the United States Government and that we do not just become an auxiliary of the United States Administration in the Far East?
  Mr. Stewart: I think that it is well known that the United States Government and ourselves always pay a great deal of respect and attention to each other's views.
  Lady Tweedsmuir: Would the Foreign Secretary say whether there has been a request from the United States Government that we should send troops to Vietnam?
  Mr. Stewart: That has been answered before. It is not our intention to do so, in view of our position as co-Chairman.

  SPECIAL OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE, FRENCH SECTION (BOOK)
  Dame Irene Wardasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on what date the book on Special Operations Executive, French Section, will be published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
  Mr. Stewart: The book is with the binders and publication is expected towards the end of April.
  Dame Irene Ward: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that information—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—may I ask him whether, since this was specially arranged for by a grant which Mr. Macmillan obtained from the Treasury for publication of the book, some acknowledgement will be made in the book of the part which he played in the interests of those whose records are to be put in the book?
  Mr. Stewart: While not accepting the implication of the hon. Lady's introduction to her supplementary question, may I say that it is common knowledge that it was the decision of the last Government to publish this book, and reference will be made to that fact in the introduction.
  Dame Irene Ward: On a point of order. Would I be in order, Mr. Speaker, in giving notice to raise the matter on the Adjournment in view of the tact that I arranged for Mr. Macmillan—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady has been in Parliament long enough to know how to give formal notice.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT

    Public Swimming Baths
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government what precautions he orders to be taken in public swimming baths under his regulations to prevent infection to the eyes, ears and other features of persons using those baths.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. James MacColl): The Department has issued comprehensive guidance from time to time on the filtration and sterilisation of the water in

    1719
    swimming pools and on the necessary pre-cleansing arrangements. Loan sanction for the building of a public swimming bath by a local authority would not be given unless the standard were satisfactory in all these respects. As regards swimming pools which are not managed by a local authority but to which the public are admitted on payment of a charge the Public Health Act 1936 enable the authority to make byelaws to secure the purity of the water and the cleanliness of the accommodation.
    Mr. Hughes: Does not my hon. Friend realise that the absence of precautions such as those indicated in the Question negatives the development and health purposes for which the baths are provided? Will he ensure that adequate precautions are taken?
    Mr. MacColl: My right hon. Friend has no evidence that the present precautions are not adequate.

  SCOTLAND

    Population
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what was the estimated net increase or decrease in the population of Scotland over the latest period of 12 months for which statistics are available; and what was the estimated net increase or decrease over the preceding 10 years.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mrs. Judith Hart): The estimated decrease in the population of Scotland between 30th June, 1964, and 30th June, 1965, was 2,500; the estimated increase between 30th June, 1954, and 30th June, 1964, was 102,800.
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I take it that in the second part of her Answer the hon. Lady is referring to the increase in the previous 10 years to which the Question refers. Would not she agree that the figures of decrease for the last year are a fair comment on the Prime Minister's statement at the last election that the people of Scotland were voting with their feet?
    Mrs. Hart: The hon. Gentleman should study the figures very much more closely. If he does, he will find that
    1720
    net migration rose from 25,000 in 1954 to 40,600 in 1964. He will know that under this Government there has been an increase of 80 per cent. in approvals for factory starts in Scotland during 1965 over 1964.

  EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

    Teaching Machines
    Mr. Gresham Cookeasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many teaching machines his Department will be purchasing in the financial year 1966–67; and whether he will issue a circular to local education authorities recommending the use of teaching machines while there is a shortage of teachers.
    The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Edward Redhead): I have nothing to add to the reply given to the hon. Member on 3rd March.
    Mr. Cooke: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that if his Department is to order only 19 teaching machines, the same as this year, that is a disgracefully small number? Does he realise that millions of electors who voted at the last General Election for a dynamic technological age will be grievously disappointed?
    Mr. Redhead: The hon. Gentleman must not overlook the fact that not only my Department but local authorities buy these machines.

  HOME DEPARTMENT

    Detainees (Documents)
    Sir B. Jannerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that young men sentenced to a detention centre arrive at the centre without any documents concerning their previous record or work or home background and that these documents usually reach the centre about a week after the admission of the detainee; and if he will arrange that in future the police take with the detainee a note of such facts as well as such documents as were available to the sentencing court.
    The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Thomas): Assizes and quarter sessions

    1721
    usually send with the detainee the reports which they have had before them. Magistrates' courts do not normally have such reports to send, and in that event the detention centre obtains information from those able to furnish it. My right hon. Friend is considering whether these arrangements can be improved.
    Sir B. Janner: While thanking my hon. Friend for his reply, may I ask him whether he will take into consideration the fact that when an individual is sent to a detention centre, unless the authorities there have the particulars of what the individual has been sent there for they are in a difficulty in respect of his treatment; and, consequently, unless and until those particulars arrive, the person detained may be dealt with in a manner very different from that intended by the court?
    Mr. Thomas: Yes, Sir.

    Petrol Stations (Automatic Cut-Off Nozzles)
    Mr. Gresham Cookeasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress is being made by the committee reviewing the recommendations made to local authorities so as to allow petrol stations supplying the public to use automatic cut-off nozzles.
    Mr. George Thomas: The drafting of appropriate amendments to the existing code of recommendations has now been completed and these will be submitted to the Standing Advisory Committee on Dangerous Substances for its consideration as soon as possible.
    Mr. Gresham Cooke: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the use of these nozzles as used in Australia and elsewhere should lead to a great increase in productivity, as they are designed to service a greater number of cars with about the same number of personnel? Will he, therefore, give this method every encouragement?
    Mr. Thomas: Yes, Sir.

B.O.A.C. AIRCRAFT (ACCIDENT, TOKYO)
Mr. R. Carr (by Private Notice)Mr. R. Carr (by Private Notice) asked the Minister of Aviation if he will make a statement about the crash to the
1722
B.O.A.C. Boeing aircraft at Tokyo with the loss of 124 lives.
The Minister of Aviation (Mr. Frederick Mulley): A Boeing 707 aircraft of B.O.A.C. on a flight from London to Hong Kong, via U.S.A. and Tokyo, crashed 17 minutes after leaving Tokyo on Saturday, 5th March, at 5.15 a.m. G.M.T., corresponding to 2.15 p.m. local time.
The aircraft took off from Tokyo under a visual flight rule clearance and the last radio contact with Tokyo was when the aircraft was at about 2,000 feet. Preliminary information indicates that the aircraft suffered a structural failure before crashing on the south-east slope of Mount Fuji. The reason for the failure is not yet known. I regret to say that all 113 passengers and 11 crew were killed.
In accordance with international agreement, the responsibility for conducting an inquiry into the circumstances of the accident lies with the Japanese authorities, but they have the right to delegate the whole or any part to the State of registry. I have no reason to doubt that the Japanese authorities will conduct the inquiry, and I will appoint an accredited representative to participate in the inquiry.
My Chief Inspector of Accidents, with members of his staff and medical advisers, left for Tokyo on Saturday morning along with the Chairman of B.O.A.C. and his investigating team, and arrived yesterday.
The whole House will wish to join with me in sympathising with the relatives and friends of all those who have lost their lives in this tragic accident.
Mr. Carr: We on this side would, of course, like to join in the sympathy which has been expressed to all those who have been bereaved by this accident. I think that the whole House would also like to express sympathy to the management and staff of B.O.A.C., who have a magnificent safety record.
Is the Minister aware that there must be growing public anxiety at the unfortunate rash of crashes of jet airliners during the last month or two? Will he, therefore, press on with his inquiry, as far as he is able to influence it, with great urgency and try to see that a statement is made at the earliest possible moment?

1723
During the course of his inquiry, will the Minister use any influence he can to see that the basic stall characteristics of large jet aircraft are particularly looked into, because there seems now to be evidence that these large jets are susceptible to these sudden stalling accidents?
Mr. Mulley: I am very much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for what he has said, and I will see that the sympathy of the House is also conveyed to the staff of B.O.A.C., who, I agree, have had an admirable safety record. The last accident involving loss of life was as long as 10 years ago.
As to the inquiry, as I have said, it is almost certain to be conducted, as international law provides, by the Japanese authorities, but I will certainly do all I can to see that it is expedited as much as possible.
It is always rash to speculate about the causes of accidents in advance of an inquiry, but on our preliminary view there is nothing to suggest that this accident had any bearing upon similar accidents which, all too unhappily, have occurred in Japan in recent weeks. I would not myself think that the stall was as relevant a matter for the Boeing 707 as, perhaps, it is for the Boeing 727, but I will certainly see that these points are studied.
Mr. Edelman: Apart from this tragic accident, will my right hon. Friend say what are the general rules governing authority for pilots to deviate from course to study features of special interest for passengers such as, for example, Mont Blanc?
Mr. Mulley: I do not know that any question of special facilities for passengers arose in this case. Flights from Tokyo to Hong Kong are generally made along airways under instrument flight rules, but an aircraft commander may, at his discretion and with the approval of air traffic control, fly outside airways under visual flight rules in clear weather, and that is what the pilot in this case was doing. The captain was a very experienced pilot, who had had a lot of experience in the area.
Mr. Lubbock: May we on these benches also associate ourselves with the sympathy which has been expressed for
1724
the relatives of the victims of this tragic crash?
May I ask the Minister whether the flight recorder has yet been recovered and what provision will be made by B.O.A.C. for meeting its route commitments now that it has lost this aircraft?
Mr. Mulley: It is too early to say what effect the accident may have on route commitments. The flight data recorder has not yet been recovered, but it is not at all clear that if it were recovered it would necessarily show any indication of the cause of the accident.
Sir A. V. Harvey: Does the Minister recall that doubts about the stall characteristics of the Boeing freighter have been expressed by the British Air Line Pilots' Association? Will he ask his investigators to make certain from the makers in the United States that the same doubts do not apply to the passenger version of the Boeing 707?
Mr. Mulley: I think that I can say now that the handling characteristics which raised questions in relation to the Boeing 707 freighters recently acquired by B.O.A.C. do not arise with the version involved in this accident, which has been flying since 1960.
Mr. Maxwell: Will my right hon. Friend explain the situation concerning the insurance that may be recovered by the families who lost their loved ones in such tragic circumstances, and the present situation as regards the Warsaw Convention?
Mr. Mulley: The question of compensation is now extremely complicated as a result of some countries having ratified and some not having ratified The Hague Convention, which revised the Warsaw Convention. The question of compensation under those Conventions may well depend upon the ticket and the flight on which passengers were travelling. The position is very unsatisfactory and, as my hon. Friend probably knows, a meeting is likely to be held very soon to try to resolve these difficulties.
The crew will be covered by the pension scheme of B.O.A.C./B.E.A., which will be in addition to any common law entitlement that may arise.
Mr. Marten: Can the Minister be a little more specific about the question of

1725
an interim statement? It would satisfy public opinion if fairly soon, as soon as he is sure of the facts, he could give an interim statement without waiting for a final detailed report.
Secondly, can the right hon. Gentleman say whether there is any machinery for linking the investigations into the various crashes which have occurred?
Mr. Mulley: As the hon. Member will know, we are in each case very much in the hands of the authority in whose area an accident occurs. I will certainly consider whether an interim statement can be made, but this is a difficult matter when another country is conducting the inquiry. There are no international arrangements for co-ordinating inquiries of this nature, but there is, as the hon. Member knows, concern about the number of accidents and they will, I am sure, be discussed within the international bodies.

HOUSE PURCHASERS (PROTECTION)
The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Richard Crossman): I will with permission, Mr. Speaker, make a statement about the protection of house purchasers.
In the White Paper "The Housing Programme 1965 to 1970" the Government stated their determination to ensure that houses for owner-occupation are properly built and that purchasers are protected against shoddy work. These aims could be achieved by statutory means—by setting up an agency to inspect houses whilst they are being built and to provide a form of guarantee against defects not revealed by inspection. The Government do not wish to rule out a statutory scheme, but they would much prefer a non-statutory scheme, provided that such a scheme can be made fully effective.
As a result of discussions in which the Government have taken part the scheme run by the National House-Builders Registration Council has recently been improved. Purchasers of houses built in accordance with the scheme, which is based on a detailed specification and several inspections during construction,
1726
now receive a guarantee against minor defects for a period of two years, and a further guarantee, backed by insurance, against major structural defects for a period of 10 years. The scheme also provides a free and simple conciliation service to deal with disputes, and a right to arbitration where conciliation fails.
I regard development of this voluntary scheme into a mandatory scheme as the most satisfactory means of protecting purchasers against the evils of jerry-building. It already applies to nearly 40 per cent. of the private enterprise houses being built, and I would like to see registration made a condition for receiving an advance from a building society.
I am glad to announce that the Building Societies Association is today recommending its members to make participation by the builder a condition for making an advance on a new house. For my part, I am inviting local authorities to restrict loans on new houses in the same way.
I hope that these measures will result in the N.H.B.R.C. scheme becoming well-nigh universal. I accept that this cannot take place overnight. But we cannot wait much longer to give proper protection to all house purchasers. I shall keep a close watch on the situation, and if progress is not quick enough I shall not hesitate to bring forward legislation.
Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: As imitation is proverbially the sincerest form of flattery, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we very much appreciate his adoption of the greater part of some ideas which we put forward some months ago on this particular subject? May I ask him whether, in addition to his adoption of the house builders' registration scheme, he has considered, in view of the fact, as he himself says, that many houses will be outside the scheme for a time, also effecting an amendment of the general law so as to imply on the sale of a house the same warranty as is implied in respect of goods under the Sale of Goods Act?
Mr. Crossman: Yes, Sir. I think that these changes of legislation are worth considering, but the thing to do, if the right hon. Gentleman agrees with me, is to get the N.H.B.R.C. working with the building societies. Though the right hon. Gentleman may have aspired to this, he did not achieve it. We have achieved it.
Mr. Lubbock: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware also that we, too, very much welcome this approach? Is he aware that the N.H.B.R.C. scheme has been very much improved since about a couple of years ago? Can he say what would be the position of houses in course of construction if the builder is not already a member of the scheme? Will they be able to get a certificate, even though it is impossible for the required number of inspections to take place?
Also, is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the N.H.B.R.C. inspectors can cope with the 250 per cent. increase in their work without danger that the standards of inspection will deteriorate?
Mr. Crossman: There is no question, in my mind, that the inspectorate of the N.H.B.R.C. is not adequate to deal with the increased number of builders we hope will join the scheme. It has been largely increased now, and one of the reasons I am reluctant to enter on a statutory scheme is that we have a limited number of inspectors. So I strongly urge all builders to join the scheme. I think that they can recruit the necessary inspectors, but I would think that the inspectors are not really the most important thing here. The most important thing is the warranty, and the insurance and the other conditions.
Mr. Ioan L. Evans: Does my right hon. Friend realise that this action will be welcomed in the country, that action speaks louder than words, and that although many give lip-service to this action it is he who has done it? May I ask what will happen in the case of those builders who, having built houses and having entered into contractual obligations, may go into liquidation?
Mr. Crossman: One of the 10 points of the N.H.B.R.C. is protection of the house purchaser against the builder who goes into bankruptcy. This is the whole point of the scheme. For the first two years of the scheme the builder gives his own guarantee; for the remaining 10 years the N.H.B.R.C. takes over the guarantee itself and protects the house purchaser in this way, so that the person is covered against bankruptcy.
As for my having done it first, I would say that the important thing is to persuade the building societies and the builders to come in. We want them to
1728
do it voluntarily, and it is only in the last resort that I would be prepared to do anything in the sense of legislation.
Brigadier Clarke: Would the Minister also say whether this scheme includes the 3 per cent. mortgage as promised by his party at the last General Election?
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Brigadier Clarke: Answer.
Mr. Speaker: Order. We must move on.

MINISTRY OF SOCIAL SECURITY
The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Margaret Herbison): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to give the House an outline of the Government's proposals for a scheme to replace National Assistance.
A Ministry of Social Security will be established bringing together the existing Departments of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance and the National Assistance Board. This will get rid of the sharp distinction between benefits related to contributions and non-contributory benefits.
A new scheme of non-contributory benefits will replace National Assistance. Provision will be made for rent and additional payments to meet special individual needs; but the aim will be to make this part of the scheme more readily understandable than the present discretionary additions. A form of guaranteed income will be provided for the old and others with long-term need such as the chronic sick.
Rules for the treatment of resources will be simplified and rationalised. There will be a small "disregard" of all income except National Insurance pensions and benefits, family allowances and maintenance payments. The amount of savings of any kind to be totally disregarded will be increased, so that modest savings will be ignored—no matter how they are invested. A new system will be adopted for capital above this level which will get rid of the rigid limit of £600 which at present by itself disqualifies the holder entirely from benefit.
The procedure for claiming the new benefit will be made more flexible for

1729
retired people. They will have a choice of making a written declaration of their circumstances or of being visited at home. The assessment based on the written declaration will need to be confirmed by an interview, but if desired this could take place at the local office.
There will be less routine visiting; but visiting officers will have more time to ensure that any welfare needs are indentified and brought to the notice of the appropriate service.
When an elderly person receiving the new benefit also has a National Insurance pension the two will be paid together on a single order book. Those who are not receiving retirement pension will receive payment on an order book of similar appearance to the retirement pension order book.
The new Ministry will send details of the new benefit to everyone claiming a National Insurance retirement pension. Personal contact will be made with anyone, who, on retirement, does not claim the new benefit, unless he indicates that he does not want it and the same will be done on widowhood. As the scheme develops we shall arrange to contact pensioners after they have been retired for some years.
Financial help is not the only kind of help that old people fail to seek. A wide range of services to meet health and welfare needs is provided by local authorities, but too often they are not known by old people or the effort to make the necessary contact is beyond them. The arrangements I have described will help to overcome these difficulties.
To preserve responsiveness to human needs there will be within the Ministry of Social Security a commission of persons chosen for their interest in, and knowledge of, social problems, in whom will be vested the responsibility, under broad regulations made by the Minister, for guiding the new scheme and for individual awards.
These changes will preserve what is good in the present scheme while getting rid of those features which create dislike or misconception. Everybody recognises the humanity and efficiency with which the National Assistance scheme is administered and the Government are confident that these qualities will be carried over into the new organisation.
1730
But the new Commission and the staff concerned will be enabled to do an even better job. The Government believe that the changes will ensure that the elderly will have no hesitation in claiming a benefit, given with dignity, to which they are entitled and which the nation wishes them to have.
Sir K. Joseph: Is the Minister aware that we on this side of the House welcome the Government's adoption of nearly every one of our own published proposals? We should like to join the right hon. Lady in her tribute to the humanity and efficiency of the National Assistance Board. But, at the same time, we welcome the more positive arrangements that she has announced.
There are a number of questions which we should like to ask on her important statement. While welcoming very much the raising of disregards, can she tell us what level she has in mind and what extra costs will be involved? I hope that the right hon. Lady will take a few notes of the questions, because I have quite a number on her long statement.
While welcoming the increased help for the chronic sick and others with long-term needs, will she tell us whether that will include the severely disabled, including those severely disabled who have not themselves individually been paying contributions under the social security scheme? Will she confirm that the extra help by what she calls "a form of guaranteed income" will involve what would be called, if it were proposed from this side, a test of means?
Will she confirm that the Assistance scales and benefits will be the same as now? Will she tell us what cost is involved in all these proposals, bearing in mind that her right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State's National Plan provided for £387 million extra for social security over six years, of which about £70 million has already been used?
Will the right hon. Lady confirm whether supplementary benefits will now be the subject of Parliamentary Questions to her? Will she acknowledge that her statement is a very far cry from the unqualified pledge of a minimum income guarantee which the Government promised? That would have involved a complete dependence on a negative tax return, which is only dragged into an

1731
overall traditional scheme as a minor option in what she proposes?
Finally, has she anything to tell the House about help for the children in low income families, as proposed by the Family Poverty Group?
Miss Herbison: I will take the first point made by the right hon. Gentleman. What a pity that, after the 1955 General Election, his Government did not introduce such a scheme, since, in the Labour Party manifesto in 1955, we had said that we would set up a Ministry of Social Security. Eleven years have passed since then, and nothing has been done.
I turn now to another point made by the right hon. Gentleman, about a test of means. We never hid that the income guarantee would be based on means. This scheme will also be based on means. We have never tried to hide that.
I have been asked whether the Assistance scales and benefits would be the same as they are now. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman and the whole House to await the legislation which will be brought forward. He has asked about the cost, and again I would ask him to await the legislation.
The point that interests the right hon. Gentleman most is clear from his reference to the National Plan. I can assure him that the cost for this is contained in the provision made to my Department. [HON. MEMBERS: "What is it?"] I would ask hon. Members to exercise a little patience. I have no doubt that when the scheme goes out, in view of the record of my Department in the last 16 months, the people will support it.
I turn now to the question of the chronic sick. In my statement I said that this form of guaranteed income will apply to the elderly and to other people such as the chronic sick. Those are the people who at present have been on the books of the National Assistance Board for a long time; in other words, people like the elderly who have nothing to look forward to but their sickness benefit and whatever help the National Assistance Board gives. Those are the people who will be covered by this form of guaranteed income.
I think that I have done my best to reply to all the right hon. Gentleman's points.
Sir S. McAdden: While congratulating the right hon. Lady on the timing of her proposals and also upon having the courage to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that she is advocating a means test, does she not think it slightly indecent that her proposals and those of her colleagues should have been introduced at this time at the expense of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, instead of at her party's expense?
Miss Herbison: I would say quite clearly—and this is important—that these are proposals on which my Department has been working for a considerable time. Whether we had been on the eve of an election or not, they would have been announced.
Dr. Summerskill: While regretting that hon. Members opposite will have to cut down the number of their election pledges from 131 to 130½, would my right hon. Friend tell the House whether she anticipates that the number of home private visits to be made will be reduced and, if so, why?
Miss Herbison: As I said in my statement, the number of routine visits will be cut down. This form of guaranteed income will give more security and stability to old people, and the routine visits every three or six months to find whether an old person should have an increase of 1s. or a cut of 1s. will disappear. It means that the visits that take place will be of much greater value in finding out the welfare needs of the old people which so desperately require to be attended to at present.
Mr. Heath: Is the right hon. Lady aware that if, as she says, she and her Department have been working on these proposals for many months, it is entirely incomprehensible to the House that she should not be able to state one single figure for the cost of them? It undermines completely the integrity of her performance, and demonstrates not only to the House but to the country that this is the last of a whole series of statements produced—
Hon Members: Oh.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The Chair does not mind universal admiration or indignation, but I must call attention to the fact that we cannot have individual hon. Members shouting across at each other.
Mr. Heath: Is the right hon. Lady aware that her statement, the last of the many by the present Government, demonstrates that it is only itself put forward for the purpose of the election and earns the contempt of us all?
Miss Herbison: I know that the right hon. Gentleman is very annoyed. I would be willing to compare my integrity with his. I have already dealt with the point about costs, which was raised by the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph). We have made it perfectly clear—the Chancellor of the Exchequer has done so time and again, and it has been made clear in the National Plan—that each spending Department has been allocated a certain figure. [HON. MEMBERS: "What is the cost?"] All that hon. Gentlemen opposite need do is to look at the National Plan. It is not my job to do that for them. The cost of these proposals will be held within the allocation which has been made to my Department.
Mr. Shinwell: Does my right hon. Friend realise that it is much more contemptible to display lavish promises before the electors after 13 years of neglect than to present constructive proposals after 15 months in office?
Mr. Braine: Is the right hon. Lady aware that the proportion of the gross national product allocated under the National Plan five years hence to health and welfare is less than it is today? Does her statement mean that a higher proportion of the gross national product is to be devoted to pensions and social security? If so, can she give the figures? If she cannot, why not?
Miss Herbison: The whole cost of this scheme is not charged against the sum which has been allocated to the Ministry
1734
of Health, but to the Department for which I am responsible at present.
Mr. Freeson: Will my right hon. Friend say whether there is any intention to abolish the wage-stop, bearing in mind the difficulties which families on low incomes, and especially their children, have been suffering in the past under our previous system of National Insurance benefits?
Miss Herbison: The scheme which I have described does not deal to any extent with the problem of the wage-stop. This is a matter which will have to be dealt with in some other way, not under this scheme.
Mr. Sandys: As the Government seem bent on rushing out a succession of pre-election statements adopting Conservative policies, may we shortly expect a statement announcing that talks have started with Mr. Smith?
Miss Herbison: I think that perhaps the best thing that I can do is to educate right hon. Gentlemen opposite by letting them see this pamphlet, which was published many years ago.
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I must defend the defence debate.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)
Ordered,
That this day, Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten o'clock, and the provisions of paragraph (5) of Standing Order No. 18 (Business of Supply) shall not apply; but with respect to each Resolution reported from the Committee of Supply, Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution.—[Mr. Short.]

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  SUPPLY
  [10TH ALLOTTED DAY]
  REPORT [3rd March]
  CIVIL ESTIMATES, SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1965–66; CIVIL ESTIMATES AND DEFENCE (CENTRAL) ESTIMATE, 1966–67 (VOTE ON ACCOUNT); DEFENCE ESTIMATES, 1966–67 (VOTE ON ACCOUNT); DEFENCE (NAVY) ESTIMATES, 1966–67, VOTE A; DEFENCE (ARMY) ESTIMATES, 1966–67, VOTE A; DEFENCE (AIR) ESTIMATES, 1966–67, VOTE A; DEFENCE (CENTRAL), SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1965–66; DEFENCE (ROYAL ORDNANCE FACTORIES), SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1965–66; CIVIL ESTIMATES (EXCESSES), 1964–65
  Resolutions reported;

  SUPPLY

    CIVIL ESTIMATES, SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1965–66
    1. That a further Supplementary sum, not exceeding £76, 519, 750, 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 1966, for expenditure in respect of the following Supplementary Estimates, viz:—

    CIVIL ESTIMATES

    CLASS I

    £

    2.

    House of Commons

    48,000

    3.

    Treasury and Subordinate Departments

    110,000

    4.

    Department of Economic Affairs

    150,000

    7.

    Customs and Excise

    662,000

    8.

    Inland Revenue

    4,754,000

    10.

    Civil Service Commission

    82,000

    CLASS II

    1.

    Diplomatic Service

    641,000

    2.

    Foreign Services

    1,206,000

    4.

    Commonwealth Services

    2,392,000

    5.

    Colonial Office

    22,000

    6.

    Colonial Grants and Loans

    1,662,000

    7.

    Ministry of Overseas Development

    79,000

    8.

    Overseas Aid (Multilateral)

    2,350

    9.

    Overseas Aid (Bilateral)

    225,000

    10.

    Overseas Aid (General Ser vices)

    287,000

    11.

    Overseas Aid (Colonial Development and Welfare)

    1,626,000

    1736

    CLASS III

    £

    1.

    Home Office

    665,000

    2.

    Scottish Home and Health Department

    145,000

    5.

    Police, England and Wales

    4,084,000

    6.

    Police, Scotland

    320,000

    7.

    Prisons, England and Wales

    811,000

    8.

    Prisons, Scotland

    1,000

    11.

    Supreme Court of Judicature, &c.

    70,000

    12.

    County Courts

    1,000

    14.

    Law Charges

    55,000

    15.

    Law Charges and Courts of Law, Scotland

    12,000

    16.

    Supreme Court of Judicature, &c., Northern Ireland

    12,000

    CLASS IV

    1.

    Board of Trade

    204,000

    2.

    Board of Trade (Promotion of Trade, Exports &c., Shipping and Other Services)

    2,547,000

    5.

    Export Credits (Special Guarantees, &c.)

    1,000

    6.

    Ministry of Labour

    1,000

    7.

    Ministry of Aviation

    9,300,000

    11.

    Ministry of Transport

    120,000

    16.

    Transport (Railways and Waterways Boards)

    6,250,000

    21.

    British Petroleum Company Ltd.

    15,577,000

    CLASS V

    1.

    Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

    648,000

    2.

    Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland

    66,000

    10.

    Fisheries (Scotland) and Herring Industry

    80,000

    CLASS VI

    1.

    Ministry of Housing and Local Government

    1,000

    2.

    Scottish Development Department

    1,000

    4.

    Housing, England

    249,000

    8.

    General Grants to Local Revenues, Scotland

    1,289,000

    13.

    Ministry of Health

    280,000

    15.

    National Health Service (Executive Councils' Services), England and Wales

    6,477,000

    16.

    Miscellaneous Health and Welfare Services, England Wales

    876,000

    17.

    National Health Service (Superannuation, &c.), England and Wales

    1,000

    18.

    National Health Service. &c., Scotland

    1,343,000

    19.

    National Health Service (Superannuation, &c.), Scotland

    1,000

    20.

    Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance

    112,000

    22.

    Family Allowances

    500,000

    1737

    CLASS VII

    £

    1.

    Department of Education and Science

    53,000

    2.

    Education: Departmental (England and Wales)

    2,408,000

    3.

    Awards to Students (England and Wales)

    210,000

    4.

    Scottish Education Department

    619,000

    5.

    Teachers' Superannuation (England and Wales)

    1,000

    6.

    Teachers' Superannuation (Scotland)

    692,000

    7.

    Universities and Colleges, &c., Great Britain

    2,829,000

    9.

    Natural Environment Research Council

    327,000

    10.

    Medical Research Council

    1,000

    13.

    Social Sciences Research Council

    28,000

    CLASS VIII

    7.

    National Gallery

    6,000

    8.

    National Maritime Museum

    2,000

    9.

    National Portrait Gallery

    19,000

    10.

    Tate Gallery

    25,000

    11.

    Wallace Collection

    1,000

    12.

    Royal Scottish Museum

    5,000

    13.

    National Galleries of Scot land

    1,000

    16.

    Grants for the Arts

    71,400

    CLASS IX

    1.

    Ministry of Public Building and Works

    1,000

    2.

    Public Buildings, &c., United Kingdom

    1,000

    13.

    Rates on Government Property

    165,000

    14.

    Stationery and Printing

    1,072,000

    16.

    Government Actuary

    2,000

    18.

    Civil Superannuation, &c.

    1,600,000

    19.

    Post Office Superannuation, &c.

    1,000

    CLASS X

    2.

    Crown Estate Office

    5,000

    3.

    Friendly Societies Registry

    3,000

    4.

    Royal Mint

    1,000

    7.

    Public Trustee

    1,000

    12.

    Scottish Record Office

    1,000

    14.

    Registrar General's Office, Scotland

    25,000

    16

    National Savings Committee

    20,000

    CLASS XI

    1.

    Broadcasting

    1,000

    2.

    Carlisle State Management District

    1,000

    4.

    Pensions, &c., (India, Pakistan and Burma)

    199,000

    5.

    Supplements to Pensions, &c., (Overseas Services)

    17,000

    6.

    Royal Irish Constabulary Pensions. &c.

    25,000

    11.

    Miscellaneous Expenses

    32,000

    76,519,750

    CIVIL ESTIMATES AND DEFENCE (CENTRAL) ESTIMATE, 1966–67 (VOTE ON ACCOUNT)
    2. That a sum, not exceeding £2,127,020,800, be granted to Her Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the charges for the following Civil Departments and for Defence (Central) for the year ending on the 31st day of March 1967:—

    CIVIL ESTIMATES

    CLASS I

    £

    1.

