Commons Sitting of 14 March 1978

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS

  BRITISH RAILWAYS BILL (By Order)
  Order for Second Reading read.
  To be read a Second time upon Thursday.

ORKNEY ISLANDS COUNCIL BILL (By Order)

  SHEFFIELD GENERAL CEMETERY BILL (By Order)
  Orders for Second Reading read.
  To be read a Second time upon Tuesday next.

CHURCH OF SCOTLAND (PROPERTY AND ENDOWMENTS) AMENDMENT ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Considered; to be read the Third time. Tomorrow.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

    Education Authorities
    Mr. Andrew F. Bennettasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many education authorities she and her ministerial colleagues visited in the last eight weeks; and with how many she, or her ministerial colleagues, discussed grants for school uniform or means tests.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Miss Margaret Jackson): In the last eight weeks we have
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    met official delegations from education authorities and members of education committees, county or borough councils on 25 occasions, either at the Department or elsewhere. Since these meetings were usually to discuss specific local problems, grant for school uniform or means tests were not usually discussed. However, my hon. Friend will be aware that the views of my right hon. Friend on the subject of moderating school uniform requirements were conveyed to all authorities in England and Wales in May 1977.
    Mr. Bennett: I appreciate that answer, but I am sure my hon. Friend realises that there has been much comment in the Press about local authorities removing assistance in the form of school uniform grants. What steps can she take to ensure that local authorities make grants available to families which suffer hardship in providing school uniforms? How soon does she hope to bring forward legislation?
    Miss Jackson: The only step that we can take in the present circumstances is to encourage local authorities to use the powers that they have. As my hon. Friend knows, it is a matter solely for their discretion. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made clear, we hope to bring forward early proposals to clarify the present law. I can go no further at present.
    Mr. Fell: The Under-Secretary said that she had discussed many matters. Did she discuss the question of school transport? Roads are becoming desperately dangerous in some areas, and young children sometimes have to walk several miles to school. Did the hon. Lady discuss this problem?
    Miss Jackson: These problems sometimes arise, and we are concerned about them. There is a Question on this matter later on the Order Paper.
    Mr. Ron Thomas: With regard to ministerial visits, can my hon. Friend make a visit to Avon and discuss with the Tories on the Avon County Council their indefensible policy of charging pupils to go to the swimming baths? The pupils have to pay not only to go into the baths but for transport, which can cost their parents 50p a visit.
    Miss Jackson: I have made a number of visits to Avon, where it has been made

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    very clear to me that local people are very concerned about many aspects of financial policies, including this one. As my hon. Friend will know, it is not an easy matter to resolve whether swimming is a normal part of the curriculum. If it is not so regarded, the authority has the right to charge if it chooses.

    Teachers (Industrial Experience)
    Mr. Haselhurstasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether she is satisfied with existing arrangements for teachers to gain experience of industry; and if she will make a statement.
    The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Gordon Oakes): In addition to local initiatives, there are several national schemes which provide opportunities for teachers to gain direct experience of industry. The planned expansion of in-service training should make it possible for more teachers to participate in such schemes and my right hon. Friend welcomes the growing interest and support which they are attracting both from industry and among teachers and their employers.
    Mr. Haselhurst: In view of the crucial link between education, preparation for work and the needs of industry, is it not very important—and will the Minister of State affirm—that we should be trying to ensure that many more teachers, as a regular part of their experience, whether in training or afterwards, are intimately connected with the workings of industry?
    Mr. Oakes: I am in entire agreement with the hon. Gentleman on this matter. Between 1977 and 1981 there will have been a fourfold increase in the number of teachers released for induction and in-service training. I hope that there may be a significant expansion of industrial experience within those figures.
    Mr. Spearing: Would not my hon. Friend agree that it is at least of equal importance that people with experience of industry become teachers? Are there still shortages in the craft trades in schools, despite widespread unemployment among teachers? If so, will my hon. Friend do something to see that people of mature years and with experience of industry take up teaching?
    Mr. Oakes: Yes, Sir. In recent years about 20 per cent, of entrants to initial teacher training have been aged 25 or over. I regret that I cannot give my hon. Friend the exact numbers of those coming from industry. In addition, more than 450 mature entrants to the profession, many of them from industry, were recruited to training in the current academic year.
    Mr. Forman: Does the Minister agree that part of the problem is caused by some rather blinkered attitudes in the teacher training colleges, quite apart from anything else? Will he get his Department and its officials to look again at the possibility of changing some aspects of the curriculum of teacher training colleges so that it does not lay such great stress on educational theory but puts more on teacher training in the class room?
    Mr. Oakes: That is a matter to which we are giving attention. We are placing emphasis on industrial aspects of the existing courses rather than having a separate new addition to the curriculum, which is already fairly overcrowded at teacher training colleges.

    Comprehensive Education
    Mr. John Evansasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if she is satisfied with the rate of progress towards a fully comprehensive system of education.
    The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mrs. Shirley Williams): Four out of every five secondary pupils are now in comprehensive schools. I shall not be satisfied until all authorities have offered their children the benefit of a comprehensive education.
    Mr. Evans: I appreciate my right hon. Friend's reply. Does she agree that the latest populist Tory Party proposals to allow children to leave school at the age of 15 is simply another example of that party's determination to undermine the very principles of comprehensive education? Will she, therefore, take a very hard line with reactionary local authorities which are still dragging their feet on reorganisation?
    Mrs. Williams: My hon. Friend is more clear about Conservative policy than I

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    am. I am not quite clear about it, but it appears to be the case that the Conservative Party—at least, part of it—supports the idea of comprehensive education followed by the creaming-off of the most academic children into direct grant schools, which I regard as a wholly destructive formula. Other parts of the Conservative Party appear to agree that the less education the better.
    Mr. Peter Bottomley: When the Secretary of State talked about being satisfied when all parents are offered comprehensive education, did she mean that or did she mean that she insists that they must all take it?
    Mrs. Williams: Will the hon. Gentleman mind repeating his question? I missed the nuances of the middle part.
    Mr. Bottomley: The Secretary of State said in her first reply that she would not be satisfied until all parents were offered comprehensive places. Is that what she meant, or was it a disguise for saying that all parents would be forced to take comprehensive schools?
    Mrs. Williams: I thought that the hon. Gentleman's nuances were of a kind that would be hard to hear. I want all local authorities to organise on comprehensive lines. I am convinced that within a comprehensive system parental preferences can certainly be taken into account.
    Mr. Flannery: Does my right hon. Friend agree that despite the fulminations of the hon. Member for Brent, North (Dr. Boyson), who, I think, will go lower than 15 eventually, comprehensive education, according to the latest report of the NFER, is going from strength to strength and proving better than any form of education that we have ever had? Does she, therefore, agree that the sooner we have all our children in there receiving a comprehensive education, the better for them and for us?
    Mrs. Williams: I believe that at one time the hon. Member for Brent, North (Dr. Boyson) believed that 14 was the right age at which to leave school.— [HON. MEMBERS: "Thirteen."] I did not know about 13. I welcome the prodigal son's return to 15. Perhaps he will get to 16 before long.
    On the second part of the question, I say loud and clear that the evidence
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    is growing week by week that where the comprehensive system has had an opportunity to settle down after the process of change, as the evidence shows in Leicestershire and West Sussex, to take the two most recent surveys, the comprehensive schools do at least as well as and in many cases better than the old selective system.
    Mr. St. John-Stevas: Does the Secretary of State agree with Mrs. Caroline Benn that the Education Act 1976 has failed? Does she agree that she has no powers to impose any particular form of comprehensive reorganisation, and that if she wishes to pursue these foolish and dictatorial policies she had better get herself a new Act of Parliament?
    Mrs. Williams: The Labour Party believes in carrying out the law as approved by Parliament. The law as approved by Parliament could not be more clear. Conservative Members might consider the wisdom of advising local education authorities not to carry out the law in spirit, although they may do so to the letter. That is not so uncommon.
    I have carefully read the remarks of Mrs. Caroline Benn. They are not as presented in the Press. In saying, quite correctly, that we cannot substitute the Department of Education's proposals for those of local education authorities, she was simply explaining what the Act of Parliament itself says.

    Truancy
    Mr. McCrindleasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what recent discussions she has had with local education authorities on the question of truancy.
    Miss Margaret Jackson: Last July, my right hon. Friend and I had a useful meeting with the local authority associations and the Magistrates Association, and the question of behavioural problems, including truancy, was also discussed at the York conference on comprehensive education last December at which a number of chief education officers and councillors were present.
    Mr. McCrindle: Does the Minister accept that on any given day it is estimated that up to 150,000 children may be absent from British schools without

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    due cause? Does not that concern her terribly?
    The Secretary of State told me last year of the forthcoming discussions with the local education authorities. Will she now say what resulted from them and what action we can expect in the very near future?
    Miss Jackson: The estimates to which the hon. Gentleman referred must be guesses, as no statistics have been collected nationally since 1974. A number of things have changed since then, including the Government. I have told the hon. Gentleman before that one of the principal matters that came out of the meeting with the local authorities was that Her Majesty's Inspectorate is conducting a survey both of what is happening in special units which many local authorities have set up and also in schools which have shown particular success in dealing with truants. Many local authorities are carrying out work and surveys of their own.
    Mr. Skinner: Will the Minister confirm that the attendance record at schools in Great Britain is much higher than it is in Parliament on any given day? Will she also accept that if we abolished school meal charges the attendance record would be even higher? Even if she is not aware of it, many parents now find it a struggle to find the necessary money with which to send their children to school, and rather than have their children subjected to this horrifying means test some of them stay away.
    Miss Jackson: I am aware that many parents have difficulty with all manner of income problems. We regret this. We changed the scales for school meals assistance to make them much more generous in order to assist those parents. I accept my hon. Friend's argument. Nothing is good enough other than full help, but that is not possible at present. as he knows.
    Dr. Boyson: Is the Minister aware that last week the report of the Institute of Mathematics said that 18 per cent. of children throughout the country at the age of 16 who took the test were absent from school, and that 28 per cent. in London were absent on that day? Does not this show what the real figure of truancy is as compared with the figure for
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    February 1974, which is continually used in the House and has no relationship with children missing from school?
    Will the Minister assure us that inspectors—we are not talking only about special units—went in to check the registers in schools to make sure that those marked present were actually in the building?
    Miss Jackson: I am aware that a number of different authorities in different groups have studied attendance. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has not read with care those reports which were specifically directed towards truancy and has not observed that only a small minority of children are known to be absent without parents' knowledge and consent.
    Dr. Boyson.
    Miss Jackson: It is no use the hon. Gentleman saying "No". I refer him to reports from authorities such as Sheffield which have specifically studied truancy and have not tried to pick up figures as a by-line of something else. He will find, as usual, that the problem is difficult but less dramatic than he pretends.

    Discretionary Awards
    Mr. Hannamasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what action she proposes to take following the recent discretionary awards survey.
    Mr. Oakes: The report on the survey was published on 1st February. My Department is seeking the views of the local authority associations and other interested bodies. The aim of my right hon. Friend is to encourage authorities to consider each case carefully and to be as generous as possible both in their policies and in rates and conditions of grant.
    Mr. Hannam: Does the Minister accept that the report has confirmed that the sharp decline in the number of discretionary awards given by local authorities comes at a time of a 6 per cent. increase in the number of 16-to-19-year-old students? At a time when the Department of Employment is pouring money into short-term courses for students, greater emphasis should be placed on the provision of these longer-term courses in such subjects as law, accountancy and the arts. When will the Government accept

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    full responsibility for making these grants mandatory?
    Mr. Oakes: I accept the hon. Gentleman's figures. I will give them. Two thousand fewer discretionary grants were given and on a population basis a further 5,000 ought to have been given, so there is a net deficiency of 7,000. We are discussing this with the local education authority associations. I am particularly concerned with the aspect mentioned by the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) concerning discretionary grants for the arts, especially for performers in the arts.
    Mr. Carter-Jones: Does my hon. Friend need any further discussion in this matter, since it has become perfectly obvious that substantial numbers of children and young people are not receiving education because of the way in which discretionary grants are being used?
    Mr. Oakes: I must explain to my hon. Friend that discretionary grants are controlled not by my Department but by the local education authorities. We can give encouragement, but we can do no more.
    Mr. Beith: Did not the survey also reveal that the value of grants to the individual had fallen badly behind with the vast majority of authorities, and does this not make it clear that the local authorities are presenting to Parliament a frighteningly strong case for having the matter taken out of their hands?
    Mr. Oakes: I am very much concerned that many "full value" awards are at lower rates than those which applied to mandatory awards, and I hope to explore this situation with the local authorities.
    Mr. Hardy: Is it not the case that many local authorities are completely ignoring the detailed content of the rate support grant settlement and are denying grants? Is my hon. Friend aware that they are then seeking to place the blame on the Government, who have provided the money for a large number of grants to be made available?
    Mr. Oakes: Yes, we provide money in the rate support grant, and we topped that up by another £1·8 million in the autumn. I do not agree with my hon. Friend that all local authorities are ignoring discretionary awards. Some autho
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    rities are good and some are bad, but we shall be discussing these matters with the local authority associations, which are aware of the gravity of the problem.

    Mobile Classrooms
    Mr. Freudasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many mobile classrooms are currently in use in the parliamentary constituency of the Isle of Ely; how many of these are in (a) the primary and (b) the secondary sectors; and how this compares with mobile classroom accommodation elsewhere in the country.
    Miss Margaret Jackson: I understand from the Cambridgeshire Education Authority that there are 33 primary and 30 secondary classrooms of this kind in the Isle of Ely. Temporary accommodation in East Anglia probably accounts for about the same proportion of all school accommodation as in England and Wales as a whole.
    Mr. Freud: The people of Cambridgeshire will be pleased to hear that in this instance they are no worse off than other parts of England. Will the Minister say whether in the provision of mobile class rooms her concern is for mobility rather than economy? If that is so, will she bear in mind that it costs almost as much to move some mobile classrooms from one place to another as it does to erect them?
    Miss Jackson: I am aware that this is a problem, and in Cambridgeshire, as elsewhere, the Department and the authority are anxious to see such classrooms taken out of use and replaced by permanent accommodation as soon as possible. But this, particularly in Cambridgeshire which has a high basic need, is something we are able to do only gradually. Over the last three years we have given Cambridgeshire £14 million in building allocations. The county has applied for about £7 million for the next three years and we are considering this at the moment.

    Student Grants
    Mr. Clemitsonasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if she will make a statement on her policy on financial help for students in full-time education between 16 and 19 years of age.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: Present policy is that financial help for students in full-time education between 16 and 19 years of age is at the discretion of local education authorities. No major change in these arrangements is possible without a substantial element of additional resources, and no mandatory system could be introduced without legislation.
    Mr. Clemitson: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that while the case for financial maintenance for young people in this age group has always been a strong one on grounds of equality of opportunity in further and higher education, that case is now strengthened by consideration both of the whole circumstances of employment and unemployment and of the various anomalies which have already arisen and will increasingly arise with the introduction of the youth opportunities programme?
    Mrs. Williams: Yes, the case is much stronger than ever. The difficulty is that the House in its wisdom in 1962 drew a clear line between higher education which was mandatory and all forms of further education which were discretionary. I doubt whether the House would still take the same view. I regard this matter as an extremely high priority, but the House should be clear that legislation is necessary and that the sums involved are substantial—several hundred million pounds.
    Mr. Fry: If the right hon. Lady is so concerned about young people between 16 and 19, why is she allowing provision for this age group in schools to be phased out of the needs element in the rate support grant?
    Mrs. Williams: I do not follow the hon. Gentleman's argument. There is no question of the needs of those between 16 and 19 being phased out of the rate support grant. On the contrary, we have recently added a substantial sum for further education specifically for this age group. We have also introduced provision for the part-time education in schools and colleges of 16 to 19-year-olds.
    Mr. Gerry Fowler: Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is more than just a problem of discretionary awards? There is the new youth opportunities programme of the Manpower Services Commission. There is also supplementary benefit where
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    young people do not attend for more than 21 hours a week. There are EMAs and students receiving nothing. This is rapidly reaching a state of total chaos, and it must be rationalised.
    Mrs. Williams: I do not think that there will be any higher priority when an advance in education can next be made. I should tell the House the orders of expenditure involved. If the rate were the same as that of the MSC, it is estimated that the cost would be approximately £1,000 million a year. If it were at the supplementary benefit rate, the cost would be about £500 million a year. The reason for these high figures is quite simply that education has managed to attract more and more young people to stay on, and, therefore, the cost for those already in schools and colleges beyond the age of 16 is substantial before any more young people are attracted. I make it clear that that is not a reason for not acting on this matter, but the House must be aware that considerable resources are involved.
    Mr. St. John-Stevas: Surely the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Fowler) is right when he says that there is chaos in this sphere. The different provisions for grants present us with a shambles. Will the right hon. Lady consider the case for the appointment of an inquiry into the training of 16 to 19-year-olds? Why not appoint the hon. Member for The Wrekin as chairman of it? That would do her a good turn and would rehabilitate him.
    Mrs. Williams: I can think of no better chairman for almost any inquiry into education than my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Fowler), who needs no rehabilitation from me or anybody else. However, the purpose of an inquiry is often to avoid a decision. There is nothing to inquire into. The task is to find the necessary resources.

    University Teachers (Pay)
    Mr. Litterickasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science when she expects to be able to make recommendations for the restructuring of university academic staff salaries.
    Mr. Oakes: My right hon. Friend will issue no recommendations before the negotiators have issued a joint statement.
    Mr. Litterick: That would be generally regarded as disappointing. Will my hon. Friend take on board the fact that there is now strong evidence of widespread discrimination in the salaries of women in university life? This applies also in terms of placements. Will my hon. Friend undertake to investigate this as a matter of urgency?
    Mr. Oakes: If what my hon. Friend says is true I shall look into it, but it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the merits of any proposals today.
    Dr. Hampson: Since the Government have repeatedly promised to rectify the 1974 pay anomalies, why are they dragging their feet to the extent that the negotiations seem to have broken down? How long will this last? Would it not be better to put the whole matter to the test of arbitration?
    Mr. Oakes: There is no question of the negotiations having been broken off. The last meeting of Committee B was on Friday 10th March and the next meeting is on Thursday 16th March.
    Mrs. Bain: Does the Minister accept that the Government's failure to come forward with any new and positive agreements on 10th March was regarded by the university teachers as a slap in the face, particularly since the Government have settled other similar pay anomalies? Does he appreciate that this latest move is an indication that we are again reverting to a brain drain in many universities, a situation that is evidenced by various departments in Glasgow?
    Mr. Oakes: I express sympathy on this matter. I hope that the university teachers in no way regard this as a slap in the face. However, let us see how we go on Thursday.

    Arts Council
    Mr. Ridleyasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he next expects to meet the Chairman of the Arts Council
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: My noble Friend the Minister of State with responsibility for the arts, meets the Chairman of the Arts Council frequently. I last met him on 31st January
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    and arrange to meet him whenever occasion demands.
    Mr. Ridley: I apologise for getting the right hon. Lady's sex wrong in the Question. It was not my fault.
    Will the right hon. Lady ask the Chairman of the Arts Council whether he will publish the salary of the Director of the National Theatre? As we are allowed to know the salaries of the heads of nationalised industries, it seems to me to be in the interests of open government that we should know the director's salary as well.
    Mrs. Williams: I accept the hon. Gentleman's apology. I was rather surprised at his lack of perception whether I was a man or a woman.
    The salary of the Director of the National Theatre is a matter for the board of the National Theatre, and I suggest that the hon. Gentleman should address himself to the board.
    Mr. Flannery: When my right hon. Friend next meets the Chairman of the Arts Council for discussion, will she bear in mind the plight of the provincial theatres, some of whose representatives met some of us recently? We were informed that £37 a week was often the wage of actors and that for about 10 to 15 weeks a year they have to go on the dole. Will she discuss that matter with the Chairman of the Arts Council, as the position of the provincial theatres is regarded as very serious by many people?
    Mrs. Williams: The preliminary question is the saving of the major provincial theatres so that there will be jobs for those who want them in the theatrical profession. My hon. Friend will be aware that the theatrical profession has a great many people in it who are seeking work. I accept what he said about the low pay of actors in some provincial areas.
    Sir Bernard Braine: Will the right hon. Lady accept that it is important for her to get her priorities right? Before she takes up any of her valuable time on a meeting with the Chairman of the Arts Council, will she arrange a very urgent meeting with local authorities to discuss the lock-out at lunch-time of tens of thousands of children up and down the country? Without making any comment on the dispute—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is too well experienced not to know that he is stretching the Question from here to Cardiff. I remind him that it is about the Arts Council.
    Sir B. Braine: I always accept your advice, Mr. Speaker, but the Question referred to a meeting with the Chairman of the Arts Council and I am suggesting to the right hon. Lady, who is responsible for the education ultimately of all children in this country, that there is a far more urgent matter for her to deal with here and now.
    Mr. St. John-Stevas: Back in the capital, may I ask the Secretary of State whether she will give her support to the Arts Council in resisting the Scrooges of the Inland Revenue, who are now proposing to tax the prizes which the Arts Council gives to authors, artists, poets and others of the deserving poor, who get a very poor deal already from our society?
    Mrs. Williams: The hon. Gentleman will not expect me to comment in detail but I am very much aware of the problem and concerned about it.

    Arts (Sponsorship)
    Sir A. Meyerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what action she is taking to promote business sponsorship of the arts.
    Mr. Oakes: On the initiative of my noble Friend the Minister of State with responsibility for the arts, a launching grant of £15,000 was made towards the establishment in 1976 of the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts, whose main object is to encourage business organisations to sponsor the arts. My noble Friend frequently reminds the business and arts world that it is Government policy to encourage industrial and commercial sponsorship of the arts.
    Sir A. Meyer: I express gratitude for that positive reply, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that in the interests of artistic variety and vitality it is most undesirable that the patronage of the arts should become a comprehensive policy of the State alone?
    Mr. Oakes: I agree, and that is why this body was set up. I think that the hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that it is estimated that in the first
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    year, up to March 1977, business firms contributed about £1 million in sponsorship. That is roughly treble the amount of money which came from the business world in the previous year. Therefore, the association is doing a good job.
    Mr. Corbett: I encourage my hon. Friend in his endeavours to attract business and commercial sponsorship to the arts, but will he set his face against any attempt by tobacco companies to use this vehicle to promote their sales of these killing drugs?
    Mr. Oakes: I think that that is a matter for the association to look into, I have no evidence at the moment that this practice exists.
    Mr. Cormack: Does the Minister agree that the Chairman of the Imperial Tobacco Company has rendered very distinguished service to the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts? Will the hon. Gentleman enter into discussions with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the basis that business sponsorship can be much better encouraged if we have a better taxation structure?
    Mr. Oakes: It is certainly true that we want money for the arts, and we shall not set our face against any moneys coming to the arts. If there were to be any abuse by means of advertisements, clearly the association would look into the matter.

    School Transport
    Mr. Hal Millerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether she has concluded her consideration of the report of the Local Authorities Management Services Advisory Committee on school transport and is now in a position to make a statement on the Government's position in this matter.
    Mr. Skinnerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science, in her consideration of the report on school transport, whether she will consider instituting a free bus fare policy for all schoolchildren.
    Miss Margaret Jackson: This report, which is a technical one concerned with the feasibility of introducing new arrangements for school transport, has

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    only just been received and is being studied by officials. I hope soon to discuss with the local authority associations and schools, which may be two or three miles away from where the children live. The second point is that country children face other interested bodies both the report difficulties with the build-up of traffic, itself and its wider implications for school transport policy. Meanwhile, I am the rundown of pathways and the dark winter nights. Three miles is far too long arranging for copies of the report to be a distance for them to have to walk in placed in the Library.
    Mr. Miller: Do we really have to have a further round of consultations on the committee's report? Cannot we arrive at a decision? Will the Minister tell the House when a decision is expected in this matter?
    Miss Jackson: It is not a matter simply of my arriving at a decision. It is a matter for the local authorities, which have to implement the policy, arriving at decisions. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that the best way to achieve that is simply to tell them what to do and leave them to get on with it, I could only look forward with horror to his ever occupying a similar post to mine.
    Mr. Skinner: Will my hon. Friend confirm that, with underspending of about £2,000 million in the current financial year, one of the ways to avoid a similar position in the next financial year would be get some spending done? Does she not agree that part of it could be done in the Department of Education and Science by having free bus fares for all school children? That would be a very good idea and would help to redistribute income marginally, in line with the manifesto. I am prepared to offer a compromise if my hon. Friend will not go that far. Why not have half fares for those over 14 and up to 18?
    Miss Jackson: The system which is being studied is one of flat-rate fares, which would be the same for all children and which might vary a little from one authority to another. I accept my hon. Friend's argument that people would be much more assisted by having no fare at all, but we are trying to make progress as fast as possible and the best way to do it is within present resources rather than by seeking to increase expense.
    Mr. Boyson: Will the Minister agree that two things must be borne in mind particularly in regard to transport? The first is parental choice of school, particularly for those who want denominational
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    Schools, which may be two or three miles away from where the children live. The second point is that country children face difficulties with the build-up of traffic, the rundown of pathways and the dark winter nights. Three miles is far too long a distance for them to have to walk in winter.
    Miss Jackson: We have been trying to remove these anomalies, and that is what the report is about. But there are many families with children in inner city areas, where bus fares are so high that they place a tremendous burden on the family. It is not a simple matter.

    School Meals
    Mr. Peter Bottomleyasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what representations she has received about a possible increase in school meal charges in 1978.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: I have received representations from 34 individuals and organisations urging that there should be no increase in the school meals charge this year.
    Mr. Bottomley: I recognise the reality that the Cabinet and the Department have to face in providing substantially more help to families with children, but will the Secretary of State say whether she would argue for a greater increase in child benefit or a greater subsidy on school meals?
    Mrs. Williams: I should not like to be asked to make the choice, but a decision about the level of school meal charges will be announced in the House as soon as possible.
    Mr. Madden: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the inevitable consequence of increasing the price of school meals is that fewer children take them? Does not my right hon. Friend also agree that the present charge is a burden on many working men and women? Does she agree that there is little point in giving working men and women more money through tax cuts if school meal charges are to be increased substantially?
    Mrs. Williams: My hon. Friend makes a persuasive case, but he will have to wait for the decision which will be announced.

    16-to-19 Age Group
    Mr. Thorneasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what plans she has to extend provisions for the 16-to-19-year age group during the current period of high unemployment.
    Mr. Oakes: There is a strong education service involvement in both the work preparation and the work experience elements of the youth opportunities programme. The education service will be represented on the 28 area boards which will run the programme under the Manpower Services Commission's general direction and on the national Special Programmes Board. My right hon. Friend issued a statement on 28th February welcoming the programme.
    Mr. Thorne: Is my hon. Friend persuading the Secretary of State to put up a fight in the Cabinet to apply more resources to education so that we can provide the courses and pay the 16-to-19 age group, whereby giving them the opportunity which they need rather than their having to draw unemployment benefit?
    Mr. Oakes: The programme itself provides 9,000 additional places at an additional cost of £9·9 million in a full year. In conjunction With the Department of Health and Social Security, there is the provision of the 21 hours per week scheme whereby an unemployed youngster who is available for work can receive education up to 21 hours a week.
    Mr. Haselhurst: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it will not be possible to produce a sensible plan to deal with the 16-to-19 year olds in an atmosphere of mounting unemployment until there is concerted action between the Department of Education and the Department of Employment?
    Mr. Oakes: We liaise closely with the Department of Employment on these matters. As my right hon. Friend told the House earlier, we are looking into all educational maintenance grants. However, as she reminded us, it is an enormously costly business.

    Mathematics Teaching
    Mr. Hooleyasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if she
    214
    will set up an inquiry into the syllabus and techniques of mathematics teaching in schools.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: The Government's reply to the Tenth Report from the Expenditure Committee on "Attainments of the School-Leaver" is being published today. It accepts the recommendation that an inquiry should be set up into the teaching of mathematics in primary and secondary schools. I hope to announce the terms of reference, its chairman and members shortly.
    Mr. Hooley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there are about 57 different types of syllabus for the teaching of mathematics in schools at the moment? Is she also aware that her Department has either surrendered or never taken any positive control over the curriculum in this respect and that the profession has not discharged its responsibilities in the way that it should have done? Will she take urgent action to look into what is becoming a national scandal?
    Mrs. Williams: The position with regard to mathematics is one of long standing. May I quote the remarks of the Joint Mathematical Council, of which the Institute of Mathematics is a member? It said:
    "The widely held belief that all children could once reliably carry out the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of numbers of more than one digit is quite at variance with the reports of HMIs over the whole of the last century."
    We therefore have a problem, and a longstanding one.
    I answer my hon. Friend first by saying that this Government have decided to ask direct questions about the place of mathematics in the curriculum. Secondly, this Government for the first time have embarked on emergency courses to train teachers of mathematics, who have been in short supply in the last 10 years, including the period when the Leader of the Opposition was Secretary of State. Thirdly, the Government are assessing the performance of mathematics in our schools for the first time ever in our history.
    Mr. Raison: If the Secretary of State succeeds in forcing Buckinghamshire to go comprehensive, will she expect the standards in mathematics in Buckinghamshire to move to the level in the

    215
    various comprehensive schools tested by the Institute of Mathematics the other day? Would that be a good thing?
    Mrs. Williams: Yes, because the fundamental problem is not one which arises from the organisation of the schools. It arises from the shortage in mathematics teachers and from the fact that we have as many as 57 separate curricula in O-level mathematics. That cannot be the proper basis for achievement in mathematics and never has been. The Institute of Mathematics was testing boys and girls whose primary period in school was spent under the previous Administration.
    Mr. Stoddart: Does my right hon. Friend realise that many of us welcome the setting up of this inquiry and appreciate the problems which she has been encountering? She will realise, I am sure, that the great problem in mathematics starts in primary schools. Is she aware that there are many systems of teaching mathematics in primary schools which merely make simple sums difficult?
    Mrs. Williams: Yes, I am aware of that. The action which the Government are taking to improve mathematics teaching in primary schools is to require mathematics O-level or its equivalent for all future intending teachers. Again, this is the first time that this has been done.
    With regard to the survey which has been widely quoted, it strikes me very hard that, in a survey which also indicated that British teaching of science was the best in the world, this is never quoted, while the mathematics results are always quoted.
    Dr. Boyson: Is the right hon. Lady aware that the Opposition welcome an inquiry into the teaching of and the curriculum for mathematics, bearing in mind especially the horrific results of the Institute of Mathematics report last week and that much juvenile unemployment is caused because school leavers have not the mathematics levels necessary if they are to be taken on as craft apprentices?
    Mrs. Williams: I am glad to hear that the hon. Member welcomes the mathematics inquiry. But it would be very helpful if occasionally the Opposition gave credit where it was deserved—[HON. MEMBERS: 'Two years ago."] I am talking about the teaching profession and not about the mathematics inquiry.
    216
    The Opposition fail consistently to indicate that we have very high and improving standards in science teaching. The hon. Member for Brent, North (Dr. Boyson), in quoting the results of a survey which was criticial of mathematics teaching, pointed out neither that the position in West Germany with a selective system had declined more rapidly nor that in science teaching we were the best in the world.
    Hon. Members: Resign!

    PRIME MINISTER (ENGAGEMENTS)
    Mr. Wyn Robertsasked the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for 14th March.
    The Prime Minister (Mr. James Callaghan): In addition to my duties in this House, I shall be holding meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. This evening I shall be attending the annual dinner of the Finance Houses Association.
    Mr. Roberts: Apropos this evening's engagement, has the Prime Minister read today's Press reports of his miraculous eleventh-hour conversion to the Tory principle of cutting taxes? Is he aware that it will cost some £5,000 million to return to the Tory tax levels of 1973?
    The Prime Minister: I am not sure whether the hon. Member is congratulating me or—[HON. MEMBERS: "When you have done it."] Then we are all agreed. That is splendid. But, as regards cutting taxes, since we began, taking the example of a married man with two children and earning £60 a week, which is a fair example, during 1977–78 I am glad to say that his tax bill was reduced by £106 a year. That is a good start.
    Mr. David Steel: Are any of the right hon. Gentleman's ministerial meetings today concerned with attempts to secure growth in world trade and a reduction in unemployment? Will he say something about his talks on the subject with Chancellor Schmidt?
    The Prime Minister: My talks with Chancellor Schmidt were concerned with a number of factors which are affecting growth in the world. At the moment,

    217
    there is a substantial disparity of view between a number of industrialised nations about what is the best course to follow. I am trying—with what success, I do not yet know—to synthesise some of these views, because it seems to me that no single element in them, whether it be stability of exchange rates or going for growth, or whatever may be the solution that is fancied, will do it. What is needed is a combination of remedies taken collectively by all the nations together. That, in my view, could restore confidence, and it is confidence which is required in the world at present.
    Mr. Edwin Wainwright: Bearing in mind that some of us might agree with my right hon. Friend about a reduction in taxes, will he bear in mind that the last time that a Chancellor took out £5,000 million from taxes, expecting that money to go to regenerate industry, the money went elsewhere, a good deal of it overseas and a good deal into property? Will my right hon. Friend take into account that if we have a reduction in taxes it must go to regenerate our industry?
    The Prime Minister: Yes. I ask my hon. Friend not to accept as a complete statement of my total views on these matters three lines that were extricated from a public meeting and published in the Press. They happen to be three lines that hit the Opposition rather hard. As far as my hon. Friend's point is concerned, there has always been a certain fear of the growth of imports following the expansion of the economy in this country. I hope that recent indicators will not bear that out as likely to happen to a degree that will make us more vulnerable.
    Mrs. Thatcher: If the Prime Minister really believes that people prefer cuts in taxation to an increase in public expenditure, why is he presenting to the House this week a public expenditure White Paper which increases public expenditure next year, and why is he asking the House to approve it?
    The Prime Minister: It is important that even though we cut taxes there should be a proper maintenance of public services. If in order to achieve that—including appropriate expenditure on the Health Service and on education —it was necessary to increase public
    218
    expenditure, I hope that the Leader of the Opposition too would see that that was the answer. It is possible to have a balanced view on these matters.
    Mrs. Thatcher: Indeed, but how can the Prime Minister cut taxes and increase public expenditure when production is flat?
    The Prime Minister: It depends to a great extent on getting the economy going again. In certain circumstances both an increase in public expenditure, in the construction industry for example, and a reduction in direct taxation could achieve that growth, and both will happen this year.
    Mrs. Castle: Is the Prime Minister aware that we are all in favour of increased tax reliefs in the coming Budget, but will he bear in mind that, since the child tax allowance can no longer be increased, the only way of bringing relief to families with children is through an increase in child benefit? This particular increase in public expenditure—by increasing child benefit by £1 next November—is one matter that we are urging upon the Prime Minister.
    The Prime Minister: I have heard my right hon. Friend explain this at great length and with great force and conviction. I am bound to point out in logic that this is not the only way of improving the position of families with children. This can also be done by other kinds of tax reduction which affects families with children and families without children. All these matters are being taken into account. I am very happy to see that a stray and random remark of mine has attracted such interest so that now everyone realises that there will be some tax cuts this year.
    Mr. Brothertonasked the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for 14th March.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the reply which I have just given to the hon. Member for Conway (Mr. Roberts).
    Mr. Brotherton: Will the Prime Minister find time to explain to 20,000 people who will not get mortgages over the next three months why he has bullied the building societies into reducing their

    219
    lending? This action is entirely wrong and it will do nothing at all to stabilise house prices.
    The Prime Minister: It is too early to draw a conclusion like that. Having seen what happened in 1972–73 when there was a dramatic increase in house prices which did nobody any good— whether those concerned were buyers or sellers—I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would have congratulated the Government on trying an experiment to see whether, by curbing the amount available in building societies, it is possible to have a reasonable roof put on house prices. Maybe the experiment will not succeed, but the hon. Member should not condemn it out of hand before it has been tried and had a chance to work. It is an attempt to restrain inflation and keep house prices within limits so that people can afford them.
    Mr. Thorne: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there are still many people who are looking for houses to rent in Britain today? Will he consider a major increase in public expenditure in housing in order to meet that need?
    The Prime Minister: There is always a need, as we on this side of the House constantly recognise. There is a need for owner-occupiers and a need for those searching for rented property. That is why we totally disagreed with the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) when he said that the building of council houses had done great harm. I have never heard a suggestion that is more completely untrue.
    Sir K. Joseph: Is the Prime Minister aware that the Government are discouraging the private rented sector? More council houses, less privately rented housing and more homeless than ever before.
    The Prime Minister: I am not sure of the point of the right hon. Members' question, but I hope that he will explain to millions of council house dwellers in this country, who are not able to buy houses, that he holds the view that it does great harm to build council houses. Why does he say that?
    Mr. Pardoe: Will the Prime Minister find time to call in at his local friendly clearing bank and ask why it does not
    220
    open on Saturday. Is he aware that one of the major clearing banks has had to withdraw the suggestion of offering a vital Saturday opening service for customers at the behest of the bank trade unions? What are the Government going to do to curtail them?
    The Prime Minister: I could, of course, recommend that the hon. Member banks at the Co-op. Short of that, although I am deeply concerned about the problems of the clearing banks, I have too much on my hands in correcting the heresies of the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East to enter into these matters.
    Mr. Loyden: Will the Prime Minister read or re-read the remit to the National Enterprise Board given at the time of the closure of the Plessey factory which indicated that all possible steps should be taken to offset redundancies created at that time? Will he consider the responsibility of the National Enterprise Board to resist the closure of the British Leyland plant at Speke for the same reasons?
    The Prime Minister: That would not be appropriate. We have to deal with Ley-land on the basis of its becoming a viable and commercial enterprise. That must be left to the managerial judgment of British Leyland. If it feels that it has to close the Speke plant, that plant must be closed. That is its judgment and the Government will uphold it. The future of British Leyland as a whole is bigger than that of any individual factory.
    Mr. Tapsell: Will the Prime Minister in his speech this evening to the Finance House Association seek to explain whether it is still Government policy, as stated in the White Paper that the House is debating on Thursday, to increase public expenditure every year for the next four years by considerably more than the increase in gross domestic product, on even the most optimistic assumptions? If this is still Government policy, how does he reconcile it with his recent conversion to a reduction in taxation?
    The Prime Minister: I am very grateful for all the suggestions that have been made to me about what I should say in my speech tonight. I shall take them all into account. There will be a debate on this matter on Thursday, and I shall look forward to hearing the hon. Member's

    221
    views on the matter then.—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer!"] I shall answer in my own way and in my own time, and I shall resume my seat when I have finished. In regard to the problem which has been mentioned, the country requires an increase in public expenditure and in turn requires a consistent and steady growth in the economy. That is what the Government are succeeding in doing.

    QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS
    Later—
    Mr. Marten: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will have noticed that in the last few weeks we have reached only Question No. Q2 in the Prime Minister's Question Time. Will you advise us how hon. Members with Questions slightly later on the Order Paper, such as Questions Nos. Q3, Q4 and Q5, could manage to get in?
    Mr. Speaker: I have advice, but I had better not give it. The hon. Gentleman will have noticed that the first four Questions were in the same form, and it was only a matter whether hon. Members would get in supplementary questions. There is a wide interest in these opening Questions, and if fewer hon. Members jumped to their feet, we should move on more quickly.
    Mr. Cormack: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is there any significance in the fact that on today's Order Paper the Prime Minister is described as "the Primate Minister"?
    Mr. Speaker: I am a Nonconformist myself.

BILLS PRESENTED
  HOUSE OF COMMONS (ADMINISTRATION)
  Mr. Michael Foot, supported by Mr. Charles R. Morris and Mr. Arthur Bottomley, presented a Bill to make further provision for the administration of the House of Commons: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 83.]

  STATUTE OF WESTMINSTER
  Mr. Ronald Bell presented a Bill to restore freedom of speech and action in
  222
  spheres recently invaded by prescription, and to provide for the consequent repeal of certain Acts; And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon 12th May and to be printed. [Bill 85.]

  STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.
  Ordered,
  That the draft Social Security (Contributions) Consequential Amendment Regulations 1978 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Coleman.]

  MORTGAGES
  3.32 p.m.
  Mr. Frank Allaun (Salford. East): I beg to move,
  That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require building societies to lend a proportion of their total annual advances to local authorities at the societies' current interest rate, to enable the authorities to provide more mortgages to local house-buyers unable to obtain them from building societies.
  Mr. Russell Kerr (Feltham and Heston): On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. Some of us regard this Bill as very important. Could my hon. Friend be heard in relative quiet?
  Mr. Speaker: I am particularly grateful to the hon. Gentleman who will, I know, always observe that rule himself.
  Mr. Allaun: Although building societies have helped millions of families to secure a home, I think it must be said that they are far too restrictive about giving mortgages on cheaper and older houses. They also usually insist on high deposits and high incomes.
  I have evidence from all parts of the country showing that the societies are refusing mortgages on structurally sound houses. For example, they often insist on the house having a front and back garden, a rare distinction in many industrial towns, or they may require that the house already possesses a bathroom and inside lavatory. Yet if the buyer could obtain a mortgage he would subsequently install them with the aid of an improvement grant. Even more serious is that many societies red-line whole districts and refuse to grant any mortgage applications in those areas.

  223
  Only 6 per cent. of building society loans go on houses costing less than £6,000, but many young couples could get their first modest home if they could obtain a mortgage. Sometimes, because of mortgage refusal, buyers are forced into the hands of money lenders or fringe banks, which charge them up to 25 per cent. interest.
  There are vast numbers of the older, cheaper type of house for sale at present. If they cannot be sold because would-be buyers cannot get a mortgage, they may be left empty, in which case within weeks or even days they are vandalised. They frequently become a complete write-off and have to be boarded up by local authorities and then demolished. One demolished house in a terrace can start the rot in a whole row. This is the main cause of the decline in the inner city areas.
  Local authorities are far less reluctant to lend on older properties. They also grant up to 100 per cent. mortgages. Unfortunately, the total amount they are permitted to lend has been reduced by the Government under the public expenditure cuts. As a result in many cases town halls have to close their lists to applicants within a week of opening them because they have reached the year's permitted totals.
  The building societies, however, are bulging with funds. Therefore, it is only fair that they should be asked to help down-market. That is why the Secretary of State for the Environment introduced his support scheme whereby the societies were to advance mortgages to applicants sponsored by the councils. Regrettably, the scheme has had mixed results. Societies have turned down three out of four applicants in some areas, for the very reasons I have stated.
  Out of a total of £157 million to be lent in this way, only £100 million will have been advanced by the end of the financial year this month. There is to be a £300 million scheme in the coming year, but there is no reason to believe that it will be any more successful. Therefore, the Bill would require the societies to provide a proportion—10 per cent.— of their total annual advances to the councils in block loans for onward lending in this way.
  Another advantage of this scheme would be that mortgagors would pay the
  224
  current building society rate of interest, rather than the higher rates which councils are forced to charge if they themselves have borrowed at a higher rate.
  Eighteen months ago I introduced a similar Bill which received its First Reading without opposition. It did not proceed further because parliamentary time was not forthcoming. I am more hopeful on this occasion because the need is now more apparent.
  Without Government backing, Private Members' Bills have a fairly poor prospect. Therefore, I shall be only too pleased if the Government take this measure over. If there is not enough time before a General Election, I suggest that this Bill should be included in Labour's election programme.
  Earlier this month Labour's national executive home policy committee unanimously supported the Bill. Furthermore, it is backed by local authorities, including, I stress, Conservative-controlled councils.
  Among the building societies some like the scheme and some do not. Many of them see no objection. Indeed, they would have far greater security than at present because the loans would be advanced not to individual borrowers but to councils and with full financial security. The societies would also be freed from the work of investigating each individual application. Block loans are already provided by English building societies to the Housing Executive of Northern Ireland for onward lending in this way.
  It may be argued that the Government are restricting temporarily the supply of mortgages. That may be the case, but this scheme would mean that more mortgages would be provided at the lower end where there is at present a shortage of loans.
  I conclude by pointing out that 10 per cent. of building society advances last year would be £600 million. That would be a tremendous boon to those needing homes, whether in the cities or elsewhere. It is surely not asking too much to require building societies to provide one-tenth of their loans to help the lower-paid half of the population.
  3.40 p.m.
  Mr. William Clark Mr. William Clark (Croydon, South) rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Is the hon. Gentleman seeking to oppose the Bill?
  Mr. Clark: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I have no direct financial interest in building societies, either as a borrower or as a lender. I am vice-president of the Building Societies Association, but that is an honorary position. The only vested interest that I have—and that everyone else has—is to ensure that building societies remain in being. As the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Allaun) said, they have been a boon to owner-occupation.
  I am diametrically opposed to the Bill because it is a direction of investment Bill and such a measure must be wrong, particularly for building societies. We are talking about an industry which has £34,000 million worth of assets, 5 million advances on its books and 15 million savers throughout the country.
  I think that all hon. Members will agree that, since the end of the war, the industry has been the one financial institutional success in this country. It has weathered the various economic storms in that period. The hon. Member for Salford, East, for all his soft talk in introducing the Bill, looks with envy on any institution that is successful, and he and his colleagues try to devise ways in which the State can get hold of some of that success.
  The hon. Gentleman did not remind us that building societies from time to time have surplus funds and lend them, on a temporary basis, to local authorities. At the end of last year, £2,900 million was deposited with local authorities and if they want to use those funds to develop inner cities, they may do so.
  It will be within the recollection of every hon. Member that, since the end of the war, and certainly recently, building societies have helped local authorities, particularly since the cut-back on public expenditure, by making building society money available for home ownership within the local authority sector. The hon. Gentleman was rather quiet about whether, if local authorities get money from the building societies, any of it could be used to assist council tenants to buy their homes from local authorities.
  The hon. Gentleman's criticisms of building societies do not bear investigation. He said that they are failing to lend money on older houses, but in the
  226
  last quarter of 1977, a total of 44 per cent. of all building society advances were made on pre-1939 houses, and in the same period, 24 per cent. of all advances were on houses built before 1919. It is not correct to say that building societies have not helped in the purchase of lower-priced or older houses.
  In the whole of last year, local authorities—despite what the hon. Gentleman said about their helping in inner cities— made 17,000 advances on pre-1919 houses. In the same period, building societies made 160,000 such advances. The hon. Gentleman's criticisms are not valid. In addition, 65 per cent. of all building society advances last year were to buyers under the age of 35. Here again, the hon. Gentleman's criticisms of building societies are not valid.
  The House must recognise that building societies can lend only money which they obtain from the public. For every person who borrows from a society, there are three investors who supply the money.
  The hon. Member for Salford, East should be criticising his own Government because since they have been in office, they have killed off the private rented sector and have not encouraged home ownership. The loose talk going on at present —and I understand that the hon. Member participates in it—of cutting the level of mortgage interest allowed for tax purposes cannot possibly encourage home ownership. The hon. Gentleman's main criticism of the Government should be that they have not kept to the manifesto on which he, no doubt, fought his campaign in October 1974, and in which it was categorically stated that local authority lending would be expanded. What criticism does the hon. Gentleman level at the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, on 22nd July 1976, slashed the home-lending programme for local authorities by £146 million? That was diametrically opposed to what they promised the electorate.
  The hon. Gentleman's tactic in saying that his Bill has been approved by the Labour Party's NEC is kite-flying, similar to the kite-flying tried by his hon. Friend the Member for Blyth (Mr. Ryman), who introduced a Bill to nationalise building societies. I am pleased that the Government would not have that and did not let that Bill go through.

