HC Deb 08 December 1970 vol 808 cc372-86
Mr. Speaker

I understand that the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) has informed a Minister that he wishes to raise a second subject on the Adjournment and that a Minister is present.

9.47 p.m.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian)

Yes, Mr. Speaker. At ten minutes to five, realising that the other business of the House might collapse, I informed the Ministry that I wished to raise this subject.

I feel a little contrite, because having written about there being an overdose of democracy which acted against the discussion of superficially fairly esoteric subjects like the future of the European Space Research Organisation, I now find that, not only has the Minister of Aviation Supply kindly come to the House for this debate, at some inconvenience to himself, I gather, but we also have with us a senior and important member of the Cabinet who is responsible, the right hon. Lady the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher). For the record, it should be said that the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Lady have taken the trouble to come here, because that will be much appreciated by many members of the staff of E.S.R.O. I sincerely, and not simply as a matter of form, thank them for coming—also the civil servants, who may have been inconvenienced.

Yet, I am not contrite in another sense in raising this subject because the future of British participation in the European Space Research Organisation is a matter of very considerable concern to those who are interested, not only in esoteric technical subjects but in Britain joining the Common Market. As a pro-Marketeer, may I say that, whatever is thought about E.S.R.O. on this side of the Channel, there is very little doubt that on the other side of the Channel it is regarded as something of a flag flier and that it matters to European politicians.

If I had written that the British delegation of the noble Lord, Lord Ironside, consisting of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn), who I hope will have an opportunity to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer) had had difficulty in getting heard at the right level, it was perhaps in contrast to what happens in France where delegates like General Billotte have the ear not only of M. Chaban-Delmas but of M. Pompidou on this subject. In Germany there is no doubt that it is dealt with at the level of Willy Brandt and Herr Wehner and in Belgium at the highest level of M. Lefevre and the Cabinet.

Without being impertinent in any way, I wish that the right hon. Gentleman who occupies the post of Minister of Aviation Supply were a member of the Cabinet so that he could take part in those Tuesday and Thursday financial wrestling matches which are part of the British governmental system. I doubt whether the Minister of Aviation Supply ought to be seen to be negotiating at this level in Europe without being a member of the Cabinet. Not only does this matter in our own Whitehall, it also matters in Europe.

I wish that there were a system of being able to place in HANSARD fairly long extracts. I have already sent the speech of Dr. Kleen, the Director of E.S.T.E.C. and Nordwijk, to the Minister. Much of what I shall say comes from the discussions of Professor Bondi, Dr. Montalenti, in Damstadt, and Pierre Blassel in Nordwijk.

Dr. Kleen says: Parallel with our development of spacecraft technology our hopes have also developed that our future programme will be enlarged to bring in application satellites—satellite systems for commercial purposes such as telecommunications and air traffic control, and perhaps later meteorology. One reason why I raise this subject is that what E.S.R.O. is doing is of extreme importance. If we are to have a proper telephone system in Europe, it is vital that E.S.R.O's satellite work should be allowed to proceed. I am not pretending that it is of great importance to short-distance calls between London and Paris, but it is of considerable importance if Glasgow has to call Milan or Falkirk has to call Turin. As industrially we become more and more integrated with Europe, this is a matter of considerable consequence. As a Scot rather more distant from Europe than from London, it is of particular consequence to me and also to my constituents and to those who work in industry in Scotland and the North. Applications work is not esoteric.

When Dr. Kleen talks of air traffic control, it is, of course, supra-ocean air traffic control, and I think that it will be agreed that the North Atlantic route is also presenting considerable problems with subsonic Boeing 707's and the fact that there has to be an air space for safety of longitudinally 300 miles and latitudinally 200 miles. It is extremely expensive to do the rerouting for the extra distances that are required for safety. It will become impossible when we bring in Concorde at supersonic speeds. E.S.R.O's work is vital to the use of Concorde on the North Atlantic route. There are, therefore, practical applications and, as a pro-Concorde man, I am concerned about this.

Dr. Kleen continues: By the very nature of applications satellite systems, they have to be international ventures. No European country is big enough to make effective use of such satellite systems for its own national purposes. International cooperation for the scientific exploration and the economic exploitation of space is, or ought to be, in addition a firm foundation for the improvement of mutual understanding between nations of different outlooks and different tongues. Here in ESTEC we have demonstrated beyond doubt the practicability of full effective international collaboration among staff. We have here staff members from fourteen countries speaking nine different mother tongues. I can assure you our work carries on without any evidence whatsoever of national bias or national difference—in fact as if different nationalities did not exist. I would say in parenthesis to the Ministers on the Front Bench that E.S.R.O. is very different from E.L.D.O., not just for party political reasons, in that a Labour Government withdrew from E.L.D.O. Perhaps it was right to draw out of E.L.D.O., which had no proper management techniques and did not own as much as a spanner. However, E.S.R.O. is an entirely different organisation and is worth preserving.

