Lords Sitting of 25 June 1957

Preamble
Reassembling after the Whitsun Recess, the House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers
The Lord Kirkwood—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION BILL
Read 2a, and referred to a Select Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
BARRY CORPORATION BILL
Read 2a, and referred to a Select Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.

LIGHTING OF PROPOSED NEW TUNNELS
2.36 p.m.
EARL HOWE: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the decision to construct a traffic tunnel at Newcastle and another at Glasgow, they will ensure that the lighting of these tunnels will be on the most modern lines, and that the regulations governing their use will ensure that vehicles using these tunnels will require the use of side and tail lights, as in the case of similar tunnels abroad.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD MANCROFT): My Lords, my noble friend Lord Howe may be assured that in lighting these proposed tunnels at Newcastle and Glasgow advantage will be taken of the latest developments both at home and abroad. I am afraid that it is too early to say what form the by-laws governing the use of vehicle lights in the tunnels will take.
EARL HOWE: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that

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Answer, may I take it that we can be sure that the Mersey Tunnel will not be taken as a model, but some better lit tunnel, like that at Lyons?
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I know the views of the noble Earl on the Mersey Tunnel and all that happens in it. I can only repeat to him that all the best advice will be sought.

BEVERLEY AIRCRAFT CRASH INQUIRY
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the evidence given at the court martial inquiring into the crash of a Beverley aircraft, they think any changes in the routine and procedure of the maintenance of aircraft at Abingdon R.A.F. station are advisable.]
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, as a result of the crash of the Beverley aircraft near Abingdon on. March 5 last, instructions are being issued that fuel-flow tests should be carried out whenever the fuel system of an aircraft has been disturbed. This will, of course, apply at Abingdon, as elsewhere.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. Would he allow me to offer him a respectful word of congratulation upon his political promotion? Is the noble Lord aware that in the evidence given at the court martial it transpired that the two fitters who received sentence were engine fitters and not air-frame fitters? Does he not think, in view of that, that more supervision is necessary when mechanics are used on maintenance work of aircraft to which they are not normally accustomed? I thank the noble Lord for what he said, but may I ask him this question. If this system of petrol supply is so prone to bad fitting, should not the design be most scrupulously examined by those responsible for such matters?
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords. I can assure the noble Lord that further inquiries are being made to see whether
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everything is as it should be in the system of supervision of this particular type of maintenance. I accept the stricture of the noble Lord that it is easy to make a mistake with this particular valve, aria the suggestion for mechanical improvement he has made, which I think has force, will be carefully borne in mind.

MILK SUPPLIES TO FORCES
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
[To ask Her Majesty's Government how much dried milk was issued during the year ending 1st April, 1957, to Her Majesty's Forces serving in the United Kingdom; what gallonage of liquid milk did this replace, and whether it is proposed that the dried milk allocation for the current year be increased or decreased.]
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, no dried milk was issued during the year ending 1st April, 1957, to Her Majesty's Forces serving in the United Kingdom. In May of this year 22,350 lb. of dried milk was issued, to use up stocks bought in connection with the Suez emergency. This took the place of tinned milk, and fresh milk was issued as usual. It is not expected that any more dried milk will be provided during the current financial year.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I thank I he noble Lord for his reply. It is, indeed, a source of great consolation to know that no more dried milk will be issued to Her Majesty's Forces serving in the United Kingdom. I am sure that many people have felt that it was slightly ironical to have dried milk issued when there was a surplus of fresh milk.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, the circumstances in this case were exceptional.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I should like to know whether it is not possible to arrange now, with such plentiful supplies, for all the milk supplied to the Home Forces to be fresh milk, because there is, as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, says, exceeding difficulty in the milk trade at the present

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time. Many of the factories have been pouring milk away, and I feel sure the Government Chief Whip will know that that has happened in Devonshire, particularly. It seems a great pity to be pouring away skimmed milk, and that kind of thing, and to supply tinned milk to the troops when there is such a surplus of milk. Why not supply them only with fresh milk?
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, a large quantity of fresh milk is included in the diet of all ranks of all three Services at home and abroad. There are exceptional circumstances, as I have indicated; and there is also the fact, curiously enough, that not everybody likes fresh milk.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, in view of those questions and answers, may I ask my noble friend whether he will make certain that the mistake made a few years ago, when fresh liquid milk was issued to the crews of armoured vehicles on manœuvres, and it all went bad, will not be repeated?

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
2.43 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I have given Private Notice to the noble Earl the Leader of the House that I desire to ask a question on the Business for tomorrow. It is observed that there are two Motions on the Order Paper, one in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, and the other in the name of my noble friend Lord Silkin. In trying this morning to make our arrangements for to-morrow, we discovered that already seventeen speakers have their names down to speak on the first Motion, in regard to what seems to us almost a parochial matter. If there is any question of principle involved, it must already be settled by Statute. There are seventeen speakers to that Motion, which stands in front of a Motion of national importance, and for which certain Members of your Lordships' House have, I know, undertaken to be present, coming from long distances. It seems impossible, unless some readjustment can be made, for the second Motion to be taken. If that should be the course adopted, we
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should like to settle it to-day, so that the people who are thinking of supporting the Motion on the Arts to-morrow may know in time, and will not be brought unnecessarily to the House.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, before dealing with the question, may I say how glad we are to see the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, fully restored to health again. We are in a slight difficulty over to-morrow's Business, as nobody really anticipated there would be quite so many speakers on the first Motion. Whether they will all materialise or not, I do not know. I believe that they have said that they will be short. The choice is either to go ahead with both Motions—we could arrange for dinner to be served, if necessary—or to find another day. Of course, the programme is fairly congested for the next month. My feeling would have been that it would probably be better to hope that the first Motion could be disposed of fairly quickly, and that we could go ahead with the second Motion, if necessary arranging for dinner. But it is Lord Silkin's Motion, and it is for him to say. If he chooses to postpone his Motion we will try to find another day, but it will not be easy.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, it is not for me to answer. It is the noble Lord's personal Motion. But I must say that I do not trust a list of seventeen speakers to be necessarily brief. I am personally anxious that the Motion of national importance which is down in my noble friend's name should be dealt with when your Lordships have full time to devote to it. I know that there are a number of experts on the matter who want to speak, and I should advise my noble friend to postpone it. But it is for him to say. If the noble Earl the Leader of the House is prepared to help to find a day, I think that would be the better course.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, if I could have any kind of assurance that we could start even as late as 4.30 p.m. I should feel disposed to go ahead, but that seems to me quite out of the question. It looks as if it is much more likely to be 7.30 p.m. before we could begin, and that

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would spoil what I consider to be a very important debate. In those circumstances, I wonder whether the noble Earl the Leader of the House would consider the possibility of taking the Motion on Thursday, July 11.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I cannot, of course, give the noble Lord any guarantee that the debate on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, will finish early, and the noble Lord is not here at the moment. Perhaps, in the circumstances, we had better agree that Lord Silkin's Motion should be postponed to another day. That might mean sitting on a Monday. It might be better to settle it in that way, so that noble Lords need not come up to-morrow. But I am afraid that certain people will have come up from the country already.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, if I may be helpful, I would point out that there is no Motion of any sort on the Order Paper for July 11. I know that the noble Earl has certain Government Business to consider, but if we could tentatively fix a date about that time we could give adequate notice to all those interested.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I think we have a Committee stage for a Scottish Bill, as my noble friend Lord Strathclyde informs me. But perhaps that will not take long, and we might aim at July 11, if that is agreeable to the noble Viscount the Leader of the Opposition.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: The Scottish Bill, which seems to be in itself a misnomer, was sent to us for July 6. We thought that that might still possibly be July 4.
THE EARL OF HOME: In the circumstances, I think it would he better to agree to postpone to-morrow's Motion on the Arts and for another day to be arranged between us, through the usual channels. It is not strictly in order, but may I here say that perhaps noble Lords will understand that for the duration of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference I may not be in my place as often as I should be, but my noble friend the Deputy Leader, Lord Hailsham, or Lord Selkirk, will be here.

