§ 3.30 p.m.
§ LORD CHERWELL rose to move to resolve, That this House regrets the slow progress made in this country in developing atomic energy for peaceful and for war-like purposes and calls upon His Majesty's Government, whilst maintaining broad general control, to transfer work on this subject from the Ministry of Supply to a special organisation more flexible than the normal Civil Service system under the direct control of the head of the Government. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I had hoped that it might be unnecessary to move this Resolution. Remembering the sympathetic reception given to my views by the noble Viscount the Leader of the House, I should still like to believe that the Government might have been persuaded to make the needed changes if he had not, unfortunately been stricken down by illness. But, as I hope to convince your Lordships, things have become so urgent that we cannot just sit back until the House reassembles after the Summer Recess and watch this great and vital project decline, as I feel it is bound to do unless it is reorganised can summarise in a very few words the reasons why I ask the House to pass this Resolution. During the war we worked hand in hand with the United States on atomic weapons. It is incredible that, despite their elaborate spy system, in 1945 the Russians should have known more about the production of atomic bombs than we did; yet they have managed to make and test one years ahead of us Could anything be more unsatisfactory?
§ The matter has become urgent because Lord Portal, the Controller of Atomic Energy, is leaving next month, and his principal scientific adviser has already left. I hope to convince the House that unless the present organisation—the cause of most of our delays and frustrations is changed, it will be very difficult to get anyone adequate to accept these key positions; and unless we do the whole project will disintegrate and atrophy. Although the development of peaceful uses of atomic energy will be impeded by bad organisation it will be several decades before this aspect becomes very important. But the delay in the production of atomic weapons is a much more urgent matter, for the use of nuclear energy in war constitutes as big a step forward 671 (perhaps I should say, backward) as the introduction of explosives into this diabolical form of human activity. Our long-drawn efforts to persuade the Kremlin to agree to some form of effective control have failed, and nothing in the present state of the world encourages the view that the Politburo, or whoever governs these matters, will be too high-minded to use these weapons if it should suit their book. Indeed, unless we also possess them we shall be in the position of savages armed with boomerangs and bows and arrows confronting armies using machine guns. Not only will our days as a great Power be numbered, but we shall be faced with slavery or even extinction.
§ All this, I think, is common ground. We do not complain about the Government's attitude in this matter. From the first, they recognised that it was vital that this country should maintain its position in the production of atomic weapons, just as it seeks to do in the production of other arms. Nor do we complain about the scale of their effort. They have not grudged men, money or materials, in the pursuit of this objective. What we complain about is the delay in achieving results. Why is it, I repeat, that the Russians with their imperfect information have been able to produce a bomb in half the time it is taking us? I think the reason is quite clear. It is because our organisation is not of the sort required for this purpose. As the House knows, it was decided in the latter half of 1945 to confide the supremely important task of producing atomic weapons to the Ministry of Supply. This decision has, I think, proved to be singularly unfortunate, for, with all its merits, the Civil Service is quite unfitted to cope with this sort of undertaking. I am not blaming the Civil Service for this. On the contrary, I think that, considering the immense handicap under which they laboured, all those concerned have done extremely well. It is just that it is the wrong sort of tool for the job. You cannot expect to win a tennis championship if you insist on using a niblick instead of a racquet.
§ The manufacture of atomic weapons is quite unlike the manufacture of any other weapon. Research of the most recondite kind, such as measuring the cross-sections of nuclei under bombardment by neutrons 672 of various velocities; development of methods to shoot together the sub-critical parts of the bomb and to make them detonate; production of fissile material involving large-scale separation of isotopes or extraction of traces of new elements from mixtures so radioactive you dare not approach them—all these aspects interact upon one another and are so closely intermingled that it is an undertaking of quite a novel kind.