Dr. Kleen goes on—and I have cleared this with the doctor, who will shortly be leaving, perhaps to go back to his former firm of Siemen of Munich: Your visit here happens to be at a time when we staff members of E.S.R.O. have just seen, with deep disappointment, that such collaboration does not yet exist at the Ministerial levels of our countries—and I refer to your delegates to the European Space Conference. The fourth European Space Conference was held at Brussels earlier this month. I suppose that its results are well known to you. We now seem to have arrived in the position that the whole concept of a co-operative European space effort is in danger. We are no longer confident that this cooperative venture will have any reasonable future. I do not intend to speak in detail about the damage to the European space effort which could result from such a failure—the damage to West European science and the damage to the European economy if Europe is prevented from developing applications satellites—especially in the telecommunications field. Such a failure would inevitably enlarge the already existing gap between the technological and managerial capabilities of the United States on the one hand and of West Europe on the other. I personally think that it is the managerial capacity that may be the most valuable part of all of E.S.R.O.'s work as, indeed, N.A.S.A. has shown in the United States. Dr. Kleen goes on: This morning I mentioned the capital investment in E.S.R.O. by our member States amounting to many millions of dollars. All this would be thrown into the dustbin if the co-operative European space effort is abandoned. But there is another aspect, and an even more important aspect, which I would like to bring to your attention. We have here in E.S.T.E.C. a team of several hundred scientists, technologists, engineers and managers who have now accumulated considerable experience in space technology and the management of space projects. We have learned a lot, sometimes even by errors. I believe that it will be generally acknowledged that within the financial constraints of oar budget, E.S.R.O. has achieved fair success. That success is because of the quality, the intellectual capacity, the experience and the teamwork of our staff. However, the present uncertainty which has resulted from the Brussels conference creates its gravest danger because of its effect on our staff. We staff members"— and this is a senior German talking— should not be considered as mercenaries who are used and paid as long as they are needed and who are fired when the situation changes because of political reasons. There is plenty of demand in Europe for good engineers, good scientists and good managers—both in national space programmes and in other fields. It may be that our present confused situation will in time be clarified. But time is important. The reason I bring forward this matter on a second adjournment debate is that there may be no other opportunity of raising this issue before the key Brussels meeting on 22nd December when I think a senior Minister will be going back to negotiate on behalf of the British Government. Dr. Kleen goes on: Already now some of our staff members are considering whether they should look for other jobs, and this number will grow…

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Monro.]

Mr. Dalyell

He continues: This number will grow with every day that the uncertainty continues. It is perhaps the uncertainty that bothers me more than anything on their behalf. All this is very understandable from the human standpoint. And it should be remembered too that when staff members do start to leave us, it will be the better ones who go first, because these are the ones who will very easily and quickly find other posts. I may add that immediately after the Brussels Conference—and this is symptomatic of the present situation—the rate of refusals of our offers of new appointments suddenly increased by an order of magnitude. Once a number of highly specialised staff members have left us, it would be impossible to replace that lost capacity within a reasonable time. We are now approaching a point when an honest boss, replying to questions from his staff concerning their future, can no longer reasonably advise them to stay and to wait until the politicians have made up their minds. Professor Bondi, shortly to leave for a senior post at the Ministry of Defence, said at the Press conference—thus not in private conversation but publicly—as the hon. Member for Hallam may remember: I should not like to be in the shoes of a director who has to build up a new staff, if E.S.R.O. fails for political reasons. That perhaps is the most important point I would make. The purpose of the Adjournment debate is not to try to score debating points, but to give the British Government an opportunity to put something of their point of view, because like everything in this field there are two sides to every question. I do not want to enter into personalities or indeed to make embarrassing comments on other Ministers. But one has to ask whether M. Lefevre was a bit quick in some of his actions at the last Brussels Conference. I hope that this situation can be healed. Certainly it was the point of view of people not even of our nationality that M. Lefevre had been "trop vite" in what he did.

I should also like to raise the issue generally of the level of attention that it is getting. Certainly there were some British staff members there who were under the impression that it was being dealt with as part of a review of public expenditure carried out by an Under-Secretary, a rather junior Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry.

The Minister of Aviation Supply (Mr. Frederick Corfield)

I do not know where the hon. Gentleman got that idea from, but I can tell him that it has nothing whatever to do with my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley).