AGRICULTURE BILL
2.48 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL ST. ALDWYN): My Lords, the main provisions of this Bill were foreshadowed in two White Papers published last November. These were the White Papers on Long-Term Assurances for Agriculture and on The Pig Industry. The policies that they announced have received wide support, both inside and outside Parliament, including, in particular, support from leaders of the agricultural industry itself; and I am confident that they will be endorsed by your Lordships to-day.
I am encouraged to believe this by the acceptance of the Resolution moved on January 30 last by my noble friend Lord Amherst of Hackney. As your Lordships will remember, this approved the policy we set out in the first of these two White Papers, which is the policy now embodied in Part I and Part II of the Bill. On that occasion, the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, fully endorsed my contention that our proposals were
"undoubtedly the most notable step that has been taken since the passing of the Act of 1947."
And I must say that that seems to me a very proper description of the long-term assurances and the farm improvement scheme we are providing for in this Bill.
The main object of Part I is to provide for the new long-term assurances, but it deals also with certain other matters. In particular, it replaces the temporary provisions of Section 4 of the 1947 Act by similar permanent provisions for the guarantee arrangements for the various guaranteed products. It also gives us the powers necessary to support these arrangements which have previously depended upon Defence Regulations and war-time legislation. Clause 1, then, takes the place of Sections 3 and 4 of the 1947 Act, but does not have to be extended annually, as Section 4 had to be.
Clauses 2 and 3 provide for the long-term assurances on the guarantees for individual products and the total value of the guarantees. Clause 2 provides that

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the guaranteed price for each product shall be kept each year at not less than 96 per cent. of that for the previous year. This assurance extends to all the guaranteed commodities, and for livestock and livestock products there is also a provision that in any period of three years the maximum reduction for any one commodity shall be 9 per cent. These minimum forward assurances take the place of the minimum price provisions of Section 5 of the 1947 Act, which applied to livestock and livestock products only. They represent a great improvement on those provisions, however, because they will relate year by year to the current levels of the guarantees and will thus be kept automatically up to date.
Clause 3 provides for the entirely new form of forward assurance—that on the total value of the price guarantees and production grants. Under this clause, the award following an Annual Review must keep this total value at not less than 97½ per cent. of that for the previous year, plus or minus cost increases or decreases since the last Annual Review. This should remove much of the apprehension which farmers have in the past felt about annual reviews; it will also set strict limits on the freedom of the Government to make any significant reductions in a number of guarantees at the same time. Taken together, these assurances offer a very valuable safeguard to producers, because they impose major limitations on the Government's discretion. They thus strengthen the 1947 Act at a point where experience has revealed a certain weakness.
Clauses 5, 6 and 7 also strengthen the Act in another way. These clauses provide powers that are needed to support the guarantee arrangements and to protect the interests of the Exchequer. We are now relying on Defence Regulations and other war-time legislation to do this, which is clearly an unsatisfactory state of affairs. I need make only a brief reference to two other clauses in Part I of the Bill. First, there is provision in Clause 8 for varying the percentages laid down in Clauses 2 and 3, but no such change could take effect before the year 1962–63. Secondly, now that we are making permanent provision for the guarantee arrangements, we can repeal a certain amount of earlier legislation, and Clause 10 does this.
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I come now to Part II of the Bill. This provides for the new scheme of grants for farm improvements and amalgamations, and I will deal first with the question of improvements. On many of our farms the fixed equipment to-day is, frankly, out of date. Until it is adapted to modern farming needs and practices, the farmer will be handicapped in his efforts to achieve greater efficiency and reduced working costs. The new grants for which the main provisions are in Cause 12 and the Second Schedule, will encourage landowners and farmers to do this, and I believe that they will thus serve to reduce the industry's dependence on support through the price guarantees. Horticulture is within the definition of agriculture given in Clause 35, and many improvements to horticultural holdings will be eligible, though we shall not be assisting specialised horticultural equipment like glasshouses, heating equipment or gas and cold stores.
Subsection (3) of Clause 12 gives the Minister discretion to withhold his approval or to attach conditions, but also imposes a number of limitations on his power to approve applications. The first, in paragraph (a), requires the farm to be an equipped farm unit that is economic, or could be made so with the improvement proposed. We do not ask for grant to equip new holdings on bare land, as we feel that that would encourage the splitting up of a larger holding into smaller ones.
On the other hand, the reclamation of waste land and its incorporation in an equipped holding would not be ruled out. I think it would be wrong to perpetuate uneconomic units by providing them with new permanent improvements, and this principle is already accepted for livestock rearing land improvement schemes. I shall come later to our proposals for uneconomic units, which are contained in Clause 16.
Paragraph (b) of subsection (3) of Clause 12 requires the improvement to give a reasonable return on its cost. Paragraph (c) requires that it must be such that a prudent landlord, having regard to its cost and all other circumstances, would be willing to make it. The purpose of this test is to ensure that the improvement is of lasting value irrespective of changes in occupation. Clause 13 deals with the rate of grant. Subsection (1) fixes this at a flat rate of one-third of

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the reasonable cost; and subsection (2) enables the Ministers to make regulations for basing payments, if the applicant wishes, on standard costs. This is a variant of the principle of the silo subsidy scheme and has the advantage to the farmer that the grant is the same whether or not he has done the work by his own labour. We do not yet know to what extent we can use this device, but I can assure your Lordships that we shall use it as much as we possibly can.
Clauses 16 and 17 offer help towards the cost of merging and regrouping uneconomic holdings into economic ones. I should like to emphasise that these grants are for voluntary amalgamation and that we certainly do not intend to compel amalgamations in any form. All that we are doing is to provide assistance in meeting the rather special onerous costs of amalgamation. They are set out in detail in subsection (2). Clause 18 is the financial clause. We estimate that the cost of the scheme will be £50 million over a period of ten years. It is, however, a very speculative figure, and we are therefore asking Parliament to give us power to raise the limit to £55 million if our estimates prove somewhat low.
lf, on the other hand, the progress of the work is slower than we now expect, Clause 12 (5) gives us power to extend the period of grant for a further two years.
Now, my Lords, I come to Part III of the Bill. This deals with the development of the pig industry and will give statutory effect to the proposals set out in the second of the White Papers that I mentioned. Clause 23 provides for the setting up of a Pig Industry Development Authority on the lines recommended by the Reorganisation Commission for Pigs and Bacon. This proposal has received widespread support, and I am sure that noble Lords on both sides of the House will also welcome it.
The composition of the Authority, as set out in Clause 24, is a matter that demanded most careful thought. If it were too large, it would be ineffective; if too small, it would not be sufficiently representative. We cannot claim to have satisfied everybody, but we think that the present provision for seventeen members is reasonable and holds the balance fairly
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between the different interests. We estimate that the Authority will need up to half a million pounds a year to finance its activities. Under Clauses 25 and 26 it will have power to impose a levy, but any such scheme will have to be submitted to Ministers and will be subject to the approval of Parliament. Clause 30 provides for the dissolution of the Pigs and Bacon Marketing Boards and the Bacon Development Board, and for the disposal of their assets. My right honourable friend has already paid tribute in another place to the work of these Boards, but I should like to add my own word of appreciation for the services which their members have given to the pig industry.
Finally, there are two points in Part IV of the Bill which I should mention. First, Clause 32 provides for annual grants to Northern Ireland. These will replace the special grants which we have made in the last three years to help to compensate Northern Ireland producers for the disadvantage of being so far from their main market in Great Britain. Secondly, Clause 37 names September 1, 1957, as the date on which the Act generally will come into force. In another place it was suggested that a better date would be August 1, since this would enable an earlier start to be made with farm improvements. But so far we have felt, with the agreement of much responsible opinion, that the first essential was to get the scheme correctly worked out and smoothly launched, and to keep enough time to enable us to do this. We have told owners to assume that September 1 is the date, and we feel that at this late stage, even if it were practicable to do so, we should not be wise to alter the basis on which they have made their plans.
It may be that in this brief summary of the Bill I have done less than justice to so important a measure, but I feel that your Lordships will share my conviction that it is indeed the greatest single piece of agricultural legislation since the 1947 Act. It represents not a departure from the policy founded upon that Act, but a development and a strengthening of that policy. It will give to the industry assurances for the future and the means of equipping itself with modern tools and modern techniques for its future task. It is in the confidence that these aims will commend themselves on alt sides of your