  227
  This Bill is analogous to the previous measure, but rather more subversive. The hon. Member for Salford, East says that we should direct the investment of building societies to the tune of 10 per cent. of their advances, but who is to say that next year that figure will not be 20 per cent. 40 per cent., or 60 per cent.? Eventually, the industry will be nationalised by backdoor methods.
  The Government did not like the Bill of the hon. Member for Blyth because the Prime Minister and everyone else in the House realised that, like this Bill, it was an albatross that even the Labour Party could not afford to carry into the next General Election.
  The direction of investment would be a dangerous precedent for the House to pass. If we start with building societies, who is to say that we shall not have
  direction of investment of insurance companies, banks, pension funds and the rest? I am sure that the Left wing of the Labour Party would like that to happen, but everyone else in the country appreciates that our future depends on investment and that investment depends on savers.
  It would be a catastrophe if the palsied hand of the State were put on building society funds. It would cause savers to lose confidence and would be the death knell of owner-occupation.
  Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and Nomination of Select Committees at Commencement of Public Business):—
  The House divided: Ayes 190, Noes 165.

  Division No. 146]

  AYES

  [3.49 p.m.

  Allaun, Frank

  Ellis, John (Brigg & Scun)

  McDonald, Dr Oonagh

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  English, Michael

  McElhone, Frank

  Ashley, Jack

  Ennals, Rt Hon David

  MacFarquhar, Roderick

  Ashton, Joe

  Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)

  MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

  Atkins, Ronald (Preston N)

  Evans, Gwynfor (Carmarthen)

  Maclennan, Robert

  Atkinson, Norman

  Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)

  Madden, Max

  Bagier, Gordon A. T.

  Evans, John (Newton)

  Mallalieu, J. P. W.

  Bain, Mrs Margaret

  Ewing, Harry (Stirling)

  Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)

  Bates, Alf

  Faulds, Andrew

  Maynard, Miss Joan

  Bean, R. E.

  Fernyhough, Rt Hon E.

  Mendelson, John

  Beith, A. J.

  Flannery, Martin

  Mikardo, Ian

  Benn, Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbrlde)

  Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N)

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Mitchell, Austin

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Fowler, Gerald (The Wrekin)

  Molloy, William

  Bishop, Rt Hon Edward

  Freud, Clement

  Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

  Blenkinsop, Arthur

  Garrett, John (Norwich S)

  Morris, Rt Hon Charles R.

  Booth, Rt Hon Albert

  Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Boothroyd, Miss Betty

  George, Bruce

  Moyle, Roland

  Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Golding, John

  Newens, Stanley

  Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

  Graham, Ted

  Noble, Mike

  Brown, Ronald (Hackney S)

  Grant, George (Morpeth)

  O'Halloran, Michael

  Buchan, Norman

  Grant, John (Islington C)

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Buchanan, Richard

  Grocott, Bruce

  Palmer, Arthur

  Butler, Mrs Joyce (Wood Green)

  Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

  Pardoe, John

  Canavan, Dennis

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Park, George

  Cant, R. B.

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Pavitt, Laurie

  Carmichael, Neil

  Hooson, Emlyn

  Panhaligon, David

  Carter-Jones, Lewis

  Hoyle, Doug (Nelson)

  Perry, Ernest

  Castle, Rt Hon Barbara

  Hughes, Rt Hon C. (Anglesey)

  Price, William (Rugby)

  Clemitson, Ivor

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Radice, Giles

  Cocks, Rt Hon Michael (Bristol S)

  Hughes Roy (Newport)

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn (Leeds S)

  Cohen, Stanley

  Irving, Rt Hon S. (Dartford)

  Reid, George

  Coleman, Donald

  Jay, Rt Hon Douglas

  Richardson, Miss Jo

  Conlan, Bernard

  Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  Cook, Robin F. (Edin C)

  John, Brynmor

  Rodgers, George (Chorley)

  Corbett, Robin

  Johnson, James (Hull Watt)

  Rooker, J. W.

  Cowans, Harry

  Jones, Alec (Rhondda)

  Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

  Craigen, Jim (Maryhill)

  Jones, Dan (Burnley)

  Rowlands, Ted

  Crawford, Douglas

  Kaufman, Gerald

  Ryman, John

  Crawshaw, Richard

  Kelley, Richard

  Sandelson, Neville

  Cryer, Bob

  Kerr, Russell

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Cunningham, Dr J. (Whiteh)

  Kilroy-Silk, Robert

  Selby, Harry

  Davidson, Arthur

  Lambie, David

  Sever, John

  Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)

  Lamond, James

  Shaw, Arnold (Ilford South)

  Deakins, Eric

  Latham, Arthur (Paddington)

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Dempsey, James

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)

  Dormand, J. D.

  Litterick, Tom

  Sillars, James

  Douglas-Mann, Bruce

  Lomas, Kenneth

  Silverman

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  Loyden, Eddie

  Skinner, Dennis

  Eadie, Alex

  Lyon, Alexander (York)

  Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)

  Edge, Geoff

  Lyons, Edward (Bradford W)

  Snape, Peter

  Spearing, Nigel

  Thorne, Stan (Preston South)

  Whitlock, William

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Tinn, James

  Willey, Rt Hon Frederick

  Stallard, A. W.

  Tuck, Raphael

  Williams, Rt Hon Shirley (Hertford)

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.

  Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)

  Stewart, Rt Hon Donald

  Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Stewart, Rt Hon M. (Fulham)

  Wainwright (Colne V)

  Woof, Robert

  Stoddart, David

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Wrigglesworth, Ian

  Stott, Roger

  Walker, Terry (Klngswood)

  Young, David (Bolton E)

  Strang, Gavin

  Ward, Michael

  Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley

  Watkins, David

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)

  Watt, Hamish

  Mr. Jim Callagban and

  Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertlllery)

  Weitzman, David

  Mr. Joseph Dean.

  Thomas, Ron (Bristol NW)

  White, Frank R. (Bury)

  NOES

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Grist, Ian

  Onslow, Cranley

  Arnold, Tom

  Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

  Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)

  Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne)

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Page, Richard (Workington)

  Banks, Robert

  Hannam, John

  Paisley, Rev Ian

  Bendall, Vivian (Ilford North)

  Harrison, Col Sir Harwood (Eye)

  Pattie, Geoffrey

  Bennett, Dr Reginald (Fareham)

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Peyton, Rt Hon John

  Berry, Hon Anthony

  Hawkins, Paul

  Powell, Rt Hon J. Enoch

  Biffen, John

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

  Body, Richard

  Hicks, Robert

  Price, David (Eastleigh)

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Holland, Philip

  Prior, Rt Hon James

  Bottomley, Peter

  Hordern, Peter

  Pym, Rt Hon Francis

  Bowden, A. (Brighton, Kemptown)

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Raison, Timothy

  Boyson, Dr Rhodes (Brent)

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Rathbone, Tim

  Braine, Sir Bernard

  Hurd, Douglas

  Renton, Rt Hon Sir D. (Hunts)

  Brooke, Peter

  James, David

  Renton, Tim (Mid-Sussex)

  Brotherton, Michael

  Jenkin, Rt Hon P. (Wanst'd&W'df'd)

  Rhodes James, R.

  Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

  Jessel, Toby

  Ridley, Hon Nicholas

  Buck, Antony

  Johnson Smith, G. (E Grinstead)

  Ridsdale, Julian

  Budgen, Nick

  Jones, Arthur (Daventry)

  Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

  Burden, F. A.

  Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

  Ross, William (Londonderry)

  Butler, Adam (Bosworth)

  Kershaw, Anthony

  Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

  Carlisle, Mark

  Kilfedder, James

  Rost, Peter (SE Derbyshire)

  Chalker, Mrs Lynda

  King, Evelyn (South Dorset)

  Sainsbury, Tim

  Churchill, W. S.

  King, Tom (Bridgwater)

  Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

  Clark, Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)

  Knight, Mrs Jill

  Shepherd, Colin

  Clark, William (Croydon S)

  Lamont, Norman

  Shersby, Michael

  Cockcroft, John

  Langford-Holt, Sir John

  Sims, Roger

  Cooke, Robert (Bristol W)

  Latham, Michael (Melton)

  Sinclair, Sir George

  Cope, John

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  Costain, A. P.

  Lawson, Nigel

  Smith Dudley (Warwick)

  Critchley, Julian

  Le Marchant, Spencer

  Smith, Timothy John (Ashfleld)

  Crouch, David

  Lester, Jim (Beeston)

  Speed, Keith

  Dodsworth, Geoffrey

  Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

  Stainton, Keith

  Drayson, Burnaby

  McAdden, Sir Stephen

  Stradling Thomas, J.

  Dykes, Hugh

  McCrindle, Robert

  Taylor, Teddy (Cathcart)

  Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  McCusker, H.

  Tebbit, Norman

  Fairbairn, Nicholas

  Macfarlane, Neil

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Fairgrieve, Russell

  MacKay, Andrew (Stechford)

  Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret

  Finsberg, Geoffrey

  Macmillan, Rt Hon M. (Farnham)

  Townsend, Cyril D.

  Fletcher, Alex (Edinburgh N)

  McNalr-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

  Trotter, Neville

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Marten, Neil

  Vaughan, Dr Gerard

  Forman, Nigel

  Mates, Michael

  Viggers, Peter

  Fowler, Norman (Sutton C'f'd)

  Mather, Carol

  Wakeham, John

  Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford & St)

  Mawby, Ray

  Walder, David (Clitheroe)

  Fry, Peter

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Walker, Rt Hon P (Worcester)

  Gardiner, George (Reigate)

  Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove)

  Wall, Patrick

  Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)

  Mitchell, David (Baslngstoke)

  Warren, Kenneth

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Ian (Chesham)

  Moate, Roger

  Weatherlll, Bernard

  Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)

  Monro, Hector

  Whitelaw, Rt Hon William

  Glyn, Dr Alan

  More, Jasper (Ludlow)

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Goodhart, Philip

  Morris, Michael (Northampton S)

  Young, Sir G. (Ealing, Acton)

  Goodhew, Victor

  Morrison, Hon Peter (Chester)

  Younger, Hon George

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Mudd, David

  Gow, Ian (Eastbourne)

  Neave, Airey

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Gower, Sir Raymond (Barry)

  Nelson, Anthony

  Mr. Patrick Connack and

  Gray, Hamish

  Neubert, Michael

  Mr. Robert Adley.

  Griffiths, Eldon

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Frank Allaum. Mr. Andrew F. Bennett, Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann, Mr. Jim Callaghan, Mr. Robin F. Cook, Mr.
  230
  Joseph Dean, Mr. Arthur Latham, Miss Joan Maynard, Mr. Max Madden, Mr. Norman Atkinson, Mr. Julius Silverman and Mr. Brian Sedgemore.

  MORTGAGES
  Mr. Frank Allaun accordingly presented a Bill to require building societies to lend a proportion of their total annual advances to local authorities at the societies' current interest rate, to enable the authorities to provide more mortgages to local housebuyers unable to obtain them from building societies; And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 14th April and to be printed. [Bill 84.]
  ORDERS OF THE DAY

    DEFENCE
    Order read for resuming adjourned debate on amendment to Question [13th March]:
    That this House endorses Her Majesty's Government's policy set out in the Statement on the Defence Estimates 1978 (Command Paper No. 7099) of basing British security on collective effort to deter aggression, while seeking every opportunity to reduce tension through international agreements on arms control and disarmament.—[Mr. Mulley.]
    Amendment proposed, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
    "regrets that the defence policy of Her Majesty's Government during the last four years has damaged the security of the United Kingdom and has harmed the prospects of reaching international agreement on arms control and disarmament'.—[Sir Ian Gilmour.]
    Mr. Speaker: Before I propose the Question, I must tell the House that yesterday Front-Bench speeches took two hours 19 minutes, and six Back-Bench Members each took 20 minutes or over. The result was that only six hon. Members from the Back Benches could be called from either side of the House. This puts me in an impossible position when hon. Members are seeking to take part in the debate. The House will realise that with another 40 hon. Members wishing to speak today, it is impossible for all of them to be called, but it is possible for right hon. and hon. Members to exercise greater self-discipline in the length of their speeches.
    As the House well knows, all I can do is to appeal—and remember; and I promise to remember, in the interests of the House.
    Question again proposed,That the amendment be made.
    4.2 p.m.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force (Mr. James Wellbeloved): My predecessor in this House urged upon me before I came here never to put Mr. Speaker into an impossible position. I shall therefore seek to be as brief as I can—and as brief as the House will allow me.
    In coming to power, the Government inherited a defence programme that was ludicrously ambitious in its projections

    233
    of forward expenditure. Therefore, the Government undertook the 1974 defence review in order that the nation should not be called upon to devote resources to defence expenditure disproportionate to those which our commitment and our economic position could possibly justify and sustain. After the defence review decisions, there were minor reductions made in some other areas of projected expenditure. But these later adjustments need to be seen against the whole background of the vital battle for the nation's economic survival.
    The outlook is improving, and we have therefore felt able to allow a real increase to be made in our defence budget for the next two years at least—in response to NATO's call in the face of the increased Warsaw Pact threat.
    My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State explained to the House yesterday that our plans will allow us to make real improvements in our defence capability while at the same time fulfilling our manifesto commitment to reduce the percentage of gross domestic product that we spend on defence so that it is more in line with that of our major European allies. This is a major achievement.
    We must not let the improvement which we are now able to make cause us to lose sight of the outstanding contribution which the United Kingdom already makes to each element of NATO's triad of forces and, indeed, to the forces of each NATO major commander. I believe that it is a tragedy that the major political Opposition party in this House has become so besotted with the pursuit of political power that it cannot generate even a flicker of patriotic pride to illuminate the vital and substantial contribution which Britain makes to the Atlantic Alliance and to the peace and security of the free world.
    The debate so far has taken the usual course of Opposition contributions consisting of negative or destructive views of the nation's defence effort—without a single constructive attempt to deploy their own policy for examination by the House or, perhaps equally as important, by those outside this House who take an intelligent interest in defence affairs.
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    Let me place on record for the benefit of serious observers of the defence scene the facts on Britain's contribution to collective defence within the NATO alliance. The United Kingdom itself provides a vital base for British forces assigned to NATO, including those forces which would reinforce Allied Command Europe, and the aircraft of RAF Strike Command which in war would operate in support of all the three NATO major commanders. The United Kingdom also provides a base for the vital United States forces which are stationed here in peace time, as well as those which would reinforce NATO's posture in time of tension.
    We contribute by far the largest of the readily available maritime forces in the Eastern Atlantic and Channel. Virtually the whole of the Royal Navy, the third largest in the world, is assigned to NATO, and we also contribute RAF aircraft to act in support of maritime operations.
    The need to deter Soviet aggression applies no less to the seas than to the land. The defence of Europe demands the passage of transatlantic reinforcements and the use of the seas around Europe for the deployment of forces. The startling growth in Soviet maritime power has been one of the striking features of the last decade. In the Eastern Atlantic, the Soviet Union's maritime capability, in particular her submarine forces, continues to improve in both quantity and quality. At sea, as on land, NATO needs a range of capabilities so that it can respond flexibly to threatened or actual aggression. The United Kingdom has a vital role to play since in the Eastern Atlantic and Channel areas we continue to provide the main weight of maritime forces readily available to the Alliance.
    In order to maintain and improve the effectiveness of our contribution to the Alliance's maritime capability, we are continuing with the major re-equipment programme for the Royal Navy. Five new classes of warship are under construction. These include the new class of anti-submarine warfare cruisers, the first of which, HMS "Invincible", was launched last May, nuclear-powered fleet submarines, which we are the only European NATO navy to operate, and the Type 22 frigates and Type 42 destroyers. To complement

    235
    these new ship classes there are new weapons and equipments including the Sea Dart and Sea Wolf guided missile systems, and the Sea Harrier aircraft.
    Turning to the Army, our peace-time commitment of the British Army of the Rhine is 55,000 men. This number would be more than doubled in an emergency. The tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles stationed in BAOR are a significant part of the ground forces immediately available to meet any surprise attack, should that eventuality ever occur. In support of the land forces, RAF aircraft are based in Germany in the strike-attack, reconnaissance, air defence and support roles. The air support contributed by these 12 squadrons would play a crucial role in ensuring that an enemy did not gain aerial superiority over the battlefield. We also contribute theatre nuclear forces and, by means of the Polaris force, add to NATO's strategic nuclear capability.
    Our forces also make significant contributions to SACEUR's strategic reserve, including the United Kingdom Mobile Force, contributions to the ACE Mobile Force and three squadrons of the Special Air Service. On the northern flank, Royal Marine commandos contribute reinforcement forces.
    This year anti-tank guided weapon systems in BAOR will be increased by 60 per cent.—yes, 60 per cent.—compared with 1974 and in RAF Germany and BAOR the total number of SAM systems will be up by 160 per cent.
    The air defence of the United Kingdom, which was dismantled and discarded by a previous Tory Government, is being restored. The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) talked of the Soviet threat. Let me tell him that under this Labour Government major steps have been taken to counter the threat to this island from the Soviet Backfire and Fencer bombers, something that his Government failed to do in the four years that they were in office.
    The right hon. Gentleman knows full well that the time lag in the development of aircraft would have led any prudent British Government to make at least a reasonable forecast of an improved Soviet air capability and would have laid the
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    foundation for the things that this Government have had the initiative, courage and ability to put into action.
    Mr. Alexander Fletcher Mr. Alexander Fletcher (Edinburgh, North) rose—
    Mr. Wellbeloved: I have hardly begun my speech. The trouble with the Opposition—and I exclude the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Fletcher)—is that they are great fellows at dishing it out but they do not always have the intestinal fortitude to take it when it is given back—to use someone else's phrase.
    These improvements include our plans for improved radar coverage, airfield survival measures, Tornado ADV, air-to-air missiles—including Skyflash medium range and AIM 9L short range—Nimrod Airborne Early Warning and air-to-air refuelling resources, which my right hon. Friend announced to the House yesterday.
    These are some of the positive steps that have been taken. They are not pie in the sky, nor the Tory election moonshine that was trotted out by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham. They are firm, practical steps which have been taken to ensure that this country has its air defence restored from that which we inherited from the previous Tory Administrations.
    Mr. Anthony Nelson: The Minister has spoken about the importance of air defence. The principal element will be the re-equipment of Strike Command with Tornados. The Secretary of State spoke about the delays in the delivery and introduction of this aircraft, which is essential and the backbone of our air defence. Can the Minister say when the replacement of Tornados will be completed? Has this been put back?
    Mr. Wellbeloved: There are no financial restraints. We hope that the Tornado will be in operation in the mid-1980s.
    No doubt the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham failed to notice an excellent report in The Guardian on 1st July 1977 by that paper's distinguished defence correspondent, David Fairhall. I shall content myself with two short quotations—one from the first paragraph of that article and one from the last. In the first paragraph, commenting

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    on the RAF's progress, Mr. Fairhall said that it would commence
    "to rebuild the air defences of the UK almost from scratch".
    In the last paragraph he declared
    "perhaps we should all feel flattered that the RAF once more thinks we are worth defending".
    Perhaps it would have been more accurate if he had said that we should all be flattered and rest in our beds more securely because the Labour Government have taken steps to restore the strength of the RAF in order to defend this island against the potential enemy.
    So much for the Opposition humbug in the amendment in which they accuse the Government of damaging
    "the security of the United Kingdom".
    Mr. Tom Litterick: Can my hon. Friend assure the House that in the interests of the Tornado programme the Russians will continue to supply the raw titanium sponge with which it is built?
    Mr. Wellbeloved: I can assure my hon. Friend that obtaining that material does not present a problem for the United Kingdom.
    This is our Government's achievement and, as the Secretary of State said yesterday, our decisions on the defence budget up to 1980–81 will enable us to make major improvements to this already outstanding contribution.
    I do not seek to claim that everything in the garden is perfect. But I do claim that our country makes a major contribution to the collective defence capability of the Alliance. This is recognised by our allies abroad and should be recognised by our political opponents in the House.
    Mr. Geoffrey Pattie: Is the Minister satisfied with another of the Government's achievements—drying up the supply of trained pilots?
    Mr. Wellbeloved: I shall come to the question of recruitment later, if the hon. Member can contain his impatience for a few minutes.
    Let me now turn to other matters, I should like to take this opportunity of paying tribute to the determination with
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    which the members of the Services, from all ranks, have worked to secure the speedy and efficient implementation of national policies in the difficult circumstances of the past few years. It would be foolish to claim that carrying out the defence policy's decisions has been an easy task for them. We must therefore not lose sight of the real anxieties that these difficult times have brought to the officers and men who serve in the Armed Forces, and the effects upon them.
    As my right hon. Friend said, the nation owes a debt of gratitude to the Services for the selfless and good-humoured way in which they have responded to the need to give aid to the civil powers, whether it was the provision of fire cover or assistance to those who were stranded or made homeless by the blizzards and flooding in Scotland and the West country.
    There are several points about the Services' contribution to the latter that I should like to make today. First, the early warning from the Meteorological Office helped considerably. Secondly, all the operations were carried out under existing standard procedures and no special MOD authority was needed for them to start. Thirdly, resources were available as required by the local authorities, and local Service commanders were able to anticipate increased demands by calling for reinforcements as necessary.
    Both operations were carefully monitored by the MOD, but at no time was it necessary for them to be conducted from London as commanders had adequate authority to deal with all calls for help. I hope that the civil authorities of England, Scotland and Wales will be comforted by this experience, knowing that we now have well-established rules for providing military aid promptly to the civil community in times of urgent need. Having reviewed our experience during these crises we would not now propose any change in the arrangements.
    Altogether, during the operation in the South West, a force of 35 helicopters rescued or evacuated over 250 people, delivered essential medical food supplies in about 150 cases and made some 160 air drops of animal fodder. Over 50 sorties were undertaken for essential civilian services. Most of the flying effort was undertaken by the Services involving the RAF, the Royal Navy and the Royal

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    Marines and aircraft from the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down. It was also encouraging for our rescue forces to be joined by aircraft from the United States Air Force, Trinity House and Bristows Limited. I am sure that hon. Members will also wish to add their thanks to these units. On both these occasions the Services performed to their customary expected standards of professionalism.
    I should like to dwell on that for a little longer. As the Minister with day-to-day responsibility for the Royal Air Force I come into close contact with large numbers of officers and airmen during the course of visits to RAF stations. I am sure that my colleagues the Under-Secretaries of State for the Royal Navy and the Army would not dissent when I say that one of the most frequent questions asked of a single-Service Minister is about their assessment of morale in the Services.
    In reply, I must say that morale is not all that I should like it to be. There are genuine anxieties and frustrations. As my right hon. Friend said yesterday, the Armed Forces have suffered, as has every other section of the community, from the fall in the standard of living. The battle against inflation has been fought by Service men and civilians alike—and I exclude the hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit). But every fair-minded person knows that the steadfast adherence to the tough and difficult decisions of the past few years is beginning to reap its reward. Even those whose judgment is marred by partisan political prejudice are hard pressed in their attempts to cloud over the realities and distort the fact that the Government's policies have been successful and open up the prospect of a stable and prosperous future.
    Mr. Geoffrey Johnson Smith: Why is it that for such a long period of time the personnel in the Armed Forces have come off so much worse than other sections of the community, to the extent that it is reported that 40 per cent. more officers and men are likely to opt for early retirement this year than last year? Is the Minister not ashamed of that record?
    Mr. Wellbeloved: I shall be coming to some of these problems in a moment. I can tell the hon. Gentleman now, on this question of comparability of pay,
    240
    that I am in the happy position, along with my right hon. and hon. Friends, of being able to remind the hon. Gentleman that it was this Government which restored comparability to the Armed Forces in 1975 after several years of loss of comparability under the Conservative Government. I have no doubt that, when the economy of this country resumes its former strength, it will be the proud duty of this Government to repeat that performance.
    I have said that morale is not all that I should like it to be. But, despite their anxieties, the Armed Forces can take pride in the professionalism which has enabled them to carry out all the tasks required of them to the highest standards of skill and professional competence. As my right hon. Friend told the House yesterday, in a recent NATO tactical evaluation an RAF station in Germany scored the highest results ever awarded to any operational unit of any NATO country. This is an outstanding achievement, and I believe that the House will wish to hear of it in a little more detail. Perhaps even Tory Members will not be able to forbear from cheering on this point.
    The Supreme Allied Commander Europe's tactical evaluation programme is intended to ensure, by means of an objective assessment, that Air Force units maintain the prescribed high standards. In laymen's terms, it measures the capacity of a unit to go from routine day-to-day work to a full war footing. Units are evaluated annually by a multinational NATO team which assesses the unit's speed of transition to a war footing, subsequent effectiveness, and capacity of the unit to support operations, and survivability under attack.
    I should like to emphasise that these evaluations are conducted with no advance notice whatsoever. The NATO team simply arrives at the station, and the personnel there have to drop all other work and domestic plans, staying on the job for days on end until the evaluation is over. In the case of RAF Bruggen, the home of the RAF Germany Jaguar strike wing, the NATO team arrived on a Sunday declaring the requirement for an advanced state of readiness. RAF Bruggen was given the highest assessments possible under all headings on which examination of the station's capability is assessed, and I understand that this is

    241
    the first time that any permanent air base in the central region has achieved this remarkable feat. This is great tribute to the professionalism of the Royal Air Force.
    It is dedication like this—for which nobody gets paid overtime—which involves significant dislocation of family life, that enable our forces to make such an outstanding contribution to the Alliance and to the maintenance of peace and freedom. I have spoken today about the RAF, but I am sure one could go to the other Services who would have their own proud stories to tell.
    This performance underlines my contention that the standards of dedication and professionalism in the Armed Forces are of the highest order.
    Mr. Philip Goodhart (Beckenham): Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Critchley) and I, together with other hon. Members, visited Bruggen and that we can pay tribute to the high efficiency of the men there? Is he also aware that we met a substantial number of senior NCOs and warrant officers who are responsible for the efficiency of the Jaguar strike squadrons and who made it perfectly plain that they would leave the RAF unless a major improvement in their pay and conditions was forthcoming soon?
    Mr. Wellbeloved: The hon. Gentleman can take some comfort from the fact that this Government, backed by all the authority and information that can be provided by our professional advisers, have ensured that every conceivable scrap of information has been made available to those who have the responsibility of determining the future pay and conditions of those in the Royal Air Force.
    The fact that we have entered a period of stability and, indeed, modest growth in the defence budget will itself help improve the morale of those serving in the forces. In the past year, recruitment to the Services has been satisfactory, with the exception of some RAF officer branches. Recruitment of Army officers has continued to improve, and it is particularly pleasing that the applicants are generally of a very high quality.
    As the House will be aware, the RAP has recently introduced a short service
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    commission for aircrew officers. This commission is for an engagement of 12 years, but with an option break-point at eight years. We have long been conscious that the thought of signing up for a permanent commission may deter many young men from choosing a career in the RAF. The introduction of the short service commission means that those who are reluctant to make the longer-term commitment early in their adult life will now have the opportunity of undertaking an exciting and stimulating career.
    Of course, we hope that many of those who join on short service commissions will, after the initial experience of life in the Royal Air Force, decide to stay on and convert to full career engagements. I am delighted to be able to say that the initial reaction to the short service commission has been highly encouraging. A significant number of applications has been made, and the standard of the applicants has been high.
    Mr. Churchill: The Undersecretary says that the standard of applicants has been high. Will he confirm that the RAF has been forced to reduce standards for its intakes?
    Mr. Wellbeloved: I can categorically deny that the Royal Air Force has reduced, or is contemplating reducing, its standards for intakes. If the hon. Gentleman says that this is not correct, perhaps he will do the House a favour and. instead of making innuendoes, give us his source for this information. We shall be delighted to know who is giving this misinformation to the hon. Gentleman.
    Within the Services' organisations for recruitment both in the field and in headquarters, we are pursuing vigorously the possibilities of greater cost effectiveness in ensuring that we have an organisation that is well equipped to carry out its task. The possibilities for colocation of careers information offices are examined whenever the time comes for the lease of a careers information office to be renewed. The achievement of colocation is necessarily a lengthy process because of the commitments we have to our existing premises. Nevertheless, real efforts are being made to accelerate the process of colocation.
    Mr. Ron Thomas: My hon. Friend has rightly

    243
    pointed out some of the problems facing members of the defence forces. Will he reconsider the suggestion of setting up a procedure whereby representatives of the TUC can meet representatives of the Armed Forces with a view to establishing trade unions for the Forces? This is the only way to deal with these matters, as opposed to the rather patronising attitude that has been adopted.
    Mr. Wellbeloved: The best way of dealing with the pay and conditions for the Armed Forces is to repose our confidence in the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. On the subject of trade unions, my right hon. Friend has said that members of the Armed Forces are free to join trade unions. I have maintained a reasonably close contact with the Royal Air Force over the past two years. I have not found any great demand for membership of trade unions in the Armed Forces. That may be regrettable. I am an ardent trade unionist, but I have to report the facts as I find them on the ground on my visits to the Armed Forces.
    As Minister with day-to-day responsibility for recruiting on a tri-Service basis, I have already told the House that we have reduced expenditure on recruitment by £4 million in 1978–79 compared with expenditure in the previous year. We have thought it right to make these economies in order that the present very high costs per recruit obtained should be made more reasonable.
    Turning to re-engagement, I can tell the House that the number of those who have the option to re-engage after completing an engagement and who opt to do so is very encouraging. Hon. Members may have noticed from the table in the White Paper that in the period 1st April to 30th September 1977, the percentages of those opting to re-engage compare very favourably with those of previous years.
    So far as outflow is concerned, the number of personnel wishing to leave the Services prematurely has historically fluctuated from year to year in response to a variety of factors, but I accept that there has recently been a disturbing increase. Anxiety about pay and conditions of service and turbulence caused by various emergency duties, both at home and overseas, are no doubt significant considerations in many individual
    244
    decisions to seek early release. We are not complacent about the present situation and are keeping a close watch on trends in this area. As the House knows, the next Armed Forces pay award is due on 1st April, but it is not possible to say at this stage what it will be.
    On several occasions, hon. Members opposite have criticised the Government for applying stage 2 of the incomes policy to the Armed Forces in just the same way as it was applied to other members of society. In order to inject some degree of perspective into their criticisms, I think that a quotation from one of my predecessors might assist them.
    Speaking in a similar debate in 1973, the then Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force said:
    "Now that the second stage of the Government's incomes policy is in prospect, the Services, like everyone else in the community, are involved in that policy, which means that any improvements in pay or conditions of service during phase 2 will need to take account of the guidelines."
    I shall continue the quotation in a few moments. But, first, I should like to remind the House that some hon. Members opposite have accused the Government of interfering with the independence of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. The quotation continues:
    "We hope that the Review Body will continue its work during phase 2. During this stage, we shall want to consult the Review Body and the Pay Board about the arrangements which should apply to the future. In the meantime, if the Review Body makes recommendations for a pay review in the light of the pay code, the Government will be prepared to agree to increases which comply with that code."—[Official Report, 19th March 1973; Vol. 853, c. 54–5.]
    I put it to hon. Members opposite that they cannot have it both ways. If the independence of the AFPRB has been taken away by this Government, it was also taken away by the Tory Administration in 1973. It is totally dishonest for them to try to make political capital out of the application of the Government's pay policy to the Services. They were the first to do it. The AFPRB made its first report during a Tory Administration.
    I should like now to say that the Government have the utmost confidence in the integrity and independence of the

    245
    Armed Forces Pay Review Body, and we are very grateful for all its hard work.
    Sir Ian Gilmour: I am grateful that at last the Government have changed their ground. They now admit that the Armed Forces Pay Review Body is not independent. They merely say that it was not independent under the Conservative Government either. The difference is that we never claimed that it was. This Government have claimed that it is, but now the hon. Gentleman has admitted that it is not.
    Mr. Wellbeloved: We have not changed our ground at all. We have merely sought to expose the hypocrisy of some of the attacks made by the Opposition on this matter.
    So far, I have spoken of the success of the Government's defence policy over the past few years and of the prospect of bringing our defence expenditure into line with that of our allies and our economic ability. I have also spoken of the prospect of a period of stability ahead and our response to NATO's call for 3 per cent. growth throughout the Alliance to meet the Warsaw Pact build-up.
    In the remainder of my time I should like to examine the Opposition's attitude to these achievements and to say a few words about what they are pleased to describe as their defence policy.
    When the White Paper was published, right hon. and hon. Members opposite made a great deal of fuss about the inclusion of the French Forces in the tables showing the comparative strengths in Europe of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The rationale for the inclusion of the French forces in these tables has already been explained by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and I do not propose to dwell on these matters further. But it is a pity that, in their haste to make party political points, the Opposition could not bring themselves to pay tribute when it was deserved.
    Right hon. and hon. Members opposite were only too ready to quote the views expressed by Doctor Luns, the Secretary-General of NATO, over the decision to reduce the planned defence expenditure for 1978–79 by £267 million. Great play was made of his concern,
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    although the fact that Dr. Luns is on record as saying that NATO recognised the Government's success in keeping to a minimum the effect of this cut on our front-line forces did not receive such emphasis.
    Sir Ian Gilmour: Too long.
    Mr. Wellbeloved: The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham is muttering about the time that I am consuming. He took an exceedingly long time yesterday to make a speech that was not only politically partisan but factually inept in not displaying the Conservative Party's policy. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman must not complain if, after having given way on numerous occasions to his hon. Friends, I seek now to expose the hollowness of his own lack of policy in dealing with these essential matters.
    In their haste to decry any one of the Government's policies which is proving successful, the Opposition seem only recently to have turned a deaf ear to Dr. Luns.
    On the day of the publication of the White Paper, Dr. Luns was reported in The Times as telling a meeting of the European-Atlantic Group that he was
    "heartened by the recent decisions of Her Majesty's Government".
    He specifically welcomed improvements in ground forces, the increase in naval strength and the introduction of new weapons. He said that the improvements were in line with last year's NATO Summit decisions to increase defence spending in real terms by 3 per cent. a year and that, compared with other NATO members' relative decline in spending, Britain was a member of the Alliance
    "which spent more than most".
    The Opposition did not quote those words of Dr. Luns in his praise of this Government's magnificent record of defending the freedom of this country.
    That statement by Dr. Luns is a true reflection of the high regard in which this nation's defence effort is held by NATO, despite the difficulties of recent years. But the Opposition pay no heed. Instead, we hear constantly from Opposition defence spokesmen carping criticism denigrating our country's contribution.
    I expect that any moment now the right hon. Lady will unilaterally announce the

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    latest shift in Conservative policy. But, until that inevitable outburst, the House is left with the policy—that gives it a dignity to which it is not entitled—outlined by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham. In order to be as kind as I can to hon. Members opposite, I shall not seek to saddle them with the wild excesses of the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill).
    I think that it is a matter for regret that the Opposition constantly make an implied criticism of the judgment of our European allies on defence expenditure by their attacks on the Government for seeking to bring Britain's defence expenditure into line with our European partners. Or is it the Conservative Party's policy that Britain should carry a heavier burden of collective defence than our European allies who are faced with the same threat arising from the build-up of the forces of the Warsaw Pact?
    The Opposition claim that the increase in the defence budget of 3 per cent. over the next two years is not enough. They would increase the defence budget by 4 per cent As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said yesterday, there seems to be no rationale behind this figure of 4 per cent. beyond a desire to outbid the Government, apart from the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Critchley) who, in a flash of candour, agreed last night that economic ability was a major factor in the consideration of defence expenditure. Opposition Members have said on many occasions that our defence effort should be governed not by a combination of the economic circumstances of the country and our perception of the best contribution we can make to NATO, but solely by the threat as it is perceived by them.
    In this case, the magic figure of 4 per cent. seems even harder to explain. Are the Opposition now saying that in order for NATO fully to match the Warsaw Pact all that is needed is a 1 per cent. increase in defence expenditure by the United Kingdom? I should be surprised if they were. What, then, are they saying?
    To be fair to the right hon. Gentleman, he did have the good grace to admit yesterday that his figure of 4 per cent. did not mean anything. He could not give us any baseline on which this 4 per cent. would be added. He told the House that a Tory Government would spend
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    more on defence than we now do, but of course he could not say how much.
    The right hon. Gentleman did, however, tell us that a Tory defence policy would be based on the security needs of the country. Similarly, in last year's debate he said that under the Conservatives defence policy would be decided on defence grounds, not party grounds. It is worthy of note that economic grounds are not even mentioned as one of the considerations to be borne in mind when arriving at a defence policy. This is a substantial change in policy, since as the House knows, the last Tory Administration, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member, made a series of short-term cuts in the defence budget because their grave misjudgment of the economy made such cuts necessary. We must assume that no such short-term cuts would be made by a Tory Administration, whatever the consequences for the rest of the public spending programme.
    The right hon. Gentleman scoffed yesterday at the 3 per cent. increase we plan in our current defence budget. He compared this with a householder making a great fuss about repairing his garden fence when at the same time his home was in serious disrepair. But, if I may continue the comparison, the right hon. Gentleman's policy seems to be like that of a householder who decides how much he can afford to spend on home improvements before he has seen his home, before he knows how much it will cost him to run it, and before he has any idea what other commitments he will have against his earnings.
    Until such time as we can hear a coherent and sensible explanation of what the Tories would do and how much they would spend in doing it, the House, the Services and the nation must recognise the Opposition's supposed defence policy for what it is. Like recent developments in Tory policy, it is nothing more than a crude electoral gimmick. Despite the right hon. Gentleman's words, it is decided solely on party grounds.
    Even if the Tory Party were to be sincere in its talk of an increase, the House, the Services and the nation are entitled to be told where the extra money would be spent. Would a Tory Administration return United Kingdom Forces to some of those overseas bases from which we have withdrawn? We are told that they

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    would not. Would they spend more money on equipment? We were told yesterday that they would. But the right hon. Gentleman must know that it is not as simple as that.
    But even if such an increase were possible, where would the money come from? The hon. Member for Stretford told us the answer in last year's debate. A Conservative Administration would stop public money being used by the National Enterprise Board and British Leyland. The NEB is a major instrument in preserving jobs such as those at British Leyland during the current recession and in providing investment to ensure that when world trade picks up our manufacturing base will be of sufficient strength to take the fullest advantage of the opportunities presented. [HON. MEMBERS: "Forty-five minutes."] Quite a lot of that time has been taken up by interruptions by Opposition Members.
    I realise that the hon. Member for Stretford has never held ministerial office and gained the experience that that brings with it, but one does not need to hold such office to cultivate the capacity of memory. Are the events of 1971 completely gone from the hon. Gentleman's mind? Does he realise that the Tornado aircraft is powered by engines made by Rolls-Royce Limited? Are we to assume that if the hon. Gentleman had been in charge in 1971 our new aircraft would be powered by engines of foreign manufacture?
    In one way it is a matter for regret that the hon. Member for Stretford has never held a ministerial office. It might have instilled in him a sense of responsibility which is so conspicuously lacking in his contributions during defence Question Time and on his visits to Service establishments. I say to him now that it does the morale of the Services, about which he professes such concern, no good at all to have their equipment and efficiency constantly criticised by him. He should learn from some of his more responsible colleagues to take a more constructive attitude.
    Perhaps if the hon. Gentleman could find the time to take a break from his destructive campaign to undermine the morale of our fighting men for squalid party reasons, he might like to visit the
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    constituency of his hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson) and take a constructive view there—
    Mr. Churchill Mr. Churchill rose—
    Mr. Wellbeloved: I shall give way in a minute.
    The hon. Gentleman might like to visit his hon. Friend's constituency and explain to the Conservative voters there the importance of providing facilities for the United States Air Force in the defence posture of NATO. But no doubt it is asking too much of him to raise his robust voice on such a vital defence issue that might lose rather than gain an electoral advantage.
    Mr. Churchill: Will the hon. Gentleman now withdraw his lie? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Will the hon. Gentleman please say on which occasion I have ever criticised the efficiency of any of Her Majesty's Armed Forces?
    Mr. Wellbeloved: The hon. Gentleman will recall visiting a Royal Air Force station, the details of which I should be pleased to give him, and later communicating with the Press from that station, with the use of public funds on a public telephone, to give a story to the Press that members of the Armed Forces had a choice between eating or heating. If that is not an attack upon the morale and efficiency of our Armed Forces—
    Mr. Churchill Mr. Churchill rose—
    Mr. Wellbeloved: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will contain himself.
    When I heard of that disgraceful episode, I took steps to ascertain the facts from that RAF station. There was no substance whatsoever in the hon. Gentleman's allegations.
    Mr. Churchill Mr. Churchill rose—
    Hon. Members: Give way.
    Mr. Wellbeloved: I am not giving way to the hon. Gentleman again.
    Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I think that the whole House heard the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) use the word "lie". I did not think that that was a parliamentary term, a term that was permissible. I wonder whether you would ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw it.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine): I am happy to ask the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) to withdraw the word "lie", which is not a parliamentary expression.
    Mr. Wellbeloved: I can perhaps save the hon. Gentleman any embarrass ment—
    Mr. Churchill: I shall be very happy to withdraw the word—[HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."]—if the Minister withdraws his wholly unfounded slur and allegation.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: The word that is not parliamentary is "lie", and it is of that word that complaint has been made.
    Mr. Churchill: I should be happy to substitute for it "terminological inexactitude".
    Mr. Wellbeloved: The hon. Gentleman's exaggerations do not worry me. I am content to rely on the simple fact that this Government, of whom I have the honour to be a member and particularly the honour to serve in the Defence Ministry, have done more to restore the military capacity of this nation, compatible with our economic ability to sustain it, than ever the Conservative Government did. In contrast, this Government have fulfilled their promises.
    Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson (New-bury): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Wellbeloved: If I give way, I shall be accused of having taken—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Unless the Minister gives way, the hon. Gentleman must resume his seat.
    Mr. McNair-Wilson: The Minister has referred to my constituency and to the threatened air base there. He suggested that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) ought to go down and see my constituents to tell them the reasons behind such Government thinking as there is to open the base. Will he now promise that he will go down, perhaps next week, and tell my constituents why the base may have to be in Newbury, and not in Lincolnshire, as the Lincolnshire County Council would like it to be?
    Mr. Wellbeloved: I have already told the hon. Gentleman that the application
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    by the United States Government to reactivate that airfield is receiving consideration. I have also offered, in company with our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, to meet the hon. Gentleman and a delegation from his constituency. All that I ask of the hon. Member for Stretford is that he takes time from his campaign to undermine the morale of the Armed Forces to go and tell the truth and the facts to the Conservative voters of the hon. Gentleman's area.
    I was saying that the Government had fulfilled their promises. We have tailored our defence commitments to match our true role as a full partner in NATO. We have concentrated our efforts in NATO, and are making real improvements to our contribution to NATO. We are making progress in filling some of the appalling gaps in our defence, such as the air defence of the United Kingdom, which it inherited from the Tories.
    I can therefore say that any young man or woman who is contemplating joining the Armed Forces of the Crown may be assured that he or she will be embarking upon a career which is in the highest tradition of public service and is reckoned to be so by the nation. This Government's record in defence is a record to be proud of, and I commend to the House the motion in the name of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence.
    4.52 p.m.
    Mr. Victor Goodhew: I shall not emulate the Under-Secretary in the time he has taken partially because of his provocative statements and abuse of my right hon. and hon. Friends. Neither shall I pursue many of the matters that he pursued because I have, in anticipation of Mr. Deputy Speaker's request, cut down my speech. I have some serious things to say which I hope to put in a serious manner and not in the frivolous and cavalier manner in which we have just heard the Minister speak.
    It is appropriate, when judging defence policy—if this Government can be said to have such a thing—to take a good look at the world scene and the way in which it is developing. It is only against this background that the defence White Paper can be weighed.

