GOVERNMENT POLICY STATEMENTS (MINISTER OF INFORMATION) (Hansard, 12 June 1969)

§ Q3. Mr. Evelyn King
asked the Prime Minister if he will appoint a Minister of Information with the duty of co-1668 ordinating the substance and timing of all major statements of Government policy.

§ Q4. Mr. Onslow
asked the Prime Minister what is the practice of his administration with regard to the issue of Ministerial statements.

§ Q8. Mr. Boston
asked the Prime Minister what is the practice of his administration concerning public statements by Ministers in Great Britain and abroad.

§ The Prime Minister
On the appointment of a Minister of Information, I would refer to my reply to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mr. Henig) on 11th February. As far as Ministerial statements are concerned, there are, as in previous administrations, arrangements to ensure that these are in accordance with policy agreed by Ministers collectively. As far as statements abroad are concerned, my right hon. Friends follow the practice which has been traditional in these matters.—[Vol. 777, c. 288]

§ Mr. King
Does the Prime Minister share the view expressed by the Paymaster-General on 8th May that all Government information policies are weakened by what she described as unfair vitriolic television campaigns? If that were so, have not the Government a legal duty, or does he think that the Minister was exaggerating?

§ The Prime Minister
I have seen certain reports—I think that they were in respect of the date mentioned by the hon. Gentleman—which did not appear to be entirely accurate; that is, if he was referring to the speech which my right hon. Friend made in Birkenhead. I am not responsible for television, radio or Press accounts of Ministerial statements. It is a fact that sometimes not as much space is given to the more successful statements as is given to matters which are issues of public controversy in this House. This has been seen in the past few weeks.

§ Mr. Onslow
While the whole House must agree that the question of increased health and spectacle charges is a nostalgic one for the Prime Minister, may I ask him to confirm that if it had been left to him to decide the timing of the statement which was recently made by the 1669 Secretary of State for Social Services, that statement would have been made after, rather than before, the local government elections?

§ The Prime Minister
There is obviously some nostalgia for the hon. Gentleman in this matter, which I thought had been finally cleared up following a written Answer which I gave to the hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Maurice Macmillan) and as a result of certain things that I said on television.
I take full responsibility for the timing. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we should time these announcements to be made only after local elections, then I suppose that that would be in accordance with the famous case of the Polaris submarine orders of May, 1963. At that time Glasgow and Merseyside were in for the contract. Glasgow polled on the Tuesday. It was announced on the Wednesday that the contract had gone to Merseyside, before Merseyside polled on the Thursday.

§ Mr. Boston
Would my right hon. Friend agree that the standards for statements made abroad apply no less to the Opposition than to the Government and that some of the reported statements of the Leader of the Opposition while he was in the United States fell deplorably below the standard expected of him? Would my right hon. Friend agree that the right hon. Gentleman should have had the statesmanship to refuse to be drawn into anti-British Government remarks of that kind with the aim of exploiting the situation—[Interruption.]—for party political purposes.

§ The Prime Minister
I think, as I said last week, that it is really a matter of taste and standards. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] The Question asked about the practice of publishing statements by Ministers. I remember that when I was asked a Question last year in a similar television programme—it might have been the same one; I am not sure—about some manœuvre by the right hon. Gentleman and a Motion on the Order Paper about Vietnam I said that I would deal with it when I got home and that, though I was in favour of exporting most things, I was not in favour of exporting our political controversies.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
Would it not be a good thing if the Prime Minister 1670 adopted my right hon. Friend's standards of telling the truth at home and abroad?

§ The Prime Minister
In our case, we say the same things both at home and abroad about the facts which this country is facing, facts which we inherited. I certainly do not propose to accept the right hon. Gentleman's advice about accepting his right hon. Friend's standards in respect of what he comes back and tells us that the Shah of Persia said.

§ Mr. Dobson
Will my right hon. Friend arrange for the Opposition to co-ordinate statements on major policy, particularly statements made from time to time—bitterly resented by many—by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell)—[HON. MEMBERS: "Where is he?"]—as there is no co-ordinating statement of any kind from the Leader of the Opposition?

§ The Prime Minister
I do not think this is a matter for me; it is, of course, a matter for the Leader of the Opposition. I think there may be an unfair innuendo in what my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Dobson) suggested in the sense that I have no reason to think that the Leader of the Opposition agrees with the statements made by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell); it takes him about four months to catch up with him.

Several Hon. Members
rose—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Mr. Heath, Business Question.

§ Mr. Heath
I had hoped, Mr. Speaker, that you were calling me to put a supplementary question.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I did not see the right hon. Gentleman rise. Mr. Heath.

§ Mr. Heath
As the Prime Minister now has to follow the unusual course of prefacing what are alleged to be major speeches on industrial relations with the remark "if the Press reports he had read were correct", and as in fact the two reports to which he referred were completely incorrect—one, that I was proposing to give nuclear weapons to Germany and, second, what I had said to the Shah—will he now withdraw the comments he made, and withdraw them 1671 in full? If he wants to read what I said about nuclear weapons and the Franco-British deterrent, I can give him a complete transcript of the conference we had in Washington. Second, as I have made absolutely no statement as to what was said by his Imperial Majesty the Shah to me, it was impossible for me incorrectly to have reported him. Will the Prime Minister, therefore, withdraw both his statements?

§ The Prime Minister
With regard to the question about Persia, I would rather accept the veracity of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary as to what was said than the right hon. Gentleman. With regard to what he said in Washington, I acknowledged in my statement that the right hon. Gentleman might have been misreported. He now says that he was misreported. Either he was or he was not. The Opposition Chief Whip had better sort it out with the Leader of the Opposition. I said last Saturday that he might have been misreported. I said that, but a fortnight has gone by without a denial. [Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. We must listen to both sides.

§ The Prime Minister
What The Times said in its report was that the right hon. Gentleman, referring to the proposals of Herr Franz Josef Strauss, said he had put this sort of proposal before and went on to say: The European partners… this is the report in The Times which the right hon. Gentleman was perfectly free to repudiate, and if he wanted to do so he should have done it a fortnight ago— must sooner or later have a nuclear capability. Since France and Britain have a nuclear capability and since he said that the partners must have nuclear capability, he could not mean Britain or France. Whom then did he mean?

§ Mr. Heath
As I have said, that report is completely untrue. I have offered the Prime Minister the complete transcript of what I said. Why does the Prime Minister—[Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. We must listen to both sides.

§ Mr. Heath
Why does the Prime Minister devote a considerable part of a major speech to something based on a completely false report, as I have told him? Why does he not withdraw now? As to the Shah, the Foreign Secretary cannot know what passed between us because I have not stated in public what passed between us; so will the Prime Minister withdraw that as well?

§ The Prime Minister
On the second point, the Prime Minister reported—[Laughter.]—the Foreign Secretary reported that the Shah of Iran had said that the right hon. Gentleman must either have misreported or misunderstood him. He was referring to the statements made by the right hon. Gentleman. On the first question, I have said that I based my speech last weekend on a matter raised in Britain within a day of his making the statement in the report in The Times. The right hon. Gentleman had a fortnight in which to deny its accuracy. His Central Office went to great lengths to defend him, with some very thin excuses for his other statements. It did nothing to say that he had been misreported. Of course I should be glad to receive the transcript which he has produced and to study it, but he could have denied what was in The Times if he says that he was misreported.