SELECT COMMITTEE FOR DEFENCE

HC Deb 25 March 1969 vol 780 cc1453-71

12.15 a.m.

Mr. Julian Ridsdale (Harwich)

I welcome this opportunity of debating the necessity of having a standing Select Committee for Defence, so forcibly advocated by the Labour Party when in opposition and now so disdainfully put aside, in spite of the earnest pleas of Lord Wigg. In view of the forceful manner in which Lord Wigg used to debate the necessity of having a standing Select Committee, I only hope that once again the Government will listen to some of the views he has been expressing recently.

For some time now I have felt that we do not discuss in nearly enough depth the various defence problems which in this technical and nuclear age face Britain. There was a time when each Service was represented in the Cabinet; when each Service had its own independent General Staff which supported its own Minister in the Cabinet; and when equally the Navy League, and the Air League were all powerful lobbies in support of policies which were being pursued by their respective Services.

Even then our defences were at a deplorable level for continental and world war, both in 1914 and in 1939. Now we have no independent General Staff. Indeed, sometimes I think that the Secretary of State has become almost a prima donna with some of the cries we hear across the Floor of the House at Question Time, such as, "The hon. Gentleman is grossly misinformed", or "Absurd".

Then there are the pledges which have been given to us and then broken. Most outstanding have been the pledge about our rôle east of Suez and the conviction that the F.111 would be a world successor to the Canberra if we cancelled the TSR.2. Should not the various statements which the Secretary of State has made recently be probed much more forcibly in depth than they are at present? I do not believe that the one-Service complex which is now growing since the creation of the Ministry of Defence is providing that forum for the debate of defence policy which is vital if we are to get the right answers upon which our whole future depends, and particularly our defence policy.

It is not that I wish to return to the old system, but rather I want to improve on what has been evolving. I am certain that, given the position as it is today with one General Staff, a Secretary of State who has been Secretary of State for Defence for far too long to act as a catalyst to defence opinion, the time has come when we should have a Select Committee to probe and ask the questions which before were being constantly probed by the reaction of one critical independent general staff on that of another, the presence of Service Ministers in the Cabinet, and the existence of a powerful Imperial Defence Committee.

Why, if the Americans consider that such a system is right, should we disdainfully put it aside in the development we have been making towards modernising the procedure of Parliament and for Parliamentary reform, particularly as our defence problem is far more difficult than it was in 1939 and, indeed, our resources far less? Therefore, we as a Parliament should see that we get value for money.

Having been a defence Minister for over two years, I do not believe that Parliament can be nearly well enough informed to look into all the items it should examine except through the medium of a Select Committee. I do not believe that we can adequately discuss the nuclear rôle of Polaris submarines and their effectiveness, the American nuclear shield, or the part nuclear warfare will play in the future at Question Time or in debate on the Floor of the House.

Have we really followed through in enough depth in our defence thinking the statement by the former American Defence Secretary, Mr. McNamara, that the threat of an incredible act is not a credible deterrent, with all the consequences this must have for the rôle of our Navy, Army and Air Force, and, far more important, on the rôle of the Reserves, which might be required to face a conflict that was not nuclear? Have we analysed deeply enough the statement made by the outgoing American Secretary of State, Mr. Rusk, according to Louis Heren's article in The Times of 30th December, that the first lesson he has drawn from Vietnam is that Americans will not defend those allies who have taken no part in that war. As Mr. Rusk sees it, reports Louis Heren, the future is most uncertain for countries such as Britain. Mr. Rusk doubts that his countrymen would defend Sussex from invasion.

In view of those serious statements, how can we be satisfied that N.A.T.O. and we ourselves possess the conventional strength we should? How much reliance can we put on such statements? I would like a Select Committee which could send for people to comment on such statements and inform the House, and not just the Secretary of State for Defence, with no independent staffs. After all, he puts to the House a political and not necessarily a national view, however much I am sure that he believes that he is acting in the national interests, as he wishes, and as we would want him to.