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    Those of us who have been in the House for some time have moved through the cold war period and then what was supposed to be a better period known as peaceful coexistence, and then, more recently, to a period known as detente. This progression was supposed to be a gradual movement from confrontation to a more relaxed state in which the Soviet Government and the Governments of the free world would discuss matters such as security, arms limitation, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, force reductions and even human rights.
    What has happened over those years? There has been a steady build-up of arms strength of Warsaw Pact countries, culminating in the massive increases in the quantity and quality of all their weapons of war during the most recent years.
    In addition, we have seen infiltration and subversion on a world-wide scale, not excluding this country, followed by a new policy of war by proxy. If I were Secretary of State, I would present every member of the Cabinet with a copy of Brian Crozier's new book called "Strategy of Survival". The Secretary of State did not write it, I am sure. Mr. Crozier mentions that in his view world war three is now being fought and has been fought ever since the end of World War Two. It has been fought by the means that I have just described—infiltration, subversion and now war by proxy. He describes the free world as the target area.
    If members of the Cabinet have not time to read the book, all they need to do is look up the maps, which show a steadily diminishing target area and the ever-increasing number of Communist-governed countries, Marxist and Moscow-aligned countries, countries in the progress of satellisation or threatened with it, and client States.
    The picture is very clear. The changes depicted in successive maps have been brought about during periods which have been called the cold war, peaceful coexistence and détente.
    Mr. Litterick: Has the hon. Gentleman, in his turn, read the very well-known book "Inside the Company", by Philip Agee, which in great detail tells us how, with the process of subversion,
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    through murder, bribery and other forms of corruption, the overturning of Governments is actually done?
    Mr. Goodhew: I was talking about the threat to this country.
    Mr. Litterick: So was Mr. Philip Agee.
    Mr. Goodhew: I was talking about the threat to this country and the free world, and I shall content myself with that. I say to Government Members that no one should be the least bit surprised by recent events. We know perfectly well that the Russian doctrine is that the ideological struggle should be continued and pursued by all means.
    We have seen Angola with a Marxist Government imposed by force by Russian-armed Cubans and immediately recognised by Her Majesty's Government, despite the fact that civil war still rages there even today. We have the Marxist regime in Mozambique, harbouring Russian-armed terrorists intent on creating chaos in Rhodesia prior to the creation of a Marxist regime there. Our Foreign Secretary seems to be giving these people aid and comfort, so blinded is he by is irritation at Mr. Ian Smith's success in bringing about an internal settlement where he himself has failed.
    If Rhodesia were to become a Marxist State, we know that the next target is South Africa. In the meantime the Cubans are busy doing the Russians' dirty work in the Horn of Africa, whilst on the other side of the Red Sea their allies are already in control in Aden and South Yemen. This is all part of the Soviet grand design for Africa and the Middle East, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) outlined in such detail yesterday.
    Russia does not have to go as far as taking the oil-producing countries of the Middle East. Control of the Cape route alone would enable it to deny Western Europe its oil supplies, and control of Southern Africa would enable it to deny us vital minerals. By a strategy of denial, it could cripple Western Europe and bring us to our knees without firing one shot.
    It seems impossible to imagine that even this Government could be blind to such a threat. Yet it is against this background of ever-increasing Soviet control

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    and influence throughout the world, accompanied by an alarming increase in Russia's offensive capability, that this Government continue with their planned defence cuts of some £10,000 million over the period 1975–76 to 1983–84, followed by five additional lots of cuts.
    This year's White Paper, thin as it is, tells us very little that we did not already know. The Secretary of State's speech yesterday was complacent beyond all understanding. I think his speech yesterday and that of the Minister today were two of the worst performances I have had the misfortune to hear in some 18½ years in the House.
    Yesterday's speech by the Secretary of State also told us very little. The White Paper at least attempts to keep reminding us of the threat. We see on pages 4 and 5 what it says. In paragraph 120, the White Paper says:
    "The capability of these forces is formidable and growing."
    It further says:
    "On any view, however, Soviet forces have in many areas been strengthened in size and quality on a scale which goes well beyond the need of any purely defensive posture."
    It goes on:
    "But quantitative assessments … do not reflect two particular factors of concern to NATO, the state of readiness of Warsaw Pact forces in Europe, which has always exceeded that of NATO forces and has recently been improved, and the continued introduction of advanced new equipment."
    It continues by referring to the increased weapon load of Soviet aircraft, the East German, Polish and Czech armies, and Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary.
    So, every time we get a White Paper we are told all these things. But what are we told is to be done in answer to it? We merely read that we are to continue with the cuts planned in the defence review and those imposed since. It is little wonder that so much has been said about morale in the Services so far in the debate. It is bad enough for Service men to see the threat that they have to meet continually growing apace, but when, in addition, they see the Government repeatedly whittling down their power to resist, and intent upon doing so regardless of the consequences, they can be forgiven for feeling that they are being let down by those who should be supporting them.
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    Much has been said in the debate about pay. It should be clear by now, even to the most complacent, that this could be the breaking point in the morale of the Armed Forces. I wonder whether the Secretary of State noticed what I noticed. In December, in winding up the defence debate in the other place, Lord Peart said:
    "The Government are aware that at present Service pay rates do not reflect full comparability. We and the Armed Forces must await the recommendations of the Review Body. The implementation of the pay award on 1st April next year is bound to take full account of the Government's pay policy, which is itself in the overall national interest. But the Armed Forces should be in no doubt that the Government intend as soon as the situation allows to restore and return them to the fully comparable pay position implicit in the military salary concept."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7th December 1977; Vol. 387, c. 1725.]
    In entire contrast to that, the next day in this House the Home Secretary, announcing the terms for the settlement of the firemen's strike, said that the Government would be
    "prepared to agree to the full implementation of the formula agreed by two approximately equal stages in November 1978 and November 1979. The Government would be prepared to contribute through the rate support grant its share of the cost of a settlement on this basis and would, exceptionally, guarantee that the phasing-in would not be thwarted by some unforeseen adverse change in economic circumstances."—[Official Report, 8th December 1977; Vol. 940, c. 1652.]
    What a contrast between the treatment of the Armed Forces and the treatment of the firemen. Even if the Secretary of State did not notice that, the matter did not elude the Services. Certainly the soldiers who had been doing the firemen's job for less pay than the firemen were already receiving before they went on strike noticed this disgraceful contrast.
    I should like to tell the Secretary of State what they thought about that, but I cannot because I do not know how to put it into parliamentary language. I can, however, read to him a letter which was published in The Daily Telegraph today from the wife of a serving man.
    Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Just tell us the page.
    Mr. Goodhew: I will read it to the hon. Member. He might learn something from it. It reads:
    "Sir—Over a period of several years now I have watched my husband's pay fall behind that of non-Servicemen. I have witnessed the

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    gradual whittling away of his enthusiasm as more and more work receives less and less recognition.
    I have felt the burden of the extra money we have to find every year as our bills increase and the demands on my husband become greater and greater. I have resented the large mess bills we have to pay to entertain and "show the flag", the rent we have to pay for ill-kept and badly-serviced married quarters, the time we spend apart without adequate recompense either in travel allowance or separation pay "—
    Mr. Litterick: It sounds as though the hon. Member is talking about council house tenants.
    Mr. Goodhew: If hon. Members listened, they might learn what is going on in the Armed Forces. I do not imagine that many of them ever bother to visit the Armed Forces to find out.
    Mr. Churchill: They just do not give a damn.
    Mr. Goodhew: I shall continue with the letter. The lady who wrote it was saying that she resented various matters, including
    "the extra hours my husband works without the benefits of overtime, and above all the indifference of the Government to our fundamental right to a fair deal."
    The letter is signed by Mrs. Serena Allen of Portsmouth.
    Mr. Ron Thomas: I wish that her husband would join a trade union.
    Mr. Goodhew: That would only help to keep salaries down, as it does for members of trade unions elsewhere in the country.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The constant succession of sedentary interventions is not contributing anything to the debate.
    Mr. Goodhew: Perhaps I may tell the Secretary of State about the plight of an RAF pilot whose wife has written a letter. At 45, he was told that he could no longer continue as a pilot and that he would have to leave the Service or retrain for something else. Now, a few years later, he finds that the Minister is asking pilots to stay on after 55. So a man of 45 is retrained and is doing a job that he does not want to do when other pilots are being asked to stay on after the age of 55. What a way to run an air force.
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    I have a suggestion to make about pay. The Top Salaries Review Body is an independent body, and when it last recommended a salary of £8,500 a year for Members of Parliament the Government had to make up their minds whether to allow Members to have that money or whether to bring the award into line with their pay policy of the time. The Government had to accept responsibility for denying hon. Members that increase. That was commendable and the right way round. I say that even though I would have liked the money.
    That being so, I say that the Pay Review Body for the Services should prove its independence in the same way. It should recommend what the Armed Forces should get in order to restore comparability, and then the Secretary of State and the Government should accept responsibility for denying that increase. In that way they would have to defend their position publicly instead of hiding behind the Review Body's skirts.
    Let the Government show that they have the courage of their convictions instead of trying to pass the responsibility on to someone else. The Secretary of State has pursued a two-faced policy by asserting the independence of the Review Body and in the next breath insisting that it must take account of Government policy. Let us be done with this charade and ensure instead that our Service men shall see that the admiration we express for them in this House, in which we all constantly join, is not just empty words but an earnest of our determination to see that they get their just deserts.
    I fear that there was something symbolic in that unfortunate photograph of the Secretary of State momentarily asleep during the Queen's Jubilee Review of the Royal Air Force. It was symbolic of a Government asleep and unaware of the dangerous developments that exist throughout the world, symbolic of a Government asleep and unaware of the mounting military threat which faces the free world, symbolic of a Government asleep and unaware of the dreadful damage they are doing to the morale of our Service men and symbolic of a Government asleep and unaware of the dangers and risks to which they are exposing our country. That is why we condemn them this afternoon with all the vigour we can command.
    5.10 p.m.
    Mr. Michael Stewart: The speech to which we have just listened from the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew) had the merit of lasting for only about 10 minutes. I am bound to confess that it reminded me a little of the comment in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on the play given by the rude mechanicals:
    "A play there is, my lord, some ten words long.… But by ten words, my lord, it is too long, which makes it tedious"
    The hon. Gentleman has really added nothing at all to any serious consideration of the problem. That has been the weakness of the whole of the Conservative approach to the problem of defence, not only in this debate but earlier, as I shall show.
    As is usual in defence debates, the Government are attacked partly by those who say that they are spending too much and partly by those who say that they are spending too little. It is to the latter section that I wish to address most of my remarks.
    To those who suggest that the Government are spending too much, I say that we must look at the relentless increase of Soviet military expenditure year by year. It cannot be said that the increase that is now planned by the NATO Powers, Britain among them, is adding to an arms race, because all the evidence is that the increase of Soviet armed power will go on, whatever the West is doing. Now at any rate—and Conservative Members ought to have given the Government credit for this—we are taking part wholeheartedly, as Dr. Luns has pointed out, in the planned increase of NATO armament. I believe that that is as it should be.
    I now turn to the suggestions from Conservative Members that the Government are not spending enough and that they ought to spend more. I think that we might at least ask them to give us some rough idea of how much more. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out, the proposals made by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) might mean, on one possible calculation of his formula, another £69 million. On another possible interpretation of his formula, it might mean another £1,600 million. I
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    genuinely hoped that, in the speech to which we have just listened, we should be told at what point between those two figures it lay, but we are none the wiser.
    To revert to the subject that we were discussing earlier today, at Question Time, one cannot help feeling that there must have been something defective in the mathematics teaching at the schools attended by Conservative Members, because we have this extraordinary discrepancy. It is not being serious to say that the Government ought to be spending more if the Conservative Opposition cannot get a little nearer to suggesting how much more it should be.
    If more is to be spent, where is it to come from? Some time ago a Conservative spokesman in a defence debate made the bare assertion that it would not be done by extra taxation. Indeed, we were given to understand by the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) on an earlier occasion that it was to come in effect, from allowing our motor car and steel industries to be run down. That is a very odd way of preparing for more efficient national defence. Conservatives sometimes forget that defence is not only a matter of the Armed Forces but of the whole economic power of the country, especially in certain industries, and these industries would be particularly hurt by what was suggested by the hon. Member for Stretford concerning the National Enterprise Board.
    In the end, Conservatives come back to their favourite source. The extra money for defence is to be provided by cuts in the social services in some form or other. I am sorry that the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) is not present, because he once suggested that if we could really explain the importance of defence to the parents of schoolchildren, they would gladly accept a reduction in the school meals service in order to pay for defence.
    Those Conservative Members who believe that more should be spent on defence seem to have no idea of how much it should be, but they seem to agree that it should be done mainly at the expense of our poorer fellow citizens. That is the kind of vicarious patriotism which cannot carry very much respect.
    Mr. Nigel Forman: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
    Mr. Stewart: I do not think I will. I am not attacking hon. Members who have not spoken, and there are many hon. Members who want to speak in the debate. I do not think that Back-Benchers are under any obligation to give way in those circumstances.
    The one thing on which the Conservative Opposition are certain is that a good deal of the extra expense should be on increased pay for the Armed Forces. We all believe that it is right that there should be an increase, but we know quite well that we must wait for the report of the review body. It is absurd to ask for pronouncements by the Government in advance of the report. Conservative Members know that perfectly well.
    What is disquieting, however, is the general approach of the Conservative Opposition to pay policy. During the firemen's strike, the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition made a speech urging that the pay guidelines should be breached in their favour. A little later on, the Conservatives urged special treatment for the police. Now it is the Armed Forces. Quite seriously, I say that if on every occasion when the Opposition think that they are on to a popular line they are to insist that the general pay policy be broken, they will build up deep resentment throughout civilian industry and create a situation—
    Mr. Cranley Onslow: Especially at Fords.
    Mr. Stewart: They will create deep resentment throughout civilian industry, and create a situation which cannot be contained. The hon. Gentleman's interjection was typical of the general resentment and hatred—that would not be too strong a word—which so many Conservative Members have towards the ordinary civilian industrial worker, particularly if he has the impudence to be organised in a successful trade union.
    We cannot run either pay policy or defence on the basis that, whenever the Opposition think they are on to something popular, they demand increases of pay but sneer at, discourage and resent any improvement in the standard of life of ordinary industrial workers. Efficient
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    defence does not only depend on the morale of men in the Services, important as that is. It depends also on the morale of coal miners, engineers, and a host of other workers. This question has to be tackled far more seriously and responsibly.
    I am not in favour of trade unions for the Armed Forces, but I believe that if we are ever to get this matter right—and free from the poisonous atmosphere that the Conservative Opposition have injected into it—there ought to be serious consultation between leaders of the trade union movement and representatives of those groups of workers who do not have trade unions and who are not allowed to strike. I believe that there could be a great widening of the understanding among civilian workers of the problems and difficulties of men in the Armed Forces, and vice versa, if there were to be discussions of that kind. I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to consider that.
    I am afraid that all too often those in the Armed Forces get their idea of how people in civilian industry live from the sort of crack that we had from the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow). It is this building up of ill will between the civilian worker and the man in the Forces, which the Conservative Party has done so much to promote, which stands in the may of a proper approach to defence problems.
    The right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) made a speech which I enjoyed, although some of his hon. Friends on the Conservative Back Benches kept looking at the clock while it went on. He drew attention to the Horn of Africa. It is very significant that the undoubted success of NATO in containing any Soviet threat in Europe has resulted, one may fairly say, in attempts to outflank NATO in the Horn of Africa. What are we to do in that situation?
    The right hon. Gentleman said, in effect, that we must rearm, but I repeat that if we are thinking in these terms we must have a policy that will appeal to the whole nation and that will recognise that the burden of that rearmament cannot be paid for exclusively, as the Conservatives have so often suggested, at the expense of the poorer people in the country. It will need a much better

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    understanding between civilian industry and men in the Armed Forces.
    If we rearm, one inevitable result will be that we must be prepared to live in a more equalitarian society. Rearmament cannot be carried out efficiently unless the whole nation feels that everyone is bearing his share. I hope that it will not come to rearming on that scale but, if it does, that is the kind of thing that the Conservatives will have to think about, as we all had to think about it in years past.
    The right hon. Gentleman put forward his views on how we should deal with the defence threat in Africa. Here again, I am afraid that there is one very serious disqualification that the Conservative Party has for dealing with that problem.
    Surely one fact is quite certain. It is that if we want the good will of the black peoples of Africa—and if we do not get that, we shall get nowhere in policy— the West must free itself of all taint of racialism. Unhappily, over the years in debate after debate on Rhodesian matters there had been Conservative Members openly expressing their sympathy with the rebel regime in Rhodesia long before, under the threat of necessity, it had shown any sign of being interested in racial justice. Those speeches were not delivered to thronged Benches here, but I think that they were noticed in Africa. They got this country a bad name. They got the West a bad name.
    Then there was the stupid decision in 1970 to resume the sale of arms to South Africa. I say "stupid", because we did not sell any worth talking about We merely forfeited again black African opinion.
    The Conservative Party will need, if it is really worried about the menace in Africa, a great change and an enlargement of its mind. That is why it is not sensible for this House to reject the Government's proposal in favour of an amendment from that quarter.
    I shall not go back on the history of the Conservative Party on defence. I remind the House only of one incident. After we had had Conservative Governments with huge majorities in power for nine years, we found ourselves in the most dreadful peril ever experienced in our history. We were rescued from that by our own exertions and the valued
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    leadership of Winston Churchill. It is interesting to notice the kind of people to whom Mr. Churchill entrusted defence. During most of the time that he was Prime Minister, the Army was in the charge of a former civil servant, the Royal Air Force was entrusted to a Liberal, the Royal Navy and home security were entrusted to members of the Labour Party, and the massive job, requiring knowledge both of war effort and of civilian matters, of allocating the nation's manpower and woman power, was entrusted also to a member of the Labour Party and one of the most famous trade union leaders that this country has ever known.
    I think, therefore, that perhaps the House could not do better tonight than follow that example and place no confidence in the Conservative Party on defence.
    5.23 p.m.
    Mr. Maurice Macmillan: I hope that the right hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. Stewart) will forgive me if, in the interests of brevity, I do not take up his argument, other than to say that, looking back, I wish that he and some of his colleagues had shown the same enthusiasm for pay policy when they were in Opposition and had practised then what they now preach to us.
    I want first very briefly to ask the Minister to fill some gaps in the information contained in the White Paper and in the speeches that we have heard so far.
    My first question concerns equipment. Are we making any progress towards narrowing the gap between the rate at which the Warsaw Pact countries and the NATO countries respectively are improving their equipment? I understand that the Warsaw Pact countries are about three years ahead. Is that gap getting wider or narrower?
    Secondly, are we making any progress in the standardisation of equipment, especially of a rifle? Even if we cannot achieve the degree of standardisation of our opponents, it would be helpful if we at least had some guns which could shoot each other's bullets.
    Thirdly, are we using NATO training methods to try to get a greater degree of standardisation of operational procedures, including communications and recognition?

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    Fourthly, there is nothing in the White Paper, nor have I heard a word in this debate, about the replacement of the Polaris missile and what is to come next. The hon. Member for Farnworth (Mr. Roper) mentioned it, but, that apart, we have heard nothing.
    There are two other matters to which I want to refer. Paragraph 330, about the Microbiological Research Establishment, ignores the presence both in the Third Shock Army which faces First British Corps and, as far as I know, in the other four or five armies of the group of Soviet forces in Germany, of chemical defence units—a company with every regiment and a battalion with every division. It seems to me that the presence of such units with what are assault troops indicates an offensive intention that requires some defensive response from us. We have not heard of it.
    We have heard nothing about the need to replace and maintain war stocks of materials. Have we 30 days' stock throughout the whole of NATO? If we have, is it enough? Has recent experience of warfare in other parts of the world indicated that stocks may be used up faster than calculated on that basis?
    The real complaint that I have about this defence White Paper—which is not even called that now—and about the speeches that we have heard from Ministers is that there is no defence policy. It is true that Chapter 1 is headed "Defence Policy". It has two rather complacent opening paragraphs, 14 paragraphs on detente and disarmament, three on deterrence and defence, and eight, with some extremely good charts, on how strong the enemy is. The remaining 21 paragraphs seem to be a situation report of what is going on. There is no statement of a strategic or tactical policy. Any possibility of a wider role for the NATO Alliance is ignored. The entire concentration is on disarmament.
    We all want disarmament, of course, provided we can get it without weakening ourselves in the West. This proviso should be quite obvious. But I am not sure that it is quite obvious when one reads bits of the White Paper and listens to some of the speeches of Govern-
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    ment supporters. In any event, we have to deal with deeds as well as words.
    We have seen Soviet imperialism spread unchecked over the past few years—and not only unchecked but actively helped by the West with credits, with money, with food supplies which the Soviet Union ought to be able to grow for itself, with technology and with raw materials.
    There is nothing new in this. If I may, I will give a short quotation:
    "The capitalists of the whole world and their Governments … will supply us with the materials and technology which we lack and will support our military industry, which we need for our future victorious attacks upon our suppliers."
    That is what Lenin wrote to his Foreign Commissar in 1920. It might have been written today, because that is exactly what we are doing. We are supplying the enemy which represents the greatest threat to us—borrowing dear to lend cheap, not for aid but for arms.
    As the late Nye Bevan said
    "Why look into a crystal ball when you can read the book?"
    I look at the facts of detente. We had Helsinki in 1975, which recognised the Soviet conquests in Europe in return for some undertakings on human rights. Our negotiators spent a long time at Belgrade saying that they would not tolerate any cover-up, that there would be no face-saving form of words, and that the Soviet Union must accept that human rights had to be respected. At the end, there was no mention of human rights in the communiqué from Belgrade in 1978. All that we had was a short negative statement and, when he had won his victory, the Soviet representative did not even receive it gracefully, but said rather angrily "Peace depends upon the level of detente."
    To the Soviet Union peace depends on a form of detente which enables it to build up its military strength in Europe, to develop a first-strike capacity against the United States and, to use the Foreign Secretary's phrase, to look after Soviet political interests in the Third World, which means the subjugation of Africa by Cuban mercenaries in Angola, Somalia and Ethiopia. Unless we take action there is a threat to Rhodesia as well, but I shall not develop that argument now.

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    In addition, we have the possibility that was not open a few years ago of the Soviet Union threatening Western Europe and Japan by blockade. Soviet submarines are deployed to have a stranglehold on essential trade routes carrying food, raw materials and energy. This makes the opening paragraphs of the White Paper look really rather silly.
    The second paragraph of the White Paper reads:
    "Defence policy needs to be seen in the wider context of our international security aims, in the service of which defence is a partner with other aspects of policy."
    That reads like the assurances given to Hitler. My right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) developed that argument yesterday when he referred to Mr. Baldwin and the Fulham by-election.
    If now we always fail to stand up to the smallest threat of aggression and the smallest movement against our interest, no stand we may ever take in the future will be credible. This merely encourages our opponents to take risks. Time and time again we have made this mistake and we have led our enemies to believe that we were so spineless that we would never resist. This craven policy has led to untold suffering in successive wars. God knows what it could lead to next time.
    So far we have failed. Even our allowing the Berlin wall to be built was a Soviet victory. Even the late President Kennedy's resistance to Soviet missiles going into Cuba was not a real victory because the price he paid was to leave Cuba as an authorised and accepted Soviet satellite, so closely controlled that it is now used as a springboard for further aggression throughout the world.
    The first paragraph of the White Paper talks about how satisfactory NATO has been for the first quarter-century. That shows bland complacency in the face of these facts. My right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Fraser) recognised the fact that the White Paper shows no signs that after 30 years there might be some need to look at defence problems in a different way.
    The hon. Member for Farnworth (Mr. Roper) took up this point in an interesting speech and suggested that there might be a need for technical doctrine changes. He said that he hoped there would not
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    be too much bureaucratic resistance or inter-Service rivalry to stand in their way. He had a point there.
    The balance of spending between the Services has not altered at all in the last 25 years. Has the threat not altered? There has been Soviet naval expansion with submarines and great ships and threats of blockade. In view of this why has inter-Service balance remained the same? Perhaps the balance is right, but we have not been told that it is either in the White Paper or in Government speeches.
    Mr. Emlyn Hooson: If it were right 25 years ago—or, I believe, 23 years ago—by definition it cannot be right today because there has been so great a change in the development of weapons.
    Mr. Macmillan: That is correct. I want to know what the Government think about this. They seem to have no concept of world changes over the years being matched by changes in British policy. We are in a new ball game now, with new nuclear capabilities. There is a greater Soviet-Warsaw Pact presence in Europe and a wider Soviet empire, stretching far beyond the shores of Europe. There is the capability of the Soviet Navy to blockade European and Japanese trade routes. Now there is a possibility of a Soviet blitzkreig, which I doubt we could withstand.
    Most serious of all is the fact that in these circumstances I do not believe that the nuclear deterrent, either strategic or tactical, will remain credible to the Soviet Union for very long unless Britain and its European partners are ready to take a very different line. We must be willing to risk confrontation—when our interests are threatened—while it is still unlikely to lead to conflict. We must be willing to stand up and help, and to organise help from others, for those who have thrown off the Soviet yoke, like the Somali's. We must be willing to help our friends who have united themselves in Rhodesia against external aggression.
    We cannot do it alone, but we can give a lead in Europe and elsewhere. I believe that we can and should rearm. Hon. Members below the Gangway on the Government Benches may say that we shall never be able to afford it. That

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    means that they are content to contemplate a flat economy with no growth, no wealth to distribute, and further unemployment. We shall have nothing except dreary egalitarianism, which those hon. Members below the Gangway want so much, while the whole country gets poorer and the poorest suffer the most, as they have done under this Government.
    We can use our defence industries to build up the economy. Looking back at history, one sees that just as much prosperity came to the United States economy from rearming as from the New Deal. The Korean War helped to expand the world economy. Even the White Paper admits that our defence industries and the spin-off from them do create a great deal of work and will probably provide £900 million-worth of exports this financial year.
    I would like to see a start made on that, and I want to see this country not only with greater conventional capability to react to conventional attack but also the capability for a limited nuclear reaction, independent of the United States. We must build up the civil and home defence and our reserves. I agree with the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin), who said that we should look further a field for our allies, including China. I believe that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That is why I would not deny friendship to South Africa. It is not South Africa that is threatening black Africa with Marxism, aggression and colonialism; it is the Cuban guerrillas under their Soviet imperialist masters. They are the threat to us all.
    I do not agree with the view that we are facing potential aggression. I think that we are facing actual aggression. The object of our strategy and tactics should be to force the Soviet Union to face a stalemate when its ambitions are checked so that it has to face the responsibility for the first nuclear strike rather than always leaving us in a stalemate situation with no non-nuclear way out, in which we have nothing to protect us but the American nuclear umbrella. It is not reasonable to expect the United States to risk nuclear war to prevent the Finlandisation of Europe—and that is one of the dangers that we have to face.
    I speak in this debate with a good deal of bitterness and fear. I speak with bitter-
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    ness, because we are seeing the sacrifices made by our fathers' generation and our own made nugatory by the fact that lessons have not been learned.
    The right hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. Stewart) referred to this matter. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that when the disarmers urged us to stand up to Hitler they may have been illogical, but at least we were all on the same side against the same enemy. But now when some hon. Members on the Government Benches below the Gangway wish to disarm, they wish to do so not because they are against the potential enemy but because they share his ideology. That is a new danger we face for the first time in this country.
    Mr. Russell Kerr: Name them.
    Mr. Macmillan: My fear is that blindness and abject appeasement forced on the Government by their own Left wing will lead to a lack of policy, which may require not the same but greater sacrifices from our children and grandchildren. That is why I urge the House to support the amendment.
    5.42 p.m.
    Mr. Philip Goodbart: Since I have been fortunate enough to be called after the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Mr. Macmillan), it is only right that I should reveal that there is a certain split on the Opposition side of the House in our approach to the White Paper and in finding some points in the Defence Estimates to praise.
    Yesterday afternoon my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) complained that the White Paper contained no reference to many of the major issues facing NATO at present. There was no word about the cruise missile, hardly a word about strategy, and no word about the future of our independent nuclear deterrent. I do not share my right hon. Friend's views on this matter. I am delighted that there is nothing in the White Paper on those subjects. I am delighted that Ministers have not spoken about it, because, if there had been references to the cruise missile and the independent nuclear deterrent, I am sure they would have got them wrong.

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    I am delighted that the Minister's Civil Service advisers and the Chiefs of Staff clearly think that this is a lame-duck Administration which will be out of office before these issues have to be faced. Therefore, they are keeping their noses to the grindstone until October comes.
    I am also glad that the Government have not cut research expenditure as greatly as many of us feared. Last year in the Estimates £123 million was set aside for research. This year the comparable figure is £129 million. It has not kept pace with the rate of inflation, but there has not been the savage cut-back that many of us feared the Government would impose on research establishments.
    However, I wonder whether this is a true figure. We know that this country now leads the whole world in the development of anti-airfield weapons and we know that the United States Government are subsidising that development in this country to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. I wonder whether the figure of £129 million for research is genuine, or whether it disguises the fact that we are receiving very substantial payments from the United States for the valuable research work we are carrying out.
    At the same time, I am glad that the Government have recognised the importance of an effective identification friend-and-foe system and that a feasibility study is now under way. In recent NATO exercises only too often we have found at the end of the day that more than 50 per cent. of the aircraft theoretically destroyed have been shot down by ourselves. On an exercise this is merely ludicrous, but if serious fighting had broken out, the failure of our identifying friend-and-foe system would not be ludicrous; it would be tragic and disastrous.
    At present there are two different systems operating on the central front. I am glad that at long last work is starting to try to get one system that will be effective and to secure more effective antiaircraft missiles. Missiles have also been handed over to units of BAOR, and this increases the risk to strike pilots and increases the importance of the project.
    How can we underline the importance of this project and how can we get the Government to put all possible speed behind it? I think that we need a good code name for the project. I suggest that we should adopt the name of a
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    devoted public servant who worked in the Administration of the right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir Harold Wilson) and who used to identify friends and foes on the Labour Benches. I believe it would be right to name this the Lady Falkender project. I hope that would give it a proper sense of urgency.
    Mr. Kenneth Warren: Operation Marcia.
    Mr. Goodhart: Let me turn to another major point in this debate. What separates this debate from previous debates is the sense of outrage now felt within the Armed Forces following the publication of last year's Armed Forces Pay Review Board Report. Members of the Armed Forces feel that no one is speaking on their behalf. That is why so many complaints are now coming forward.
    When I was in Northern Ireland recently I spoke to a young gunner who had served in the Army for six years. Although he had served in the Armed Forces for six years, he could not afford to keep his family in a married quarter while he was on his tour. He had only one civilian suit and one civilian pair of shoes. He was proud of his job, but he was leaving the Army because he had been offered a job in. which his take-home pay would be £70 a week.
    During the firemen's strike I met in my constituency a Royal Air Force sergeant with 20 years of service. His pay was so low that his children of school age were eligible for free school meals.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) was disgracefully attacked by the Under-Secretary of State for saying that some of our Service men had to make a choice between heating and eating. It so happens that I was present on an occasion when an Army sergeant—he was not in the Royal Air Force as the Minister said—used that phrase to my hon. Friend. My hon. Friend did not make it up. It was said by a sergeant in one of the greatest regiments in the British Army.
    Bruggen was mentioned earlier in the debate. It is a magnificent Royal Air Force station that has received the highest tactical commendation that it is possible to give. However, the senior NCOs and warrant officers of the ground staff, to whom its performance is largely due

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    under the inspired leadership of the station commander, are threatening to leave in their droves. They are willing to say to visiting Members of Parliament that they want to leave the Service because they know that they can get two or three times as much pay outside. They say that they are having to put up with unwarranted sacrifices by staying in the Services.
    Youth unemployment worries Members on both sides of the Chamber. We all know that the figures for youth unemployment have rocketed in recent years. To disguise the true gravity of the situation we have a number of cosmetic programmes that cost tens of millions of pounds. For example, there is the work experience programme and the youth opportunities programme. We read today in The Sun that the job creation programme is paying some young people £43 a week to count lamp-posts.
    In the past the Army, the Navy and the Air Force have provided some of the best training facilities for young people. However, when the 1977 figures are compared with the 1976 figures, it is clear that there has been a collapse in youth recruitment into the Armed Forces. Instead of increasing the number of apprenticeships in the Armed Forces there has been a reduction. Surely we should be looking to the youth programme to increase the recruitment of young people into the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces should be providing the apprenticeship schemes that unfortunately seem to be diminishing in the rest of industry instead of the Government paying young people £43 a week to count lamp-posts.
    If we do not spend enough money on our defences—we are not at the moment—counting lamp-posts will not matter because the lamps of freedom will have gone out in Europe and in this country.
    5.56 p.m.
    Mr. James Lamond: Having listened to a fair amount of the debate, I would say that the contributions made by Opposition Members fall roughly into two categories. In the first category is the melodramatic nonsense that we heard from the right hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Macmillan) and his terrible twin the right hon. Member for
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    Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery). Opposition Members in that category try to curdle our blood by saying that everything in the world is the fault of the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union were eliminated from this world, presumably we could all disarm immediately and everything in the garden would be lovely. I venture to suggest that if that were to happen Opposition Members would be busily engaged in erecting some new bogy—possibly the Chinese Peoples' Republic, which they are now so warmly welcoming as an ally. That country would become the major threat to the free world and we should have to re-arm against it.
    In the other category are those hon. Members who seem to think that this is the occasion on which they should try to chastise the Government because, as they allege, Service men have not had a fair deal. If all the things that they say are correct, and all the stories that they bring to the House that they have heard in messes throughout the United Kingdom and abroad, along with all the other trivia, are well-founded, they drive one irresistibly to the conclusion that Service men are correct in saying that they have no one to speak for them.
    If that is so, Service men should get representatives to speak on their behalf. The only people who will do so from an unbiased point of view are trade union organisers. If Conservative Members are prepared to accept that conclusion from the remarks that they make, I shall have some respect for them. However, if Service men believe that they can rely on Conservative Members to act as their spokesmen and to ensure that they get a fair deal from any Government, I am afraid that they are being sadly misled. If they are prepared to allow Conservative Members to act as their spokesmen, they will continue to be treated as any group of workers that is unorganised and has insufficient strength to get a fair deal. Until Service men realise that, they will be treated as they are now being treated.
    I take a different view from both categories that I have mentioned. We have been discussing the level of defence expenditure. We see from the White Paper that Britain's defence expenditure amounts to £7,000 million per annum. Are we paying more than we should towards the cost of NATO compared with

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    the other participants in the organisation? It may be that we should consider the world picture of the arms buildup. The money spent on arms throughout the world has increased thirtyfold since 1900. That is the increase at constant prices.
    Is it not time that we asked what progress we are making towards reducing that enormous burden, not just on the British people but on the people throughout the world, particularly those in the underdeveloped countries, because it is on their backs that we are re-arming? That is not an idle question of my own; it has been asked by many prominent politicians, including some in this country. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said that it is no good having a defence policy that could bankrupt the society it is designed to defend. I wholeheartedly support that view. Mr. Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defence in the United States for some time, expressed the same sentiment when he said that excessive military spending can erode security rather than enhance it because the burden gets so great that the country cannot stand it any longer.
    The right hon. Member for Farnham said that we needed something like a new Korea to get our economy moving. He conveniently forgot that the war in Vietnam was such a tremendous drain on the resources of even the mightiest industrial country in the world that, in the face of objections from its people—greater objections that it had ever faced before on any subject—the United States had to withdraw from Vietnam. If it had continued the war, the country would have collapsed, and surely no one believes that we should start another war in order to overcome our grave unemployment problem.
    Are we all convinced that the figures we have been given over many years, of the build-up of the strength of the Soviet Union, are correct? I expected a rather larger shout of "Oh" when I suggested that there may have been an exaggeration of the expenditure of the Soviet Union on arms. On whom do we rely for a lot of our figures?
    Mr. Jerry Wiggin: Look at the hardware.
    Mr. Lamond: We rely on statements of the United States and, in this country, on the assessments of many people who
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    have a direct financial and career interest in building up the war machine in the United States and in this country. We must look at the figures with some suspicion to make sure they are correct. [HON. MEMBERS: "Look at Brezhnev's figures."] I could certainly quote Mr. Brezhnev, but I know that, just as I look with some suspicion on what is said by the United States, the Opposition may not accept completely what is said by Mr. Brezhnev. I prefer, therefore, to use a source that even they might accept as being reasonably unbiased. I refer to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. I thought that Opposition Members would like to cast suspicion on that source even before they knew anything about it. They laugh because they know that that might suggest that there is something suspicious about the institute. In fact there is nothing about which to be suspicious.
    I imagine that many of the institute's conclusions would be acceptable to the Opposition. However, I wonder whether they would accept this conclusion: the institute believes that the United States' estimate that the Soviet Union is spending 130 billion dollars on arms is more than double the actual amount. After investigation, the institute believes that the amount spent by the Soviet Union is more like 61 billion dollars.
    I believe that 61 billion dollars is an enormous sum and certainly far too much for the Soviet Union to be spending on arms. I call on the Soviet Union to make cuts in its defence expenditure. Perhaps Opposition Members will listen to me more carefully if I do that, but I wonder whether they will also cheer if I call on the United States and Great Britain to reduce their arms expenditure as well.
    If we do not reduce our spending on arms, we shall not make any friends in the emerging countries of Africa or anywhere else. They are not interested in how much we spend on arms; they expect us to assist them. When one considers that the world is spending 1 billion dollars a day on arms, one realises the enormous waste of resources of all kinds that this entails.
    We must set this expenditure against the tasks that are necessary in the world. Millions of people are waiting for even such elementary services as a fresh water supply, let alone education, housing and

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    proper health services. At the same time, the richest countries in the world are squandering 1,000 million dollars a day on defence. It is no wonder that any sane person in the Western world, the Socialist world or the developing world wonders why the British Parliament is wasting time listening to the melodramatic nonsense of some Opposition Members, or squabbling over a matter that could easily be dealt with by trade union representation for our Armed Forces.
    These are not the issues that we should be concerned with in such a debate. We should ask why developed nations spend 20 times more on their military programmes than on economic assistance for poor countries. That is the question that our newspapers should be publicising and that is the message that hon. Members should be carrying to their constituents to convince them that something must be done to overturn our priorities. If we have this amount of money, it should be spent in the right way and not, for example, in the development of the neutron bomb—one more new page in the arms race.
    The Soviet Union has already said that it will develop a neutron bomb. It is naive to think that by flicking from one new weapon to another, we can get a permanent advantage over whatever bloc of countries we regard, for the moment, as our enemies. All that will happen is that the costs to this country, the Soviet Union and the United States will escalate still further and there will be less money available for poorer countries. The people who are starving will ask for help in vain. All we seem to be thinking about is building ever-greater arsenals when we already have enough bombs to kill each other hundreds of times over—and all this is done in the name of security.
    Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Myer Galpern): Order. Yesterday several hon. Members who failed to catch the eye of the Chair complained about the length of speeches. I have been in the Chair for 10 minutes now, and, frankly, I am alarmed, having counted the number of hon. Members who are all present in the Chamber—29—and who are anxious to participate in the debate having sat throughout the whole debate yesterday.
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    Assuming that the winding-up speeches will begin at 9 o'clock, we have roughly three hours left. Everyone can be accommodated, but it depends upon hon. Members. Having made this appeal—I know that several appeals have already been made—I would very much deprecate any Members coming to ask me whether they are likely to get into the debate. It is up to hon. Members themselves to realise their responsibilities to each other and to curtail their speeches as much as possible.
    6.10 p.m.
    Mr. Peter Walker: I think that we were all very moved by the plea made by the hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Lamond) to the Soviet Union to embark upon disarmament. Doubtless his plea will obtain very large coverage in Pravda tomorrow. In urging the Soviet Union to disarm, at least the hon. Member was doing something that most Soviet citizens are not free to do. One thing that one would not see in the Soviet Union would be a debate such as this, upon Defence Estimates, with people urging—as many Labour Members have urged in this debate—that there should be reductions.
    However, what has struck me about the debate is that there has been a basic difference between the two sides of the House. My right hon. Friends the Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) and for Farnham (Mr. Macmillan) have been referred to as making melodramatic speeches. I believe that their assessment of what is happening in Africa at present and their very real fear about the developments over the last few years are anything but melodramatic. Indeed, they are very realistic. This shows the great divide across the House.
    That is clearly encouraged by the differences in the manner of the Front Bench speeches. Both yesterday and today, the speeches from the Government Front Bench have been contented, satisfied and—as one could roughly describe them—complacent, in the same way as when the Government had the defence review in early 1975 they based the whole of that review not upon their assessment of our enemies but on their assessment of what our allies were doing. That is a remarkable way in which to pursue defence policy—to say that allies and friends of ours are only doing so much, so we shall reduce expenditure to match

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    what they are doing. Certainly no sensible defence policy could be based on anything but a realistic assessment of what our potential enemies are doing.
    The hon. Member for Oldham, East referred to the Soviet Union as the latest Tory bogy, saying that afterwards it would be replaced by another. All I can say is that the current build-up of the Soviet Union in defence terms, over the last 10 years, is certainly the most frightening military spectacle that we have seen this century. Certainly it is far worse in many ways than what we saw in the 1930s.
    The right hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. Stewart) referred to the 1930s as being nine years of disaster and disarmament. No constituency played a larger part in that than his when, in the famous Fulham by-election, it was shown that the mood of the country was for appeasement and disarmament at that period.
    Mr. Michael Stewart: I was not the Member for Fulham then, nor, indeed, a Member at all. However, I took part in that by-election. The right hon. Gentleman's interpretation of it is totally wrong. The Member who was elected then was not a pacifist or within a thousand miles of being that. That was a story made up afterwards by the Tories.
    Mr. Walker: It is a story that certainly sustained the Labour Party for a long time as being in favour of disarmament and of defence cuts during that period. Conservative right hon. and hon. Members at the time, who were then making the way for rearmament, were accused, in the same way as people have been accused today, of making melodramatic speeches. At present we are entering the same sort of trap.
    When, four years ago, I joined in the debate on the then defence White Paper, no one could have predicted the manner in which the Soviet Union defence machine would have been built up over the last four years. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) is accused of having left the present Government with an over-ambitious defence programme, I must say that it is nowhere as ambitious as the present defence programme of the Soviet Union. If we had complied with the defence programme left by the last Tory Government, we would still have
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    widened the gap between the Soviet Union and ourselves.
    Over the last four years we have seen the Soviet Union infiltrate into Africa on a massive scale. The right hon. Member for Fulham mentioned that, and he is alarmed by it. He rightly says that this is a method of outflanking NATO. When he was Foreign Secretary, he spoke up bravely against many voices on his side of the House who wanted to support disarmament and nuclear disarmament, and he will be remembered for that. However, he must fear, as many of us fear, the incredibly sinister way in which the Soviet Union is now operating throughout Africa.
    No one could have predicted four years ago the way in which the Soviet Union would be dominating the sea routes of the world. One sees this move of the Soviet Union to dominate the sea routes and the raw materials and resources as a total strategy. We are not dealing with some democratically elected Government afraid of the Americans. We are dealing with a group of men, self-perpetuating in their power, with ideological ambitions that they wish to impose upon the rest of the world. Looking at the whole build-up of Soviet forces over this period of years, there is no doubt but that they intend to use military might as a major instrument for obtaining that objective.
    Therefore, it is in circumstances such as these that I believe that my right hon. Friends are absolutely right to press the type of amendment that they are pressing today. I do not believe that this is the time for any form of complacency. My criticism about the whole of the Government's present attitude is that knowing, as they do, what the Soviet Union is doing, the task of the Secretary of State for Defence at present should be to arouse the country to the dangers. In fact, at present he does not even arouse himself to the dangers, let alone the country.
    There is no atmosphere in the country that we are under a very real and increasing threat at present. The more that my right hon. and hon. Friends press home that view and the more that we bring it to the attention of the country that in all the major spheres of defence we are basically weakening and not strengthening, the better. We do not have the

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    power to mobilise that we might need. We do not have the power to defend the sea routes that are essential to us. We do not have the application to research that is needed in terms of modern defence strategy.
    I believe that we have wasted four years. We have given the Soviet Union a terrifying advantage. What we should be doing with regard to NATO is not going around saying "Can we do as little as the other members are doing?" but urging them all to do far more.
    6.17 p.m.
    Mr. Alan Lee Williams: I very much welcome the attempt of the right hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Walker) to debate these issues, because I believe that we are witnessing a recrudescence of the arms race. In these circumstances, I think that it is incumbent upon all of us to speak with great care. I think it would be very damaging indeed—this is perhaps a modest way of expressing that view—if we were in any way to exaggerate the dangers.
    Nevertheless, I believe that we are in a situation which requires some analysis and some understanding. I think that the present resurgence of the arms race has no single cause or effect, but I profoundly believe that the Soviet Union has made things very much more difficult by the way in which it has built up its forces in central Europe.
    I wish to make just a few comments about the build-up in central Europe, because in many ways it is critical to the argument that we have been trying to develop in the last two days. First, there is no doubt that the Soviet Union has built up its offensive capability. One has only to look at the ratio of tanks to establish that that is so. There is no question but that the tank is an offensive weapon. Therefore, it seems to me that if we are to make any progress at all in the area of mutual and balanced force reductions, we have to persuade the Soviet Union to make a trade-off with its tanks. It will be a test, in my judgment, of the Soviet Union's sincerity if it fails to move on this critical issue.
    I should very much like to see the North Atlantic Alliance concentrate on weapons for stability, because the profound change in technical defence has
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    moved in favour of the defender rather than the offender. In those circumstances, we ought to grasp that and take full advantage of that situation.
    Mr. Robert Rhodes James: I accept the point that the hon. Member makes about tanks, but does he not agree that this also applies to tactical aircraft, particularly as the Soviet Union has, in the central Europe sector alone, excluding the Warsaw Pact, nearly 3,000 tactical aircraft?
    Mr. Williams: I agree about that, but of all the areas in which the Soviet Union has increased its forces it is in the tactical area that it has increased them least. I take the hon. Member's point.
    It is important that we concentrate on the areas for stability in terms of weapons. The Soviet Union is concerned about the nuclear question. We have an opportunity to turn this back on the Soviet Union and say "If you have this understandable concern about the development of tactical nuclear weapons and new weapons that might come along, you must recognise our legitimate fears about your tank strength." The Soviet Union has increased its number of tanks by 4,000 in the last decade. The ratio is now 2·7 to 1.
    If we can get the Soviet Union to move on that, we might yet find that some progress is made towards mutual and balanced force reductions. However, I frankly do not put too much store by that. The MBFR talks have stalled and the Soviet Union shows a defensive position in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. That indicates that the Soviet Union still intends to increase its forces. It has increased its force capability in Central Europe in a most alarming way. It has gone in for a new strategy which we all should recognise. That strategy is to move its forces nearer to the Western position so that we are given the impression that the Soviet Union has the capability to move quickly from day one into war situation. I am not claiming that the Soviet Union intends to go to war. I do not believe that she does. But she has the capability to do so.
    In these circumstances, it would be imprudent for us not to take action. That is why I welcome my right hon. Friend's speech and the robust speech of my hon.