Mr. Dalyell

I am glad that has been made clear, because it was not clear to some people at E.S.R.O. with whom I was talking about this. I hope it is now cleared up.

Finally, we have to say that there is indeed a possibility, in the view of the French, that France, Germany and Belgium may decide, in what the French call their exasperation, to go it alone. There are pressures from the French national organisation at Toulouse that in many ways they would like, for reasons of their own, to go it alone. If they did, then we should be left out not only of air traffic control but of the European satellite system and the new dimensions of telephonic communication.

Because there are other hon. Members who ought to have their say—the hon. Member for Hallam in particular—and because the Minister ought to have his time to wind up the debate. I should like to thank the House for giving me a hearing and once again to say that I deeply appreciate that, whatever differences of opinion there may be between us, not only has the Minister of Aviation Supply turned up for the debate but also his right hon. Secretary of State for Education and Science. This will be appreciated by those who read the debate in Europe.

10.4 p.m.

Mr. John H. Osborn (Sheffield, Hallam)

I must first thank the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell for warning me about three-quarters of an hour ago that he was raising this subject on the Adjournment and inviting me to contribute.

The problems that the hon. Gentle-has raised are immense, and he should realise that decisions relating to many of them go well beyond the powers of a Minister in this country and involve the taking of decisions by Ministers of the ten countries which support E.S.R.O. and of those other countries who support the E.L.D.O. programme.

One point should be made clear. As the hon. Gentleman said, there was a parliamentary and scientific visit following a Parliamentary and scientific meeting with Professor Bondi, and various Members of this House were represented on that visit and met Members of Parliament from other countries.

I have tabled a number of Questions to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science on joint projects both as regards CERN and E.S.R.O., and it should be said that the approach which my right hon. Friend has announced already so accords with the nature of my Question on CERN that I very much hope that we shall be able to show a co-operative approach on a European space research programme. I was contemplating tabling some Questions to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation Supply following the note which I sent him after our visit.

We must accept that E.S.R.O., like any other organisation supported by a number of independent Governments, is subject to the political whims of those independent Governments, Her Majesty's Government being one of them. The hon. Gentleman will readily admit that delegates from other countries questioned the value of the work already being carried out by E.S.R.O. I remember talking to a Swedish delegate and asking whether the money would not be better spent on social security and health schemes rather than on the pursuit of scientific knowledge. I noted a statement in the Press back in October announcing that Denmark is to leave the European Space Research Organisation at the end of next year. The reason is that Denmark has balance of payments problems and has to ascertain its own priorities.

Then there is the argument about whether we should take part in E.L.D.O. The decision to withdraw was taken by the previous Government and not by this Government. I would remind my right hon. Friends that I have been among those hon. Members on this side of the House who have advocated a British launcher programme or British participation in an international launcher programme.

Mr Dalyell

There is all the difference in the world between E.L.D.O. and E.S.R.O. from a management point of view. One is a very successful organisation, whereas the other was thought not to be.

Mr. Osborn

Certainly, but that brings one to consider the extent to which there should be national programmes and international programmes.

The hon. Gentleman referred to three very interesting articles in the issues of Aviation Week and Space Technology dated 9th and 16th November and the more recent one of 7th December. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation Supply may not be aware of it, but the issue of 9th November was circulated to all Members of Parliament who had been to Germany. It stresses one or two points: The British said they would not invest in the N.A.S.A. programme because it is 'too loosely defined'… Britain's move caught its European partners by surprise and caused complete disruption of the session. The meetings, which were to have lasted three days, were adjourned at the end of the first day. Then it refers to M. Theo Lefevre, the Belgian Science Minister and the Chairman, and says that perhaps he was too quick. Then there is a reference to the possibility of France, Germany and Belgium deciding to go it alone.

Finally, the Aviation Week and Space Technology of 7th December states: The E.S.R.O. council meeting came less than a month after the abortive November 4th European Space Conference meeting in Brussels. The overall European space picture was left very confused following the breakdown of the E.S.C. negotiations. What is also interesting is that Professor Bondi has now decided to stay on until September, 1971, and not take an appointment in this country quite as early as was anticipated.

The hon. Member for West Lothian read from his article published in the New Scientist—

Mr. Dalyell

No.

Mr. Osborn

The hon. Gentleman inferred that what he said accorded with what was published in the article. The hon. Gentleman has probably over-emphasised the element of disagreement.

We had a separate meeting with General Billotte from France and with others. He hoped that it would be possible to arrange a meeting of Members of Parliament in this country to discuss our participation in E.S.R.O. and in other spheres.