    House of Lords

    127,000

    2.

    House of Commons

    1,085,000

    3.

    Treasury and Subordinate Departments

    1,750,000

    4.

    Department of Economic Affairs

    692,000

    5.

    Privy Council Office

    21,000

    6.

    Post Office Ministers

    5,000

    7.

    Customs and Excise

    9,300,000

    8.

    Inland Revenue

    25,800,000

    10.

    Exchequer and Audit Department

    350,000

    11.

    Civil Service Commission

    370,000

    12.

    Royal Commissions, etc.

    200,000

    CLASS II

    1.

    Diplomatic Service

    16,703,000

    2.

    Foreign Services

    7,967,000

    3.

    British Council

    1,500,000

    4.

    Commonwealth Services

    7,000,000

    5.

    Colonial Office

    2,890,000

    6.

    Colonial Grants and Loans

    8,000,000

    7.

    Ministry of Overseas Development

    880,000

    8.

    Overseas Aid (Multilateral)

    7,973,000

    9.

    Overseas Aid (Bilateral)

    27,319,000

    10.

    Overseas Aid (General Services)

    14,356,000

    11.

    Overseas Aid (Colonial Development and Welfare)

    5,250,000

    12.

    Commonwealth War Graves Commission

    460,000

    CLASS III

    1.

    Home Office

    5,200,000

    2.

    Scottish Home and Health Department

    1,320,000

    3.

    Home Office (Civil Defence Services)

    4,850,000

    4.

    Scottish Home and Health Department (Civil Defence Services)

    190,000

    5.

    Police, England and Wales

    35,500,000

    6.

    Police, Scotland

    150,000

    7.

    Prisons, England and Wales

    8,500,000

    8.

    Prisons, Scotland

    1,070,000

    9.

    Child Care, England and Wales

    2,514,000

    10.

    Child Care, Scotland

    397,000

    11.

    Supreme Court of Judicature, etc.

    76,000

    12.

    County Courts

    300,000

    13.

    Legal Aid Fund

    2,081,000

    14.

    Law Charges

    400,000

    15.

    Law Charges and Courts of Law, Scotland

    200,000

    16.

    Supreme Court of Judicature, etc., Northern Ireland

    35,000

    1739

    CLASS IV

    £

    1.

    Board of Trade

    3,175,000

    2.

    Board of Trade (Promotion of Trade, Exports, etc., and Shipping and Other Ser vices)

    3,091,000

    3.

    Board of Trade (Promotion of Local Employment)

    15,000,000

    4.

    Export Credits

    100

    5.

    Export Credits (Special Guarantees, etc.)

    100

    6.

    Ministry of Labour

    13,332,000

    7.

    Ministry of Aviation

    92,300,000

    8.

    Ministry of Aviation (Purchasing (Repayment) Services)

    100

    10.

    Ministry of Aviation (Special Materials)

    18,300,000

    11.

    Civil Aerodromes and Air Navigational Services

    5,600,000

    12.

    Ministry of Transport

    1,840,000

    13.

    Roads, etc., England

    68,000,000

    14.

    Roads, etc., Scotland

    10,800,000

    15.

    Roads, etc., Wales

    6,000,000

    16.

    Transport Services

    1,930,000

    17.

    Transport (Railways and Waterways Boards)

    52,000,000

    18.

    Ministry of Power

    1,75,000

    19.

    Ministry of Technology

    9,129,000

    20.

    Atomic Energy

    20,000,000

    21.

    Atomic Energy (Trading Fund Services)

    100

    22.

    British Petroleum Company Ltd.

    15,576,000

    CLASS V

    1.

    Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

    10,000,000

    2.

    Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland

    3,492,000

    3.

    Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Agricultural Grants and Subsidies)

    37,650,000

    4.

    Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland (Agricultural Grants and Subsidies)

    5,702,000

    5.

    Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Agricultural Price Guarantees)

    44,000,000

    6.

    Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland (Agricultural Price Guarantees)

    4,300,000

    7.

    Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Agricultural and Food Services)

    4,760,000

    8.

    Food (Strategic Reserves)

    100

    9.

    Fishery Grants and Services

    1,600,000

    10.

    Fisheries (Scotland) and Her ring Industry

    900,000

    CLASS VI

    1.

    Ministry of Housing and Local Government

    8,834,000

    2.

    Scottish Development Department

    1,600,000

    3.

    Welsh Office

    850,000

    4.

    Housing, England

    36,000,000

    5.

    Housing, Scotland

    12,300,000

    6.

    Housing, Wales

    1,875,000

    1740

    £

    7.

    General Grants to Local Revenues, England and Wales

    266,000,000

    8.

    General Grants to Local Revenues, Scotland

    35,195,000

    9.

    Rate Deficiency Grants to Local Revenues, England and Wales

    65,300,000

    10.

    Equalisation and Transitional Grants to Local Revenues, Scotland

    12,320,000

    11.

    Ministry of Land and Natural Resources

    870,000

    12.

    Forestry Commission

    5,300,000

    13.

    Ministry of Health

    1,974,000

    14.

    National Health Service, etc., (Hospital Services, etc.), England and Wales

    219,120,000

    15.

    National Health Service (Executive Councils' Services), England and Wales

    102,302,000

    16

    Miscellaneous Health and Welfare Services, England and Wales

    19,398,000

    17.

    National Health Service (Superannuation, etc.), England and Wales

    100

    18.

    National Health Service, etc., Scotland

    41,500,000

    19.

    National Health Service (Superannuation, etc.), Scotland

    100

    20.

    Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance

    3,000,000

    21.

    National Insurance

    97,800,000

    22.

    Family Allowances

    51,500,000

    23.

    National Assistance Board

    99,250,000

    24.

    War Pensions, etc.

    41,250,000

    CLASS VII

    1.

    Department of Education and Science

    50,000,000

    2.

    Scottish Education Department

    13,423,000

    3.

    Teachers' Superannuation (England and Wales)

    100

    4.

    Teachers' Superannuation (Scotland)

    263,000

    5.

    Universities and Colleges, etc., Great Britain

    71,000,000

    6.

    Social Sciences Research Council

    250,000

    7.

    Science Research Council

    12,785,000

    8.

    Natural Environment Research Council

    1,700,000

    9.

    Medical Research Council

    3,961,000

    10.

    Agricultural Research Council

    3,435,000

    11.

    British Museum (Natural History)

    310,000

    12.

    Science: Grants and Ser vices

    393,000

    CLASS VIII

    1.

    British Museum

    888,000

    2.

    Science Museum

    180,000

    3.

    Victoria and Albert Museum

    400,000

    4.

    Imperial War Museum

    52,000

    5.

    London Museum

    29,000

    6.

    National Gallery

    265,000

    7.

    National Maritime Museum

    62,000

    8.

    National Portrait Gallery

    30,000

    1741

    9.

    Tate Gallery

    157,000

    10.

    Wallace Collection

    22,000

    11.

    Royal Scottish Museum, etc.

    82,000

    12.

    National Galleries of Scot land

    75,000

    13.

    National Library of Scotland

    76,000

    14.

    National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland

    22,000

    15.

    National Library of Wales and National Museum of Wales

    250,000

    16.

    Arts Council and other Grants for the Arts

    3,165,000

    CLASS IX

    1.

    Ministry of Public Building and Works

    11,667,000

    2.

    Public Buildings, etc., United Kingdom

    26,900,000

    3.

    Public Buildings Overseas

    2,800,000

    4.

    Works and Buildings for the Ministry of Defence (Navy Department)

    10,900,000

    5.

    Works and Buildings for the Ministry of Defence (Army Department)

    20,200,000

    6.

    Works and Buildings for the Ministry of Defence (Air Force Department)

    13,800,000

    7.

    Works and Buildings for the Ministry of Aviation

    2,650,000

    8.

    Works and Buildings for Royal Ordnance Factories

    300,000

    9.

    Additional Married Quarters for the Ministry of Defence

    100

    10.

    Houses of Parliament Buildings

    300,000

    11.

    Royal Palaces

    270,000

    12.

    Royal Parks and Pleasure Gardens

    520,000

    13.

    Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments

    560,000

    14.

    Rates on Government Property

    13,000,000

    15.

    Stationery and Printing

    10,200,000

    16.

    Central Office of Information

    3,750,000

    17.

    Government Actuary

    28,000

    18.

    Government Hospitality

    80,000

    19.

    Civil Superannuation, etc.

    18,890,000

    20.

    Post Office Superannuation, etc.

    100

    CLASS X

    1.

    Charity Commission

    133,000

    2.

    Crown Estate Office

    68,000

    3.

    Friendly Societies Registry

    52,000

    4.

    Royal Mint

    100

    5.

    National Debt Office

    100

    6.

    Public Works Loan Com mission

    100

    7.

    Public Trustee

    100

    8.

    Land Registry

    100

    9.

    Office of the Registrar of Restrictive Trading Agreements

    60,000

    10.

    Ordnance Survey

    1,362,000

    11.

    Public Record Office

    83,000

    12.

    Scottish Record Office

    32,000

    13.

    Registrar General's Office

    1,000,000

    1742

    £

    14.

    Registrar General's Office, Scotland

    171,000

    15.

    Department of the Registers of Scotland

    100

    16.

    National Savings Committee

    650,000

    CLASS XI

    1.

    Broadcasting

    27,600,000

    2.

    Carlisle State Management District

    100

    3.

    State Management Districts, Scotland

    100

    4.

    Pensions, &c., (Overseas Services)

    4,222,000

    5.

    Royal Irish Constabulary Pensions. &c.

    390,000

    6.

    Irish Land Purchase Services

    485,000

    7.

    Development Fund

    550,000

    8.

    Secret Service

    4,000,000

    9.

    Miscellaneous Expenses

    300,000

    Total for Civil Estimates

    2,117,220,800

    Defence (Central)

    9,800,000

    2,127,020,800

    DEFENCE ESTIMATES, 1966–67
    (VOTE ON ACCOUNT)
    3. That a sum, not exceeding £687,00,000, be granted to Her Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the charges of the Defence Services, including the expense of the Army Reserve Forces (to a number not exceeding 78,000. all ranks, including a number not exceeding 75,500, other ranks), Territorial Army (to a number not exceeding 169,350, all ranks) and Cadet Forces; the expense of operating the Royal Ordnance Factories; the expenditure incurred by the Army Department on the supply of munitions, common-user and other articles for the Government service and on miscellaneous supply; and the expense of the Reserve and Auxiliary services of the Royal Air Force (to a number not exceeding 21,655, all ranks, for the Royal Air Force Reserve, and 600, all ranks, for the Royal Auxiliary Air Force) and Cadet Forces, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1967, as follows:—

    DEFENCE (NAVY)

    £

    1.

    Pay, etc., of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines

    40,000,000

    2.

    Royal Naval Reserves

    1,000,000

    3.

    Navy Department Headquarters

    5,000,000

    4.

    Research and Development and other Scientific Services

    12,000,000

    5.

    Medical Services, Education and Civilians on Fleet Services

    7,000,000

    6.

    Naval Stores, Armament, Victualling and other Material Supply Services

    90,000,000

    7.

    H.M. Ships, Aircraft and Weapons, New Construction and Repairs

    71,000,000

    8.

    Miscellaneous Effective Services

    4,000,000

    9.

    Non-Effective Services

    10,000,000

    1743

    DEFENCE (ARMY)

    £

    1.

    Pay, etc., of the Army

    75,000,000

    2.

    Reserve Forces, Territorial Army and Cadet Forces

    8,000,000

    3.

    Army Department Headquarters

    2,500,000

    4.

    Civilians at Outstations

    48,000,000

    5.

    Movements

    9,500,000

    6.

    Supplies

    8,000,000

    7.

    Stores and Equipment

    52,000,000

    8.

    Miscellaneous Effective Ser vices

    2,000,000

    9.

    Non-Effective Services

    16,000,000

    10.

    Defence Lands and Buildings

    4,000,000

    Defence (Royal Ordnance Factories)

    1,000,000

    Defence (Army) Purchasing (Repayment) Services

    1,000,000

    DEFENCE (AIR)

    1.

    Pay, etc., of the Air Force

    60,000,000

    2.

    Reserve and Auxiliary Services

    500,000

    3.

    Air Force Department Headquarters

    2,000,000

    4.

    Civilians at Outstations and the Meteorological Office

    19,000,000

    5.

    Movements

    8,500,000

    6.

    Supplies

    13,000,000

    7.

    Aircraft and Stores

    107,000,000

    8.

    Miscellaneous Effective Ser vices

    1,000,000

    9.

    Non-Effective Services

    9,000,000

    687,000,000

    DEFENCE (NAVY)
      VOTE A. NUMBERS
      4. That 103,000 Officers, Ratings and Royal Marines be maintained for Naval Service, for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1967.
    DEFENCE (ARMY)
      VOTE A. NUMBER OF LAND FORCES
      5. That a number of Land Forces, not exceeding 238,700, all ranks, be maintained for the safety of the United Kingdom and the defence of the possessions of Her Majesty's Crown, during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1967.
    DEFENCE (AIR)
      VOTE A. NUMBER FOR AIR FORCE SERVICL
      6. That a number of Officers, Airmen and Airwomen, not exceeding 131,000, all ranks, be maintained for Air Force Service, during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1967.
    DEFENCE (CENTRAL), SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1965–66
    7. That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £1,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ended on the 31st day of March, 1966, for the salaries and expenses of the Central Defence Staffs, the Defence Secretariat and the Central Defence Scientific Staff and of certain Joint Service Establishments; expenses in connection with International Defence Organisations, including international subscriptions; and sundry other services including certain grants in aid.
    DEFENCE (ROYAL ORDNANCE FACTORIES), SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1965–66
    8. That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £500,000, be granted to Her Majesty to defray the expense of operating the Royal Ordnance Factories, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1966.

    CIVIL ESTIMATES (EXCESSES), 1964–65
    9. That a sum, not exceeding £1,018,284 19s. 5d., be granted to Her Majesty, to make good excesses on certain grants for Civil Services, for the year ended on the 31st day of March 1965.

    SCHEDULE

    CLASS AND VOTE

    Excess Votes

    CLASS I

    £

    s.

    d.

    £

    s.

    d.

    2.

    House of Commons

    Excess Expenditure

    28,781

    9

    4

    Add—Deficiency on Subhead Z

    1,003

    5

    1

    29,784

    14

    5

    CLASS II

    5.

    Commonwealth Grants and Loans

    Subhead F.3.—Malawi (Grants in Aid): Excess Expenditure

    188,000

    0

    0

    Less—Net savings available on other subheads

    187,990

    0

    0

    10

    0

    0

    CLASS VI

    1.

    Ministry of Housing and Local Government

    Subhead H.3.—Flood Relief (Grant in Aid): Expenditure not supported by statutory authority

    1,249

    4

    7

    Less—Net savings available on Vote

    1,239

    4

    7

    10

    0

    0

    2A.

    Welsh Office

    Subhead C.—Flood Relief (Grant in Aid): Expenditure not supported by statutory authority

    25,000

    0

    0

    Less—Saving available on Vote

    24,990

    0

    0

    10

    0

    0

    9C

    Awards to Students

    Excess Expenditure

    7,001

    10

    8

    Less—Appropriations in Aid

    40

    13

    8

    6,960

    17

    0

    12.

    Teachers' Superannuation (Scotland)

    Excess Expenditure

    21,040

    13

    8

    Less—Appropriations in Aid

    21,030

    13

    8

    10

    0

    0

    17.

    National Health Service (Superannuation &c.), England and Wales

    Excess Expenditure

    209,763

    15

    11

    Less—Appropriations in Aid

    209,753

    15

    11

    10

    0

    0

    23.

    National Assistance Board Excess Expenditure

    1,047,057

    11

    1

    Less—Appropriations in Aid

    65,588

    3

    1

    981,469

    8

    0

    CLASS VII

    1.

    Universities and Colleges &c., Great Britain Excess Expenditure

    153,990

    9

    8

    Less—Savings available on other subheads

    153,980

    9

    8

    10

    0

    0

    CLASS X

    7.

    Public Trustee

    Excess Expenditure

    488

    19

    6

    Less—Appropriations in Aid

    478

    19

    6

    10

    0

    0

    Total, Civil (Excesses)

    £

    1,018,284

    19

    5

    Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to Order, to put forthwith with respect to each Resolution the Question, That this
    House doth agree with the Committee in that Resolution.
    Resolutions agreed to.

    WAYS AND MEANS [17th MARCH]
    Resolutions reported;
    1. That, towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty for the service of the year ended on the 31st day of March 1965, the sum of £1,018,2849s. 5d. be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom
    2. That, towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty for the service of the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966, the sum of £77,020,750 be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
    3. That, towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty for the service of the year ending on the 31st day of March 1967, the sum of £2,814,020,800, be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
    Resolutions agreed to.
    Bill ordered to be brought in upon the said Resolutions by the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. MacDermot.

    CONSOLIDATED FUND (APPROPRIATION)
    Bill to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the years ending on 31st March, 1965, 1966 and 1967, and to appropriate the supplies granted in this Session of Parliament, presented accordingly and read the First time; to be read a Second time Tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 80.]

  DEFENCE
  4.8 p.m.
  Mr. J. Enoch Powell: I beg to move,
  That this House regrets that Her Majesty's Government have announced decisions in the Statement on the Defence Estimates 1966 (Command Papers No. 2901 and 2902) which will impair the ability of our forces to carry out the duties required of them.
  The debate this year upon the Defence Statement takes place in circumstances which are unusual to the point of being unique. It not only follows a long-heralded and long-protracted alleged review by the Government of our commitments and the means of meeting them, but it was preceded and accompanied by the resignation of the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy and of the First Sea Lord. It is, therefore, natural that the House and the country should approach it with special anxiety and with special scrutiny.
  The Government have sought to represent that they found themselves confronted with a steep and ineluctable rise in the cost of defence, and that, finding this, they instituted a bold and comprehensive review which enabled them to reduce the prospective expenditure on defence to the figure of £2,000 million in the year 1969–70 at 1964 prices.
  Every part of this picture which the Government have sought to put before the House and the country is without foundation.
  I intend to show that both the suggestion that defence costs have been engaged on a runaway course, and the notion that they have been brought under control by decisions taken in consequence of a careful review of commitments, are mere mystification, and that the only reality was the financial panic into which the Government were plunged in the early days of their administration, whence the establishment by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in an endeavour to stem the loss of confidence in sterling, of certain prospective figures for future defence expenditure, and a whole series of unconnected decisions, taken very often long before even the alleged Defence Review could have made any substantial progress—decisions of which many will have the most damaging and lasting consequences

  1749
  for the defence and the security of this country.
  Let us take, first, the allegation of the "runaway train". Just before the Defence White Paper appeared, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said:
  "Defence spending was speeding ahead like a runaway train out of control. We had to fix a target."
  The Foreign Secretary spoke of "the spiralling cost of defence" which "had to be halted". There is no foundation in fact or history for this picture.
  The right hon. Gentleman was kind enough to provide me with an indication of the course of the proportion which defence expenditure has borne to the national income over the last decade. I will read to the House the simple figures of the percentage of the national income which that expenditure has represented, year by year, during the last eight or nine years of Conservative administration. Beginning from the year 1957–58, they are as follows: 7·3; 7·1; 6·8; 6·9; 6·9; 6·9; 6·6, and 65. The last figure is for the year 1964–65—the year in which the General Election occurred. The estimate for the year just closing, as it happens, shows a slight increase again to 6·6, and a similar figure is estimated for the new year, 1966–67. If there is any talk of a runaway train, that train can have started to run away only under the administration of the party opposite. These figures show that, year by year, defence expenditure has been contained within a very stable but gradually falling proportion of a continually rising national income.
  "But," say the party opposite, "we have made some projections and we find that if things did go on in the way that the Conservatives were running them the expenditure would have risen by £400 million by 1969–70, to the figure of £2,400 million in constant prices at that year." So the party opposite set up the bogy of a £400 million increase in defence expenditure which, in two statements—that of last July-August, and that contained in the Defence White Paper—it purports to have demolished and eliminated.
  My first observation about this £400 million bogy is that even if defence expenditure were to increase by £400 million from the base year of 1964–65, that rate of increase would be no higher than the Government themselves have promised for the national income as a whole over that
  1750
  quinquennium. So even on their own figures they were not faced with anything more than a proportion of the national income to be spent on defence remaining constant at the lowest point which it had reached since the early years after the war.
  As the Chancellor of the Exchequer knows very well, this is the oldest trick in the game—to put up the Aunt Sally of an alleged increase in expenditure which is to happen in some remote future year and then proceed to claim credit for cuts which are made in it, piece by piece.
  Even if such a figure were genuine—even if the projection as seen in 1965–66 were real—it would, as always, only be a starting point for the serious studies which need to be made and are made, year by year, in the course of drawing up the defence budget as part of the total Budget. I noticed that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Defence described £35 million worth of his total of £400 million of alleged savings as
  "the sort of thing that happens in any year", [OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th August, 1965; Vol. 717, c. 1883.]
  In July, last year, there was a recurrence, I think that it was the third recurrence, but I tend to lose count—of a loss of international confidence in the value of sterling, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer insisted that the Minister of Defence should, there and then, come forward and give a report not only to the House but to the country and the world of the progress that he was making in achieving the advertised £400 million worth of cuts.
  Accordingly, first at a Press conference, and then in the House of Commons—a curious order, but never mind—on 4th and 5th August last year, the right hon. Gentleman announced savings, as at 1969–70, totalling £220 million. He gave the country and the House a detailed list of six specific items and one miscellaneous item—that to which I have already referred, namely, the £35 million—which added up exactly to the £220 million which he claimed to have saved. Having done that, he said:
  "Though some additional saving could be made by operating more aircraft on a joint R.A.F.—Navy basis, the only real hope of savings "—
  beyond the £220 million—

  1751
  "lies in the possibility that commitments can be revised."
  In the House the right hon. Gentleman was even more explicit in describing the source from which he sought his remaining £180 million of savings: on 5th August, he said:
  "I readily confess that to bridge the remaining nearly £200 million gap to the target will require redeployment of our forces and a smaller total of manpower in the Services."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th August, 1965; Vol. 717, c. 1885.]
  Now, in the Defence White Paper, we are told that the trick has been done. The gap has been closed; the further £180 million have been found and the Defence White Paper can forecast a Defence Budget, 1969–70, of £2,000 million precisely at 1964 prices.
  What are these £180 million of further savings which the right hon. Gentleman has made, and how has he made them? We naturally looked with interest and eagerness to the White Paper for enlightenment, only to discover that there is no indication in it of how this remaining £180 million-worth of saving has been made up. True, the right hon. Gentleman, in his announcement to the House on 22nd February, indicated that only a quarter of the £400 million—say, about £100 million—had been achieved "by reductions in our military capability". But when I asked him if he would give the approximate value of each of the principal items with which he expects to close the gap of £180 million, his answer to me was the briefest possible answer which can be given:
  "No."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd March, 1966; Vol. 725, c. 300.]
  So the right hon. Gentleman, who has been so anxiously candid, so desirous of coming forward before the House, the country and the world and explaining exactly how he got to £220 million of savings, suddenly becomes coy, clam-like and silent as to what is the make-up of the remaining £180 million, which is what the whole of the Defence Review is about, that is, the only things which we were waiting to know when the Defence Review was published.
  Why is it that there is this extraordinary contrast between the forthcoming right hon. Gentleman on the 4th and 5th August last year and his extraordin
  1752
  ary tight-lipped silence in February and March of 1966?—[An HON. MEMBER: "The election."]—Yes, that is one reason; but I can see quite a number of reasons for this remarkable change.
  For one thing, the right hon. Gentleman dare not give the items because that would disclose the undisclosed cuts which he is determined to conceal, at any rate until after the General Election. We know—we have for this the authority of one of his own late colleagues—that the cuts involved in the Defence Review and those involved in this saving of £180 million by the year 1969–70 have not been fully disclosed. The hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) drew the attention of the House to the fact that the cuts were not quantified in the Defence White Paper. Indeed they were not. The right hon. Gentleman does not want it known—yet—what the nature of those reductions is.
  In the second place, he is afraid to do this because it would show that the carrier decision—the decision taken now that Britain shall not have a carrier capability beyond the early 1970s—turned on a very little, if any, net saving in the target year. Thirdly, it would show up the fact that very much of the further saving which he claims since last August is "phoney", that it has been achieved by mere juggling, such as the pushing forward of further expenditure beyond the target year, which is always possible when one has pinned oneself to a specific figure in a specific year. Finally, if he were to spell it out, it would show how little all this has to do with any review or reconsideration of our commitments.
  In other words, if the right hon. Gentleman had done what he—understandably, in his position—refuses to do, it would have "blown the gaff". So I must myself undertake the painful duty of attempting to elicit some of the facts from the right hon. Gentleman and display something of what is involved in the right hon. Gentleman's attempt to extricate himself from the panic situation in which he and the Government were placed in the early months of their administration.
  I come, first, to the Army. We find reference in the Defence White Paper to reductions of forces in Cyprus, Malta, British Guiana and Swaziland, adding

  1753
  up, perhaps, to three or four battalions. We find, too, of course, the decision to give up the Aden base in exchange for a minor redeployment in the Persian Gulf. This might well be worth between one and two brigades more. These are very substantial changes in the deployment of our forces, amounting to perhaps eight or nine battalions at the very least.
  But this involves no saving at all in budgetary expenditure if those men are still to be maintained under arms. Certainly, if they are brought home, there may be some saving in foreign exchange; but if they are still kept under arms additional accommodation must be provided for them and new expenditure must be undertaken in the areas to which they are moved. So if any saving is involved here—this is one of the heads under which the right hon. Gentleman claims to have achieved his target—it can come about only through a reduction in the size of the standing Army. Indeed, we have had well-authenticated reports that the Department of Defence are thinking in terms of a reduction of the order of 16,000 men in the Regular Army by the target year of 1970.
  The right hon. Gentleman ought to indicate what reduction in the Regular forces he contemplates by the year 1970. Does he envisage a reduction in the Regular Army? By how many battalions does he estimate that it will be reduced by the year 1970? This is where the importance of these decisions lies. It is hence that their practical consequences flow. This is what the country has the right to be told now—in the framework of the Defence White Paper.
  In some of the details which we get from the Department of Defence by indirect means—[An HON. MEMBER: "The Press."]—Yes, via the Press—the right hon. Gentleman can deny any of this if he likes—I thought that there was a very remarkable item, a sentence in The Times defence correspondent's report of 24th February. Talking about the reductions in garrisons to which I have referred, he went on:
  "Much greater cuts in Britain's forces in Cyprus are being contemplated by the Government. The minor reductions mentioned in Tuesday's White Paper were kept unexceptionable for diplomatic reasons. The Government have been under pressure…not to disturb the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean by a premature disclosure that Britain will be moving out."
  1754
  What strange irony for a Government who had committed the incredible folly, as well as the direct breach of faith, involved in announcing that they would be out of Aden by the year 1968.
  There is no doubt what the commitments in respect to Aden were. They are set out in the White Paper of the conference report of July, 1964 (Cmd. 2414). It says that the delegates of the Federation had requested that
  "…Britain should convene a conference for the purposes of fixing a date for independence not later than 1968 and of concluding a defence agreement under which Britain would retain her military base in Aden for the defence of the Federation and the fulfilment of her world-wide responsibilities."
  One can hardly imagine a more direct breach of the undertaking contained in the following words—
  "The Secretary of State announced the agreement of the British Government to this request"—
  than for the Government now to come forward, at the beginning of 1966, and to announce that, whatever else happens, they will be out of the base by the year 1968.
  The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Denis Healey): I will deal with this point, of course, in my own speech, but I think that it would be helpful for the House if the right hon. Gentleman would answer on behalf of his party this question. Does he believe that the promise made by his right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), in 1964, constitutes a binding commitment on any future British Government to keep a military base in Aden even if Britain has no requirement for one and the local population does not want one there?
  Mr. Powell: The commitment which I have read to the House—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] I will answer—is a perfectly clear commitment as to what Her Majesty's Government promised to do. By the right hon. Gentleman's announcement he has broken that promise. We regard that promise in those terms, in the terms in which it was made by Her Majesty's Government—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]—I am answering as precisely as such a question can be answered—we regard that commitment as being a binding commitment which the Government have broken and which, if we

  1755
  replace them as a result of the General Election, we shall regard as binding upon us.
  But even if the right hon. Gentleman and the Government were determined that they would not carry out this commitment, even if they had taken that decision in petto, as it were, what incredible folly it was to publish it to the world so as to give the maximum comfort to our enemies and the maximum reinforcement to all the pressures which could be brought to bear upon us before or after 1968.
  They were not slow to reap the consequences: those were very quick in coming. There may have been one day perhaps since 22nd February, there may have been just one day, on which there was not a new report of rising acts of violence in Aden. There has been a continuing crescendo ever since 22nd February of the rising, natural and inevitable pressures and violence following the statement. I do not think that it could have been commented upon more effectively than Colonel Nasser commented upon it. He said that the United Arab Republic would not be stopped from
  "staying one, two, three, or five years in Yemen in the cause of the Arab revolution."
  He said that
  "one of the results of Egyptian intervention had been Britain's decision to leave Aden and South Arabia in 1968."
  That only shows the kind of damage that can be done, the kind of dangers to which our own troops, our own people and our own friends can be subjected, the kind of humiliation which can be brought upon us, by the sheer stupidity of the Government announcing this decision "in clear," as it were, two or three years in advance of their own date for breaking their commitment.
  The reduction of the Regular forces, which is the necessary implication of the economies expected from the evacuation of Aden and other points, will throw even greater weight and importance upon Britain's reserves. It was long before there could have been any conclusion to any real defence review, let alone the sham Defence Review which we are considering, that the Government came forward in August last in the context of the right hon. Gentleman's "shopping list" and announced an item of £20 million for the destruction of the Territorial Army.
  1756
  They had decided that in future there was only one requirement for a citizen volunteer reserve. It was to be the reinforcement of the Regular Army in certain specific and narrowly defined circumstances, so narrowly defined that they could go down even to the smallest detail in the order of battle. They pooh-poohed and cast scorn upon any suggestion that there could be any other rôle in the future for a citizen volunteer reserve. Home defence was a byword with them: "Why," they said, "we take it as an axiom that there is no requirement for a military force for home defence in future." "That at least", they said, "we know without going any further in our defence review".
  They were wrong and they admitted that they were wrong. Six months later they had to announce that they had decided that, after all, there was a need for a military force
  "to act generally in support of the civil authorities in the event of a general war."
  What is more, the Minister of Defence for the Army, in enlarging upon the functions of this force, said that though
  "its primary rôle would be–to help the civil powers in the maintenance of law and order…it will also be used to engage enemy forces if they were in this country"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd February, 1966; Vol. 723, c. 1097–1101.]
  a proposition which, only a few months earlier, the Government had treated with utter ridicule.
  So we might suppose there had been some progress. They had recognised now that there was a need for home defence—not in any particular narrowly defined sense, but in a general sense—by a citizen volunteer reserve. At that point they might wisely have bethought them of their own phrase in the Defence White Paper about "the dangers of being over-dogmatic". But they were still determined that their original decision to destroy the Territorial Army should stand.
  The trouble is that the right hon. Gentleman does not like the Territorial Army. He was determined to get rid of it and, even when he was driven into admitting one major additional function which required a citizen volunteer reserve, a military volunteer reserve, he was determined that it should have as little as possible to do with anything

  1757
  else in this field and that he would have as little as possible to do with it himself. Even so, I think that it was carrying it a little far that in the section on reserves in Part II of the Defence White Paper, there is not even a mention of the force for home defence. So determined is the right hon. Gentleman that it shall have nothing to do with the carrying forward of the tradition of a citizen volunteer army in this country. So determined is he that all the accumulated not merely tradition but voluntary spirit of the Territorial Army shall disappear so far as lies within his power.
  He has decided that this military force for civil defence shall consist of battalions of 300 men each, scattered in companies of 100 men each, armed with rifles, and each will have one or two trucks. They will have nothing to do with the Army Volunteer Reserve. All the possibilities of mutual maintenance of morale and mutual aid in recruitment which lie in the Territorial Army framework as the party opposite found it, and as that framework might have been developed, are being destroyed. The work of destruction is going on before our eyes.
  What is essential is that the Territorial Army should be the basis of the citizen volunteer reserve of the future not only for home defence, not only for the reinforcement of the Regular Army, but as a basis, if ever it should be necessary again, for the expansion of our Regular Army in emergency and in war, a requirement which is rendered all the more realistic and urgent if the economies of the right hon. Gentleman involve the reduction of the size of the standing Army.
  I turn to the decisions which relate to the Royal Navy. Here, of course, the key decision is that this country is not to have a carrier force beyond the early's 'seventies. This was a decision taken once-for-all by the abandonment of the building of a new carrier. It is almost impossible to estimate how far-reaching are the consequences of that once-for-all decision. In their White Paper, the Government say that the function for which a carrier force is indispensable
  "…is the landing, or withdrawal, of troops against sophisticated opposition outside the range of land-based air cover."
  1758
  It is as well at this stage to be quite clear about what, in this context, ought to be meant by
  "the range of land-based air cover".
  We are not here talking about aircraft operating at extreme range. We are talking, if that statement has any validity, about close, intimate and unremitting air cover afforded to troops during all stages of the initial landing and battle. That cover can be given only at relatively short range and in such a way that the command of the amphibious forces is closely integrated with the command of the air forces supporting it. That is to say, for this purpose, "the range of land-based air cover" is a relatively short distance.
  It follows, that we have deprived ourselves, by this decision, from the early seventies onward, of the power to carry out amphibious operations except across narrow waters, that is, unless we are integrated in the task force of an ally which provides carriers. This decision calls into question the whole future our amphibious forces. Only two paragraphs earlier than the words I have quoted, the Government say in their White Paper:
  "Our amphibious fleet—the commando ships and assault ships carrying Royal Marine commandos—will greatly strengthen our forces outside Europe."
  It is as well for the House and the country to be clear that after the early 'seventies those amphibious forces in which, apparently, we all take so much pride, will only be able to operate, except across a short arm of the sea, as part of an Anglo-American task force. In other words, it is to provide a contingent for an American task force of the future, that we are maintaining and training our amphibious forces.
  I think there is something even more serious and dangerous implicit in the decision that we shall not, after the early 'seventies, have a carrier force. The decision involves the turnover from one complete naval philosophy to an entirely different one. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles) was quite right, when the right hon. Gentleman made his initial statement, to draw attention to the passage in part 2 of the Defence White Paper, which states:
  "The aircraft carrier is the most important element of the fleet for offensive action against an enemy at sea or ashore."

