§ Q1. Dr. Gilbertasked the Prime Minister if he is satisfied with the coordination between the Foreign Office, the Stationery Office and the Central Office of Information, with respect to the production of Her Majesty's Government's fact sheets on the Common Market; and if he will make a statement.
§ The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath)Yes, Sir.
§ Dr. GilbertIs the Prime Minister aware that fact sheet No. 5 on E.F.T.A. makes no reference to his agreement with the President of France that no new tariff barriers will be erected between the Common Market and those members of E.F.T.A. which are not candidates for admission? Will he explain this omission and tell us what economic benefits we might expect to obtain over and above those which the non-candidate countries of E.F.T.A. would get by virtue of this guarantee that there will be no new trade barriers?
§ The Prime MinisterOn the first part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, the explanation is that this particular fact sheet was prepared before my meeting with the President of France. Fact sheets are intended to deal with the basic facts of the Community, not with the arrangements which are being made in the negotiations until these problems have been dealt with in the negotiations. Any information about the results of negotiations will be published in full in the White Paper as soon as the major problems have been dealt with.
The hon. Gentleman has returned to a Question which he asked recently, about which I think there is some misunderstanding. What was intended by the statement about E.F.T.A. was that there was no desire by the President of France to see tariffs raised between E.F.T.A. countries not members of an enlarged Community and the members of an enlarged Community until there had been a proper opportunity of working out solutions. This is quite different from the position of an E.F.T.A. country which 227 becomes a full member of the Community.
§ Sir D. Walker-SmithWill my right hon. Friend ensure that all factual information, whether in the White Paper or through the Central Office of Information, includes a reference to the frank and manly admission by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at Stockholm, and confirmed in this House yesterday, that, whatever his personal opinion may be, as a matter of fact the so-called dynamic effects can be neither measured nor assessed?
§ The Prime MinisterObviously, certain calculations can be made of the dynamic effects of entry. My right hon. Friend was not saying that we cannot make assessments of the growth of the United Kingdom economy in an enlarged Community, nor yet that we cannot make assessments of the growth of the economy in an enlarged Community as a whole. This cannot be put into every fact sheet, but it is a matter which will be dealt with as succinctly as possible in the White Paper.