HC Deb 11 December 1981 vol 14 cc1088-91 9.35 am
The Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household (Mr. John Stradling Thomas)

I have the pleasurable duty of reporting to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the House on the visit of a delegation to the Pacific. In passing, may I say that London and Britain this morning seem a far cry from those islands in the sun, where we were wonderfully received and feted. We have nothing but the highest praise for the hospitality and warmth of the greetings that we received.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) and I were charged to go to Fiji to present from the House of Commons a table for the use of the House in Fiji. On a personal note, may I add that the fact that you had been to Fiji so recently made our visit all the more pleasurable. The people there remember your stay in Fiji with great affection. You made a great impression on them. As you know, the people of Fiji have a great Methodist tradition, which I realise appeals very much to you. Throughout our visit, the Fijians, the Indian communities, the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, and especially your brother, the Speaker of the House of Fiji, were indefatigable in looking after us and giving us every welcome.

I have a message to you, Mr. Speaker, from the Speaker of the Parliament of Fiji, arising from the resolution which was passed in that House, which the hon. Member for Grimsby and I were privileged to address. I shall read it out, so that it may be formally on the record. It is a resolution of the House of Representatives from the Speaker's Chamber, Suva, Fiji, dated 26 October 1981: We, the members of the Fiji House of Representatives in Parliament assembled, in the presence of the President of the Senate and honourable Senators, express our sincere thanks to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom for the Clerks' table which, by direction of Her Majesty the Queen, it has presented to this House. We accept this generous gift as a token of the friendship and good will of the House of Commons towards the House of Representatives. Signed: Mosese Quionibaravi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Lavinia Ah Koy, Clerk to Parliament. Before I present you with this, Mr. Speaker, I should like to refer also to our visit to Vanuatu, formerly known as the New Hebrides. Again, we received a tremendous welcome and great hospitality. We met the President, the Prime Minister, and Mr. Maxime Carlot, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, where at least three languages are spoken. That is a matter of interest to you and me as Welshmen. They speak English, French and Bislama, which is a form of pidgin. I shall not attempt to address the House in Bislama, because in this House we have to follow certain rules.

I pay tribute to the High Commissioners in Fiji and Vanuatu, who helped us a great deal. As you will be aware, Mr. Speaker, the High Commissioner in Fiji has a close relationship with the House of Commons, and it was a pleasure to be looked after by him and his wife, as we were looked after in Port Vila in Vanuatu.

In conclusion, I apologise for the fact that, as a result of the weather today, the hon. Member for Grimsby has been delayed. However, I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that it was a most happy band that journeyed out to the Pacific. I pay tribute to our Clerk, Mr. Michael Ryle, who looked after us when, perhaps, we might have gone astray. Indeed, we always expect such service from the Clerks. At this point, on a snowy morning, I shall present the resolution to you, Mr. Speaker, and draw my remarks to a close.

Mr. Speaker

I know that the House would wish me to express its deepest gratitude to the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Stradling Thomas), for the way in which he has addressed us and to both hon. Members for the way in which they conducted themselves on our behalf so far away from home. The House will have realised the loss that we suffer because the hon. Member for Monmouth is a Whip. We do not hear him as often as we would like to. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

I have happy memories of the House of Representatives in Fiji. The Fijians are a wonderful people, who are tremendously loyal to the British throne and to this country. They sing like the Welsh, and at least the hon. Members for Monmouth and for Cardigan (Mr. Howells) and I think that that is in their favour. I shall ensure that the resolution of the House of Representatives of Fiji is entered on the Journals of the House. Our gratitude goes out to the Houses of Representatives of both countries for their kindness to our colleagues when they were with them.

Later——

Mr. Austin Mitchell (Grimsby)

I am grateful for the opportunity to complete, in very brief compass, the report of the delegation to Fiji and Vanuatu. Today's climate is not exactly what we came to expect in Fiji and Vanuatu, and I am afraid that it caused me certain problems.

I am grateful to the House for having chosen and sent me as a member of that delegation. It was an experience that I shall never forget. The delegation maintained the reputation and the dignity of this honourable House in its presentation of a desk to the Parliament of Fiji and a gavel to the Parliament of Vanuatu.

The most striking feature to emerge to the delegation was the affection and even the awe in which this honourable House was held. We may doubt it at times as British Members of Parliament, given the change of attitudes to parties, politicians and even Parliament which has occurred in recent years. But the feeling overseas, especially in the Commonwealth Parliaments that we visited, towards this Mother of Parliaments is a real one, and we came away very impressed with the warmth of that feeling, believing that it was entirely fitting to strengthen and embody the links in the gifts that we took with us to Fiji and Vanuatu.

