COMMONWEALTH SETTLEMENT BILL

HC Deb 05 April 1967 vol 744 cc159-76

Order for Second Reading read.

10.24 a.m.

The Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Herbert Bowden)

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The purpose of this Bill is to enable the Government to continue to cooperate financially with other Commonwealth Governments and organisations in schemes designed to facilitate emigration to and settlement in Commonwealth countries. The Secretary of State has been empowered, under earlier Acts, to enter into financial agreements subject to a limit of an annual expenditure by Her Majesty's Government of £1.5 million. The provisions in the Acts enabling the Secretary of State to make these financial agreements lapse on 31st May, 1967.

It has long been our belief that the flow of British migrants to other countries of the Commonwealth brings benefits to all concerned and is a source of great strength and unity to the Commonwealth as a whole. Of the 860,000 British migrants who left these shores to settle overseas during the years 1962 to 1965, nearly two-thirds—or over 550,000—found new homes in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. During that same period, British immigrants into those three countries represented more than one-third of the total immigration. The British Government believe that this steady influx helps to strengthen the bonds between our family of nations.

We know that Commonwealth countries remain anxious to attract British settlers who, in addition to their British blood, bring with them a diversity of arts and skills to enhance the economic, social and cultural life of their countries. The Australian Government continue to attach very great important to Britain's participation in the Assisted Passage Scheme for British migrants, Canada's immigration policy results in the greater proportion of her migrants coming from Britain. As for New Zealand, in 1965–66, of the 35,000 immigrants admitted, almost half came from the United Kingdom.

The scale of British financial help for migration has varied over the past 45 years according to economic and social conditions in this country and the receiving countries, and is now limited to a contribution to the United Kingdom-Australian Assisted Passage Scheme, and in addition to support for certain voluntary societies dealing with child migration, the precise terms of this assistance being controlled by the legislation presently under consideration.

The Assisted Passage Scheme to Australia provides subsidised passages for British immigrants from the United Kingdom. The British migrants selected by the Australian Government pay £10 towards their fare in the case of adults, and nothing at all if they are under the age of 19. During the period 1962–65 over 214,000 assisted immigrants have taken advantage of this scheme to leave the United Kingdom and make a new home in Australia. There has been general praise for the efficient way in which the Australian authorities conduct this scheme, which calls for complex administrative arrangements to cover the selection of the migrants and their journey to Australia, and to ensure that they are settled into their new surroundings with the minimum difficulty and delay. Inevitably there are some failures, cases where intending settlers find that they are not ready for this complete change in their way of life, but it is an undeniable fact that the majority of immigrants settle down very happily in their new homes.

The bulk of the cost of this scheme, amounting annually to about £8 million, is borne by the Australian Government. The British Government for their part contribute £150,000 which could really be regarded as a token payment. Nevertheless, this token payment is highly regarded by the Australian Government who see in it the continued interest of this country in the infusion of people of British stock into the Australian social and economic scene and in the maintaining of the close links between Britain and Australia. It is true that this relatively modest financial contribution can have little practical effect on the numbers emigrating, but we are very much aware of the political importance which the Australian Government attach to the assisted passage scheme. We also recognise and value the way in which the Australian Government have been willing to meet our wishes that they should accept as immigrants a fair cross-section of our population, and not seek to recruit only those who are highly skilled and possess professional qualifications.

In addition to this assisted passage scheme, we have agreements, under the Commonwealth Settlement Act, with four voluntary societies in this country, which make arrangements for the migration of children to Australia and for their care and training when they have arrived and settled down there. Over the 45 years during which this policy of helping with child migration, largely by financial contribution, has been followed, circumstances have changed, and improved economic and social conditions in this country as a whole are reflected in the fact that far fewer children are now being sent overseas under child migration schemes than in the past. In fact, none are now going alone, every child being accompanied by one parent.

Of the four societies with which the Government currently have agreements under the Act, the Fairbridge Society is by far the most active and the one with which Her Majesty's Government have most dealings.

The British Government contribute £4 outfit allowance per child and £1 a week towards the maintenance of each child until the age of 16 as long as the child is in the care of the society, and on condition that the Australian State Government also contribute. On the Australian side, the Commonwealth Government pay to the societies an £8 outfit allowance per child, together with a 16s. a week maintenance allowance and the normal family allowance, while the Australian State Governments contribute a maintenance allowance according to varying rates. Children emigrating under this scheme go to one of the Fairbridge Homes in Australia where parents can visit them as frequently and as regularly as they wish. Expenditure under the agreements with the four societies which we assist under the Act is currently running at about £10,000 a year.