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Lordships' House that I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. (Earl St. Aldwyn.)
3.5 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, if brevity is the principal merit in the introduction of a major measure, then the noble Earl has achieved a very high standard indeed. The only reason one would perhaps accept such brevity to-day is that we have had on, I think, at least two previous occasions, discussions in the matters which are relevant to the Bill, and I think they have even overlapped into one or two other discussions as well. So that, on the whole, we exonerate the noble Earl for not taking long enough in submitting this measure to-day.
I gladly repeat that, so far as the Government opposite have had any policy at all on agriculture for the last six years, this Bill is most welcome, because it is the largest and most important contribution to agricultural legislation since the 1947 Act. There are, however, one or two matters to which I should like to refer briefly. I do not, by any means, wish to bedevil your Lordships with a repetition of things I have said before on these matters. I listened to the noble Earl as he dealt briefly with Part I of the Bill, and I am bound to say that I have been waiting anxiously month after month to see something like reasonable stability in the sale of many commodities which are the subject of guarantees, and to find a substantial amount of what I call pleasurable satisfaction amongst the farming community as to what the various arrangements yield to them, both in volume of sale return or in the general position of their farm economy.
It is most interesting at the outset, when dealing with Part 1, to remember what my right honourable friend in another place, Mr. Tom Williams, said on Second Reading, which, by the way, was about three months ago—the Bill has been a long time in another place. He referred to Clause 1 of the Bill and pointed out that it was really a great tribute to the Labour Government, in that it accepted almost entirely a particular section in the 1947 Act which was rigidly resisted by the Conservative Party of the day when that Act was a Bill in Standing
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Committee in another place. Therefore, one reason why I welcome this measure is that it is a recognition at last by the Conservative Party, and certainly by the Government, that that particular provision in the 1947 Act was well worth including, that it has worked well and that it is necessary in any kind of constructive legislation which involves State assistance. Although my right honourable friend in another place was most concerned lest there should be any catch in the fact that the Bill contains the word "may" instead of "shall" in regard to these guarantees, nevertheless I welcome the clause as it now stands.
Then the noble Earl referred to a matter which we have already discussed—namely, the future arrangements for drawing up the guaranteed prices in a given year so that they shall not fall below 96 per cent. of the previous year's figure. He dealt in general with the question of reductions in the guarantees, which in regard to livestock must not exceed 9 per cent. over three years, and with the whole farm economy in a similar period of three years—because that is the kind of period we have to visualise when dealing with a margin of, say, 7 or 7½ per cent. I have looked at the various workings of these things and I have listened to people who are in farming, and there is certainly some satisfaction to be gained from the fact that reductions in guaranteed prices are at last to have statutory blocks on their going too far in any given period. That is something. I do not know how the farm incomes of the country are assessed—I can never understand that: it is a little beyond me—but it has been pointed out that when assessing the overall income of a farmer on the basis of figures which have been used in the Price Review, it is possible for the farming industry, in spite of the increase in costs, to lose £29 million of its receipts in a year. The industry as a whole is not yet satisfied on that point, particularly when it is borne in mind that for year after year (and I promise not to repeat this) large gaps have to be made up, partly by an increase in price here and there but mainly, taking things as a whole, by increased efficiency in the industry. But that is probably achieved to an extent sufficient to meet the increased costs only where there is a very large farm organisation and no need to farm "on a shoestring," where there is plenty of money

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for capital for improving fixed equipment and machinery, and where the farmers are able to make very rapid reduction in costs, particularly in labour costs. I think that aspect requires a good deal of looking into.
Then, let us take the experience of the arable farmer in the last twelve months (your Lordships will find a list of commodities in Part I of the First Schedule, with barley, oats and rye and potatoes in the first list) and see what has been his experience in regard to oats. I have not yet heard of anything which would appear to enable him to count upon any acreage payment as a part of the guarantee policy of Her Majesty's Government on these commodities. There have been payments on barley and wheat, but there has been no payment on oats, yet in many parts of the country oats was a very poor crop this year. The fact is that this acreage payment helps the farmer, whether he sells his oats or is keeping them for his general use on his farm, to build up his other products for sale. With the poorness of a large part of the national crop of oats, certainly in the first half of the financial year, a very much higher price than might have been expected was received. The man who grows oats for sale is all right, but the man who grows oats for his own consumption, and who happens to be in an area of bad weather and poor crops, has had to buy oats at very high prices, having been unable to get enough from his own production because of circumstances over which he had no control. That is a very sharp comment upon the whole principle of providing guaranteed prices on an acreage basis. I should like to hear from the noble Earl, if possible to-day, something about what is to be done in the current period of 1956 guarantees, because this is a very sore point with a large number of farmers in this country. I would also ask Her Majesty's Government to look again at this question of acreage payments, for this system often works out in the manner which I have tried, perhaps ineffectively, to describe to your Lordships this afternoon.
As to Part II of the Bill. I entirely agree with the noble Earl in his description of the condition of farms, and especially of their fixed equipment. It makes the offer to assist in the provision of improvements, and in many cases in
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the substitution of new fixed equipment for old, after the demolition of the old equipment, in order to obtain increased efficiency, valuable. Having looked into this matter, and talked about it, I am bound to say that if the position is as the noble Earl describes—and I believe rightly describes—it would seem that in the present financial situation in the country a grant of 33⅓ per cent. is not a large one. I have seen it stated in one or two farming papers that there must be farmers who look back ruefully to the period, eight or nine years ago, when wages were little more than half the present rate on many farms, and when the costs of borrowing money were very much less than the present cost—the figure has soared so rapidly during the last four or five yea 7S. The farmer's ruefulness will be caused by his realising fiat had he carried out the improvement on his own nine years ago he would have been better off than he will be now, even with the 33⅓ per cent. grant offered. It is that kind of circumstance which should be taken into account by Her Majesty's Government and the Treasury, though I am quite sure that the Ministry of Agriculture feel much more sympathetic to farmers than the Treasury always allow them to be.
In a good many cases the small man will find considerable difficulty in effectively taking advantage of the offer made by Her Majesty's Government in this Part of the Bill. I know that it was said on a previous occasion that the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation have made it clear that on suitable classes of fixed equipment they are willing to lend a good deal of the actual cost; but unless the market drops rapidly, one cannot visualise a rate of interest anything much below 5½ per cent. or 6 per cent. In fact, I believe that the present rate is 6 per cent.; and if one has to provide two-thirds of the cost of a building, and is not a very wealthy or prosperous farmer according to acreage, it is difficult to raise money at such a rate with any degree of confidence that one will be able to meet all one's liabilities.
I should like to say a word or two about Clause 12 (3) which the noble Earl mentioned. It seems to me that the wording to which he referred does not exactly cover the point I have in mind. If I am misrepresenting the recent speech