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    Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force, who stated that Britain's defence policy is four square behind NATO. I welcome the expenditure increase of 3 per cent. for 1978–79, modest though that is. In last year's defence debate, I expressed the hope that we would increase defence expenditure if economic circumstances allowed. I am pleased to see this modest increase.
    I turn to the amendment tabled by some of my hon. Friends. The gap between them and myself is not necessarily that wide. I have found that to be so when I have discussed the matter individually with my hon. Friends. They want to achieve the same objective. They want to see some movement in MBFR. They want to see detente strengthened. However, their policy will weaken detente. Their policy is even against the spirit of the Labour Party manifesto. The manifesto stresses that detente is based firmly on defence. As I understand it, that is precisely the Government's policy.
    The impetus behind the amendment would weaken the forces of detente, as would the proposal by the national executive committee of the Labour Party for an additional cut of £1,000 million-plus. My hon. Friends will know that I resigned from the working party because I did not believe that it took into consideration the strategic and economic implications. I am pleased to say that the document was not endorsed by the Labour Party conference. It was brought forward as a discussion document and no decision was taken on it.
    I do not believe that a recommendation of that sort would be carried by the Labour Party, not only because it would weaken our contribution to defence and, therefore, to detente but because it is profoundly wrong. It would lead to the danger which I hope that the Government's policy will avoid—namely, war.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am obliged to the right hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Walker) and the hon. Member for Horn-church (Mr. Williams), who responded to my appeal and took only seven minutes. If we proceed on that basis, all hon. Members who wish to be will be accommodated.
    6.25 p.m.
    Mr. Antony Buck: I shall try, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to obey your injunction about brevity. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Horn-church (Mr. Williams), because he genuinely cares about defence and because his speech showed up the deplorable attitude of some hon. Members who sit near him below the Gangway. Their defence policy is akin to the Scandinavian politicians whose stated reaction to a Soviet threat would be to send a telegram to Moscow which stated "We surrender." Some hon. Members below the Gangway give the impression of having a policy only of surrender. The hon. Member for Hornchurch made a valuable contribution when he condemned the Tribune Group's amendment.
    First, I shall deal with a plus to the Government. Their first White Paper seemed to contain a good idea. It said that it was setting the pattern for a decade. Regrettably, that did not happen. Thereafter we had cut after cut. It appeared to some in the Armed Forces that they would suffer death by a thousand cuts.
    Now we have a slight improvement. Because of the influence of our NATO partners, we have a small upsurge in expenditure which we welcome. However, we should not forget that this comes only after cut after cut made after an initial enormous cut. The only good part in the first White Paper was the suggestion that we should have a long-term policy for defence. We can all agree that there should never be a cut of more than 1 per cent. in defence expenditure so that there can be long-term planning, as there is in the agriculture industry.
    There is a real crisis of morale in the Armed Forces. I represent a garrison town and I have paid frequent visits to Northern Ireland. It is scandalous that many members of the Armed Forces have to supplement their pay by taking on other jobs in the evenings—by moon lighting.
    It is somewhat surprising that the Government have not indicated in the debate what they will do about pay because the Armed Forces Pay Review Body is due to report soon. Why has that report not been expedited? Once again we are free only to recommend whether the pay of the Armed Forces should be increased by the maximum

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    amount laid down by the pay limits or by some lesser amount. It would have been appropriate had the Review Body been asked to report earlier so that we could consider its proposals.
    We are appalled that professionals are required to be not only superb professionals in the Armed Forces but professional dustmen yesterday and professional firemen a few weeks ago. Despite that, they are being paid less than many of the so-called professionals whom they are required to replace, I hope that we shall have an indication that there will be a Pay Review Body Report which will be fully implemented and which will at least restore differentials.
    This is the great debate. After Easter we shall come to individual debates on the Services, when there will be many constituency matters which I shall hope to take up. I had hoped to have heard in this debate something more from the Government about statements on a grand design. What of NATO? What have we heard from the Secretary of State or from the Under-Secretary about the grand design? What is the state of play in NATO? We are alarmed about the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean relative to Greece and Turkey. These are the big matters which we ought to be debating. What is Britain's position in the attempt to achieve detente between our allies of Greece and Turkey so that they once again work fully in the integrated structure? Let us hear about that.
    What progress has been made towards getting Spain—as it approaches democracy—into the NATO structure, together with the whole of the Iberian Peninsula? What is needed for NATO is some kind of shock treatment. The whole concept of NATO ought to be altered. The geographical guidelines of that organisation do not make sense any more. That is universally recognised. What is appropriate is that there should be started a new initiative so that NATO is not just the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, not just a defence force for the present members, but a defence shield for the whole of the free Western world, in which other countries as they approach democracy, are brought in, outside the geographical guidelines.
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    We ought to have closer integration with Australia and New Zealand and, as it proceeds to democracy, with Persia, now a great Power, particularly in the Indian Ocean. Let us have an initiative for the expansion of NATO, bringing in more countries so that, especially in the maritime sphere, we can redress the balance.
    Ever since the Cuban incident, there has been this massive maritime build-up by the Russians. The Russians are now building one nuclear submarine a month. Theirs is an offensive capability and makes an example of our role in NATO, especially in the maritime area, absolutely essential. I hope that the Minister of State will deal with the question of our shipbuilding programme. It has been badly cut and should be restored if we are to redress the maritime balance and play our full and proper part in NATO, which part should be more specifically oriented towards the Navy.
    Another matter of a different kind concerns the reorganisation of the Ministry of Defence. What about the structural organisation there? We heard much of this in the Government's early days. This is a subject worthy of a separate debate. I was not at the Ministry of Defence long enough to know quite how it should be reorganised, but it seems nonsensical that at its head there should be a Defence Council which practically never meets. That is prima facie absurd. Someone such as the former permanent under-secretary at the Ministry of Defence, Sir James Dunnett, should be asked to carry out an independent survey of the internal structure. We could have practical reforms carried out, cutting out some of those who may do excellent work but who are not, perhaps, organised as well as they might be.
    I represent a garrison town, and I know that our forces are becoming a little cynical towards our attitude in this House. We have, rightly, heard fulsome tributes to the work the forces do in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. These tributes come from both sides of the House. Our troops are called on to do more and more, yet their position in society is, relatively, declining. This creates a certain cynicism.

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    I hope that in the reply tonight we shall be given an indication that the Pay Review Body will be asked to recommend substantial increases, which will be implemented, so that parity is fully restored. There is much cynicism, and we ought not to be such hypocrites as to pay fulsome tributes to our forces and at the same time be content to see them become the poor relations in society. Let the Government match their actions to their words and see that a square deal is given to the forces over pay. Let us have an announcement about that tonight.
    6.34 p.m.
    Mr. Ronald Brown: I wish to raise three issues in this debate. The first concerns paragraph 513 of the Statement on the Defence Estimates, in which it is said:
    "First priority, however, is being given to improving dockyard productivity as a means of increasing capacity."
    Is it not time that the Government also showed the same determination towards implementing the principle of equal pay in the dockyards? The Minister knows that for three years I have been pressing the case of 25 upholsteresses in the dockyards who are being denied equal pay by the Ministry of Defence simply because the Ministry keeps vacillating from year to year, arguing against the principle of equal pay.
    I have brought to the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister the views of the trade union side of the joint industrial council which has supported the claim of these 25 women. I continually prove the case that in other Departments of State the principle of equal pay is conceded. I take the opportunity tonight of saying again that it is about time that my hon. Friend, as a good employer, began to implement the Labour Party principle of equal pay and brought himself into conformity with the Equal Pay Act.
    I have asked the European Parliament to intervene over this issue since we do not seem to have any power over my hon. Friend in this House. I understand that the Commissioner is in consultation with my hon. Friend, asking him to accede to the EEC regulation on equal pay. Before my hon. Friend imagines that he is letting himself in for a vast sum of money, let me point out that the princely sum we
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    are talking about is the grand total of £237·50 a week. That is what is needed to pay these 25 women the £9·50 a week extra to which they are entitled.
    Talking about extra money brings me to the Tornado. As my hon. Friend knows, I have persistently tried to obtain information on the weapons system of the Tornado. He knows that recently I asked more questions of him about this matter. I have been seeking to find out who is developing the stores management system, what is its current status and whether he is satisfied that it will be capable of being installed in the Tornado. Every time I ask such questions, I get the impression, first, that the Department will avoid answering the question if it can and, secondly, that if it cannot avoid answering it will not so much mislead as confuse everyone with its answers so that it is impossible to make any sense of them.
    The last time I put questions to my hon. Friend on this subject, he said that the Secretary of State would deal with them at the end of the debate. Towards the end of the debate, I intervened and my right hon. Friend said that he would come to the point in a minute. On the second occasion when I intervened, my right hon. Friend said that if I would be patient he would get to the point. We reached the end of the debate but my right hon. Friend had not dealt with the matter. I hope that tonight I shall have an answer. My hon. Friend has not intervened in my speech as he did last year to assure me that my right hon. Friend would answer the question. That causes me some trepidation. I suspect that I shall not receive an answer.
    This is an important issue, having regard to the fact that the Auditor-General made it clear in his Appropriation Accounts published in January that he thought that my arguments were right. He said, in paragraphs 53 and 54 of his report, that there was something radically wrong with the stores management system. I was surprised to find that in the Statement on the Defence Estimates, published in February, there was no reference to this point and no rebuttal of the Auditor-General's comments.
    I should like to discuss an issue of some importance concerning my hon. Friend's thinking with regard to the

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    recent incident involving the Soviet satellite which contained a nuclear device and which entered the earth's atmosphere and was consumed. We were told that there were telephone calls between Moscow and America. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was telephoned. I am surprised that there has been no comment. We have merely been told that there have been searches for bits of it in Canada and that something that looks like it has been found, but we are not sure.
    I raised this matter in the 1960s. I asked the Ministry of Defence whether it was aware of the fractional orbital bombardment system that the Soviet Union was developing. The idea of FOBS is to park a satellite containing a nuclear weapon in what is called geotationary orbit. According to the evidence that was available in the 1960s, the system was near-perfect. I asked a Question—I was asked not to press it, but I did—and got a reply to the effect "We do not know about this system. If we did, it would not matter because the FOBS does not go round the earth; it stays in one place. Therefore, it does not contravene the United Nations protocol on outer space. It would offend the protocol only if it went all the way round the earth, but it does not."
    If my hon. Friend still pursues that argument, in the light of this latest incident will he tell us how many of these satellites are parked in orbit around the earth? Are we keeping the system under surveillance? If so, how? I do not believe that we can feel satisfied that the Soviet satellite which fell from the sky was necessarily as innocent as was claimed. Any satellite which contains a nuclear device is a matter for concern. If it is attached to a system for the deployment of nuclear weapons, it becomes horrifying. We are entitled to an answer on that matter.
    I have tried to keep my remarks within the seven minutes that you have suggested, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall support the Government tonight on their defence policy. However, I remind them that I am fed up with the situation regarding the upholsteresses. My union, the Furniture, Timber and Allied Trades Union, has been fighting hard for them. Unless my hon. Friend gets round to
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    giving them equal pay, I shall get very upset about the Government's defence policy.
    Secondly, I insist on having some sensible replies about Tornado. We are entitled to know whether that system will work, which firm in this country is doing the work and how long it will take to complete it. Thirdly, we are entitled to know whether my hon. Friend has any knowledge about the deployment of nuclear weapons in the sky. If so, we must be told what is being done about that matter.
    6.42 p.m.
    Mr. Emlyn Hooson: I think that I shall be the only Member to be called in this debate who is not a Member of one of the two major parties. Therefore, in as short a time as possible, I should like to explain the Liberal Party's view on this debate, particularly on the motion and the amendment.
    First, I should like to quote from a speech by Mr. Brezhnev to the twenty-fifth party congress of the Soviet Communist Party on 24th February 1976. I think that this will dispose of the amendment put down by the Tribune Group. Mr. Brezhnev said:
    "Development of the socialist countries, their greater might, and the greater beneficial influence of their international policy—this is now the main direction in mankind's social progress."
    I have no doubt that the Soviet Union has built up a great offensive might. That is in accord with its political as well as its military thinking. It does so, as Mr. Brezhnev explained, to bring greater influence on its international policy.
    We cannot ignore those words. The Soviets regard military might as essential to help them to fulfil their purposes. They are unlikely to make a direct attack on the West, but they are likely to use their military might to scare people into accepting states of affairs and interferences in internal politics which otherwise they would not accept.
    The real battle that NATO is likely to fight could be some kind of armed insurrection within a country that is part of or is associated with NATO with the Soviet military not directly intervening but exerting all the pressure that it can to try to facilitate the success of the insurrection.

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    Whenever I attend any discussions on defence, I find that that is the one sphere that is not discussed. As Dr. Luns said recently, and emphasised in this House, defence expenditure is a question not of what we wish to pay but of what we must pay in order to maintain our security. He also added his view that the NATO alliance forces were adequate to meet any threat now from the Soviet Union and that the United Kingdom was making one of the most useful contributions in that respect. That should be emphasised.
    As I said last Friday, the Liberal Party's view was that "Labour's Programme 1976" was entirely unrealistic on defence. Many of the cuts last year were not justified. We said that and we maintained our view by voting against the Government, despite the fact that the Lib-Lab agreement had been entered into, because of the undoubted evidence of the build-up over the years of offensive capacity in the Warsaw Pact forces.
    The cuts of last year have not had much effect, because of the delay largely of British industry in fulfilling contracts. Therefore, the cuts have not been as severe as might have been expected.
    However, since last year there has been no more fruitful area of co-operation between the Government and the Liberal Party than in the sphere of defence. We welcomed the agreement by the NATO Ministers for an annual increase of defence expenditure in real terms of about 3 per cent. from 1979. According to figures which I got from the Library, I note that, as a percentage of gross domestic product, the lowest defence expenditure in this country was in 1973, under a Conservative Government. In 1970 the percentage of gross domestic product was 5·7, and it was 5·7 per cent. in 1976. In the meantime, it had gone down under both Conservative and Labour Governments, reaching its lowest point in 1970 terms under a Conservative Government. We pressed the Government to adhere to their decision, expressed by the Prime Minister, to agree to an increase in defence expenditure of about 3 per cent. We are glad that the Government have followed that up.
    We think that it is right to delay any commitment for a similar increase in 1981–82 pending the result of progress in the negotiations on mutual and
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    balanced force reductions. It gives the Liberals no pleasure to press for increased expenditure on defence. It is a matter of necessity.
    We hope that in those talks the Warsaw Pact countries will agree to sensible and realistic force reductions. That would enable this country, as well as other NATO and Warsaw Pact countries, to save on defence and to spend more beneficially in other directions.
    Sir Ian Gilmour: The hon. and learned Gentleman said that defence had been a fruitful area of co-operation for the Lib-Lab pact. That is an interesting point. Will he explain why the figure for this year, 1978–79, has not been altered, although that was what the Liberal Party was pressing for as late as last December? Will he further explain why the figure for 1979–80 is £55 million less than it was to be when the talks between the Liberal Party and the Labour Party were taking place last December? From what we can see, the result of that cooperation has been a lowering of defence expenditure.
    Mr. Hooson: There is no merit in defence expenditure as such. We have to look at the threat and consider the economy. I am more impressed by Dr. Luns' view of this matter than by the right hon. Gentleman's.
    Sir Ian Gilmour: Answer the question.
    Mr. Hooson: The right hon. Gentleman knows that a 3 per cent. increase in net defence expenditure is fulfilling this country's undertaking to NATO.
    The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Frederick Mulley): I should like to acknowledge the constructive views on defence which have been expressed by the hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues during the year, in contrast with the official Opposition. As my hon. Friend said this afternoon, I do not know how anyone can make anything of a defence policy that cannot distinguish between 4 per cent. which could be £69 million and which could be £1,600 million.
    Mr. Hooson: I think that what all parties should avoid, but do not, is playing politics with the Armed Forces. That is what the Opposition have tried to do. It can be a very dangerous game, as other countries have found.

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    The House of Commons should seek to ensure, first, that there is confidence in the long-term approach by the Government to defence, to avoid the sudden ad hoc and piecemeal cuts which have characterised both Labour and Conservative Governments in the last decade; secondly, that the Forces are provided with up-to-date equipment to fulfil their task; and, thirdly, that their pay and conditions of service are satisfactory and encouraging.
    The most interesting statistic to come out of the debate today is that the percentage of the defence budget allocated to the three Services has remained fixed for the past 23 years. That is a matter about which everyone interested in defence can do something. It is ludicrous if it is true, and I have good grounds for thinking that it is.
    Imagine the position, Mr. Deputy Speaker. There have been enormous changes in arms development. There has been enormous growth in the Soviet Navy. There have been enormous changes as a result of the 1973 desert war. Yet the proportion of the defence budget spent on the Army, the Navy and the Air Force is exactly the same as it was 23 years ago.
    That surely shows that there is something basically wrong with decision-making at the Ministry of Defence. Indeed, the Ministry has been likened to a multinational corporation of immense complexity without a board of directors to lay down a policy. It has an enormous number of subordinate boards, starting with the Chiefs of Staff Committee, which has great power but has no policy direction from the staff.
    One of the most important things that the present Secretary of State has done is to resuscitate the Defence Council. I understand that in the last year the Council has met many more times than in previous years, and for more than to take its photograph, as used to be the case. I think that the Council should lay down policy.
    It is disgraceful that there has been incredible delay in equipping our Forces with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, as compared with the United States, West German or even the French forces. Much of the trouble lies not with the Secretary of State or his predecessor but with com-
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    petition by the chiefs of staff, who tend to have an occupational bias. There was a tremendous argument within the Ministry about who was to man the Milan anti-tank missile. I remember in the United States a few years ago firing a Redeye anti-aircraft device from my shoulder and seeing how effective it was. There have been arguments about who is to man such weapons.
    I hope that all who are interested in defence have read that brilliant article entitled "The Soviet Anti-tank Debate" by Mr. Philip Karber, Director of Strategic Studies at the BDM Corporation, Virginia in the United States, in the May-June 1976 issue of Survival. The article contains a thorough review of the extensive Soviet military debate on the results of the 1973 Middle East war and says that different opinion groups in Russia seem to form around Service branch interests rather than anything else, exactly as in this country. The Russians have similar problems. They have their vested interests, just as we have them here.
    In Russia the artillery people argue that the consequences of the 1973 war, when a brilliantly conceived Israeli tank advance was halted by ordinary Egyptian infantry equipped with Soviet anti-tank weapons, demonstrate the need for much greater artillery strength. But the officers of the tank corps say that the lesson is the need for even greater speed of tank attacks, supported by more motorised infantry, although it is interesting to note that the motorised infantry of the Warsaw Pact is even more vulnerable to our anti-tank weapons than the tanks.
    Mr. Karber concludes:
    "There are then several indications that in the event of conflict with NATO the Red Army would prefer to launch a surprise attack without needing to rely upon massive mobilisation of the rear echelon divisions in the Soviet Union or filling out under-strength forces of the Warsaw Pact … Thus while the West still seems to believe that the tank is the best means of anti-tank defence, Soviet military writers are beginning to stress the offensive use of anti-tank weapons."
    It is for this reason that we in the Liberal Party believe that the top priority for our Armed Forces—and it is a question of priorities that we are discussing —is the strengthening of BAOR, together with a strengthening of the naval forces, making sure that in BAOR we have more troops and that they are better

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    equipped. What is the time scale for, for example, equipping BAOR and its reserves with the Milan anti-tank weapon? What is the position with regard to the longer-range ATGWs? BAOR must have vehicles that can be relied upon to work and are not worn out.
    There must be within the Ministry a genuine search for cost-effectiveness in weapons. I was amazed when I listened to the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour), because he seemed to imply that there was merit in defence spending, whatever the money was spent on, whatever it was directed to. Not once did he mention cost-effectiveness. I believe that the greatest single requirement in the Ministry today is a greater awareness of cost-effectiveness and a breakdown of the vested interests, the competing military sections. The right hon. Gentleman would have made a more valuable contribution if he had directed attention to those matters.
    I want to turn to the subject that I think is of supreme importance at present—
    Mr. Litterick: Ten minutes.
    Mr. Hooson: I am the only speaker who is called to give the view of my party.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. and learned Gentleman is a bit unfair if he seeks to advance an argument that, because he happens to be the sole speaker for his party, he should be allowed to make a speech that is three or four times longer than the speeches of other hon. Members. If that argument were correct, we should have nobody else speaking but the representatives of small parties.
    Mr. Hooson: With the greatest respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if the Back Benchers of the major parties had taken less time yesterday, there would have been more time for their Members today.
    I believe that at no time in peace has the reputation of our Armed Forces been higher with the people of the country than it is today. We have all been made aware of their fine and unstinted contribution in such varied and unwelcome tasks as have already been men-
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    tioned. It is, therefore, with dismay that every hon. Member who is interested in defence realises that so many Service men are leaving the Services and that morale is said to be low. I dealt with this matter in the debate on 9th December 1977.
    The members of the Armed Forces to whom I have spoken—I have not found one dissentient on this matter—believe that they should have the 10 per cent. and be within the pay guidelines just like everyone else. But they are well aware of such deals as in British Airways, for example, whereby workers have obtained the 10 per cent. plus 5 per cent. for a productivity deal. Members of the forces are well aware of the productivity deals that are being made. Therefore the X factor, which I think is the right way to deal with the matter, should be upgraded.
    I should like to mention one small point that adds enormously to the morale difficulties in the Forces. I am sure that hon. Members throughout the House have received complaints from Service men who have been moved from Germany to emergency duty in Northern Ireland. They immediately lose their £4 a week overseas allowance, although their wives and families stay in Germany. They have a 50p a day special payment in Northern Ireland, but that does not replace the £4. There are obvious anomalies of that kind which could be sorted out without reference to the Armed Forces Pay Review Body.
    The Government will at their peril show a more favourable disposition to the firemen than to the Armed Forces. I am sure that the Secretary of State has brought that point of view to bear on the Cabinet.
    7.0 p.m.
    Mr. George Rodgers: I suppose that I should feel duly complimented by the fact that the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour), who speaks for the Opposition on defence matters, decided yesterday to refer directly to my constituency and point out that I had signed an amendment which he mistakenly described as a Tribune amendment. Many people who have signed that amendment have very little to do with the Tribune Group. The right hon. Gentleman went on rather

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    offensively to suggest that I was advocating unemployment in my own constituency.
    It was only when I realised that the other constituencies to which he referred were all highly marginal that I knew that the right hon. Gentleman was indulging in a little electioneering. The issue of employment in industries producing munitions or armaments should be examined. We should not retreat from it. In my constituency the workers who are employed at that publicly owned industry, the Royal Ordnance Factory—a very efficient industry—are anxious to take on board work as distinct from work on armaments.
    Today in the House we received a group of workers from the Lucas combine in Lancashire who are anxious to put forward projects whereby they could indulge in the production of socially useful goods rather than armaments. They have particularly in mind the equipment of a kidney machine, which could be of enormous value to the community. These projects should be examined.
    Conservative Members have been very careful not to say that they think that rearmament should continue whatever the cost. They have said that there should be checks and balances. I appreciate that. But, at the end of the day, is the Conservative Party in favour of disarming? In what circumstances does the Conservative Party say that we should disarm? Is it saying that we can disarm only by creating unemployment? Have Conservative Members no method, no imagination and no vision? How are they to deal with the situation? They must face this question and answer it.
    The reason why I signed the amendment was not that I am a pacifist, though I respect people who hold such a view. I accept that there may be a circumstance in which we have to defend our way of life. The situation has arisen previously. I do not pretend to know from which direction the assault may come. Conservative Members seem to have pre-determined this matter already.
    I know that the First World War came about because of the imperialism of the German Empire and the Second World War because of the Right-wing Fascist regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan. So
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    we cannot assume that the assault may come from one direction.
    I am angry at some Conservative Members who see things in such a simplistic fashion. For them there are no complications, no confusion, no moral issues, no fear of reproach by their consciences. It is hardly necessary for them to think at all. On the one hand, they see the Communist States which seemingly represent the only really evil social system in existence. On the other hand, they see the remainder of the world, which is apparently at all times supremely virtuous.
    Apparently it is possible to avert one's mind from the brutalities of the racist regime in South Africa, the repugnant conduct of the United States during the Vietnam war and the torture and massacre in Chile by neatly dividing the world into two camps, namely, the Communists, who are the perpetual bad guys, and the rest of the world community, which is for ever on the side of the angels.
    I believe that this division of the world into black and white is not merely absurd but is desperately dangerous. I recall a bishop in France once declaring that "Humanity is anaesthetised." Perhaps it is true today that a communal deafness has descended upon us because we have lived with nuclear weapons and their growing escalation for so long that we are beginning to imagine in a vague sort of way that the threat of our total destruction is no longer real. Yet in truth the period of the nuclear age is brief and fleeting.
    Only a very few years have passed since the first atomic bombs were launched at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 130,000 people. The weapons used then must be considered trivial and obsolete when compared with those available today. It is said that the United States has sufficient nuclear weaponry to destroy the Soviet Union at least 44 times over, and that the Soviet Union could destroy the United States at least 20 times over. Who can face the reality of this situation and still believe that the mutual stockpiling of nuclear annihilation makes the world a safer place in which to live?
    If there be those who genuinely believe that peace is more likely if there is a massive accumulation of nuclear weapons

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    on both sides of the divide, I would ask them whether it is not possible that peace is more likely to flourish if neither side is in possession of such ghastly and gruesome armoury.
    I want to make my own position abundantly clear. I deplore many aspects of the Communist regime but I still recognise that for many millions of people this is their chosen way of life and that they would be prepared to defend it to the last. That is absolutely so. The system does not appeal to me. I would oppose it with the same vigour as that with which I am prepared to oppose an extreme Right-wing capitalist system of society.
    None the less, I believe that common ground exists between capitalism and Communism in the desire to survive. There can be no doubt that neither would emerge at all from a nuclear conflict. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the planet Earth would exist if the crime of nuclear warfare were committed.
    I visited the Soviet Union as a member of a parliamentary delegation which included Members from both sides of the House less than a year ago. I returned with one clear and firm impression, that in that country there is a great longing for a sustained period of peace. The question of peace was constantly thrust before us and frequent appeals were made to our party to work together for peace and understanding. With others in the delegation, I supported that plea then and I support it now. There is good reason to accept that the desire of the Soviet people for peace is genuine. The calamity of the last war brought death to 20 million of their people. Hardly a family in the Soviet Union did not feel the impact of death through warfare. In Leningrad alone there is a cemetery which contains the remains of 1 million victims of that war.
    I can understand why people in the Soviet Union seek peace. Additionally, it must be recognised that the Soviet budget is not inexhaustible. The northern and eastern regions of the country are being exploited at enormous cost for their mineral wealth. Railways, roads, mines and quarries and new towns are being constructed and it will be scores of years before the investment pays a dividend. I just do not believe that against that back-
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    ground the Soviet Union is about to indulge in military adventurism.
    No doubt there are politicians and military people within the Soviet Union within the Eastern bloc who have visions of nuclear conquests just as we have latter-day Bodiceas and Tom-Thumb generals in this country who still strut about in search of the bubble reputation. Such people are dangerous and must be denied the power for which they are unfitted.
    I have concentrated my remarks noon the terrible dangers of the nuclear weapon because I believe this to be the most important of all the world's many problems. I believe that it is one which our nation can help resolve by making a positive and practical gesture.
    The United Kingdom has its own independent collection of nuclear weapons, which it could well abandon without placing its people at risk. In fact, many people would sleep easier in their beds at night if we were not in possession of this destructive capacity. God alone knows the circumstances in which we intend to use the wretched things, but one thing is certain: the retention of the bomb by the United Kingdom is suicidal, because its presence invites attack and, astonishingly, offers no prospect of victory as our small clutch of atomic weapons would soon be exhausted and retaliation by a major Power would quickly wipe our small island off the face of the map.
    I accept the criticism that the Soviet Union has an excessive number of nuclear submarines. I have no reason to doubt that intelligence. But the balance of forces between great nations has never been symmetrical. It seems that the United States has an abundance of aircraft carriers, while the Rusians have only one, or perhaps as many as three, but certainly a minute number compared with the United States.
    The madness on both sides must seemingly continue. In one area the Soviets pursue the Americans. In another area the Americans spend more to pursue the Soviets. I cannot influence the conduct of either of the world's super Powers. Perhaps I cannot influence the course of events in this country, but I must try, if only for the sake of our children, and our children's children. I simply seek sanity.

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    Let the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary go to the conference chamber clothed in garments of common sense and decency. Let them demonstrate to the world that we are bigger, morally at least, than the so-called super-nations, because we are prepared independently to renounce nuclear weapons. The pathetic fallacy that peace is dependent on a policy, the main ingredients of which are fear and terror, should first be exposed and then abandoned. We may no longer be a great military Power, but we are a great people and nation, capable of leading the world towards nuclear disarmament. What worthier role could there be for any Government?
    7.10 p.m.
    Miss Janet Fookes: The most striking thing about the White Paper is not so much what it says as what it fails to say. It is with those sins of omission that I should like to deal.
    The first relates to the complete absence of any mention of the Soviet build-up of naval strength in the Indian Ocean. It can have no defensive purpose, yet it poses an enormous threat to the trade routes of the West. If the Russians chose to use that power, surely all our efforts in NATO might be void because we should be strangled before we could get anywhere. There is no mention of that in the White Paper. Commitments outside NATO occupy only one short paragraph.
    Secondly, there is no mention of any possible relationship with the People's Republic of China. This subject was dealt with by the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin), and I share his view that we should engage in military talks with that country. With several of my hon. Friends who are here tonight, I was fortunate enough to go to China in the summer. It is evident that the Chinese assessment of the Russian threat is quite different from that propounded by several Labour Members.
    The Chinese say categorically that Russia will start a third world war and that it will turn on the West because, in their words, it is soft and will then turn and attack China. I hope that the Chinese are being unduly pessimistic, but it seems to me at least reasonable that we should enter into discussions with them on this mutual interest.
    Mr. Roderick MacFarquhar: May I inform the hon. Lady that I suggested a few years ago that the Chinese might be asked to present their case at a meeting of the NATO Assembly, and that when they were approached, the Chinese showed no inclination so to do?
    Miss Fookes: I should have thought that one would have to start more slowly than that. I must leave that matter, however, because of the shortage of time.
    My third point concerns the insignificant reference in the White Paper to the role of research. It is certainly mentioned, but it is not given any vital prominence. Research is the seed corn upon which many of our important technological developments depend. It is frightening to look at the amount that the Soviet Union is apparently spending on research. In a reference to expenditure, the White Paper says:
    "It is clear that a very large proportion of the total goes on new weapons systems including an immense high-technology research and development programme … over the entire range of military equipment."
    Contrast that with the £129 million that we are proposing to spend this year. I suggest that we should be spending far more.
    I was certainly impressed when I went to the research establishment at Fort Halstead some months ago by the fact that it appeared to be working on a shoestring. Clearly I shall not refer in public to any of the projects with which the people there were dealing, but in one or two cases it seemed that the manpower devoted to an individual project was so minimal that if one person had resigned, gone sick or fallen under the proverbial bus, the whole project would have been in danger of grinding to a standstill. Far more attention needs to be given to this aspect.
    My fourth point concerns the issue of the Armed Forces' pay. I make no apology for dealing with this matter. It is important that the Minister realises that it is not that the Armed Forces expect to be completely exempt from every pay policy. However, they feel that they are being asked to make an unfair sacrifice.
    It will be recalled that the whole concept of the military salary, which was introduced in 1970, was that there should

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    be comparability as far as possible with civilian counterparts and that, in return for that, board and lodging should be put at a realistic level. The Armed Forces have been screwed down on pay so that they have fallen perhaps 20 to 25 per cent. behind their civilian counterparts. On the other hand, their board and lodging charges have been put up to a realistic level. The Government have ratted on their obligations on the one hand and exacted their pound of flesh on the other.
    The results of this are reflected in the alarming number of people who seek premature release from the Armed Services. I gather that in the Army and the RAF the number of officers leaving is likely to be double last year's figures, and I suggest to the Minister that there is a strong connection between the numbers leaving and the treament meted out on pay.
    The most experienced men are leaving the Forces, and in the RAF this is particularly worrying concerning jet pilots. It costs well over £500,000 to train a jet pilot. It is therefore, false economy then to drive him out of the RAF by being so mean on his pay. I urge the Minister to examine this very closely. We can only hope that the Review Body will do justice by the Armed Services when it makes its report on 1st April. At the moment, many in the Services think that, far from being their watchdog, the Review Body has become the Government's lap-dog.
    7.17 p.m.
    Miss Jo Richardson: It is quite extraordinary that the hon. Member for Plymouth. Drake (Miss Fookes) should seem to be advocating an alliance with the People's Republic of China. Another of her remarks was of great interest. She said that the view of the Chinese whom she had met was that the Russians were preparing for another war, that they would turn on the West first and that they would then move on to China. Many of us on the Labour Benches have said for a long time that one of the reasons for the deplorable build-up of Soviet forces is that the Soviet Union has three requirements to meet in defence. It is understandable in many respects that the Soviet Union should consider itself vulnerable from the West, the East and the South.
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    The White Paper is for many of my hon. Friends and myself a disappointing document. Here we are in the Labour Party committed to a reduction in arms spending to the level of our Western European allies, and the Government's response is to increase spending on arms. The Conservatives want to increase the figure, and their hearts must be full of joy at seeing a Labour Government travel at least part of the way down that path.
    The standpoint of successive Governments and of NATO has always been that our possession of nuclear weaponry is simply to deter. A close examination of nuclear weapons development over the last 10 years brings one to the conclusion that those weapons are not meant to deter. If that were so and if we could stand by that, I should be happier about it. Those weapons are meant to be used. If they are meant to deter, why do we continue to develop more and more accurate weapons of greater and greater sophistication? If we accept the concept that the Soviet Union—or any other country for that matter—will be deterred, and has been deterred so far, by our very possession of nuclear weapons, surely that is enough.
    Reference has been made this evening to the possibility of the development of the neutron bomb. There is a considerable strength of shocked opinion on both sides of the Atlantic at this possibility. Apart from the fact that this bomb will kill people and preserve property, my strongest objection to it is that, if it is developed, it looks as though it may become the most usable weapon, and the development of it and our acceptance of it would in my opinion escalate the possibilities of a world-wide threat of war.
    Why should it be thought that development of a neutron bomb will stop retaliation? Why should that be a greater deterrent than the weapons that we have already? Far from developing more and more of these horrific weapons, we should be considering the question of alternatives to employment in defence industries, as indicated in the amendment which stands in my name and the names of a large number of my hon. Friends. I hope that the eyes of hon. Members on the Front Benches on each side will not glaze over with boredom at the fact that I have raised this matter yet again. I make no apology for raising it because

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    I believe that the Government ought to be making alternative plans and looking ahead as far as they can for alternative employment.
    The Lucas alternative has been put before the Government and they have consistently refused to take action. They have also consistently blocked any action by saying that it is not their responsibility but that of the Lucas management to consider these alternatives. But they well know that Lucas is not interested in producing socially useful products, which the company considers to be not as immediately profitable in money terms as its production of weapons. I think that they may not be correct in that assumption. The whole matter has become a classic case of buck-passing.
    We hear now that Lucas is considering further redundancies in its work force. I find this the most devastating piece of cynicism. People scream about the need for defence, and yet they are prepared to throw men into the dustbin of unemployment when viable alternatives could be made possible.
    I understand that it is expected that by August there will be another 1,000 redundancies in Lucas Aerospace. That will make a total of nearly 6,000 jobs which have been lost since 1970. The Lucas work force saw this possibility and, through its combined committee—this is all well known now—produced a viable plan for about 150 potential products which it was felt, after much in-depth research, could be produced if only someone would take them on board. The committee went first to the management, and the management said that it wanted nothing to do with it. That was in March 1976. Since then the committee has tried its best to get the Government to put pressure on the Lucas management, but again without any success.
    This seems to be a strange attitude on the part of the Government. If it is possible for them to put pressure on private industry by withholding business and aid from companies in breach of pay policy, what stops them from forcing a more serious response from Lucas on the matter of alternative employment? After all, well over 70 per cent. of Lucas contracts come from the Government. I should have thought that the Government
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    were in a position to bring this pressure to bear on Lucas.
    Hon. Members may not know that at last some help has arrived for the Lucas workers' plan. The Rowntree Trust has given a grant for this year of £7,000 in order to start a centre, which happens to be at the Barking precinct of the North-East London Polytechnic. Some of the proposals for alternative employment are to be thoroughly explored. Some of them may possibly be set up in local industry. It is ironic that neither the Government nor the board of Lucas can do it, but a charitable institution is able to take some steps along this road.
    I believe that there is growing public alarm about the level of defence expenditure and a growing public realisation that we are concentrating far too much of our national cake in this area. I believe that people are convinced that our dependence on nuclear weapons will in the end only bring about our downfall.
    7.25 p.m.
    Mr. Cranley Onslow: I make no apology for coming back to the question of Service morale, about which the Government are clearly rattled and about which the country clearly ought to be and is worried.
    The bald statements in paragraph 409 of the White Paper show the increasing number of officers and men in the Army and the Royal Air Force applying for premature release—voting with their feet, to coin a phrase. It is of no particular comfort to anyone, I suspect, to know from the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force that the Government are closely watching the trends. What they should be doing is analysing the reasons for these premature resignations and seeing whether something can be done to prevent them.
    In the experience of anyone who has been connected with the Services, it must be common ground that there is a variety of causes which can lower morale. Soldiers worry about what is happening at home—quite rightly so. Domestic worries are probably at the top of the list. If they are not adequately paid, fed or housed, they worry. If they know that they have outdated or inefficient weapons, or have not adequate time in which to train with them, they worry. If they

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    have no confidence in the political leadership of the country, they worry. If they have no confidence in the system in whose defence they are expected to lay down their lives, they worry.
    It is a combination of those worries which has the effect, as Ministers must know, of causing men to say "We will jack it in and go to work for Securicor", for example. I do not blame them. But the reaction of the Government or of the Labour Party is twofold. First, there is the type of reaction that is epitomised by Members on the Government Benches below the Gangway and is thoroughly Jesuitical and dishonest. It is to the effect that "We want to see the Service man properly fed, housed and so on. We will fight for him. If he cares to join a trade union, we shall welcome him like a brother." But those Members do not want him to be properly armed. That sort of attitude does not take in the Service man, because he is there to be armed. It is part of his function, and he knows it.
    Then there is the other type of reaction, which we get from the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force and to which the right hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. Stewart) tried to lend what passes for his authority. I refer to the poisonous campaign to put all the blame on the Opposition and to suggest that we are stirring it up by exaggerating and making trouble and going round the country inciting Service men to resign.
    I notice that the two Ministers are suddenly awake and ready to join in the chorus of falsification. They know perfectly well that Conservative Members do not go round sergeants' messes stirring it up. When we get there, as the Ministers and their colleagues know, the sergeants' messes are already in a state of simmering revolt. I do not go to the Guards' Depot telling people that they ought to resign and that there are better jobs waiting for them outside. Service men read the newspapers.
    Where do Ministers think Service men come from? Do they think that they are found under gooseberry bushes and are simply put into uniform at 18? They come from the same society as the rest of us. They have relations, friends and girl friends in society. They read the same newspapers. They read The Sun.
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    Hon. Members may laugh, but Service men read what The Sun says. They also read articles, such as that reprinted in the Daily Express this week, telling them that they would be better off driving a bus. We on the Conservative Benches report faithfully on what comes to us from Service men, and we report it with concern.
    I remember that the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army was once foolish enough to describe himself as the shop steward for the Armed Forces. Not long ago, he was booed at the Adjutant-General's conference. That was a distressing and disturbing but significant event, because the officers who rounded on him there were not a middle-class elite, speaking only for themselves; they were speaking for their men, about whom they care. In the face of that event, the Minister should have honoured the traditions that he is supposed to stand for by tendering his resignation. In that way he would at least have earned a degree of respect from the Army.
    I turn now to the political situation that surrounds the morale problem. We are in grave danger of finding that there are no more men and women ready to come forward and make a career in the Services. It may be that they will come forward for short engagements and sign on for three, five or seven years. But I doubt whether many will still be willing to dedicate their working lives to the Services unless something radical happens quite soon.
    There is a reference in the White Paper to the Representation of the People (Armed Forces) Act, which I was lucky enough to be able to get through this House. When I first said that I would introduce that measure I ran into a brick wall of opposition in the Home Office. I went to see junior Ministers who told me "You have no hope of getting the Bill through. The Government are committed to this, but we shall not lend support to the Bill". I wrote to the then Home Secretary, Mr. Roy Jenkins, and said that enormous damage would be done if the Services thought that one political party was interested in the Service man having the vote while the other was not.
    I do not mind how Service men use their votes, but if they got the idea that the Socialist Party was not interested in