  1759
  The offensive power of the Navy as we have hitherto conceived it lay with the aircraft carrier. The Government's decision means that a new philosophy has to supersede that on which the Navy has been trained and maintained during the last 20 years, and indeed many more. It means a change over to the missile philosophy, to the surface-to-surface missile. The Government would do well, in this context, to recollect their statement on page 4 of the White Paper:
  "…it takes at least ten years to develop and introduce a major new weapon system…".
  We are today hardly in the very earliest stages of introducing that new weapon system which must supersede the power of the carrier, since the carrier is to go. We are taking this final decision on the mere hope and expectation of something which at present is in its early infancy.
  I noted at the beginning of this month that the naval correspondent of The Times wrote:
  "No British ship today has a missile with a ship-to-ship capability."
  He went on:
  "The Sea Slug has been frequently spoken of as likely to be employed in such a rôle, but nothing has emerged, at least in operational use…. The Sea Dart is described as having ' a reasonable anti-ship capability', but it will be some years before we shall see it in operation with the new guided missile ships."
  He went on to refer to the Norwegian surface weapon and stated:
  "The Navy has been examining"
  it
  "but there has been no commitment to this or any other weapon."
  Of course, the right hon. Gentleman was right in saying that it requires at least 10 years to turn over to a new weapon system. What we are doing is throwing away, deciding that we shall dispossess ourselves of the present offensive power of the Royal Navy when we have as yet no knowledge of how the philosophy and the weapon systems which will succeed it are to develop. A decision of final import—a most final decision—has been taken merely on hopes and speculations; something which I will show presently is not unique in this White Paper.
  Mr. Ted Leadbitter: The matter which I wish to bring to the right hon. Gentleman's attention is of
  1760
  some relevance, because I want to find out how he reconciles what he has been saying today with the statement made in 1958 by the then Minister of Defence, the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), who said:
  "We have no aircraft carriers large enough to operate the long-range bombers which would be needed for an effective strike operation. We really could not contemplate building more and bigger carriers which, with their aircraft, would cost over £100 million each."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th February, 1958, Vol. 583, c. 388–9.]
  How does the right hon. Gentleman reconcile that statement with his remarks today?
  Mr. Powell: I can reconcile it very simply—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]—in this way. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] I will answer. It was a great mistake to have scrapped the aircraft carrier under construction. The Government should have gone on with the aircraft carrier on accordance—[Interruption.] Already £3½ million had been spent on it. The plans had been made and announced.
  Mr. Leadbitter: Which carrier?
  Mr. Powell: There is no serious dispute about the fact that an order for production was due to be placed, after major preparations, and expenditure of £3½ million, in the spring of this year, and that the Government's decision was not to proceed with it.
  Mr. E. Shinwell Mr. E. Shinwell (Easington) rose—
  Mr. Powell: I will not give way. I am answering the question.
  We should have continued with the construction of the aircraft carrier in accordance with the policy which was announced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) in 1963.
  Mr. Leadbitter: Have the courage to answer.
  Mr. Powell: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will listen to me. He would have done well to have studied the wording and—
  Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Powell: The hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. Leadbitter) gets very excited. I expect that it is his excitement which prevents him from reading and

  1761
  understanding the quotation he read out, which referred to long-range bombers being flown from aircraft carriers.
  Mr. Healey: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that it will help hon. Members if I tell them that not only is no carrier under construction, but that no tenders have even been invited for contracts for a new carrier.
  Mr. Powell: Of course, it was in March and April of this year that tenders, if this project was to be proceeded with, were due to be called for. The right hon. Gentleman took the wrong decision, and we should have taken the right decision—which was to go on with the carrier.
  But we know very well that this is not the only decision to cut the Royal Navy that has been taken by the Government, and we are entitled to know what the further decisions are—we know this one—which the Government have taken which will cut the strength of the Royal Navy. The former Minister of Defence for the Navy said on 22nd February:
  "…the White Paper does not specify the full range of cuts…in the Navy…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd February, 1966; Vol. 725, c. 260.]
  We are entitled to know what is the "full range of cuts" upon which the Government have decided. We are entitled to be told of what they consist and how they have contributed to this figure of £180 million we have been told of. It is merely a figure: we have had no explanation. Once again, when my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) asked the right hon. Gentleman if he would specify what the cuts are which we know have been made, the right hon. Gentleman refused—OFFICIAI REPORT, 2nd March, 1966; Vol. 725, c. 298
  There is one respect in which I trust there will be no question of cuts, and that is in the development of the nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine force. The White Paper, Part I refers to four such submarines in service in 1970, and the second part of the White Paper refers to the order placed late last year for a fourth. It so happens that, by good fortune, my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) put down to the Minister of Defence for the Navy a Question for Written Answer [OFFICIAL
  1762
  REPORT, 4th March, 1966; Vol. 725, c. 397] and obtained an Answer at the end of last week, which disclosed the Government's intention to order a fifth nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine.
  I must say that this is no way to treat the House. The Government purport to have produced a White Paper conveying the results of a profound study of the long-term future of Britain's armed forces, and they wait for a Written Question, 10 days after publication of that White Paper, to disclose, for the first time, that they intend to order a fifth submarine.
  I say that this in itself is not sufficient. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to say whether his budget for 1969–70—and he must have such a budget—includes anything for the construction in that year of follow-on nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarines, for in the opinion of the Opposition there should here be a continuing programme up to a much larger total than that which has at present been envisaged. This is the only stance which is acceptable in the light of the rapid and continued increase in the strength of the Soviet Fleet in this most modern, and perhaps the most dangerous, of all instruments of naval power.
  I come, finally, to the decisions which affect the Air Force. Here, of course, the key decision is to be found in paragraph 8, page 11, of the White Paper. That paragraph holds out what is apparently a clear-cut and simple sequence of events. The Canberra aircraft is to phase out about the year 1970. Thereafter, its functions will be taken over by the 50 F.111As purchased from the United States, supplemented by the V-bombers which will then have been relieved in their strategic nuclear function. But from 1975 onwards, the Anglo-French variable-geometry aircraft will come in and take over, in turn, from the F.111As and the V-bombers in the strike rôle. That is the picture which this paragraph of the White Paper seeks to establish.
  All this arises out of cancellation of the TSR.2. The first observation I would make is that it represents the purchase of very expensive aircraft indeed. It has been a matter of some difficulty to extract from the Government any of the relevant figures about the expenditure—dollar or otherwise—on the F.111A, but if we take the total initial dollar cost, which the

  1763
  right hon. Gentleman told me is £150 million; if we add the sterling costs which, perhaps, are not very large; if we add the cancellation charges which have so far been incurred on the TSR.2—that is to say, expenditure incurred after the decision not to proceed with the TSR.2, but to cancel it—and if we add, further, the substantial interest charges, something like £40 million, which we have incurred because this is a dollar expenditure and because it has been carried forward, then the cost per aircraft of the F.111A works out at around £5 million—[Interruption.]
  The right hon. Gentleman will be able to give his figures, but I am taking the total dollar costs at £150 million; I am adding something for the sterling costs; I am adding the £40 million referred to in a Written Answer of 28th February—cancellation charges so far; and I am adding the figure for interest charge which, on the basis of the answer that the right hon. Gentleman gave me, I estimate at about £40 million. That gives a total of between £230 and £250 million for 50 aircraft, which I make to be £5 million each. I have taken no account in this comparison of the £125 million abortive expenditure written off on the TSR.2, nor am I taking account of the further figures of dollar expenditure which will be incurred over the following ten years.
  A figure of £5 million as the individual cost of this aircraft is certainly not out of comparison with the cost of the TSR.2 on which the Government took their decision to cancel that aircraft, and which they themselves announced to the House at the time of their decision—namely £5 million apiece if we bought 150, and £6 million apiece if we bought 100. This is a very expensive aircraft, indeed, and its cost per aircraft—the value we are getting for money, to put it another way round—is within range of the figure which the Government themselves quoted to the House when they were making the case against the TSR.2.
  But this expenditure is dollar expenditure, and we have been given the most extraordinary assurance by the Government in relation to that dollar expenditure of about £200 million—initially; more to come—on the F.111A. The Government said in the White Paper:
  "We have taken steps to ensure that the foreign exchange cost…will be fully offset by sales of British equipment."
  1764
  They may have taken steps, but they have not told the House about them, because there is nothing in the White Paper which "ensures" that the dollar cost of these aircraft will be "fully offset" by sales of British equipment.
  All that we learn is that British firms are to be allowed to compete without discrimination and that the United States Government will extend to Britain the opportunity to tender. Let us get this quite clear: unless the Government can give firm evidence that the United States has undertaken to make additional purchases from this country—not just purchases which it was going to make anyhow, because that would be double counting—of equipment to the value of at least £200 million, then they are deceiving the country by suggesting that they have ensured that this dollar expenditure on the F.111A will be offset.
  But there are much more serious matters even than the expenditure, both in absolute terms and in dollar terms. Let us look at the function of these aircraft, to which this key paragraph of the Defence White Paper refers. We are told in the second part of the Defence White Paper that the primary function of the Canberra aircraft which are to be replaced is
  "nuclear strike, but they can also use conventional weapons to meet national requirements outside the N.A.T.O. area."
  What, then, are the characteristics of the F.111A which have resulted in its being chosen as a successor in this rôle to the Canberra aircraft? It has the ability to strike and to reconnoitre at a radius of action of 1,500 miles and upwards and to do so with an exceptionally high chance of penetration.
  It is not denied that these aircraft are primarily for use outside Europe. When the right hon. Gentleman was debating the cancellation of the TSR. 2 on 13th April, he referred, as reported in column 1198, to our problems outside Europe and said:
  "…hon. Members…will realise that it is the knowledge that we could, if necessary, strike successfully at the enemy's main bases which is the best guarantee against the dangerous escalation of a local conflict into major war".
  He went on with these words, which I particularly ask the House to note:
  "This is the case…for having as part of our total defence some aircraft with a

  1765
  capacity for tactical strike and reconnaissance. In our view, it is an irrefutable one if Britain proposes to maintain any capacity for military action on her own in any part of the world."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th April, 1965; Vol. 710, c. 1198.]
  So we have been told by the right hon. Gentleman what the purpose of these aircraft is. It is to reconnoitre and to strike at a depth of 1,500 miles and upwards "on our own" in any part of the world. I think that the right hon. Gentleman ought to explain to the House and to the country—and this, I think, will be a matter of interest on both sides of the House—what these operations are. He ought to explain in what circumstances he, who has deprived this country of the ability in the early 1970s to land even a battalion against opposition except across a short stretch of water or except as part of an Anglo-American task force, has decided that it is necessary for Britain far into the 1970s in any part of the world to be able "on her own" to strike at an enemy at 1,500 miles and more radius of action from our nearest base. We ought to be told more about the sort of operations and the sort of circumstances in which he regards this as essential.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with him?
  Mr. Powell: Indeed, but hon. Members on this side of the House have not decided that they should deprive this country of any power of naval intervention whatever in the 1970s. They are not in the position of the Secretary of State.
  I think that both sides of the House, and particularly hon. Members below the Gangway, will be interested in one aspect of the possible utilisation of these aircraft. On page 5 of the White Paper, Part I, the right hon. Gentleman refers to the nuclear deterrent and says that we "aim to internationalise our nuclear strategic forces"—apparently a complete disembarrassment by the Labour Party of the nuclear deterrent: the whole of the nuclear strategic force, the nuclear deterrent, is to be embodied, if he can manage it, in some international arrangement and removed from our control.
  But when we look at the second part of the Defence White Paper, the part perhaps in which political considerations
  1766
  have played less part and factual realities a little more, we find this on page 23:
  "Under our proposal for an Atlantic Nuclear Force, we have offered to internationalise the bulk of our nuclear strategic forces"—
  hon. Members will note the words: we have offered to internationalise "the bulk of" our nuclear strategic forces—
  "including the entire Polaris submarine Fleet…".
  There is thus something left over. There is a part of our independent nuclear deterrent which is not to be internationalised. There is a part which is to remain operational under our control outside Europe. Presumably, therefore, this is the key, or one of the keys, to the use which is to be made of these deep-striking deep-penetrating aircraft in the Far East far into the 1970s. I am sure that hon. Members opposite, above and below the Gangway, will be glad to know that this country is maintaining an independent nuclear deterrent for use outside Europe and providing itself with the means to deliver it far into the 1970s.
  For this purpose the Government have bought the 50 F111As. The reason why the purchase has been limited to 50 is, in the terms of the White Paper, the expectation
  "that the Anglo-French variable-geometry aircraft should begin to take over this and other rôles"
  by the mid-1970s. I leave aside altogether the question of the adequacy of 50 aircraft, which even initially could give an operational capability at any one time of no more than 20 to 25 aircraft, to discharge these rôles over five years and more, and to do so at a time when our carrier capability will completely have phased out.
  But the whole policy rests, and is admitted to rest, upon the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft which is to take over from the mid-1970s onwards. The "core of our long-term aircraft programme", the only thing which makes even tentative sense of all that is proposed in this vital sector of our defence preparations, is that the Anglo-French variable-geometry aircraft will be beginning by the middle of the 1970s to take over these and other rôles from the V-bombers and the F111As.
  At present, this aircraft—the Anglo-French variable-geometry aircraft—does

  1767
  not exist, as someone in the aircraft industry put it to me, "even on the back of an envelope". But from all that has been known about it hitherto, from all that is known about the understanding between this country and the French, the idea that the Canberra, the V-bomber and the F111A could be replaced by the Anglo-French variable-geometry aircraft is an insult either to our intelligence or to our information.
  First, it involves replacing an 80-ton aircraft by an aircraft which is envisaged as weighing only 15 or 16 tons and carrying a two-ton bombload. Secondly, this is an aircraft which the Government have hitherto envisaged as an interceptor, as a successor to the Lightning. As recently as 25th February, the Chief of the French Air Staff at a Press conference said:
  "The British are interested by the interception missions and the French by the strike missions. We have always been told that the variable geometry aircraft was to replace the Lightning in the R.A.F. interceptor squadrons."
  Thirdly, this relatively light aircraft, with a much shorter range of action than the F111A, is acceptable and desirable to the French, among other reasons, because it can operate off a carrier as well as from land bases.
  The same right hon. Gentleman, who has now produced this aircraft as the deus ex machina to take over in the middle of the 1970s from the F111A and the V-bomber, said this 15 months ago, in referring to this aircraft:
  "It is under consideration because it is likely to be a suitable replacement for some or possibly all of these aircraft";
  and "these aircraft" were the Buccaneer the Lightning and the Phantom. It is not surprising that the right hon. Gentleman on that occasion went on to say that:
  "there is no relationship between the F111A problem and the variable geometry aircraft now under consideration with the French." [OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th May, 1965: Vol. 712, c. 1008.]
  Neither is there. The whole thing is a structure of spoof, designed to cover up the mess into which the Government have got themselves by the cancellation of the TSR2 and the obligations that they have entered into to the United States.
  While I am mentioning the United States, I would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he asks in whatever authoritative quarters he likes whether they think that the Americans will sit
  1768
  idly by as the 1970s go on and wait for this swing-wing aircraft, in this entirely different rôle, to be produced without themselves going into production with something which will rival it. Does he really imagine that, come the late 1970s, even this aircraft will not have been anticipated by an American bid? What has happened is that the Government have bound themselves hand and foot to the Americans in this whole area of armament of our forces.
  There is one country where the paragraph that I have been dissecting and the decisions of the Government have caused great satisfaction. That is in the United States. The editor of the journal Missiles and Rockets, commenting on the White Paper a few days ago, said:
  "Britain's decision to buy the F111 on credit and to phase out the Royal Navy's air arm is virtually a deathknell for that nation's once proud aircraft industry."
  He ironically besought "no one in United States industry to trouble to complain at the short-run competition which this may provide on a few inconsequential contracts." (That, by the way, is how "ensuring that the full dollar cost is offset" looks from the other side of the Atlantic.) Why? Because
  "the net effect of the White Paper decision will be to put the finishing touches on an industry which once appeared as a potentially potent competitor."
  No wonder that Mr McNamara kept back the announcement of his decision to increase the American carrier force until the sale of the F111A was in the bag.
  So we are contemplating a series of decisions which will run down our conventional forces, which will render us the military dependants of the United States, and which will severely prejudice the future of our aircraft industry.
  Mr. Woodrow Wyatt: The right hon. Gentleman has been making a very powerful case against the Government's defence cuts. Could he reconcile that case with his own often repeated statements that our commitments east of Suez ought to be reduced drastically and more quickly? Where is the consistency?
  Mr. Powell: I should be very obliged to the hon. Gentleman if he would do me the honour to draw my attention to the place and circumstances in which I have used either those words or anything like them.

  1769
  The party which has thus damaged the capabilities of our aircraft industry, which has taken decisions which will reduce the strength of our conventional forces and which will render us for a whole range of our requirements the prisoners of the United States, is, to use the words of the Secretary of State for Defence a few days ago,
  "shortly to stand at an election".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd February, 1966; Vol. 725, c. 242.]
  It is, therefore, worth while looking to see what it was that the Labour Party was holding out to the country when it last stood at a General Election. When the Labour Party last stood at a General Election—[Interruption.] I can quite understand hon. Members opposite not wishing to be reminded of what they said at the last election.
  "We are not prepared"—
  they then said to the country—
  "any longer to waste the country's resources on endless duplication of strategic nuclear weapons."
  So this Government have maintained them all, except the fifth Polaris submarine.
  "We shall propose the renegotiation of the Nassau agreement".
  This they have not done. The Labour Party then went on to say:
  "Our stress will be on the strengthening of our conventional regular forces".
  They have cut them—the complete reverse of what they said has actually happened during these last 15 months.
  The Prime Minister, who, within months of the end of the last Parliament had promised that
  "we should renegotiate this Agreement to end the proposal to buy Polaris submarines from the United States…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th January, 1964; Vol. 687, c. 444.]
  who had stated that "Aden must be held as an important base, both for communications and as a centre for peacekeeping operations, and whatever measures were necessary to this end must be taken", the same right hon. Gentleman went down to Plymouth a fortnight or a little more before the General Election. He treated his hearers to a long account of the movements of British carriers. At the end of this long disquisition on their movements he continued:
  "This is taking dangerous risks with our defences."
  1770
  Now, we in the House know the Prime Minister pretty well. We know very well that frankness and candour of which he never ceases to remind us. Consequently, if we had been present in that hall at Plymouth and had heard him, after that long disquisition on carriers, conclude, "This is taking dangerous risks with our defences", we would have known that his intention was to scrap the carrier force altogether. But was it really fair or candid with the electorate of Plymouth and elsewhere to face them with that puzzle?
  The right hon. Gentleman went on to
  say:
  "I believe we shall need an expanded naval shipbuilding programme. How are we going to pay for it? Out of the savings made through stopping wasteful expenditure on the politically-inspired nuclear programme."
  That was the £15 million for stopping the fifth Polaris submarine. All the rest of the £400 million is taken out of our conventional forces, a considerable part of it representing cuts in our naval shipbuilding programme. Right hon. Gentlemen and a party who talk that way and who act this way are not fit to be trusted with the defence of this country.
  5.22 p.m.
  The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Denis Healey): I think that many of us on both sides of the House hoped that this debate would see the beginning of a major national argument about where we should go in defence and foreign policy. After all, the party opposite, like the party on this side of the House, is standing three weeks next Thursday in a General Election and it has chosen to make defence a major issue.
  I think that many of us were equally waiting for the speech of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) in the hope that he would lift some of the veil on the Conservative Party's defence policy. We were hoping that we might find out who has won the battle which has been raging in the Conservative Party on defence since the Brighton conference. Is it those who want to spend less, or those who want to spend more? Is it those who, like the right hon. Gentleman, want Britain to abandon her military capability altogether outside Europe, or is it those who want to continue to play a rôle in supporting

  1771
  the Commonwealth overseas? Is it those who want to stay in Europe, who want a Gaullist policy, like the right hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery) and the right hon. Gentleman himself, or is it those who want a Common Market policy?
  We have got absolutely no clue from the right hon. Gentleman's speech what is the defence policy of the party opposite. From the opposite side all we got was soggy mishmash like the Conservatives' policy when they were in office. We got equivocation on every important issue in the hope of maintaining the façade of solidarity until the election is over.
  I should like to ask the Leader of the Opposition: what about the dogs that are not barking in the night these next two days? There is not a single spokesman from the political side of the party opposite. Where are the shadow Foreign Secretary, or the shadow Commonwealth Secretary? Here is a major debate on defence and foreign policy, and neither of them chooses to speak. What about the cohorts of ex-defence Ministers on the other side of the House? Not one of them is planning to speak. I am not at all surprised. The fact is that the party opposite is hoping to ride away on a purely negative approach to this problem, and the right hon. Gentleman made quite a negative speech, but he also asked some important questions and I shall try to deal with them.
  So far as I could understand it, the right hon. Gentleman's main criticism of the Government's policy—I agree that if he could sustain it and I could not answer it, it would be a very damaging criticism—was based on three main grounds: first, that we should not have fixed a target of £2,000 million for our defence expenditure in 1969—70, that we should have gone on spending 7 per cent. of the gross national product on defence. I was a little confused here because, first, the right hon. Gentleman argued that there was no gap to close, then he argued that we had not closed it, and then he argued that we had closed it, but that we had not told anybody how. I will deal with that part of his criticism in a moment.
  So far as I could understand it, the second part of the right hon. Gentleman's
  1772
  complaint was that we should not have cut our military tasks in the way we planned to do, or at least that we should not have told anyone that we were going to cut them in that way, or rather that we should have told them a bit more than we have told them about how we are planning to cut them. In particular, he argued that we should not have decided now, and announced our decision, to withdraw from the Aden base after South Arabia becomes independent.
  The third criticism—and the main weight of his attack lay on this—was that the forces and equipment with which we plan to carry out our remaining commitments are not adequate for the tasks involved. I propose to deal with each of these major criticisms in turn.
  On the question of a target figure, the Conservative Party tried to do exactly the same. In its 1962 Defence White Paper, it said that there was a need for five-year forward budgets and that it hoped to avoid a significant increase in the 7 per cent. of the gross national product which it was then devoting to defence. In its White Paper on Public Expenditure, three years ago, it established forecasts for the growth of all major Government programmes up to the year 1967–68, four years ahead. The figure for the defence budget for that year was £2,200 million at 1964 prices. The 10-year forward costings which I found in my own Department when I took over 16 months ago involved an expenditure of £2,400 million for defence in 1969–70.
  So far as I can understand, there is really no difference between the two sides of the House in principle on the need for a target on defence expenditure. Anyone with any experience of public planning knows that forward planning must be based on an estimated target. The only difference between the two sides of the House on this question is that the Conservatives fixed their target for defence expenditure higher than the country could afford, and even so they failed completely to stay within the limit which they had set themselves. Although, on the basis of the Conservative Party White Paper on Public Expenditure in 1963, the average annual growth in defence expenditure envisaged was only 3½ per cent., the following year's defence estimates showed an increase at constant prices of 5½ per cent., and the estimates we inherited in

  1773
  October, 1964, for the financial year 1965–66 showed an increase in expenditure of 5·1 per cent.
  The fact is that they fixed the limit too high, and, even so, they did not keep inside it They sat back and watched defence expenditure rise and they did nothing about it—like a lump of jelly. The right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, and he knows what his responsibility was and he knows that he did not carry it out. This is what they call "tough, purposeful, abrasive Conservative planning". Or possibly that is what they mean when they say, "Conservative freedom works".
  Mr. Reginald Maudling: Would the right hon. Gentleman take account of the figures quoted this afternoon which show that the proportion of the gross national product devoted to defence was falling during the last years of the then Government?
  Mr. Healey: The right hon. Gentleman tried to fix much of his argument on the fact that the hon. Members opposite, when they were in power, grossly overestimated the amount of money that they would be able to spend in a year on defence. The figures given by the right hon. Gentleman were not the estimates. They were the out-turn. What happened was that they failed to carry out the programme as fast as they wished, and they simply pushed the expenditure to the right, thereby incurring a tremendous bulge in defence expenditure during the last years of this decade. This was the position that we found when we came to office.
  The real argument is whether the target that we have set ourselves—£2,000 million, which is £400 million less than the estimate we inherited—is too low. Unfortunately, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West has given no indication whether he thinks it too low or not. If he believes that it is too low, he must answer the questions which follow. How will the Opposition find the additional money they believe to be necessary for defence in 1969–70? The £400 million which we have cut off the expenditure they planned for that year would be the equivalent of an increase in the standard rate of Income Tax of more
  1774
  than 1s. 6d. in the £. Is this how the Opposition would have found the money?
  Would they, instead, have cut other items in public expenditure? Were they planning to cut productive investment in the nationalised industries? Were they planning to cut the social services? Let them tell us now. It is no good saying in principle that one is in favour of an increase in expenditure unless one shows where one is to get the money.
  Mr. Powell: Does not the Secretary of State realise that what he is saying now is that he does not anticipate any growth in the national income in the next five years?
  Mr. Healey: No—not at all. I have made it clear that I see us keeping defence expenditure steady while the national wealth rises, with the result that, in 1969–70, we shall be spending only 6 per cent. of our gross national product on defence instead of the 7 per cent. which the previous Government planned to spend.
  It would have been quite wrong for Britain to plan on continuing to spend 7 per cent.—[Interruption.] I am talking about the estimate that we inherited from the party opposite and that estimate was 7 per cent. I wish that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition would listen.
  Mr. Scholefield Allen: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it right that a running battle should be carried on between the Front Benches from sitting positions? We cannot hear the questions.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): If there is an excess of noise, I shall call right hon. Gentlemen to order.
  Mr. Healey: I recall the estimate that we inherited from the Conservative Government. It provided for an expenditure in excess of 7 per cent. of the gross national product in 1969–70. Is anyone now suggesting that we should continue to spend this percentage of our expanding national product on defence when all our allies, including the United States, are trying to decrease the amount of national wealth they are spending on defence, and when all our major allies except the United States are already spending less than Britain?