How far is Lord Wigg correct in saying in a forceful article in The Times recently that our choice is suicide or surrender? All these matters and many more should be under far closer scrutiny by the House than they are now. How much easier it would be for a Select Committee to go into secret session! How can one debate properly the questions I have posed unless it can do so at times? If we want to maintain the technical quality of our nuclear weapons, should we, as Der Spiegel asked the Secretary of State, buy the Poseidon missile? How can we talk about these questions unless in the necessary secrecy of a Select Committee? What is the role of our Polaris submarines in this matter? I should like to see adequate probing by the House in a Select Committee, if necessary in a secret Select Committee. There is also the question of the cost of these weapons, and whether we are getting cost-effectiveness. All these are matters for a Select Committee far more than for general debate on the Floor of the House.

Can we really get the technical information we need about defence weapons, whether ships, aircraft or tanks, unless we have the opportunity to examine and hear statements from expert witnesses? For example, there is the question of the replacement of the Canberra and the choice of its successor.

My experience as a defence Minister for over two years leads me to believe that we must have far more debates in depth than we have been having especially in the technical and nuclear world of defence in which we now live, and because of the cost of modern weapons and their technicality. We have never really had adequate probing of the sorry story of the F.111 or the TRS2, or the cancellation of the P. 1154, a supersonic aircraft. Seeing how the old P. 1127 has been developed into an excellent plane, how much better it would have been if we could have developed the P. 1154! These are questions which it is vital we should probe far beyond what we are doing if we are to be constructive about defence. Again, how much has the buying of American aircraft destroyed our aircraft design and scientific staffs and, therefore, our facilities for research and development? All these are detailed questions to which we can get no adequate answer.

I could make many more points, but I hope that I have said enough to make the House realise how inadequate is the probing which we can give at present to our defence policies and organisation, particularly on the nuclear side. Above all, surely we must be satisfied, with the developments taking place in the general rôle of defence policy, that N.A.T.O. possesses enough conventional strength to provide time for hot line diplomacy. We must probe far more than we are doing the question of reserves. Are three days' reserves really adequate before we come to a nuclear posture? Are we facing the reality of our position? How much would ten, 15 or 30 days' reserves for conventional war cost before we went nuclear?

This is the kind of question we cannot ask across the Floor of the House, yet we must have answers if we are to say that we are doing our duty by the country and are getting the right answers at a time when our resources are scarce and it is important to see that we get value with them. Only by establishing a Select Committee on Defence can we provide the forum necessary to probe all these vital questions, on which not only our future security but our survival depend.

12.28 a.m.

Mr. Raymond Fletcher (Ilkeston)

I am in a somewhat strange position. I cannot agree with many of the points put by the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale), yet I support his general plea for a Select Committee for Defence for perhaps slightly different reasons. But it does not matter what reasons we have individually. When this House is united in a demand—and there is not much of a House here at this hour—the specific reasons which flow into that debate from specific hon. Members do not really matter.

I shall resist the temptation to deliver the speech which I had hoped to deliver in the defence debate but which I could not give because I had other business, but it is a powerful temptation to make it. What we have to realise is that there was a time in the history of the House when technical questions of defence could be left to the commanders. The House itself decided who were the top two potential enemies, and the technical details of defence could be left to the experts, the commanders who would be in the field in the event of hostilities. That was fairly easy.

Today, of course, we are faced with a technological revolution in defence which is far more rapid than the technological revolutions happening everywhere else. The people who fought in the Boer War used weapons which would have been recognisable by Wellington's troops in the Peninsular Campaign. But every five to six years now there is a complete revolution in technology which completely transforms the conditions of warfare.

This is something to which the House must give attention, and it cannot give attention in the traditional format of defence debates. We cannot probe, and I do not use that word to signify that we should have committees that would torture Ministers with gridirons, technological consequences of certain innovations in the set format of a defence debate. It is totally impossible to do so. One of the arguments against setting up such a committee is that certain hon. Members only would talk on defence. No one in the modern world is a defence expert; we are all mystified when we meet the technologists. I do not think that this argument stands up.