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    Service men, I believe it would be very damaging. I am glad to have this opportunity to pay tribute to the former Home Secretary, who replied that he had full sympathy with my arguments. I got full support from the Home Office from then on.
    But if the Services get the idea that the Labour Party is not interested in their getting a proper reward for what they do—by recognising the extent to which the Services make a special contribution to the integrity of our society—it will do incalculable damage not merely in the short term but also in the long run, because it will justify Service men concluding that there is no point in seeking to defend a Socialist Britain.
    7.32 p.m.
    Mr. Roderick MacFarquhar: The White Paper is fine as far as it goes, but one gets no hint from it that we should now be debating how best we can make our NATO contribution in the 1980s in the light of Britain's economic circumstances then. I believe that the White Paper should have had as its theme the kind of issues discussed in two distinguished articles in recent issues of International Affairs, the quarterly journal of Chatham House. Perhaps I can declare an interest as a former research fellow of that body.
    As Mr. Ian Smart, the deputy director of the institute, pointed out in the October issue, the question of the replacement of the Polaris nuclear force must be decided in the next two or three years one way or the other. If we do not take a decision by 1980, the decision will have been taken by omission. By the early 1990s both our nuclear submarines and their missiles will, for different reasons, be ready for the scrap-heap. Allowing a modest 12 years for development, any replacement force would have to be decided on by the early 1980s. When my right hon. Friend replies, will he confirm this analysis and also restate the Government's position in the light of that analysis?
    The Conservative Opposition spokesman who will reply to the debate should state whether or not the mystical 4 per cent. includes the additional 1 per cent.—2 per cent. additional defence expenditure which the development of a new generation of British nuclear weapons would
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    entail. Will the Conservative Party state whether in its next General Election manifesto it will go for a new generation of nuclear weapons? There is no need for accusations of fiddling the books. The facts are widely known. Let the Conservative Party state its position now.
    My second point is based on the other article by Mr. Lawrence Freedman. What is the Government's view of the future of BAOR, in the light of its increasing balance of payments cost into the 1980s? It is now clear that if we are to fulfil the objective of this Government's 1974 defence review—to stabilise defence expenditure by the 1980s—it will mean reductions in the real defence effort. I therefore ask my right hon. Friend whether he anticipates that the short-term 3 per cent. annual increases will have to become the rule for defence expenditure right through the 1980s. If not, it is certain that there will have to be further defence cuts due to the rising costs of new equipment and pay.
    As my hon. Friend the Member for Farnworth (Mr. Roper) pointed out yesterday, there are virtually no non-NATO reductions to be made. This brings me to BAOR. The historically unusual sight of a British Expenditionary Force stationed on the Continent of Europe for 30 peacetime years in fulfilment of the Brussels Treaty is, of course, designed as concrete evidence of this country's commitment to NATO in general and to the defence of Germany in particular. I do not wish to alter that commitment, but I wonder how long into the 1980s this country will be able to carry a foreign exchange cost that now amounts to over £500 million and is still rising.
    That is one reason why hon. Members on both sides tof the House are asking whether the present level of BAOR commitment is immutable. It has, after all, been reduced in the past—by the Conservative Party. In view of the shortness of time I wish to do no more than raise this issue tonight and to suggest one way of looking at it. It seems to me that a major reduction in BAOR is thinkable in defence terms if the foreign exchange savings are to be devoted to the strengthening of our other, more traditional, role in NATO—naval defence in the Eastern Atlantic and the Channel.
    But whatever the defence implications, a reduction of our land force in Germany

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    would in my opinion be unthinkable in foreign policy terms if it were not compensated for by a tightening of the political links between this country and Germany via the EEC. Otherwise, the removal of British ground troops would suggest that we were scuttling from the Alliance and could lead to the end of NATO.
    In short, I believe that a radical rethinking of Britain's NATO contribution will be necessitated by economic considerations in the 1980s. That can take place only in the context of moves towards greater unity within the EEC, so that there can be no doubt about our commitment to our Continental partners. What is certain is that the Government must now start discussing this issue and giving their opinions to the House.
    7.37 p.m.
    Mr. Kenneth Warren: I should declare an indirect interest in the defence industry.
    I believe that the defence White Paper has been shown to be complacent in this two-day debate. Beyond that, I believe it to be dangerous for two reasons. The first reason is with regard to the basic intelligence data published in figures 2 and 4 of the White Paper. For example, let me take two points from figure 2. Figure 2 shows the increases in the strength of Soviet forces in central Europe. Unfortunately, there is no definition of what "central Europe" is actually is. I hope that the Minister can tell us, because his colleague referred earlier to the northern flank as well as to central Europe. It would be interesting to know what is this place called central Europe.
    Figure 2 also states that in terms of main battle tanks the Soviet Union now has 9,500. But, according to Institute of Strategic Studies sources, the Warsaw Pact countries are shown to have 20,500. That is a difference of two to one in basic data on which the whole defence policy of the Government is postulated.
    Let us take another example—artillery. The White Paper says that there are 4,400 artillery pieces, but the Institute of Strategic Studies states that there are 10,000—again, double the number which is said to be the basis for consideration in the defence White Paper. The same applies to all the other statistics in figure 2.
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    When we look at figure 4, we see that we have moved on from Soviet forces to Warsaw Pact forces. Again, there are disparities in the figures—many of which have already been quoted this afternoon—between the Stockholm Institute of Peace Research or the Institute of Strategic Studies and what is stated in the White Paper with regard to the "total soldiers" situation. The White Paper states that the ratio between the NATO countries and the Warsaw Pact countries is 1 to 1.2. But the Institute of Strategic Studies suggests that the ratio is 1 to 2.6, which means that instead of 27 divisions facing us there would be 70 divisions. One can see that the whole of the White Paper is founded on a miasma of dilution of the threat that is actually facing us. I hope that the Minister will tell us the sources of his data and why they are consistently lower than those of any other published source, including the Soviet Union.
    The second point that I make concerns the other grave omission from the White Paper, which is the absence of any indication of the responsibilities which have to be accepted by politicians in NATO so that the NATO defence system can work.
    It is said frequently—the Secretary of State said it yesterday—that Ministers are not willing to discuss NATO contingency planning. That may be so militarily, but we have to face the political fact that, if we call upon the NATO forces to fight a defensive war and to hold the line, the military men will rely on the politicians to win the war for them. At some point, political initiatives have to be taken to make possible the reality of containment of a Soviet attack.
    It is clear—and it has been said in this debate on a number of occasions in the past two days—that the very deployment of the Soviet forces over the past two or three years has shown the way in which the Russians have raised the nuclear threshold. This is very significant. It means that they believe that they can fight a war in Europe without having to use nuclear weapons and still win, in the belief that we would not use them in return.
    The Russians have raised the nuclear threshold and moved their forces right forward, so that from a standing start they could get to the North Sea in the first leap forward. Military analysts say

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    that they would take from a minimum of five days to a maximum of 21 days to do that. That is the standing-start philosophy, and they are forced into this because of the very vulnerability of their fuel lines from Russia. They have to move from a standing start because they could not possibly go if they had to bring everything forward over a long period.
    In this time of between five and 21 days, something has to be done about a political response. I believe that the Russians have made a calculated decision that they can, within the time of the first leap forward, get a military victory over a substantial area of Western Europe and that the super-Powers would then say "All right. If you stop now, we shall not exchange nuclear weapons."
    This may be a horrendous view, but I am deeply suspicious of the style of change of the Soviet forces, especially in East Germany, and of the reason why they are moving the whole of their defence fighter force forward and changing it over to that of a tactical strike force of a style that they have never used before in any of their military analyses of how a war could be fought.
    Without doubt, the future Soviet military strategy will be upset by the introduction of cruise missiles, which can turn the Russians' flanks. It will also be upset if the neutron bomb is made, because that would deny them the latest strategy that they have put forward—the great leap forward from a standing start. That is why we hear so much propaganda against the development of these two weapons, in contrast to the way in which they, on the other hand, conceal the SS20 mobile atomic missiles stationed on East German territory.
    I fear most of all that in the years ahead we face an acute danger that, as the ageing clique which rules the Soviet Union gets older, it may decide that it has to take its chance now before it becomes obsolescent itself. It is interesting to note how slowly younger men are coming forward in Russia and how few ideas are allowed to penetrate the thoughts and style of government at the top level of the Soviet Union.
    Unfortunately, time is not on our side. The NATO military arm is ready, and I am confident that it could hold the line
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    properly. I fear, however, that at the moment our political arm is missing. I hope that we shall not lose this chance to bring back into the defence of Western Europe the political sanity which is not to be found in the White Paper.
    7.44 p.m.
    Mr. Stanley Newens: The House has heard the hon. Member for Hastings (Mr. Warren) following the lead of his right hon. and hon. Friends in clamouring for increased expenditure on arms. In so doing, the Conservatives have played their traditional role of supporting an arms race. If their plans for raising the level of defence expenditure were implemented, though the details are vague in the extreme, they would provide the excuse which their counterparts in the Soviet Union require to demand that defence expenditure by the Warsaw Pact should be increased further. On both sides, the advocates of the military establishment counterbalance one another. Their arguments, their outlooks and their aspirations are remarkably similar.
    One of the most terrifying features of the modern world is the growth of a military industrial complex in virtually every advanced country—a huge vested interest with an army of spokesmen, correspondents and lobbyists dedicated to the justification of preparations for war. It exists in both the East and the West, and we have heard the case put forward by its representatives here in this House yesterday and today.
    I speak as one who has no brief to defend and advance the case for increased arms expenditure in either camp. In 1976, it was estimated that the world spent $276,000 million on arms. It was estimated that strategic nuclear weapons held on all sides had an explosive content equivalent to 3 tons of TNT per person alive on this globe.
    At a time when so large a percentage of the world's population does not have enough to eat, and when 500 million people suffer from severe malnutrition, it is an appalling commentary on what the most advanced minds of humanity can think. In my view, it is quite disgusting that cohorts of well-heeled individuals should be clamouring for more and still more to be spent on the means of mass destruction whilst their fellow human beings starve.

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    The Opposition and the Government justify their case by reference to Soviet weaponry. I accept that in conventional arms the Warsaw Pact in Europe is ahead. In nuclear terms, however expressed in targetable nuclear warheads, the Warsaw Pact has not attained the lead.
    Conservatives call continually for cuts in public expenditure and for reducing the burden of taxation. If military expenditure is to be increased, this must mean either increased taxes or much more stringent cuts in expenditure on health, education, welfare, public transport and so on. The public are entitled to be told the consequences of Conservative policy, and it is sheer hypocrisy to come to this House and clamour for increased expenditure on arms and at the same time not point out in real terms what that means to the British population.
    In my view, the British economy can no longer bear the heavy burden of arms expenditure of past years without continuing a serious decline in our competitive position as an industrial country. It is time that right hon. and hon. Members got their priorities right. While they point continually to the threat from outside and urge that ever more resources should be diverted to meet it, they fail to recognise that the threat of increased unemployment and run-down services will create an atmosphere in which groups like the National Front and other undesirable elements flourish and that ultimately this could pose a much more serious threat than any outside force to what is worth defending in Britain.
    I believe that the chance of a world war arising from a crisis in the Middle East or in Southern Africa is much greater than the chance of a world war arising from a crisis in Europe. Yet we have this tremendous concentration on building up our forces in NATO.
    Defence is urged upon us to protect our way of life and our democratic freedoms. There was very little democracy in Oman for our forces to defend in crushing the rebellion of the PFLO there. There is no real freedom in Iran, where we have an advisory mission and to which country we help to supply arms. In Cyprus our forces did not prevent many thousands of Greek Cypriots from being deprived of their property and homes. Our arms sales, to which the defence review refers, are not restricted
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    to countries which uphold our democratic way of life. In these circumstances, there is need for a challenge to be made to the ever-increasing demand for increasing expenditure on arms. This demand is made not only in Britain but throughout the world—in the Soviet Union, China, the United States and elsewhere.
    In the Labour Party manifesto, we on these Benches pledged ourselves to work not only for disarmament but for mutual and concurrent phasing out of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. The progress towards real disarmament has been disappointing. SALT I permitted both East and West alike to build more nuclear missiles and defence systems. We need to step up the pressure for change.
    I have never been an out-and-out pacifist, and I have always argued for Britain to have an efficient, conventional armed force. I have always argued that men who serve should be properly remunerated and provided with homes when they are demobilised. However, I believe that we cannot accept that Britain should indefinitely maintain the burden of BAOR, because such a huge financial burden is proving crippling as well as being unjustified in military terms.
    I cannot accept that Britain should maintain a nuclear deterrent. Therefore, I am completely opposed to any proposals for a new generation of nuclear weapons. Again, I cannot accept the proposals of the defence review that the real resources devoted to military purposes should be increased.
    In the long run, the division of the world between rival military camps will maintain tensions and increase the huge volume of wealth being committed internationally to producing the means of destruction. I am opposed to pacts, and I believe that we must seek to bring them all to and end and replace them by a completely different system of international security.
    It is wrong at this stage for the Labour Government to propose to raise the level of defence expenditure. It is unfortunate that the amendment in the names of my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Allaun), myself and others should not have been called. This prevents an opinion contrary to that expressed on both Front Benches from being carried into the Lobbies. This should in no way obscure the strength of the opposition

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    to spending more on armaments and the demand that we make once again today for cuts.
    In the long run, we and the rest of the world must face the fact that arms expenditure will have to be cut. The Labour Government should be giving us a lead, and a much better lead than is proposed in the defence review.
    7.55 p.m.
    Dr. Alan Glyn: The hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Newens) asked what would be the results of Conservative policy on defence. It would be the security of this country and the protection of Western democracy.
    I want to say a quick word about my constituency, where I have regiments of the Guards Division stationed. They do a tremendous job. They have served in Northern Ireland, and other theatres and they took part in the fire-fighting last year with "green goddesses" in addition to doing ceremonial guard duties without the facilities of Wellington Barracks. They deserve to be properly rewarded and they should not be forced to moonlight.
    This debate is about defence strategy. I believe that NATO must now look much further afield in the protection of the Western world. Strategy is changing. China has possession of a nuclear bomb, located in Sinkiang Province. What will happen along the heavily fortified Sino-Russian border where Russian troops are facing the Chinese, if the Russians attempt to attack Sinkiang? Alternatively, if there were a Ribbentrop-Molotov type of agreement, the Russians could release their troops to the Warsaw Pact countries. This could alter the whole balance of power in the West.
    The White Paper attempts to deal with the build-up by the Warsaw Pact and the threat in Central Europe. It does not deal with the Soviet infiltration in Africa, where many of our raw materials are located. Nor does it deal with the threat to our lines of communication, and how we get our raw materials back to Europe, which is absolutely vital in times of hostility, as it is in times of peace. We must remember that there were 50 submarines in the First World War and that the Russians have three times that number now. The whole concept of the defence of Western Europe must be ex-
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    panded to take account of our sources of supply of raw materials and food. No consideration has been given to that at all.
    Detente is all very well, but let us make sure, before we sign the comprehensive test ban treaty, and complete the SALT talks and the MBFR talks, that this is not done because the Russians have completed their tests. Let us not sign anything until we can guarantee that the Russians will not explode any more bombs. What about inspection? Let us be very careful here. My experience is that so far the Russians are not prepared to allow proper inspection as we are. Without proper inspection any form of agreement is entirely meaningless.
    The Russians have enormous reserves throughout the Soviet Union and can easily bring them forward. Our reserves are limited by a time factor and we must consider the time taken in getting them to their destinations. The Government must consider this.
    Paragraph 113 of the defence review refers to chemical and biological warfare. As far as I know we have no defence against these weapons. The Russians are developing this ghastly form of war, and we must ensure that any test ban agreement on nuclear weapons includes chemical and biological weapons. One chemical or bacteriological bomb could do incalculable damage if it were dropped on these islands. All these weapons must be considered together, and I believe that we should look at a means of defence against them. If the Russians have a defence against chemical and biological weapons among their forward troops we should ensure that we are not left behind.
    Paragraphs 120, 121, 123 and 125 all indicate the strength of the Russian threat. Paragraph 126 makes it very clear that the Government have not any real knowledge—quite understandably—of the amount being spent by the Russians on defence.
    Soviet influence in Africa and South Africa is very serious. Why has the Shah considered it necessary to defend himself by buying naval vessels? It is because he realises the potential danger posed by the Russian sea routes. What does all this add up to? It simply means that we are very dependent, and will be

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    for a long time yet, on the atomic deterrent. What is the programme for replacement of the Polaris submarines, and when will they be replaced? What is the policy on spares for Polaris from America? The Government must answer these questions because they are vitally important. We must have control of the Polaris, because the Americans may be frightened to launch a nuclear attack to defend Europe because it would endanger the United States. If the Russians know that we have the power of destruction, we have a very strong weapon in our armoury for peace and disarmament.
    I hope that when the Minister replies he will give proper attention to the question of Polaris and the development of the neutron bomb, as well as to the question of bringing up reserves. It is important to ensure that any agreement with the Soviet Union includes a proper system of inspection on both sides. If that does not happen, the agreement will be meaningless. Such an agreement must include bacteriological and chemical warfare.
    Let us remember that we must stand up at some point by ensuring that we possess Polaris or a substitute weapon. If it is known that we have the power to use that weapon—and of course none of us wishes to use it—strength will be given to our negotiations in seeking the disarmament that we all want to see. Therefore, let us go into the conference room with a feeling of strength, and let us ensure that any agreement is backed by the knowledge that, if necessary, we also have the ability to destroy.
    8.2 p.m.
    Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth: I am aware that because of the pressure of time hon. Members are concentrating on the completion of speeches rather than their content, and, therefore, I shall try to be as brief as possible. I shall not take up the points made by the hon. Member for Windsor and Maidenhead (Dr. Glyn) in his general review of the defence White Paper. I wish to make particular reference to the position of civil staff in the Ministry of Defence.
    As the House knows, before I came to the House I was a member of the Institution of Professional Civil Servants and an adviser to the largest Civil Service Union, the CPSA. The Ministry of
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    Defence has within it 266,000 Civil Service staff, and we have concentrated heavily in this debate on 332,000 military staff. Therefore, it is right that I should say something about the anxieties felt by civilian staff in the Ministry of Defence, because they are equally vital working in the Department on behalf of the country.
    I wish first to mention the subject of pay. I have pressed in this House on a number of occasions for the reintroduction of the Pay Research Unit. That unit was suspended as part of pay policy and is to be resurrected next year. But it is my view that it should have been reintroduced earlier so that there could be a benchmark for discussion of pay in the Civil Service this year. Civil servants want to feel that there is a sense of fairness in pay policy, and certainly military personnel also want a sense of fairness. It comes somewhat rich from Conservative Members, who pressed for public expenditure cuts and who earlier in the year asked the Government to be as tough as possible on pay in the public sector, now to bring one case after another pressing for pay increases to public servants. This would only wreck the pay policy if some of these suggestions were implemented, and it would also increase public expenditure.
    I believe that the military personnel in the Ministry of Defence have a justifiable grievance over pay, and the Review Body should take that matter into account. Even if that body cannot make a recommendation to be implemented immediately, I believe that it should put up some markers for the future so that the level of pay can be brought up to what it would have been if it had not been caught by pay policy in the last two or three years.
    Civilian staff in the Ministry of Defence and other Government Departments also want to feel that their case is being treated fairly, and they want to know that the private sector will not go ahead of the public sector. This can be done only by reintroducing the Pay Research Unit which has operated in the past. The sooner that such a unit is reintroduced, the sooner will a sense of fairness be felt by public servants.
    Many civilian employees in the Ministry of Defence feel very strongly about retired officers being employed in

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    their present numbers. Members of the Civil Service unions take strong exception to the maintenance of the retired officers class. There are now around 2,000 such officers. They were formed as a special class after the last war because of the bulge in the number of officers.
    I wish to draw a distinction between many ex-Service men, officers and other ranks who compete with others for jobs within the Civil Service and who are appointed on ability. However, if those who are registered as former officers are appointed to jobs in the Ministry of Defence, there is bound to be a feeling that an "old boy" network is operating. There is the sense of nepotism that was shown in Victorian days in the appointment of civil servants. This gives rise to a feeling of divisiveness within the Department which, I hope, the Government can overcome by substantially cutting the number of retired officers on pension who are now working in the Ministry of Defence.
    Furthermore, there is a great deal of concern about the proposals to concentrate the centralisation of computer services away from many parts of the country to Glasgow. There are many jobs involved in places such as Mottingham, Stanmore, Guildford, Portsmouth, Bath and Innsworth, Rosyth and elsewhere. Hundreds of jobs from many different areas are being centralised in Glasgow.
    All this activity is being disguised as a policy of dispersal under the Hardman proposals. But they are not dispersal proposals at all. The Hardman proposals were aimed at removing people from London to other parts of the country suffering high unemployment. It is no good moving from one area of unemployment to another area of unemployment as is now being proposed.
    We must also consider whether the centralisation of computer services in the Department gives rise to a security risk if there is to be such a substantial concentration of services in one place. I hope that when the Minister replies he will tell the House whether he believes that this is a wise proposal. I would ask him to consider whether the proposal could be reconsidered and put into suspension until further discussions have taken place.
    8.8 p.m.
    Mr. Jerry Wiggin: I do not normally sing the praises of Privy Councillors, but I believe that in the course of the last two days, my right hon. Friends, in company with many of my hon. Friends, have collectively deployed the most powerful arguments to show the complacency and self-satisfaction of the Labour Government in attempting to meet a totally unprecedented military threat—a threat which increases month by month. That threat seeks to put in peril not just our own country, but the whole of the Western world.
    There is one aspect of this debate which has been mentioned mostly by Labour Members, including the hon. Members for Chorley (Mr. Rodgers), Barking (Miss Richardson) and Salford, East (Mr. Allaun)—namely, the threat of nuclear power. The hon. Members I have mentioned argued against the existence of the nuclear weapon. I suggest, however, that it is the very existence of that weapon on both sides which since the end of the last world war has done more than any other single factor to maintain peace.
    Mr. Litterick: Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that there have been 50 wars since 1945? How, then, has peace been maintained?
    Mr. Wiggin: For the reason that none of those 50 wars has escalated into a world war. It is a world war that we are attempting to avoid. There will always be wars and rumours of wars, and there will be small bush fires. That is a good argument for maintaining a strong level of conventional forces. The fact that we have not had a world wide escalation is wholly due to the existence of the nuclear weapon. But in the changing circumstances of today, as Warsaw Pact power increases in relation to our own forces, we should once again examine the concept of the so-called flexible response. Could it be flexible weakness?
    I have always felt that the tripwire philosophy, which envisages that once a Russian puts his foot into allied territory it will bring upon Russian heads an all-out nuclear attack, was the factor that kept the world peaceful from 1945 until today. The neutron bomb has an important part to play in this argument. The very response to that from Russia leads me to believe that it is most urgent that it

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    should become part of our armament at the earliest moment. Unlike Labour Members, I shall sleep better when it is in our armoury.
    Nothing of what I say should be taken to detract from the necessity of maintaining strong conventional forces. The Warsaw Pact countries have moved into a position from which a surprise attack could be carried out undetected—despite statements to the contrary by the Government and our NATO allies. Exercises involving 30,000 or more troops with fully-armed equipment could, at a word of command, catch us on the hop if our enemies wished.
    I should like to spend the rest of my speech talking about reserves and reinforcements. I declare an interest as I remain, though only for a few more weeks, a serving member of TAVR.
    I should like to quote from von Clausewitz's book "On War", in which he said:
    "Therefore, the thing of the highest importance in War will always be the art of conquering the enemy in battle."
    Under the heading "General principles", dealing with defence, he sets out:
    "(1) To keep troops on the defensive under cover from fire as long as possible …
    (2) Not to bring the whole force into action at once. If this fault is committed, all rational guidance of the combat is at an end; it is only with disposable troops that we can turn the course of a battle."
    Those words may have been written in the last century, but they are just as true today.
    The Defence and External Affairs Sub-Committee of the Expenditure Committee has conducted an excellent investigation into our reserve forces. It has gone as far as it is proper for the House to go in investigating but has not attempted to interfere in precise military formations and other matters that the House should not delve into too deeply. Its conclusions are accurate, if mild, but could have been substantially more outspoken.
    In the past, the TA was treated by Regular front-line commanders as a bonus force to be used only when all else was exhausted. Now, in a number of cases, TAVR forces, particularly in the infantry, are a part of our front-line defence and will be moved in an emergency to play their part in BAOR. This is a new and different function for part-time soldiers.
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    I do not share the Government's equanimity about the problems of moving troops in a crisis. Many potential enemies may be within our ranks. Who knows how many there are on the Continent who subscribe to the Communist philosophy and, on the declaration of war, would turn against us? Some large numbers are quoted, particularly in Germany.
    In the general philosophy, it has always been assumed that the bravery and keenness of part-time soldiers makes up for the lack of training and expertise, but I question whether the technological weapons and high level of training employed in the Regular Army will not show at a disadvantage the Territorial troops alongside them in the front line. It is a question not of blaming military commanders but rather of blaming the Government for leaving gaps in the front line which can be filled only by part-time soldiers.
    The position of our Regular reserves is even worse. Most have had little, if any, training since leaving their Service employment. They may not know what slots they are to fit into, and it is so long since they were tested to see whether they are fit for a role that no one can remember when it took place. No Regular officer, in assessing the funds and troops at his disposal, will willingly see reserves being given priority over Regulars. He will always say that certain things must be kept back for his Regular troops. Thus the reserve forces suffer.
    A simple but hurtful example was the allocation of Jubilee Medals. A total of 25,000 went to the Regular Army, but each reserve unit received only a handful, one of which was given to the commander. What better way could there have been of thanking volunteers for their efforts? It would have cost the Government nothing, and the way in which it was handled caused a great deal of ill feeling.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army will be visiting my regiment next month. I regret that I shall not be there, but I know that he will find keenness, high morale and a general willingness to do a job that I think is superior to that of the Regular Army. I hope that when the hon. Gentleman absorbs what he learns from his visit he will find that the troops in my part of the country are just as keen and

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    efficient as the troops in the North-East about whom he spoke yesterday.
    I should also like to refer to the Royal Air Force and Naval reserves, both of which require close examination. The RAF has only 3,000 volunteer reserves and 30,000 altogether, 6,000 of whom have a predetermined job. The Navy has only 5,500 reserves, and it does not take much imagination to see what an extension of numbers and equipment, even small ships, could do to assist defence in this area.
    A number of hon. Members have raised the crucial question whether, in the light of experience of the Yom Kippur war and other recent conflicts, our war stocks are remotely adequate even to attain the 30-day target which is the well-known NATO figure. The Atlantic cannot be cleared of Russian shipping in under three months, so the 30-day figure is far too low.
    We learn the advantages of reserves almost every year. The firemen's strike was an example. What would the Government have done if the "green goddesses" had not been available? Yet the Government were about to sell those vehicles when they were brought out of stock. I am glad to learn that they are now to be kept, but what happens to other reserve items? Shall we be ready for the unknown? That is what the reserves and our Armed Forces will have to cope with.
    Why could not the TAVR have helped in the firemen's strike? It was not because it did not have a job to do but was because it would have needed a proclamation to call out the reserves, and the Government were not prepared to do that.
    The recall arrangements for the reserves require examination. The Government should expand their researches away from the Regular reserves to all reserves, including TAVR. I should like to talk about the function that TAVR could perform in a civil defence role, and the function it might have to perform in guarding the home base, but time is against us.
    The White Paper talks about Regular and TAVR units guarding the home base in time of war, but no Regular Army unit is based west of Salisbury
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    Plain and the whole of the West Country will rely on volunteer reserves and other military units in the case of a cataclysm which, although unseen and unforecast, might happen. The Continent of America is better guarded than our small island.
    Napoleon said:
    "Victory is to him who has the last reserve."
    That is something we should never forget.
    8.18 p.m.
    Mr. Richard Crawshaw: I agree to some extent with what the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) said about the nuclear deterrent having kept us free of a European war for the last 30 years, though I do not go the whole way with him.
    In the years that I have been in the House, I have been appalled by the artificiality of debates on defence. I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) that we make defence a football. Ministers have had a difficult job to do in our recent economic circumstances and have been kicked by the Left wing of our party into reducing defence expenditure. I pay tribute to the fact that they have managed to retain expenditure at the current level. It cannot have been easy. But Ministers give the impression that they are quite satisfied with defence arrangements although I am sure that in their hearts they know that what is being provided is completely inadequate.
    I have found the only people who have been consistent are my colleagues on the Left wing of the Labour Party.
    Mr. Patrick Wall: Consistently wrong.
    Mr. Crawshaw: The hon. Gentleman may be correct, but I shall be coming to his side of the House in a moment.
    One can expect the same amendments from the Left wing of the Labour Party whether we are in Government or in Opposition. They are consistent in saying that the Government of the day are spending too much money.
    I ask the Opposition to cease making defence a political football. Some Opposition Members have made speeches that

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    make me think that by the time I get home, Russian forces will be in the Channel. That could happen—but it could also have happened between 1970 and 1974.
    Over the past two days Conservative Members have been criticising the Government for reducing our defence forces. If the Conservatives form the next Government will they make the same remarks? The fact is that they do not make the same attacks when their party is in Government. Those attacks are left to one or two individuals, who remain consistent.
    I am sorry that the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) has left the Chamber after being present for most of the debate. I presume that he will return. I hope that he will be able to explain why the same attacks are not made by Conservative Members when their party forms the Government. It is not because they believe that their party is providing adequate defence. After three and a half years of Conservative Government, the hon. Member for Stretford said:
    "Perhaps it is true to say … leaving aside nuclear weapons … Britain's defence capability relative to the forces facing us has not been weaker at any time since 1938."—[Official Report, 12th December 1973;Vol. 866, c. 491.]
    That was three and a half years after the Conservative Government had been in office. If Conservative Members honestly feel to be right what they have been telling the Government over the past two years, they are right to take that stance. However, I think that they were wrong not to make the same statements between 1970 and 1974.
    It is true that we can make anything of statistics if we wish, but between 1972 and 1973 the total manpower of the Armed Forces was reduced by 4,000 by a Conservative Government. The following year there was a reduction of 18,000. They were then merely getting into their stride. Where was the build-up of defence forces that we hear of so often from Conservative Members? That seems to disappear the moment we have a Conservative Government. If there is a change of Government I only hope that we hear then a few of the speeches that we heard yesterday and today.
    I, too, believe that we take the morale of the Armed Forces too much for
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    granted. There is no doubt that they are the most loyal of our people. They can be called upon to do anything. They do the dirty business that nobody else wants to do.
    If we are to exercise a pay policy in which we reduce, to a certain extent, the living standards of our people, those whom we segregate should be those who do not have the most powerful muscle, those who all too often have to take the buck. They are the ones who should have priority every time. In that category I place the police and the Armed Forces We cannot continue indefinitely to rely on their good will while they are having to take moonlighting jobs to keep their families.
    I address a few remarks to my hon. Friends on the Left of the Labour Party. I respect their views. I acknowledge that they are consistent. However, would they honestly go right through with what they are suggesting? My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Lamond) said how terrible it was for Russia to have all its weapons and how terrible it was for the West. I was waiting for him to offer a solution. He said everything except "If we give up our weapons, the Russians will give up theirs." He did not say that. He is too sensible a man to say it. It is so easy to pose a problem.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Rodgers) suggested that if we cut down on munitions factories, we could make lung machines. With 1½ million unemployed we could be making lung machines now.
    Everybody wants peace, and those who want peace the most are those who have had war. Those who serve in the Armed Forces do not want war. I appeal to my hon. Friends on the Left of the party to recognise that it is so easy, and in some cases it can become so cheap, merely to appeal to people's emotions. Of course everyone wants peace. To promote peace is the most easy vote-catching in which we can indulge. No one knows that that is the wrong approach until "1939" arrives. It is at that stage that we and others have to sacrifice six years of our lives. We had to do so in 1939 because the Conservative Party did not have the guts to build up our defence forces and because the Left-wing of my party denied that defence when others wanted it.

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    I remind my hon. Friends that there are those in Eastern Europe, such as Dubcek in Czechoslovakia and others in the Soviet Union, who look to the West and are given heart by the fact that it still exists. My hon. Friends do no need to be told that. I have a Press cutting—I know that it is 18 months old, but that does not alter the fact—which states that a telegram was sent to Dubcek. In the telegram it was said that there was solidarity with the Czech people and others who support the fight to create a society free from the gross abuses and crimes that have marred so much done in the name of Socialism.
    They were saying, in effect, "We are sending the telegram to you to show what we think of the Soviet Union, and that we recognise what it has done to Czechoslovakia". That was a great gesture. It is, perhaps, significant, that nine of the 11 names that subscribed to the telegram appear on the Left-wing motion on the Order Paper that asks us to reduce our Armed Forces. What sincerity is there in believing that any useful purpose is served merely to send such a telegram to someone who has been thrown out of his job and whose country has been invaded by the Russians? What is offered merely to say "We are thinking of you"? Even the heading of the article does not bear reading into. Indeed, it may have been looking a little into the future as it reads "We're still with you". Given what some of my hon. Friends want, it will not be long before we are with Mr. Dubcek.
    8.26 p.m.
    Mr. Nigel Forman: I begin by unashamedly and perhaps presumptuously congratulating the hon. Member for Liverpool, Toxteth (Mr. Crawshaw) on a powerful speech that found a great deal of support and congratulation on the Opposition Benches.
    It has always seemed that some of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues below the Gangway regard defence and foreign policy very much as Bernard Shaw once regarded those who hawked around their consciences and appeared to treat the world like some sort of moral gymnasium in which to exercise. That is not the proper way to make a sane decision in this sphere.
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    I confine my remarks to a few simple points about policy. In the statement on the Defence Estimates there are glimpses of defence policy. In so far as policies exist, they are broadly the same as in previous years. However, the Government are increasingly undermining our capability to implement the policy. That is true whether we consider the cumulative cuts of the defence plan for 1973–74 or the bogus 3 per cent. increase about which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) has already said quite enough.
    The Government say, quite rightly, that our policy is indistinguishable from NATO policy. They say that it is a deterrent strategy based on forward defence and the capability of a flexible response. The Government also say that detente and disarmament are not enough on their own to secure adequate security. They may say that again. It is a relief that they recognise such simple home truths.
    I shall examine in a little more detail two aspects of the Government's policy that I believe merit further consideration. First, a forward defence implies the vital importance of BAOR and the present manpower level of about 55,000, and the assurance that that force can be more than doubled in an emergency. One of the things that I should like to hear tonight from the Minister is exactly how the Government intend that that force should be doubled in an emergency and over what sort of period, because it seems very dubious that that could necessarily be carried out.
    Furthermore, we need the reassurance every year that BAOR has all the advanced defence equipment that it really needs to halt the Warsaw Pact and hence to make that policy of forward defence a reality. Here I am thinking of the procurement of such things as the Milan and TOW, and, later, the enhanced radiation weapon, all of which will have a part to play in making a reality of forward defence.
    Equally, on the force reduction side, there is vital importance in seeing that in the so-called reduction areas within the negotiations we do not have a situation in which we leave intact the present disparity of ground forces manpower of

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    about 150,000 between the two alliances. This obviously works significantly to NATO's disadvantage. One has only to consult paragraph 127 of the White Paper to see that at least the Government recognise that, even if Ministers do not bring out this point sufficiently clearly.
    Turning to the question of flexible response, I shall content myself with saying that this depends, of course—it goes without saying—on having a sufficient range of military options available to NATO commanders quickly and without having to rely necessarily on transatlantic reinforcement, which may not come or which may not even get through. It is very important, therefore, to strengthen the case, for the enhanced radiation weapon and to introduce it as soon as possible, because it is only with theatre nuclear weapons of this kind, whether used by the West Germans with conventional warheads or used by others with nuclear warheads, that we can do something to make this flexibility really work.
    As my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) so rightly said, most of all this flexible response depends on having a sufficient conventional capability of manpower and weapons in order to keep the nuclear threshold high. Contrary to what my hon. Friend actually said. I believe that a high nuclear threshold with a really strong and diverse capability is our best chance of making a reality of that flexible response. We should recognise that this is necessarily an expensive strategy.
    I take up a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings (Mr. Warren). Politicians have a role to play here—to stress time and again that we cannot have a policy of flexible response on the cheap, and that of all the available policies that we may use in Europe, that one is the safest, but is also, we must admit, one of the most expensive. We do no credit to public opinion and to people who follow these matters if we do not make that clear.
    I end by simply reminding the House that is was not any Right-wing colonel from Tunbridge Wells or somewhere like that who warned about the real perils of not doing anything in our own defence. It was the present Chancellor of the Exchequer who, when he was Secretary of
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    State for Defence in a previous incarnation, talked about the dilemma in regard to schools, hospitals and the Welfare State, on the one hand, and defence spending on the other. He rightly pointed out that, unless we are prepared to spend adequately on defence and, to bring these points clearly home to the British people, to face the nation with them, we shall not have any schools or hospitals or a Welfare State; we shall have only ashes.
    8.33 p.m.
    Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: It is with a little concern that, although yesterday we seemed to have such long and leisurely speeches, we find that this evening hon. Members have been forced to curtail their remarks and produce rather hurried speeches to conform to the amount of time available. I shall certainly try to curtail my speech, but I wish that there had been more efforts by some people to curtail their speeches yesterday.
    I should like to follow the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Thornaby (Mr. Wrigglesworth), who referred to some of the problems at the hearts of some civil servants who work for the Ministry of Defence. I should particularly like to refer to some of my constituents working at the Ministry of Defence establishment at Cheadle Hulme, in the Pay Office, which is concerned, I think, particularly with records. There are many rumours circulating there now about the future of their employment. They would very much like the Government quickly to make clear their proposals concerning them.
    I realise that in the White Paper there is some reference to the possibility of moving much of the administration to Glasgow some time in the period 1983–84. It seems to me somewhat illogical that this is coming about as a result of the Hardman proposals to diversify and decentralise Ministry of Defence staff and civil servants from London into the regions. In practice, it is not staff movements from London that will occur, but people moving from one region to another.
    It seems particularly illogical that we should now be trying to concentrate staff in Glasgow, taking them away from areas such as Stockport in the North-West of England when we find that the North-West, sadly, now has more unemployed

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    people than the whole of Scotland. If anyone has followed the devolution debate carefully, he will find that it is clear that areas such as the North-West are at a severe disadvantage compared with areas such as Scotland. Therefore, if the Government are to centralise their records and administration in one area, I hope that they will not take them to Scotland but will keep them in one of the English regions in which some of that work is already done. It is particularly hard for the women who work at Cheadle Hulme, because it is not easy for them to move to Glasgow unless their husbands can also find jobs.
    I hope that the Government recognise the attractions of the area. The Greater Manchester area has plenty of office accommodation, good communications, housing and amenities. The Government should bring work to Stockport rather than take it away.
    Another issue worries my constituents, particularly those who work at British Aerospace in the old Hawker Siddeley factory at Woodford. They are concerned about fishery protection and particularly about the role of the Nimrod aircraft. Nimrod was produced there, and my constituents are aware that it is a good aircraft. However, they have some reservations about using it for fishery protection. The Coastguarder, developed from the HS748, would perform the role better than Nimrod. I hope that the Minister will look at this in terms both of its British use and of the possibility of sales abroad.
    I turn to the question of the work done by the Ministry of Defence, particularly by the RAF, to mountain rescue services and to the civil rescue work which has been done this winter. The House should pay tribute to the helicopter pilots who often work in difficult mountain conditions. We need more information about these services, their cost and how they can be fitted more clearly into the mountain rescue picture. We need more information about the military coming to the aid of the civil power.
    I am in favour of the amendment which calls for a reduction in defence expenditure. I am firmly in favour of reducing defence expenditure, but not at the cost of accommodation,
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    pay, equipment or at the expense of some of the forces' fringe benefits.
    I have visited British troops in Northern Ireland and Germany. I am conscious that Forces' accommodation in Northern Ireland is appalling. I recognise the political difficulty. Temporary accommodation is difficult to make adequate. However, if the temporary nature of the accommodation stretches to years, there must be a firm decision to upgrade that accommodation. It does not seem to be a worthwhile cut for the Ministry not to return old defence land to civil use. We must give our Service men decent pay and working conditions.
    If we are to have defence cuts—and I believe that we should—they must be made in the role that we perform or by persuading our allies that they should carry a larger share of the burden. This is the argument of my hon. Friends below the Gangway. They do not want to ask the Services to do the job on the cheap. They want to reduce the role that we ask them to perform.
    I could go on at some length but I realise that I must watch the time. The Government should mount a disarmament campaign to bring down the world level of arms, not only by agreement with the super-Powers but by the amount that some of the smaller nations spend. We ought to be doing all we can to reduce this.
    The sad thing is that we are sending out to the smaller nations arms salesmen who are trying to frighten them and persuade them to make greater investments in arms. We ought to be doing more to reverse this trend. We ought to be trying hard to get our industries out of the arms trade. We have to end the attitude, which I have heard expressed several times in the debate, that if we do not sell arms to these countries, others will do so. We should say very firmly that we want to get out of the arms trade. Consider the example of Japan. Its industries are doing pretty well at the moment without any major arms trade. It is managing to spend a much larger sum on research and development than we are. This is because so much of our effort goes into military and armament research and development.
    We ought to be supporting the efforts being made by the shop stewards of Vickers and Lucas Aerospace who are

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    trying to see how they can switch effectively from defence manufacturing capacity into useful production so that, if we succeed in the multilateral disarmament talks, we do not face a major problem of redeployment. In particular, we should be hoping to cut down our dependence on arms sales to the smaller countries of the world. As well as trying to get British industry out of the arms trade, we ought to be letting the world know the full horrors of modern weaponry.
    One of the ironies of the present situation is that it is in the interests of the super-Powers to tell each other about the horrors of their weapons while keeping the ordinary people in the dark. We should be making the full horrors of war known to everyone. I am particularly concerned about the debate developing over the neutron bomb. It seems that this is catching the imagination of the public and that there will shortly be a world campaign against it. I would be pleased about that. I would be unhappy if the Government tried to oppose that campaign.
    What I am concerned about is that the campaign should not be one-sided, simply emphasising the neutron bomb. Such a campaign should be broadened to show that we cannot pick out one weapon in isolation and say that, because it happens to catch the imagination of the people, it ought to be stopped. We ought to be saying firmly that all the nuclear weapons are extremely horrible and that we cannot make a distinction between them. We must bring home to the world the horrors of all nuclear weapons and begin raising demands, from this and other countries, to stop their production. It is important that the Vienna talks and the United Nations Special Assembly on Disarmament this May do not become a talking shop but produce results. We should end the view that disarmament talks can go on for ever without producing results.
    8.43 p.m.
    Mr. Michael Mates: There are two points that I wish to raise. During our debate in the past two days much has been said on the question of pay—pay guidelines and the Government's pay policy. I will not add to the welter of words on the subject. There is, however, one aspect of pay that should not be subject to guidelines arid behind which the
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    Government have been hiding for the past two years. I refer to the special payment made to Forces as a result of the cost of serving in Northern Ireland.
    To say that the allowance for serving in Northern Ireland cannot be increased because of pay policy is to state a falsehood. Any allowances set against extra expense are not subject to the policy, and the Government know that very well. A year ago it seemed as if the Secretary of State was about to see the error of his ways and double the allowance. I am told that he made strenuous efforts to have the allowance doubled but that they were resisted within the Cabinet because of trade union pressure. If that is so it is doubly scandalous and the trade unions ought to be as ashamed as the Government.
    The fact is that the allowance of 50p per day paid to those serving in Ulster has not been changed for four years. Not only are single soldiers suffering from inflation; like everyone else, married families are under the same financial penalties because the husbands are serving their country in Ulster. That has been recognised by the Government, in that the resident battalion tour has had to be reduced to 18 months, not, mainly, because of the unpleasantness but because of the sheer cost to the soldier and his family. There are various things which the families simply cannot afford to do.
    Those tours have had to be cut from the normal two and a half or three years to 18 months, because the men could not stand the financial strain. That scandal has nothing to do with Government pay policy or guidelines. The Government should do something about it now.
    The second point concerns manpower, about which there has been much talk. Let us have the facts spelt out. In four years, since this Government took office, 20,000 Service men have been dispensed with—about half of them during the tenure in office of the present Secretary of State for Defence. He has been responsible for getting rid of 10,000 of those 20,000 Service men. We have lost 20,000 Service men from our already stretched Services.
    That would be scandalous enough if it were not for the fact that the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the

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    Army—I wish that he were present—told us last night, with a remarkable combination of ignorance and complacency, that the Government now realise that the threat is greater and they
    "will allow a more positive emphasis to be placed on improvements to … our capability when, as now, they are rendered necessary by developments in the threat against which we have to defend ourselves … But it is a change of emphasis in face of an increased threat ".—[Official Report, 13th March 1978; Vol. 946, c. 153.]
    If the Government have decided to strengthen our defences because of the increased threat, what about the last six defence cuts? Were they made in response to a reduction in the threat? Was the threat from the Soviet bloc going down in 1975, 1976 and 1977? That is when six successive cuts in our defence capability were made by the Government. This inevitable seesaw of cuts and raises, reduction and expansion, is going on.
    It calls to mind the Grand Old Duke of York. The cuts have been made with about as little sense with regard to the threat. There was one planned cut. The rest were panic responses to an ever-worsening economic situation and ever-increasing pressure from the Left wing of the Labour Party, both within and without Parliament.
    I do not know whether the nursery rhyme is still recited to children by Service men who do not have to take second jobs in the evenings. If they do, that nursery rhyme having been written for political reasons, it might not be unreasonable to suppose that the next generation of Service men will sing a new version:
    "Sleepy Uncle Fred,
    He sacked 10,000 men,
    And when he saw the size of the threat,
    Enlisted them again."
    There is about as little sense in what the Government have done as there is in that old nursery rhyme. It might be amusing if it were not so deadly serious.
    I shall quote one more statistic. This is where the long-term harm is being done. I quote from the Central Statistical Office Annual Abstract for 1977—the latest figures that we have. Granted that we have 20,000 fewer Service men than we had when this Government came
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    to power, this is where the real damage is being done. I quote a typical year—the latest year, 1976. Those leaving the Services between the ages of 25 and 30 numbered 9,070, whereas those who joined at the age of 18 numbered 5,613.
    It is a reduction not just in numbers but in numbers where it will hurt most—middle management in both other ranks and officer structures. These are people with six to 10 years' service. They have had their training and are performing useful and responsible functions. They are gaining their first experience in command at every level. The best of them are set to go on to the upper ranks, to staff training, to technical training, to become warrant officers, majors, colonels, and so on. Those are the men who are leaving in ever-increasing numbers and who are being replaced by a lesser number of just as keen and just as good 18 year-olds.
    The strain does not show now. It is the strain that will show in four or five years' time that is so deadly serious. Commanding officers can make do now with inexperienced company commanders. Sergeant-majors can make do without experienced sergeants and can bring the young ones on, because they themselves have the 15 years' experience required to reach those posts. But when they have moved on, the missing generation will cause a gap where it matters most at all levels of command.
    That is the long-term damage that this Government have done—damage that can be remedied only by urgent measures to stem the tide of dissatisfied, discontented but highly experienced Service men, who are saying "To hell with it. I'm getting out."
    If we do not hear within the next few weeks that the Government will give those people priority—because that is the priority that will count in the next four or five years—the Government should get out and let someone else do the job.
    8.51 p.m.
    Mr. Tom Litterick: I shall not try to take up the points made by the hon. Member for Petersfield (Mr. Mates). I hope that he will not be offended, but we are all having to butcher our speeches because of the shortage of time.