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of the Minister of Agriculture, I must apologise. I had intended to bring the Press Report with me but omitted to do so. From what the Minister was reported as saying, it appeared to suggest that because there has been a substantial increase in the production of milk, eggs and pigs, farmers could not look for very much help under this part of the clause. If I am not inaccurately reporting what was in the mind of the Minister, I should like that point clarified a little to-day.
Under the general powers of Clause 1, which has been adopted from the Agriculture Act, 1947—the Labour Act—it is obvious that if State funds are to be spent to assist a great industry there must be something in the Statute authorising those payments to ensure that the money is well and properly spent, and that, if necessary, it is possible to control certain classes of production. That is not unreasonable, and it is a principle by which we stood in the time of the Labour Government. But when we come to the basis on which guaranteed prices under Part II of the Bill will work—in particular with regard to the three commodities which I have mentioned, milk, eggs and pigs—I believe that farmers who are thinking about making applications for grants under this Part of the Bill will wish to know exactly what the position is.
The noble Earl very nearly went as far as I wanted him to, but not quite. I would put this to him. Suppose that a man is producing T.T. milk and attested milk under an older system than those which have gradually been developed in order to secure this healthful milk for the nation, and finds that his expenses have risen substantially owing to the great increase in wages and labour costs generally—and bear in mind that a really qualified herdsman, with an assistant to relieve him when he is away, costs, according to the size of the herd, anything from £10 a week per man upwards. These are very heavy costs, and the producer may well wish to reduce them in some way by adopting more efficient labour-saving methods for the production for this class of milk. Will he be eligible for grant, although he is already producing this sort of milk, in order that he may be able to reorganise his premises? I think that is a question upon which we
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might well have some clarification; I feel sure it would be helpful.
It seems to me that it would be an exceedingly expensive matter for the small man who may have what is called a "T.T. attested cowshed," but one which is by no means perfect, to make the necessary changes to effect substantial savings in labour costs. If he could get a grant for a smaller amount than might be involved in other cases, this would help him to effect the necessary alterations as indicated in a recent issue of the Farmer's Weekly. He might have a bail at one end of the shed and various other things all designed gradually to reduce the number of men who are required for milking in the case of a medium-sized herd. This would enable him to meet the difficulties with which he is faced at present as the result of the wage position, which is a matter of such concern, in spite of larger production, for it has to be borne in mind that the use of more milk for manufacture means a somewhat lower price per gallon. That is the problem which these poor people at the present time have to face, and it is causing great difficulty. If they could have an assurance that they can be helped to some extent by the system of grants I am sure that it would be beneficial.
Another question I wish to put to the noble Earl is how he thinks the conditions of a reasonable return are going to be judged. What is a "reasonable return"? Are the same criteria used to determine a reasonable return on a 500-acre farm per unit of commodity to be applied to the unit of commodity on a very much smaller farm, in different circumstances? Or is a reasonably elastic yardstick going to be adopted by the people who have to report to the Ministry upon the applications? I cannot, of course, expect the Minister to define exactly what the Government have in mind, but I should like to be given some idea of how it is proposed to deal with the problem of what is a reasonable return per unit of commodity to be dealt with under Clause 12 (3) (b).
Now I wish to put a question on Clause 16, which in my view is a very useful clause. I noticed with interest the reservations which the Minister placed upon the use of this clause: they did not sound to me unreasonable. But is there

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to be any regulation as to what kind of amalgamation will be thought to qualify for grants towards costs? Would two partners in a farming business be regarded as separate farmers and would an amalgamation in such a case be helped? Or is there to be a bar on that kind of thing? What exactly are the sort of general conditions which the Government have in mind with regard to this question of grants towards the cost of amalgamation? I think it would be very helpful to have some background in this connection.
I notice that in the noble Earl's remarks On Part III of the Bill he stated that the idea of a Pig Industry Development Authority had received widespread support from the industry in the country. I suppose that in a way that might be so, but from the controversies which I have read in agricultural journals over the last two or three years I should have thought that those associated with the old Pig Marketing Board, and some of those associated with the Bacon Marketing Board, have not been too happy about it. However, it may be that the new Authority is welcomed by the majority. When we come to deal with the actual position of the Authority, I can understand that, as the noble Earl says, it will cause difficulty if the membership is too large. Bat there are two points on which I think the Government should, if possible, think again.
I was disappointed to see that the plea of my old friend Mr. Gooch, President of the National Union of Agricultural Workers was not met. Considering the number of groups to whom two, or even four, representatives are to be allocated, and considering the great importance of retaining skilled labour in the farming industry, I should have thought that that Union would have been given at least two representatives. But it is still confined to one. I should also have thought that the plea of the co-operative societies in the country, who are very large users of agricultural products, might have been met, and that room could have been found upon what is not a commodity marketing board—please observe that the new body is not that; it is the Pig Industry Development Authority—for some persons who are representative of the consumers, the public. I know that the noble Earl can say that at the very beginning of the list there are some
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independent people. But, to my mind, the word "independent" never gets very far away from the explanation of it given by Lord Beaconsfield, when he was Mr. Disraeli. "What is an independent?", he said. "An independent is one upon whom no dependence can be placed."
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: But not a member of the "Co-op".
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I notice that the first comment on that is by the Government Whip. That is very good: I think that the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, rose to that very quickly.
It applies to a great many activities in life, and when one comes to give judgment upon anything it is exceedingly important to have independence. When there is a body composed of different interests—trading interests, agricultural interests, bacon and manufacturing interests, and the like—it seems to us that it would lie reasonable to have some definite consumer representatives on the Authority. So I would ask the Government, if they would, to think again on that matter.
My last point relates to the comments made by the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, on the appointed day for the coming into operation of the Statute. I have noticed with great interest—and I should like to know whether the Minister can tell us if it is the experience of his Department up to date—that the rush of inquiries and the pressure from sections of the industry to be allowed to proceed before September 1 is mostly from people who from the beginning have had no difficulty at all in finding the capital to put down in order to get the benefit of the Government grant. It is going to be much more difficult for many smaller and poorer men. Even when, with the help of the already overworked advisory officers, they have been able to get out a scheme that would be eligible for grant, and have tried to make sure that they have enough finance behind them, or promised to them, to be able to put up the two-thirds of the cost of the scheme, they may not be among the earlier of the applicants.
If it is intended that the maximum cost to the industry is to be no more than the estimated £15 million a year, including the £5 million a year Government grant,

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I hope that the applications of the rich will not be rushed through at the beginning so that those other applications, which would bring the total up to the £5 million a year grant, are left out of account for the rest of the year. I hope that a good deal of thought and consideration will be given to the smaller man in the industry, who feels that, if he can go on long enough in his search for the rest of the capital he will need in order to qualify for a grant, he will be able to get it, so that he will not be left out of the grant to be made within the current financial year beginning September 1. I am much obliged to the noble Earl for his presentation of the Bill.
3.33 p.m.
LORD AMHERST OF HACKNEY: My Lords, I also welcome this Bill and I should like to congratulate the Government upon bringing it in. I had an opportunity earlier this year of moving a Motion approving the White Paper, and naturally I support this Bill wholeheartedly. I feel that it makes a major contribution to meeting some of the problems which face the agricultural industry. At the moment, there are three main problems. The first is to ensure that agriculture makes its maximum contribution to the balance of payments; the second is to provide a high standard of living for those employed in the industry, comparable with the standard of the rest of the community, and the third is to produce what the consumer wants at a reasonable cost both to the consumer and to the Exchequer.
Agriculture is making a great contribution—I believe over £300 million—to the balance of payments. The net production is higher than it has ever been. A great tribute is due to farmers and workers for bringing that about and also to those people who, working behind the scenes, have produced new varieties of corn, malting barley and other grain, so that what was regarded as a good crop some years ago would now be regarded almost as a crop failure. But we are still importing a very high amount of feeding-stuffs and something has to be done to increase the net production from our land. There is still the difficulty of providing a reasonable living for those employed in the industry. I think it is true to say that farmers' incomes—particularly, the
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incomes of the smaller farmers—have not risen with the increase in production anything like so much as have the incomes of other people.
These two problems and the third, of producing at a reasonable cost both to the consumer and to the Exchequer, we have to solve against a background of world surpluses and some home surpluses. These problems remain whatever the method of implementation of the guarantees. Fixed prices would be no solution; in fact, they would increase our difficulties by insulating the producer too much from consumer demand; but to produce cheaply and efficiently we must be able to plan ahead, and to do that we must have stability. I think that Part I of the Bill gives the farmer the necessary security to enable him to plan ahead. At an} rate, it gives him far greater security than he has ever had before. Certainly the forward guarantees under the 1947 Act were always utterly unrealistic, but the farmer at least knows ahead the worst that can possibly happen to him, and he can plan ahead realistically. He knows that there cannot be any disastrous fall in prices for the commodities he produces. Some latitude is essential in any scheme which deals with guarantees in the future, and these percentages have been agreed with the industry and I am sure that they are reasonably fair.
If we are going to produce efficiently and cheaply, the other thing which is required is new capital. I believe that Part II of the Bill can make a great contribution in this regard. We have to see, however, that these grants are used to the maximum effect, and a great responsibility will fall on the members of the Agricultural Land Service and the agricultural executive committees who have to administer these grants. I am sure that they will make certain that they apply the rigid test that grants will either lower the cost of production proportionately or increase returns in proportion to the amount spent. The noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, asked what the test would be. I suppose that in this scheme we have the test of the prudent landlord, who I am sure would not make an improvement unless it could be justified by some increase in the amount of the yield of a farm. I think that that, at the moment, is usually somewhere about 8 per cent.