The warmth of the welcome to us was particularly noticeable in Fiji, no doubt partly because of their tradition of Nisa Bolla but also because of the feeling for Britain and the traditional close links with Britain which have always existed in Fiji. It was that feeling which led the Fijians to incorporate the Union Jack in their national flag. It was a feeling that we got from both sides of the House there—from the Opposition, which is mainly Indian, and from the Government, which is mainly Fijian.

Students from Fiji whom I taught when I was in New Zealand in the 1960s had given me very high expectations of their country. I met some of them on my visit, and the expectations that they had given me all that time ago were in no way disappointed.

I assure the House that its desk not only fits in extremely well and looks very impressive in the Fijian Parliament, but that it was received with a real warmth.

Our presentation in Vanuatu was a gavel. Some might think that appropriate in view of the fact that the previous system of government, which we called condominium, they called pandemonium.

Vanuatu is a much smaller nation than Fiji, with an even more scattered population. Whereas Fiji had a legislative council as a preparation for parliamentary democracy, Vanuatu has built a parliamentary system from scratch. We were impressed by the way in which they were setting out to build an almost instant parliamentary tradition with seriousness and a real will and dedication. They are blending British parliamentary traditions with French ones. For example, they have a semi-circular Chamber. We explained that they should not feel any special attachment to the British tradition simply because it was 500 years older and 500 years better.

Our visit was particularly important in that work of building up a parliamentary system because of all the informal exchanges between Members of Parliament about the working of our system, about Committees, about how we dealt with legislation, about the role of the Member of Parliament, where he looked for advice and how Bills were passed. All these practices which have been built up from scratch we were able to discuss with them fully, and in that sense we helped them on a personal level in a way which we found very impressive. There are a great many practical problems in building up a Parliament, and personal contacts of that kind help with it.

While there, we were privileged to visit the only English high school, Molopoa college, which has a staff of 20 or more teachers, most of them British and financed by the British aid programme. The headmaster, David Holmes, is a Grimbarian, so we came away feeling assured that the college was a well run and happy institution.

I went on to the island of Tanna, where I met local Members of Parliament, though not all of them, because I was given to understand that one of them had been killed in an attack on Government offices. I had to explain that this was not how we went about making representations to Government Departments. But the process of explanation was continued there, and I was able to see something of the John From movement, which began as a cargo cult in the war when the people were persuaded that the way to get Western technology and the Western goods which they called the "cargo" was to build airstrips so that John From could fly it in. That phase of the John From movement has passed, and it is now a movement dedicated to defending traditions, customs, and values.

There was fascinating contrast between our visit to Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, and my own visit to Tanna where subsistence agriculture is the basic way of life. The contrast was very marked, and it brought home to us the realities of the problems of development.

I do not want to give the impression, having had the unaccustomed luxury of speaking to two Commonwealth Parliaments, that I now have the bit between my teeth and that I shall be impossible to put down in this Parliament.

I conclude with two brief comments. We were all impressed by the virtues of small scale. Perhaps the Fijians and the people of Vanuatu were somewhat in awe of the Mother of Parliaments, but we were impressed there by the benefits of small scale. The Parliament in Vanuatu has 39 Members and the Parliament in Fiji has about 50 Members, and such Parliaments are much more manageable because of that small scale. More important, a Member in Vanuatu represents 2,000 to 3,000 people, and in Fiji about 5,000 to 6,000, and we were impressed by the intimacy of contact between Members of Parliament and their constituents. Members' ability to know their constituents' minds was impressive. I have no doubts about the future health of democracy and the parliamentary system in either country, largely as a consequence of that intimacy of contact. There are obvious problems of development, but the parliamentary tradition there is healthy, vigorous and impressive.

Lastly, I want to express my personal thanks and the thanks of the other members of the deputation to our Clerk, Mr. Ryle, for the efficiency, friendliness and charm with which he carried out all the arrangements in the most impeccable manner. I also thank the leader of the delegation, the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Stradling Thomas) who, as a Whip, is not accustomed to speaking in Parliament. I assure the House that he addressed both legislatures with wit, elegance and dignity. This House would have been proud had it seen the way in which he spoke for and led the parliamentary delegation on its behalf.