§ The Government quite rightly decided that the project must be unified and welded together. The mistake was in handing it over to the Civil Service. If every decision and every plan, or change of plan, has to go through all the interdepartmental committees and obtain Treasury sanction, if every appointment has to be approved by the establishment officers, interminable delays are inevitable. What is needed is some much more flexible organisation, freed from the trammels and restrictions which are bound to hem in any sub-department of a Ministry. Naturally, it would be under Government control. Indeed, in my view, considering the importance and urgency of the project, it should be responsible to the head of the Government, for he alone could settle quickly any difficulties which might arise with any department, and he alone could cut through red tape. Only in this way can we get quick decisions and the right men. Rapid progress can be expected only if the people in charge are allowed a reasonably free hand. Only men used to tackling large industrial developments can successfully handle operations of this nature.
§ But industrialists of this sort, accustomed to take decisions and responsibility, cannot be fitted into the Civil Service machine. The Civil Service would find them singularly indigestible; and they, for their part, except in war time, would be very unwilling themselves to be swallowed by the Civil Service. If the project had been entrusted to some flexible organisation, freed from the inevitable restrictions of a Government Department, it would have been much easier to induce men experienced in large industrial undertakings to take a leading part in the work; and, given reasonable freedom of action in making plans, in making contracts, engaging staff and so on, they would, I am sure, have produced for us atomic bombs at least as fast as the Russians. 673 This difficulty does not arise only in the top ranks; it extends all down the line. Rightly or wrongly, many good engineers and scientists do not like the idea of joining the Civil Service. They know that they will be less independent than in industry, and that their work will be prescribed for them and regulated by the administratise civil servants who often know little about the subject and yet enjoy a much higher status. For this reason alone it is very hard to get and to keep the right sort of man. In this country, un high-grade technologists are all too scarce—there are more jobs than men.
§ Working as I do at Oxford, in close contact with the experimental station at Harwell, I see a good deal of these difficulties. The House would be astonished if it knew what a large proportion of the best men have left or are trying to leave. The fact that higher salaries are paid in industry than in the Civil Service is not unimportant; but it is by no means the main trouble. There are numerous other difficulties concerned with housing, transport and so on, which could easily be dealt with in an independent corporation without constituting precedents—which would be quite intolerable in the Civil Service. Even when men of the right type have been to consider appointments, the inevitable delay and red tape have often resulted in their being snapped up by other employers. For Treasury approval has to be obtained for each post, and the Civil Service Commissioners have to be satisfied that the mode and terms of each appointment conform to traditional usage.
§ In 1946 I called attention to the difficulties which were likely to arise owing to this, and we were assured that they could be and would be circumvented. But I think it will be found that in practice the complications were such that short cuts of this sort were few and far between. Quite apart from the difficulties of manning the establishments, progress would have been cnormously accelerated if rapid decisions could have been obtained. In Government Departments, as we all know, innumerable conferences and committees have to report before anything important can be decided. In private business, things are often settled in a couple of days that would be held up for months in a Ministry. But difficulties of this sort have been arising and have held up the progress of 674 this work. I will give the House just one instance of the sort of things which have happened. In the case of one large project, an interval of three years occurred before the decision of the technical people that the project was necessary showed above the ground in the form of bricks and mortar. True this was a big undertaking, equivalent to erecting a large power station. But I cannot believe that such a long period would have elapsed if the atomic energy project had not been part of the Ministry of Supply.
§ One of the most serious objections to the present arrangement is concerned with security. As my noble friend Lord Swinton pointed out in a recent debate, the security officers are set an almost impossible task in present circumstances. A civil servant, as the House knows, can be shifted from one post to another (Ally if it can be proved—I emphasise the word "proved" —that his associations with the Communist Party are so close that it would be dangerous to leave him in a post in which he has access to secret information. Before anything can be done the so-called "purge" procedure has to be invoked. The House will realise that it is often exceedingly difficult in this country, where we do not keep police records as they do abroad, to prove to the satisfaction of a quasi-legal tribunal that a man is not a good security risk. Unless this can be done, such a man remains at his post. Even if he is not immediately concerned with most secret matters, 1t.3 is bound to know—and can certainly find out—a good deal about what is going on in other sections where secrecy is absolutely vital. I am sure that if he has been properly instructed, the Minister will not venture to deny the existence of cases of this sort, causing the gravest anxiety. All this, of course, could be avoided in a more flexible organisation. People would be given contracts with a "break" clause. It would be possible to get rid of them without any stated reason on payment of six months' or a year's salary. Naturally, their salaries would have to be higher. But surely it would be well worth it. If we could have prevented Fuchs giving the information to Russia which has enabled them so quickly to make atomic bombs, it would have been worth paying many millions of pounds.