I have become a convert in the last few weeks to the point of view of the hon. Gentleman, because I took part in a seminar at the Royal United Services Institution. It was an all-party seminar and we probed matters in depth. It was held under special circumstances and we were able to reach a wider measure of agreement between the parties than has ever been possible in defence debates here. I do not argue that this is always a desirable thing. Conflict is just as essential in defence matters, as in every other political matter. It was rather important that at this seminar we were able to reduce the areas of violent disagreement to hardware. In hardware there should be no political argument. There is no such thing as a Conservative frigate, a Liberal frigate or a Labour frigate. There is only a frigate, and the argument is whether it is being properly used, is it in the right place, is it being used in conformity with a sane, coherent strategy?

These are things which a Select Committee for Defence can probe. By its very nature the information established can, in a sense, infiltrate the entire House. In the general defence debates which we would continue to have, hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who would be probing this matter deeper than is now possible, would bring informed discussion to the entire membership of the House. That would be a good thing.

One of the great things about the Secretary of State for Defence is that for my party he has turned the subject of defence into a colossal bore. There was a lime when there were anguished and violent discussions, in which I freely participated, in my own party about defence. It was right that this should have been so. I would not wish to be a member of any party in which these agonising decisions did not take place. It is one of the achievements of my right hon. Friend, and I do not appear for my right hon. Friend in any sense, that defence has become a bore. Perhaps this should be so, because the more defence is removed from party political conflict, the better it is for defence, the better it is for the country and the better it is for the House.

Our function as hon. Members is basically this: whatever Service we belonged to in an earlier incarnation—and we all bear the imprint of the Service we belonged to—we function in this House as shop stewards to the entire Armed Forces. We can best perform that function by the kind of Select Committee which has been advocated by the hon. Gentleman. It is only there that we can be specific; it is only there we can go into details; it is only there that we can go into these maters which, if freely debated on the Floor of the House, could be a potential threat to our security.

In these strange days we have weapons which we dare not use and we deploy forces according to a strategy which cannot possibly be effective. The current deployment of ground forces in N.A.T.O. is political and not strategic. Every hon. Member who studies these matters is well aware that if a thrust comes from the East to the West it will come in the classic Schlieffen style and our forces are not deployed to meet such a thrust, nor could they be in view of the political arrangements in N.A.T.O. It is a political deployment and it may be very sensible. But it does not make strategic sense.

We could explore such matters as those, too, in a Select Committee.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian)

Would my hon. Friend say whether, in his view, the Select Committee should be subject to the Official Secrets Act? If so, would not that mean that there would be first-class and second-class Members of Parliament? If not, how would he hope to have a meaningful Select Committee?

Mr. Fletcher

That is a very difficult question. One does not like to think in terms of first-class and second-class Members of Parliament. But I recognise that some hon. Members know far more than I do about certain subjects. I know absolutely nothing about the housing problem and its solution. But there are hon. Members who know about it and I pay deference to them. In those circumstances, I become a second-class Member and they are first-class Members.

In view of the terms of reference implicit in the hon. Member's speech, it is obvious that certain aspects of this Select Committee's work would have to be subject to the Official Secrets Act. I accept that with regret. This does not create a class of hon. Members in any way superior to other hon. Members except in so far as we have specialists. We all tend to specialise. When a specialist is speaking, hon. Members give him the respect due to his knowledge of the subject. I do not think the objection of my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) stands up. With respect, it is overruled immediately.

I support the hon. Member for Harwich without in any way agreeing with what he said in his defence debate speech. But he is on to a very good thing and a very necessary thing. I am a recent convert. I do not speak all that lucidly because my conversion was so recent. But as a result of one afternoon's experience of discussing defence matters in the R.U.S.I. in the way in which a Select Committee would discuss them, I completely support the suggestion of the hon. Member for Harwich.

12.33 a.m.

Mr. Stephen Hastings (Mid-Bedfordshire)

I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) on raising a matter which is of extreme importance not only in the defence field but in the constitutional field. It is something to which, in view of the recent appointment of Select Committees by the Government, I should have thought the Patronage Secretary, who is to answer our debate, would most certainly pay very careful attention.