At the end of his article in the New Scientist the hon. Gentleman said: From now on it is intended that there should be regular meetings by Members of Parliament interested in E.S.R.O. from all the member countries. I welcome this. I think that Members of Parliament should know how their money is being spent. But I suggest that the hon. Gentleman has taken a rather dramatic interpretation of the position as explained by the Minister. In fact, the Minister—no doubt he will describe the position that he found on his first visit to Brussels—must decide how much we spend on international programmes and on our own.

The hon. Member for West Lothian referred to the fact that Belgium, Germany and France are going on with their own launcher programme. That is fair enough. When dealing with a space research programme the most important issue, as I see it, is to have satellites adequately launched. There is an excellent arrangement whereby, for the time being, these satellites are launched from Cape Canaveral but are controlled from Darmstadt and the various stations set up in the European Space Organisation.

I welcome this opportunity of asking my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend to outline what has gone on in Brussels and elsewhere. We want to be quite certain that our money on space programmes, on high energy physics, or on other programmes is spent to the best advantage. If, for the time being, it is logical to use American space launchers—certainly E.L.D.O., which I have not seen, has its limitations for the moment—this is fair enough. Ultimately we have to decide the extent to which we share in a post-Apollo programme. The decision so far is somewhat negative. The decisions facing any Government in this country as to how far to participate and deal with our friends in Europe and work out a satisfactory compromise are difficult.

But if there are these difficulties on any joint international venture, they are by no means confined to E.S.R.O. They are to be found in other ventures. Euratom is yet another example where joint finance and agreement on how to spend it is necessary.

I urgently suggest to our Belgian, German and French friends that it is more costly to embark on a national programme financed by one Exchequer than to share with agreement, give and take, in an international programme.

I hope that my hon. Friend will give us some positive views at this stage. I readily concede that my hon. Friend cannot give us a firm answer tonight, because it depends on negotiations with our friends.

10.15 p.m.

The Minister of Aviation Supply (Mr. Frederick Corfield)

I should like to make it clear to the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) that it has not at any time been in our minds to withdraw from E.S.R.O. There is no lack of appreciation of the work of E.S.R.O. or its staff, and we accept, as we are bound to do, that where there are uncertainties in any organisation about the work load there will be uncertainties and frustrations amongst the staff.

I remind the hon. Gentleman, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) has done, that where one depends on collaboration, it takes more than one country to collaborate, and I think that it would be useful if I were to try very quickly to remind, or perhaps to inform, the hon. Gentleman of the facts, which are very different from what appeared in his article in the New Scientist.

I take the House back to the July Ministerial Space Conference, when a budget of 12½ million dollars was agreed by all the countries present to finance the application satellite studies, covering the communications satellite project, the air traffic control satellite project, which I think the hon. Gentleman will know is subject to some degree of agreement between the Americans and Europe about the most appropriate frequency, and a possible meteorological satellite. Our share of that sum which was voted and agreed was about £1.1 million, and of course, it was voted on the assumption that the other participating countries would pay their share.

We made it abundantly clear at that stage that we did not believe that we were justified in the very expensive programme of launchers in which other countries were interested. In view of the generous way in which the United States have hitherto made launchers available for our scientific satellites, we have no reason to believe that that will not continue, and we felt, and still feel, that to expend Europe's resources on duplicating technologies which the United States had developed was not the right priority.

Immediately following that Ministerial meeting in July the E.S.R.O. Council met and approved for the ensuing few months its budget of one million dollars out of the 12½ million dollars voted for the current year, leaving a balance of 11½ million dollars to be allocated later. It was at that stage that the French made it clear that they were not prepared to vote their share of that 12½ million dollars, on the grounds—which to be fair to them they had made clear to us—that they wished to have what they called a complete, coherent and balanced common space programme, the implication being that any other programme was somehow or other incoherent, incomplete or unbalanced, a distinction which I have never been able fully to understand, but it may be a difference of language.

Earlier this month the E.S.R.O. Council also approved the science budget of no less than 64 million dollars, our share of which works out at 23.13 per cent., or about five million, which falls upon my right hon. Friend's budget.

The next meeting, as the hon. Gentleman has made clear, is on 22nd December. It is a meeting of the Council at official level, and is not a Ministerial meeting. The question of the application satellite will have to be considered in the light of what has gone on before, and we must be guided by the proposals which may be put forward by E.S.R.O. itself as to what can be done with the balance of the money remaining, having taken account of the fact that the French are not now willing to contribute, and that perhaps other countries will follow their lead. Therefore, until we know that, it is impossible to be clear as to the line that can or should be taken.

