RHODESIA (Hansard, 7 May 1968)

§ Q6. Mr. Hamling
asked the Prime Minister what reports have been submitted to him on the organisation of resistance within Rhodesia to the illegal régime.

§ The Prime Minister
I receive regular reports on this and other aspects of the Rhodesian situation but my hon. Friend will not expect me to discuss the sources of information on events in Rhodesia which are available to me.

§ Mr. Hamling
Will my right hon. Friend accept the view that this side of the House would strongly support the Government in aiding such illegal organisations, even though we understand that details ought not to be published?

§ The Prime Minister
I am not sure what my hon. Friend means by "illegal". What is illegal is the régime, and we do not support that. My hon. Friend, who voted in the Division Lobby not long ago, will recognise that Mr. Smith has now declared his position. He has stated in terms that he totally rejects any idea of majority rule, which means he rejects now—and he made clear he has always rejected—the six principles on which my predecessor and I have both negotiated with him.

§ Mr. Hastings
Does the Prime Minister agree that the recruiting, training, and arming of the terrorists in Zambia and the Zambesi Valley are being carried out by the Soviet Union, Communist China, 213 Algeria, and Cuba? Does the Prime Minister further agree that those Powers are not exactly among our best friends?

§ The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman will remember that during a recent debate on Rhodesia I warned hon. Members who thought that this was a parochial matter to recognise that that is exactly what would happen. Their refusal to recognise world concern and African concern in the matter was a prescription for putting the whole of Southern Africa into the hands of internationally organised chaos.

§ Mr. Speaker
Mr. Shinwell, to ask a supplementary question.

§ Mr. Shinwell
Question No. 7.

§ Mr. Speaker
I called the right hon. Member to ask a supplementary on Question No. Q6. We had passed the time to begin other Questions.

§ Mr. Shinwell
Mr. Speaker, are you aware that for several months I have been putting down Questions to the Prime Minister, and have tried to keep within the rules of the modern procedure of the House, but it always happens, for some reason or other, that my Questions are not answered orally? I am accumulating a supply of supplementary questions, and there ought to be some occasion on which I am able to ask them.

§ Mr. Speaker
I am in complete sympathy with the right hon. Member. This is a problem which he shares with many other hon. Members. The arranging of Questions to the Prime Minister is a matter of pure chance. Some hon. Members seem to be luckier than others.

§ The Prime Minister
Further to that point of order. Mr. Speaker, would not it help my right hon. Friend and others who want to get Questions down if there was some machinery by which, when a Question is put down for the eleventh or more time, having been answered ten times, it is taken off the Order Paper?

§ Mr. Speaker
That is another matter altogether.

§ Mr. Atkinson
Further to that point of order. Is it not a fact that it is the printer of the Order Paper who determines the order of the Questions?

§ Mr. Speaker
Perhaps I had better explain the system a little more clearly. Every day hon. Members submit Questions to the Table Office, usually on the very first day on which they are entitled to do so. Those put in on that day are collected, looked at by the Table Office, and sent to the printer. The order in which they appear on the Order Paper is purely a matter of chance. They are taken in a batch to the printer, and he takes them out by chance as they come.

§ Mr. Tapsell
Further to that point of order. Mr. Speaker, will you consider this matter further, bearing in mind the great political importance which is now attached to the Questions which the Prime Minister is able to reach, and also the fact that it is unquestionably the case that when an hon. Member puts down two Questions to the Prime Minister they are grouped, and therefore it cannot be pure chance? The whole system of leaving this degree of influence to a printing office is not very satisfactory.

§ Mr. Speaker
I share the anxiety which every hon. Member feels about his desire to get his Question in a favourable position on the Order Paper. We put to the Committee on Procedure the suggestion of time-stamping Questions as they came in, but that was rejected. Obviously I must consider what the House is saying at the moment.

§ The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Fred Peart)
I think that the matter ought to be looked into very carefully. I have always had the impression from my experience in the House over a long period that Questions put down first appeared first on the Order Paper. It may be that there are reasons why this is not so. I think that perhaps the matter ought to be considered carefully.

§ Mr. Speaker
I should be grateful if the Services Committee would look into this. It has done so before.