I wish to reinforce one proposition which the hon. Member for Ilkeston (Mr. Raymond Fletcher) put, namely, that there should be no such thing as a political aeroplane or a political naval ship. Our debates on these matters have suffered greatly because of the shape of this Chamber, which is not particularly well arranged for logical and cool debate of technological subjects of the kind which my hon. Friend has raised and to which the hon. Member for Ilkeston alluded. This is not the right place coolly to consider questions raised in this context. There is a place here for one of the Select Committees which the present Government have abolished. I would claim some basis for advancing this. I am interested in research and development and I am a member of the Science and Technology Committee. That is well known to the House.

From the evidence and from what we consider in debate, I believe that our experience tends to be influenced by the argument put forward by my hon. Friend. There is a real danger that our debate on these matters are concerned far too much with background. The Public Accounts Committee, for instance, is in many ways a grave disadvantage to our considerations of these things, because we are always thinking about what has happened in the past and where the money has gone instead of considering achievement and how we can advance projects under consideration at present.

Mr. Dalyell

As one who worked for three years in the Public Accounts Committee, how does the House of Commons, other than through the Public Accounts Committee, exercise detailed scrutiny of Whitehall? If one uses that line of argument one is in difficulty.

Mr. Hastings

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for asking that question. I have heard the Public Accounts Committee described by a technologist of considerable ability as not a system of financial control at all but rather an expression of retrospective amazement. Now I have recovered what I had lost earlier, my train of thought, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for West Lothian, whose general concept and aim in these matters is closely related to mine.

Parliament is in some danger of failing to cope with the challenge of modern technology in defence. If we are true to our tradition of centuries of granting Supply and being endlessly connected and concerned only with the granting of Supply, that is to say justifying expenditure in the past, we shall tend to fail in terms of technology. The leading technology is, in the nature of things, bound to be defence. Here is the kernel of the justification of my hon. Friend's proposition this evening, and the only logically possible solution to this is to have a Committee of hon. Members of both sides of the House who are closely connected with the question so that they can judge and solve matters of defence without being bogged down in detailed considerations. I can see no other solution to what is unquestionably a real problem facing the House.

The Government have made a certain advance in the Select Committees which they have set up, one of which, at least, survives, and the logical extension must be in defence. The work of the Select Committee on Science and Technology shows that this must be the next step, and I hope that the Patronage Secretary will accept it as such.

Mr. Dalyell

What are the hon. Gentleman's reflections on whether the proposed Committee on defence should be subject to the Official Secrets Act? It would be interesting to know.

Mr. Hastings

That would unquestionably play some part.

Mr. Dalyell

It is crucial.

Mr. Hastings

I do not know. We should have to take advice, and we should probably be well advised to study the system in the United States. There is no question but that the influence of the equivalent committee in the United States is very high.

Mr. Dalyell

The lobby.

Mr. Hastings

Not only the lobby but the committee itself. Under Mr. McNamara, when he was Secretary of State for Defence, it was, perhaps, the most powerful committee of the Senate and Congress. It had rules regarding security. There were limits beyond which it could not go, or, if it passed the limits, it was required to go into secret session. A similar hurdle has already been overcome in the experience of Select Committees of the House of Commons. We could manage to cope with it.

My hon. Friend has proposed a new Select Committee in the most important field in which Parliament can extend its intelligent control and interest. Our debates and Questions are limited by many factors, which we all recognise. If we are really interested in understanding what is at stake, this seems to be the only extension of our activities which can be regarded as relevant and valuable. My experience of Select Committees and my interest in defence matters convince me that it could be of the greatest importance not only for the House but for the country.

12.48 a.m.

Mr. Patrick Wall (Haltemprice)

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) on raising this matter, and I accept virtually all the arguments put by him, by my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Hordern) and by the hon. Member for Ilkeston (Mr. Raymond Fletcher). However, I advocate a Select Committee on defence for a different reason. We all realise that Parliament today is held in pretty low esteem by the nation. We ourselves sometimes wonder whether we are doing a fully worth-while job in the House. The real reason for this state of affairs is that, when we have major debates in the House, everyone knows that a decision has been taken already and nothing anyone says will alter it—apart from a revolt on the Government side leading to a general election, which happens, perhaps, once in 100 years. It nearly happened once in the last war, but it does not happen in the more normal course of parliamentary life.