  1775
  There is nothing particularly revolutionary about this view. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, who leads for the Opposition on defence, and the right hon. Member for Mon-mouth (Mr. Thorneycroft), my predecessor as Defence Secretary, both resigned from the Conservative Government in 1958. Why? On the ground that it would be impossible, without gravely weakening the British economy, to continue the level of defence expenditure they planned—
  Mr. Powell Mr. Powell rose—
  Mr. Healey: —while also carrying out their planned level of social services.
  Mr. Powell: As my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) is not present—
  Mr. William Hamilton: He has just left.
  Mr. Powell: Then he is not here, is he? As he is not here, perhaps I should say that the issue of defence expenditure was not involved in the issue over which he and I resigned.
  Hon. Members: Withdraw.
  Mr. Healey: I will not withdraw. I will quote what the right hon. Member for Monmouth said on 23rd January, 1958, in justifying his resignation. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition will listen to it. The right hon. Member for Monmouth said:
  "The point I want to put is the quite simple one that for twelve years we have been attempting to do more than our resources could manage, and in the process we have been gravely weakening ourselves. We have, in a sense, been trying to do two things at the same time. First, we have sought to be a nuclear power, matching missile with missile and anti-missile with anti-missile, and with large…conventional forces in the Far East, the Middle East and the Atlantic at the same time…. At the same time, we have sought to maintain a Welfare State at as high a level as—sometimes at an even higher level than—that of the United States of America…. The simple truth is that we have been spending more money than we should."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd January, 1958, Vol. 580, c. 1295–6.]
  Let the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition get up if he wants to.
  Mr. Edward Heath: The Secretary of State should now withdraw. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] He has been
  1776
  making this erroneous statement for a long time. The fact is as stated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell)—defence expenditure was not the issue on which he and my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) resigned. It is quite clear from that extract of my right hon. Friend's speech in 1958 that the Secretary of State for Defence should withdraw.
  Mr. Healey Mr. Healey rose—
  Hon. Members: Withdraw.
  Mr. Healey: I have quoted the speech of the right hon. Member for Monmouth. The House and the country can judge whether or not I have misrepresented what he said.
  Even the United States—and this is a point not generally realised—is steadily cutting its percentage of gross national product on defence. It fell from 101 per cent. in 1962 to 8·2 per cent. in 1965. Germany has been cutting its defence percentage by ½ per cent. in each of the last three years. Next year, it is not likely to amount to more than 4½ per cent. of its gross national product. Does anyone outside the ranks of the Opposition really think that, in these circumstances, we should have continued to let our defence expenditure swell automatically from year to year as they are prepared to do?
  In fact, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West has made it clear that he wants to spend much more than £2,400 million in 1969–70. If I followed his speech correctly, he does not go back on anything he said in the debate on our reserve forces a few weeks ago. In that case he wants to spend two or three times more on defence than even his colleagues in the last Government. He wants us to be able to fight a long war in Europe with conventional weapons alone—and to be able to resist Soviet invasion as well. Since none of our allies shares his views, this would mean Britain alone mobilising another 30 divisions—a defence budget of £6,000 million a year and conscription.
  At the same time, the right hon. Gentleman does not want to reduce our expenditure on atomic weapons to compensate. On the contrary, he wants, as

  1777
  he made it clear, to keep independent national control of our strategic deterrent forces. But I must say, judging by his previous argument, that it is not clear when he would propose to use them because he would not even use them in the situation which he envisaged—when the Territorial Army was defending our wives and families against the mass of the Red Army in Britain.
  I do not know why he wants atomic weapons at all on the assumption of the arguments that he used in the reserve forces debate. The fact is that we had to cut the percentage of our national wealth that the previous Government planned to spend on defence.
  Mr. Julian Amery: Nonsense.
  Mr. Healey: I am glad that there is at least one right hon. Gentleman on the benches opposite who has the courage to say in this election what he thinks.
  We were also deeply concerned to reduce the total amount of foreign exchange expenditure on defence and to reduce the over-stretch from which our forces have been suffering in recent years. Too many of our soldiers, sailors and airmen are having to spend far too long away from their families, are having to work far too hard in conditions which are too difficult.
  If, as I believe we must, we aim to obtain by voluntary recruitment the men and women for our forces, it is essential to reduce this over-stretch, otherwise recruiting and re-engagement will fall, overstretch will increase—and so on, and so on, in a vicious circle.
  By August last year, as the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West pointed out, we had got more than half way to our target saving by changes in the equipment programme which would actually increase our capability for carrying out all our existing military tasks. We had not yet made any favourable impact on the foreign exchange costs of defence nor did these equipment savings reduce the strain on our forces. So, for the last six months we have concentrated on planning to reduce our military tasks, so that we were able to save foreign exchange, reduce over-stretch and make further savings in resources.
  1778
  Our conclusions can be summarised as follows. We have cut the planned expenditure of the previous Government for 1969–70 by 16 per cent. Of that saving, three-quarters will be achieved without any loss in capability by getting better value for money. This is summed up in the phrase cost-effectiveness, which I see the party opposite has discovered and put into its manifesto, although it opposed every decision we took to get better cost-effectiveness applied in defence.
  But, of course, we believe in action not words. Because we are getting value for money we will be cutting our military capability by only 4 per cent. On the other hand, and this answers one of the questions asked by the right hon. Gentleman, to reduce over-stretch we plan to reduce the number of troops we keep outside Europe by over 30 per cent., keeping a much higher proportion of our forces in a home station, in Britain or Germany.
  This will save about one-quarter of our existing expenditure of foreign exchange in stationing costs. Contrary to what some critics-have claimed when we have fully carried out the changes in tasks and forces planned in the defence review we shall be in a much better position to fulfil the tasks which then remain than we are to fulfil existing tasks today.
  Mr. Powell: The right hon. Gentleman has said that the redeployment will make a saving of one-quarter in foreign exchange costs. Can he say what saving it will make in budgetary costs?
  Mr. Healey: I will come to that in a moment.
  I pass to the second question. Have we cut the right tasks? Should we have cut more, or should we have cut less, or should we have done something different altogether? So far as I can tell, there has been no serious complaint on either side of the House about the cuts we plan in the N.A.T.O. area, about the removal of our forces from the Caribbean, and the Southern African territories, or about the cuts we plan to make in the Mediterranean—although the right hon. Gentleman said that we should be more specific about this, while saying that we were quite wrong to be specific about the cut we plan to make in Aden.

  1779
  The argument has focused almost exclusively on the cuts we have planned to make East of Suez and in the Middle and Far East. I know that there are very important differences of opinion—
  Mr. J. Amery Mr. J. Amery rose—
  Mr. Healey: not only between the Government and Opposition, but also inside both parties.
  I cannot help feeling that these differences, real though they are, tend to be exaggerated and inflamed by the emotional associations which are so easily attached to the phrase "east of Suez", with its echoes from the "road to Mandalay", and even to the phrase, "Britain's world rôle". The fact is that Britain has got to stay east of Suez in any case for many years. We have direct responsibility for the internal security and external defence of territories in the areas which are unlikely to become independent for some time yet.
  Successive Governments have accepted treaty obligations in Asia, both bilateral, like those to Malaysia, and multilateral, like those to CENTO and S.E.A.T.O. Our commitment to defend Malaysia involves us at this moment in deploying over 50,000 military personnel in Southern Asia.
  Mr. Nigel Fisher: What about Aden?
  Mr. Healey: I am coming to that in a moment. If the hon. Gentleman will show a little patience I will answer all his questions.
  I know that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, Southwest, who speaks for the Opposition on defence, believes that the presence of our forces in Borneo can be explained only by a state of national hallucination. But I have the impression that the Leader of the Opposition, like the Leader of the Liberal Party, who, I am sorry to say, is not present, agrees that this is a commitment from which we cannot consider attempting to withdraw so long as our Commonwealth partners remain under the existing threat from Indonesia.
  Even if circumstances were to make it possible and desirable for us to negotiate an end to this commitment, our
  1780
  residual responsibilities would compel us to retain some forces in the Far East. The question is not whether we stay east of Suez, but in what strength and for what purpose and for how long.
  The same is true of Britain's world rôle. There are few responsible politicians in any party who wish Britain to be without all influence outside the European continent, and to shrink into an exclusive pre-occupation with that part of humanity which is her immediate neighbour. In any case, we have important economic and political interests in every continent. Though the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West and many of his party consider the Commonwealth to be just a gigantic farce, most of us on both sides of the House believe that the existence of the Commonwealth makes an indispensable contribution to world order and strengthens the international influence of all its members—including Britain.
  The question, therefore, is not whether Britain has a world rôle or not—she must have one—but what part her military forces outside Europe can play at reasonable cost in supporting it. To ask this question is not to indulge in vain dreams of imperial nostalgia or world domination. Even the most powerful of the super States, like Russia and America, cannot today determine by themselves what shall happen throughout the world. One has only to look at Albania and Cuba to see that.
  The question is whether, by her military presence outside Europe, Britain can, not rule the world, but make a useful contribution to peace and stability in areas which are in the throes of revolutionary change, and where, to quote from the Conservative Party statement at its Brighton conference,
  "…the main danger to peace now rests."
  Her Majesty's Government believe that she can, but only if she accepts certain necessary limitations on her military rôle. We believe that we must take decisions ourselves about these limitations and take them now. That is the real difference between us and the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. He thinks that we should cut our commitments but will not do anything about it. That is how he described his attitude on television the other night.

  1781
  He said:
  "We have got commitments east of Suez, as it is commonly described, which I believe we ought to adhere to. Of course, we would like to see these commitments reduced and in the course of time I think this will come about. You cannot be certain when it is going to come about. And, therefore, in making provision for defence you cannot be dogmatic about it."
  This is tough, purposeful, abrasive talk all right—wait for someone else to take the decisions for you.
  Mr. Heath: Can the Secretary of State be certain when confrontation over Indonesia will end or when the certainty of the independence of Malaysia can be assured?
  Mr. Healey: No, I cannot be certain about everything but, I think that it is possible to take some decisions now and that a Government with any sense of responsibility to the British people must take those decisions which it is possible to take and not leave everything to be decided by foreigners. [Laughter.] Let us go into this.
  The first of these limitations is that we should not seek to maintain military facilities in an independent country against its will. The second is that we should not accept commitments to give military support to a country unless that country provides us with the facilities we require to make our support effective in time. The third is that we should not attempt to maintain a capability for carrying out major military operations entirely alone and without allies.
  I do not believe that, even if it were economically or militarily possible for us to avoid accepting these limitations, it would be politically wise for us to seek to do so. In particular, to seek to maintain military facilities in an independent country against its will can mean tying down so many troops in protecting one's base that one has none left to use from it. The base then becomes a heavy commitment in itself and loses all its military value.
  So far as the ability to wage large-scale war on our own outside Europe is concerned, we have ceased to have this for many years and, even if we thought it worth while attempting to recover this ability, I cannot see how it could possibly make sense for Britain to engage in major military operations entirely on her own in Asia in the 1970s, if her
  1782
  neighbours and competitors in Western Europe are sitting back and raking in the money. I know that the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West does not think so either, but he does not think it expedient to reveal his thoughts so soon before the General Election.
  Mr. William Warbey: I wonder whether my right hon. Friend would say why we should engage in any military operations at all in Asia in the 1970s?
  Mr. Healey: Certainly. I will say it very simply. If the capacity to engage in small-scale military operations can prevent large-scale disaster, as undoubtedly it did when we intervened under the previous Government in East Africa in 1964, it is well worth a people with any sense of international responsibility paying something to be able to do it.
  If we honestly face the natural limitations which the facts impose on our foreign policy and military capability in the 1970s, then we can draw some practical conclusions. The first is that it would be a mistake to try to keep a base in Aden after independence in 1968, particularly when we do not need that base to carry out our commitments outside South Arabia. That is why the Government have decided that British forces should leave Aden when South Arabia becomes independent and that, meanwhile, we should make a small increase in our forces already stationed in the Persian Gulf so that we can carry out our commitments to support Kuwait and the other States in the Gulf to which we have obligations.
  The right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) has tried to suggest that, in deciding to leave the Aden base in 1968, we are unilaterally abandoning a commitment. This is totally untrue. We have at present some treaty obligations to the South Arabia Federation, but these will automatically lapse when South Arabia becomes an independent State in its own right. In any case, none of them is appropriate in form to relations between independent States.
  The right hon. Gentleman tried to maintain that the promise made by his right hon. Friend in July, 1964, to delegates from the Federation of South Arabia and Aden Colony in some way commits Britain to conclude a defence

  1783
  agreement with an independent South Arabia in 1968 under which she would retain her military base in Aden. This, also, is quite untrue. The promise which the right hon. Gentleman made was to convene a conference. The present Government attempted to convene such a conference last March—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, but it proved quite impossible to secure agreement between Adeni and Federal leaders on the composition of the conference; and by March the Aden Government had resigned to be replaced by a Government committed to the immediate withdrawal of the Aden base; and at no time since has it been possible to secure sufficient agreement between Adeni and Federal leaders to permit any of the proposals made in July, 1964, to be carried further.
  In so far as the present Government had any commitment as a result of the right hon. Gentleman's promise before the last election, it has already been fully carried out. But, in any case, I do not see how any hon. or right hon. Member can maintain that Britain could ever have had any obligation to keep the base in Aden if she did not need it, and the local people did not want it, and then to conclude a defence agreement for which the purpose would be to ensure that she could retain that base. Her Majesty's Government have an obligation to protect the interests of the British people as well as those of foreigners.
  I thought that the right hon. Gentleman was uncharacteristically evasive in pretending to answer the question which I put to him. I will ask him again: does the Conservative Party believe that we have a commitment to keep the Aden base whether we need it or not and whether the local people want us to have it or not? If it does not think that, everything that the right hon. Gentleman has said is simply a dishonest and shilly-shallying smokescreen. The point which he makes is totally irrelevant. The commitment we had was to call a conference. We tried to do this. It was the fault of the people to whom we made the promise that we could not hold to it. I do not think that even right hon. Members opposite would maintain that we have a commitment to maintain the base in Aden even if we do not want one
  1784
  and even if the local people do not want us to have one.
  Mr. Duncan Sandys: The right hon. Gentleman cannot wriggle out of firm commitments. He is just playing with words. He talks about the local people not wanting this base. He knows perfectly well that the request for a defence agreement came not from us—we did not ask for it—but from the Federal Government themselves. They asked that we should fix a date for independence and that we should conclude a defence agreement. Those two things were joined together because they knew that independence without protection was a farce. We gave the pledge that we would do both things—independence not later than 1968, and a defence agreement. That pledge clearly commits our successors—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech."] I must continue. The House should know that this pledge was subsequently confirmed on behalf of the present British Government by the British High Commissioner in Aden. That is an important fact. The right hon. Gentleman also knows—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech."] The right hon. Gentleman also knows that when he himself—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order."] Hon. Members opposite do not like this. When the right hon. Gentleman—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Interventions should be brief—
  Mr. Healey Mr. Healey rose—
  Mr. Sandys Mr. Sandys rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Interventions should be brief. This seems to be a somewhat important intervention, but I hope that the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) will make it as brief as he can.
  Mr. Sandys: I have only one more point to make. The right hon. Gentleman knows that when he was in Aden last June he personally assured the Federal Government that they could trust the British Government to fulfil and to honour all their obligations. Is he going to "rat" on them now?
  Mr. Healey: I have just explained to the House that we fully carried out the promise which the right hon. Gentleman made. I wish that the Leader of the

  1785
  Opposition, even if the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West has not the guts to do so, would answer the question which I put: does any member of the Opposition believe that we should adhere to the promise made by the right hon. Gentlemen to keep the base in Aden if we do not need it and the local people do not want it?
  Mr. Heath: This is a very serious matter and I will answer the right hon. Gentleman. The question which he is putting is a false question. Surely he is not arguing that because the Colonial Secretary failed at his first attempt to get agreement about independence with the Federation and the then Government of Aden, that is the end of the matter. Of course not. He said that it is not. If there is to be a future conference, the undertaking of the British Government should be adhered to.
  Mr. Healey: This is not the case at all. We have exactly the same right as the Government of Aden—which has changed since it was represented at the conference called by the right hon. Gentleman—to decide where our interests lie. The promise made by the right hon. Gentleman—I have checked this carefully in the White Paper—was made at a conference attended by many people. Some were representatives of the Federal Government. Some were representatives of the then Government of Aden Colony. Some were representatives of individual States.
  Mr. Fisher Mr. Fisher rose—
  Mr. Healey: I have given way a great deal already. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity to intervene in the debate, because it is—
  Mr. Fisher Mr. Fisher rose—
  Mr. Healey: I think that I have the right to make my speech in my own way and to be listened to with the same care and attention as we gave to the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, Southwest.
  Mr. Sandys Mr. Sandys rose—
  Mr. Healey: No. The right hon. Gentleman has just intervened at great length, and I regret having given way to him to let him make a point which he should have made in a speech from
  1786
  the Opposition Front Bench. He made a large number of statements when he was Commonwealth Secretary, as he did when he was Secretary of State for Defence. He was a dogmatically dangerous Commonwealth Secretary, just as he was when he was Defence Secretary.
  Mr. Fisher Mr. Fisher rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Surbiton (Mr. Fisher) must not persist in seeking to interrupt if the right hon. Gentleman does not give way.
  Mr. Healey: It is interesting that the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West took a very different position from that of his right hon. Friends. So far as I could understand him, he did not argue about the wisdom of our decision to give up the Aden base in 1968. I do not see how he could have done so in the light of the speech which he made at the Conservative Party Conference at Brighton. Instead, he argued that we should not have announced our decision now.
  With respect, I think that if he reflects for one moment, he will understand that we have no alternative. If we want our Forces to be out of Aden in 1968—which is only two years from now—we must start making the physical and practical arrangements right away. Our intention would thus become known on the spot, in any case, from the local actions which we took or ceased to take. More important still, I do not believe that it would have been honourable to attempt to conceal our intention from the local people and their leaders, as the right hon. Gentleman seems to have suggested that we should. Even if it had been physically possible to do so—which it is not—it would have been intolerable for the Government, having decided to leave the base in two years' time, to give no indication of their intentions to those with whom they must negotiate the form of independence.
  Some hon. Members may feel that, if we are leaving Aden, we should leave the Gulf, too. But in the Gulf we have treaty obligations to States which are independent, such as Kuwait, which is a member of the United Nations. Moreover, the Gulf is an area of such vital importance, not only to the economy of

  1787
  Western Europe as a whole but also to world peace, that it would be totally irresponsible for us to withdraw our force from the area unless we were completely satisfied that peace and order would be maintained after our withdrawal.
  The purpose of the small increase in forces which we plan to make over the next few years in the Gulf is to ensure that diplomacy has time to produce a stable situation in the area against the time, which will come some day, when peace in the Gulf need no longer depend on Britain's military power.
  I pass to the most important question asked by the right hon. Gentleman. He asked whether, having reduced our military tasks in the world, as I have described, we shall be able to carry out the remaining tasks with the men and weapons provided for in the White Paper. I agree with him that the whole of our Defence Review would be a dangerous waste of effort if it resulted in leaving our forces with jobs to do which they had neither the numbers nor the arms to do effectively. I agree entirely with what my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) said in his personal statement—that no honourable man should continue to serve in a Government which left our Forces, in his opinion, in such a state.
  But what are the facts? First of all, we do not plan to make any reduction in the size of our forces until confrontation with Indonesia is ended, and we are able to reduce our Far East deployment to the level once planned by the previous Government before confrontation began. The cuts which we make in our tasks in the Caribbean, the South Atlantic, the Southern African Territories, the Mediterranean and the Middle East will not by themselves lead to any reduction in the total of Army units or manpower. There will simply be more men to deal with fewer areas in which emergencies may arise and for which we remain responsible.
  Mr. J. Amery: The right hon. Gentleman referred to cuts in the Mediterranean. There have been stories in The Times and elsewhere that the Government were proposing to give up the sovereign base
  1788
  area at Dhekelia. Will he give an assurance that this is not the case?
  Mr. Healey: There is no authority whatsoever for those stories.
  As our programme is implemented we shall be able to relax the strain on the fighting units of the Services and to reduce very substantially the requirement for Army units to go overseas on emergency tours. We shall keep some slack in hand for reducing over-stretch. In other words, as our commitments diminish according to our programme, our capability for carrying out our remaining military tasks will steadily improve. Just to give the right hon. Gentleman one example—because he raised the question—at the moment we have nine battalions overseas on emergency tours. These will all be able to return to Britain to accommodation which they left when they went overseas on emergency tours. In other words, they will be able to spend the time in Britain which they were led to expect when they were recruited—time which they expected to be able to spend in a home station.
  The fact is that the major savings resulting from our Defence Review will arise almost entirely from changes in the equipment programme and not in manpower. Many of these changes will result in increased military capability. Where they involve reductions in capability, these will be in fields where we are satisfied that the reductions involve little risk.
  The biggest single saving will be in the aircraft programme of the previous Government. Here we shall save £1,200 million altogether over the next ten years, partly through buying aircraft more cheaply from abroad, and partly through having a more cost-effective mix of aircraft for the tasks we envisage. Yet much of these savings will involve a very substantial increase in our capability in certain directions; for example, we shall be getting our C.130 or Hercules transport aircraft next year—five years earlier than we could have expected the HS.681 which we cancelled. Similarly, the Phantoms will come into service in 1968 and the P.1127 in 1969. We do not believe there was any chance of getting the P.1154 until 1972. In fact, if we had continued the programme of the previous Government, we should certainly have had to make extensive interim

  1789
  purchases of American aircraft to bridge the gap between the time when our existing transport and ground support aircraft had to be replaced and the earliest date at Which we could have expected their British successors.
  Certainly, we have to pay dollars for the aircraft which we need, but the net additional cost of the whole of the programme outlined in the Defence Review is only £165 million spread over ten years. The dollar cost of the Conservative programme which we inherited was £410 million—two-and-a-half times higher. Incidentally, let me tell the right hon. Gentleman that what he said about the F.111A was absolutely ridiculous. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation will deal in detail when he winds up the debate with the points which the right hon. Gentleman made about that.
  All I say about the right hon. Gentleman's remarks in this respect is as follows: as far as I could make it out, he does not believe in the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft and he wants many more F.111As. In fact, he poured the most dismal predictions over the whole prospect of co-operation between this country and France in the production of military aircraft, although this is one of the major items in the Manifesto which the Conservative Party published yesterday. We had the usual anti-American rigmarole from him, but he forgets that the carrier force which he wants to continue indefinitely would depend entirely on American aircraft bought for it by the previous Administration.
  These are facts which nobody can dispute. So far as I can understand it, the right hon. Gentleman's argument that we shall have tasks in the 1970's which we cannot carry out depends exclusively on the assumption that we must have one new aircraft carrier coming into service in seven years' time, in 1973. He seems to argue that the absence of this single carrier will make all the difference between our ability to carry out all our conceivable military tasks outside Europe, entirely alone and without allies, and a sort of helpless satellite status.
  I will not disguise from the House that the future of our carrier force was by far the most difficult problem I had to settle in the course of the Defence
  1790
  Review. Let me make it clear at the outset that the problem was not to decide whether, in principle, a carrier force would be a useful addition to our armoury, but whether the particular size and type of carrier force for which Britain could find the men and money was value for money—and whether it was a necessary addition to our total military strength.
  I say "addition" because it has never been suggested in the course of our discussions of this issue, even by the most ardent supporters of carriers, that the building of CVA 01 would enable us to dispense with any other element in our planned forces, including the F.111A. There was never a conflict between the F.111A and the carrier force. The whole Admiralty Board completely supported the requirement for the purchase of F.111As. Therefore, we had to consider a carrier as a potential addition, not as a substitute for something else. If, like the United States, one can afford a force of 16 attack carriers, and, like the United States, one is engaged in a massive land campaign in Asia in which one's land airfields are liable to mortar attack by a powerful guerilla army, then there is no doubt that carriers are well worth while. But our situation is very different. I do not believe that it would ever make sense for us to engage in such a war, especially alone. In any case, the Admiralty Board has concluded that the Navy could not possibly man more than four carriers in all, and even then only at the expense of important elements in the rest of the Fleet.
  The carrier plan we inherited from the previous Government envisaged in practice only three carriers available for operations east of Suez through the 1970s, once the Ark Royal and Victorious had been withdrawn from service. I think it is common ground that British carriers are not necessary for operations in the Atlantic, Mediterranean or Middle East. It is against the needs of possible operations in the Indian Ocean and the Far East that the case for carriers must stand or fall.
  I must say that it comes oddly from the right hon. Member that he should lay such importance on getting out of the Far East and then lay such importance on a weapon whose only purpose is to increase capability in the Far East; but the fact

  1791
  is that, with the three-carrier force planned by the previous Government, only one ship would be permanently east of Suez and that ship would not always be in the right place at the right time. In fact it is not possible, even with our existing carrier force of four ships, to be wholly dependent on carriers in any of our contingency plans. We have to consider the possible presence of a carrier as a bonus.
  It is true that a second carrier would, for nine or ten months of the year, be available at 15 days' notice to be moved east of Suez, but the single carrier which would be permanently in the area where it is needed would have only a very limited operational value. It would be capable of only four days of operation at intensive rates, though 30 days at sustained rates of operation, and one of the three carriers concerned, H.M.S. "Hermes", would be carrying only seven strike aircraft in addition to her 12 fighters. And yet the cost of this three-carrier force would be £1,400 million over a 10-year period, or an average of £140 million a year. Even if the strike aircraft on "Hermes" were a developed Buccaneer, the Buccaneer Two-Double Star, they would only have the capability of about three land-based F.111As, costing a tiny fraction of the cost of the carrier force.
  I really do not believe that any hon. Member would regard this as good value for money. Indeed, broadly speaking, our studies have shown that the attributable cost of the Navy's front-line carrier-based aircraft tends to be between two and two and a half times higher than that of comparable aircraft based on land. I know that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) tried desperately to get these facts in front of the Cabinet when he was a Minister in the last Government, and I hope that, now I have got the facts in front of the Cabinet and the country, he will have the guts to support the decision I have taken, which is one he would have wished to take himself years ago.
  Now, once the facts had become clear the question was whether there were any other means—
  Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles: Will the right hon. Gentleman cast his mind back to what happened at Kuwait?
  Mr. Healey: Yes, I will indeed. I will deal with this question in detail when I wind up tomorrow night, if I am lucky enough to catch Mr. Speaker's eye.
  Once the facts had become clear, the only question which remained was whether there were any means of doing the carrier's essential jobs more cheaply. The previous Government rightly said in their 1962 White Paper that, while it was difficult to forecast with certainty what our requirements for aircraft carriers would be, 10 or 15 years ahead,
  "clearly any new generation of carriers would have to be designed primarily for the support of amphibious and land operations".
  In fact, as I said when the right hon. Gentleman dealt with this point, there is only one type of land or amphibious operation for which carriers are particularly indispensable, and that is the landing or withdrawal of troops in enemy territory in the face of air attack and outside the range of our own land-based aircraft—in fact, the type of operation of which the previous Government made such a hash at Suez. I do not believe that any Government in their senses would undertake such operations outside the range of land-based aircraft, if the amount of protection we could provide for our troops would be only that available from the sort of carrier force I have just described.
  If we were to take seriously the possibility of landing troops on a hostile shore, without allies, outside the range of our land-based aircraft, we would have to have a force of at least five or six carriers so as to be certain of having two premanently available, but such a force, besides costing very large sums far beyond our means, would be far beyond the capacity of the Royal Navy to man. We therefore decided not to keep the capability for such operations, and I regard this as a small sacrifice since we could not afford it anyway, and it is difficult to imagine circumstances in which it would be politically wise to use it.
  Commander Anthony Courtney: That is not the only operation for which carriers are indispensable.
  Mr. Healey: I am coming to that in a moment.
  Commander Courtney: The carrier is a protection for ships anywhere, as well as support for forces outside Europe.
  Mr. Healey: I am grateful to the hon. and gallant Member. I am coming precisely to that point. There is in fact only one rôle of the carrier which we consider necessary and which there is some difficulty in carrying out more cheaply by other means, and that is the protection of ships at sea, either merchant ships or naval vessels. We plan to replace this capability so far as it is necessary when carriers have gone, in part by the use of R.A.F. aircraft operating from land bases, in close co-operation with the Navy; and, in addition, we shall develop a small surface-to-surface guided weapon for use against missile-firing ships.
  These developments will take time—of course, the right hon. Gentleman was right on that—and I am very anxious that in the meantime the Fleet shall not be deprived of the protection which only carriers at present can afford. That is why I believe it is essential to run our existing carrier force as long as possible into the 1970s, and in fact the target which I have set myself is 1975. I know that to keep the carrier force running till 1975 is a challenge which will tax the efforts of the Navy, but I can tell the House that the whole Admiralty Board is determined to meet it.
  But on the assumption that we do continue to keep the carriers going for another 10 years, the programme I have outlined will save us £650 million compared with the programme envisaged by the previous Government. The additional cost of reproducing the carrier's capability by other means will be about £150 million, largely for the Royal Navy, but this would have had to be spent at some stage whenever carriers were phased out. So the net saving over the next 10 years is about £500 million, and that £500 million is the net cost of the Conservative Party's proposal to keep a carrier programme going, as it has expressed it in its manifesto for the last election. The saving in 1969–70, contrary to what the right hon. Gentleman said in his speech, will not be small; it will be £80 million by the adoption of the new carrier programme which I have outlined.
  Mr. Powell: Net?
  Mr. Healey: Net saving.
  Mr. John Hay: The right hon. Gentleman has just said that his intention is to run the carrier force till about 1975, even though by that time all of the ships will have gone. Will he tell us what is to be the future of the Fleet Air Arm, particularly in the later stages of that period?
  Mr. Healey: I am coming to that.
  Mr. Hay: I hope so.
  Mr. Healey: I really think that, if hon. and right hon. Members could wait for what I have to say, it would be easier for us all and save time. I do not intend to dodge any question, and I hope that I have foreseen most of the questions being put by right hon. and hon. Members opposite.
  I know that the decision I have taken will be a bitter blow to many in the Navy, and above all to the Fleet Air Arm, and it has led to the premature retirement, at his own request, of a very great sailor, Admiral Sir David Luce. I know that the House will wish me to say how much we all regret that he should have felt it necessary to take this step. But those who are saying, for whatever reason, that the phasing out of the carrier force in up to 10 years' time means the end of the Royal Navy are doing the Fleet a grave disservice.
  The fact is that the United States is the only country in the world which plans to maintain a viable carrier force round the world through the 1970s—[HON. MEMBERS: "What about France?"]—They are keeping a very small carrier force simply for use in one small part of the world. Neither the Soviet Union nor China has carriers or plans to have them, nor does any of the countries with whom our commitments might have engaged us in hostilities over the last 20 years.
  Commander Courtney: They are not maritime Powers.
  Mr. Healey: Our decision to end the carrier force in 1975 rather than 1980—because, on the proposal by the party opposite for one new carrier, we should have had to end the carrier force five years later than we planned—does not mean the end of the Fleet Air Arm and still less of the Royal Navy. At least