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    The only sentence in the speech of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) in which I found anything with which I could agree was the one in which he said that the White Paper was thoroughly uninformative. That remark is a key to the character of the debate, because in an important sense the debate is based on ignorance. One could almost say that the ignorance is calculated. It is not ignorance on the part of hon. Members who take part—we are the victims. This is a debate between Back Benchers and the State, which is determined that we shall know little or nothing about so-called defence, armaments and so on.
    I shall try to make the point more specifically as I go along. It is appropriate to start with a quotation from the White Paper. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says, in paragraph 126:
    "We do not know the exact amount of Soviet military expenditure."
    In the same paragraph he says that he thinks that it is between 11 per cent. and 13 per cent. of the Russian gross national product, without telling us what he thinks the Russian GNP is. In other words, my right hon. Friend thinks that Russian armaments spending is between 11 per cent. and 13 per cent. of X.
    So I asked the World Bank whether it could tell me what the best estimates of the Russian GNP were. It turns out to be 41·7 per cent. of the United States GNP. That brings us a little closer to what the Secretary of State for rearmament—for that is what he is for the purpose of the White Paper—is trying to tell us. He is telling us that Russian spending on armaments is between 11 per cent. and 13 per cent. of 41·7 per cent. of the American GNP, although he did not have the courage to say it.
    That paints a very different picture. I tell those hon. Members who are not particularly quick at mental arithmetic that in this context 1 per cent. means rather more than £3,000 million. I discovered that also from the World Bank. In other words, the range of error built into what could be called a calculated lie by my right hon. Friend is £9,000 million a year. I need not labour the point, but that is much bigger than the entire spending of the United Kingdom on armaments.
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    My right hon. Friend knew exactly what he was doing when he had that printed. It is very misleading. He knew very well that it would be in tune with much of the hysteria that would come floating across the Chamber from both sides—the talk about threat, the imminent advance of the Mongol hordes, and all the usual rubbish that we have to put up with every year. I am referring here only to the comparison between the size of the USSR's gross national product and that of the United States' gross national product. If hon. Members are thinking of the other details of the Warsaw Pact they will discover that the comparison is equally impressive.
    The combined gross national products of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and East Germany are about 55 per cent. of the gross national product of Western Germany, for example. In other words, we are talking about a group of relatively poor nations who have not a hope in Hell of matching the armaments capability of the NATO Powers.
    Let us remind ourselves of another two or three simple truths which might counteract the hysterical nonsense that we have been telling each other for hours on end. The largest air force in the world is the American air force. There is no doubt about it. The standard reference works in our own Library will tell us that. The largest navy on earth is the American navy. Again, the same standard refence works will tell us that. The largest army on earth—surprise, surprise —is the Chinese Army.
    The Russians—who are postulated, as they have been again and again during the last two days, as the enemy—are facing the largest air force in the world, the largest navy in the world and the largest army in the world. That is the Russians' problem.
    Mr. Crawshaw: Will my hon. Friend take this up with the Czech people? Whom do they believe is the enemy?
    Mr. Litterick: I think that that puts the debate in a saner perspective, because at least three Conservative Members in my hearing during the last two days have said "My enemy's enemy is my friend." In other words, we should tacitly regard China as NATO's ally in the context of the debate, which is about our ability to defend ourselves

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    against the threat by Russia—a nation which faces the largest army, navy and air force in the world. That should deter many hon. Members from thinking that there is any likelihood of a Russian aggressive act in Western Europe.
    It also makes it much more difficult to justify the statements made by the, Secretary-General of NATO that NATO must increase its armaments expenditure and the statements by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that Britain specifically must do this. We know—many Labour Members have said it more than once—that there is a super abundance of nuclear weapons necessary to kill everybody on earth. I doubt whether anyone other than those who subscribe to the peculiarly contorted terms used from time to time by some Members of the county party in the Opposition Benches would justify increasing the total supply of nuclear weapons in the world. We have been recently considering, and will do so again, the neutron bomb. To pick out the weapon would be misleading. I agree on this point with my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett. The crucial point is the overall accumulation of nuclear weapons.
    The major point that I am making is about balance. We do not and cannot, by the very nature of the information that we are given, consider either the quality of the armaments used by our Service men or the quality of the potential enemy, which is defined in the context of the debate.
    In page 13 of the White Paper about 16 relatively new weapons systems are mentioned. No hon. Member has any means of discovering the capabilities of any of the weapons systems except by improper means. We are denied the opportunity to know what any one of these 16 weapons systems can do, either in absolute terms or in relation to the corresponding equipment used by the Warsaw Pact countries. I assure hon. Members who have not tried to find out, that I have—by asking questions—and that these matters are official secrets. In that sense, quite literally, we do not know what we are talking about when we engage in this debate. We do not know whether the hardware that we have is any use, let alone whether it is as good as or better than what the Russians or Hun-
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    garians are likely to be using. Those of us who know something about a specific weapons system had better keep quite because if we do not we shall be guilty under Section 1 or 2 of the Official Secrets Act and we may well incriminate someone else as well.
    Finally, we do not know about the quality of the forces that face us—perhaps I should say the forces that make up the Warsaw Pact threat. But we do know this: the Russians had to invade Czechoslovakia. They did not do it out of a whim; they did it because they were forced to—
    Mr. Buck: Oh, the poor Russians.
    Mr. Litterick: They were forced to do it by the desire of the Czechoslovakian people to be a sovereign people. Do the Conservatives not understand that? That by itself must warn the House that simply to count heads in this numbers game is dangerous. Is there anyone in this House who can put his hand on his heart and say that a division of Czech infantry is the same as a division of Russion infantry? Of course not, because we all know that every Czech is aware of the recent past of his own country and that every Russian military commander knows it, too.
    When I visited the American military intelligence centre at Stuttgart I discovered that, very wisely and unlike the Conservatives, the Americans do a daily assesssment of the standing of the Eastern European military Powers other than the Russians. The Americans have no illusions about this. They do not count those forces as being of equal quality with Russian forces. They know better. They know that Eastern European countries cannot be implicitly relied upon by the Politburo. They know that very well, and hon. Members should take that into account, although there has been precious little sign in the last two days of our debate that that has happpened. That is our failure.
    9.3 p.m.
    Mr. Churchill: I am not sure that I follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Litterick) all the way in his arguments, but I had some sympathy with what he said about Czechoslovakia, certainly when he referred to the outrageous way in which the sovereignty of a State that wished to be

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    free was outrageously overrun by the Soviet Union in 1968.
    The Government are asking the House tonight to endorse their defence policies as set out in the White Paper. It is the thinnest, most miserable White Paper ever presented to the House. It is 27 per cent. thinner than the last White Paper presented by the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) in 1976. The principal feature of this document, apart from the voluminous cliches, rests in its lack of detail and lack of fact. In its pages the Government reveal themselves as resolved and utterly determined—not, regrettably, to do the necessary to ensure the maintenance of peace and freedom—to play down the Soviet threat and to conceal the stark facts from the British public.
    The reason for this is clear. It is not that the Government are fearful of causing alarm and despondency. Even they know that the British people are not so easily rattled. It is rather that they fear that if the true facts were known there would be an immediate and overwhelming popular demand for the Government to take action and to rearm. Nothing could be more calculated to split the Labour Party wide open, and this is a Government who will make the nation pay any price, no matter how terrible, in order to avoid that.
    I am not referring to the minor bit of window-dressing involved in including France for the first time in the balance of forces in Europe, although, like my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings (Mr. Warren), I would query whether it is right to take such a narrow geographical area and to ignore totally the Soviet Forces in the three western military districts of the Soviet Union.
    According to the "Military Balance 1977–78", the Soviet army consists of no fewer than 168 divisions, with 43,000 tanks. In fact, at least four new divisions and some 2,000 additional tanks have been added since this document went to press.
    Apart from 30 divisions in reserve, the Soviets have more than 90 divisions, together with at least 25,000 tanks, deployed west of the Urals. I think that that is a very fair dividing line in assess-sing the forces facing us in Western
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    Europe. Therefore, the figure given on page 7 of the White Paper, which shows merely 9,500 tanks, is grossly misleading, the more so since the Russians have sufficient tank transporters in the western military districts of the Soviet Union to bring forward simultaneously at least four tank divisions. I must emphasise that the figures I am using refer to Soviet strength alone and take no account of Warsaw Pact forces.
    Nothing is said in the White Paper of the dramatically increased air threat to the United Kingdom which results from the deployment of a new generation of supersonic swing-wing aircraft, such as the Fencer, Flogger and Fitter, which, according to General Alexander Haig, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, have
    "double the range and four times the payload"
    of the aircraft they are replacing.
    Although these aircraft are currently being produced, and have been for many months now, at a rate exceeding 1,000 per year, the RAF will have nothing comparable until Tornado enters service, and it must be a matter for extreme disquiet that the Secretary of State should have come to the Dispatch Box yesterday to tell us that there is further slippage in the Tornado programme.
    It is regrettable that we have to rely on a spokesman for the United States Air Forces in Europe to point out that this new Soviet deployment means a 300 per cent. increase in Soviet delivery capability against the United Kingdom since 1971. In fact even that figure is a substantial underestimate.
    The reality is that the Soviet Union has deployed a capability of striking the cities and civilian population of these islands that, even in conventional terms, is infinitely greater than anything faced from the Luftwaffe in the last war. It goes without saying that there is no mention of that in the Government's White Paper, let alone the fact that already more than 100 supersonic Backfire nuclear strike bombers are in service with the Soviet naval and long-range air forces. This equipment is armed with 375-mile range cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, which have the capability of making an attack against the United Kingdom from any direction

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    and of returning to base without refuelling.
    In conventional terms alone, the Soviet military build-up already far exceeds that of Nazi Germany prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. In this period —which some choose to call "detente"—theSoviet Union is maintaining more than one-third of a million more men under arms than Hitler did after full mobilisation in September 1939.
    As my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor and Maidenhead (Dr. Glyn) pointed out earlier, the Nazis had only 57 U-boats at the outbreak of war. Those were puny, primitive pieces of equipment, although they came close to bringing this country to the point of surrender through starvation by 1942 and 1943. Yet the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy tells us that the Soviets today deploy no fewer than 432 submarines. In other words, they have today seven times the submarine strength of Nazi Germany at the outbreak of war. And whereas in May 1940 Hitler had only 2,500 tanks, the Soviet Union deploys 45,000–17 times as many.
    But in no area does the White Paper seek to distort our true situation more than in dealing with the strategic nuclear threat. Although there are several pages on detente and disarmament, although there is evidence of neither—except the unilateral disarmament carried out by Britain under this Socialist Government—nowhere is there to be found a single word about the gravest and most alarming change in the threat to the peoples of these islands and to Western Europe. I am, of course, referring to the Soviet SS-20 mobile intermediate range ballistic missile which has in recent months become operational. Why is the Secretary of State seeking deliberately to conceal this information from the House and from the British people? What is the reason for deliberately playing down the Soviet threat?
    Why do I have to turn to the excellent report to Congress by the right hon. Gentleman's opposite number, the United States Secretary of Defence, Mr. Harold Brown? It is unfortunate that we have to learn from the United States of the capabilities of a weapon system—which is designed specifically against our people
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    and poses no threat to the United States. Secretary Brown asserts:
    "In our judgment the mobile SS-20 intermediate range ballistic missile, which consists of the first two stages of the SS-16, is already being deployed. We estimate that it has a range of at least 3,000 kilometres and can carry three multiple independent re-entry vehicles to that distance. We estimate that it will replace or augment the current force of medium range ballistic missiles and intermediate range ballistic missile launchers and that, with a successful multiple-refire capability, it could provide roughly three times the number of warheads of the older force".
    This is the weapon which has been conceived by President Brezhnev with specifically this country and the peoples of Western Europe in mind. I would submit that that is not the sort of detente which we are seeking.
    Mr. Frank Allaun Mr. Frank Allaun (Salford, East) rose—
    Mr. Churchill: I shall give way in a moment. This is a detente in which the Soviet nuclear striking capability—targeted against our cities, our wives and our children—is at this very moment being increased threefold. The Prime Minister did well to acknowledge in response to my question on 21st February that this weapon is thousands of times more powerful than the so-called neutron bomb, about which so many Labour Members below the Gangway have sought to make propaganda. Indeed, the Prime Minister had no alternative but to do so. But what has been his response? It has been to order the Secretary of State for Defence to cover up for the Russians and, meanwhile, further to cut our defence budget.
    Mr. Allaun: Before the hon. Gentleman gets too worked up, does he not think that the Americans have also advanced in their weapons? Has not the hon. Gentleman heard about the cruise and MX missiles, or the neutron bomb? Does he not realise that unfortunately there are gentlemen in the Kremlin just like himself who are using precisely these arguments for increasing their military expenditure?
    Mr. Churchill: I am immediately coming to the points that the hon. Gentleman has raised. But I would say to him that the United States has not deployed the cruise missile but is only in the process of developing it. I also believe that

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    no development contract has been let for the MX.
    The brutal truth is that, in addition to the SS-20, the Soviet Union currently is deploying four new intercontinental ballistic missiles, the SS-16, 17, 18 and 19, as well as submarine-launched ballistic missiles, at a continued rate of more than 200 a year, according to the United States Defence Secretary.
    Although the United States has made no increase to its silo- or submarine-launched strategic missiles since 1967 and has halved its strategic nuclear bomber force, the Soviet Union has been deploying nuclear missiles as though it had an appointment with Doomsday. Though the Soviet Union already has 40 per cent. more ICBMs and SLBMs than the United States, it is continuing to produce them at the rate of four each week, each one with the potential to devastate a city the size of London.
    It can only be a matter for the gravest concern that, although the deployment of this latest generation of Soviet ballistic missiles is far from complete, according to Dr. Brown
    "A fifth generation of inter-continental ballistic missiles is in development, estimated to consist of four missiles. Flight-testing of one or two of these missiles could begin at any time, with others following by the early 1980s."
    Mr. Allaun: Both sides.
    Mr. Churchill: That is not the case. The United States has not got four intercontinental ballistic missiles on the point of entering development—
    Mr. Allaun Mr. Allaun rose—
    Mr. Churchill: No, I shall not give way to the hon. Member.
    At two points in the White Paper, the Secretary of State admits to feelings of disquiet and even puzzlement. In paragraph 121, he writes:
    "Soviet forces have in many areas been strengthened in size and quality on a scale which goes well beyond the need of any purely defensive posture."
    Mr. Allaun: Both sides.
    Mr. Russell Kerr: Is this Brown again?
    Mr. Churchill: No. This is the hon. Member's own Secretary of State. He writes in paragraph 127:
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    "There is however no sign that more recent developments in the field of detente are leading the Soviet Government to slacken the pace of its military effort."
    The question which confronts us is, why are they doing it. Why? Why? Why? Until a rational explanation can be adduced or, better still, the Kremlin abandons its arms escalation policies, the alarm bells should be ringing all over the place.
    In his very powerful contribution to the debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Walker) pointed out that the Soviet build-up was more frightening in his estimation than anything this century. There are many in this House who share his judgment. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, the full facts have come to light only in the course of the last four years.
    There is a complacent presumption that these weapons will never be used. With my right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery), I have just returned from the Horn of Africa, where Soviet conventional weapons are already in use. The Soviet Union has invaded Africa with its own troops and pilots as well as its Cuban mercenary army. Apart from MiGs, heavy artillery and Stalin organ rocket launchers, the Russians have introduced more than 400 modern Soviet tanks. That is, as the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army will no doubt confirm, an armoured force approaching the fire-power of all the Chieftain tanks in BAOR, and it is all ranged against a tiny Third world country with a population of barely 3 million. Here we see tangible proof of the Soviet Union's willingness—nay, determination—to use its new-found military power. Today it is Africa. Who can be so bold as to assert that tomorrow it will not be Europe?
    Yesterday, the Secretary of State trotted out the predictable rubbish about the need to bring Britain's defence expenditure down to the same level as that of our allies—our European allies naturally, for our American allies spend rather more than we do. However, the only yardstick by which a peace-loving democracy can measure its defensive needs is against the perceived level of threat. Even the Secretary of State will agree that the level of threat has never been higher.

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    Why then, does the right hon. Gentleman persist in cutting, cutting and cutting again our already inadequate defences? In the 1978–79 financial year, despite the relentless Soviet build-up and the commitments given by the Secretary of State in December 1976 and again in May last year to increase the budget and conventional forces in the coming year, the Government will be cutting not only the defence budget but the manpower of the Royal Navy and the Army, which will lose the equivalent of a further three battalions. The additional £267 million of cuts should be rescinded and the manpower run-down halted immediately.
    So far, £10,000 million has been cut from the planned defence expenditure programme of 1974. I hope that when the Minister of State replies to the debate he will not trumpet on once again about the 3 per cent. "increase". I am sorry that the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) is not in his place, because he should know that that increase is deceitful and fraudulent.
    There will be no increases in 1978–79. In fact, there will be a further decrease representing 18·4 per cent. on the pre-defence review programme. According to last year's expenditure White Paper Cmnd. 6721, defence expenditure was planned to increase between 1978–79 and 1979–80 by 4·3 per cent. and between 1979–80 and 1980–81 by no less than 5 per cent. But because President Carter asked for only 3 per cent, this Government reduced the 4·3 per cent. for one year and the 5 per cent for the next year. That represents a further decrease of £243 million—not on the Tory proposed expenditure plan but on what the Government planned to spend only last year.
    I hope that the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery, who has just entered the Chamber, will take heed of the fact that this 3 per cent. is wholly fraudulent.
    Mr. John Cronin Mr. John Cronin (Loughborough) rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Obviously the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) is not giving way. He must be allowed to continue.
    Mr. Churchill: If the 3 per cent. increase were to be continued indefinitely
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    —and it is noteworthy that the Government committed themselves to 3 per cent. for only one year—
    Mr. Hooson: Two years.
    Mr. Churchill: No, it is only one year; the second year is subject to review. If the 3 per cent. increase were to continue indefinitely it would take 10 years from now to get back to the pre-defence review level.
    Mr. Hooson: Although the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) says that the figure is fraudulent, Dr. Luns does not think that it is.
    Mr. Churchill: Dr. Luns was taking the words of the Secretary of State and the British Government at face value. I do not think he was aware that the Government had been planning a substantially greater increase. It is regrettable that the Liberal Party, which voted against the Government in December on this issue, even though defence expenditure has been further reduced is not proposing to join us in the Lobby tonight. I hope that Liberal Members will reconsider their position.
    The effect of these cuts, as Dr. Luns observed in his rebuke to the Government last summer, was that
    "While part of the reduction is related to non-NATO commitments, that part is relatively small."
    The cuts have come overwhelmingly at the expense of Britain's contribution to NATO. The northern and southern flanks have both been cut. But the most crippling cuts of all have come in the central region and have affected BAOR and RAF Germany. RAF Germany has too few men, and this situation has been aggravated by dispersed operations from hardened shelters, a factor which could easily have been foreseen before the reckless decision to slash RAF manpower by 18 per cent.
    The reduction in Army manpower of 8,900 to date means not only more frequent tours of duty for our forces in Northern Ireland but a decrease in BAOR readiness, which is a matter of great concern to NATO at present. Training, ammunition and war-stocks have all been cut. The introduction into service of the desperately needed Milan anti-tank missile has been repeatedly postponed and the acquisition of air-to-air missiles as well as Rapier SAMs has been postponed.

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    In making these cuts, the British Government have been completely out of step with our allies in respect of readiness and in the belief that we need plan for only a short war—a hypothesis that is very much open to doubt—and on excessive dependence on tactical nuclear weapons, which has had the effect of lowering the nuclear threshold in Europe.
    I should like, however, to welcome Her Majesty's Government's response to the short-term improvements proposed by NATO calling for an immediate increase of one-third by the end of this year in stocks of anti-armour missiles, sonobuoys and other critical munitions. In consequence of this, deliveries of Milan have been accelerated and will reach the Rhine Army in the course of this year.
    Why do we need to be told this by our allies? Could we not have seen it for ourselves? The Defence and Economic Affairs Sub-Committee, which carries out such excellent work for the House, had already drawn attention to these critical shortages.
    As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) pointed out yesterday, it is impossible for a party in Opposition, denied access to facts, figures and expertise, to prepare a blueprint plan and to cost it. But we can identify certain areas of priority and say that, in the light of a now rapidly escalating threat as well as a serious Socialist run-down in our defences, a strengthening of our defence is imperative and overdue. This inevitably requires the commitment of substantially greater resources to defence. It is of the first importance that we should do whatever is necessary to ensure that our people continue to live in peace and freedom. On behalf of the Opposition, I am saying that we shall do just that.
    There are four main areas which we feel require priority to be given to them. The first is pay. Of all elements involved in our national defence, nothing is more important than the human element. I have no hesitation in saying that we have the finest Armed Forces of any nation in the world, and the whole nation is in their debt.
    I wish to join in the tributes paid to the 29 Service men killed in Northern Ireland in the past year. Regrettably, we have a Government who take them for
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    granted and who think that they can treat the Armed Forces as a "dirty job squad" while making sure that they are screwed down on pay more tightly than any other section of the community.
    Mr. Russell Kerr: Cheap.
    Mr. Churchill: The restoration of full comparability of pay has become a matter of urgency. It is no wonder that 6,000 Army officers and men have quit in the past year and the wastage rate in Rhine Army is up by 50 per cent.
    Mr. Russell Kerr: Scandalous.
    Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman must not keep interrupting from a sedentary position.
    Mr. Churchill: Secondly, the next Conservative Government will accelerate and. where appropriate, expand many of the re-equipment programmes for all three Services. We have excellent British-made kit in the pipeline, some of it second to none in the world, but it is not coming through fast enough or in sufficient volume.
    Thirdly, we need to examine our deterrent. This matter was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Mr. Macmillan) and the hon. Member for Belper (Mr. MacFarquhar). Our strategic deterrent is in danger of ceasing to be effective beyond 1982, when the V-bomber force is to be scrapped at the decision of this Government. At that point, it will depend for some of the time on a single Polaris on station, which, I would submit, is inadequate. It is a matter of extreme urgency that this matter should be examined. We hope that the Minister will be able to say tonight where the Government stand on the deterrent.
    Another priority will be our reserves. It is sheer foolhardiness to base all our plans on the premise of a short war. This has been the basis on which we have run down our Armed Forces to a point where, even with full mobilisation of all reserves, we have smaller armed forces than Switzerland, Sweden or even tiny Finland. A Conservative Government will substantially increase our reserves so as to meet unforeseen contingencies in future.
    The Government's unilateral defence cuts have been undermining the achievement of a negotiated arms control agreement with the Soviet Union and have been

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    responsible for lowering the nuclear threshold by reducing the ability of our forces in Germany to withstand a Soviet attack without an early escalation to tactical nuclear weapons.
    Every minute that this Government remain in office, peace is slipping from our grasp. That is why we shall be pressing our amendment in the Division Lobby.
    Mr. Russell Kerr: The hon. Gentleman's grandfather must be spinning in his grave.
    9.31 p.m.
    The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Dr. John Gilbert): This has been an unusually revealing and interesting debate. It is a trifle sad, because it is probably the last, certainly the penultimate, defence debate in which we shall hear from the hon. and gallant Member for Eye (Sir H. Harrison), my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Stewart) and my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, East (Mr. Mallalieu). They made three of the best and most balanced contributions to the debate. I pay tribute to the hon. and gallant Member for Eye, who has been a most distinguished Chairman of the Defence and External Affairs Sub-Committee on which, under his chairmanship, I was happy to serve for several years.
    It seems to have escaped the attention of the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) and the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) that the fact that French forces were listed in this year's White Paper was the direct result of a suggestion from the Sub-Committee which we were happy to accept.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, East and my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham put to bed once and for all the myth that the Tories seek to foster that the Labour Party does not care about defence and that the Tory Party has the only true patriots. Some of us on the Government side of the House are getting a little sick of the Tories grabbing the Union Jack. The hon. Member for Stretford wants a monopoly of patriotism for himself. That has been the recipe of the Tory Party for
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    many years. I am glad that he is cheering. No doubt he knows the quotation.
    The themes of the Opposition have been that we have not spent enough on defence generally and the Services have not been treated fairly on pay. Within these themes, there has been interspersed an extraordinary stream of personal attacks on my hon. Friends below the Gangway and on their views and motives. The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham and the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Critchley) devoted more time to attacking the Tribune Group than to the defence White Paper.
    I shall return to the general themes, but I wish first to deal with some more detailed problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Hoyle) asked about the right of a Service man to appeal against the findings of his commanding officer under the Services summary justice procedure.
    It is true that there is no formal appeal machinery. However, if the accused feels that he has been unfairly treated, he has the statutory right to bring a complaint and to seek redress of grievance from a superior authority up to the level of the Defence Council. Moreover, if the charge is sufficiently serious to carry the possibility of a sentence involving loss of pay or liberty, the accused has the right to elect trial by court martial. For more serious offences the accused is automatically remanded to a court martial. In addition, all summary proceedings are forwarded to a higher authority and may at any time be the subject of review.
    I hope that on that basis my hon. Friend will agree that our procedures incorporate adequate safeguards for the protection of the rights of individual Service men.
    The hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Pink) referred to the position of Service widows whose husbands left the Armed Forces before 1st September 1950 and who are not entitled to a widow's pension. On both sides of the House we recognise the strength of feeling about the pre-1950 widows. Their case has been debated on several occasions in recent years. Unfortunately, as the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) was told two years ago, in 1975, the Government carefully considered whether anything

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    could be done to give a pension to the widows and reluctantly had to accept, as had previous Administrations, that that was not possible without causing unacceptable repercussions throughout the whole public sector, where there are many other groups of widows not entitled to a pension from their husband's employment. I regret that that is still the position.
    My hon. Friends the Members for Thornaby (Mr. Wrigglesworth) and Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) asked about dispersal to Glasgow. The revised timetable that was announced by the Lord Privy Seal last July commits the Ministry of Defence to disperse up to 5,500 posts to Glasgow, 1,500 to the Anderson site by 1983–84 and up to 4,000 to St. Enoch after that. The number of headquarter posts in London that might be involved in dispersal to Glasgow has been reduced by ministerial decisions to exclude quality assurance staffs in the London area by the dispersal of some 4,250 staff to procurement executive posts at Cardiff and by the decentralisation and rationalisation of certain tasks, such as that of the army logistics executive, to achieve reduced manpower targets. A package of about 5,000 posts has been identified and is made up accordingly of director general defence accounts non-industrial pay staffs from Bath and Cheadle Hulme and the three Service pay records and management information systems at Gosport, RAPC Worthy Down and the RAF personnel management centre, Innsworth.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown)—I am sorry that I was not present when he made his contribution—raised the issue of ladies who he thinks have been unfairly discriminated against in terms of pay. I undertake to consider the question that he has raised and to write to him. When I have had the benefit of having Hansard in front of me, I shall reconsider whether there is anything more that I can say to my hon. Friend about the Tornado stores management system other than the matters that he and I have already discussed.
    The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Clark) spoke yesterday of naval cruising speeds and asked about economies in fuel consumption by Her Majesty's ships. There has been a cer-
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    tain amount of misunderstanding. Economies were made purely by way of good housekeeping. No cuts have been imposed that will affect the training or the operational effectiveness of the Fleet. The cuts merely relate to the speeds at which the Fleet steams when going from one station to another.
    The hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) and the hon. and gallant Member for Eye spoke of the movements of reinforcements by sea. That has been a theme of the hon. Member for Stretford for some time. I note that he has come off it lately. As the House well knows, it has been the policy of Her Majesty's Government for many years, under all Administrations, to rely mainly on civil shipping for the movement of troops and equipment that cannot go by air in times of tension or war, whether movement to the northern flank or across the Channel. It does not make sense to tie up large resources in maintaining special ships for military purposes when suitable civilian ships, including roll-on/roll-off vessels will be available.
    Mr. Wall: Will the Minister confirm that the Government have a right to take up these ships and civil aircraft in time of peace, bearing in mind that the warning time may be only two or three days?
    Dr. Gilbert: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. I was just coming to the point. For the nationalised undertakings,
    powers of direction are available under the Transport Act. With companies in the private sector, we already have contracts or letters of agreement that cover all our needs, and no legislation or other parliamentary action will be required.
    The right hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Macmillan) raised several points in the course of a speech in which he seemed to be indicating that we ought to ally ourselves simultaneously with the Republic of South Africa and the People's Republic of China. That whimsy aside, he asked a few questions that I feel I ought to answer.
    The right hon. Member asked first about war stocks. While the exact levels of war stocks cannot be disclosed, and never have been disclosed, our war stocks meet NATO requirements and are kept continuously under review. Furthermore, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in answer to the hon. Member

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    for Stretford, it is the Government's intention, in order to meet the agreed NATO target, to increase by one-third the stocks of anti-armour missiles and other critical munitions.
    The right hon. Member also asked about the future of Polaris, as did the hon. Member for Stretford. Of course, no one would expect an announcement from me, one way or another, on so important a matter, and least of all in reply to a couple of casual comments in a debate on a defence White Paper. However, it is understood, of course, that weapons systems reach the end of their useful life at some point. We are already taking steps, at considerable expense, to improve Polaris so that it remains an effective component of NATO's strategic deterrent for many years to come.
    We have no intention of abandoning our existing strategic capability. On the other hand, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made clear, we have no plans for a successor system. Clearly, however, the time for decision is approaching, decision one way or the other about the need for a successor and the form that it should take, if there is going to be a successor—and I emphasise that.
    Mr. Julian Critchley: When will the hull life of the first of the four Polaris submarines be exhausted?
    Dr. Gilbert: In the early 1990s.
    The decision can take many forms. It could be, whichever Government are in power, to replace Polaris with another ballistic system, or to go to cruise missiles, or to abandon a strategic nuclear capability entirely and invest more in conventional weapons. There is no need for a decision to be taken on that subject yet.
    Mr. Newens: Will my hon. Friend clarify the situation with regard to our commitment about not going forward with any new generation of nuclear weapons? Does that remain our policy? Will my hon. Friend confirm that?
    Dr. Gilbert: Yes.
    Mr. Frank Allaun: I am very glad to hear that "Yes", but in that case, why are we undertaking research, at at least four British armament firms, into corn-
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    ponent parts of an intermediate range missile of the cruise type?
    Dr. Gilbert: My hon. Friend has put many Questions on the Order Paper about contracts that have been let. They relate purely to possible technological capabilities in the cruise missile field. We have no development contracts out whatsoever.
    Mr. Allaun: Yet.
    Dr. Gilbert: Yes, certainly—yet, or not yet. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] We simply do not have them. The word "yet" is intended to imply that we are planning to have them in the future, so I said "not yet", implying that we do not intend to place any contracts at present.
    Mr. Allaun Mr. Allaun rose—
    Dr. Gilbert: I cannot give way again.
    Mr. Amery: Give way.
    Dr. Gilbert: The hon. Member for Stretford gave way only once or twice. I have given hon. Members a fair crack of the whip.
    The right hon. Member for Farnham and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) were on to a good point on the question of the division of the budget among the three Services. It is extraordinary that this has remained unchanged over 23 years. However, I do not necessarily accept that because a certain proportion was appropriate many years ago it is inappropriate today. There could have been compensating changes across the board. But it is a coincidence that bears investigation. I accept what the right hon. Member and the hon. and learned Member said about the need for us rigorously to study cost-benefit analysis so far as we can in the procurement of new weapons systems. We should look closely at the way in which we make our decisions and determine the balance of resources that should be made available for the sea-air or land-air scenarios.
    These are complex matters which depend on forecasts, intelligence inputs and a whole range of assumptions which can be fragile. I certainly accept that we should look into this matter carefully. Perhaps there has been some sclerosis in the Ministry of Defence in the past

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    and perhaps the vested interests of the Services over many years have been a more determining factor than other more rational bases.
    Mr. Julian Amery: Give way.
    Dr. Gilbert: No. [HON. MEMBERS: "Discourteous"] I shall not take lectures about courtesy when the Opposition Front Bench spokesman gave way only once or twice. I must have given way a dozen times already.
    The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery asked me about the Milan missile. Deliveries have been accelerated, so that we have brought forward the in-service date by six months. By the end of this year over half of the planned deployment to BAOR will have been completed. This capability will be further enhanced when the Scout helicopters with the SS11 anti-tank missiles are replaced by Lynx with TOW in the early 1980s.
    The development of the successor system to the Carl Gustav has begun and is currently expected to enter service in the mid-1980s. That gives the lie to the suggestion that the equipment of our Services, particularly in BAOR, is lagging far behind.
    In his remarks yesterday the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham said that every independent commentator was united in deploring what this Government have done in defence. The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force quoted from one distinguished defence correspondent who said what nonsense this was. I shall quote from The Times of 12th January. in which Henry Stanhope stated:
    "With 40 kinds of new equipment coming into service this year and 50 more systems due over the next five years, BAOR should by the 1980s regain its reputation as the best equipped army in Western Europe, at a time when the much praised West German army will be faced with block obsolescence of much of its equipment."
    Hon. Members know that a long time elapses between the original design of equipment and getting that equipment into service. That is a responsible attitude towards the redeployment of equipment for BAOR.
    I turn now to the question of the neutron bomb, a subject raised by my
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    hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Miss Richardson) and others. I agree, for once, with the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham that there has been much misapprehension about the nature of this weapon. It is a battlefield weapon. The question is whether it will raise or lower the nuclear threshold and whether a deterrent is thereby made more or less credible. To be effective (a) a deterrent must exist, (b) it must been seen to exist and (c) its use must be credible. It certainly can be argued, although I recognise that the argument can go both ways, that the neutron bomb may be more credible than the strategic ballistic missile system and, in being more credible, as a result of the nuclear paradox, may be less likely to be used.
    I recognise that some of my hon. Friends sincerely believe—for instance my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Rodgers)—that all nuclear weapons ought unilaterally to be renounced. I recognise the sincerity with which those views are held, and I realise that it is the aim of the Government to achieve complete disarmament and a world free of weapons of all kinds, but that has to be done by progressive, realistic and verifiable measures of arms control. There are no easy routes to this goal.
    I cannot see that unilateral renunciation would do anything to encourage the super-Powers to progress more rapidly towards disarmament. I think it was Ernie Bevin who justified our possession of nuclear weapons by saying that it gave us a lever on world peace. Our record shows that we see it the same way. Our participation in the negotiations on the test ban treaty and our programme at the United Nations' Special Session on disarmament are further evidence of that. Most of my hon. Friends would agree that trade unions would very rarely expect to get more out of negotiations if they gave away their best bargaining cards first.
    The right hon. Member for Farnham asked me some generalised questions about collaboration. A great deal of effort has gone into this, largely on the part of the European members of NATO in the last couple of years through the independent European Programme Group, in which we are glad to say that France is a member and is playing her full part. We are glad to say that the

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    group is recognised by the United States as the medium for European equipment collaboration. The results so far show very little for the efforts and the enthusiasm that has been put in. The main benefit is a clarification of the nature of the problems, which has always to be the first stage in solving such problems.
    If co-operation is to be successful, military requirements need to be broadly similar. The price and level of sophistication of systems have to be generally acceptable and the industrial arrangements have to be mutually satisfactory. Above all, the time scale has to be made to fit in with national programmes. Unfortunately, we cannot expect that diverse national inventories will be transformed overnight. Standardisation is not an objective in itself. In some areas, such as electronic counter-measures, it is better not to have standardisation.
    We have to recognise that from time to time standardisation, however, admirable an objective, may go against procurement from British sources. One of the most popular announcements that my right hon. Friend made since becoming Secretary of State was the decision to go ahead with Nimrod, which was a British plane. A valuable capability has been added to the Alliance, but it could not be said to be a step towards standardisation. We may shortly be faced with difficult decisions as a result of the American decision to go for a smoothbore tank gun for their next generation of main battle tanks.
    I turn now to the question of pay. The Government have accepted that the Armed Forces have lost in terms of comparability over the past couple of years, ever since the 1975 pay review of this Government which brought them back to the full comparability which they had lost under a Tory Administration. My right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham said that it was absurd to expect pronouncements before the Armed Forces Pay Review Body reported. It is dishonest to claim that they should be made.
    My right hon. Friend has been attacked for not disclosing private conversations.
    Mr. Mates Mr. Mates rose—
    Dr. Gilbert: There is no question of our hiding behind the Pay Review Body as the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr.
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    Goodhew) suggested. The report is due very soon. It is with the Pay Review Body. It will be published. The Government's response will be made public shortly thereafter. The Government will then stand by such criticism as may or may not be directed towards them as a result of their response to the Pay Review Body's report.
    It would be interesting to know what the Conservative Party would propose to do on pay. [HoN. MEMBERS: "Pay more."] Pay more.
    Mr. Churchill: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
    Dr. Gilbert: In a moment. The Opposition do not say how much more. Do they suggest 10 per cent., 20 per cent., 25 per cent., 30 per cent., 50 per cent.? Why are they so coy? Why do they not tell us how much more they would pay?
    Mr. Churchill: The Opposition are asking for a return to full comparability in a time scale no less favourable than that accorded by the Government to the firemen. Will the Minister give that undertaking?
    Dr. Gilbert: Splendid. [HoN. MEMBERS: "Answer."] I shall answer in my own way. When asked what a return to comparability involves, no answer comes from the hon. Member for Stretford. Of course no answer comes. He cannot answer that question until he has seen the Pay Review Body's report. He knows that it is dishonest to suggest any extra amount until he has seen the report.
    The hon. Gentleman suggested that the Pay Review Body was under Government domination. If so, I take it that he will pay no attention to its recommendations when the report is published. Of course he will pay attention to its recommendations. It is thoroughly dishonest to suggest that we should know what the Pay Review Body will report.
    My right hon. Friend has made a firm commitment that the Armed Forces will be restored to full comparability as soon as pay policy permits. The hon. Gentleman knows that. My right hon. Friend has given that commitment on more than one occasion from this Dispatch Box, and the hon. Gentleman knows it perfectly well. The Opposition either know or do not know what they would do.

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    I turn now to the proposal by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham about the size of the Defence Vote. He does not know by how much he would increase it. By more than 4 per cent., he said. But he does not say by how much more. Not surprisingly, he regrets that he ever gave a figure at all. That was the wisest thing that he said in a very poor speech. He does not know what base line he would take it from. Is it 1 per cent. of the 1977–78 Estimates, which is £63·3 million; 1 per cent. of the 1978–79 Estimates, which is £62·9 million; or 1 per cent. of the plans for 1980–81, which is £66·6 million. It is a range, on any conceivable base, apart from the flight of fancy of my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulplans for 1980–81, which is £66·6 million? million. The right hon. Gentleman cannot make up his mind. That is the measure of the difference, unless he is prepared to say differently, between his proposals and those of my right hon. Friend.
    What would that £60 million buy him? I shall tell him. It will possibly buy one
    frigate; about two-thirds of one nuclear attack submarine, or a lot less than half of one through-deck cruiser. That is what the right hon. Gentleman is making such a row about, and that is the basis on which the amendment is moved.
    Sir Ian Gilmour: The right hon. Gentleman knows that it was not my figure. I said at least 4 per cent. I recommend him not to pay any more attention to it than he pays to the Chancellor's figure of 8·4 per cent.
    Dr. Gilbert: Four per cent. of what? The right hon. Gentleman does not know. [HoN. MEMBERS "More than 4 per cent"] All right, more than 4 per cent. That is more than two-thirds of one nuclear attack submarine or more than half of one through-deck cruiser. It is not surprising, with that kind of leadership, that the right hon. Gentleman is known not as the leader of the Left of his party but as the leader of the "wets".
    Question put, That the amendment be made:—
    The House divided: Ayes 246, Noes 285.

    Division No. 147]

    AYES

    [10.00 p.m.

    Adley, Robert

    Cormack, Patrick

    Griffiths, Eldon

    Aitken, Jonathan

    Costain, A. P.

    Grist, Ian

    Alison, Michael

    Critchley, Julian

    Grylls, Michael

    Amery, Rt Hon Julian

    Crouch, David

    Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

    Arnold, Tom

    Crowder, F. P.

    Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

    Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne)

    Davies, Rt Hon J. (Knutsford)

    Hampson, Dr Keith

    Atkinson, David (Bournemouth, East)

    Dodsworth, Geoffrey

    Hannam, John

    Awdry, Daniel

    Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

    Harrison, Col Sir Harwood (Eye)

    Baker, Kenneth

    Drayson, Burnaby

    Haselhurst, Alan

    Bell, Ronald

    du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

    Hastings, Stephen

    Bendall, Vivian (Ilford North)

    Durant, Tony

    Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

    Bennett, Dr Reginald (Fareham)

    Dykes, Hugh

    Hawkins, Paul

    Benyon, W.

    Eden, Rt Hon Sir John

    Hayhoe, Barney

    Berry, Hon Anthony

    Elliott, Sir William

    Heath, Rt Hon Edward

    Biffen, John

    Emery, Peter

    Heseltine, Michael

    Biggs-Davison, John

    Fairbairn, Nicholas

    Hicks, Robert

    Body, Richard

    Fairgrieve, Russell

    Higgins, Terence L.

    Boscawen, Hon Robert

    Farr, John

    Hodgson, Robin

    Bottomley, Peter

    Fell, Anthony

    Holland, Philip

    Bowden, A. (Brighton, Kemptown)

    Finsberg, Geoffrey

    Hordern, Peter

    Boyson, Dr Rhodes (Brent)

    Fisher, Sir Nigel

    Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

    Braine, Sir Bernard

    Fletcher, Alex (Edinburgh N)

    Howell, David (Guildford)

    Brittan, Leon

    Fookes, Miss Janet

    Hunt, David (Wirral)

    Brooke, Peter

    Forman, Nigel

    Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

    Brotherton, Michael

    Fowler, Norman (Sutton C'f'd)

    Hurd, Douglas

    Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

    Fox, Marcus

    Hutchison, Michael Clark

    Bryan, Sir Paul

    Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford & St)

    Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)

    Buchanan-Smith, Alick

    Fry, Peter

    James, David

    Buck, Antony

    Galbraith, Hon T. G. D.

    Jenkin, Rt Hon P. (Wanst'd&W'df'd)

    Budgen, Nick

    Gardiner, George (Reigate)

    Johnson Smith, G. (E Grinstead)

    Bulmer, Esmond

    Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)

    Jones, Arthur (Daventry)

    Burden, F. A.

    Gilmour, Rt Hon Ian (Chesham)

    Jopling, Michael

    Butler, Adam (Bosworth)

    Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)

    Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

    Carlisle, Mark

    Glyn Dr Alan

    Kaberry, Sir Donald

    Chalker, Mrs Lynda

    Godber, Rt Hon Joseph

    Kershaw, Anthony

    Churchill, W. S.

    Goodhart, Philip

    Kilfedder, James

    Clark, Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)

    Goodhew, Victor

    Kimball, Marcus

    Clark, William (Croydon S)

    Goodlad, Alastair

    King, Evelyn (South Dorset)

    Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

    Gorst, John

    King, Tom (Bridgwater)

    Cockroft, John

    Gow, Ian (Eastbourne)

    Kitson, Sir Timothy

    Cooke, Robert (Bristol W)

    Gower, Sir Raymond (Barry)

    Knight, Mrs Jill

    Cope, John

    Gray, Hamlsh

    Knox, David

    Lamont, Norman

    Nelson, Anthony

    Smith, Timothy John (Ashfield)

    Langford-Holt, Sir John

    Neubert, Michael

    Speed, Keith

    Latham, Michael (Melton)

    Newton, Tony

    Spence, John

    Lawrence, Ivan

    Onslow, Cranley

    Spicer, Michael (S Worcester)

    Lawson, Nigel

    Oppenheim, Mrs Sally

    Sproat, lain

    Lester, Jim (Beeston)

    Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)

    Stanbrook, Ivor

    Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

    Page, Richard (Workington)

    Stanley, John

    Lloyd, Ian

    Parkinson, Cecil

    Steen, Anthony (Wavertree)

    Loveridge, John

    Pattie, Geoffrey

    Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)

    McAdden, Sir Stephen

    Percival, Ian

    Stokes, John

    McCrindle, Robert

    Peyton, Rt Hon John

    Stradling Thomas, J.

    Macfarlane, Neil

    Pink, R. Bonner

    Tapsell, Peter

    MacGregor, John

    Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

    Taylor, R (Croydon NW)

    MacKay, Andrew (Stechford)

    Price, David (Eastleigh)

    Taylor, Teddy (Cathcart)

    Macmillan, Rt Hon M. (Farnham)

    Prior, Rt Hon James

    Tebbit, Norman

    McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

    Pym, Rt Hon Francis

    Temple-Morris, Peter

    McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)

    Raison, Timothy

    Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret

    Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

    Rathbone, Tim

    Thomas, Rt Hon P (Hendon S)

    Marten, Neil

    Rawlinson, Rt Hon Sir Peter

    Townsend, Cyril D.

    Mates, Michael

    Rees, Peter (Dover & Deal)

    Trotter, Neville

    Mather, Carol

    Renton, Rt Hon Sir D. (Hunts)

    van Straubenzee, W. R.

    Maude, Angus

    Renton, Tim (Mid-Sussex)

    Vaughan, Dr Gerard

    Maudling, Rt Hon Reginald

    Rhodes James, R.

    Viggers, Peter

    Mawby, Ray

    Ridley, Hon Nicholas

    Wakeham, John

    Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

    Ridsdale, Julian

    Walder, David (Clitheroe)

    Mayhew, Patrick

    Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

    Walker, Rt Hon P (Worcester)

    Meyer, Sir Anthony

    Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

    Wall, Patrick

    Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove)

    Rost, Peter (SE Derbyshire)

    Walters, Dennis

    Mills, Peter

    Royle, Sir Anthony

    Warren, Kenneth

    Miscampbell, Norman

    Sainsbury, Tim

    Weatherill, Bernard

    Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

    St. John-Stevas, Norman

    Wells, John

    Moate, Roger

    Scott, Nicholas

    Whitelaw, Rt Hon William

    Monro, Hector

    Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

    Wiggin, Jerry

    Montgomery, Fergus

    Shelton, William (Streatham)

    Winterlon, Nicholas

    Moore, John (Croydon C)

    Shepherd, Colin

    Wood, Rt Hon Richard

    More, Jasper (Ludlow)

    Shersby, Michael

    Young, Sir G. (Eallng, Acton)

    Morgan, Geraint

    Silvester, Fred

    Younger, Hon George

    Morris, Michael (Northampton S)

    Sims, Roper

    Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

    Sinclair, Sir George

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

    Morrison, Hon Peter (Chester)

    Skeet, T. H. H.

    Mr. Spencer Le Marchant and

    Mudd, David

    Smith Dudley (Warwick)

    Mr. Michael Roberts.

    Neave, Airey

    NOES

    Abse, Leo

    Cartwright, John

    Evans, John (Newton)

    Allaun, Frank

    Castle, Rt Hon Barbara

    Ewing, Harry (Stirling)

    Anderson, Donald

    Clemitson, Ivor

    Fernyhough, Rt Hon E.

    Archer, Rt Hon Peter

    Cocks, Rt Hon Michael (Bristol S)

    Flannery, Martin

    Armstrong, Ernest

    Cohen, Stanley

    Fletcher, L. R. (Ilkeston)

    Ashley, Jack

    Coleman, Donald

    Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

    Ashton, Joe

    Colquhoun, Ms Maureen

    Foot, Rt Hon Michael

    Atkins, Ronald (Preston N)

    Concannon, Rt Hon John

    Ford, Ben

    Atkinson, Norman

    Conlan, Bernard

    Forrester, John

    Bagier, Gordon A. T.

    Cook, Robin F. (Edin C)

    Fowler, Gerald (The Wrekin)

    Bain, Mrs Margaret

    Corbett, Robin

    Fraser, John (Lambeth, N'w'd)

    Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

    Cowans, Harry

    Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

    Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood)

    Cox, Thomas (Tooting)

    Freud, Clement

    Bates, Alf

    Craigen, Jim (Maryhill)

    Garrett, John (Norwich S)

    Bean, R. E.

    Crawford, Douglas

    Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)

    Beith, A. J.

    Crawshaw, Richard

    George, Bruce

    Benn, Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood

    Cronin, John

    Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

    Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N)

    Crowther, Stan (Rotherham)

    Ginsburg, David

    Bidwell, Sydney

    Cryer, Bob

    Golding, John

    Bishop, Rt Hon Edward

    Cunningham, Dr J. (Whiteh)

    Gourlay, Harry

    Blenkinsop, Arthur

    Davidson, Arthur

    Graham, Ted

    Boardman, H.

    Davies, Rt Hon Denzil

    Grant, George (Morpeth)

    Booth, Rt Hon Albert

    Davies, Ifor (Gower)

    Grant, John (Islington C)

    Boothroyd, Miss Betty

    Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)

    Grimond, Rt Hon J.

    Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur

    Deakins, Eric

    Grocott, Bruce

    Boyden, James (Bish Auck)

    Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)

    Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

    Bradley, Tom

    Dempsey, James

    Hart, Rt Hon Judith

    Bray, Dr Jeremy

    Doig, Peter

    Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

    Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

    Dormand, J. D.

    Hayman, Mrs Helene

    Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)

    Douglas-Mann, Bruce

    Healey, Rt Hon Denis

    Buchan, Norman

    Duffy, A. E. P.

    Heffer, Eric S.

    Buchanan, Richard

    Dunn, James A.

    Hooley, Frank

    Butler, Mrs Joyce (Wood Green)

    Dunnett, Jack

    Hooson, Emlyn

    Callaghan, Rt Hon J. (Cardiff SE)

    Eadle, Alex

    Horam, John

    Callaghan, Jim (Middleton & P)

    Edge, Geoff

    Howell, Rt Hon Denis (B'ham, Sm H)

    Campbell, Ian

    Ellis, John (Brlgg & Scun)

    Howells, Geraint (Cardigan)

    Canavan, Dennis

    English, Michael

    Hoyle, Doug (Nelson)

    Cant, R. B.

    Ennals, Rt Hon David

    Huckfield, Les

    Carmichael, Neil

    Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)

    Hughes, Rt Hon C. (Anglesey)

    Carter, Ray

    Evans, Gwynfor (Carmarthen)

    Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

    Carter-Jones, Lewis

    Evans, loan (Aberdare)

    Hughes, Roy (Newport)

    366

    367

    Hunter, Adam

    Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

    Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)

    Irvine, Rt Hon Sir A. (Edge Hill)

    Morris, Rt Hon Charles R.

    Snape, Peter

    Irving, Rt Hon S. (Dartford)

    Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

    Spriggs, Leslie

    Jackson, Colin (Brighouse)

    Moyle, Roland

    Stallard, A. W.

    Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln)

    Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

    Steel, Rt Hon David

    Janner, Greville

    Murray, Rt Hon Ronald King

    Stewart, Rt Hon Donald

    Jay, Rt Hon Douglas

    Newens, Stanley

    Stewart, Rt Hon M. (Fulham)

    Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

    Noble, Mike

    Stoddart, David

    John, Brynmor

    Oakes, Gordon

    Stott, Roger

    Johnson, James (Hull West)

    Ogden, Eric

    Strang, Gavin

    Jones, Alec (Rhondda)

    O'Halloran, Michael

    Strauss, Rt Hon G. R.

    Jones, Barry (East Flint)

    Orbach, Maurice

    Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley

    Jones, Dan (Burnley)

    Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

    Swain, Thomas

    Judd, Frank

    Ovenden, John

    Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)

    Kaufman, Gerald

    Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

    Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)

    Kelley, Richard

    Padley, Walter

    Thomas, Mike (Newcastle E)

    Kerr, Russell

    Palmer, Arthur

    Thomas, Ron (Bristol NW)

    Kilroy-Silk, Robert

    Park, George

    Thompson, George

    Lambie, David

    Parker, John

    Thorne, Stan (Preston South)

    Lamborn, Harry

    Parry, Robert

    Thorpe, Rt Hon Jeremy (N Devon)

    Lamond, James

    Pavitt, Laurie

    Tierney, Sydney

    Latham, Arthur (Paddington)

    Pendry, Tom

    Tinn, James

    Leadbitter, Ted

    Panhaligon, David

    Tomney, Frank

    Lee, John

    Perry, Ernest

    Tuck, Raphael

    Lestor, Miss Joan (Eton & Slough)

    Phipps, Dr Colin

    Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.

    Lever, Rt Hon Harold

    Price, C. (Lewisham W)

    Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)

    Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

    Price, William (Rugby)

    Wainwright, Richard (Colne V)

    Litterick, Tom

    Radice, Giles

    Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

    Lomas, Kenneth

    Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn (Leeds S)

    Walker, Terry (Kingswood)

    Loyden, Eddie

    Reid, George

    Ward, Michael

    Lyon, Alexander (York)

    Richardson, Miss Jo

    Watkins, David

    Lyons, Edward (Bradford W)

    Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

    Watt, Hamish

    Mabon, Rt Hon Dr J. Dickson

    Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)

    Weetch, Ken

    McDonald, Dr Oonagh

    Robinson, Geoffrey

    Weitzman, David

    McElhone, Frank

    Roderick, Caerwyn

    Wellbeloved, James

    MacFarquhar, Roderick

    Rodgers, George (Chorley)

    Welsh, Andrew

    McGuire, Michael (Ince)

    Rodgers, Rt Hon William (Stockton)

    White, Frank R. (Bury)

    MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

    Rooker, J. W.

    White, James (Pollok)

    Mackintosh, John P.

    Rose, Paul B.

    Whitlock, William

    Maclennan, Robert

    Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

    Willey, Rt Hon Frederick

    McMillan, Tom (Glasgow C)

    Ross, Rt Hon W (Kilmarnock)

    Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W)

    Madden, Max

    Rowlands, Ted

    Williams, Alan Lee (Hornch'ch)

    Magee, Bryan

    Ryman, John

    Williams, Rt Hon Shirley (Hertford)

    Mallalieu, J. P. W.

    Sandelson, Neville

    Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)

    Marks, Kenneth

    Sedgemore, Brian

    Wilson, Rt Hon Sir Harold (Huyton)

    Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)

    Selby, Harry

    Wilson, William (Coventry SE)

    Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

    Sever, John

    Wise, Mrs Audrey

    Maynard, Miss Joan

    Shaw, Arnold (Ilford South)

    Woodall, Alec

    Mellish, Rt Hon Robert

    Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

    Woof, Robert

    Mendelson, John

    Shors, Rt Hon Peter

    Wrigglesworth, Ian

    Mikardo, Ian

    Sllkin, Rt Hon John (Deptford)

    Young, David (Bolton E)

    Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

    Silkin, Rt Hoi S. C. (Dulwlch)

    Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbrlde)

    Sillars, James

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

    Mitchell, Austin

    Silver Julius

    Mr. James Hamilton and

    Molloy, William

    Skinner, Dennis

    Mr. Joseph Harper.

    Moonman, Eric

    Question accordingly negatived.
    Main Question put:—

    Division No. 148]

    AYES

    [10.18 p.m.

    Abse, Leo

    Boothroyd, Miss Betty

    Colquhoun, Ms Maureen

    Allaun, Frank

    Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur

    Concannon, Rt Hon John

    Anderson, Donald

    Boyden, James (Bish Auck)

    Conlan, Bernard

    Archer, Rt Hon Peter

    Bradley, Tom

    Cook, Robin F. (Edin C)

    Armstrong, Ernest

    Bray, Dr Jeremy

    Corbett, Robin

    Ashley, Jac

    Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

    Cowans, Harry

    Ashton, Joe

    Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)

    Cox, Thomas (Tooting)

    Atkins, Ronald (Preston N)

    Buchan, Norman

    Craigen, Jim (Maryhill)

    Atkinson, Norman

    Buchanan, Richard

    Crawford, Douglas

    Bagier, Gordon A. T.

    Butler, Mrs Joyce (Wood Green)

    Crawshaw, Richard

    Bain, Mrs Margaret

    Callaghan, Rt Hon J. (Cardiff SE)

    Cronin, John

    Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

    Callaghan, Jim (Middleton & P)

    Crowther, Stan (Rotherham)

    Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood)

    Campbell, Ian

    Cryer, Bob

    Bates, Alf

    Cant, R. B.

    Cunningham, Dr J. (Whiteh)

    Bean, R. E.

    Carmichael, Neil

    Davidson, Arthur

    Beith, A. J.

    Carter, Ray

    Davles, Rt Hon Denzil

    Benn, Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood

    Carter-Jones, Lewis

    Davies, Ifor (Gower)

    Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N)

    Cartwright, John

    Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)

    Bidwell, Sydney

    Castle, Rt Hon Barbara

    Deakins, Eric

    Bishop, Rt Hon Edward

    Clemitson, Ivor

    Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)

    Blenkinsop, Arthur

    Cocks, Rt Hon Michael (Bristol S)

    Dempsey, James

    Boardman, H.

    Cohen, Stanley

    Doig, Peter

    Booth, Rt Hon Albert

    Coleman, Donald

    Dormand, J. D.

    The House divided: Ayes 276, Noes 246.

    Douglas-Mann, Bruce

    Lambie, David

    Rooker, J. W.

    Duffy, A. E. P.

    Lamborn, Harry

    Rose, Paul B.

    Dunn, James A.

    Lamond, James

    Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

    Dunnett, Jack

    Leadbitter, Ted

    Ross, Rt Hon W. (Kilmarnock)

    Eadie, Alex

    Lestor, Miss Joan (Eton & Slough)

    Rowlands, Ted

    Edge, Geoff

    Lever, Rt Hon Harold

    Ryman, John

    Ellis, John (Brigg & Scun)

    Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

    Sandelson, Neville

    English, Michael

    Litterick, Tom

    Sedgemore, Brian

    Ennals, Rt Hon David

    Lomas, Kenneth

    Selby, Harry

    Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)

    Lyon, Alexander (York)

    Sever, John

    Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)

    Lyons, Edward (Bradford W)

    Shaw, Arnold (Ilford South)

    Evans, John (Newton)

    Mabon, Rt Hon Dr J. Dickson

    Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

    Ewing, Harry (Stirling)

    McDonald, Dr Oonagh

    Shore, Rt Hon Peter

    Fernyhough, Rt Hon E.

    McElhone, Frank

    Silkin, Rt Hon John (Deptford)

    Flannery, Martin

    MacFarquhar, Roderick

    Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)

    Fletcher, L. R. (Ilkeston)

    McGuire, Michael (Ince)

    Sillars, James

    Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

    Mackenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

    Silverman, Julius

    Foot, Rt Hon Michael

    Mackintosh, John P.

    Skinner, Dennis

    Ford, Ben

    Maclennan, Robert

    Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)

    Forrester, John

    McMillan, Tom (Glasgow C)

    Snape, Peter

    Fowler, Gerald (The Wrekin)

    Madden, Max

    Spriggs, Leslie

    Fraser, John (Lambeth, N'w'd)

    Magee, Bryan

    Steel, Rt Hon David

    Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

    Mallalieu, J. P. W.

    Stewart, Rt Hon Donald

    Freud, Clement

    Marks, Kenneth

    Stewart, Rt Hon M. (Fulham)

    Garrett, John (Norwich S)

    Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)

    Stoddart, David

    Garrelt, W. E. (Wallsend)

    Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

    Stott, Roger

    George, Bruce

    Maynard, Miss Joan

    Strang, Gavin

    Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

    Mellish, Rt Hon Robert

    Strauss, Rt Hon G. R.

    Ginsburg, David

    Mendelson, John

    Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley

    Golding, John

    Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

    Swain, Thomas

    Gourlay, Harry

    Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

    Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)

    Grant, George (Morpeth)

    Mitchell, Austin

    Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)

    Grant, John (Islington C)

    Molloy, William

    Thomas, Mike (Newcastle E)

    Grlmond, Rt Hon J.

    Moonman, Eric

    Thompson, George

    Grocott, Bruce

    Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

    Thorne, Stan (Preston South)

    Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

    Morris, Rt Hon Charles R.

    Thorpe, Rt Hon Jeremy (N Devon)

    Harper, Joseph

    Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

    Tierney, Sydney

    Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

    Moyle, Roland

    Tinn, James

    Hart, Rt Hon Judith

    Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

    Tomney, Frank

    Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

    Murray, Rt Hon Ronald King

    Tuck, Raphael

    Hayman, Mrs Helene

    Newens, Stanley

    Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.

    Healey, Rt Hon Denis

    Noble, Mike

    Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)

    Heffer, Eric S.

    Oakes, Gordon

    Wainwright, Richard (Colne V)

    Hooley, Frank

    Ogden, Eric

    Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

    Hooson, Emlyn

    O'Halloran, Michael

    Walker, Terry (Kingswood)

    Horam, John

    Orbach, Maurice

    Ward, Michael

    Howell, Rt Hon Denis (B'ham, Sm H)

    Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

    Watkins, David

    Howells, Geraint (Cardigan)

    Ovenden, John

    Watt, Hamish

    Hoyle, Doug (Nelson)

    Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

    Weetch, Ken

    Huckfield, Les

    Padley Walter

    Weitzman, David

    Hughes, Rt Hon C. (Anglesey)

    Palmer, Arthur

    Wellbeloved, James

    Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

    Park, George

    Welsh, Andrew

    Hughes, Roy (Newport)

    Parker, John

    White, Frank R. (Bury)

    Hunter, Adam

    Parry, Robert

    White, James (Pollok)

    Irvine, Rt Hon Sir A. (Edge Hill)

    pavitt, Laurie

    Whitlock, William

    Irving, Rt Hon S. (Dartford)

    Pendry Tom

    Willey, Rt Hon Frederick

    Jackson, Colin (Brighouse)

    Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W)

    Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln)

    Panhaligon, David

    Williams, Alan Lee (Hornch'ch)

    Janner, Greville

    Perry, Ernest

    Jay, Rt Hon Douglas

    Phipps, Dr Colin

    Williams, Rt Hon Shiriey (Herifort)

    Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

    Price, C. (Lewlsham W)

    Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)

    John Brynmor

    Price, William (Rugby)

    Wilson, Rt Hon Sir Harold (Huyton)

    Johnson, James (Hull West)

    Radice, Glles

    Wilson, William (Coventry SE)

    Jones, Alec (Rhondda)

    Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn (Leeds S)

    Woodall, Alec

    Jones, Barry (East Flint)

    Reid, George

    Wrigglesworth, Ian

    Jones, Dan (Burnley)

    Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

    Young, David (Bolton E)

    Judd, Frank

    Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)

    Kaufman, Gerald

    Robinson, Geoffrey

    Kelley, Richard

    Roderick, Caerwyn

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

    Kerr, Russell

    Rodgers, George (Chorley)

    Mr. A. W. Stallard and

    Kilroy-Silk, Robert

    Rodgers, Rt Hon William (Stockton)

    Mr. Ted Graham.

    NOES

    Adley, Robert

    Benyon, W.

    Brotherton, Michael

    Aitken, Jonathan

    Berry, Hon Anthony

    Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

    Alison, Michael

    Bitten, John

    Bryan, Sir Paul

    Amery, Rt Hon Julian

    Biggs-Davison, John

    Buchanan-Smith, Alick

    Arnold, Tom

    Body, Richard

    Buck, Antony

    Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne)

    Boscawen, Hon Robert

    Budgen, Nick

    Atkinson, David (Bournemouth, East)

    Bottomley, Peter

    Bulmer, Esmond

    Awdry, Daniel

    Bowden, A. (Brighton, Kemptown)

    Burden, F. A.

    Baker, Kenneth

    Boyson, Dr Rhodes (Brent)

    Butler, Adam (Bosworth)

    Bell, Ronald

    Bralne, Sir Bernard

    Carlisle, Mark

    Bendall, Vivian (Ilford North)

    Brittan, Leon

    Chalker, Mrs Lynda

    Bennett, Dr Reginald (Fareham)

    Brooke, Peter

    Churchill, W. S.

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    371

    Clark, Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)

    Hutchison, Michael Clark

    Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

    Clark, William (Croydon S)

    Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)

    Price, David (Eastleigh)

    Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

    James, David

    Prior, Rt Hon James

    Cockroft, John

    Jenkin, Rt Hon P. (Wanst'd&W'df'd)

    Pym, Rt Hon Francis

    Cooke, Robert (Bristol W)

    Johnson Smith, G. (E Grinstead)

    Raison, Timothy

    Cope, John

    Jones, Arthur (Daventry)

    Rathbone, Tim

    Cormack, Patrick

    Jopling, Michael

    Rawlinson, Rt Hon Sir Peter

    Costain, A. P.

    Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

    Rees, Peter (Dover & Deal)

    Critchley, Julian

    Kaberry, Sir Donald

    Renton, Rt Hon Sir D. (Hunts)

    Crouch, David

    Kershaw, Anthony

    Renton, Tim (Mid-Sussex)

    Crowder, F. P.

    Kilfedder, James

    Rhodes James, R.

    Davies, Rt Hon J. (Knutsford)

    Kimball, Marcus

    Ridley, Hon Nicholas

    Dodsworth, Geoffrey

    King, Evelyn (South Dorset)

    Ridsdale, Julian

    Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

    King, Tom (Bridgwater)

    Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

    Drayson, Burnaby

    Kitson, Sir Timothy

    Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

    du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

    Knight, Mrs Jill

    Rost, Peter (SE Derbyshire)

    Durant, Tony

    Knox, David

    Royle, Sir Anthony

    Dykes, Hugh

    Lamont, Norman

    Sainsbury, Tim

    Eden, Rt Hon Sir John

    Langford-Holt, Sir John

    St. John-Stevas, Norman

    Elliott, Sir William

    Latham, Michael (Melton)

    Scott, Nicholas

    Emery, Peter

    Lawrence, Ivan

    Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

    Fairbairn, Nicholas

    Lawson, Nigel

    Shelton, William (Streatham)

    Fairgrieve, Russell

    Lester, Jim (Beeston)

    Shepherd, Colin

    Farr, John

    Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

    Shersby, Michael

    Fell, Anthony

    Lloyd, Ian

    Silvester, Fred

    Finsberg, Geoffrey

    Loverldge, John

    Sims, Roger

    Fisher, Sir Nigel

    McAdden, Sir Stephen

    Sinclair, Sir George

    Fletcher, Alex (Edinburgh N)

    McCrindle, Robert

    Skeet, T. H. H.

    Fookes, Miss Janet

    Macfarlane, Neil

    Smith. Dudley (Warwick)

    Forman, Nigel

    MacGregor, John

    Smith, Timothy John (Ashfield)

    Fowler, Norman (Sutton C'f'd)

    MacKay, Andrew (Stechford)

    Speed, Keith

    Fox, Marcus

    Macmillan, Rt Hon M. (Farnham)

    Spence, John

    Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford & St)

    McNair Wilson, M. (Newbury)

    Spicer, Michael (S Worcester)

    Fry, Peter

    McNalr-Wilson, P. (New Forest)

    Sproat, lain

    Galbraith, Hon T. G. D.

    Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

    Stainton, Keith

    Gardiner, George (Reigate)

    Marten, Neil

    Stanbrook, Ivor

    Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)

    Mates, Michael

    Stanley, John

    Gilmour. Rt Hon Ian (Chesham)

    Mather, Carol

    Steen, Anthony (Wavertree)

    Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)

    Maude, Angus

    Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)

    Glyn, Dr Alan

    Maudling, Rt Hon Reginald

    Stokes, John

    Godber, Rt Hon Joseph

    Mawby, Ray

    Stradling Thomas, J.

    Goodhart, Philip

    Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

    Tapsell, Peter

    Goodhew, Victor

    Mayhew, Patrick

    Taylor, R (Croydon NW)

    Goodlad, Alastair

    Meyer, Sir Anthony

    Taylor, Teddy (Cathcart)

    Gorst, John

    Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove)

    Tebbit, Norman

    Gow, Ian (Eastbourne)

    Mills, Peter

    Temple-Morris, Peter

    Gower, Sir Raymond (Barry)

    Miscampbell, Norman

    Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret

    Gray, Hamish

    Mitchell, David (Baslngstoke)

    Thomas, Rt Hon P (Hendon S)

    Griffiths, Eldon

    Moate, Roger

    Townsend, Cyril D.

    Grist, Ian

    Monro, Hector

    Trotter, Neville

    Grylls, Michael

    Montgomery, Fergus

    van Straubenzee, W. R.

    Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

    Moore, John (Croydon C)

    Vaughan, Dr Gerard

    Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

    More, Jasper (Ludlow)

    Viggers, Peter

    Hampson, Dr Keith

    Morgan, Geraint

    Wakeham, John

    Hannam, John

    Morris, Michael (Northampton S)

    Walder, David (Clitheroe)

    Harrison, Col Sir Harwood (Eye)

    Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

    Walker, Rt Hon P (Worcester)

    Haselhurst, Alan

    Morrison, Hon Peter (Chester)

    Wall, Patrick

    Hastings, Stephen

    Mudd, David

    Walters, Dennis

    Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

    Neave, Alrey

    Warren, Kenneth

    Hawkins, Paul

    Nelson, Anthony

    Weatherill, Bernard

    Hayhoe, Barney

    Neubert, Michael

    Wells, John

    Heseltine, Michael

    Newton, Tony

    Whitelaw, Rt Hon William

    Hicks, Robert

    Onslow, Cranley

    Wiggin, Jerry

    Higgins, Terence L.

    Oppenheim, Mrs Sally

    Winterton, Nicholas

    Hodgson, Robin

    Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)

    Wood, Rt Hon Richard

    Holland, Philip

    Page, Richard (Workington)

    Young, Sir G. (Ealing, Acton)

    Hordern, Peter

    Parkinson, Cecil

    Younger, Hon George

    Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

    Pattie, Geoffrey

    Howell, David (Guildford)

    Percival, Ian

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

    Hunt, David (Wirral)

    Peyton, Rt Hon John

    Mr. Spencer Le Marchant and

    Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

    Pink, R. Bonner

    Mr. Michael Roberts.

    Hurd, Douglas

    Question accordingly agreed to.
    Resolved,
    That this House endorses Her Majesty's Government's policy set out in the Statement
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    on the Defence Estimates 1978 (Command Paper No. 7099) of basing British security on collective effort to deter aggression, while seeking every opportunity to reduce tension through international agreements on arms control and disarmament.

    INDUSTRIAL TRAINING LEVY (ENGINEERING)
    10.32 p.m.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. John Golding): I beg to move,
    That the draft Industrial Training Levy (Engineering) Order 1978, which was laid before this House on 22nd February, be approved.
    This is a historic occasion, because I understand that it is the first time that a levy order has been brought before Parliament. It is brought because under the Industrial Training Act 1964, as amended by the Employment and Training Act 1973, an order giving an industrial training board approval to raise a levy in its industry in excess of 1 per cent, of emoluments must be approved by both Houses of Parliament.
    It is not necessary for the major part of the engineering industry, where the proposal is for the levy on employers to remain at 1 per cent. It is necessary because the Engineering Industry Training Board is proposing to raise a levy of 2 per cent, on large employers in the mechanical and electrical engineering construction sector. The 2 per cent, levy will apply only to employers engaged mainly or wholly in engineering construction activities, and it will be raised only in respect of site employees—those actually working on construction sites.
    Thirdly, the 2 per cent, levy will apply only to an employer whose payroll for site employees exceeds £½ million a year. Fourthly, where an employer meets the previous conditions he will be assessed for levy as follows: no levy on the first £50,000 of his payroll for site employees, 1 per cent, on the next £450,000 and 2 per cent, on the payroll above £500,000. It is estimated that for a large employer the average levy on the total payroll will be about 1½ per cent.
    Mr. J. W. Rooker: Is there not another exemption in that a site must have 60 workers employed on it? That is my understanding of article 5 of the order. If that is so, what is the estimate of the number of sites that will be exempt?
    Mr. Golding: I have no estimate of that. In the construction industry the situation changes from month to month and it would be difficult to estimate.
    Why is it necessary to have more than 1 per cent, for the civil engineering sector? The Engineering Industry Training Board decided unanimously to ask the Manpower Services Commission for a higher levy because in the past there has not been a sufficient training effort by employers in that sector. The need for better training is clear. First, about three-quarters of the workers on sites are skilled. Secondly, it is important for the reputation of the civil engineering industry that jobs are done competently. Thirdly, it is a high-risk industry from the safety point of view and training is important to meet safety standards.
    Training in the industry is difficult to organise due to the great mobility between sites. The Manpower Services Commission and the Government have devoted time and resources to improving training in the industry over the past few years. In 1974, all the activities of employers in the sector were brought within the scope of the EITB whereas previously they had been split between the EITB and the Construction Industry Training Board. The EITB set up a committee for the sector representing both sides of industry. It has done a good job already in drawing up plans for improving training in this difficult area.
    The Government provided resources for the Manpower Services Commission to give £3½ million over three years to help the EITB to begin the job of improving training in the industry. The board made available £1 million on a loan basis to help the sector committee to get things moving.
    When the Manpower Services Commission gave the money to the board, it made it clear that it was only filling a gap and that in due course the firms in the industry would be expected to shoulder the major burden of training. The board has now come forward with the levy proposals. It has sought the support of industry for its proposed levy. I welcome the fact that the two major employers' organisations in the industry, the Engineering Employers Federation and the Oil and Chemical Plant Construction Association, support the levy as set out. They have provided evidence of majority support among their

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    memberships. I am pleased, too, to say that the AUEW has also given firm support.
    In determining its main priorities for 1978–79, the EITB will be concentrating particularly on maintaining and, if possible, improving the level of apprentice training in the industry and, secondly, on improving the quality and quantity of the training of professional engineers. It will be giving priority to management and supervisory training, and to other skills such as welding, non-destructive testing and site draughtsmanship in instructional skills. I should add the important point that all the training includes training for safety. The Government regard all these as important areas.
    One of the Government's own priorities is to maintain the level of apprentice training in industry at a time of recession. Speaking generally, over £135 million has been made available to industry over the last three years. We also believe that management and supervisory training is essential to ensure that work is properly organised and that jobs are completed on time. We see, too, that the training of highly skilled workers obviously contributes to improving the quality of the work done.
    The MSC will continue to make money available for key training activities in this sector in 1978–79. This is still under discussion with the EITB. The money will be made available to support, initially, off-the-job training, the training of professional engineers and draughtsmen and management and supervisory training for adult operators.
    The order provides for the raising of a levy in excess of 1 per cent. on part of the payroll of some large employers in a highly specialised sector of the engineering industry. In providing special arrangements for this sector, which includes those involved in building power stations, petroleum refineries, chemical plants and the structures that are necessary to exploit the North Sea, the order recognises the particular problems of the industry in raising its level and standard of training and it emphasises the importance of doing so for the long-term good both of the industry itself and of the economy. It also makes a direct contribution to the development of the potential of individuals.
    Mr. Jim Craigen: How optimistic is the Minister that in these rather capital-intensive industries there will be a great deal of potential for young people to find apprenticeships and other opportunities in the skilled trades?
    Mr. Golding: This is a matter to which the EITB is at present giving great attention. I discussed it with the board's chairman, Hugh Scanlon, only the other week. The board is very closely examining the document "Training for Skills", issued by the MSC to try to ensure that there is an adequate flow of apprentices into the industries for which it is responsible. I think that the board is delighted with the general proposition that, if industry plays its part in providing training, the Government will top up by the use of taxpayers' money to ensure that we have an adequate flow of apprentices in industry.
    I have pleasure in commending the order to the House.
    10.44 p.m.
    Mr. James Prior: I would not detain the House for more than a few minutes at this time of night, but the Opposition felt that this important order ought not to go through without some debate on the Floor of the House because, although the order relates to a comparatively small part of the engineering industry, it is my belief that we do not pay anything like enough attention to that industry in this House. Perhaps at some future date, in Opposition time or Government time, we ought to have a proper debate on the industry.
    I am always appalled to find how few Members of Parliament are connected with the engineering industry.
    Mr. Rooker: Especially on the Opposition side.
    Mr. Prior: I would say that it applies on either side of the House.
    The House should pay more attention to the engineering industry and seek to understand its problems, since it is one of the main wealth-creating sectors of the economy. Over the last 50 or 60 years, the capacity of the industry has not kept pace with that of other countries. Britain cannot prosper unless we do something about this.
    We give the order a fair wind. We are grateful to the Under-Secretary of State

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    for his explanation of the order. I am sure that no hon. Member on this side would wish to dispute anything that he said. The information that I have is that the employers involved in this sector of the industry have been fully consulted at all stages in the preparation of the order and agree with its proposals. Therefore, there is no problem about lack of consultation.
    I pay tribute to the chairman of the Engineering Industry Training Board, Mr. Hugh Scanlon. He has done a first-class job and has perhaps set a precedent for future chairmen of training boards. I should like to thank him for all that he has accomplished. He has won the respect of employers' representatives as well as of his own trade union representatives. Sometimes I wonder whether he is more popular with the employers' representatives than with his union representatives. However, I do not wish to make his job more difficult than it is.
    The question of apprenticeships is of vital importance. The more we grow into the concept of training to a standard rather than concentrating on an inflexible period of time, the better it will be for the industry. We are much too hidebound to sticking to a time limit. In many respects, concentrating on training to standard is better.
    One of the main complaints is the lack of educational standard of those who come forward for engineering apprenticeships. This is partly because young people with higher qualifications tend to go for other jobs and, therefore, the standard available to the industry has come down in the last few years. But that does not alter the fact that many employers say that the low standards of arithmetic and English are such that remedial education is necessary before industrial training can begin. That is a serious commentary on our education system to which we must pay close attention.
    I have just visited Japan and America. Although I was not looking particularly at this sector of the engineering industry, I had a chance to see some line production in various factories. My overwhelming impression—this is supported by information available here, including that in the articles which The Sunday Times
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    began two weeks ago—was that the problem of British industry is not the speed at which we run our machines. There is little difference in that respect between Britain, Germany, Japan, America and other countries. One of our problems is keeping our production line going. There are too many stoppages in the course of the day because our maintenance engineering and the ability of our engineers to walk round the line to keep it going is not as good as that of our competitors.
    It always seemed to me that there was, in a way, a weakness in the Engineering Industry Training Board set-up in that many of our food companies—and other companies, too—the maintenance engineers are not of the quality required and are not trained in the way that the board trains those going into engineering firms pure and simple. This is one of the main problems that we have to solve in Britain. It has been borne out a hundred times over that it is not that our people do not work as hard as or work shorter hours than our Continental competitors. In many respects our people work longer hours, but they simply do not keep the production line going hour in, hour out in the way that other countries do.
    The other day I was talking to someone in Dunlop, and he told me that by means of a graph the company has compared the uptake of power in factories here with that in its plants abroad, and it has been found that whereas at the start of the morning, when the power is turned on, the graph immediately shoots up and remains at the same level throughout the day in other countries, in Britain it tends to wobble around all day, which is a further indication that we have great difficulty in keeping our production line working throughout the day.
    I hope that the Engineering Industry Training Board will pay particular attention to the problem of maintaining a flow of production on the line. I do not think that we have given this matter or the problem of restrictive practices and who does what sufficient attention. I do not for one moment think that these are matters for the House to deal with— heaven forbid!—but they are matters over which management and unions have to get together. The board is a good catalyst for talks of this nature, and one of the great benefits that has come from

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    training boards is getting the two sides of industry talking together in an informal and off-the-record way. That, again. is something that I strongly support.
    I am worried, as, I think, many hon. Members are, about the growth of bureaucracy that is overtaking certain sections of what might be called the training industry. I think that the House and the Government have a duty to watch that carefully. Whether my Government were right to make the Manpower Services Commission independent of the Department of Employment I just do not know, but I have an awful feeling that there is a degree of duplication and a creeping in of bureaucracy that has to be watched, because if it is not kept carefully under control it will lead to a certain disillusionment on the part of both sides of industry. I hope that the Government will bear in mind the fear that bureaucracy is beginning to take over in the training industry.
    Those are the only remarks I want to make, except to end by saying again that in this House we do not pay enough attention to the importance of the engineering industry. I doubt whether we have paid enough attention to it at any time this century. Anyone who reads Corelli Barnet's "Collapse of British Power" has to recognise and go back to the last century to find that the Select Committees which were discussing technical education were saying that unless Britain pulled itself together we would fall behind other countries. It has taken a long time for this to happen. What in the 1880s was being prophesied would happen quickly has started to come about in the 1970s.
    As our industrial base has narrowed and as the efficiency of British industry has declined, the need for the Government and all those who have any influence on public opinion to do everything possible to encourage the engineering industry to recruit people of high quality, to see that they are properly rewarded and to see that the differentials for skill are once more sustained at reasonable levels has become of great importance.
    I am always being told that an enormous number of milk roundsmen in London are qualified, skilled men but that nowadays it is better and more profitable to do an unskilled job and to fill in by doing a bit of moonlighting than to follow a skill. There is no point in anyone
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    in this country spending vast sums on training people if they are not to be properly rewarded after they have achieved the skills that industry requires. It will mean a widening of differentials and taking a different attitude from the one that we have adopted over the last few years. I hope that it will be a matter not of party controversy but of common ground between the parties in the House. A number of industrial matters are so important to the future of the country that they must become common ground between the parties.
    We must have a strong industrial base, and our great engineering industry must be an important part of it. If we do anything to destroy the confidence of the engineering industry in its ability to invest and in the ability and desire of people to work within it, we shall do no service either to our country or to that industry. There are many other matters about which we can argue. That is why I give the order a fair wind tonight.
    10.57 p.m.
    Mr. J. W. Rooker: My first point is a criticism not of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State but of the explanatory note to the order. In fact, it does not explain anything about the order. The explantory note is meaningless. It gives no indication to members of the public or to Members of the House of the effect or the contents of the order. There is nothing to indicate the peculiar nature of the order as it affects engineering construction.
    Before my hon. Friend signs the order, I ask him to get the explanatory note altered. He can do that after the order has been passed, because the explanatory note does not form part of it. I think that he needs to pull up his officials, because this is mumbo-jumbo. It does not do what it purports to do.
    My second point concerns the definition of "engineering construction". I accept all that my hon. Friend said about the vital nature of this industry. It is a difficult industry to organise in terms of trade union activity, management, manpower, cash flow, orders and so on. It is also difficult for the Inland Revenue to collect the taxes which are due from various sections of the industry, whether from workers or from companies, as we have seen recently.