We have Question Time, and we have Adjournment debates which help on constituency cases and minor grievances, but they do not deal with the fundamental function of Parliament, which is to discuss policy and control finance.

I suggest that two things are wrong. One is that there is a lack of team work, probably on both sides of the House, certainly, I believe, on mine, stemming probably from the fact that in this House it is not the party supporting the Government or the Opposition party but the Ministers who have the real control over policy and its functions, and most Members on the Government side and all on the Opposition side have no function at all, except to talk in an attempt to direct policy. I am not saying that we on the back benches on either side do not have any influence. What we say probably does have influence—three or four years hence; and what we say in party committees certainly does have influence. So I am not suggesting that we are completely wasting our time, but that the decline of Parliament's prestige in the country is due to the fact that everybody knows that when we have our major debates the decisions are already made and that it is very unlikely that anything we say will be able to alter those decisions.

Permanent specialised Committees were introduced by this Government, and I pay all credit to them for so doing, and particularly the former Lord President of the Council, whose baby, if I may so put it, was the introduction of the Committees; but I have a feeling that the Government have rather lost their nerve at the moment and maybe having second thought. I hope I am wrong, as I would like to see the Committees extended, because I believe they are the way to build team work on both sides of the House, and the way to improve the status of Members of Parliament. Not everybody can be a Minister or wants to be a Minister, but the fact that one is a Member of a permanent Select Committee, in which one has a real interest and does a full-time job of work, adds to the status of the average Member of Parliament and also, let us face it, increases his status in his own constituency and in the country and gives him a real job to do, and that is of benefit both to his own party and to Parliament as a whole.

That is as to the value of the Select Committees. Now I turn to the need, which has already been referred to by other speakers, but which I believe to be twofold. First, there is in defence probably more advance in technology than in any other single field. Secondly, we are, after all, considering sums of £2,000 million a year or more of expenditure on defence. I believe that probably if, for example, we had had a Select Committee on Defence at the time of the Conservative Government some eight years ago we might have succeeded in persuading the Government to adopt the Buccaneer for the R.A.F. and that would have saved an awful lot of money. Again, if we had had the Select Committee on Defence during the time of the Labour Government we might have decided to go on with the TSR.2. With hindsight we can say that that would have been the right answer. I agree that that is not a Conservative plane any more than the Buccaneer was a Socialist plane, but Select Committees cut right across party line and in Select Committees we get well thought out advice from experts from both sides of the House and that can only be of value to the country.

I had forgotten about it until this debate, but I now remember that a couple of years ago I was asked to write for Brassey's Annual an article dealing with the amount of time spent in this House in discussing defence compared with the Senate and Congress. It is really six days, two on defence in general, one of each of the three Services, and one day subsequently on the various Votes, with possibly one other single debate later in the year. Whereas in the United States they spend five months in select committees in both Houses, and then six days in Congress and the Senate, and they really get down to the nuts and bolts of the problems and save a good deal of money for the taxpayers in so doing.

Mr. Dalyell

I do not want to be a nuisance, and I thank the hon. Member for giving way, but has he in fact seen the servicing staff which an American select committee of this kind has? When he talks about nuts and bolts, would he agree one needs engineers, accountants, lawyers, to back one up?

Mr. Wall

I accept that I should have said hardware rather than nuts and bolts, as it would be wrong to go into too great detail. Perhaps in the United States they go to the other extreme. I am not suggesting that we have half the senior officers of the three Services spending half their time giving evidence to a Select Committee. However, the principle is a good one, because the expenditure on defence, even in this country, is very large; £2,000 million a year is a very large sum of money, and its outlay ought to be properly discussed and well thought out, the Committee should therefore be able to call witnesses from the Civil Service as well as the Armed Forces to speak on behalf of their Services.

If I may recount two personal experiences, having been a Regular Marine myself, I find that my friends and colleagues who are still serving in the forces tend to run a mile when they see me in case I talk to them on technical subjects which may be discussed in the House and therefore embarrass them in their Service career.