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But there is a real difficulty, which the noble Viscount mentioned, and that is the case of the small farmer who in many cases may find great difficulty in borrowing the two-thirds of the cost. I know that the resources of the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation are available, but the small farmer, unlike the larger farmer, is, in many cases, though not in all, having a somewhat difficult time at the moment, because the three commodities on which he most relies—namely, milk, eggs and pigs—are the three commodities for which at the moment there is difficulty in finding a market. He has, of course, been helped considerably by such things as the fertiliser subsidy, which assist him to improve his grassland, and by production grants; but I feel that he is the person who is probably in the greatest need of new equipment if he is to cut his costs of production, and he is the one who will probably find the greatest difficulty in getting it. So far as the products on which he relies are concerned, I may say that although early in the year the consumption of liquid milk fell, it now seems to be improving; there is the new Egg Marketing Board; and under this Bill the Pig Industry Development Authority will be formed, which should help to put the pig market on a sounder basis and make it more profitable.
Others who will probably find difficulty are some of the tenant farmers, because until the question of rents, which at the moment are very low, is dealt with, it is going to be difficult in some cases to persuade the landlord that it is a good investment to put more money into a business which is now showing such a low return. I welcome, too, the provision for voluntary amalgamation of uneconomic holdings. I do not think anybody wants to encourage the persistence of a low standard of living on the land, and it is quite right that help should be given to amalgamate those holdings. What we want is for the good small farmer to be able to climb the ladder and become a good large farmer. I therefore welcome this Bill, which will, I think, help to improve the stability of the industry, give people confidence, and inject the necessary extra capital into the industry. I think the taxpayer will get good value, in that agriculture will become more self-supporting; the farmer will get good value; and the nation, which must rely
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on a prosperous agriculture, will get good value also. I have pleasure in supporting the Bill.
3.45 p.m.
LORD ARCHIBALD: My Lords, I am sorry that I have to strike perhaps the first discordant note in what has been until now a rather harmonious situation, but I cannot say that I welcome this Bill, and, with all the good will in the world, I can summon up no enthusiasm for it. I do not regard the Bill as being adequate to the needs of British agriculture at the present time. I want to relate my comments on the Bill to what I hope to show is the current state of agriculture in this country, and, first of all, I would read a short paragraph from a leading article in the Farmer and Stock-Breeder of June 11. I would comment that the Farmer and Stock Breeder is not a journal unfriendly to the Government, and this leading article was not written in ignorance of the fact that this Bill has already passed through another place and will shortly be on the Statute Book. It obviously does not and the Bill as encouraging as some noble Lords do, because it says:
"Nagging at every farmer's heart is the fear that one day he will not be able to meet his incessantly rising costs. That fear is deepening, for to-day he sees that while he has to pay inure for everything he buys, he gets less from most of the things he sells."
I find in my county that that is a widespread experience on the part of farmers and a widespread view of the future. What does this Bill do in relation to that situation of the farmer's fear of rising costs for what he buys and lower prices for what he sells? To my mind, the Bill gives only it negative approach to it.
Let me take the matter in some detail. Clause 1 (3) is, in my opinion, a retrograde step, in that it fixes the prices for the harvest for the year in which they are fixed, and not for the following year, as was formerly the case. That means that the farmer has sown his winter corn, and if he has not actually sown his spring corn, he is at the stage when his commitments are complete—he has his seeds and fertilisers ordered, if not already delivered—and, after he has made his investment in his winter corn and his spring corn, then, and only then, is he told what the guaranteed price is to be when it comes to harvest time. That, I should have thought, was going back on what had been

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the much better system that was in operation in the past. I know that, as has been emphasised, Clauses 2 and 3 limit the amount by which the guaranteed prices for individual commodities may be cut and the amount by which the total of guarantees and production grants may be cut; but, as I say, that is an entirely negative approach. It is not an approach which is encouraging to the farmer; it merely gives him a little measure of protection against the worst befalling him. It may be good Treasury policy, but it seems to be rank bad agricultural psychology, and to be discouraging rather than encouraging.
What does it say to the farmer? If he was in another industry, and he worked hard (as we know he does), and availed himself of the resources of modern research and applied them in his industry—if he applied new techniques, had time-and-motion studies and all the other things that combine to make up efficiency—he could expect to see his increased efficiency reflected in higher profits. But, being a farmer, if he does all these things which in another industry would give him higher profits, what he is faced with then is that his increased efficiency will be used as an offset against increased costs over which he has no control. I think it is a discouraging situation. May I put it in broader terms? We have been hearing a great deal, particularly in the last ten years, about the evil of inflation. Noble Lords will have noticed that more recently the economists have come round to the point of view that inflation is something that they can find no means of combating; something we have to accept as being always with us; and that the best that any Government can do is to limit it, to keep it under control, and prevent it from getting out of hand. In effect, what this Bill does is to make agriculture, as it were, an island of deflation in a steadily rising flood of inflation: and the farmer wonders how long it will be before the flood of inflation rises to drown him in his deflationary position.
We are told that this Bill is the embodiment of long-term assurances. We seem to have different ideas of what constitutes "long-term", because as the Minister has indicated, under Clause 8 he may, after 1960, by Order, vary the percentages. It is true that such variations will not come into force until 1962–63, but that is only five years from now, and I
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do not regard a five-year term as constituting a long-term assurance to agriculture which is, by its nature, an industry in which a much longer view must be taken. There is nothing to prevent the Minister by 1962–63 from making the amount by which individual commodity prices may be cut, or the total cut in production grants and guarantees, much greater than they are in the Bill which is now before us.
Before I turn to Part II of the Bill, which deals with the provision of some new capital for the industry, I should like to ask your Lordships to look with me for a moment at the capital position of British agriculture to-day, and at the return on capital in agriculture. I am indebted for some of the figures to a useful work by Messrs. Cheveley and Price on the capital position in British agriculture. On their estimate, farmland and buildings in the United Kingdom in 1953 had a capital value of £1,850 million, with tenants' capital another £1,600 million, or a total of £3,450 million—a vast sum indeed. The figure may well he higher to-day, because I think that certainly tenants' capital has gone up since 1953. In this year's Annual Review, net farm income is forecast for 1956–57 at £317 million. But, as is usual in that calculation, that is arrived at after charging rent and interest of £82 million. As I cannot break that figure down, I am going to assume that the £82 million is rent, and add it back to the £317 million in order to get the figure which represents the return on the whole capital, landlords' and tenants' capital together.
That would give us £399 million, which would not be so bad if it were really what it is described as in the Review—namely, net income. But, of course, it is not net income as I think any other industry would understand it, because in the first place it is arrived at before making any provision at all for the value of the actual labour of the farmer. Most of the farmers that I know put in a very heavy week's work, and I think it would be insulting to them to value their labour, both managerial and manual, at less than £10 a week or, say, £500 a year, which is less than they would earn in other spheres of life. For 350,000 farmers, that gives a figure of £175 million which ought to be deducted from the £399 million before we talk about any net income. We come