The other societies have similar schemes. The aim of all these schemes is not to separate the child permanently from the parent, but rather to ensure that, when circumstances permit, the family can be reunited and can then make a home together.

Emigration clearly has played a decisive part in the development of the Commonwealth in the past. It is less easy to discern, perhaps, the extent of its rôle in the years ahead. In introducing this Bill, the Government once more reaffirm the significance which they attach to the subject, and I am sure that the whole House would agree that the Government should continue their present co-operation with other Commonwealth Governments in the form and spirit I have outlined. I hope, therefore, that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.

10.34 a.m.

Mr. Richard Wood (Bridlington)

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the very clear explanation of the Bill which he has given, and may I say that his recent journey to Australia and New Zealand has given to his speech an even greater authority than his speeches always command.

Like him, and as my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) said when he introduced the Bill in 1962, I and most of my right hon. and hon. Friends welcome a steady flow of emigrants, but we recognise that it is possible that the flow of emigrants from this country may get out of balance from time to time. It is that which is the basis of the disquiet which the right hon. Gentleman will wholly understand and which we expressed two months ago in the debate on the brain drain. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) pointed out on that occasion, if too great a vacuum of skilled manpower were created in this country, it would attract to this country men and women from a number of less developed countries whom those countries can ill afford to lose.

Were it not for that fact, which no one who has visited any of the less developed countries can disregard, I should be the more inclined to be wholly single-minded in my encouragement of migration from this country, especially to countries of the Commonwealth.

We believe that the organisation which we call the State exists not for its own good but for the good of the individuals within it. Certainly it has never been the belief of my party that the State should do for individuals what those individuals can as well or better do for themselves. As we conceive it and as we are frequently reminded in the House in many other contexts, the function of the State is to create conditions in which each individual can realise his full potential and make the most of his natural ability.

If that is our conviction, I find it very difficult to understand why we should place limitations, even mentally, on the free movement of individuals from this country to another. I imagine and hope that we are unlikely ever to erect barriers to keep in Britain those who feel that their future lies elsewhere.

It is certainly true that the collective view which Parliament expresses from time to time, whether that view in comparatively restrictive or relatively liberal can have an influence on countless individual decisions which will be taken in the years ahead. I hope that our view on this matter will become increasingly liberal, because I believe that it is in the liberal direction and not by a philosophy of restriction that this country can continue to exercise its most decisive influence in the years to come.

It is for these reasons that I welcome the Bill, although I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman or anyone else would claim, any more than it was claimed on the occasion of the introduction of the 1962 Bill, that it is a major step towards the further encouragement of migration to the Commonwealth.

As the right hon. Gentleman made plain, the lion's share of the money which is expended annually under the authority of these Acts has for many years found its way into the assisted passage schemes. However admirable those may be—and I concur entirely with what the right hon. Gentleman said about them—the money expended through them does not add to the total of migrants. It is a little unrealistic that we should continue every five years to give Her Majesty's Ministers authority to spend up to £1,500,000 annually when the average for recent years under both Conservative and Socialist Administrations has been around £160,000.

For reasons which I have already given I am not anxious, on these grounds, to reject or even amend the Bill. What I am anxious to see, as soon as the Government feel free to return to their first flush of financial liberality, is that fuller use should be made of the powers that we are about to give them in this legislation.

In the debates of 1962, the right hon. Gentleman who is now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and my hon. Friend the Member for Surbiton (Mr. Fisher) pressed for fuller statistics to assist the Overseas Migration Board in its work. My hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine), who replied for the Government on that occasion, explained that the Board's work would be made easier by the sample survey.

I am pleased to find that in the Report published at the end of 1965, Cmnd. 2861, the Board acknowledged that the sample survey represented a considerable improvement on the statistics hitherto available. The Board still believed, however, in paragraph 2, that nothing short of a complete count of migrants will provide fully satisfactory statistics and it suggested that the sampling system should be re-examined in two or three years' time—that is, at the end of this or next year.

We have the right to ask the Government, particularly in the light of the views expressed by a prominent member of the present Government, for a firm undertaking not only that that examination will be carried out at the end of this or next year, but that, if the Board still thinks it desirable, some way of providing fuller statistics will then be introduced.