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    I hope my hon. Friend will confirm that there are no loopholes in the order that would enable the bucket-shop operators in the construction industry to become classified as engineering constructors and thereby obtain some of the exemptions available to many small firms because of the minimum level of payroll, the minimum number of workers on a site and so on. There are possible loopholes if people can change the definition of their firm.
    Mr. Golding: The figure of 60 is modified in respect of engineering construction. It is of much greater significance within mainstream engineering than within construction, because the figure of £50,000 for emoluments is more relevant in the constructional engineering industry.
    Mr. Rooker: I accept that for the conventional engineering industry 60 is too low a figure to give exemption to small employers. One could raise it and there would still be a case to be made. But the construction industry is a different matter. For many firms in construction 60 would be a large number of workers on a site, although in the building of a power station or oil refinery one has what is in effect a mobile factory, with several hundred employees.
    I wanted to make the point because of the notorious difficulty of the construction industry in operating under the tax laws of the land and in making other normal payments to the State. I would think that there were opportunities for the bucket shop operators to gain exemptions.
    The right hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior) had important points to make. I was glad that you did not call him to order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because we are enabled to have a more wide-ranging debate than I had thought possible. A member of the Shadow Cabinet thought it important enough to take part in the debate. He has subordinates who would normally carry out that function. Clearly, there are reasons why he has done it himself.
    The right hon. Gentleman said that the House paid little attention to the engineering industry. He is right. The reasons are abundantly clear. Few Con-
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    servative Members are qualified or experienced in the industry, whether on the shop floor or in management. How can one expect a House full of lawyers, journalists and teachers to take on board seriously the problems of engineering and productive industry and its importance?
    The House will give hours each week to discussions of the minutiae of legal matters and peripheral education matters. I often wonder what you are thinking about as you listen to the debates, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Do you think of the nation outside and the millions of people working in productive industry? Fortunately, I do not have to listen to all the debates. I am not saying that only those hon. Members with experience are qualified to speak—that is not so—but there are not enough hon. Members with a detailed interest in the industry.
    It is well known that the character of the House has changed over the years. There are fewer and fewer Members on the Labour Benches who have been manual workers in engineering and manufacturing. There never were many. The Conservative Party may well be the party of business, but it is not the party of management. There are not many people on the Conservative Benches who are experienced in running factories.
    Mr. Frank Hooley: My bon. Friend is being a little unfair in criticising the House. Labour Members are selected as candidates by constituency Labour Parties. That selection process is responsible for the lawyers and the teachers who are here. When there was a 10,000 Tory majority in my constituency, there were very few engineers and workers from the shop floor who were willing to fight that seat. People like me were left to do it.
    Mr. Rooker: The House does not reflect society as a whole, and there is probably good reason why it should not be a mirror image of society. Because of the nature of society, it is difficult for people at the productive end of industry, the sharp end, the shop floor and management, to take the risks that result from becoming involved in local as well as national politics. It is much more difficult for those people than for people in other occupations, and that is one of the reasons for the present character of this House. That is why all the journalists

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    and lawyers are here as Members. The nature of their occupations enables them to devote more time to the subject and to run the two activities together.
    I am criticising the whole system. The problem goes down to the grass roots of the selection process. I reiterate what has been said about the House not giving enough time for debates on this subject.
    I think that the right hon. Member for Lowestoft came along tonight to serve penance. We hear a great deal these days from the Opposition by way of apologies for their reform of local government, the National Health Service and water authorities. Those are all the things that the Labour Party gets the blame for because they took place in April 1974, although they were legislated for by the Conservatives.
    One such matter that has never been debated substantially in the House is the hiving off of the activities of the Department of Employment by the Conservatives. I give the right hon. Member his due. He did not cover up the fact that it was his Government who set up the Manpower Services Commission, the Training Services Agency and the Employment Services Agency, a growing train of bureaucracy for which he and his right hon. and hon. Friends now castigate the Government.
    Perhaps this is the next theme for the Opposition to pursue—first, immigration, then law and order, and now the next campaign from the theme committee of the "gang of four" is to be bureaucracy. The Opposition are laying the groundwork now by coming to the House late at night admitting that they were really to blame, after which they will go full tilt at the subject.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): Order. The hon. Member is running away with himself. The right hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior) was talking about the industrial training levy. I think that the hon. Member is now expanding on that theme. He should confine himself to the order.
    Mr. Rooker: Of course, I accept your admonition, Mr. Deputy Speaker. But the right hon. Member went somewhat wider than the training levy—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am not denying that fact, but the hon. Member is going even wider than that.
    Mr. Rooker: It is for that very good reason, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that my final point relates strictly to the training levy and to the question of rewards to apprentices for skill. This is supremely important. It is no good my right hon. and hon. Friends bringing forward orders to support and encourage a greater degree of apprentice training in industry, particularly in engineering, thereby encouraging young men to take up a skill and become craftsmen, if those men are not in the end to be paid for the sacrifice that they make. It is a sacrifice to go through an apprenticeship.
    I do not accept the argument about time limits. There has to be such a limit because the scheme has to be properly structured. However, the five years that I served was too long.
    Some trade union leaders say that there must be rewards for effort as well as skill. The implication of that is that men working on the track should not get a penny less than the men working in the tool room. That in turn implies that the person working in the tool room is not using effort in addition to the skill he has obtained. I do not accept that. I shall not go into greater detail, because hon. Members will gather to whom I am referring.
    I have contributed to the forthcoming quarter's edition of the Engineering Industry Training Board's newspaper—various hon. Members in the main parties take turns at doing so—and I have made this point. It is no good encouraging young men and girls to go into engineering apprenticeships without providing an adequate reward for the sacrifice they make. The Government's pay policy must recognise that, and all the political parties have to face up to the fact that this is the one way of getting over the problem.
    We do not want a party battle on the issue of differentials for skill. It would not do anyone any good, least of all the people whom we are trying to encourage to take up apprenticeships and the firms that we are trying to encourage to bring in new people, with the help of the Engineering Industry Training Board and other training boards. On the evidence so far, the Government do not appear to have accepted this. There are now many skilled craftsmen who have seen their differentials eroded and who are

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    getting no real reward for the sacrifice of their apprenticeship years and the skill they have acquired.
    Incidentally, I do not accept that there are unskilled jobs. Every job is skilled in its own way, and it is certainly a denigration to imply that a milk rounds-man is unskilled. Nevertheless, it is possible for skilled men today to do that sort of work and not have to take a moonlighting job in order to make ends meet. That is because the differentials have been so eroded.
    There are many cases in which skilled workers are seeking loopholes in the pay policy, such as may be provided by the fair wages resolution. They do this rather than have an industrial dispute, because jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Large groups of toolmakers have lodged claims. It is their only way out of the impasse. Some of our trade unions have grown in such a way that many skilled craftsmen do not believe that their own unions take full cognisance of the sacrifice they have made to gain their skills and to keep in their trades.
    It is greatly to the credit of many skilled craftsmen that they still encourage their sons to follow them, because on all the available evidence it is not morally justifiable in many cases today. The acquiring of a skill does not necessarily mean having a job for life, but it means that that skill will be, or should be, recognised and rewarded.
    We need a turn-round by the Government and an acceptance of the sorts of points that many of us on each side of the House have made. The Engineering Industry Training Board, which still has Hugh Scanlon as its chairman, ought to take account of them. It would be more likely to be listened to by parties in this House than would other bodies in the engineering industry which were making exactly the same points.
    The board has a very good record and is well thought of and accepted by the employers in the industry. The people on the board and involved in its operations are often skilled men. Indeed, one of the senior officials in North Wales was at one time my chief and owned a firm employing about 100 men, at which I served my apprenticeship in Birmingham. He is now using his skills as a former
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    tradesman and owner-manager of a firm and is putting his expertise at the disposal of the board.
    People of that sort have great expertise and knowledge. They can see and understand the problems. That being so, the board is in a good position to deal with points of the kind which have been raised and to bring forward some recommendations to the House. That would be preferable to having to go through the Manpower Services Commission.
    11.14 p.m.
    Mr. David Penhaligon: I have been pleased with the tone of the debate. We have been discussing a matter which ought to be discussed far more often. There are, I believe, only eight—or perhaps 10—chartered engineers in the House of Commons, of whom I am one. That is extraordinary when we consider that, with the exception of Japan, we are the nation which most relies upon engineering expertise on a wide front in order to produce goods to export. It means that in this House there are some 625 hon. Members who are certainly not particularly knowledgeable in this area. I believe that parliamentary debates on this topic ought to be regarded as being of considerable importance and that greater scope should be provided for them.
    I remember that, when I was standing for Parliament in my constituency, the other parties were rather worried that I might get elected. In fact, I was more worried than they were. As a chartered engineer, working for Holmans in Cornwall, I remember the final message that went out to deride my efforts. Canvassers said, "Of course, he only works down Holmans, you know. Would you like such a person to represent you in Parliament?". I only just won, but the fact that I was a chartered engineer was of little or no significance.
    I believe that over the last 15 years this country has made a great mistake in regard to training engineers and training in general. Criticism is often made that the ability of those who now apply for the classical engineering apprenticeship to read and to understand numbers is not satisfactory. I suspect that is so mainly because those whom the industry used to take on as apprentices no longer make themselves available for apprenticeship.

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    They are scooped up in our great education system and go off and do something else.
    I believe that this country has made a tragic mistake by creating a considerable divide—which certainly exists for the brighter half of the country—between academic training and training in industry. I am staggered how often I meet someone with a university degree, who wants to become an engineer, but who has hardly ever spent more than 12 minutes inside a factory or has hardly ever met industrial life head on. That is a disaster for which this country will pay very heavily.
    Nowhere is this better expressed than in our talking to local sixth form colleges. That is one of the standard things which hon. Members are asked to do in a fairly non-partisan way. We are asked to talk about the House of Comons and the economy in general. One of my favourite questions which I always put to students—who, I suppose are academically the elite—is whether they have any ambition to be involved in the process of making something. In such a group, which is supposed to be the better 10 per cent., occasionally one student puts up his hand. My usual reply is "You and I have got busy lives in front of us keeping all the rest". That is the reality of the situation. The existing status of engineering and chartered engineers is very low indeed, and we shall pay dearly for that.
    I welcome the order. We must welcome orders such as this for all industries. Such orders at least mean that every company will make a contribution towards training. There was an increasing tendency to believe that all companies would take their responsibility towards training seriously. But often a large number of the people go down the road to a firm which carries out no training whatever. The order will at least stop that. It will make every firm play its part and face up to its responsibilities. In view of the state of affairs that we have now reached, we must all welcome orders such as this.
    I should also like to comment on the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) with regard to differentials. It is not fair nor true to blame the Government's present pay policy for the lack of differentials. The lack of differentials in engineering,
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    as well as in many other spheres of life, has been a growing trend for a long time. It is not a particular effect of the pay policy over the last two or three years. It has been brought about, and brought to a head, because industry no longer has enough skilled people, which is regrettable. No longer are there sufficient skilled people to do the increasingly complicated jobs which engineering requires as an industry.
    The industry has got over this problem for a very long time by making most of the jobs in factories jobs for idiots. The attempt is made to employ as little skill as possible. I know many skilled fitters and turners who use less than 5 per cent. of their skills on the occupations that they are given, because that is the way that the production line is run. It is run not to use the full capacity of available skills but to use as little skill as possible and as many untrained people as possible. The effect is not just the erosion of differentials; it is boredom. I suggest that the man who decided to become a milkman as opposed to remaining in industry did so as much as anything else because, in view of the way that industry has been run over the past 10 or 15 years, becoming a milkman was not only as well paid but far more interesting than the jobs of many in industry.
    A number of specific points have been mentioned, and I should have thought there was a good case for a day's debate on many of them. Although this country is telling itself that we have plenty of oil—and perhaps for a few years we shall have—there is no doubt that within my lifetime we shall get back to the position where once again engineering is the backbone of whatever standard of living we have. Perhaps the oil gives us four or five years or possibly a decade in which to sort out this essential problem, but it is desperate that we both increase the status of engineering and bring training and education in later years closer to industry. It is obvious that we must increase the general level of skill available.
    If we cannot achieve those objectives, all the parliamentary debates, all the taxation incentives and all the industrial levies will be as nothing, because the backbone of our economy will not exist.
    Therefore, I welcome this order. I think that it will increase the amount of training that is done. I wish that the

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    industry itself had taken on the responsibility, as opposed to the Government setting it up. But, for all that, I welcome the fact that the Government are taking it on, and I hope that it will lead to the increased training and the level of skills which the few of us in the House at the moment see as so necessary if the United Kingdom's economy is ever to take off.
    11.23 p.m.
    Mr. Jim Craigen: We all seem to be in favour of this order, but I wonder whether we are not expecting far too much of the Engineering Industry Training Board when we talk of resolving some of the many problems which have been raised in the debate.
    Dare I admit that I am not an engineer by training? However, I recognise the crucial importance of the industry to our economy. The hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Penhaligon) referred to the development of North Sea oil, but what really intrigued me was the confession made by the right hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior). I recall that there was considerable resentment about the levies of the various industry training boards when the Conservatives set to work in devising the 1973 Act, and, in many respects, I think that we are suffering from the way in which that piece of legislation downgraded the individual role and capacity of industry training boards. If we are now suffering from the surfeit of bureaucracy, the Conservatives were largely responsible for it.
    I want to take up with the Minister what he said about apprenticeships. The industries which he cited are very largely industries which take up a lot of capital but do not provide many new jobs. It seems to me that in the future increasingly we shall require the industry training boards themselves to foster the employment of young people in their respective areas. Many employers seem to be reluctant, if not loath, to take on more young people. I would have wished that the Minister might have referred to any foreseeable developments of the excellent training awards scheme within the EITB and some other boards.
    The points that were made about rewards and status within an industry are all too true. The trouble is that altering the status and social standing of people
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    working in engineering or other skilled occupations compared with those in white collar and professional work will take a long time and largely will have to be fostered in the education system itself. It is far too late to leave it to the industry training boards.
    The right hon. Member for Lowestoft was correct in pointing out some of the problems that employers are facing over the skills that young people often lack when they come on to the employment market, quite apart from the relevant shortage of employment opportunities in many parts of the country.
    11.27 p.m.
    Mr. Alan Haselhurst: The explanatory note has come under attack from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), but at least it says that the purpose of bringing forward this order to impose a levy is to encourage adequate training in the industry.
    The Under-Secretary did not really enlighten us on the subject of adequate training in the industry. There are at least two limiting factors which we should bear in mind—particularly as the debate has ranged as widely as it has—about the adequacy of training in the engineering industry, and whether the training board should be casting its eyes on what is happening in schools. I am not convinced that the preparation for work or apprenticeship in engineering is all it might be in some schools. Some schools have people from the industry to train youngsters in the engineering workshop, and this may be beneficial, but I am not convinced that it is happening on anything like the right scale.
    When I hear from employers that youngsters who leave school and come to them have to be told to forget what they learned at school, I feel that something is wrong. If we are to get something out of trainees from school we must see whether the initial foundation that they are acquiring is the best as it is at present organised in the schools. This raises wide questions. We must ask whether keeping people in school for the purpose of learning the elements of engineering is necessarily the best way of preparing them for work and of making them the best material for entry into the industry.

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    The other factor relates to the exemptions allowed in the order. The Under-Secretary would not expect me, from this side of the House, to want to place huge new burdens on small businesses. Rather I would tend to argue that these businesses have too many burdens already from a variety of causes, and that they are not allowed to get on with the job.
    However, when it comes to the question of training, I see this in a wider context. We ought to spend more time and effort in training people in the engineering industry and other industries. I am not sure whether we can afford to ignore the potential for training offered by the small employers. I realise that many small employers fight shy of taking part in the training process, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for not such good reasons. I wonder whether at some stage we shall not have to try to extend the demands that we make upon small employers in the engineering industry. Could not this be done through specialist training associations helping the small employers to carry out training?
    I do not say that we should place a great bureaucratic responsibility on each employer, but we could offer him facilities through a group training association, so that there would be a relatively painless way in which he could train one, two or three people. In total, this might make a great contribution to the fund of trained engineers.
    This point may be considered somewhat abstruse in terms of the subject that we are discussing—
    Mr. David Watkins: This is not an abstruse matter. The whole basis of the grant-levy system, which has been in operation in the engineering industry for several years, is to penalise those employers who do not provide training but allow the responsibility to be taken by those firms which have considerable resources for training. That is the basic object of the grant-levy system.
    Mr. Haselhurst: I am grateful to the hon. Member for having appreciated the relevance of what I was saying. But we must attend to the points that I have made if we are to get the most we can in terms of training people for the engineering industry.
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    I welcome the order, but point out that before long we may have to consider going further.
    11.32 p.m.
    Mr. Frank Hooley: I share the opinion of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) in his criticism of the explanatory note, which states that
    "The proposals are for the imposition of a levy on employers in the engineering industry for the purposes of encouraging adequate training in the industry."
    In fact, the order has a much narrower objective, as was explained by the Minister, since it relates only to certain employers in the engineering industry, and in a rather restricted way, at that. The explanatory note falls short of telling us what the order is all about. Nevertheless, this is an important order, and I support it.
    I want to take up a point that was touched on by other speakers concerning the problem of what we should do when boys and girls simply do not come forward for the training opportunities that exist. It is a peculiar irony of the present situation that, although we have a falling level of employment, there is a shortage of skilled workers. This was well brought out in the Sheffield Star of 7th March, only a few days ago, which reported the city's industrial development officer as saying that
    "there could be more than 2,000 vacancies for skilled workers in Sheffield and some firms were wary of taking more orders because of the situation."
    The president of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, commenting on the shortage of skilled labour, said that there
    "seemed to be a lack of desire to take up skilled jobs."
    Such comments are not simply made by local government officers and business men they are confirmed by the district manager of the Training Services Agency. I want to quote briefly from the report that she presented to the industrial development committee of the city council only last Friday. She said:
    "Despite the efforts of the Employment Service Agency and a large amount of advertising, the training places at Sheffield Skill-centre were underused throughout 1977. The over 90 per cent. occupancy of 1976 was maintained up to the end of May 1977 and then fell steadily to reach a low point of 78 per cent. in September 1977; it remained

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    in the low 80s until the end of the year—a quite unacceptably low figure."
    In regard to training within firms, she said:
    "Short courses in Engineering were under-used throughout the year in Employer Establishments—insufficient numbers of young persons were interested in undertaking training in this field despite excellent placing results, and some instances of successful transfers to standard craft apprenticeship training schemes in the Autumn."
    This is a serious problem and I do not altogether agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr that it is a crude matter of money, incentives and differentials. How would he deal with the differentials problem? He knows better than that there has been a civil war in British Leyland between the TGWU and the AUEW over precisely the question of differentials. The skilled craft workers want differentials, but as soon as they push for them there is immediate pressure from other workers who want to join in if there is any money going—and I do not blame them.
    My hon. Friend made the curious observation, in which there is some truth, that all jobs are skilled. There is some special responsibility and effort in milk rounds just as on production lines or among skilled craftsmen. I am not sure that is merely a question of differentials, though they may have a part to play in solving the problem. If we say that we shall restore differentials in an industry, the backlash from those who will not get increases will destroy what we may be trying to achieve.
    Mr. Rooker: My hon. Friend has been a little unfair to me. Because of the time limit, I did not go beyond saying that the problem went much wider than merely differentials. I was going to intervene in the speech of the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Penhaligon), but, again because of the shortage of time, I did not do so, to point out that, unlike most professions, engineering does not offer a way to the board room to anyone starting from the shop floor. This is because of the elitist attitude of the institutions. People cannot now get to the top through the old path of part-time education. They must have had full-time further education, and this is a barrier to many people. If we opened these avenues from the shop floor, workers might be prepared to make sacri-
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    fices and even to have no differentials for a few years.
    Mr. Hooley: That is an extremely important point and I do not dissent from what my hon. Friend has said. That may be one of the ways in which we can persuade young men and women to go more readily into skilled work in engineering. The prospect of the field marshal's baton in the knapsack may help to persuade them.
    Another possibility would be to provide greater security of employment, especially for skilled workers. Men with the greatest skills—those aged between 40 and 55—can be thrown out of work in their hundreds by a single decision of a company that takes over their firm and closes it.
    While that situation exists in manufacturing industry, parents may tell their children not to get involved in the industry and to go instead into local government, the National Health Service or public corporations, which have a much better record in this respect. or to somewhere that gives them a reasonable assurance that if they do their job properly the job will remain. While we have the rather crude system in manufacturing industry that allows highly skilled men to be thrown to one side at short notice—or even with no notice—we are destroying the incentive for the most able boys and girls to come into the industry.
    Undoubtedly we have a serious problem in providing adequate skilled labour. Even with the appalling 1½ million unemployed there is a shortage of skilled people. Even more serious, there is now an apparent reluctance on the part of some boys and girls to take the vacancies that are offered.
    I do not share the criticism made of the Manpower Services Commission. It is an important body and it was right to create it. However, apart from the provision of training facilities, which is extremely important, it must examine a little more carefully why those facilities—this applies at least in the Sheffield locality, and it probably applies elsewhere—are not being fully used, when on all normal calculations it should be a splendid chance, with so much unemployment, for boys and girls to seize with both hands the opportunities that are available.
    11.42 p.m.
    Mr. Cecil Parkinson: I intervene briefly in what I consider to be a most interesting debate. I do not want to introduce a note of acrimony when I say to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley) that I cannot agree with him that businesses are taken over with a view to putting highly skilled people out of work. The most important commodity that most businesses have is the skill of their employees. I have never come across anyone who wants to take over a business with a view to getting rid of skilled people.
    I must declare an interest as I have taken over a business or two and have built up a small group of businesses. One of my businesses is in the engineering sector. It is so involved because one of its associated subsidiary activities is in that sector. I am a chartered accountant. I apologise to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) for not being an engineer.
    My children will be surprised that I have intervened in a debate about engineering because I am probably the most hamfisted do-it-yourself person in Great Britain. I lay no claim to possessing engineering skills.
    Mr. Penhaligon: The hon. Gentleman has summed up the trouble. He is proud that he is in that position in a country that relies on manual skills. In some sections of our society to be ham-fisted is something to boast about, and that is the trouble.
    Mr. Parkinson: The hon. Gentleman is totally and utterly wrong. I have been an athlete. I used to run 400 metres. The fact that I could not run three miles never troubled me because I had a skill that I used. I have a skill now because I am a chartered accountant. We need a variety of skills. It is not necessary to apologise for not being an engineer if one has a skill and makes a useful contribution in other ways.
    There is an air of unanimity about the debate that is welcome but in a way slightly troublesome. The Engineering Industry Training Board is not entirely without criticism. I welcome a great number of its activities. I was proud last year to preside over the presentation of the awards at the Craftex exhibition. The EITB had sponsored a competition
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    among apprentices in which skill in finishing a job on time was put at a premium. I was impressed by the work that the board had done and with the work that was being done to lay the emphasis on skill.
    I was, however, a little critical that two highly skilled people travelled all the way to London to present me with the programme for the day. I thought that it was unnecessary that so much skilled time should have been lost in delivering something that the Post Office could have delivered for 9p. There is a feeling among the engineering industry that the EITB does things on the grand scale and that it is rather extravagant. The EITB will have to guard against that. Certainly it is extravagant for two highly skilled people to travel to London just to deliver a letter. I am repeating remarks that have been made to me by engineering employers in my constituency. They think that there is a certain amount of waste in the machinery.
    One must welcome the fact that the order exempts the smaller companies. It is sometimes very difficult for small companies that have specialist areas for which they are responsible, where they do on-the-job training, to find themselves being levied. I remember one of my constituents coming to see me about this. He was absolutely incensed by the fact that he had been forced to pay a levy when he did all his on-the-job training. When he said to the board "How can I get something from this? What can you contribute?", the board's only suggestion was that perhaps he would like to go on a management course himself. As he was a one-man manager who had run a business very successfully for about 15 years, he did not take too kindly to that suggestion.
    However, on the whole, the board does a first-class job. In this country there is a very big need to put the emphasis on training. Last week I talked to a representative of MITI, the Japanese Ministry of Industry. He was saying that the key to Japan's success is the fact that people accept that they will have to retrain perhaps once or twice, or three times, in their lifetime. He said "We in Japan do not understand the British saying 'A rolling stone gathers no moss'. We think that a person being fixed in the same place and not changing is unhealthy.

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    We in Japan, with our company unions, accept that one of the things that we cannot discuss is unemployment. The union is firm about it. It will not allow us to talk about sacking people but, in return, the employees also accept that they will have to face retraining and that they cannot hang on to jobs for which there is no longer a demand. They have to be prepared to move on, retrain and take the new job, and not try to hang on to the old one". That illustrates one of our weaknesses in Britain.
    I recall being lobbied a few months ago by a group of printers from my constituency. One of them said "I did a five-year apprenticeship. Now, 10 years later, the machines are such that an intelligent person with a few months' training could do my job, yet I spent five years training to do it". I said "This is very sad for you, but let me put it to you another way. How old are you?" He said "I am 36". I said "Do you really think that between now and retirement age you will be able to hang on to a job for which, by your own admission, there is no real demand, because, 10 years ago, you had five years' training? It is sad, but you have to think about the next job, and not worry and become bitter about the fact that your old one might be getting out of date".
    I am sorry that the Minister is agitated. I want to put forward a few points, and I intend to do so. It is our bad luck that we shall not be able to listen to too much of the Minister.
    Mr. Tony DurantFollowing the point that my hon. Friend has been making, does he accept that titles are very much in line with what he has been talking about? People get stuck with titles to certain jobs and, therefore, find difficulty in being flexible and changing on the lines that he is suggesting.
    Mr. Parkinson: That is quite an important point.
    The reason I wanted to intervene in the debate is that in my constituency now, at a time of high unemployment, there is a chronic shortage of skilled people. One company there alone has vacancies for nearly 1,000 people. My local newspaper, the Boreham Wood and Elstree Post, could not believe that this was a fact. It sent representatives all round the fac-
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    tories in my constituency to see whether this was unusual. Every employer in my constituency now has vacancies for skilled people. At a time of recession, we have a chronic shortage of skilled people, mainly engineers. What will it be like if we have a boom, if we ever have one again? At a time of deep recession, with 1½ million out of work, many highly paid jobs are going begging because there are not the people to fill them.
    My right hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior) mentioned several matters which my local newspaper has found out for itself. It has found that housing is a problem, that there is no flexibility in housing. It has found that there are transport problems and that the tax rates make it not worth while to become highly skilled. It has found that the education system results in children not wanting to go into industry. Local schools are sending their brightest children to universities and few are going into the craft skills. I was interested in what my right hon. Friend said, because my experiences in my constituency confirm it.
    I spent this afternoon at the Thames barrier watching the work by people in my company on that interesting project. The lowest paid man on the site is the site manager. He is the most highly skilled man on site and yet not well paid. The Government have made it impossible to give him a rise. We are not allowed to do that. If we did, since this is a public contract, we should be subjected to the sanctions. I often wonder whether Government Ministers understand half the policies that they support. This highly skilled man is not as well paid as some of the labourers on the site.
    I could launch a debate on that project. Suffice to say that, for various reasons, it will be a very expensive barrier by the time it is finished.
    Until differentials are restored and the tax system restores incentive, skills will be downgraded and skilled jobs will remain vacant. That is a serious problem.
    11.52 p.m.
    Mr. Golding: I shall have to hurry or my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Harrison) will be upset if I talk the order out.
    My hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard) has the

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    best qualifications to take part in tonight's debate but, being a Whip, he has not been permitted to speak. He is a member of the Institute of Training Officers.
    I apologise for not being able to reply in the detail which the debate deserves. It has been a thoughtful debate. I appreciate the thoughtful contribution by the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior). He said that we did not pay enough attention to the industry. That cannot be true of the Department of Employment. Both of my senior Ministers are trained craftsmen from the engineering industry and are conscious of the problems.
    I join in the right hon. Gentleman's tribute to Hugh Scanlon. We hope that he will continue to head the Engineering Industry Training Board for a long time. I am impressed by his grasp of the industry's problems. Certainly he is aware of the need to examine the structure of apprenticeships.
    I am not convinced that a lack in educational standards always leads to difficulty in recruitment. I have been a full-time officer of a union which in the last few years has been proud of the level of its recruits into craftsmen technician apprenticeships in the Post Office.
    Indeed, I take the point made by my Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker). What I find disturbing on factory visits is the difference in status between the 16-year-old girl in the office and her prospects and those of a craftsman on the shop floor. I think that a lot of the movement away from skilled trades—and that is my family background, because my uncles were skilled workers—and a lot of the erosion of differentials could be prevented if we could return to the situation where the craftsman is given more status, more security and the possibility of promotion—all of which are denied to him at the moment.
    The right hon. Member for Lowestoft referred to the weakness in the Engineering Industry Training Board set-up and said that difficulties sometimes arise in getting maintenance engineers in other industries. I am conscious of this, and the district officer of the AUEW in North Staffordshire has drawn my attention to the way in which poaching takes place
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    from mainstream engineering into other industries.
    I think that one matter to which we have to pay careful attention—and I have discussed this with the Manpower Services Commission, the EITB and other training boards—is that too often we see training in a national rather than a local context, and people work locally rather than nationally. I think that there must be a closer relationship between the various industry training boards in order to get over some of the problems that we have been debating tonight.
    I do not think that any complaint of bureaucracy stems from the creation of the Manpower Services Commission as a body independent of the Government. I think that Conservative Members were right to hand over training and the employment services to employers, the trade unions and the local authorities, because when they have taken decisions they are able to deliver in a way that the Government cannot do. However, I agree that there are problems, and the right hon. Gentleman has spoken of them in a different context.
    One of the difficulties that we have in a long chain of command is that we are trying to control the use of public money and therefore introducing mechanisms of accountability which in turn become bureaucratic irritations to people in the front line trying to get on with the job of training. I think that the Manpower Services Commission has to look carefully at its relationship with the EITB and others to make certain that there is no more bureaucracy than is needed to give us a reasonable degree of accountability.
    I accept the criticism that has been made, particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr, of the explanatory note. I shall accept responsibility for that rather than push it over. My hon. Friend referred to mumbo jumbo, and we shall look at the explanatory note to see whether something more adequate can be prepared. It may be that it will not be possible to do something on this occasion, but the point is well taken.
    Let me make it clear that the order covers the whole of engineering. I talked of the constructional section particularly since it was because there was a demand for 2 per cent. rather than 1 per cent. that we are having the

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    debate tonight. The level of exemption for construction is determined more by the payroll than by the numbers involved on site. I agree with the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South (Mr. Parkinson)—this is about the only matter on which I do agree with him—that there are problems in not exempting small firms. I recently spoke to the EITB about this. If the cost of collection exceeds the amount that one collects it is bureaucratic nonsense not to exempt. The test that I always apply is whether it is worth spending money to collect money.
    I do not accept the description of the gravy train and bureaucracy. The right hon. Member for Lowestoft did not use that expression.
    Mr. Rooker: Neither did I.
    Mr. Golding: My hon. Friend attributed that expression to the right hon. Gentleman. I do not think that he said that, and it is not an apt expression.
    I was interested in the contribution made by the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Penhaligon). I think that he was probably elected on the Holmans vote. Snide remarks in elections always tend to backfire. I accept the spirit of what he said.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Craigen), in an interesting contribution, asked about the future of awards. The Government are determined to maintain support for apprentice training. We shall have to consider in what ways we can do that in future.
    I am afraid that I shall not be able to reply to all the points that have been made. I am conscious of the comment by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield. Heeley (Mr. Hooley) about the shortage of skilled labour. There is a skill shortage in certain places. It is sometimes difficult to fill engineering places in skillcentres. As a nation, and certainly as a Government, we must tackle that problem.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Resolved,
    That the draft Industrial Training Levy (Engineering) Order 1978, which was laid before this House on 22nd February, be approved.

    OPENCAST MINING (ATHERTON)
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Tinn.]
    12.2 a.m.
    Mr. H. Boardman: The subject that we are about to discuss concerns the National Coal Board's proposals for the working of an opencast site at Atherton, in Greater Manchester.
    Before discussing this matter, I should mention that I have received a note from my hon. Friend the Member for Farnworth (Mr. Roper), whose constituency is adjacent to mine, saying that he wishes to be associated with what I have to say because he fears that part of his area will suffer environmentally if the work proceeds.
    The proposed site is fairly substantial. It involves 188 acres, and the NCB reckons that it can get 567,000 tons of reasonable quality coal from this site. The area is bounded by three schools. a church, a brand new leisure centre and private houses.
    A public inquiry was held. At the inquiry there was opposition by the Greater Manchester Council, the metropolitan borough of Wigan, a residents' action group and private objectors.
    At the time the local authority wrote to the Minister and said that it would like him to receive a deputation. I did likewise. I wrote to the Secretary of State and received a reply from the Under-Secretary saying that he was responsible in matters of coal fuel and that he would be pleased to see me, provided that we did not discuss the Atherton opencast site. I began to wonder what in God's name we would discuss if that was not it. Anyway, I was given an assurance that I could discuss opencast mining in a general way, but not this particular site. In the circumstances, I let him know that I thought that I should be wasting his time and certainly my own.
    The inspector who conducted the inquiry reported:
    "I recommend that the application for an authorisation, as submitted, should be refused."
    The Secretary of State turned down his inspector's recommendation on the ground

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    that it was "in the national interest" that the coal should be worked. The argument that something is "in the national interest" can be used at any time on any subject by almost any Minister.
    There was a bit of lambasting in Press headlines when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State turned down the inspector's report. Great play was made of my right hon. Friend's name. That was regrettable, because the issue is too important to be brought down to a matter of petty personalities of the people involved. But it is difficult for the local people to understand when my right hon. Friend says that after careful study, taking into account the effect on amenity and the environment, the dust, noise and general inconvenience, he has decided that it is in the national interest that the coal should be worked.
    Considering all this and the alleged urgency of the need to get the coal, I find it ironic that a few years ago a deep mine within three or four miles of the site, the Mosley Common colliery, was closed by the National Coal Board after the board had put in an additional £10 million for development of the pit. It was claimed at the time to be one of the most modern pits in Europe. Now we have come to scraping the surface.
    It was stressed in the Board's case to the inquiry that it was an important factor that coal production in my area was sufficient only to satisfy about half the local demand, having regard to power stations and so on. I find this a novel approach. It has great possibilities, if every area in the country is to have to be self-sufficient in coal production. I imagine that it would cause a bit of a row around Hampstead Heath and some of the other more salubrious areas where people do not know what a coal mine looks like, certainly not what opencast mining looks like.
    But Atherton does not have a Hampstead Heath. That is part of the trouble, which my hon. Friend the Minister does not seem to appreciate. Atherton is simply a very small, very confined, rural area. That is why local opinion is so shocked, why people are so angry at my right hon. Friend's seeming disregard of their environment, of their views and the recommendation of the inspector who
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    heard the evidence. There is very strong feeling up there about the matter.
    When the NCB's representative said at the inquiry that the area was now capable only of producing roughly half of the local requirements, it is a pity the Board was not gracious enough to give the reasons. This area of South Lancashire has traditionally been one of the major coalfields in the country. Two substantial pits remain. All the other pits have been closed, because the coal is worked out, because there is neither coal nor profit there.
    Many of the old people of today have lived in the area since they were youngsters, seeing the pithead gear, seeing the effects of getting coal from underneath the earth. Now that the Board is to scrape it off the top it is not at all surprising that those people are very angry. People in the district have paid the price of living in a coalfield. They have lived in dereliction and with subsidence the whole of their lives. It is little wonder there is anger.
    If my right hon. Friend wants to prove his words that people's opinions matter, that democracy works, let him review his decision in the light of the unanimous local objection to this opencast project.
    I have one final point to make concerning this site and any future site. I understand that it is the NCB's intention to work several other sites in South Lancashire.
    This is not a petty matter to be reduced to the level of personalities. It is a serious subject. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would not allow my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to discuss with me the Atherton site. I was horrified when I found later that neither would he allow the deputation that had come down especially from the metropolitan borough of Wigan to discuss it. I called off my interview, although I had sought it. The Secretary of State's case apparently was that the case was sub judice.
    Are we to be asked to believe that the Minister read the inspector's report with complete detachment? I can tell him, as my constituents will tell him, that that is a load of rubbish. I say that for this reason. The report "Coal for the Future" concernes the tripartite arrangement. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote the foreword.

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    He is also the chairman of the Tripartite Group. Apart from the Department, it includes representatives of the NCB and the National Union of Mineworkers. The arrangement is a laudable one and I applaud it, but my right hon. Friend's direct involvement in it means that he has a constitutional relationship with the NCB and he must therefore be disqualified from claiming to exercise an independent judgment. He cannot clothe himself with a white sheet and say that his man must not talk about the subject. So much for that attitude, but it kills off the Secretary of State's right to make a judgment on matters of this description.
    Mr. Bernard Conlon: Does my hon. Friend accept that the point that he is making so forcefully, although focused on Atherton in Lancashire, affects many other areas where this type of mining is to be pursued? Does he agree that, unless the cogent case that he is making is accepted, there will be many more objections of this kind?
    Mr. Boardman: I am glad to have my hon. Friend's intervention. That is precisely the point I am making, precisely why I say that this is more than a petty point made into headlines criticising my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I criticise my right hon. Friend for different reasons. This situation is probably not his fault, but it ought to be changed. I believe that his decision in this case has done irreparable damage to public inquiries into coal matters throughout the country. It is because I feel so seriously about it that I propose taking up my complaint with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
    12.13 a.m.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Alex Eadie): Before I follow my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Mr. Boardman) into a discussion of the Millers Lane site and other aspects of his speech, I should like to say something about opencast mining in general. I should congratulate my hon. Friend on his enterprise and initiative in instituting this debate. He is one of the most experienced parliamentarians in the House.
    The House will recall the Tripartite Group that we set up for the coal industry
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    comprising representatives of the Government, the National Coal Board and the mining unions. In 1974 the group endorsed the general strategy of the Board's "Plan for Coal" with a total output of 135 million tons a year by 1985.
    Within that we endorsed the Board's aim to expand opencast coal production from just over 10 million tons a year to 15 million tons within about four years. In the latest Tripartite Group report, "Coal for the Future", published in February last year, the target was maintained at 15 million tons a year, and it was reiterated in the Green Paper on Energy Policy which my right hon. Friend presented to the House last month.
    In other words, it still remains Government policy to expand opencast coal output to 15 million tons a year, although, because of various difficulties, it now looks as if that will not be possible until towards 1985. Production last year was 11·3 million tons, and for the current year it is estimated at about 12·7 million tons.
    Since the average size of opencast sites is fairly constant, in order to maintain this rate of production new sites must continually be found to replace those becoming worked out, and if production is to be increased to 15 million tons a year, the Board needs to begin more sites each year than those which are exhausted.
    Obviously, coal can be worked only where it is found. This means, in general, that opencast sites have to be located in areas where mining has taken place in the past or is now in progress.
    At present, sites are being worked in all the coalfield areas. Indeed, some 12 applications are under consideration for sites in Cumbria, Northumberland, West Yorkshire, Durham, Leicestershire, Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire, in addition to three sites in Wales and two in Scotland, so there is no question of the Greater Manchester area—or, indeed, any other area—being singled out for a disproportionate amount of opencast mining.
    In the early days, much of the work could be confined to areas of dereliction which were considerably improved when they were restored after the coal had been worked. Hon. Members will know of many such sites. However, this type of site is becoming less and less available, although many sites still contain some dereliction which is cleared during the operations.

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    The procedures for dealing with applications for authorisation to work opencast sites are set out in the Opencast Coal Act 1958.
    If the local planning authorities or the owners, occupiers or lessees of the land comprising a site object, my right hon. Friend is required to have a public inquiry. In other cases, he has discretion to have one if he thinks it desirable. In recent years the number of public inquiries held has increased significantly. It is normal for an inspector from the Department of the Environment's housing and planning inspectorate to be appointed to hold a public inquiry.
    There is some misconception about the purpose of a public inquiry. At the inquiry the applicants and the objectors are given full opportunity to make their cases for and against the application and to cross-examine each other on the arguments. In other words, the aim is to elicit all the facts and the arguments and to provide an opportunity for them to be challenged and tested. It is the inspector's job to bring out the facts and the arguments and to report them, with any recommendations he may wish to make, to my right hon. Friend. I must emphasise that it is not the inspector's job to act as an arbitrator or judge.
    When he receives the inspector's report, it is my right hon. Friend's responsibility, against the background of Government policy, to decide the case in the light of his assessment of the issues brought out in the report and of the inspector's recommendations, if any. But inspectors are not infallible, and my right hon. Friend certainly does not have to accept their recommendations, any more than the Secretary of State for the Environment necessarily has to accept the recommendations of the inspectors he appoints to hold ordinary planning inquiries.
    I am sometimes asked to stop the Board applying for authorisations in areas which have suffered for many years from the effects of mining and other industrial development. But there is no statutory power to do this. The Board is fully entitled to submit any applications it wishes, and my right hon. Friend has to consider them and make a decision. I can assure the House that he takes fully into account any objection based on environmental and amenity damage
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    caused by previous operations before reaching a decision.
    Coming from the area I do, I am deeply conscious of the environmental consequences of mining operations. The statutes—the Opencast Coal Act 1958 and the Countryside Act 1968—require that the desirability of preserving natural beauty and various other features must be taken into account when applications for opencast authorisations are being considered.
    But the Government also have a responsibility to ensure that the required coal production is available. The problem of weighing the one against the other—the national need against the local damage—is often an extremely difficult one. I can assure the House that no one in my Department takes this lightly. We are all fully aware of our responsibilities. But inevitably decisions sometimes have to be made which one or other of the parties concerned find it hard to take—or to understand.
    However, if an authorisation is granted conditions are always imposed to ensure that the adverse effects of the operations on local residents and on their environment and amenities are kept to the absolute minimum and to ensure the satisfactory restoration of the site after coal working has ceased. These conditions are agreed with the Department of the Environment and with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. They also provide for consultation with local planning authorities on various aspects of the working and restoration programme.
    I think that some hon. Members who remember opencast coal workings from many years ago would be very pleasantly surprised at the development that has taken place in the ability to work a site with the minimum of local disturbance and to restore sites to an equal, or often a better, state than they were to begin with. It is remarkable how few complaints arise once people have realised how things are managed these days.
    I now turn to the Millers Lane site. The National Coal Board applied in December 1976 for an authorisation to work this site. Written objections were made by the Greater Manchester Council, Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council, the Atherton Labour Party., the Atherton Millers Lane Opencast Mining Action

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    Group and nine individuals. A public inquiry was held in June 1977.
    I hope that my hon. Friend has had time to glance—if only very briefly—through the copies of the decision letter and the inspector's report which I sent him earlier today. They will give him some idea of how exhaustively the issues were canvassed.
    In brief, the National Coal Board's case was that the 567,000 tons of coal in the site was needed towards the 15 million ton target. There was a particular local need in that local production was only sufficient to meet about half the local demand and the rest had to be shipped from Yorkshire and the Midlands, mostly for use in power stations. If the site was not authorised, no alternatives could take its place. The value of the coal at current prices would be £13½ million. The equivalent cost of imported oil would be £18 million. It would not be a substitute for deep-mined coal.
    The various objectors said that the area had suffered considerably from past mining activities, and that the programme of opencast operations envisaged in the Wigan area over the next two to three years was unacceptable in a densely populated area. They said that there would be no need for any opencast coal output if the Board met its deep-mine production targets. They were concerned about the adverse effects the proposals would have on houses, schools and recreational facilities adjacent to the site through dirt, dust, noise and visual intrusion and about the despoliation of the limited rural countryside and recreational facilities in the district, the loss of footpaths and the devaluation of properties for up to five years. Opencast working would discourage permanent industrial development in the area and would have adverse effects on the safety, health and welfare of the local community.
    The inspector concluded that the basic issue was whether the need for the coal outweighed the serious amenity and environmental objections to the proposed workings. He recognised the local regional need for more coal and that the coal in the site would make a valuable contribution to national coal production. But he suggested that since the target date for attaining the 15 million tons objective had receded there appeared to be no
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    great urgency in this matter. He also suggested that the NCB might be able to find other sites to replace Millers Lane involving far less amenity and environmental objection.
    The inspector said he was unable, therefore, to assess the relative advantage to the nation of working the coal compared with the amenity and environmental objections to the proposals. Nevertheless, he recommended refusal of the application as submitted, though acknowledging that it might be considered necessary in the national and regional interests to grant an authorisation for the site.
    I can assure the House that my right hon. Friend and I gave very careful consideration to all these arguments. We agreed with the inspector that the coal in the site would make a valuable contribution to the 15 million tons a year target to meeting local regional needs. However, we could not agree that there was no great urgency in the need for more sites, and the inspector's conclusion that the Board might find alternative sites with less environmental and amenity objection did not answer the proposition that this site was essential to the achievement of the 15 million tons a year target since, even if such sites were to become available, they would not be able actually to produce the coal over the same time scale.
    For these reasons my right hon. Friend took the view that, in reaching his conclusions and recommendations, the inspector had not assigned full weight to the case for working the site.
    However, on the opposite side of the balance, we noted the inspector's suggestion that if the northern boundary of the site was taken further away from the built-up area and moved to the south side of the disused railway embankment which runs across the site from east to west—that is to say, to the opposite side of the embankment from the houses and schools—it would achieve a substantial amelioration of the environmental and amenity damage, although it appeared that this would cause great difficulties in working the site.
    The Secretary of State, therefore, after weighing all these factors very carefully, came to the conclusion that the balance of advantage lay in favour of authorisation on that basis.

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    With the application of our normal stringent planning conditions, together with the inspector's recommendations that there should be a local liaison committee, safeguards against blasting damage, a noise control scheme and restoration plans agreed in principle with the local planning authority, I am convinced that this site can be worked without most of the adverse effects my hon. Friend fears, and that, when the work is over and the site restored, the area will be improved. Certainly I am sure it will be the aim of the Board to demonstrate, in the working of this site, that opencast coal can be worked in a decent, humane manner and that it will do all it can to minimise its effects on the local populace.
    I am conscious of how strongly my hon. Friend feels about this matter, and I appreciate the strength of the views that he has put forward. 1 note that he intends to pursue the matter further. But I am sure that he accepts that, although
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    I offered to meet him, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State acts in a quasi-judicial way in these matters and, therefore, that the circumstances in which we suggested meeting were the only ones in which we could meet. There was no reluctance on our part to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter.
    I understand my hon. Friend's difficulties. I was born and reared in a mining area, and I know the consequences of environmental blight and environmental damage. But I hope that I have succeeded in explaining why the decision about this site was taken, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that all the published documents to which I referred have been laid before the House.
    Nevertheless, I congratulate my hon. Friend on his initiative and enterprise in obtaining this Adjournment debate.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Adjourned accordingly at halt-past Twelve o'clock.