  1795
  half the Fleet Air Arm at present is concerned with operating helicopters. Helicopters have a vital anti-submarine rôle and will be flown in increasing numbers from the cruisers, destroyers and frigates of the Fleet, and others will continue to operate in the tactical rôle from the commando ships.
  In that way, the tradition of the Fleet Air Arm will be carried on even when the attack carrier has gone in 1975. But, for the next 10 years, the watchword for the Fleet Air Arm will be "Business as usual". I realise the very great importance, both to the nation and to the Navy, of the carrier force during the next 10 years while this difficult transition to the new arrangements is being made. In fact, I know that the whole Royal Navy will regard it as a challenge to be met, as they have met all other challenges in the past.
  The Royal Navy in the 1970s will still be fulfilling a vital rôle in the defence of Britain. Its Polaris submarines will make a massive contribution to the deterrent power of our alliance.
  Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I thought they were going to be thrown away.
  Mr. Healey: The right hon. Gentleman did not think they were going to be thrown away, surely. But it is nice to see him back here. I only wish that he was speaking in the debate, perhaps to deal with some of the foreign affairs aspects.
  The Navy's nuclear-powered hunter killer submarines and its Type 82 destroyers will be among the most modern fighting vessels in the world. It takes about four years to build a nuclear-powered hunter killer submarine, and the fifth one which we are planning to build will still be building in 1969–70. I think that that is the question that the right hon. Gentleman was going to ask me.
  The amphibious forces of the Navy—commando ships, landing ships and Royal Marines—will make a valuable contribution to allied or United Nations operations outside Europe. Its surface ships will have new missiles, and its antisubmarine capability will be increased by new weapons and helicopters. It will remain a great Service with a future worthy of its past.
  Mr. Powell: To get the right hon. Gentleman's point about nuclear-powered submarines quite clear, I take it that there is no allowance in his 1969–70 budget for the building at that time, at any stage of its building, of any nuclear-powered submarine?
  Mr. Healey: Not in 1969–70, although the Navy is now engaged on producing a new programme to take account of its needs when the carriers have gone, and it may be that it will be decided that a further increased speed-up in the nuclear-powered programme is required. Incidentally, we are only able to build now a fifth nuclear-powered submarine because we have dropped the fifth Polaris. The previous Government did not plan to build one in the next five years.
  This is not the first time that a British Government have cut defence expenditure. The previous Government did it in 1957, but it used a butcher's axe and made no attempt to analyse the problem. The right hon. Member for Streatham decided that there was no future for manned aircraft after only three months in office, but the present Government have spent 16 months in a most thorough review.
  Mr. Sandys: What does the right hon. Gentleman mean when he says that we decided that there was no future for manned aircraft?
  Mr. Healey: I mean, the manned bomber.
  Mr. Sandys: Well, say so.
  Mr. Healey: I must say that I deeply regret that the right hon. Gentleman has not been selected to speak in the debate, but I fully understand why.
  Mr. Sandys Mr. Sandys rose—
  Mr. Healey: I know that many hon. Members on both sides have been impatient about the time that it has taken, but the Defence Review has not only occupied the major part of the time of senior officers and officials in the Ministry of Defence over the last 16 months. It has involved all the political and economic departments of the Government and the Government as well. Ministers on the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee of the Cabinet have held 30 meetings on the Defence Review. In addition, the

  1797
  most thorough consultations ever have been carried out with our allies and partners in the Commonwealth, the United States and Europe.
  I have no doubt that it is one of the issues that we shall be debating in the General Election, but I believe that the effort has been worth it. We are getting value for money in our defence policy for the first time in many years. We have already made cost-effectiveness the acid test of policy and expenditure in the biggest spending department of them all. The major decisions are now taken, but the review will be a continuing process. From now on, it will be part of the normal machinery of government. We shall be constantly testing and revising our assumptions to make sure that what we are doing in defence is politically worthwhile and that we are doing it as cheaply as we can.
  What the House is debating today is not just a plan for 1969–70, three years ahead. The fact is that the Government have already achieved tremendous savings. At constant prices, our actual expenditure last year was under £2,000 million. Our estimates for next year are under £2,000 million. It is not only that we are planning to cut £400 million off Conservative estimates for 1969–70. We have saved £300 million already on Tory plans for our first two years of office. That is money actually saved and available now for other purposes.
  Yet every single decision which has led to these savings has been opposed by the Conservative Opposition. They opposed the changes in the aircraft programme, without which the R.A.F. would not have got the aircraft that it needs in time. They have opposed the reorganisation of our reserve forces, without which the Regular Army would remain short of reserves which it can use. They have opposed our decision on the aircraft carrier. The Liberal Party has also opposed all these savings, except the one on carriers.
  The Conservatives have also opposed the biggest reduction that we plan to make in our commitments, in Aden—a reduction without which there would be no chance of saving our serving men and women from the overstrain imposed on them in recent years. If the Opposition had their way, our defence costs would
  1798
  continue spiralling upwards, and out forces would continue to be dangerously overstretched.
  So far as I was able to discover from what the right hon. Member for Wolver-hampton, South-West said, the party opposite still believes that the soggy mess left by the right hon. Member for Monmouth represents the acme of perfection. Any attempt to improve on his dismal record, they describe as dogmatism. The tough, purposeful and abrasive Leader of the Opposition knows that we must cut the defence expenditure, but he has not the guts to do anything about it. This Government have. It is not a question of dogma. It is a question of decision. We have had the courage to look the facts in the face, to draw the right conclusions from them and then to act, however difficult, however unpopular, even if it means breaking with old friends. The will to take decisions is the final test of a party's fitness to govern. By this test, the party opposite is a discredited irrelevance. I believe that, when the opportunity comes in three weeks' time, the nation will choose the party which has the guts to govern.
  6.30 p.m.
  Mr. Hugh Fraser: I do not intend to speak for more than five or six minutes, but I think that it is important to make a few comments on what the right hon. Gentleman said. I shall be brief, and will comment on only four or five matters.
  I suggest that this White Paper reveals the absolute inability by the right hon. Gentleman and his party to tell the nation the facts. This stands out specially in one way, namely, his failure to reveal how he got any firm agreement by which our enormous expenditure on American aircraft will be met. There is nothing that I know of except the U.S.A. possibly buying a few tugboats. There is nothing about the Americans buying sophisticated machinery to offset our purchases in the United States, except in one particular, and I have asked Questions to get this matter referred to the National Prices and Incomes Board. The First Secretary of State knows that in this country there is an American firm hiring British craftsmen—I hope that the Foreign Secretary will not leave the Chamber be

  1799
  cause I shall have something to say about him in a few minutes—at 30 per cent. above craftsmen's rates. They are working in this country on designs for the Lockheed Corporation. They are working on drawings which will then be exported for Lockheeds to manufacture. This is the only form of sophisticated export which I can trace.
  Secondly, there is the right hon. Gentleman's complete failure to push on with the integration of his Department. We on these benches believe that our defence should have been further integrated. The outstanding example of this is the right hon. Gentleman's failure to reconcile the row which should be reconciled between the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, and there has been no sign of this. When I had the honour to be Secretary of State for Air, this was my chief objective. I believe that it could be done, and there was an admirable letter from Sir Caspar John to The Times showing how it could be achieved. If it were to be done, it would make the whole question of the aircraft carrier and its importance irrelevant. Then the aircraft carrier would be regarded not as a capital ship but as a floating platform for joint air-sea operations of a unitary air power.
  Next, there is the complete failure to rationalise our commitments. I thank the Foreign Secretary for staying, because I have two things to say to him, even though he is not involved in the betrayal of our friends in Aden, and endangering our friends in Bahrein. The Foreign Secretary's time would have been better used if, instead of going round South America, he had tried to meet a reorganisation of our commitments in South-East Asia.
  With the situation as it is in Indonesia today with Sukarno in difficulties and danger, I do not believe that it is beyond the wit of American and British diplomacy to see that confrontation is brought to an end. I am prepared to support, and see that it is supported, some wider concept such as Maphilindo which would bring about the organisation of a second line in the area to combat the expansion of Communism.
  Next, there has been the failure to provide adequate men and weapons to meet our commitments. As my right hon.
  1800
  Friend pointed out, there has been this failure, and it is growing in intensity. When I was at the Air Ministry there was a demand for 150 or more TSR2s to meet our commitments. How can the Government meet this with 50 F.111As? They know that there has been a demand by B.A.O.R. to provide adequate tactical weapons which were to be provided by the TSR2. Where is that now?
  The reorganisation of the Territorial Army has been a clumsy operation. In fact, I can think of no clumsier one in the history of the Armed Forces. There was one plan, then there was a second one, followed by its withdrawal. As a result, recruitment and enthusiasm in the T.A. has diminished to almost nil. The strength of the force has dropped from 105,000 to under 90,000 in a few months.
  Those are the results which we have seen as a result of Government policy. Their commitments abroad seem to be increasing daily. Endlessly the Prime Minister talks about a frontier on the Himalayas. Endlessly, he seems to prepare and work for further and worse trouble in Africa south of the Sahara. These are the people in office today. They have destroyed our interests abroad. They have weakened our forces. The right hon. Gentleman has done more than anyone else to destroy the volunteer spirit in this country, and surely now is the time for them to go.
  6.35 p.m.
  Mr. William Warbey: I am grateful for the opportunity during my last speech in this House to explain why it will not be possible tomorrow night for me to vote either with the Government or with the Opposition.
  When I came to this House, 20½ years ago, it was with a Labour Government who, within a space of three years, carried out a substantial internal social revolution. Then we had the word consolidation, uttered by Herbert Morrison. We stopped short, and external forces began to take over. The effect of the Anglo-American alliance entered into by Mr. Ernest Bevin, and the effect of the current balance of payments crises, resulted not only in the loss of our influence abroad for good, but also hit back on our internal policies and effectively brought to an end the social democratic experiments on which we were engaged.

  1801
  In 1950, we saw the consequences of this with the loss of effective power by the Labour Government, and the return of this country to the kind of policies which we had inherited from pre-war days and from the leaders of the wartime Coalition Government.
  The logical consequence of the effects of the Korean War, and of what happened under the pressure of American interests at that time, was the return to power of the Conservative Party in October, 1951, and the policies which we have had during the past 15 years—13 years of Conservative rule, and, I regret to say, one and a half years of Labour responsibility in office without power—have been a continuation of the policies which were laid down during those decisive years of 1948–51.
  It was during that time, under the influence of Sir Winston Churchill, that Mr. Ernest Bevin decided that we must call in the United States to offset the growing Communist challenge in Europe and, indeed, in the rest of the world. It was the decision of Labour Governments to accept the terms for internal economic policy laid down by international financiers and moneylenders, together with this new association with the United States, which led to a number of decisions in foreign and defence policy, the consequences of which we are now suffering.
  In 1949, I spoke in opposition to the adding of this country's signature to the North Atlantic Treaty. I want to quote a short paragraph from my speech, because it is a rather strange and disturbing prediction of what has happened since that Treaty was signed. After referring to the likelihood that the signature of the Treaty would promote further and future dangers in Europe by the dividing of Germany between two rival power blocs, I said:
  "If we build up a polarisation, a power bloc around Washington—because that is what it is—then we are encouraging similar polarisation in the other part of the world. The fact that the core of the Western Power bloc is Anglo-Saxon, the fact that the core consists of those countries which are colonial or were formerly colonial countries, will drive large parts of Asia into the arms of the Soviet bloc. One inevitable consequence of this Treaty and of the building up of a power bloc based on Britain and United States is to lead to the building up of an
  1802
  even vaster power bloc on the other side of the world. Then where is that overwhelming strength which is going to ensure the inevitable defeat of our opponents? It is an illusion. It is the old illusion of military alliances and balances of power, which is being repeated."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th May, 1949; Vol. 464, c. 2040.]
  I am not at all happy that those predictions, made in 1949, should have been so closely fulfilled. I could have wished it to be otherwise, but it has turned out this way. What disturbs me today is that this course of development has led successively to the building-up of rival power blocs, to the intensification of the armed force held by each side, to the continuation and intensification of the cold war, and to a situation in which Britain now has to rely upon the military strength of the United States of America, combined with that of our former enemies, Germany and Japan, to protect us against the menace of world Communism. I find this situation alarming, and especially disturbing when it appears to be fully endorsed by my right hon. Friends.
  My right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence today attempted to justify the present course of the foreign and defence policies upon which this country is now set. He argued that we had military responsibilities in Asia which we might have to exercise far into the 1970s. Those responsibilities, like the commitments referred to in the White Paper and in speeches today are self-accepted responsibilities and commitments. They are not honourable commitments, entered into between equals. They are obligations which we have deliberately taken upon ourselves, not in the interests of the people in the areas in respect of which those commitments have been made but in the supposed interests of Britain, what remains of the British Empire, and our allies.
  I do not see anything honourable in retaining those commitments. I see a great deal of dishonour in not seeking to break them as soon as we have the opportunity. My right hon. Friend did not find it difficult to wriggle out of one special commitment which the present Government find embarrassing—the commitment made by the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) and his colleagues. This commitment is as valid, in any strict sense, as the commitment made, also by the right hon. Member for Streatham, to protect the Malaysian Federation.

  1803
  My right hon. Friend has found it possible and convenient, because there have been changes of Governments in this country and in Southern Arabia, to say that we propose to break this commitment. Why, then, cannot we apply the same principle to our supposed commitments in Malaysia and the Far East—commitments far more dishonourable and, indeed, immoral, than those into which we have entered in the Middle East? They were commitments to support a racialist policy in the Far East. They were commitments to support the Malays against the Chinese, because the sole reason for the formation of the Malayan Federation was that Tunku Abdul Rahman feared that the incorporation of Singapore with Malayasia without the addition of the territories of Sabah and Sarawak would lead to a too-strong representation of the Chinese. He said so publicly at the time.
  The formation of the Federation was conditioned not by the voluntary and spontaneous demand of the people of the area, but by power, political, strategic, ideological and racial considerations—none of them honourable. Therefore, we have no honourable responsibilities and commitments in the Far East. What is left of the commitments is nothing more than an obligation—to which the American Government have tied us in return for their protection—to support the American policy of trying to contain Communism by military force.
  What has this to do with the defence of the people of Britain, which is the prime responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence? The Minister of Defence is supposed to exist to defend the interests of Britain and the people of Britain. Then what are we doing risking the lives of some of our men, risking our scarce resources in sending weapons of war and fighting men thousands of miles across the sea to help the Americans carry out the policy which has already been discredited in practice and in theory?
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) has said, with a kind of naive candour which no one can deny to be the truth, the British military presence east of Suez carried on into the 1970s is not an independent exercise of British power. I warn my right hon. and hon. Friends that what he
  1804
  said in his resignation statement is on the record, and cannot be swept under the carpet. I fully understand why my right hon and hon. Friend, left, right and centre, are temporarily united in wishing that my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East had never said what he did. But he said it, although belatedly: he should have said it 18 months ago.
  What he said was that, if we carry out this White Paper east of Suez policy, this military presence for Britain east of Suez, this means—as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence said when he was in Australia getting the approval of the Australian Government for the defence White Paper, after he had, first of all, got the approval of the American Government for it—that Britain must continue to have a world rôle in a military sense. But Britain is shorn of its imperial rôle, out-numbered in fire power by the United States by 20 to 1 and by the Soviet Union by 10 to 1—[Interruption.] Did you? Well, you are wrong—
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member knows that he must not bring me into this debate.
  Mr. Warbey: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but if the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) had risen to make his interjection, I should never have committed my indiscretion.
  The fire power of this country is tiny in comparison with that of the super-Powers. Yet we are still to have a world rôle in a military sense—not just a European rôle, not just a North Atlantic rôle, a North Sea rôle, a West European rôle, a European rôle, a Middle East rôle, or an African rôle, but a Far Eastern rôle, a South African rôle, a Southern hemisphere rôle.
  What an incredible delusion of grandeur is this, exploded completely by my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East, when he put forward in clear and irrefutable terms the only condition on which Britain can have that kind of rôle in the overseas world of today. That is that we shall be acting not as a Power in our own right, but as an extension of United States power, not as allies, but as auxiliaries to the United States.
  It comes to this. We have created, over the last 15 years, an alliance with the United States to which we have now

  1805
  become completely subordinate and to which all our basic military, political and economic policies are being subordinated and sacrificed. This is the outcome of 15 years of Conservative control of the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury—and that 15 years is not yet up.
  The Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury have not passed for one moment out of Conservative control since 1951. The Ministers who are supposed to be responsible for policy are not carrying out and cannot carry out a Socialist policy, let alone a Labour policy, so long as they accept the basic pre-suppositions and premises laid down for them by their Tory predecessors at the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury.
  As a result of this, what have we done? What is the situation in which Britain now finds itself? We are committed to a quasi-permanent military, political and financial alliance with the United States of America, global in present scope, cosmic in future perspective. This alliance involves the integration of strike weapons, of independence agencies, of political subversion agencies, of foreign policies and of financial policies.
  We have done three things which we have never done before in British history. We have entered into a quasi-permanent alliance with a foreign Power. We have never done that before: we have never committed ourselves in that way before, with good reason. Secondly, disregarding the warning of Edmund Burke given in this House 150 years ago, we have tied ourselves to a giant ally, a colossus with twenty times our fire power, whose aims and interests must predominate over ours at every point of time and space. Thirdly, we have placed the lives and deaths of the British people in the hands of the President of the United States of America and his intimate advisers.
  We have committed these three acts of folly, at a time when, as the White Paper itself admits, four-fifths of the human race is going through a process of political, social and economic revolution—revolutions which are so inimical to the interests of American private enterprise that the American Government is engaged in endeavouring to carry out a Metternichian counter-world revolution.
  1806
  This time it will fail, because the political and social conditions throughout the world can no longer be held in check, even by the mightiest military and financial power that the United States and its allies are able to assemble, not even when the United States is able to add nuclear blackmail as the weapon of last resort with which to try to enforce its counter-revolutionary policy. Its counter-revolutionary policy is being actively waged by the United States throughout Asia, Latin America and now Africa, too. We, a Socialist Government, are tied to this policy of world counter-revolution. This is a most astonishing and most tragic development.
  The only hope that I see is that this policy is becoming so recognised in this country and in the United States of America, as well as in most of the rest of the world, as a prescription for disaster, as a road the only course of which leads to the abyss, that men are beginning to turn back from this course now that they have come to the brink and now that they see where it is leading us.
  We did not need to be told by my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East, or by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) in his Brighton speech, which was so different from his speech this afternoon that one wonders whether he, like others, has been compelled by the smell of power to change his mind. We now have the benefit of the verdict of no less a person than Mr. Dean Rusk on where these policies are leading, because, according to to-day's Daily Telegraph, he told us over the weekend that
  "America could face a far worse military ' confrontation' involving China and Russia, if she walked out of Vietnam…. Peking and Moscow would make decisions about the lack of will of the United States that would move us into a war that no one would want."
  So now we know where American policy is leading the rest of the world and where American foreign and defence policy is leading its allies. And yet we choose, apparently, to continue in this subservience. I hope that we shall quickly break away from it into the kind of freedom to determine our own future, our own foreign policy and our own way of building up the world which has

  1807
  been chosen by some other countries—by France, for example.
  France has shown under de Gaulle that it is not necessary for a medium Power like Britain or France to become an auxiliary of one of the world's colossi, that it is possible to build up an independent and financial basis, that it is possible to make use of one's native technical skill and ability to build up one's strength, that it is possible without vast military power to make friends throughout the world and that it is possible to exercise influence on policies in various parts of the world in the direction of peace and not of war.
  That is the kind of example that Britain might well follow. Why do we not join with France in creating a kind of world peace alliance? We could join with France in beginning to get a closer association of the European countries based on a union dés patries, not based on a subservience of one to another or to some bureaucratic central court or body.
  We could enter into close and friendly relations not only with the great revolutionary emerging nations of Africa and Asia, but also with China as well as the Soviet Union. That is a policy which certain sensible Americans, like Senator Fulbright and Mr. Walter Lippmann, are now beginning to advocate even for the United States of America.
  Are we to be left holding the Chinese baby when the Americans begin to have doubts about the wisdom of the policy of Mr. John Foster Dulles which they are now trying to apply to China? I hope that we will give a lead to our American friends. I hope that we will recognise that Britain's rôle in the world can be a rôle only for the promotion of peace.
  We have great experience in the peaceful adjustment of disputes, in industry and in diplomacy. That is the contribution that Britain can, and should, make to the world. We can make no contribution by military power to the modern world. Let us realise it. By military power, we can help only towards the destruction of the modern world and not its peaceful building up.
  Then, if we could begin to choose new friends and to break away from the
  1808
  allies who try to drag us back into the old world of imperialist power politics, we could make a start on the task which some of us thought to be the major task of this generation when we first entered Parliament in July, 1945. We might get back to what some of us said in our first speeches in this House, and to what I said in my first speech here, that the discovery of the terrifying, awsome power of atomic fission meant that we must move towards either world government or world destruction. There are two ways towards world government or a single world political authority.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Member, but I must remind him and the House that at least 45 hon. Members are seeking to speak in the debate, all of whom have equal claim on catching my eye.
  Mr. Warbey: I am grateful, Mr. Speaker, for that intervention. I was, in any case, going through what is sometimes described as one's peroration.
  I believe that it is possible to set a course in the right direction. We must, within the coming two or three decades, head for a single authority for the whole world. There are only two ways of achieving that. We can get it by having a super Power conquering all others and shaping a world empire, or by peaceful negotiation and agreement. The first way can only lead to disaster and probably the destruction of the human race. Only the second way lies open.
  7.12 p.m.
  Brigadier Sir John Smyth: It is certainly fitting that the last big debate of this Parliament should be on the most important subject of defence. It is equally fitting that the Conservative Opposition should be moving this Motion on a Supply day.
  The reason why the Government's Defence Review, coupled with the measures for the virtual disbandment of the Territorial Army, have received such a bad press, have given rise to resignations in high places and, in my view, have weakened our security and our standing in the world as a great Power stems from three facts. The first is that the Review has been conducted solely with a view to making an immediate reduction in the defence budget. The second is that

  1809
  it does not start by getting the fundamental facts of life straight and our objects clear and the third is that it is so limited in scope and much too narrow in outlook.
  On the first point, if this country is no longer prepared to contribute something approaching 7 per cent. of its gross national product for our security and world peace, there must either be something very wrong with the gross national product or else the British people are getting their priorities wrong. I have said in the House on many occasions that we must watch the defence budget very carefully because it could easily escalate to £3,000 millions a year—and yet not give us the security we want. At the time of the Korean War the Labour Government had, quite rightly, to undertake urgent measures of rearmament which put the gross national product above 7 per cent. We supported them, but later, when we came to power, we had to take steps to reduce it again.
  I thought the most telling part of the resignation speech of the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew), for whom I have always had a high regard, was what he said on this very point. He said, first, that we could not maintain a world rôle in the 'seventies, including a presence east of Suez, on £2,000 million a year—not without excessive strain on the forces or excessive dependence on the United States
  The hon. Gentleman said, secondly, that we had to avoid the mistake which had been made so often in the past, and which we were making now, especially in the Navy, of asking our Servicemen to do too much with too little. He said, thirdly, that £2,000 million was an entirely arbitrary figure laid down before the Defence Review started and that it corresponded with no realistic foreign or defence policy. That opinion is widely held. The Defence Review says that its purpose is
  "…to shape a new defence posture for the 1970s."
  The word "posture" was new to me in defence jargon, so I looked it up in my dictionary, where it is given as
  "…an attitude of body or mind…"
  My dictionary says that a posture-maker is either an acrobat or a contortionist. I realise what tremendous contortions
  1810
  the Secretary of State must have gone through to get our forces and their commitments into the straitjacket of the White Paper. But will he ever be able to get them out of it? Part II of the Defence Review repeats that old cliche which is as true today as it always has been:
  "Defence must be the servant of foreign policy, not its master".
  Having said that, it goes on to disregard that entirely. Defence and foreign policy are now so inextricably bound up together that it has become unreal to have a separate foreign affairs and a separate defence debate. I would like to have seen a big debate such as this opened by the Foreign Secretary on the first day and for the Defence Minister to have spoken at, say, the beginning of the second day so that he could have explained how the defence policy would implement the foreign policy laid down by the Foreign Secretary. Instead of that, defence has become the master and the unfortunate Foreign Secretary must go around afterwards picking up the bits and making excuses.
  I come to the second point. I do not think that we want any horrific war game film to make us understand that a nuclear global war between Russia and the Western Powers would cause the utter devastation of our modern civilisation and would probably put it back several generations. Once such a war had started there would be no place for any conventional weapons. However, such a war could happen only as a result of our giving such provocation to Russia on a major issue which would appear to give her no alternative, or if the Western Powers so lowered their guard that it might become apparent to Russia that she would have an easy victory. I believe that there is no chance of either of those things happening.
  Underneath the great nuclear deterrent umbrella we must be prepared to counter every sort of conventional secondary operation. The Secretary of State has been much too narrow in his appreciation of this. Any sort of sudden brush fire operation may crop up and must be tackled immediately if we are to put it out before it develops into something very much bigger. The powerful air strike and air landings which the Ameri

  1811
  cans are now carrying out in Vietnam have not been decisive there only because of the nature of the country, in which the guerrilla is more effective than the bomb.
  I want to apply this thesis to the two very controversial matters of the Territorial Army and aircraft carriers. The Secretary of State made two references to my Territorial Army speech of 16th December about the rôle of the Territorial Army in civil defence and home defence. On the first, he said that both the N.A.T.O. Powers and Russia took it for granted that any war in Europe would be a nuclear war. He maintained, therefore, that there would not be any need for civil defence or home defence. I could not help recalling the passionate conviction with which the right hon. Gentleman and Labour spokesmen in defence debates had, for all the years preceding their coming to power, argued so vehemently that we must be prepared to fight a conventional war in Europe. They were constantly urging us to increase our defence budget; to increase our manpower in N.A.T.O. from 55,000 men to 80,000 men. Then, winding up on 16th December, the Minister, referring to my suggestion that there might be a possibility of a conventional air invasion of Britain, said:
  "…I ask hon. Members to follow me here…If N.A.T.O. has any meaning whatever, such a conventional invasion of this country could not happen except in one situation, and that would be after the Alliance as a whole had been defeated in a conventional war on the continent of Europe."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th December, 1965; Vol. 722, c. 1591.]
  He had said a little earlier that the next war would be a nuclear war. In the Defence Review, the right hon. Gentleman says that we are only to maintain our forces in Germany
  "…provided that some means is found for meeting the foreign exchange costs…"
  I therefore find that his statements on these subjects make rather a bundle of inconsistencies.
  In my speech on the Territorial Army, I said that the wanton destruction of that force would be very unpopular in this country. I feel that I was right, and that the Government feel now that it is as unpopular as I then said it would be. At the moment, before the election, the Government are making rather bleating noises to the Territorial Army, to which
  1812
  the Territorial Army is replying in a most unsheeplike way.
  I have always regarded the tactical nuclear weapon as a possible source of considerable danger. These weapons now have such immense destructive power that it would be almost impossible for the recipient to accept them as anything but the start of a nuclear war, and I suggest that it is only in such an unlikely eventuality that these nuclear tactical weapons should be used.
  In a global war, the aircraft carrier—as, indeed, is the fixed air base—is very vulnerable, but in the small type of peacekeeping operation such as we are contemplating I think that they are quite invaluable. Indeed, the Royal Navy will be virtually emasculated without them. We must realise that as every year goes by the permanence of our fixed bases becomes very problematical. The rundown of the carrier force without replacement provides a very depressing future for the personnel of the Fleet Air Arm, and my information is that it will be very difficult, indeed—and I can well understand it—to get the best people to go on serving in a force that is being gradually run down to nothing.
  The Defence Review states:
  "It is in the Far East and Southern Asia that the greatest danger to peace may lie in the next decade, and some of our partners in the Commonwealth may be directly threatened. We believe it is right that Britain should continue to maintain a military presence in this area. Its effectiveness will turn largely on the arrangements we can make with our Commonwealth partners and other allies in the coming years."
  Those are very wise words, but does the right hon. Gentleman really give any idea that he intends to carry them out and follow them up by action?
  Can our splendid Gurkha Brigade, which has borne the brunt of the fighting in Malaya, be quite happy that its future in the British Army is assured? This is very important, both to the Gurkhas themselves and to the Government of Nepal. I hope that before the end of this debate the right hon. Gentleman will give an assurance to the Gurkha Brigade—and the men are naturally nervous about this—that its future, after everything the Gurkhas have done for us, is assured within the British Army. As our own British recruiting is running down, I believe that matter to be very important.