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down, therefore, to a figure of £224 million, approximately, of net income, which as a return on capital is equal to 6½ per cent.
But out of that 6½ per cent. there has to come income tax, interest on borrowed monies and finance for development. When my right honourable friend Tom Williams was Minister of Agriculture, he made an estimate, which I have no doubt was a Departmental estimate, that 6s. 9d. in the £ of net farm income was required year by year for normal farm financing. That would mean another £100 million, and out of the monies available it just cannot he done, which is one reason why our buildings are getting worse year by year. Another reason why that money cannot be found is that, as in most businesses, the net income is, of course, not all in cash; some £37½ million of it is in the form of an increase in the value of stocks and work in hand. I may say in passing that I have heard in many places talk about the art and mystery of farming. I submit that here I have found a mystery that goes far beyond it, and that is the mystery of why there should still be so many people trying to get into agriculture, paying prices for farms which keep the farm prices high, despite the fact that the evidence shows that they are buying into a very unprofitable business indeed.
That, to me, is the background against which we must look at Part II of the Bill which, in providing for £50 million in grant over ten years, is seeking to ensure that £150 million will be spent in improvements over that period. The first thing I have to say about that is that I think it is completely inadequate. The agricultural economists as a whole estimate the need for new capital expenditure in the industry at anything between £400 million and £1,000 million. Even taking the lower figure, £150 million in ten years can hardly be regarded as making a substantial drive to solve the problem. It looks pitifully inadequate if we compare it with the capital schemes which are envisaged, in some cases over a less period than ten years, for the other great industries in this country, bearing in mind that in terms of employment and output I think agriculture, is the greatest of them. For nuclear power £900 million is to be spent; for conventional rower stations I think the figure is £1,200 million; for coal, £1,000 million; for gas,
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£500 million; for railways £1,200 million; but for agriculture £150 million over ten years, which I think is not anything about which one can be very enthusiastic.
Not only do I think it is inadequate but I think that, as planned, there is a grave danger that the grants will, in some measure at least, go into the wrong hands. When the till was in another place the Minister was pressed very strongly to make the provisions of Part II retrospective in their operation. What was the reason for that pressure? It was urged that, unless he did that, work which ought to be proceeded with during this summer would be held up, the country builders would be in difficulty and the work would either have to wait until next summer or be done under the mere difficult building conditions of winter. What does that mean? It means that there were schedules of work prepared on farms for which the farmers had made provision to find the money and get on with the work this summer, and these schemes are going to be postponed so that they can get the 33⅓ per cent. grant. I am quite sure that there is not a farmer in your Lordships' House who does not in his own area know of cases where a farmer was going to spend, say, £1,500 on a new dutch barn this summer. He has put it back and he will apply under the grant; and, if he is successful, he will get his new dutch barn for £1,000, despite the fact that he was prepared, willing and able, to find the £1,500 himself.
As has already been said, that will be paralleled by the small men who cannot do the work because they themselves cannot borrow or find the two-thirds. The operation of these two factors seems to me to some extent to defeat the purpose of Part II Those who can afford to do the work will get the grant, and in many cases those who need it most will not be able to avail themselves of it. I suggest that in this situation some proof ought to be produced, not only that the work in itself will be valuable but that it could not proceed without a grant: in other words, to put it quite bluntly, that there should he something in the nature of a means test. We have a means test for university scholarships and many other things—it is no new factor in the application of public money. Why should it not be applied here? No one who is unprepared to undergo the test need apply for the

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grant. In fact, if I may borrow the words of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, on another occasion, it would be "No ledgers, no 'lolly'". Unless there is some sort of means test, then I am afraid we shall have the situation of—I will not say public money being misused, but certainly public money being misdirected.
I want to say only a brief word on Part III of the Bill because I have too often in the past taken up the time of your Lordships with the problems of the pig producers. I regret very much that the Government did not see fit to introduce into this Part of the Bill provision for a marketing board for all pigs, but I appreciate that that is a policy decision about which there is no need to argue further now. The second point is apparently a small one, but it is an important one to the pig producers. The Government are rushing up the standards rather faster than they are getting on with their own side of the job. In effect, the pig producer to-day is being asked to match standards of quality which took the Danes forty or fifty years of research to achieve, and we have not yet in effect started the research in this country.
The more I look at this Bill and study the state of agriculture in this country today, the more convinced I am that my noble friend Lord Listowel was right when in April of last year and on an earlier occasion he urged the Government to appoint a Royal Commission to look into the whole of the agricultural problems. It was then said that the operation of and the necessary time involved with a Royal Commission would create a state of uncertainty. If the Government really have faith in this Bill—their argument is that this Bill produces (though I do not accept it) a state of confidence—that would be a good background against which a Royal Commission might conduct its work.
To my mind, there are many things which need examination and rethinking. They may not all be affected by this Bill. Are ploughing-up grants still justified? Do fertiliser subsidies benefit the farmer as much as they benefit the manufacturers of the fertilisers? Is our agricultural research in anything like an adequate condition? Above all, can anyone say that an industry is in a healthy condition when it can neither pay an adequate wage to its
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workers nor provide an adequate return on the capital which is involved in it? As I said, I do not believe that this Bill meets the needs of agriculture. A Royal Commission would be the means of establishing what its needs are, and probably of suggesting the means of dealing with them. We might on that find common ground and be able to take agriculture and its problems out of the cockpit of Party politics.
4.8 p.m.
LORD FORBES: My Lords, I want to confine my remarks to Part II of this Bill and that part dealing with farm improvement grants. I do so because, being a farmer in the North-East of Scotland, I think I can speak from some experience on this matter, as we in the North-East probably have to house our cattle for a longer period during the year than do people in any other part of the country. Because of that, we have to pay particular attention to our buildings. It is therefore not surprising to find that the North of Scotland College of Agriculture and the farmers in that area have made what I would call a rather special study of farm buildings We all know by now that the majority of our farm buildings are hopelessly out of date. They were built at the time when farms were worked with horses and when labour was cheap. So to-day there is a very real need for this farm improvement grant—in fact, it is lone overdue. I would go so far as to say that to-day, with farming being so technical and scientific, the margin of profit left to the farmer is to a large extent dependent on the adequacy or otherwise of the farm buildings.
Before going any further I should like to make one observation. The reason why this grant has become necessary, is, in the main, due to two facts; first of all, on the landlord's side, rents have utterly failed to keep pace with rising costs, while many a mortal blow has been struck by death duties. Then, on the tenant's or owner-occupier's side, one finds that, even if the farmer is able to make a reasonable profit, it is extremely difficult for him to put aside anything for future farm improvements. Had this monstrous state of affairs never been allowed to raise its ugly head, I humbly submit that there would have been no need for this farm improvement

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grant to-day. However, as things stand now, there is no alternative, and I would give my wholehearted support to this grant for improving our farm buildings and fixed equipment.
Having said that, let me quickly qualify that statement by saying that I see insufficient evidence in this Bill to convince me that the £50 million put up by the Government is, of necessity, going to be spent for the good of the nation. The Government must ensure, first of all, that public money is not wasted; and secondly, they must ensure that the taxpayer, as well as the farmer, gets a good return for the money that is expended. Make no mistake: public money must not be spent just to enable the farmer to do to-morrow what he is doing to-day, but to do it with more ease and greater comfort. Instead, these grants must be used to lower the cost of production, to bring down the cost of food, and to bring an improvement in the cost of living. I am quite certain that, given the chance, our agricultural industry could play an enormous part by improving our balance of payments position.
There is another matter which must receive more attention. If the Government are going to spend £50 million, and the farmers a further £100 million, we must be satisfied that the right type of improvements are carried out, and that they will be really good improvements. I have stated previously in this House that not only the farmers but also the Advisory Services have much to learn about farm buildings and their construction. Most regrettably, this country is one of the few European countries dependent on agriculture without any farm buildings research Units. Due to this lack of knowledge in the past, a substantial amount of precious capital has been wasted on buildings that have not' proved their worth.
I suppose the most glaring example of this has been the so-called Danish piggery. To begin with, these modern piggeries received much praise, but later, when farmers began to cost their pigs, they found that the results were extremely poor. It was only comparatively recently that the reason for this result was discovered. It was found that the Danish piggery had been copied in practically every respect except two—ventilation and insulation, both extremely important in connection with pig-keeping.
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To substantiate what I have been saying, perhaps I might read just a few lines from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Bulletin No. 160, dated 1953, dealing with the housing of pigs. It says:
"There is indeed no easy answer to the general problem of housing the pig. It is only in comparatively recent years that its needs in this respect have been scientifically studied. Thus we are to some extent working in the dark when we try to provide suitable accommodation for it."
What an admission! Of course it is absolutely true, and I must congratulate the Ministry on not attempting to hide the unpalatable truth.
But surely the burning question is why, in 1957, the position regarding farm buildings is the same as it was in 1953. Why have we still no farm buildings research units? I have said before in this Chamber that it seems quite extraordinary that we have research into practically every aspect of farming except the very heart of the farm itself, the farm buildings. If we are to spend £150 million on improving our farm buildings, surely it would be prudent to spent at least the first million pounds on research work to find out exactly what we want. The total yearly sum spent on agricultural research is. I believe, about £9 million—that is for a yearly output of some £1,300 million. I believe that that sum could well be stepped up, especially when one finds that a firm like Imperial Chemical Industries are spending £9½ million on research for an output of some £411 million. From that, one can see that, by comparison, I.C.I. are spending three times as much on research work as is the agricultural industry; and I have little doubt that I.C.I. are obtaining value for their money. Owing to the great climatic difference between the North of Scotland and the South of England it is absolutely essential that we should have at least two farm buildings research units. Without research units our Advisory Services have not the technical data that they require to fall back on. This means that they have to learn mainly from their bitter mistakes, and it means also that the farmer has to suffer by these costly mistakes. I submit that this situation cannot be tolerated any longer, and I implore Her Majesty's Government to agree to the setting up of farm buildings research units.