§ It has been suggested that these points should have been raised when the 675 Atomic Energy Bill was before the House. I do not admit this. Nothing specific was stated in the Act as to how the project was to be organised. It would have been open to the Minister to form a semi-independent body, had he so desired. As I have said, I pointed out some of the difficulties as to staffing, division of responsibilities and the need for a directed drive, and I hoped that the Minister might take account of them. But I was willing to wait and see what was done. And, knowing that the noble Viscount, Lord Portal, had patriotically undertaken the control, I hoped for the best. Apart from this, when the Bill was before the House, security considerations were in the foreground of our discussions. Up till then there had been no stop, except the Official Secrets Act, on communicating what might be vital secrets in this field by anybody to anybody. It would have been impossible to hold up the Bill while we discussed details of the organisation which the Minister might intend to set up.
§ I cannot understand what are the objections to working on the lines which I have been adumbrating. They have been adopted by every other country working on atomic energy. The United States has its semi-independent commission. Take Canada, South Africa, France, Sweden, Norway: there is not one of these countries that is trying to carry out atomic research and development in a Government Department. Why should it be wrong here to organise the work on the lines all these other countries consider to be right. After all, there are plenty of precedents for organisations of this sort. We have the Medical Research Council and the B.B.C.; we have the Electricity Authority and the Coal Board. We have the Colonial Development Corporation; and in the war we had the United Kingdom Corporation. It is nonsense to say that arrangements could not be made by which a vital project like the atomic energy project could be entrusted to some semi-independent organisation without undue risk to the public interest or the public purse. Indeed. this was the course contemplated by the Coalition Government when these questions were examined in the first half of 1945. The then Chan 676 cellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Anderson, saw no objection from the Treasury point of view. If Sir John Anderson, who started life as a civil servant, accepted such a possibility, surely there can be nothing inherently wicked about it. But I hope that I am preaching to the converted. Only yesterday the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, gave the House clear and convincing reasons—endorsed by the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough—why the production of coal, electricity and so on, could not be entrusted to the Civil Service. If that is true of such straightforward things as coal and electricity, how much more clearly is it true of a complicated and entirely novel undertaking like the production of atomic weapons?
§ The other objections to taking the atomic energy project out of the Ministry of Supply are equally unconvincing. The Coal Board, we are told, is in quite a different position; it pays its way. The atomic energy project cannot expect to spend all this public money without minute Treasury control. But if the atomic energy project charged the Services for the atomic weapons supplied, then, surely, it also would pay its way. And, incidentally, do all the other Corporations pay their way? Do the Medical Research Council, or the B.B.C., or the Colonial Development Corporation, or the Food Corporation, all make vast profits? Of course not. But in all these cases money derived from taxes is spent for what is believed to be a useful public purpose. The production of atomic weapons is in exactly the same case. Sometimes it is contended that if this organisation were admitted for the atomic energy project other Service research groups, such as the guided missiles group, might claim to be treated in the same way. But this argument is fallacious. These other projects involve research; they do not involve new principles. They require development, but no novel production methods. Once the missile, or whatever it may be, has been designed and tested, its production can be put out to contract. Production and development can be separated. This would not be possible with atomic weapons. Until the fissionable material has been extracted, research and development cannot be finalised. Production, development and research are inextricably linked. Even if we had complete blue 677 prints there is no firm from which we could order a thousand atomic bombs; for they would have to begin by building vast plants to get the raw material.