  1813
  The most unfortunate clash that has been taking place between India and Pakistan has weakened our overall defence power in that area very greatly. If British leadership could only resolve that antagonism and settle the Kashmir problem it would strengthen our position in the whole Indian Ocean area. The war that took place last year between India and Pakistan was the worst blow the Commonwealth has ever suffered. People coming back from those countries—including my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition—have stated that our relations with India and Pakistan—particularly, with India—are worse today than they have ever been since the transfer of power. We should direct our attention to strengthening the relations between India and Pakistan, in trying to bring the two countries together again, and using our own British leadership, coming at the end of the Tashkent conference, to resolve the situation in Kashmir
  It is rather interesting to look back on my first Defence White Paper debate in this House on 16th March, 1950, and to see how some of the same problems were then cropping up which are exercising us so much today. The then Minister for Defence, the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell), moving the Motion, spoke, as Mr. Churchill, as he then was, said when he followed him, in
  "…a strong spirit of self-restraint and of moderation…".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th March, 1950; Vol. 472, c. 1280.]
  I should like to stress that point because, in every defence debate now, the Secretary of State for Defence so antagonises the House in his opening speech that we really never get together again in terms of a national debate. The result of that opening speech in 1950 was that we had a most excellent debate, with no Division at the end of it. That was because it had been started off by the Minister on the right note.
  The Minister at that time said that it was essential that the Navy should proceed with the conversion and modernisation of aircraft carriers, and Mr. Churchill most strongly agreed with him. I think that Mr. Churchill had in mind the great disaster which we suffered in Malaya in the sinking of the battleships, "Prince of
  1814
  Wales" and "Repulse". Although we have no battleships today, that incident holds a lesson for us in showing the weakness of any sort of naval force that has no carrier protection, compared with another force with carriers.
  Quite briefly, the situation was that those two battleships were sent to Singapore. They arrived on 2nd December, 1941, but the aircraft carrier "Indomitable"—a new aircraft carrier earmarked for the Far East—which should have gone with them, ran aground in Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, and never got there. But still the battleships intended to try to counter the Japanese amphibious operation in landing on the coast of Malaya within the range of the fixed air bases which were all round Malaya; in fact, the whole defence of Malaya was based on air defence. It seemed to be well within what the right hon. Gentleman has been envisaging today, that we must operate only when we are in the close protection of land-based aircraft.
  What happened five days later when the Japanese invaded? Within the first 48 hours they obtained complete air superiority over the mainland of Malaya. When Admiral Phillips took his battleships to counter the Japanese landing and asked for fighter protection there was not any. The Japanese had two carriers and some very fine pilots, the absolute cream of their fleet air arm on those carriers. They exchanged their bombs for torpedoes as soon as our ships had been spotted and on 10th December at 11.13 in the morning they attacked. The "Repulse" went to the bottom in 20 minutes and was very soon followed by the "Prince of Wales". The ships were entirely helpless with no aircraft carrier in the face of what the Japanese could bring against them.
  In my maiden speech in that debate I said that I recommended that a Commonwealth Defence Secretariat should be set up in London and that our great Dominions should bear a bigger share of the manpower and defence expense than they were doing then, or, indeed, than they are doing now. I referred to the vacuum created by the loss of our Indian Army and said:
  "…we have a strong moral responsibility today to see that the tension"—

  1815
  between India and Pakistan—
  "which exists over Kashmir does not result in one of those conflagrations which arise because it is nobody's business, and which might possibly lead the world into another war."
  That was 16 years ago. We have had the conflagration and we must not allow it to happen again—because it is nobody's business. As the leading nation in the Commonwealth it is our business.
  I shall quote my final words in that speech as they appertain to the Motion that we are now debating:
  "if we can make the ordinary soldier or airman who may be, perhaps, languishing in a swampy jungle in Malaya feel that he really matters,…that he is doing a top priority job and that in this year of grace, 1950, it is still a fine thing to be British…we shall have started to give the people of this country the defence force they deserve."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th March, 1950; Vol. 472, cc. 1370–1372.]
  It is because we do not believe that the Government's proposals in the White Paper under discussion give our forces the support they must have to carry out the tasks imposed upon them that we have put forward this Motion today.
  7.33 p.m.
  Mr. Robert Edwards: I would very much like to follow some of the points submitted to the House by the right hon. and gallant Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth), because he speaks with great sincerity. I know that he is greatly disturbed by the proposal to reorganise the Territorial Army, but it is well to remind ourselves that the reorganisation of the Territorial Army came out of a review of home defence expenditure which was running at the rate of £38 million a year and providing no home defence at all in this modern age.
  The Territorial Army had declined very considerably from its peak force of well over 200,000 to below 100,000. There were five different auxiliary forces all limping behind the Army and it was obvious that any Government which wanted to get value for its defence expenditure had to do something about reorganising the Territorial Army.
  In any case, we are living in an entirely different world from the world in which the Territorial Army was organised for the defence of this homeland. Napoleon managed to get complete control over Europe and was an able dictator, but he failed to land French soldiers in
  1816
  Britain. Hitler got complete control of Europe with the most highly mechanised fighting force that the world has ever seen, but he failed to land forces in this country. Surely it is obvious, in the light of these changed circumstances, that we had to cut back the £38 million a year which was going into the Territorial Army.
  The right hon. and gallant Member thought that we could justify the expenditure of 7 per cent. of our national product on defence, but even with the recommendations embodied in the White Paper which aim to cut back the percentage from 7 per cent. to 6 per cent., we shall still be spending a greater percentage of our national product on defence than any other country in the Western world with the exception of the United States of America. Even with these cuts we shall still be spending twice as much as our allies in Europe and more than twice as much as Australia and New Zealand, two of the six richest countries in the world.
  The percentage of the annual product of Australia spent on defence, although Australia is deep in the east of Suez area, is only 4·5 per cent. against our 7 per cent. and the Australians enjoy the second highest standard of living in the world. It is quite clear that the Government proposals to cut back our defence expenditure which today takes 7·2 per cent. of our national product to 6 per cent. and to have a continuous annual review of military expenditure is a very progressive move which should be applauded by intelligent people who are concerned about the rising cost of defence which is bedevilling social advance in this country and in every country in the world.
  Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles: Before the hon. Member leaves the question of Australia, may I ask whether he realises that Australia, with a population of 11 million, simultaneously with defending itself is trying to develop a country the size of Europe?
  Mr. Edwards: I was considering the percentage of the national product, not the totality of defence expenditure. When we consider the percentage of the national product spent on defence we should take into consideration all these factors.
  The Philippines, for example, which is in the heart of the east of Suez area,

  1817
  expends on defence only 1·9 per cent. of its national product. It is ridiculous that a country such as ours should have to accept this colossal burden. Defence expenditure in every country in the world is reaching the nth degree of human stupidity.
  The last Government, in 10 years, spent £20,000 million of the people's money on defence. What defence have we today from intercontinenal ballistic missiles? No defence whatever. The last Government were increasing the percentage of the national product spent on defence all the time year by year.
  In a debate of this nature we must consider some of the fundamental issues of the age in which we live. The Prime Minister suggested that there should be a great national debate on defence. I do not see how any evil consequences for the people can flow from there being a national debate on defence. Unfortunately, we cannot have a realistic debate, even in this House, on defence questions, because we do not know the facts. All the Parliaments of Western Europe have all-party defence committees, and those committees are supplied by the Government of the day with the facts.
  We have no such committee. We have no means of discovering just what a base anywhere in the world costs. The White Paper is the first one to give the House and the people any kind of realistic information about defence costs. Now we can really talk about what our bases cost us. The Singapore base will cost us, even after the review, £223 million a year. Our expenditure in Malaysia this year is running at £260 million a year. The defence of the Persian Gulf is costing us £150 million a year.
  I am very pleased indeed that the Government have decided to remove our base from Aden. If ever there was a death trap for British Service men, their wives and children, it is in the Port of Aden, where we have a base surrounded by a quarter of a million Arabs. Half of the work of our Service men is protecting the base and their own families from a hostile Arab population.
  It has been suggested that we are under a very firm commitment to defend Aden and South Arabia and that we signed a firm agreement at the constitutional con
  1818
  ference held in London three years ago. I remember that conference very well indeed. First, the only elected representatives who appeared here in London walked out of the conference without signing anything. They were the elected representatives of the Legislative Council.
  Secondly, the Chairman of the South Arabian Supreme Council walked out of the conference and went into voluntary exile in Cairo. The only people left to sign the agreement were a small group of sheiks, rulers and sultans who were accountable to no one. I do not know who they were signing for. They were not signing for their people, because they had never been elected and they represented nobody. So I hope that we shall hear no more nonsense about the agreement we are supposed to have signed pledging the protection of the sheiks, rulers and sultans, who have no future whatsoever in this vitally important oil area of South Arabia.
  When we discuss defence expenditure we must consider what is happening in the world. We live in a world in which two revolutions are taking place. They are unfolding themselves simultaneously. The first is the revolution in weaponry. The second is the revolution in human rights. Both of these revolutions—we cannot halt them—fundamentally affect the whole of our defence policy; and they should do so. It is no use burying our heads in the sands and pretending that in this age we can police half the world. Dean Rusk, only the other week, said that America is not rich enough to be the gendarme of half the world. If it is true of America, it is more than true of ourselves: we are no longer in a position to be gendarme for half the world and for this area east of Suez.
  Last year I was privileged to visit the United States of America, to study with a group of people who were interested the whole American space programme. We met people in the Pentagon. We were taken round the missile bases. We were told of—indeed, some of us saw for ourselves—the great revolution in weapons which is taking place in the world and which there has been a tendancy to overlook in this country, although the Labour Government are beginning to appreciate the needs of reorientating our policy in the light of this revolution.

  1819
  In America, there are 1,000 Minute-men, Nos. 1 and 2, intercontinental rockets. These 1,000 rockets are operational 24 hours a day. They travel at the rate of 16,000 miles an hour. They can reach a target 10,000 miles away and arrive plomp on the target anywhere in the world. They are geared to hit any target they want in the Soviet Union. A general in the Pentagon boasted to me that when this missile explodes it has a potential of destroying 20 million human beings. I have not the slightest doubt that the Russians, too, have about 1,000 intercontinental missiles aimed at all the industrial centres of the United States of America and the Western world. No doubt they can arrive plomp on the target and nothing can stop them once the button is pressed.
  A depressing feature of what is going on in these rocket bases is that, when the crew go on to the rocket site, they are each given a revolver. It is not given to them to defend the site, which is well protected. They are each given a revolver to shoot any one of the crew who might go mad and press the button and start the third world war. We have descended to low moral standards when this kind of thing has to go on. I have no doubt that the same thing happens in the missile bases in the Soviet Union.
  In this kind of world, which has revolutionised the whole method of warfare and defence, what function have we to perform? What are we in the middle supposed to do—compete with this lot? Are we to bankrupt our country and bleed ourselves white? The mountain of wealth that goes in defence expenditure is sweated out of the toil and industrial intelligence of the people.
  We have one function to fulfil in this kind of world, and that function is a peacekeeping one. I am very pleased to note that the White Paper stresses the peace-keeping rôle of Britain through the United Nations, because that is where we have got to keep the peace of the world. There must be no more military adventures by any separate country. We must proceed with the building up of an organisation which can keep peace in the world now and in the future.
  I know that many other hon. Members want to speak and that I am inclined to let my thoughts flow and take up more
  1820
  time than I should in this important debate. I will close by hoping that the beginning which has been made by the Government in the publication of this White Paper will be continued, that we shall get a review every year, and that as we get each review there will be recommendations for cuts in defence expenditure. Already, there is a clear saving of £300 million a year. In social advance this represents 50,000 new houses a year, 10 new hospitals a year, and seven new universities a year. If we can make a similar cut next year, think of the great progress we can make in meeting the real social needs of our people.
  I commend the Government's work and this White Paper. It is a mighty progressive move in the right direction that will be applauded by the people when they have the opportunity of voting at the General Election.
  7.50 p.m.
  Mr. David Walder: I think that I can follow the hon. Member for Bilston (Mr. Robert Edwards) in one point which he made at the opening of his speech, when he referred to the limitations in this House upon a proper, informed debate on the subject of defence. They certainly exist. I might even hope that the hon. Gentleman saw the letter written by me in The Times on this subject.
  There is, however, another limitation which is rather more serious. In the interchange between parties on defence, between Front Bench and Front Bench, there has grown up an underlying assumption—it is quite false, but it exists—that it is possible for any Government to create a perfect defence force with indestructible machines, permanent systems of communication, suffering almost from over-recruitment, prepared to go any moment to any quarter of the globe, from the Arctic to Africa. In fact, we all know that this is impossible. When one is creating a defence force, especially one like ours, when, obviously there is a limited amount of money which can be spent, one creates a defence force on a chance basis, a defence force which, it is hoped, will be adequate for a certain number of possibilities.
  This is the situation today, and it is wrong for right hon. Gentlemen opposite

  1821
  to concentrate their criticisms, for instance, on my party when it was in office on the basis of weapons systems which never came to fruition and were never used, because I think right hon. Gentlemen opposite know perfectly well that weapons systems are created with possibly an opponent's weapon system in mind. They may become out-dated automatically, and this is no criticism of any Government. Inevitably, in this process large sums of money must be spent, and, of course, in defence there is no ascertainable tangible return for expenditure of money. This is seen to be obvious if one looks at the part that we have played in Europe. We have maintained the position there. I think that one can say that the N.A.T.O. Alliance has been effective in Europe against possible intrusion from the East, but there is very little that one can show to the public as a positive return from a great deal of money spent.
  We live, I think, in an age of withdrawal for Britain. I am not regretting this. This is just a fact of life. For me to argue that this process should either be speeded up, or to suggest that there should be some easy way of achieving this result, would be to kick against an open door. This is about the one point that arose in the speech of the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey) on which I would agree with him.
  We are, as I say, living in this period of withdrawal, and the Minister of Defence has set his target to consider, as he did in his speech, a period of, say, 10 years for which he has made certain decisions. This is perhaps the most difficult task he can set himself, to think what may be our defence needs by the 1970s, because none of us in this House, if we cast our minds back, would necessarily have thought that a revolt in Brunei would eventually result in a very large confrontation in North Borneo. None of us would have predicted a few years ago the situation that has now arisen, for instance, in Rhodesia. Those are two very different situations, but both of them have required the deployment of our Services.
  We are in a period, also, where any demands that might be made on us would be in the sphere of limited war. Nuclear war, I think, is obviously out of
  1822
  the question and the demand that may be made on us is in this sphere of limited war where I think the aircraft carrier, the attack carrier, obviously has relevance at the moment. The right hon. Gentleman, in his argument, suggested that it will not have relevance at the end of the period which he has set himself. I would only put this to him, that we all know perfectly well the plain and simple military arguments about attack carriers and strike aircraft, the speed with which either can be deployed, and all the rest of it. We know perfectly well that the carrier in time of all-out warfare is a very vulnerable vessel indeed.
  However, let me put these two points to the right hon. Gentleman. Is it not possible to say that the aircraft carrier is a more flexible instrument and a less provocative instrument of policy than the strike aircraft? In certain situations which might arise the presence of an aircraft carrier off a particular shore would not provoke a reaction in that country half as violent as the use, or the threat of use, of strike aircraft. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that in the Rhodesian situation the presence of H.M.S. "Eagle" off that shore was, no doubt, relevant. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will return to that point and say that aircraft were later available. But I cannot think that the presence of H.M.S. "Eagle" during that very short period was entirely irrelevant to that situation.
  For any Minister of Defence to predict or hope to predict what will happen in the next 10 years is an impossible task. One hears, for instance, bandied about by both parties the sort of wishful sentiment that confrontation will be bound to come to an end in Malaysia. This suggests the rather curious situation—I think that Philip Guedella was the first person to point out this attitude of mind—that in 1755 politicians and military commanders got together and one of their spokesmen said "Tomorrow, gentlemen, we shall begin the Seven Years' War."
  That is an impossibility for a Minister of Defence, and my fear is that perhaps—I only say "perhaps"—the decision that has been made over the carrier may place us in a position at a time of withdrawal where we are in the danger of having to make an unpleasant decision,

  1823
  whether to reply to some form of aggression or whether to submit to it. This period of withdrawal for us is perhaps the most crucial period in our history, and to deprive ourselves in that period of the assistance of the force that a carrier can provide is a dangerous course.
  I want to turn now to the problem in Europe. We are up against the paradox that, in Europe, we have large numbers of Service men deployed who are basically inactive. They are effective, but inactive. Outside Europe, we have large numbers of Service men deployed who are active, fighting in a small scale war.
  Outside Europe, inevitably, our defence deployments tend to come under the shadow of the United States. The House has heard the phrase that the British position is that of auxiliaries rather than allies of the United States. But our position in Europe is slightly different. I do not suggest that the presence of British forces there provides an easy ticket into the E.E.C.—that argument disappeared some time ago. Nevertheless, they have a negative value.
  If our forces were withdrawn from Europe—and I think that there is perhaps a little more than merely a suggestion in the White Paper that this should happen—I have no doubt that our friends in Europe would say, "The British are taking their forces from Europe because they have to pay for them themselves, yet outside Europe Britain, with perhaps ineffective strength, follows the lead of the United States".
  If such a situation arose, I would argue that, by then, we would be getting the worst of both worlds. The hon. Member for Bilston said that the Defence Secretary had to do something and I think that is true. There was an understanding that defence expenditure would be cut on the basis of cost effectiveness. My argument is aimed against the effectiveness. I am certain that our forces will be effective in future.
  I do think that the right hon. Gentleman had to do something. He took a choice and decided not to build the new aircraft carrier. I believe that was a wrong choice and, despite the resignations of the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) and of a senior naval officer, I believe that the Government took it because it was the easiest choice. It
  1824
  is for these reasons that I regard it more especially as the wrong choice.
  8.3 p.m.
  Mr. Edmund Dell: In his brilliant speech, my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary asked that there should be in the country a major debate on the defence rôle of the United Kingdom, especially on the question of our continuing commitments east of Suez. On that theme, I stated my main ideas in a foreign affairs debate some months ago and I do not want to repeat what I said then.
  I have just returned from a visit to one part of the world where we have commitments also. I was there just after the Defence White Paper was published and I saw the problems which emerged as a result of the White Paper. My right hon. Friend said that, in considering the question of commitments east of Suez, it was really a matter of degree. I agree with him. But I would add that those of us who feel that the degree should be somewhat less than perhaps he wishes had better continue to pull on our ropes.
  Nevertheless, I am glad to see what the Government have done to cut defence expenditure, especially the cost in foreign exchange—a matter that is particularly important at the moment. However, it remains true that our foreign exchange expenditure on defence in the next financial year will be £293 million. That is far too high for this country to bear if we are to recover from our present economic difficulties and I look forward to the realisation of the further cuts which my right hon. Friend promises.
  I have just been to the Persian Gulf—or, as they call it in that part of the Persian Gulf I visited, the Arabian Gulf. I did not visit Kuwait but I did visit some of the nine other States which we have the duty to protect. This was not my first visit to the Middle East but it was the first to the Gulf and I must, therefore, beware of becoming an expert on the area too rapidly. However, I formed certain impressions.
  If we have to have forces in the Gulf, we should do a great deal more to see that the conditions of the Services in the area are made more tolerable. Better accommodation is needed by our forces, especially in Bahrein and especially for the Royal Air Force. More families

  1825
  should be accommodated with the troops in that area. Indeed, one question put to me by a member of the Government of Bahrein was why we were putting a limit on the number of families which could be accommodated with our troops in Bahrein.
  According to my impressions after speaking to officers and men there, Bahrein is not a popular station. It is not a station in which, as a result of service, people are likely to re-engage. This is not the fault of the people of Bahrein but the result of conditions of service in the island. I hope that we shall not continue to put the sort of burden on our troops in the area which arises simply from unsatisfactory conditions of life.
  The problems arising from the general question of our commitments in the area are an illustration of the enormous difficulties that arise when one tries to withdraw from empire. The hon. Member for The High Peak (Mr. Walder) said that we were in a period of withdrawal. My right hon. Friend went so far as to suggest that one day—when, he could not say—we would withdraw even from the Gulf. But there are serious problems.
  We are in a curious and anomalous position in the Gulf, we protect the States in the area but are not legally responsible for their internal affairs because they are not colonies but independent States and therefore we have no right to say what the conditions of life or the types of political and economic development within them should be, although we may, of course, influence them. We maintain the peace in the area—and it is an area where there are many territorial claims. With these claims go riches in the form of oil which are beyond the dreams of avarice.
  As a result of these claims, it is fair to say that, if we suddenly abandoned our commitments in the area, chaos might, at any rate temporarily, follow. I believe that a great debate is beginning in the Gulf about our position there and that that debate arises not entirely but in part from the decision that the Government—correctly, in my view—have made to leave Aden. There is no doubt that the decision is causing considerable concern for reasons which are sufficiently obvious.
  1826
  People in the Gulf States, especially those whose position is protected by us and may be, indeed, dependent upon us, are asking themselves, "If Britain withdraws from Aden, for what duration of time can we place any reliance on British defence?" People in the Gulf States who might be friendly to us and attach their political future to Britain have a fear of being suddenly let down. It would seem from my discussions in the Gulf States, following publication of the Defence White Paper, that those fears have been in no way relieved by the short sentence in the White Paper which says that we propose to build up our forces to a small extent in the Gulf States. This is because it is thought that if we leave Aden we can leave the Gulf. But no one knows when. The implications of the withdrawal from Aden are fairly clear for the Gulf. The whole weight of Nasserite propaganda, the nature of which I shall not comment upon here, will turn the position in the Gulf. The second thing that will happen, and is already happening, is that the Rulers in the Gulf States will become more difficult. I discovered, in my discussions in Bahrein, that demands are already been made on the Government for the payment of higher rents for the areas we occupy in Bahrein to accommodate our troops.
  We are told that it is an embarrassment to the Ruler that we should be in Bahrein and that this embarrassment might, to a certain extent, be relieved if we paid a more significant sum for the areas occupied. I suspect that a great many people might be much more embarrassed by our absence than they are by our presence. Undoubtedly, people in the area will start looking around for friends they consider more reliable, and internal opposition to our presence will grow. There is a further question which has been raised in discussions, and that is how far, if at all, we are capable of carrying out our commitments in the Gulf without the Aden base.
  Unfortunately we are a very easy target for political propaganda in that area. To begin with, no one believes that we are not responsible for the internal affairs of the States. Our treaties give us jurisdiction only over their external affairs but I have found it difficult to find anyone who would accept that as the

  1827
  real position. I think that this is an attitude for which some justification can be found. There was a recent incident with the Ruler of Sharjar as a result of which he disappeared. There was an earlier incident some years ago in which, with the assistance of a British battleship outside Doha, the Ruler of Qatar abdicated. This is one reason for these doubts about whether we are responsible or how far we are responsible for what goes on in the Gulf States.
  As a result of this feeling we carry a great deal of the blame for the conditions in the area. We are blamed for the forms of government and for the insignificant elements of representative government. Although I realise the difficulties of withdrawing from the area, and saying that we will no longer accept responsibility, I do not feel at all happy about our position as defenders of the forms of Government there. We are held responsible for the fact that large proportions of oil revenue are going into private pockets and not being spent productively. There are cases of this among the Trucial States. One has a fabulous quantity of oil, six have none at all. The people of the six are demanding, and it seems a reasonable demand, that they should share significantly in the oil revenue.
  We are blamed for every little disagreement between these petty principalities, whether relating to boundaries or currencies. At the moment there is considerable worry in the Trucial States as to whether the Indian rupee, their medium of exchange, will be devalued. I was told by a ruler that if it was devalued Britain would be responsible. As a result of all this it cannot be difficult to cause trouble in this area if that is the object—and I believe it will be, of people who wish more rapidly to remove Britain's influence from the Middle East. Do we have an answer to this problem? I agree with and support the decision of the Government to withdraw from the Aden base. In any case the sort of pressures I have mentioned, although they will be exacerbated by the decision to withdraw from the base, already existed. These pressures are in the nature of the situation which we are defending. We will have to work out the implications for our position in the Gulf of the withdrawal from the Aden base.
  Commander Courtney: Would the hon. Gentleman accept that the onset of terrorist pressure in Aden, followed by our decision to evacuate in 1968, may encourage precisely this form of pressure in Bahrein with a similar objective in view?
  Mr. Dell: I am saying that there are pressures in the area which can lead to trouble and to social unrest. I suspect that these pressures will be encouraged by our withdrawal from Aden. These pressures would exist in any event, but I feel that they may be exacerbated by the decision to withdraw, although I entirely accept that decision. The implications for the Gulf States must be thought through, difficult though it will be, to find any adequate answer.
  Everyone is now discussing what sort of stability can be established in the Persian Gulf, if Britain withdraws. Can we conceive of the possibility of a peaceful withdrawal from these States? One reads in the papers, and this might have been a conclusion drawn from some of the comments of my right hon. Friend this after-noon, that certain hopes are based on Saudi Arabia and the rôle which it could play in this area. That, if it were possible, would be preferable to the present situation, but I am rather afraid that these hopes are insubstantial, and I feel sceptical about them. The Arabian Peninsula cannot be insulated from external ideas, and the Saudi-Arabian solution is posited on the principle that it can be insulated from external ideas. Ideas are moving very fast in the Arab world, encouraged by the existence of vast oil revenue and the demands for development following from that. On any consideration of this problem we must remember that the estimated population of the whole Arabian Peninsula is only 10 million, and that of Saudi Arabia 3 million, whereas the population of Egypt is 30 million. This has important consequences for the kind of influence which will be dominant throughout the Arab world.
  I have tried to indicate the problem as I see it. I should now provide the answer. I have no easy answer to the problem, not even the easy one of saying that we should get out quickly. I accept that, if we did, a great deal of trouble might follow. All I can say is that we must investigate every possibility of alternative sources of stability in the area. Secondly, and this is of major importance, we must use our

  1829
  influence in the protected States more determinedly than before in favour of political and economic development. The squabbles that go on among these States are rather like the squabbles that went on in the Italian city states at the time of the Renaissance—they are fascinating but they are not important. In dealing with them we need from Britain more of the quality of the administrator and less that of the diplomatist. We must negotiate less and do more. What we aim to protect in the Gulf must be politically defensible.
  Looking to the future, I do not believe that we will be militarily present in the Gulf 10 years from now. But I suspect that unfortunately we will find it a great deal more difficult to get out and leave peace behind than it was to get in in the first place.
  8.20 p.m.
  Mr. Emlyn Hooson: The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) will forgive me if I do not follow his detailsd consideration of the position in the Persian Gulf. However, while listening to him, I could not help reflecting on a passage in the remarkable speech made by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) at the Conservative Party conference, which impressed me a great deal more than his contribution today. In a passage dealing with countervailing forces—I quote from the hand-out of his speech—he said:
  "We have to reckon with the harsh tact that the attainment of this eventual equilibrium of forces may at some point be delayed rather than hastened by Western military presence."
  That may be very true of the situation in the Gulf.
  In my contribution, I hope to challenge some of the assumptions made on both sides of the House in the course of this debate. There is no sphere in which the Labour Party has broken as many promises as in defence. I have in my hand a booklet published in 1964, before the last election, entitled "Defence policy talking points". Under the heading "What is Labour policy?" five points are set out. They are the only five points set out as Labour policy. Each of them has been broken; none of them has been fulfilled.
  The first point is that
  1830
  "Britain should cease the attempt to remain an independent nuclear power, since this neither strengthens the alliance nor is it a sensible use of our resources."
  That has been completely broken by the Government.
  The second point is in the form of a quotation from a speech made by the Prime Minister in January, 1964, when he said:
  "We shall keep the V-bombers for the rest of their limited life—and we shall keep them unequivocally assigned to N.A.TO."
  As we know, part of them is now stationed in the East in what is thought to be a nuclear rôle. Certainly, they are not assigned to N.A.T.O.
  Mr. Healey: Of course they are. The hon. and learned Gentleman should not make these absurd statements without doing his homework. All the V-bombers are assigned to N.A.T.O. Much of the Fleet in the Far East is assigned to N.A.T.O. The hon. and learned Gentleman should try to find out the meaning of words before he says this sort of thing.
  Mr. Hooson: With great respect, what was commonly understood by the term "unequivocally assigned to N.A.T.O." was that the V-bombers would be assigned to the N.A.T.O. sphere and not to the Far East. Everybody knows that the Government have those bombers in an independent nuclear rôle in the East.
  The third point is a quotation from the same speech by the Prime Minister:
  "We shall renegotiate this agreement to end the proposal to buy Polaris submarines from the United States."
  That has been broken.
  The fourth point refers to the TSR2 and again is a quotation from the same speech praising the TSR2 to the skies. The Government did away with the TSR2, and my party supported them on that.
  Mr. Healey: The hon. and learned Gentleman's party voted against the Government on the aircraft programme.
  Mr. Hooson: The right hon. Gentleman must do his homework before he lectures me. My party did not.
  The fifth point was that the Labour Party would
  "use the enhanced increased influence that we should get by very good conventional forces, far better equipped than we have today"

  1831
  by making savings in the nuclear arm. This, too, has been unfulfilled. I was surprised that the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, East—[HON. MEMBERS: "Wolverhampton, South-West."] I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman. At least he is consistent about his constituency, if not about his policy. I was amazed that he castigated the Government so much. He should be congratulating himself that he has got them to follow Tory defence policy, with slight trimmings.
  The truth is that we are over-extended militarily and economically. What we have not sufficiently realised in this country is that the British Empire really has ceased to exist. We are living in a kind of nostalgic twilight in which the modes of thought engendered by the Empire still remain, and in no one's mind do they operate more acutely than in that of the Secretary of Stale for Defence. I often think that, with his undoubted ability, he would have been an ideal Defence Minister in the Palmerstonian era. He would have loved to send his little gunboats all over the world to maintain peace, thinking that we had a great rôle to play in maintaining the Pax Britannica. Unfortunately, for him, that attitude is to disregard the harsh facts of life.
  Pitt laid down the axiom that the arm of Britain should not be extended any further than it could be maintained. That was a very wise axiom. The truth is that the arm of Britain is extended to many parts of the world where, if we were under pressure, it would be impossible to maintain it. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, knows this perfectly well. Although he did not say so today, he certainly implied it in his speech at Brighton.
  I challenge the assumption that to exert a great influence in the world it is necessary for us to be a world military power. This assumption is contrary to our true interests. In fact, it leads to a policy that is weakening us. Can anyone in the House say that France has less influence in the world than we do?
  Mr. Healey: Yes.
  Mr. Hooson: The right hon. Gentleman obviously thinks that that is so, but very few people outside think so. By being an effective European Power France has at
  1832
  least as much influence in the world as we have by being an ineffective world power.
  I was amazed to read in The Guardian on 3rd February, 1966, that in Australia the right hon. Gentleman—and no doubt he will correct me if the quotation is wrong—said:
  "The most important conclusion we have come to is that we do intend to remain, in the military sense, a world power."
  It is impossible for us, on our resources, to be a world Power in the military sense independently of the United States. The more we try to be a world power in the military sense the more we inevitably become an auxiliary of the United States.
  It is interesting that when the Labour Party was in opposition it often chided the Tory Government for buying war materials from the United States and thereby becoming more and more dependent on the United States. One remembers the Nassau Agreement and the debate upon it, and the chiding from the party opposite that this country was becoming so dependent upon the United States. But, this is inevitable, whichever Government are in power, as long as we think that our rôle is a world military rôle.
  A world rôle in the military sense is impossible for us save as an auxiliary of the United States. If it is the country's choice that we become more and more an auxiliary of the United States, that is a perfectly feasible rôle for us to fulfil in world affairs. All I need say is that I do not want that rôle. The future for this country lies in Europe. Certainly, let us have an alliance with the United States, and be a good ally but do not let us be its auxiliary.
  We must face the reality of our circumstances. Our resources are not such as to enable us to play this world military rôle. I am sure that the Secretary of State for Defence would have liked to have carriers if the truth be known so that he would be in a position to provide our Servicemen with the kind of additional support that carriers can certainly give in certain circumstances, but he had to cut his coat according to his cloth. We simply are unable to fulfil our commitments in the world on our present defence budget. That is the truth of the matter, as the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) said in his

  1833
  resignation speech. We should cut our commitments, and cut them quickly.
  It has been said that we are living in an era of withdrawal. We certainly are, but we are not withdrawing fast enough. We are not recasting our position. We are not alive to the change in our circumstances. We want drastic reductions in our commitments.
  Mr. Healey: I hope that the hon. and learned Member will forgive me if I withdraw from the debate right away.
  Mr. Hooson: Certainly, but I wish that the right hon. Gentleman would withdraw his defence policy with him.
  We hear a great deal about our commitments. What exactly does the term "commitment" mean? For example, we have a commitment, undertaken by Sir Anthony Eden, as he then was, to have five divisions stationed under N.A.T.O. command in Europe. That commitment has never been fulfilled. So much for a commitment. We have other commitments of various kinds. But are they to continue for ever? Is there no Statute of Limitation on commitments that were entered into, for example, in the last century?
  The Government are absolutely right to withdraw from Aden. They should also withdraw from Bahrein. Except in one instance, there is no obligation upon us to defend the Trucial States. We are holding back what the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West described as the countervailing forces, sometimes nationalistic in character. I agree with him that they often are held back by the very presence of Western troops.
  We hear a good deal about Malaysia. Much could be done by this country in taking a diplomatic initiative in South-East Asia. We must remember the way in which Malaysia was born. I understand that Australia opposed the formation of Malaysia and that the views of the Australian Government at the time were not heeded. Is it not right to say that Borneo was included in Malaysia to counterbalance the Singapore Chinese? Singapore has now withdrawn from the Federation. We should be taking a great diplomatic initiative to find means to end this confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia.
  Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles: The hon. and learned Member proposes a diplomatic initiative in South-East Asia, presumably with Indonesia. Is he aware that the British Embassy in Jakarta was burned down two years ago and that the British Ambassador has not been able to see President Sukarno for nearly a year? How, therefore, does the hon. and learned Member expect to make friends with people who are in this frame of mind?
  Mr. Hooson: The Government are never short of ideas in diplomatic initiatives when it comes to sending somebody to North Vietnam. We do not have to follow the traditional form of diplomatic initiative. Questions were asked in the House last week on this very point of increasing our diplomatic representation in Indonesia.
  I do not think that we have a real rôle to play in the Far East in the 1970s. One cannot put an exact date on this, and I agree that we must fulfil our existing obligation to Malaysia, but Malaysia is more the concern of countries like Australia and New Zealand who are in the area. I would certainly support a policy of helping those countries to fulfil their obligations. I am not opposed to a linking alliance between an alliance in the Western Hemisphere and one in the East, but I do not think that we have an independent rôle to play east of Suez in the 1970s. In this debate, after all, we are considering matters which will affect defence policy in the 1970s and not now.
  I agree entirely with the point made earlier in the debate that we should take steps to strengthen the United Nations. We could do much more to ensure that the United Nations has a really effective rôle too in such areas of the world as we have been engaged in a so-called peacekeeping rôle.
  It follows from what I have been saying that I challenge certain fundamental assumptions on which our defence policies have been based. It is my view that the future of Britain is that of a European Power, and that we should have a defence policy compatible with our future, and not compatible with our past.
  The hon. Gentleman the Member for Woolwich, East, in his resignation