I have no doubt that my right hon. and hon. Friends will join me in welcoming the Bill. I hope that they will also join me in pressing the Government as soon as practicable to make as full use of it as possible. The last table in the White Paper, Cmnd. 2861, seems to me to give us all a great deal of food for thought. That is the table which relates to the future total population of the United Kingdom. On those estimates, the 1964 population of 54 million will apparently, at the turn of the century, be very nearly 75 million. Of that 75 million, I hope very much that I shall still be one. If I am one, however, I wonder how it will be possible to move around, particularly if, as is likely, most of the 20 million additional people invest in a motor car.

More seriously, I ask the Secretary of State whether it is his opinion that it will be in Britain or whether it will be scattered throughout the Commonwealth, with its vast opportunities and its continuing need of men and women, that a large proportion of that future 75 million population will have the fullest opportunity to go ahead.

I have no doubt that a great many of that population will continue to go—and I believe that we should encourage them to go—as our countrymen have gone for hundreds of years past, to the four corners of the world. I hope that we shall gradually come to see more clearly that this emigration is not only for their own benefit and that we shall consequently do more than we do now to ease their start in new surroundings.

I hope that we can also have the vision to understand that in a world which is becoming increasingly interdependent, the massive intermingling of human beings is the surest guarantee of benefit not only to individuals but to countries as well, and also, I believe, to humanity as a whole. I therefore have pleasure in supporting the Bill.

10.43 a.m.

Mr. John Tilney (Liverpool, Wavertree)

I, too, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood), welcome what the Secretary of State has said in his opening remarks, but I also regret that such a small amount of the money which has been voted by Parliament has been used. This was referred to at considerable length in the debate in 1962. I understand from the Secretary of State that 214,000 people have been assisted—out of a total of over 550,000 who, in five years, have gone to Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It is a small step at least in the right direction.

I also welcome what the Secretary of State has said about no child going without one parent. In past years it has been a bit tough that children of a comparatively young age have gone out on their own to find a comparatively new life in Australia. This has, perhaps, added to the toughness of that great continent, but it is more civilised that children should now be accompanied by at least one parent.

It is difficult to decide what makes people wish to emigrate. In my opinion, money for the passage hardly comes into it. It depends on many considerations, one of which may be the political complexion of the Government in this country. It may be unemployment here or a wish to get different employment overseas. Questions of housing, the education of children, the future of those children and of the children's children in the decades to come, and how the benefits of the Welfare State here compare with what is available overseas—all these influences are very different from the great pioneering spirit of past decades.

I accept that Australia has to commit vast capital expenditure in the way of housing and the well-being of her immigrants, but she is getting, as are the other Dominions in a much lesser way, the benefit of very considerable expenditure in this country in the education, for example, that we in the United Kingdom have given to those immigrants. Most of those immigrants now go to towns whereas in the old days they went much more often to the outback, to that great, vast territory where farms are calculated in square miles rather than in acres.

We do not want to lose our best people, but we must not take up a narrow nationalistic outlook. What is wanted is that the Western way of life in freedom should endure against all the possibilities of autocratic Communism and the quite different kind of faith which is paramount in the territory north of Australia.

I particularly hope, naturally, that the British way of life will find a reflection in Australia—it certainly does today—but it would be wrong to expect Australia to copy entirely the ways of life of Britain any more than her tastes can be considered to be the same as British market tastes. This is something which so often our exporters tend to forget.

The potentialities of Australia are indeed vast. It may be that while droughts and fires continue—and how much one regrets the great fire that ravaged Tasmania not long ago—once we can find an economic way of turning salt water into fresh, that vast heart of Australia will be opened up to many more people. She has vast mineral and agricultural wealth. She has a lovely climate and is a very virile country. Indeed, I often think that the basic strength of Britain, forgetting all the frills, fashions and snobbery of the past, finds a very strong root now in Australia.

It is not, however, easy for some of the older people who emigrate to acclimatise themselves to the Australian scene or to find new jobs. I remember coming across some of my ex-constituents in a hostel in one of the housing camps at Adelaide a few years ago. They must learn new skills and become accustomed to new techniques and a new outlook, and occasionally even to a new type of language. That obviously takes a little time.