To refer to the hon. Gentleman's article in the New Scientist, I am not suggesting that he did not do his best to reflect what he believed to be the reactions of the people to whom he talked.

Mr. J. H. Osborn

I hope that I have made it clear that others did not gain the same impression as the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), and that they thought the reactions were different.

Mr. Corfield

I am grateful. I was going to say that, whatever those reactions may have been, or the hon. Member's impression thereof, I am afraid that they are a long way from an accurate record of the facts. But I would emphasise—the hon. Gentleman mentioned Ministerial availability—that I would have been only too delighted to inform him of the facts had he approached me or wished to talk to me.

Mr. Dalyell

I said that the speech of Dr. Kleen was a most coherent record of an attitude. I think that I behaved properly over this.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris)

Order. We must have proper parliamentary decorum.

Mr. Corfield

I should have been very happy, had I been asked, to enlighten the hon. Gentleman about the facts, although I had done my best in answering the Written Question of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson) on 11th November, to set those facts out as far as possible without adding to any of the exasperation or anger to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I do not believe that to dwell on emotion of that sort is in any way helpful. Nor do I believe that it is either accurate or helpful to describe what happened at Brussels as "Brussels malignancy". That expression does not help.

If the hon. Gentleman had checked the facts, he would have been quite clear at any rate that any situation which might be described in the words that he used was certainly not of our making. I hope that he will refer, if he is in doubt, to the latest article in Aviation Week and Space Technology, which is a fairly accurate account of what has happened in the most recent meeting. I hope that he will also refer to the answer I mentioned to my hon. Friend.

But I should add, although I am very anxious not to add to any of the emotions to which the hon. Gentleman has referred that what happened was that M. Lefèvre, at least a week or a little more before the conference, told me that the French, Germans and Belgians were insisting on a further contribution, totalling 35 million dollars, which at that time was described as being for the purposes of post-Apollo studies, and that it was to be understood that, if those studies were successful, the countries concerned must undertake now to go ahead with the development of whatever portions of the post-Apollo programme were allotted to Europe. This could have involved a sum for this country of up to £100 million, on estimates which allowed practically nothing for escalation and nothing at all for either production or operation.

So we were faced with a proposal which left us entirely in the dark—I am not entirely unused to the art of cross-examination, but I remained in the dark—as to who would decide whether these studies were successful, what criterion would be applied, and, if they were so-called successful, in the meantime to what the 35 million dollars were to be applied.

It was not until the conference, and well on in the conference—until a good deal of hard cross-examination—that it appeared that by far the greater part of the 35 million dollars was, in fact, to be devoted to the launcher programme which we had made perfectly clear in July we were not prepared to enter. Naturally, no responsible Government could commit this country to an entirely open-ended commitment on the basis of studies about which it was not even clear how and by whom it would be decided whether they were successful.

If the other parties to this operation were surprised, then I am bound to say that M. Lefevre had no reason to believe that we could possibly be attracted by a proposition of this sort. Whether or not he was trop vite, he had a week in which to think about it.

The result, I believe, was a fairly unsatisfactory conference. However, I do not believe that it could conceivably have been the right way to achieve collaboration by, as the hon. Gentleman said in his article, having a pistol of this sort at one's head.

Certainly this is not the way in which we believe we could enhance and advance the collaborative proposals and projects which I am every bit as anxious as he is should be executed; and I think that I can probably claim to be even older in the European concept and movement than he is.

It does not help in any way at all if any of us add fuel to the flames. If the hon. Gentleman will study the Belgian newspapers, he will see marked change in the articles written the day after the conference—following a Press conference called by M. Lefevre at about 7 o'clock, when there had been agreement that there would be no Press conference until 11 o'clock—and the Press comment which appeared two or three days later, when the true facts had begun to be understood in Brussels. The hon. Gentleman will find it an interesting and, in some respects, reassuring exercise to read those newspapers.

I want it clearly on the record that we have throughout been willing and anxious to support the satellite programme to which the hon. Gentleman has referred, and we remain in that position. Of our share of the money voted in July, I think that practically none has yet been allocated or spent. It seems to me right that we should accept the reports of these studies which were scheduled to appear from June onwards next year. We should expect some results from that contribution without being forced, so to speak, to decide whether we go on with an open-ended commitment entirely undefined in terms of technology in order, so to speak, to pay our ticket into Europe. That would in no way help the European cause. If we are to appear to the British public—who are not perhaps unanimous in the belief that we should go into Europe—to be paying that sort of price, then I do not believe that it would do the cause which the hon. Gentleman has at heart any good at all.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past Ten o'clock.