  1835
  speech, said that he estimated that if we truly withdrew, and were a European Power, we would have a very effective defence policy for less than £1,800 million per annum. I had a separate estimate made by a very distinguished military expert who thought that we could be a really fully effective European Power for a defence budget of about £1,700 million per annum.
  This means that it is possible for this country to save about £500 million per annum on defence, and a great deal of this would be in foreign exchange. This would have a most important effect on our economic affairs, because I think it is right to say that we could probably enormously improve, if not completely solve—though one must be very careful not to be dogmatic about this—our balance of payments problem by this means.
  What I do think is that at this moment we are in world affairs at an in-between stage where we are in the process of transition from a great imperial Power. This we have now ceased to be; and we should be in the process of becoming a truly effective European Power. Our world influence would be greater if we were bold enough to recognise that this is our rôle. At the moment the truth is that we are wasting hundreds of millions of pounds per annum on an ineffective world rôle in order to satisfy the nostalgic yearnings of people like the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Defence, who is living in the past.
  Mr. Cyril Bence: Nonsense.
  Mr. David Steel: Tory.
  Mr. Hooson: If I am wrong in my view of the rôle of Britain in the world, and if the Secretary of State for Defence is right in his view that we have a world rôle as a military power policing various parts of the world, then I think his defence policy entirely muddled. I am convinced that, if this is our rôle—and I do not accept it—there is an overwhelming case for the carrier—and for carriers generally. It seems to me that there is no defence in a nuclear war: it is only a nuclear deterrent, it cannot be nuclear defence; and if we have this rôle to fulfill in world affairs, dealing with "bush fires",
  1836
  conventional wars of a small nature here and there, I would have thought carriers essential for it.
  Assuming that I am wrong and that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of Defence is right in the basic assessment, then I would have thought the Government's case has certainly not been made. I would agree again with the right hon. Member for Woolwich, East that, if we have these obligations, if we have these commitments, then we need carriers. I should like to know whether, on this matter, the Government have considered, for example, small carriers for a type of aircraft like Jaguars, and further, whether if there was any attempt to interest the Australians and the New Zealanders in sharing these carrier costs in the Far East—because it is assumed that it is in the Far East such carriers would operate.
  Having said that, I do not shift in any way from my assumption. I think that this country is dangerously delaying the proper reassessment of its rôle in the world, and it is spending far too much money on defence. We simply cannot afford to spend this money. A great deal of it has been wasted. There is still a large scope for saving expenditure, even in this country. Is it necessary, for example, to spend £½ million on stabling in the new Knightsbridge barracks, to take only one small point
  In the sphere of defence, the Government have broken every promise that they have made. I have read the five talking points published before the last election, and not one of them has been fulfilled. It is small wonder that the country still finds itself in great economic difficulty.
  8.40 p.m.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: I agreed with a great deal of what the spokesman for the Liberal Party, the right hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson), has said in his very interesting speech. I have been saying the same things for the last 20 years in the House, and I hope that next Easter we shall see the hon. and learned Gentleman join us in the Aldermaston march.
  The main talking point in the debate has been the aircraft carrier, and in many ways it symbolises the whole of the argument on defence. I am very glad that

  1837
  the question has been raised at this time, because it means that the whole subject of expenditure upon defence will become one of the great issues for debate in the General Election.
  If it had been proceeded with, I understand that the aircraft carrier would have cost £170 million and would not have been finished for another 10 years, by which time it would have been obsolete. During that time, a very large amount of skilled labour which should have been devoted to building up industry would have been devoted to something which is economically useless and irrelevant from a defence point of view.
  Just imagine the large number of skilled workers who would have been employed building an aircraft carrier. There are electricians, shipbuilders, and other skilled workers such as shipwrights, a large percentage of whom could be engaged in the building industry. At the same time, we need skilled workers of all kinds to build up new factories on which the future economy of the country depends. From that point of view alone, the Government are perfectly justified in stopping the aircraft carrier, and my only regret is that they have not gone far enough in making greater cuts in our defence expenditure, especially in the Royal Navy.
  I was rather disappointed to hear the Minister of Defence talk about the glorious rôle that the Royal Navy would play in 10 years' time. I wonder whether he reads anything about developments in the modern world. I do not believe that aircraft carriers are going to play any part in the next 10 years. In that time, we shall see tremendous developments in rockets. The Russians can hit the moon, and they are even talking of having hit Venus. Developments in the science of rockets are advancing at a tremendous pace.
  I can foresee the time, in 10 years, when the whole idea of modern warfare will have changed. If the Opposition had their way, in that time we should have gone on using British brains and the energies of British workers in building up something which by then would be completely obsolete. I hope that the Government will continue to reduce expenditure, because I would rather see all these workers engaged in building advance
  1838
  factories in the mining areas and in building up a real economy which will maintain the standard of life of the British people.
  Although there have been cuts in defence, there have not been nearly enough for me. I agree with the basic assumptions of the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery. We have to shed our imperial delusions in the same way Spain did two centuries ago. It is useless to persist with useless expenditure at a time when we need to spend so much money on building schools, factories, hospitals and all the other things which we need, and a Motion of censure on the Government when they are making a start in cutting expenditure will not receive support in the country.
  I was rather disappointed to hear my right hon. Friend talk about the Polaris submarines. Apparently he has resigned himself to the idea that they will play an important rôle in the 'seventies. From all that I have read on the subject, I believe that these submarines, at any rate those which will go to Gareloch, will be obsolete long before 1970. I remember the debate when Polaris submarines were first mentioned in this House. It was Mr. Macmillan who came home from Nassau with the idea of having them.
  The right hon. Member for Wolver-hampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) talked about the Government being bound hand and foot to the Americans. The decision on the Polaris submarines was taken long before this Government came into power. It was taken when we agreed to the Nassau Agreement. It was taken when we agreed to the American base at the Holy Loch, and the policy has been continued with the resultant large expenditure which is now taking place at Gareloch.
  I have visited Gareloch. By 1968, £45 million will have been spent there. In the West of Scotland we need houses, schools, and all the buildings which are necessary to increase our educational facilities. We need hospitals, and we need new factories, yet it is proposed to spend £45 million on a base which, when it is completed in 1968, will be such that the Government will not know what to do about it.

  1839
  I wish that in looking at the future of the Navy, and at aircraft carriers in particular, we had gone further and faced the fact that in the 'sixties and 'seventies naval expenditure is obsolete and should be dispensed with.
  I do not know how far the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West agrees with the American Alliance, but, as I see it, it has tremendous dangers. If, for example, America decided to go to war with China, presumably in a very short time we would be drawn into the whirlpool. I believe that one reason why we are so close to America is that we are linked with her in Far Eastern policy. I would like to see the end of our Far Eastern policy. I would like to see the right hon. Gentleman develop his "east of Suez" ideas, which orignated either with Karl Marx or Norman Angell, and apply them to a "west of Suez" or "north of Suez" concept. Why should we talk about changing military strategy east of Suez, drawing an imaginary geographical line and failing to carry the argument any further?
  My point is that the pacifist argument is the right one and that, sooner or later, the Government will have to listen to this argument. After the next election I hope that many more young members of the Labour Party will come into the House—men who will challenge all the old conceptions on which the Labour Party has built its defence policy for years. I agree that there are many contradictions in this, but there is only one alternative to the policy of the arms race and international tension, and that is the pacifist policy.
  We must dispense with the idea that we can defend ourselves in a nuclear war, because we cannot. One person pressing a button either in the United States or Russia would start a chain reaction which could obliterate this country. Therefore, we should take risks when those risks mean a complete change in our foreign policy and in our attitude towards America. We should take a more individual line towards America.
  A fortnight ago I was interested to read that there had been a slump on the New York Stock Exchange as a result of a rumour that a peace feeler had been extended from Ho Chi Minh, through
  1840
  Delhi. There was a tremendous slump in arms shares. People who had their money invested in poison gas, napalm bombs and all the other fiendish instruments of war which are now being used in Vietnam, were hit by the slump. But then, an hour or so afterwards, the news came that this was only a rumour, after which those shares rose in value once more.
  My argument is that we are too closely allied to the United States. One of the reasons for United States foreign policy—which is so dangerous to the world—is the fact that such an enormous part of her wealth is invested in armaments. As long as we are regarded throughout the world as a sort of satellite of the United States our influence will be negligible. We shall be regarded in much the same way as Herr Ulbricht and East Germany are regarded in terms of the international outlook of Europe.
  I support the Government because this is a first step—only a very small one—towards getting rid of the huge naval armaments. The Government did well to end the TSR2 project. They did well in leaving Aden. I wish that they would leave Cyprus and Singapore, and all the other world bases on which an enormous amount of money is now being spent. We need money for the Highlands of Scotland. The £12 million that has been spent on Cyprus could well be spent on Scotland. The enormous sums of money spent overseas could be used in developing our economic life. This would give us real influence in the world.
  I hope that this debate will go on throughout the General Election. We must challenge all the old conceptions that huge armaments bring peace or defence in any sense of the word. I welcome the debate and I hope that it will be carried on in the country—[An HON. MEMBER: "Broken promises."] I have not broken any promises during the last 10 years—
  Brigadier Terence Clarke Brigadier Terence Clarke (Portsmouth, West) rose—
  Mr. Hughes: No. I want to conclude by saying—[HON. MEMBERS: "Give way."] I am not giving way.
  I hope that the debate will be continued during the election, that members of the Labour Party will say to the leaders of the Labour Party, "You have begun well.

  1841
  You have to turn your backs completely on the old traditional ideas of foreign policy, which have failed us." I hope that, in the next Parliament, we shall have enough hon. Members who take this point of view to compel the Government completely to change their defence and foreign policy.
  Brigadier Clarke: The hon. Member said that he is prepared to take risks. Does he mean risks with the security of the country? He said that that was what he was prepared to do. I think that this is an extraordinary thing to suggest. Will he answer?
  An Hon. Member: He was taking the Communist line.
  Mr. Hughes: I am not running the risk of allowing the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth, West (Brigadier Clarke) to make another speech tonight.
  8.57 p.m.
  Mr. Stanley R. McMaster: I do not want to take too long, as the debate is reaching its conclusion, but there are a few points which I want to make. Listening to the Secretary of State and many other speakers on the other side of the House, I was particularly impressed by the way in which they kept on coming back to the fact that we were spending or had been spending 7 per cent. of our gross national product on defence and that we should have to reduce this.
  The right hon. Gentleman even referred to what other countries were spending, as though he sought to cry in aid the fact that, because other countries were spending less than 7 per cent. of their gross national product, we should do the same. There was no attempt—nor was there one in the Defence White Paper for which we waited so long—to analyse what this country's commitments are throughout the world and what its needs to protect its interests are.
  I suggest that defence must come first. The great social services of this country—and everything on which we depend—depend themselves on our ability to protect ourselves, but there was no analysis in the White Paper of the needs of this country over the next 10 or 15 years to protect our interests throughout the world. It is completely false and artificial to say that we must spend some arbitrary sum unrelated to the commit
  1842
  ments of this country, such as 5 or 6 per cent. of the gross national product, and then fit everything in with that.
  Therefore, I cannot follow what the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) has said. I say with great feeling, although he is an older man than I, that I am sure that, in the 1930s, many hon. Members on the other side of the House got up and said, "Give in to any form of aggression. Unless we give in to aggression, we shall have a world war." We discovered in the last war and we might well discover in future that if one gives in to minor aggression, it only escalates and the final catastrophe is not averted.
  Britain must play her part along with the United States and the other great countries in the world to stand up to aggression wherever we might find it, whether in Europe or the Far East—
  Sir Peter Roberts: I am sure that my hon. Friend realises that the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) was only taking his usual Communist line.
  Mr. McMaster: I should like to pursue this further, but I feel that the House has taken the point.
  The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) spoke of Aden and Bahrein. I had the privilege, with four of my colleagues, of visiting our bases in Aden and Bahrein last summer and I can endorse all that he said about the conditions in Bahrein. In fact, they were so bad that, on returning from Bahrein I wrote a letter to the Secretary of State for Defence which I sent round and which was signed by all of my colleagues. I am still waiting for a reply, which I am sure I will get in due course.
  This letter pointed out that the conditions, particularly for the R.A.F., were pretty well intolerable. They needed not only more married quarters but swimming pools, because they were living in high humidity and very high temperature and in those circumstances, particularly in midsummer, they need better conditions.
  Aden is not a paradise, as most hon. Members know, but conditions there are much better than in Bahrein. If we give up the Aden base how can we maintain our presence in the Persian Gulf in such conditions as I have described? Perhaps the Government are being a little rash

  1843
  in deciding to give up the base in Aden so quickly, when we have excellent installations there. I have written to the right hon. Gentleman about the very bad smell arising from the sewers emptying into the sea at the Kormaksar naval base near the canteen and sleeping quarters. With that exception the conditions in Aden are tolerable and Aden is a far better centre for our troops than Bahrein. From there we look after our commitments throughout the Middle East and it is the headquarters of Middle East Command. If we withdraw from Aden in two years that is too short a time to provide a suitable alternative base in the Persian Gulf.
  I have very strong feelings about the decision to scrap the aircraft carrier programme, which is not surprising as more carriers for the British Navy have come from the shipyards of Harland and Wolff than from any other yard in the country. But this is not the main reason for my saying that the Government are mistaken in cancelling the carrier programme. If the carrier programme is to be changed, the Government should consider the possibility of having new and smaller ships equioped with vertical take-off aircraft which could provide cover for troops in local operations which they may be called on to support.
  I call attention to the effect of the Government's defence policy on areas such as mine in Northern Ireland, where the decision to buy American aircraft has caused a great deal of damage to the interests of ordinary people who have been working in our shipyards and aircraft factories and who are now very uncertain about their future. I mention the Sydenham naval aircraft station where so much work mentioned in the White Paper is carried out, such as the maintenance of fleet aircraft. It is difficult for people who lose work there to find other work in the area because of their remoteness from the markets. I hope that before the Session closes the right hon. Gentleman will make a firm statement about the future of firms such as Short Bros, and about the naval aircraft station at Sydenham. I hope that the Minister of Aviation will say a few words about it when he winds up the debate.
  9.4 p.m.
  Sir John Eden: The first day of what has been called this
  1844
  great national debate has been marked by two valedictory addresses, one from the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey), who has never allowed the realities of international power to shake his conviction in the rightness of his own views, and the other from my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth), who will be greatly missed by all hon. Members. My right hon. and gallant Friend spoke, as he has done on previous occasions, on behalf of the Brigade of Gurkhas, that magnificent fighting force. He asked pointedly for a firm guarantee as to their future in the British Army. I hope that when the Secretary of State winds up the debate tomorrow he will make a special reference to the position of the Gurkhas in future.
  The debate was also marked by a most distinguished and searching opening speech from these benches. But it was marred by the performance of the Secretary of State, who reduced this important discussion to the level of the nursery. Perhaps he thought that it was good stuff for the hustings. In that case he clearly does not reserve his arrogance for this House alone.
  Before considering the White Papers before us it is worth looking back to last year's Command Paper 2592, which was a sort of trailer to the full feature which we now have before the House. Last year's White Paper began by claiming that our forces were seriously overstretched and under-equipped. It stated:
  "The equipment programme…fails to satisfy either our military or economic needs, particularly in the field of aircraft."
  So the Government took immediate steps to remedy that grave state of affairs. How did they do it? By cancelling the three most advanced projects which were then under development. That was the first step, taken before the so-called review had been concluded.
  Now, in Command Paper 2901, we see the next stages in the Labour Government's attempt to match political commitments to resources and to relate resources to economic circumstances. How do they propose to go about it? They intend to do it by ratting on our obligations to South Arabia and, as for other political commitments, by deciding which we must give up and which we could discharge on a more limited scale of operations. I

  1845
  always thought that "commitment" implied an obligation that was binding in honour and could not be broken unilaterally.
  How do the Government propose to relate resources to economic circumstances? Apparently by spending £1,000 million on aircraft designed and produced in America. It is clear that long before this over-dressed review had begun, the principal decisions had already been taken, if not by the Secretary of State then by those curious bedfellows of his, the Prime Minister and the Paymaster-General. However, it is not altogether one-sided, for even the Paymaster-General must have rubbed his eyes when he read Chapter IV of Cmd. 2902—the admirably clear explanation about the rôle of Britain's nuclear strategic forces. This is the most complete vindication of the policies of previous Conservative Governments.
  The paragraphs in the White Paper on the V-bombers are of especial importance, and I am sorry that some of the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen from below the Gangway opposite who took part in the debate earlier are not here—[Interruption.]—because in this part of the document we have set out for all to see the essential features that make Britain's independent deterrent a most important factor for peace in the world—V-bombers capable of high or low level attack, equipped with free-fall weapons or with Blue Steel stand-off bombs which are virtually immune to interception; the electronic counter-measures which enhance their ability to penetrate deep into enemy territory; and now coming into service, a new nuclear weapon which can be effectively and accurately delivered from a very low level.
  I am certain that some hon. Gentlemen opposite will have been particularly interested in this and also to read the statement in the second paragraph of Chapter IV, where it says that the V-bomber force
  "…will in due course be augmented by the Polaris Fleet of the Royal Navy…"
  If "augment" means anything, it means to increase, enlarge and it does not mean to replace.
  This is of even greater consequence when one turns to the now notorious opening paragraph of the section headed
  1846
  "Canberra Aircraft Replacement", because there we are told that the V-bombers will cease to form part of our contribution to the strategic forces of the alliance when the Polaris submarines come into service. The important words there are "of the alliance". What is the consequence of those words? Is this the Government's way of telling the country that even though the V-bombers will not be assigned to N.A.T.O., they will still maintain their use as an independent deterrent for use on their own anywhere? Is this the Government's way of announcing a complete reversal of their previous policies? At one time it was "scrap the nuclear, and build up the conventional", but now they tell us that increasing reliance on nuclear devastation is the proper policy for this country.
  Where in all this does the American F.111A come in? We are told that it is to bridge a gap—but who created the gap? The gap was created by the right hon. Gentleman when he cancelled the TSR2. It is for him, therefore, to justify the purchase of this aircraft; and to justify the fact that only 50 have been bought. It is well known that the Air Staff wanted many more even than the 110 TSR2s, which was the minimum they were to get. What are they to do with 50 of these American aircraft? How exactly are they to be used? In what rôle—reconnaissance, or strike, or both? Is it for Europe, the Far East or world wide?
  Then we are told that the F.111A is, in due course—in 1975—to be supplemented by the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft in the strike rôle. As my right hon. Friend said in opening the debate, the Anglo-French V.G. aircraft was originally intended as a Lightning, not a Canberra, replacement. It was also intended that it would be a joint Royal Air Force-Royal Navy aircraft. Now, apparently, it is to have the wholly different rôle of taking over from the V-bombers as a conventional and tactical nuclear strike aircraft, and it is to be the core of our long-term aircraft programme.
  If the Government are really serious about this aircraft, they must get on with it. They must put some urgency into the matter. They must bring the project forward earlier than 1975. I am told that it is practically possible for them to do so. They must, at any rate, get the O.R.

  1847
  written. How many are they likely to want to buy? If they are only to buy 50 F.111As and this new aircraft in 1975 is to supplement the F.111A, presumably well over 100 of the Anglo-French V.G. aircraft will be needed. To be fair, in all this talk about cost of cancellations and cost of purchase, when considering the cost of the F.111A we ought also to bring into consideration the cost in the future of the Anglo-French variable-geometry aircraft.
  Let me say a word about cost. Costs should not be measured in a case like this in terms of the unit ceiling price per copy alone. The Government seem to be unaware of the widespread beneficial effects throughout British industry and the economy which follow the injection of funds to finance the development of advanced projects. It is this aspect which the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have much more in mind. It is not sufficient just to assess notional savings in cash terms, because against the credit side in the equation must be set the immense debit reflected in the net loss to the whole spectrum of British design skill and advanced technology which arises from the decision to purchase American to such a large extent as the Government have decided to do. The Labour Government have required us not only to pay for U.S. aircraft, but to pay for U.S. development as well.
  They have been quick to make up their minds about ordering from America; the United Kingdom industry is still mainly without firm production orders. The Government have talked about sales of British equipment as being guaranteed, but where is the guarantee? Nothing we heard from the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon amounted to anything like a guarantee that Mr. Henry J. Kuss, Jnr., would purchase equipment from this country. I ask again the question asked by my right hon. Friend: is this meant to imply that the sale of this British equipment will be over and above what is in any case to be sold? Why was no special bargain struck at the time when the right hon. Gentleman was negotiating as a prospective purchaser? That was the time to have a guarantee written into the contract, at that time before he cancelled the advance project on which our
  1848
  own industry was engaged and before he concluded a deal to purchase from the United States.
  This Government, ever since just before the last election, have made a habit of speaking in glowing terms about modernising Britain with the new technology of the new scientific age. If this is their line of argument there must be clear evidence that they intend to translate those words into action by giving effective support to the key leader industries of this country. The new aerospace developments form the spur to technological advance and unless that spur is maintained as sharp as possible we shall not be able to achieve the tremendous advances which our electronics industries can bring us towards modernisation throughout our industry.
  Much of British industry is still living on a hand-to-mouth basis. There is one sphere in which this is particularly so, the sphere in which we used to have a clear lead, in v.t.o.l. technology. The Americans are about to break through in v.t.o.l., having benefited from the experience gained in the lead which we had. Are the Government really serious about the Kestrel? The right hon. Gentleman mentioned this this afternoon. If the Government are determined that it shall come into service as rapidly as possible, why is the Pegasus engine still only on a development contract? The original contract expired in December. Since then it has been renewed for one month at a time. The present contract will be expiring on polling day. This is not the way to go full speed ahead with an important project and a piece of military equipment urgently needed for which our forces are waiting.
  I turn to the question of balanced forces. The last Government in all their policies ensured that we would have balanced forces. As the right hon. Gentleman well knows, the previous Conservative Government had planned that the equipment of our forces and the disposition of our forces should largely be governed by the new techniques of vertical take-off and short take-off and landing, which would mean that we needed no permanent airfields and the machines would be able to operate in any part of the world. We had plans for carrier-borne strike aircraft and heli

  1849
  copters to give close support. These were supplemented by long-range strategic bombers, the whole complex providing a great degree of mobility which would have led progressively to less and less; dependence on fixed bases.
  This was becoming, and in fact at that time had a guarantee of staying in the future, a formidable force of great flexibility. Now we have a complete turnabout as a result of the Government's policies. They have cancelled the supersonic v.t.o.l. fighter and cancelled the s.t.o.l. transport which was the necessary result of such a weapon. They have purchased aircraft requiring permanent airfields and long runways. They hardly said a word about helicopters, at least in the White Paper, and they have cancelled the new aircraft carrier. To describe this Part 1 of the Review as a new defence posture is the under-statement of the century.
  The decisions which the Government have announced cannot fail to reduce the flexibility and mobility of our forces. This is at a time when, according to their own White Paper, events in the Middle East, the Far East and Africa have made it necessary in the past year for us to send reinforcements from this country to all our main overseas territories. They condemned us for being dogmatic about weapons. Nothing could be more dogmatic than the assumption on which the Government's entire policy is now based. What is to replace the carrier, described on page 27 of Cmnd. 2902 as
  "the most important element of the Fleet"?
  How are the Government planning to defend our seaborne forces in the 1970s? If there is to be no carrier, how are they going to guarantee to our ground forces the local air superiority and offensive support which they may require?
  The Secretary of State told us this afternoon. He said that the Royal Air Force will co-operate with the Royal Navy and that the Royal Navy will be supplied with surface-to-surface guided weapons to use against missile-carrying ships. Surely the experience in Vietnam has a lesson for us here, where the Americans have found the need for really close support to their operations and where they have found increasing difficulties arising from having to go many
  1850
  thousands of miles away to bring up their strategic aircraft.
  But if this is to be the policy of the future, an increasing dependence upon long-range aircraft, surely we must be certain that, without a carrier, we shall have a chain of bases. Without these bases the decision to purchase the F.111 makes little sense. The policy to ensure a chain of new bases, such as the island base strategy, to which very little reference is made in the White Paper, would inevitably lead to further reliance upon American equipment.
  The Royal Air Force will need more transport aircraft. Where are these aircraft to come from? Are they to buy more C.130s? Are they going to buy the even larger C.5? The bases themselves will be equipped with American ground and communications equipment. The right hon. Gentleman should at least give the House tomorrow more information about what his intentions are as regards bases. When he talks about co-operation between the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, he must recognise that this implies a chain of bases across the Indian Ocean, and he should give us more information about that.
  The Secretary of State may tell us that we are going to find the necessary facilities in Bahrein. The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell), who made a most interesting speech and who has just been out there, told us something of the difficulties and fears of the Bahreinis in regard to our decision. More importantly, if the right hon. Gentleman intends to leave Aden, where there is a most important stockpile, is he going to replace that by putting it at Bahrein? Is the headquarters of the Middle East Command also to move to Bahrein? I do not follow the right hon. Gentleman in being so certain about the pattern of events in the future, particularly in this part of the world, where they tend to change from one day to the next. As the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) said on 2nd February:
  "The future defence requirements of the area are extremely difficult to foresee."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd February, 1966: Vol. 723, c. 1066.]
  The Secretary of State by his decision to run out of Aden, has in fact made it more difficult to forecast what is likely

  1851
  to happen in that part or the world. Nasser has already leaped in with a few well chosen words. His broadcasts are already beaming on to the other Arabian countries. He has begun to boast that he has defeated the British in Aden and Arabia. The right hon. Gentleman bears a heavy responsibility indeed for the situation he has created in that part of the world, and this at a time when Nasser was virtually beaten to his knees in the Yemen. The Secretary of State could not have chosen a more unfortunate moment to have announced this decision and to have taken it unilaterally in this way.
  What is the point of this move in fact? Was it just to fit in with the right hon. Gentleman's arithmetic, with his need to find the necessary savings? Or is this the prelude to further withdrawal elsewhere? If our troops outside Europe are to be cut by 30,000 to 40,000, which is what the right hon. Gentleman told us, where are they to come from? Thirty thousand to 40,000 troops are going to come from where? The right hon. Gentleman has a duty to be more frank to the House than he has been so far.
  So far the Defence White Paper has shown up some very clear weaknesses in the Government's thinking. The major weakness is the fact that they arbitrarily selected a figure in advance of making their positive review. The right hon. Gentleman claims that he has had the courage to look the facts in the face and draw the right conclusions from them. He has, in fact, done nothing of the kind. If he had genuinely faced the facts and if, as he asserts, defence in his hands is the servant and not the master of foreign policy, then he would certainly not have cut into our military capability. The uncertainties in the world today would have required that he should maintain the effectiveness and mobility of our forces at the greatest possible state of readiness. He has not faced the facts. What he has done is to present them with the conclusions that he himself invented to fit the figure which he himself has chosen.
  This has been not so much a review—more a way of retreat. Before the party opposite have a chance to do any further damage, the country will welcome the opportunity it now has to get them out.
  9.26 p.m.
  The Minister of Aviation (Mr. Frederick Mulley): I should like to join the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir J. Eden) in referring to the valedictory addresses by two of our colleagues who are not seeking re-election—my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey) and the right hon and gallant Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth) who, in rather different ways, have made many contributions to our defence debates over the years. I know from my experience as Minister of Defence for the Army that in the retirement of the right hon. and Gallant Member for Norwood the Brigade of Gurkhas will lose a very powerful advocate in this House.
  When I read the Motion that the Opposition have put down for debate I was surprised to find such a modest Motion on the eve of a General Election. But then I recalled the situation of our defences when we took office 15 months ago, and I realised that the Opposition had a great deal to be modest about.
  As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has made clear, not only this year but in the debates on the White Paper a year ago, we found our defence forces extremely stretched. We found, in fact, that no real decisions about defence had been taken for the previous year or even longer, and my right hon. Friend had the job of trying to put our defence policy in order. When I found the manifesto of the Conservative Party called "Action not words", I thought that particularly in the defence context this was the supreme impertinence. No action was shown in trying to get the right balance of forces and provide the necessary money for them without placing a burden on our economy.
  The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) read out a lot of figures of the actual percentage of the gross national product that had been consumed by defence expenditure over the years. The figure in the last year of the Conservative Government was 6·5 per cent. But this figure conceals a great deal. It conceals the fact that in respect of all the equipment that had been ordered for all three Services in the years just before the last election the bills were left to my right hon. Friend to pay. In every single Service, whether it be equipment for the Army, the Navy

  1853
  or more particularly the Air Force, right down to the Phantoms, the first American aircraft ordered by this country—ordered, in fact, by the right hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft)—and the helicopters that he ordered just before the election, it was all left for us to pay. That is why it is misleading to suggest that had they gone on they would have been able to maintain defence expenditure at 6·5 per cent. of the gross national product.
  Mr. J. Amery: I cannot think what the right hon. Gentleman is complaining about. All the American aircraft the Government have ordered are to be paid for over a time scale reaching to 1977.
  Mr. Mulley: Although I doubt whether the right hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery) will be with us, I assure him that in that year there will still be a Labour Government. We are not seeking to postpone any payments. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] I think that that is a very good answer.
  The Conservative programme would have involved an expenditure of £400 million a year beyond the figure that my right hon. Friend has taken as his target. As he said, if we achieve the target, as we intend to, it will be 6 per cent. of the gross national product—not 6·5 per cent. or 7 per cent. as it would have been if the party opposite had remained in power.
  The other surprising aspect of the debate is the complaint from the Opposition that we have not given enough information. Any hon. Member who has followed defence debates over these last years will realise that, through the Defence White Paper and in other debates, we have given more information over the whole range of defence activity than has been given by any Defence Minister before. Here, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend and to all the military and civilian officials in the Ministry who have been so heavily engaged in the review and in providing for the House and public opinion a fuller picture of our defence situation than has ever been provided before.
  In the same speech in which he complained about not being told enough, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West also complained that we should not have told the House that we
  1854
  have decided to leave the Aden base in 1968. He cannot have it both ways. The Opposition say that my right hon. Friend should have come to a view about the future of the Aden base, but concealed it from the House and the public. I think that that would have been quite improper. However, the Opposition cannot take that point of view and still complain that the Government have not given enough information.
  In studying the Motion, I was particularly struck by the last few words:
  "…will impair the ability of our forces to carry out the duties required of them."
  I suppose that it is a matter of argument whether the policy and the disposition of forces that my right hon. Friend has presented will be subject to this criticism, but what is beyond doubt is that if my right hon. Friend had followed the programme that he inherited, certainly the Royal Air Force would have been quite incapable of carrying out the duties imposed upon it.
  Plane after plane was becoming obsolete and the procrastination—in contrast to the action that the Opposition now talk about—in placing orders meant that the Royal Air Force would not have had the strike aircraft, fighter aircraft or transport aircraft that it needs in the time scale and within the cost that it wants them.
  We inherited an aircraft programme that was over ambitious and hopelessly overloaded. It made no kind of sense and would have led to an increase in defence expenditure not only in absolute terms, but also as a proportion of the national income. I agree that the programme contained highly sophisticated projects in the P1154 and the TSR2, but these were absorbing a disproportionate share of the country's resources, both financial and manpower—skilled manpower badly needed to revitalise other industries.
  The hon. Gentleman the Member for Bournemouth, West criticised the fact that we cancelled the programme of the P.1154 and the HS.681. These could not have been provided in time to replace the existing aircraft which the R.A.F. urgently needed. In the case of the TSR2 we found that the whole costs of the programme were completely out of control. In the light of what has recently