§ It is said that, in any case, scales of pay would have to be much the same as in the Government scientific service, so what would be the use of the new organisation. Are they really the same in the Coal Board and the other organisations? It is very difficult to find out, but it seems that they are not—certainly not at the top. In any event, as I have said, it is not only or indeed mainly, the rates of pay that are at issue. It is the rigidity and inflexibility of the Civil Service system which must be dispelled. It is essential that it should be possible to consider various cases on their merits and to make special arrangements where necessary. Anyway, it is not a good thing to haw work of this sort done by people receiving much less than men doing equivalent work for private firms, even if we can get them to do it. A man tends to wonder whether he would not be better off elsewhere and to become disgruntled; and what is worse, it puts the employer at the mercy of the man who can at any moment walk out and find a better job.
§ As time went on those who had been in close touch with the technical aspects of the project, all of whom had been doing their best to make it a success, came to the conclusion that things could not go on as they were going, and that a radical change on the lines I have indicated was absolutely necessary. For some years now, efforts have been made, backed by he best technical advice, to induce the Government to take the project out of the hands of the Ministry of Supply. Nothing has been done. What has bought the matter to a head, as I have said, is the departure of the Controller, Lord Portal, and of the deputy controller for technical policy, his principal scientific adviser, Mr. Perrin. As your Lordships know, Lord Portal has been in charge of atomic energy production for five years. All who have seen anything of his work admire his gallant efforts to make headway against all obstructions and frustrations inherent in the organisation as it stands. No one could have done better in the circumstances. Indeed, I doubt whether anyone else could have done so well in face 678 of such difficulties. All of us who have been connected with the project deplore his departure.
§ Now comes the thorny problem of finding his successor. In our view, it is this that makes it so urgent to free the project from its Civil Service trammels. For unless this is done, I am sure it will be extremely difficult to induce anyone of sufficient eminence and ability to accept the post. When Lord Portal patriotically stepped into the breach, it was hoped that things might work out satisfactorily. Now, people know they have not, and suitable men will be very chary of letting themselves in for such an ungrateful task. The outlook is rendered all the darker for Lord Portal's successor owing to the departure of Mr. Perrin. From the very beginning, when Sir Wallace Akers took over executive control under Sir John Anderson in 1942, Mr. Perrin, a distinguished chemist from Imperial Chemical Industries, has been second-in-command. Not only does he know all the hack history, the personalities involved, and the details of our negotiations with America, but he is the only man in the Ministry of Supply headquarters, I should say, who has a really profound knowledge of the scientific aspects of the work, as well as of the chemical engineering and economic problems involved. I do not think the Minister quite realises how hard Lord Portal's successor will find it to become acquainted with, and to understand, the extremely difficult and recondite questions involved in atomic energy work without someone with Mr. Perrin's qualifications to advise and help him. However great his previous knowledge of this subject, anyone who accepts the post in such circumstances will be a brave, even a foolhardy, man.
§ It is these impending changes that make it so urgent to secure, if not an immediate change in the organisation, at any rate the promise of a change. If things are left as they are, it will be next to impossible to get the sort of man who is needed to take charge. And this is vital. For, unless we do, the whole project will atrophy. I do not say it will collapse: it will just run down. Nor do I claim that the change that I advocate will instantly transform the situation and produce for us an atomic bomb in a matter of weeks. Things have gone too flit for that. But 679 it will certainly give a new impetus, and will thus make a great difference in the long run. Failure in the atomic energy field will stamp us as a second-class nation. Without the prospect of reorganisation, this great undertaking, on which so much effort and money has been lavished, will disintegrate and decay. It will certainly take some months of preparation before the actual changeover can be made. I ask the Government, therefore, to put the matter in hand quickly. The course advocated in this Resolution has been adopted by all the other countries interested in atomic energy, and has been recommended here by those best able to judge. I beg the Government to accept it and not to let the amour propre of any Minister or Ministry stand in the way. I beg to move.
§ Moved to resolve, That this House regrets the slow progress made in this country in developing atomic energy for peaceful and for war-like purposes and calls upon His Majesty's Government, whilst maintaining broad general control, to transfer work on this subject from the Ministry of Supply to a special organisation more flexible than the normal Civil Service system under the direct control of the head of the Government.—(Lord Cherwell.)