Again, some years ago I was allowed by the Americans to see their Polaris submarines in Holy Loch, and of course they first gave me security clearance, but when much more recently I asked the Admiralty to see a tactical training teacher exercise at Woolwich I was told I could not do so because it was programmed for a confidential exercise. I make this point not because I have any quarrel with the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy with whom I reached a compromise, but because it does seem extraordinary that a Member of this House should be able to visit the American Polaris submarines at Holy Loch but should not be able to visit a tactical training teacher exercise in his own country. This is the kind of absurdity which I believe makes Parliament itself look rather stupid.

I believe that a Select Committee would breed expert knowledge on both sides of the House. I think its members would have to have security clearance, otherwise one would not be able to discuss secret matters which I believe are bound to be discussed by a Committee of that type.

I would like to see Ministers concerned with defence expenditure discussing their Estimates with such a Committee. They could have a preliminary discussion with the Select Committee before coming to the House with their Estimates. I would remind the Patronage Secretary that the Agriculture Committee, on which I served, suggested that the Minister might come to the Committee to discuss the Agricultural Price Review before going to the House with it, and I think the Minister would get a much better reception in the House if he had thrashed it out with the Select Committee before putting it to the House.

I found, in the Agriculture Committee, that it seemed to be resented by the Civil Servants in the Ministry to start with, but later they realised that Select Committees run completely across party lines. Although in agriculture there is party controversy now, because the Opposition want to change the policy of support prices, guaranteed payments and so on, this did not come into any of our debates, and I found that the whole attitude of the civil servants changed during those months when they realised that the Committee was trying to be helpful to the Ministry.

I think that in general the whole idea of specialist committees on the lines we are discussing is resented by many Ministers and shadow Ministers who feel that it would tread on their toes, either in their present positions or in the jobs they hope to occupy. Possibly it is also not very popular among our colleagues who are part-time M.P.s, but I am one of those who believe that we will have to be full-time M.P.s if we are to do our job properly. I believe however that these specialist committees would lead to better-thought-out government, less wastage and greater efficiency. They would do much to restore the prestige of Parliament, and provide more control over the Executive, which I think it is generally agreed is needed. They would build up team work and give backbenchers a real function which would be recognised by the country.

I believe a Select Committee on Defence, to which the taxpayer has to contribute so much money, would be one of the most important, and I think there is a growing feeling among backbenchers on both sides of the House who have some expertise on this subject, that this form of Committee is needed.

I sometimes think the best form of Parliamentary democracy today is when back benchers on both sides of the House get together against their Front Benchers, as we have seen on a number of occasions recently and I hope they will continue to press the Government.

1 a.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury and Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Silkin)

The whole House will be grateful to the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) for initiating this debate. He played a distinguished part as a Defence Minister in the previous Administration, and we are glad to have his expertise today.

In making his case, however, he widened the argument for a Select Committee on Defence to that for Select Committees in general, and this point was well taken up by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings) and the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall). Any argument in favour of a Select Committee on Defence must accept that it should be one of a number of Select Committees, and I think that both hon. Gentlemen were gracious enough to pay some tribute to this Government for their setting up of Select Committees.

These Committees owe their genesis to the announcement of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 21st April, 1966, and it is worth recalling what my right hon. Friend said on that occasion: I believe the time has now come when we might consider an experiment to extend this system over a wider field of public administration"— that is to say, beyond the Select Committees concerned with Public Accounts, Estimates and the Nationalised Industries. Accordingly, the Government will enter into discussions through the usual channels with the two Opposition parties on the suggestion of establishing one or two new Parliamentary Committees to concern themselves with administration in the sphere of certain Departments whose usual operations are not only of national concern but in many cases are of intensely human concern."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st April, 1966; Vol. 727. c. 76.] That was just under three years ago, and it is worthwhile looking at the record today. Since then, we have set up Select Committees on Education and Science, Race Relations and Immigration, Science and Technology, Scottish Affairs, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, Agriculture, and we have already promised a further one on Overseas Aid and Development. Seven new Select Committees have been set up in under three years. That, in itself, is not a bad record.

When one considers the request of the hon. Gentleman and those who have supported him for a Select Committee on Defence, the Government must also take into account requests for other Select Committees, and perhaps I might tell the House what those requests have been.