  1855
  been said about the need for interdependent arrangements, particularly arrangements with our allies in Europe, it is important to stress that in none of these three projects had there been any attempt to interest or involve other European countries. Equally, it must be said that the export prospects of all these planes were extremely poor.
  Quite clearly, what was necessary was a searching review of the place of the aircraft industry in the country's economy. It was for that reason that my right hon. Friend decided to appoint the Plowden Committee. The situation on the military programme was so serious that, quite properly, we could not await the Plowden Report, although the action taken has proved to be in line with the recommendations made by the Committee. We cancelled the P.1154, the HS.681 and TSR.2. We recognised that these decisions would not be popular, but we thought it necessary to take them in order that there should be a healthy aircraft industry and that the R.A.F. should get the planes in the time scale and at a cost which the country could afford.
  Mr. Robert Carr: I think that a moment or two ago the right hon. Gentleman indicated that the Plowden Committee expressed the view that it was right to cancel all these planes. My feeling is that the Plowden Committee undertook its review in the context of the planes having been cancelled.
  Mr. Mulley: I did not say that the Plowden Committee had endorsed the cancellations. That was not a matter before it. What I did indicate was that the conclusions of Plowden were completely in line with the decisions taken, in particular, that it condemned the idea of going forward independently with aircraft of a highly sophisticated character, which is what the TSR2, the P.1154 and the HS.681 were. It stressed that we should go in for European collaboration in these projects, and it also made it quite clear that we could not afford to go in for an expensive development project unless there were good prospects for exports, and the possibility of spreading the development costs over a much bigger range of aircraft than our industry could expect to sell to the Government.
  1856
  We decided to replace these aircraft with more Phantoms. The original Phantoms had been ordered by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mon-mouth. We also decided to develop an operational version of the P.1127 in place of the P.1154 and to purchase the Hercules C.130 in place of the HS.681. The most difficult decision, and one upon which the Government pondered deeply was the choice of the aircraft to replace the Canberra. We decided to purchase the American F.111A, which will meet the strike reconnaisance requirement until the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft comes along in the mid-1970s. The tests we had to apply for the aircraft to replace the Canberra was not only that of cost, but that of time. We have to have aircraft in service by 1970 because the Canberras which have served us so very well are getting extremely old.
  In addition, we did not wish to buy or to develop aircraft of sufficient number which would have made it impossible in the mid-1970s to go in for a substantial purchase, as the hon. Gentleman indicated we should, of the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft. The tactical strike gap which would otherwise have existed because we bought the minimum number of F111s can be filled by the V-bombers, which will have completed their strategic bombing rôle with the coming of the Polaris submarine and will be available in the tactical strike rôle thereafter.
  As the House has been told in a number of debates, and as has been set out in the White Paper, we seriously considered a number of alternatives, particularly the alternative purchase of the Buccaneer 2 Double Star, a developed version of the Buccaneer which has done such good service in the Royal Navy, and the Spey/Mirage which, I should stress, is an aircraft which does not exist but was a project for converting the French Mirage IV by completely changing its rôle and installing the Rolls-Royce Spey engine. In neither case would there have been any substantial saving in money. In both cases there would have been great difficulty in time. We could not have got either plane ready by 1970 or perhaps even by 1971.
  Each of these alternatives would have had not only a much inferior performance in terms of range and load-carrying

  1857
  capacity to the F111, but would have been inferior to the TSR2 which had been cancelled. We therefore thought that, particularly in the reconnaissance rôle, the only choice was the American F111A.
  Mr. R. Carr: It would be helpful to the House to establish this fact. The right hon. Gentleman has been talking about the disadvantages of the Buccaneer 2 Double Star and the Spey/Mirage and particularly mentioned the range as being inferior to that of the F111. Surely the range of the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft, since it will be only half the weight of the F111, will also be inferior. How then can it be a replacement?
  Mr. Mulley: If the right hon. Gentleman had listened to his hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West, he would have understood that there is no question of the Anglo-French variable geometry plane replacing the F111. It is complementary or supplementary to it. Clearly, we shall not buy these American aircraft and expect to have them in service for only four or five years. The intention clearly in the mid-1970s will be to get the new Anglo-French geometry planes to replace the ageing V-bombers, and they will be used alongside the F111s.
  Mr. Powell: What, then, is the meaning of the sentence in the Defence White Paper, which states:
  "Until the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft is available the F.111A will be supplemented by the V-bombers."?
  Does this mean that the 50 F111A aircraft will go on performing this rôle beyond 1975 and on towards 1980?
  Mr. Healey: The Canberras have been going for 15 years.
  Mr. Mulley: I hesitate to give the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, advice in this field, because I think that he held a Chair in English language at one time. But the fact is that the supplementation which is to be performed by the V-bombers will be replaced by supplementation by Anglo-French variable geometry planes in the mid-1970s. It would clearly be an act of lunacy to contemplate buying aircraft, the final ones to be delivered in 1970, and expect them to be obsolete by 1974.
  1858
  It is usual for aircraft to be in R.A.F. service for 10 years or more. In fact, our present problems are due to the fact that the Canberra and Hunter have been in service for very much longer than that. By 1970, the Canberras will be 17 or 18 years old. This is the whole problem that we have tried over the last year to get inside the heads of right hon. Gentlemen opposite, but, clearly, we have failed, otherwise they could not have put down a Motion in such terms as they have done today.
  A good deal has been said about cost. When talking about mystification, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West probably had more in mind the letters to The Times written by some of his right hon. Friends than any statements that my right hon. Friend had made. I should, however, try to clear up the question of the cost of the F111 in comparison with what might have been the cost had we proceeded with the TSR2 programme.
  I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that in his calculation he had included a figure of £150 million for basic purchase, an additional £20 million for sterling costs in this connection, £40 million—which I confirm—as the amount of cancellation charges paid since the cancellation was actually made, and £40 million for interest, making a grand total of between £230 million and £250 million, on the basis of which the right hon. Gentleman calculated the per capita cost of the F.111A for the purpose of his argument as being about £5 million.
  The unit cost of the F.111 is expected to be about £2½ million, making a total of £125 million for the 50 aircraft. The sterling element of about £10 million is included in this figure.
  Mr. J. Amery Mr. J. Amery rose—
  Mr. Mulley: I want to finish what I am saying. The right hon. Gentleman makes his comments in The Times, not in the House. I must answer his right hon. Friend. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the right hon. Gentleman?"] I have not written a letter to The Times for a very long time.
  Brigadier Clarke: The Times would not accept it from the right hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Mulley: Interest on the price of the aircraft will amount to about £25 million, which, added to the figure of £125 million, totals £150 million. If we add the £40 million for the cancellation charges, which is the one figure given by the right hon. Gentleman which I agree, we arrive at a figure of £190 million, as compared with the right hon. Gentleman's £230 million to £250 million. Therefore, the cost on the basis chosen by the right hon. Gentleman is less than £4 million rather than the £5 million which he suggested.
  Mr. Nicholas Ridley: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Comptroller and Auditor General has now estimated that the cancellation charges will be £70 million? Will the right hon. Gentleman add that on, too?
  Mr. Mulley: I agree that there are additional cancellation charges to be paid, but I was dealing with the basis of comparison with the figures given by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, who asked me to confirm or correct them. If the hon. Member has complaints, he must make them to his right hon. Friend.
  By contrast, the cost of 50 TSR2s would have amounted to well over £450 million, including—
  Mr. J. Amery: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Mulley: I shall finish these figures first.
  The right hon. Gentleman should know about the TSR2. The cost of 50 TSR2s would, by contrast, have amounted to well over £450 million, including research and development, and this is a conservative estimates in both senses of the word. Of this figure, only £125 million had been spent at the time of the cancellation. Therefore, on the basis of £450 million for 50 TSR2s, the comparable figure would have been over £9 million per aircraft, as against £2½ million each for the F.111, or £4 million on the basis of comparison chosen by the right hon. Gentleman.
  Furthermore, these figures show that the difference in unit costs, when the support and running costs are added on, between the force of 50 F.111s and 50
  1860
  TRS2s approaches £300 million. If the comparison is carried a stage further, and the cost of the present purchase of 50 F.111s is compared with that of the last Administration's TSR2 programme of over 150 aircraft, the difference is more than twice as much again, providing a substantial part of the total £1,200 million saved by my right hon. Friend's revised aircraft programme.
  Mr. J. Amery: I only wanted to take up the right hon. Gentleman on this fairly small point. He has said that the unit cost of the modified F.111 for the R.A.F. would be about £2½ million. I understand that, in fact, it is £2·8 million, which is more than two-thirds more. Would it not be more accurate to say so?
  Mr. Mulley: My right hon. Friend, who has done a magnificent job in these negotiations, assures me, as he did the House, that it is £2·5 million. The right hon. Gentleman must tell us where he gets his information from.
  Mr. J. Amery: Modified for the R.A.F.
  Mr. Mulley: Perhaps I could let the right hon. Gentleman into a secret. All these F.111s we are buying are for the R.A.F.
  Sir Ian Orr-Ewing Sir Ian Orr-Ewing (Hendon, North) rose—
  Mr. Mulley: I have not got much time.
  Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: I know, but in an Answer the other day it was stated that the F.111A would cost a total of £280 million, of which £240 million would be in dollars. Could the right hon. Gentleman tell us what the cost of the TSR2 would have been in comparable circumstances—on the 10-year basis?
  Mr. Mulley: On the 10-year basis, £570 million, including the running costs and after allowing for cancellation costs which were involved as well.
  However hon. Gentlemen opposite juggle with the figures they cannot escape the brutal fact that having the TSR2 on the most favourable assumptions of their choosing would have cost the nation £300 million more than purchasing the F.111s.
  The other point I want to deal with at some length is the question of the dollar expenditure involved. The choice of the

  1861
  F.111A has been criticised because of the substantial dollar expenditure, but we have, in fact, taken steps to ensure that the whole dollar expenditure costs of the purchase of this aircraft, including spares, over the whole period of its life will be fully offset by sales of British equipment to the United States from any co-operative arrangements—
  Mr. J. Amery: Is the right hon. Gentleman sure?
  Sir J. Eden Sir J. Eden rose—
  Mr. Mulley: I think that I ought to get on. I have not much time. This is a very important point.
  The total dollar cost over the period has been stated as being £260 million over a 10-year period amounting in dollar terms to 725 million dollars, and we have the agreement of the United States that it will over the period buy directly British equipment to the value of 325 million dollars, and that it will co-operate with us in sales to third countries, at least of a kind similar to that we have recently arranged with Saudi Arabia, to the value of 400 million dollars—covering the whole dollar cost of the purchase of these aircraft over the 10 years. If anyone queries the practicability of these proposals he must either, on the one hand, say he has no faith in the word of the American Government, or, on the other, say that he has no faith in the competitive power of British industry to sell against American firms when there is no tariff or other barrier.
  The arrangement was very skilfully negotiated by my right hon. Friend. I can assure the House that it was not an easy deal to arrange. The essence of it was that there will be no buy-American 50 per cent. preference. There will be no 6 or 12 per cent. tariff. Our firms will be competing equally against their American competitors for the whole range of defence equipment and subsidiary equipment like office machinery and so forth which is bought by the American Defence Department. I have complete faith in my right hon. Friend and in British industry that over the years we shall be able to achieve this target to cover completely the cost that we incurred on the F.111A.
  1862
  I want to deal with the very serious criticism that the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West made about the project for the VG aircraft. If anyone was making a case for buying more than 50 F.111As and for trying to put an end to the very fruitful co-operation with France that the Government have tried to develop, his speech was well calculated in both directions. I want to stress that the VG aircraft is complementary to the F.111A and is in no sense a replacement. We are going ahead with it precisely to avoid buying a large number of those expensive aircraft.
  From its inception, the VG has been a multi-rôle aircraft—a strike interceptor—and the emphasis both for us and for the French is on its strike capability. Joint engine project studies are in hand now by S.N.E.C.M.A. and Bristol Siddeley Engines and will be completed by the end of this month. Separate feasibility studies of air frames have been undertaken by B.A.C. and Dassault and are being evaluated prior to the placing of project study contracts, probably in May.
  Our intention is to use the VG aircraft to replace the Phantom in the strike rôle, releasing the Phantom from that rôle in order to replace the Lightning. Later, some VG aircraft will be used in an interceptor rôle instead of Phantoms. I should say that, as soon as can be arranged after the election, it is the intention of my right hon. Friend and myself to have talks with Monsieur Messmer, the French Minister of Defence, to survey the progress of the project and take all steps possible so that it should go on as fast as possible.
  The final word that I want to say is about how our reshaped military programme fits in with the Plowden recommendations and the needs of the aircraft industry. During the next few weeks there will no doubt be great distortions about the damage that it is alleged the Government have done to the aircraft industry. As the White Paper makes absolutely clear, we have provided a balanced programme of military aircraft work for the industry over the next years and, above everything else, we have provided the industry with the stability that it has been seeking for so long in the programme that we have announced for the next five years.

  1863
  I am convinced that when our programme is put to the test of public discussion outside not only will my right hon. Friend's Defence Review be endorsed by the people, but, also, that the industry will accept that we have laid the foundation for a healthy aircraft industry and provided it with the stimulus by which it will save itself by its own exertions.
  9.59 p.m.
  Brigadier Terence Clarke: I do not want to continue with the debate on aircraft. I should like to talk about aircraft carriers. The Government have made a very poor show today on the aircraft carrier programme.
  Continuing on the same theme, I feel that people in Portsmouth Dockyard, the Navy and those concerned for the safety of the whole country have been let down by the Labour Government today, and I should like to suggest that if we had had a proper—
  It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed Tomorrow.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  Ordered,
  That the Proceedings on consideration of the Lords Amendments to the Universities (Scotland) Bill may be entered upon and proceeded with at this day's Sitting at any hour, though opposed.—[Mr Edward Short.]

  UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL
  Lords Amendments considered.
  UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL

    Clause 4.—(MAKING OF ORDINANCES.)
    Lords Amendment: In page 3, line 19, leave out "one month" and insert "eight weeks".
    10.1 p.m.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mrs. Judith Hart): I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.
    Mr. Ian MacArthur: We are making such rapid progress, that I am almost frightened of losing my cue. I rise to express our appreciation to the hon. Lady for the fact that this Amendment was considered in another place, and has now come to us. It meets to a large extent the worry which
    1864
    many of us on both sides had about the lack of time for the proper consideration of ordinances, originally provided for in this Clause. We are glad that the hon. Lady has seen her way to move that the House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.
    Mrs. Hart: Perhaps this is the appropriate moment, in this last interval of agreement between the two Front Benches, to express one's appreciation of the way in which both sides of the House have dealt with this Bill. I recognise the hon. Gentleman's concern about this, and I am glad that we have been able to meet it.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Remaining Lords Amendments agreed to.

  HOSPITALS, LEICESTER
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. O'Malley.]
  10.4 p.m.
  Mr. John Farr: Although this is one of the last days in a dying Parliament, I welcome the opportunity of launching a debate on hospitals in Leicester. If, at the end of the debate, we have made the Minister aware just how short of hospitals Leicester and its catchment area are, just how bad existing accommodation is, and how deplorable conditions are for patients and staff—and if we can seize the Parliamentary Secretary with the determination that he or his successor will correct those faults at the earliest possible debate—our debate will not have been in vain.
  It was the Minister's apparent unreadiness to reply to a Question which I asked him on 14th February, relating to the hospital problem in Leicester, which prompted this debate. The right hon. Gentleman then declined to give a simple and reasonable undertaking which was asked of him. He declined to undertake that plans for the building of a new maternity hospital in Leicester would not be postponed. I hope that as a result of what the Parliamentary Secretary hears tonight we shall receive a firm undertaking from him that plans for this new maternity hospital, which is so badly needed, will be put in hand forthwith.

  1865
  In an endeavour to convince the Parliamentary Secretary of the need for this hospital I want to put before him one or two figures of which he may not be aware. With one possible exception, no city of an equivalent size, or bigger, has grown at so fast a pace in the past 30 or 35 years. There is a set of figures which I shall row read which may surprise him when he studies them in tomorrow's OFFICIAL REPORT. The population living in the catchment area of the Leicester hospitals has grown from 541,000 in 1951 to 682,000 in 1962, and the projected total for 1975 is just over 784,000. This indicates an average growth rate of 10,000 yearly or 50 per cent. in 25 years.
  What makes that figure so significant is that it is just four times the average rate of growth of population in the rest of the United Kingdom. This gives some idea of Leicester's problem. Its facilities to cater for this exploding population are meagre and limited. I believe that it was the Cranbrook Committee which recommended that for every 2,000 people there should be nearly 1½ maternity beds. At the latest count available to me Leicester had only half a maternity bed for every 2,000 people, or one-third of the recommended figure.
  I am disappointed not to see the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health here tonight, although I am sure that we shall get a very sympathetic and energetic response from his deputy. I realise that the right hon. Gentleman is very busy. He was unable to accept an invitation which I extended to him a week or two ago to visit the Bond Street Maternity Hospital in Leicester, with which I shall deal now. I am pleased to know that although the Minister was unable to visit that hospital he sent two senior representatives from the Ministry—
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health (Mr. Charles Loughlin)The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health (Mr. Charles Loughlin) indicated assent.
  Mr. Farr: I see the Parliamentary Secretary nodding in agreement. No doubt he will have in front of him their report.
  The Bond Street Maternity Hospital is a disgrace, with both patients and staff having to live in the most unhygienic conditions imaginable. It is unhygienic because, cheek by jowl with the sterilising unit are dustbins full of garbage and
  1866
  because the drainage system is so inadequate that it frequently overflows. It is outdated because in one small surgical nursing home which was discarded as a non-conventional unit when the State Medical Service came into being, together with a small but recent wing built in the late 1920s and an old dispensary and a few council houses knocked together, we have what is now the Bond Street Maternity Hospital. In 1955, that sorry collection of buildings took in 1,175 maternity cases. Ten years later, in 1965, the intake of patients in one year had more than doubled, to 3,504. This tremendous expansion has been achieved at great discomfort to the staff, at some considerable discomfort to the patients and also by discharging no less than 13½ per cent. of all the patients who come in within 24 hours of arrival.
  I can do no more than give a brief outline of the chronic conditions at Bond Street Maternity Hospital. This is not the time to give a whole mass of figures and statistics. All I can hope to do is bring home to the Parliamentary Secretary that, at this moment, in the City of Leicester, children are being brought into the world in what is supposed to be one of Britain's most prosperous cities in buildings which, if they were not utilised for hospital purposes, would long ago have been condemned as unfit for human habitation.
  I know that at least one other hon Member from Leicester wishes to take part in the debate. What is it that we want the Parliamentary Secretary to undertake tonight? First of all, we want from him a very firm promise, to be recorded in the OFFICIAL REPORT, that the new maternity hospital, of which Leicester is in such real need, the plans for which lie in his Ministry at the moment and the money for which has already been earmarked by the Sheffield Regional Hospital Board, will be proceeded with forthwith.
  It is not good enough to say—as the hon. Gentleman's Minister said on 14th February—that it is hoped that planning will be completed in time for building to start towards the end of next year, and then to decline to give an undertaking that even these plans would not be further postponed. The plans are now waiting in his Ministry. Why cannot

  1867
  a start be made with this serious project this summer or autumn, without waiting for 1967? I am advised on the best authority that foundation work could be begun at a very early date.
  With the example which I have given of hospital capacity in the City of Leicester, with its large catchment area stretched up to and possibly beyond the limit, it might be worth my while to mention the importance of some of the smaller hospitals which are playing a real part in the function of the Health Service in the City and County of Leicester, particularly in some of the county towns in Leicestershire.
  I have in mind the very important rôle, for instance, which the cottage hospital plays at Market Harborough, where the townsfolk are so determined to see their hospital flourish that they are engaged in raising £12,500 by their own efforts from voluntary subscription for a new wing to be constructed there. While looking for a moment at the needs beyond the immediate city of Leicester, I should like to call the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to the fact that, readily available for him at Wigston in the southern part of the County of Leicester, there is a very good site for the new general hospital project for the county to be commenced in the 1970s.
  Finally, may I read a short extract from a letter of a constituent who sums up the tenor of this important and anxious debate? This shows how the strain of coping has reached the limit at Bond Street Hospital. This constituent who lives in Wigston writes:
  "My wife went into Bond Street Maternity Hospital some three years ago to have her baby and was told that if all went well she would be in about ten days. She goes in again at the end of March—that is three years later—and this time she has been told, 'Two days, then home'. It is time the Minister and the regional hospital board did something."
  Upon that note, which I should like to echo—that it is time that the Minister and the regional hospital board did something—I conclude with my fervent plea that this something should be done at the earliest possible date.
  10.17 p.m.
  Sir Barnett Janner: We have been given a number
  1868
  of figures by the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) whose concern in this matter is shared by many people in the area which I have the privilege and honour to represent. This is not a new problem for it has existed for a long time, and because of the conditions at this hospital it requires immediate attention. Incidentally the hospital is in my constituency.
  Having revisited the hospital as recently as Friday last, I should like to pay a very well-deserved compliment to the medical staff, the matron and the nurses who for many years have been practising in the hospital, who have been bringing great comfort to the patients and who, in spite of the sordid surroundings in which confinements take place, have created an atmosphere of happiness and contentment for those who have passed through the wards. It has been a remarkable effort and their conscientious and painstaking services for those who have passed through the wards of the hospital should not blind us to the fact that they have been working in intolerable circumstances.
  I know that the Minister is anxious to do all that he possibly can to alleviate the suffering and to help all those who pass through the hospital. I know that more money is being spent in this country on hospitals than ever before. But decisions on priority in the spending of the money should obviously take into consideration circumstances such as those which prevail in the Bond Street Hospital. Almost daily there is an increase in the number of patients who go to the hospital. They cannot be kept there for any length of time. Even in those cases in which the medical staff believe it to be essential for patients to have a longer stay in hospital, they have to go out sometimes within a few days. This puts a great strain on visiting midwives and others who must follow up the work done in the hospital. I am sure that my hon. Friend will, when replying, not only express his sympathy at this state of affairs, but will do his best to remedy the position.
  It is difficult to explain to the House what is actually happening at this hospital. In some instances the passages are so narrow that people can hardly

  1869
  turn round, remembering what old houses that are converted are like. I agree that it has managed to operate for many years, but the staff have done the best possible with what is available to them. If one visits the hospital one sees what they must put up with. Despite this, the hospital is remarkably clean and the way it is kept is highly commendable. However, it is most unsatisfactory, with wash places which would not be tolerated in the average household.
  The Minister will appreciate that this state of affairs cannot be tolerated. I am told, for example, that in the last few years the hospital's delivery rate has been about 60 per cent. of the rate in other hospitals in the Nottingham and Sheffield region. To achieve this rate of delivery it has been necessary to discharge patients much earlier than is generally thought to be suitable. It has also meant increasing the daily visits to Leicester of mid-wives from 50,000 to 70,000 visits a year. I am also told that the criteria for booking patients into the hospital has had to be changed, as a result of which life is made even harder for the staff. It is interesting to note that the hospital still shares with the general hospital a yearly emergency intake of 12,000 patients.
  In these circumstances, I appeal to my hon. Friend to do what he can to remedy this state of affairs. Unless the work is started quickly—certainly within the limit given by the hon. Member for Harborough—we will be placed in the position of not only having to pay additional sums of money to have the work done, but the building operations will be delayed. These operations should start some time before the date given by the hon Gentleman, so that there is no interference with other necessary building work. I appreciate that my hon. Friend has great sympathy in these matters and that the Government are anxious for hospitals in this plight to be helped. I trust, therefore, that he will give a firm date so that the anxieties which at present exist may be somewhat alleviated.
  10.25 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Charles Loughlin): I regret that I must rise to answer the debate before allowing the hon. Member for Leicester, South-East (Mr. Peel) time to speak. I will speak quickly,
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  and he may possibly have a moment in which to speak at the close of my remarks.
  These matters have recently been the subject of several Questions in the House, following on many references in the local Press. The Chairman of the Sheffield Regional Hospital Board discussed the situation afresh with Mr. McGavin, Chairman of the Leicester Area Consultants Committee, who is also as it happens a member of the regional hospital board, and other consultants in the area, and sent a long letter in conjunction with the Chairman of the Leicester No. 1 Hospital Management Committee, to the editor of the Leicester Mercury dealing frankly and fully with the hospital situation in the area. This was published on 14th February. There was a further meeting between the chairman and senior officers of the board and the consultants on 2nd March.
  I do not want to suggest for a moment that things are everything that they ought to be in the Leicester region at present, but the House will appreciate that the present situation there has not just suddenly developed. The conditions of which the hon. Member complains have obtained for a number of years—certainly during the period of the last Government. However, I assure the House that there is no complacency about the present state of the hospital service, and that my right hon. Friend is determined to introduce improvements as rapidly as the country's resources permit.
  Mr. John Peel: Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary would be good enough to answer this point, which is that the tremendous increase in the waiting lists for the hospitals has suddenly appeared over the last year, and that this really requires the most urgent treatment.
  Mr. Loughlin: I am very sorry to contradict the hon. Member, but the fact is that the waiting list has gone up over a considerable period of time. There is no question about that. If the hon. Member checks the figures he will find that what I say is true.
  To return to what I was saying, we can only introduce improvements as rapidly as the country's resources permit. But we must recognise that where so much needs

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  to be done must have regard to overall priorities and tackle the worst situations first. We are doing this energetically, and are providing for a rising volume of capital investment for the building of new hospitals and hospital units, and for the improvement of the existing hospitals.
  I want, if I may, very quickly to deal with the Leicester situation in particular, but I want to make it absolutely clear that it is for the board to assess priorities for development of the service within its region or between one locality and another. Leicester was more fortunate than some other areas in the hospitals taken into the National Health Service, and it is not surprising that the board judged that other areas had a higher claim for capital developments. Nevertheless, there has already been development at Leicester, and about 11 per cent. of the board's investment in the first 17 years of the Health Service has been spent in the area.
  As the hon. Member knows, one of the problems we have been faced with in Leicester has been a shortage of nursing staff. I think that he will accept from me that Leicester has long been a prosperous area, and there has been a long tradition for the womenfolk in the area to go out to work in the industries for which the city is famous. To some extent this has created difficulties in nurse recruitment in the area. There has been for some time a shortage of nurses in some of the Leicester hospitals, particularly the Leicester General Hospital and the Swithland Recovery Home at Woodhouse Eaves. The hospital authorities have taken strenuous measures to overcome this; at the New Year there were 66 more trained nurses working in the group than a year previously. The management committee has been able to reopen all the beds at the general hospital, which were closed for shortage of staff, and also some of the pre-convalescent beds at the Swithland Recovery Home, the use of which should further increase the hospitals' capacity.
  With regard to the present situation in Leicester, I will deal first with the maternity services, since the hon. Member is particularly concerned about these, and especially the Bond Street Maternity Hospital. First, I would assure the hon. Member that my right hon. Friend is
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  aware of the current situation in detail. I also have studied a full report, to which the hon. Member referred, by two of our medical officers who visited the hospital on 24th February. The present unit is indeed working to full capacity; there were about 3,200 admissions in 1964, and 3,500 in 1965, or over 50 patients per bed per year. The very greatest tribute is due to the doctors, the matron and her staff for the effective way in which such a large volume of work is carried out under difficult circumstances in quite unsuitable premises. There is no denying that the buildings are primitive in parts and generally unsatisfactory and should be replaced as soon as possible. The Sheffield Regional Hospital Board has for some years been preparing plans for a new unit, and these have now reached an advanced stage.
  The new unit will not only replace the 70 or so beds provided at Bond Street, but make further provision to meet the needs of Leicester. The new unit will have 156 beds and 30 special care baby cots with all the necessary supporting services. The estimated cost is something over £1 million. A major development of this nature needs to be planned with great care to fulfil all the implications of hospital planning. The whole project has reached an advanced stage in planning, but the cost limit has yet to be approved, after which the designs have to be completed and the usual stages gone through before the contractor can begin. This is likely to take 18 months. After that the planned contract period is two and a half years.
  I give these facts because I do not want to create any undue optimism. At the same time I assure the House that the Sheffield Regional Hospital Board and the Ministry are treating this scheme as a very urgent matter, and—
  Mr. Peel Mr. Peel rose—
  Mr. Loughlin: I am sorry, but I am short of time and I want to answer the hon. Members who have spoken.
  It is hoped that construction will be able to begin towards the end of next year, that is, as soon as the plans are ready. I do not know whether this assurance will be satisfactory to the hon. Member—
  Mr. Peel: Can the hon. Gentleman say why in September, 1964, the starting date

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  could he April, 1967, and it has had to be deferred since?
  Mr. Loughlin: This is in keeping with a lot of things in the hospital service. We have had to look at the whole issue of the projected plans of the previous Government on the basis of how it was possible to meet them. Even today at Question Time—
  Miss Mervyn Pike: This Government—
  Mr. Loughlin: The hon. Lady says, "This Government", but if the last Government had done its job in the proper way some of the difficulties with which we are faced today would not have come about.
  Miss Pike: The hon. Gentleman must at least recognise that we did things more quickly.
  Mr. Loughlin: It took the last Government 13 years to get us to the position
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  in which we are now, but the hon. Lady expects us to complete all the projects in 13 months.
  Miss Pike: I expect them to get on with the planning.
  Mr. Loughlin: I want to make reference to other maternity services in Leicester and make clear that the board does not regard this as the complete answer, but as a first step. Other developments in the maternity services are being considered—
  The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at twenty-six minutes to-Eleven o'clock.