The States of the Commonwealth of Australia vary very much, and everything depends on whether the immigrant lands in Perth, with its very attractive climate, almost an island divided from the rest of Australia by a vast desert, yet with a hinterland of great mineral and iron ore wealth; in Adelaide, beautifully laid out, and the driest State of the driest continent, yet with the sprinklers going in every garden and field—more so than in the gardens of my constituency; or, as the bulk do, the immigrant goes to Melbourne or Sydney, or, at the end of the line, to Brisbane, lying on the banks of a great meandering river, and with a lovely tropical climate. There is vast scope for anyone who goes to Australia, which is already almost a little America; if it has more fresh water we may find that the "little" of that phrase is altogether erased.

I am glad that the Secretary of State said that a fair cross-section should be received by Australia, and I believe that that applies not only to the young but to an all-age group. The group will be much happier if they can go out as father and son, and even grandchildren, to that country, where the average age is much lower than it is here. If they can take their friends with them, as has happened in a number of cases, they will be happier still.

In the 1962 debate, suggestions were made that help might be given over housing. I accept that with so many houses needed in this country it is not easy for Her Majesty's Government to offer that help, except possibly on a completely economic basis of investment. Perhaps the Secretary of State could refer to that when he winds up. The Dutch and the Italians have helped, and I do not see why we should not also do so.

Could the Secretary of State also say exactly what countries have benefited from the small expenditure of £160,000 in the past year? Is it not possible for the airlines to produce proper records? I have just been in the Far East, and everywhere I went I had to fill up a form. It took only about one-and-a-half to two minutes, and I cannot see why the airlines going to and from Australia should not be asked to produce such a form to be filled up by their passengers.

Perhaps the Secretary of State will also say what the migration in this direction has been, both of those who had tried to emigrate permanently to the Dominions and those of the next generation who have decided to return to the old country. If we are to consider migration it is important that we should know those facts.

I have one further suggestion. When I had the privilege of going to all the States in Australia and to New Zealand in 1963 I found that a number of university places were not filled—although the universities of the great cities like Sydney and Melbourne are over-full, and there is a waiting list. In this country we have a number of would-be undergraduates who are on the margin of passing into our universities and cannot get a place. Would it not be possible to use some of the money voted by Parliament to allow those young men and women to take up vacancies in universities in Australia and New Zealand? I believe that that would be very good for all three countries.

If the Commonwealth is to mean anything we must co-operate on the functional side. The Bill is a small step to that end. We are only a junior partner in the assisted passages schemes but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington said, we are apt to be overpopulated and will become more so.

The decision to emigrate must remain very personal. But if the wish of this country to enter the Common Market of Europe should be denied, I believe that the English-speaking world will have to come together even more than it is at present, and this small Bill will help in a very small way to that end.

10.56 a.m.

Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine (Rye)

As I had the privilege of visiting Australia once again early this year, I support everything my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) has just said about the opportunities there. I am not sure whether when talking about Australia he had in mind that I was born in Canada, and so was suggesting in a sense that a word might be said on behalf of the Canadians. Anybody who has watched what has been happening in Canada over a number of years cannot fail to have been impressed with the great opportunities there just as there are in Australia.

I am rather sad that so many of those opportunities are going to people who are not of British stock. I have seen many people going to those countries and living a full and prosperous life, and I am fully convinced that migration is good not only for them but also for the receiving country and for the United Kingdom. That was why I was particularly pleased that the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs said that he felt that migration was a source of great strength. A clear statement like that on behalf of Her Majesty's Government is very welcome.

I was not so pleased when he went on to say that what was done under the Bill was now limited to certain things. I should like him to have read with a little more care the first page of the rather attenuated document we are given, headed "Commonwealth Settlement Bill", where it is seen that we are giving the Government an opportunity "to cooperate in … schemes." I hope that he will direct his attention to schemes which will enable him to increase the amount of money which he can spend out of the £1½ million to be spent in each year that we shall vote him today.

As I am a member of the Council of the Fairbridge Society, I thank him on behalf of those who work so hard to achieve its results for what he was good enough to say about its work. That will be greatly appreciated by a number of people.

When the Secretary of State set out the limitations, I wondered whether there are not certain practical things to which he might direct his attention to achieve the object we unanimously support today. Some have already been mentioned. The first is the question of statistics, which was raised in the last debate in 1962, and I remember Lord Alport, as he now is, referring to them in the debate in 1957. It is about time something was done to produce the necessary statistics. That would be one way in which a little of this money might well be spent.