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There are some other considerations that I should like to put before Her Majesty's Government in connection with the proposed grants for farm buildings improvements. I know that there are some who think that these grants should be used by the Government to encourage certain types of farming, while at the same time discouraging other types of farming by withholding the grant. In my view, this is utterly wrong; there should be no discrimination whatsoever. The present surpluses in farming are short-term. We hope that the improvements to buildings will be of longer duration. For instance, in my view there should be nothing to prevent the dairy farmer who intends modernising his holding from constructing a milking parlour, provided that he can prove that by so doing he will lower his cost of production. I also believe that priority of acceptance might be given to any scheme designed to further the use of home grown feeding-stuffs. This would materially help our balance of payments position.
There is another point. In the past, our picturesque farmhouses have dominated the rural scene. Now these delightful little farmhouses will tend to become dwarfed by massive farm buildings. Large these buildings must be, so as to house modern machinery and to work like factories, but are we right to spoil our cherished countryside for future generations by large ugly buildings of concrete and suchlike? I raise this matter in the full knowledge that to do anything will cost money, but once the countryside is spoilt, what then? A few years of un-thoughtful building may mean blots on the landscape for many years to come. Our countryside is our heritage, and that being so, I believe that it is up to Her Majesty's Government to give serious consideration to this matter if future generations are still to sing and talk about "England's green and pleasant land" and "Bonnie Scotland."
At a time when we are constantly being reminded that Government and personal spending must be kept down, Her Majesty's Government have taken a bold and imaginative step in introducing this grant for farm buildings, because, now that world supplies of cheap food are on the increase, this injection of capital into British farming comes at the right
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moment. We must ensure, however, that those who are to administer this grant keep their eye on one object: that the grants should go to the farmer who is prepared to lower his cost of production by carrying out the right type of improvements to his buildings. Then, and then only, will the housewife rightfully be able to go about singing, "Oh, what a beautiful morning, everything's going my way," because, at last, food will cost her less. The stage will then be set for a reduction in the cost of living. Then, too, agricultural products selling overseas will become highly competitive and will give a shove in the right direction to our balance of payments problem. Finally, I have little doubt that, given the chance, our agricultural industry will prove itself better fitted than any other industry to play a captain's innings by leading us towards that real prosperity which we have heard so much about, but which always seems to be just over the next horizon. My Lords, I wish to support this Bill.
4.25 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I do not propose to take up much of your Lordships' time this afternoon because most of the subject matter of this Bill has been discussed several times before in your Lordships' House. I feel, however, that this is an opportunity to make one or two observations. This Bill has been virtually universally acclaimed as being a great step forward for agriculture, and it has given confidence to agriculture, which I feel is a great thing. There are two points in connection with this Bill that I feel are most important. The first is the fact that although now the price of any individual commodity cannot drop by more than 4 per cent. in any one year, the total guarantee cannot drop by more than 2½ per cent. To my mind, it is a very courageous step for any Government to give that undertaking at a time when the world price of food is relatively low and the quantity of food is relatively abundant.
I should like to add, however, that I noticed that, before setting off from Ottawa, the new Canadian Prime Minister said he had a whole quantity of wheat of which he wished to dispose, and that he anticipated that at the end of this harvest there would be a lot more. I trust that Her Majesty's Government will not find themselves the recipients of

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a large quantity of cheap wheat, because I believe that that not only would depress the market but would be a bad thing, most of all for the taxpayer. The second most important item in this Bill is the provision for long-term improvements and the fact that Her Majesty's Government are prepared to contribute 33⅓per cent. of the cost of any substantial improvements to buildings. To my mind—and this I wish to stress—that is by far the best way of spending the taxpayer's money, for the simple reason that the money is paid by the Government in one year but the effect is felt for the next five, ten or even fifteen years. In my opinion, that is far better than paying out annually for deficiency payments on various commodities, and therefore I should like most heartily to associate myself with the remarks made by noble Lords in favour of the long-term improvements provisions.
I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Archibald, extremely interesting, but I am afraid that not being an economist, I found myself a little at a loss when he was adding and substracting his hundreds of millions and putting them into percentages. I do feel, however, that what he said is to a very large extent true. If I understood him rightly, he said that the farmers, although they have spent time and money in order to lower their costs of production, have, in fact, been receiving less for their products and getting a lower profit than would have been the case had they been in industry. I believe that is perfectly true, but that is why I have felt some measure of pride in having been associated with the farming industry, for I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that the farming industry is the only industry that is prepared—whether by its own intentions or by the intentions of the Government, forced upon it—not to press inflation.
I presume that if the noble Lord, Lord Archibald, had had what he wanted, the £150 million which has been absorbed by the agricultural industry, over, I believe, the last five years, would have been recouped to the industry in the form of larger Review grants. That, surely, is nothing but pressing inflation, because that £150 million would have to come out of the taxpayer. Whilst I
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sympathise with a great deal of what the noble Lord said, I do not see that he provided any alternative whatever to the system now in force.
As I have said, I feel glad to be associated with an industry which is not perpetually thinking solely and entirely of its own prosperity. There is one continuous cry, with which I must say I feel in sympathy—that is, that the small farmer is in a situation in which he finds it difficult to borrow money. I think it probable that there is hardly a farmer in these islands to-day who is not farming with someone else's money, and the facilities for finding credit are of great importance, especially to the small man. I understand that Her Majesty's Government have been having consultations with the National Farmers' Union with regard to the possibility of providing some form of cheap credit, particularly for the small farmer. I should like to ask the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, whether he would be good enough to state in his reply how far these consultations have gone, whether they are nearing completion; and, if so, whether the result is likely to be favourable to the small farmer.
Another point upon which I should like clarification from the noble Earl relates to Part III of the Bill. This, as your Lordships know, deals with the development of the pig industry and, in particular, with the establishment of a Pig Industry Development Authority. I am afraid that I am a little at a loss to understand from the Bill precisely what the Pig Industry Development Authority is to do and how it is to do it. I should be very glad if the noble Earl would give us some information as to how this authority is going to work. Clause 23 says:
"…there shall be constituted a body to be called the Pig Industry Development Authority."
And it is explained that this is to be done:
"with a view to improving efficiency in the production, marketing and distribution of pigs and the production, processing, manufacture, marketing and distribution of pig products, and improving the quality of pigs and pig products."
It seems to me that the Authority is told to do just about everything other than consume pigs and pig products.