The following additional Select Committees lave been suggested by hon. Members, each of whom no doubt attaches as much importance to the Select Committee suggested as hon. Gentlemen tonight have attached to a Select Committee on Defence. They have been concerned with Welsh affairs, economic affairs, trade and industry, the status and development of Her Majesty's Government's Dependencies Overseas, pre-Iegislation, statute law repeal, Members' outside interests, an all-women Committee to investigate the rights and obligations of women in a free society, and then, if one includes Committees set up for a specific short-term purpose, 16 separate Select Committees on information leaks, the brain-children of the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis). That is quite a formidable list, and I think that the House would agree that it would be rather a foolish Leader of the House who did not consider all these very carefully.

I hope that I carry the House with me when I say that it is quite impossible in this evolutionary stage of Parliament, to set up every single one of those Select Committees, or even every single one that hon. Members here might consider to be essential. One has to move at a reasonable pace and, in talking about the seven Select Committees set up since 1966, I would have said that that was a very reasonable pace. I know that there are hon. Members who are much more impatient and would like to move even more quickly.

One or two points must be taken into consideration. First, not every right hon. or hon. Member is convinced that the Select Committee is the best way of considering our affairs. The American precedent, quoted by the hon. Member for Harwich, does not find universal favour in this House.

I think that possibly my hon. Friend the Member for Ilkeston (Mr. Raymond Fletcher) put the problem fairly clearly to us in what I thought was an inspiring speech because, in saying that defence was a bors, he also pointed out that he intended to make his speech on the Floor of the House. My hon. Friend said that the choice lies between conflict and the vitality—and both exist a great deal of the time in this Chamber—the specialisation, the expertise, the bi-partisanship of the Select Committee.

I rather liked the visual image put forward by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire of the opposed benches against the semi-circular benches—that is, the shape of the Chamber. It put in a very neat form the truth of the matter. It is no secret that hon. Members like my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) would be most disturbed to see the power of this Chamber flowing into Select Committees.

I do not say that this should be the last word; I merely say that this is something that we must take into consideration. But, even if we accept that the right evolution is towards a greater number of Select Committees, we must do it in the correct manner. For example, we must see that they are properly staffed. I think that this point was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), and it is worth considering. Although I have no personal knowledge of American select committees, I gather that they are well staffed not only with clerks but with experts of one sort or another. The House may yet have to accustom itself to this. We must go to the limit of the assistance that we have. At this moment I think that we have perhaps reached that limit.

There is another factor—

Mr. Wall

Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the real emphasis on defence is because of the immense development of technology year by year and the very large sums of taxpayers' money? I think that gives it a certain priority.

Mr. Silkin

I know that the hon. Gentleman will be patient with me. I was intending to come to this through my own rather devious means.

I was about to put the point to the hon. Gentleman that there was another factor that we had to take into consideration. I well recall a certain amount of irritation in this Chamber towards the summer term of last Session and complaint that hon. Members were being overworked on committees. They meant not only Standing Committees, but Select Committees. This is a danger that we have to face in our present evolutionary stage.

The House must bear in mind that when we come to Whitsun time there may be twelve or thirteen Standing Committees considering Bills. This is the natural way in which we have evolved our method of legislation. This means that over 300 Members are engaged on standing committees. It also means that at that time—and this will be within the recollection of hon. Members who served on Select Committees—attendance on Select Committees tends to go down and the figures of attendance are not as impressive as we would like.

These factors have to be taken into consideration. Nevertheless, it seems to me, and to the Government, that this suggestion, like the other suggestions, is worthy of very considerable attention. I think that that was what the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings) asked me to assure him. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that this will receive considerable attention.

The position really is that the time has come for the Government to take stock of this whole experiment, for experiment it was, of Select Committees. I hope that the House will never abandon Select Committees. Indeed, I doubt whether it ever could. This idea has gripped the consciousness and general fibre of Parliament today, and Parliament would be a very much poorer institution without Select Committees. But the House must consider not only the experiment as a whole, but the experiment individually. I think that it would be very foolish indeed to give a simple non possumus to the suggestion of the hon. Member for Harwich, but, equally, this is a matter which must be carefully thought out and given some study, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that this is what the Government intend to do.