My second suggestion has been mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood). He said that there would be 75 million people in this country at the turn of the century. We know that already we are one of the most heavily populated countries in the world. There are few countries which have a population of more than 570 people to the square mile, as we have. We know the difficulty of getting about on the roads today, and we know, too, that unless something drastic is done it will become more and more difficult as the years go by.

I think that it would be profitable for the Commonwealth Secretary to cooperate with some of his right hon. Friends to see whether he can work out a scheme which would define the optimum population for the United Kingdom. He would then be able to consider how he could dovetail migration in with that figure, and perhaps take more active steps with regard to Commonwealth settlement.

My next point is about a balanced scheme of migration. I was pleased to hear the right hon. Gentleman say that a scheme has been arrived at with regard to those who are going to Australia. I would like him to look a little more keenly into the arrangements being made for balanced migration to see whether he can spend some of his money on encouraging older members of families to go with the young migrants. If some of the older people, who are kept at home largely because of their economic circumstances, were able to go into those communities they would probably live a happier life with their families and they would make a great contribution to the receiving country as well.

My fourth suggestion is concerned with the amount of money which we ate able to invest abroad. It is almost a year since the President of the Board of Trade went to Ottawa and made a speech in which he said: Investments have been built up again to an impressive total of £1,100 million. If somebody wants to invest in the Commonwealth he does not get very much encouragement from the Government, and I think it is something of a dilemma to find the President of the Board of Trade saying how much he welcomes that investment and how proud he is that once again it is £1,100 million, when at the same time people are not given encouragement to go on investing. At the same time if we invest money, it seems right to send men and management with the money so that we have a balanced investment which will bring them greater opportunities and give us a good return over a long period.

In 1913 we managed to send 225,000 people to the Commonwealth, and at that time we were investing 7 per cent. of our net income. In recent years we have never approached anything like 225,000 and we have heard the President of the Board of Trade congratulating us on an investment of about 2 per cent. I think that this is something which the Commonwealth Secretary might consider to see whether there is a way in which he can co-operate in encouraging people to migrate when the money is being invested abroad.

One way in which tremendous successes have been achieved both in Australia and Canada is where whole factories with the workers and equipment have moved, and this again is something which I think the right hon. Gentleman ought to consider.

The final matter about which I want to say a few words is the subject of universities. This has been touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Wavertree. Some years ago when I heard that the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme was being introduced, in my naive way I thought it meant that we would be able to move people around between the different universities in different parts of the Commonwealth. I then discovered that it operated only in respect of people from a country which did not have the necesssary facilities for them there. This meant that virtually nobody from this country was able to benefit from the scheme.

There is one Canadian, Colonel Harold Hemming, who, over a number of years, has arranged annually for about 70 students to go from this country to universities in Canada. If an individual can achieve that kind of success, what might the Commonwealth Secretary do if he were to discuss the matter with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science to see whether it is possible for the vacancies in Australia, to which my hon. Friend referred, and the opportunities which I know are available in Canada, to be taken up so that there is an increase in the number of our students going to Commonwealth universities? I would like to see at least one student going from this country to each of the universities in Canada and in Australia.

Mr. Tilney

And in New Zealand.

Mr. Godman Irvine

Yes, indeed, and in New Zealand. I think that it would be of great benefit not only to the individuals, but would be a great help to the universities if they had somebody from the United Kingdom with whom they could discuss our problems and our way of life.

One of the things which the Fairbridge Society does, and to which the right hon. Gentleman did not refer, is to arrange for students to go to the University of Western Australia in Perth. There are schemes afoot for the number to be increased. I think that there are definite openings and possibilities for increased migration of those who are able to take advantage of the vacancies in some universities in the Commonwealth.

At the same time, I think that it would do no harm if, with the assistance perhaps of the Secretary of State for Education and Science, the Commonwealth Secretary were to make a survey of the position in technical colleges. There are a number of vacancies in parts of the Commonwealth to which people could go and receive apprentice training. This would enable them to contribute richly to the life of the country to which they went and at the same time would enable them to benefit from the training they received.

Those are five specific ways in which I suggest that the Commonwealth Secretary might on another occasion come to the House and say that he was doing much better than spending only £161,000 out of the £1½ million which we are voting him. I welcome the Bill, and I hope that the fullest use will be made of it.

11.8 a.m.

Mr. Bowden rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher)

Order. The right hon. Gentleman requires the leave of the House to speak again.

Mr. Bowden

I ask for that leave. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) for his comments. With regard to migration generally, I take the view that this is, and always must be, a matter of individual choice. I do not think that it is for the Government to encourage or discourage migration from these shores. On the other hand, I think that we should always bear in mind the loss to this country if, having spent a considerable amount of money on training them, people with high skills and qualifications feel that to make full use of their new skills they should leave these shores and go to some other Commonwealth country. Nevertheless, I reiterate that this must be an individual choice. The Government should neither encourage nor discourage.

When one considers this Bill, I think one should realise that it was 45 years ago that it was first proposed that assistance should be provided by the Government of the day for people who, of their own choice, wished to emigrate from this country and to settle in a Commonwealth country. It is true that during certain periods, for instance at the end of the war, movement was rather more rapid, but during the last five years the amount of money spent under the Act has been restricted to about £160,000 to £161,000.

We seek authority, as previous Governments have done, for the sum of £1½ million because there must be a great deal of flexibility. We can never be sure that we shall not need to increase the sums of money when greater numbers of people wish to emigrate. Although, under the scheme, the Australian Assisted Passage Scheme and the four organisations which I have mentioned take up the whole of the £160,000, there is nothing to prevent similar schemes from being assisted under the legislation, and the Government would look sympathetically at any such request. Canada, for instance, has her own scheme of a two-year loan to pay the passage of would-be emigrants. New Zealand also assists. But if there should arise schemes rather like the Australian scheme or like the four organisations I have mentioned, we would sympathetically consider in what way they could be helped.

The hon. Member for Wavertree mentioned the question of housing. As the Bill stands we would not be able to assist in housing because it is clearly laid down in a Section of the 1922 Act that the money should be spent on training and the provision of assisted passages, but not in the provision of accommodation and housing. It is true that Australia is the only country which we are assisting at present. But this need not necessarily always be so.

When one of my predecessors, the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), was moving a similar Bill, he made it clear, as I have done, that the retaining of a figure greatly in excess of what we are contemplating was important for two reasons: first, presentationally to indicate to Commonwealth countries that we are prepared to assist with these schemes, and, secondly, if new applications are made, to enable us to consider them.

The point was made that emigrants to Australia from this country are spreading into the outback. This is true. I checked on it when I was there. But it is equally true that the tendency earlier was to congregate, naturally, where there was work in the larger towns. But there are indications of, for instance, development in Western Australia and of mining exploitation north of Perth which are extremely important. Since the war, almost half of the emigrants to Australia have gone from this country. I know that the Australians wanted that sort of proportion. I am sure that we do, for the reasons which I gave when I moved the Second Reading.

There has been reference to family emigration. This is a human problem which we have all felt at some time or another. There is no doubt that one thing which prevents emigrants going from this country to any Commonwealth country is being torn away from the older members of the family. While it is largely a matter for the receiving country to decide whom it receives as emigrants, Australia considers the position sympathetically. But, given the approval of the receiving country and the fact that this must be a question of individual choice within the family, this is something which we should encourage.

The question of British investment abroad hardly arises under the Bill. It is a problem which was raised with me when I was in Australia. It had to be pointed out that the voluntary programme of investment does not apply to the new developing countries. It applies to Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made it absolutely clear when it was introduced that this was a temporary Measure. He mentioned the period of two years. I accept that with additional British investment in Commonwealth countries—in the older Commonwealth as well as in the new Commonwealth countries—there is a need for British firms and British emigrants to go out and take part in these new developments.

I agree that this is a small Bill. It is a continuation of what has been done for a very long time. We are taking powers to continue the provision of the same amount of money, £1½ million, clearly with a view to consideration of other schemes and requests which may be made to us from time to time. Over the 45 years that these emigration-assisted schemes have been in existence the figures of actual expenditure have varied considerably. I am sure that the Government will at all times sympathetically consider any new applications.

Mr. Tilney

Would the right hon. Gentleman say something about the universities, which, after all, are a form of training? Therefore, presumably, university places could be subsidised under the Bill.

Mr. Bowden

Under the Act as it stands, assisted passages are available to students who are going to study in the universities provided that their intention is to settle in the Commonwealth country concerned. That is the existing position.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. McBride.]

Committee Tomorrow.