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What I do not understand is how this body is going to work. On what kind of footing is the Authority going to be? Whereas it is told to improve efficiency in the production, marketing and distribution of pigs, we find it stated in subsection (3) of the same clause that:
"Nothing in this section or any order there-under shall be construed as authorising the Authority to engage in the business of buying or selling pigs or pig products…".
At the same time, the Pig Development Board, and the Bacon and Pig Marketing Boards are all dissolved. Who is to have the responsibility of marketing pigs? The Pig Development Authority is apparently not to be allowed to indulge in it. What I assume is to be the case is that this Authority is to be virtually a research unit. If that is so, to whom will it give its information? Having carried out its research and made its findings, is it going to have any authority to put those findings into practice? Or is it just going to issue a journal saying, in effect, "This is what we have found," and leave it to the manufacturers or the bacon curers to put the findings into practice?
Is the Authority, for instance, to be allowed to advertise, or is it prevented from doing so by the rather curious sentence at the end of subsection (3), which says that the Authority is not to be allowed—here I quote and I ask your Lordships to note these words for they are rather remarkable:
"to undertake or promote the establishment of arrangements for marketing pigs or pig products"
Will the noble Earl be good enough to tell me what that passage means? I do not see what it means. I can only assume that it bears a slight relation to that remarkable statement, which was made several years ago, to the effect that "This war, like the next war, is a war to end all other wars". I should be grateful to know what the last sentence in that subsection means. If the Authority is not to be allowed to advertise pigs, bacon or pork who is? Frankly, while I find this Bill of great value, I find Part III confusing. I am sure that there is an admirable reason for it, and that an admirable explanation can be given. I shall be grateful if the noble Earl will give me some form of illumination upon the passage which I have just mentioned.
4.37 p.m.
LORD WISE: My Lords, I do not want to follow the noble Earl who has just sat down into discussions of pig troubles; I will leave those to the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, to deal with when he replies. For that reason, I do not propose to ask the noble Earl many further questions which might embarrass him—though, of course, that one will probably not do so. This is a very small Bill, and, as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, has just said, during the last few months we in your Lordships' House have discussed the agricultural policy of the Government very fully. But although it is small, the Bill certainly deserves attention. In my view it is not a very good Bill nor is it a conclusive Bill. But I hope, and indeed I expect, that we are not to look upon it as the last word in long-term policy as regards agriculture so far as the Government is concerned. As I say, the Bill deserves the attention of us all. It had a long innings in another place. It was well considered and discussed, and in one or two places it was amended by the Minister. We, on this side, hope to establish further Amendments to improve the Bill. For that reason, I hope that when we come to the Committee stage we shall have a satisfactory response by the Government to our representations.
My noble Leader has spoken about commodities as they are affected by Part I of the Bill. He said that, so far as he was concerned, he thought that there was no stability at all in the Bill. And it is in this connection that I find difficulty. On many occasions I have spoken to your Lordships on the subject of marketing. I may be wrong in my views with regard to marketing, but I think that I am right, because the marketing system (which is not at all improved by this Bill) is still chaotic. It certainly requires some amendment. In a moment I shall come to a reference in the Bill which I hope may be taken as favourable in relation to what may happen in the future, but first I would say this. During the last few weeks it has been my fortune to attend one or two markets. Whatever my views were previously on the present system of marketing in this country, they were endorsed by what I saw in those markets.
I am going to ask noble Lords opposite who are in the agricultural industry if they have ever stood in a British cattle

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market, as I am sure they have often done, and watched pigs and cattle being sold, and seen one dealer nudge another and the second dealer not hid, or animals being "knocked done" (the expression will be known to noble Lords opposite) at the first bid. That is absolute lunacy, and this Bill does not remedy that in any shape or form. Agriculture is the victim of the Government "free-for-all". We on this side of the House hope that in the future we shall be able to establish a far better system of marketing, as we did on a previous occasion.
I have referred previously to the question of deficiency payments and I want to refer to it again. How can any Government favour a system whereby home produced wheat is sold to merchants at 19s. a cwt. and the British taxpayer is forced to pay, in addition to that amount, another 9s. a cwt.? That is more or less what the deficiency payment was during the last period and no doubt the same will apply in the present period. Cannot the Government, by some kind of stabilising action, raise the price of wheat to British farmers so that fair payment for our cereal crops is thrown upon the millers and merchants rather than upon the taxpayer by way of deficiency payments? The system as it prevails at the moment seems io me to be radically wrong.
I see that wheat and barley of next year's crop will be at a higher price. I am informed that although the price of barley has been fixed by the Government, the forward buying price at the present time is 70s. a quarter, which, as noble Lords will know, is nothing near the price obtained for barley at the beginning of the last selling year. The Government state the standard price, but the price paid to the British farmer is fixed by the agents of the brewers and merchants who gather together and decide what the price shall be. I hope that a better system of marketing is envisaged for the future. That hope is increased by the fact that under Clause 1 (2) (c) of the Bill an order may provide
"…for the purchase by or on behalf of the Minister…of any of the produce tendered by the producers,…"
To my mind, that raises the hope for the future that there will be direct purchase of our products by the Minister. The noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn shakes his head, but I ant hoping that if this Bill
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lives long enough, another Government may operate that clause in the Bill in that direction, and I am certain that if we do that, it will be all to the advantage of British farming.
My noble friends who have spoken on this side of the House have brought to bear their great experience in agriculture and in legislation, and I want only to touch on one or two other points upon which the Minister may be able to give me further information, either at this stage or on Committee. Before I deal with Part II of the Bill, perhaps I had better refer to another paint I wish to make with regard to Part I. There are repeated references throughout the Bill to decreases in prices and guarantees. There is one reference where perhaps the noble Earl may be able to tell me what is actually in the minds of the Government. Under Clause 2 (6), the Minister has no power to reduce amounts payable under various sections of the Bill unless
"(a) the reduction is made in pursuance of the conclusions of the Ministers from the annual review last held before the commencement of that period;"—
that is not the point I want to raise, but the one which follows—or
"(b) the Ministers are satisfied, in consequence of a special review, that the reduction is expedient in the public interest."
I should like to know what is the Government's interpretation of these words. If it is "expedient in the public interest," there may be a decrease, yet there is no provision in the Bill for an increase, if that is expedient in the public interest, as it might possibly be if the prices of agricultural products got so very low that it became necessary to increase them.
I come to Part II of the Bill, which deals with grants for improvements and amalgamations. In Clause 12 (2) there is a reference to
"any person intending to acquire such an interest if the improvement is approved."
Clause 13 (4) says:
"The grant shall be payable to the person or persons by whom or on whose behalf the work required for making the improvement is done…"
Do I understand that the Government are prepared to make the grant to somebody who anticipates purchasing a farm or land, or to pay the solicitors' costs and other costs of such a person? Surely, this Bill is intended only for the actual

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owners or tenants of agricultural property, and cannot be intended to cover somebody who may acquire the interest in the property, carry out the work, and then possibly sell it. Is there any safeguard in the Bill for the stopping of the sale of property when an improvement grant has been paid? Or is there any likelihood of any provision whereby part of the improvement grant can be repaid to the Government over a period of years if the property changes hands by reason of that particular grant?
Clause 16 refers to amalgamations. I was glad to hear from the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, that there would be no compulsory amalgamations. I am entirely against amalgamations, particularly where they are likely to affect small farmers, although I observed that the noble Lord, Lord Amherst of Hackney, who also comes from Norfolk, takes the reverse view. In Norfolk at the present time we have nearly 400 applications for smallholdings; and throughout the country there are at present on the books of the county councils no fewer than 8,710 applications for smallholdings. If we are going to amalgamate holdings and increase the area of holdings, we shall make it much more difficult for those requiring smallholdings to obtain them. Therefore, I hope that there will not be many of these amalgamations.
I cannot conceive how the Government can bring into an Act of Parliament that they are prepared to pay part of the costs—solicitors' costs, surveyors' costs, stamp duty and the rest—of the amalgamation of agricultural holdings. Surely if we do that in regard to agriculture, we are opening the door wide to other people who make amalgamations to request the Government to pay part of their costs. I suggest that those people in London who operate in the take-over of various businesses and concerns incur heavy legal costs and the rest, and if we do this in regard to one industry, surely other industries may come to the Government and say that they are entitled to the same consideration. I am all in favour of helping the agricultural industry, but so far as this clause is concerned I must look upon it with perhaps different eyes from those with which I look at agriculture generally. And I must disagree with the Government if by this clause they
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are prepared to pay part of the legal and other costs in regard to amalgamations.
The noble Earl referred to the fact that, so far as grants are concerned, this Bill had reference only to equipped farm units. I am hoping that in Committee we may be able to persuade the Government to broaden Clause 12 (3), which says that the Minister
"shall not approve any improvement unless he is satisfied—
(a) that the land for the benefit of which the improvement is proposed is agricultural land occupied together with buildings…".
I can envisage that there may be many areas of land which could be put to far better use than they are at the present time if they had buildings, or the like, on them. Therefore, I think it is too narrow to limit the grants only to those farm units which already have buildings.
For instance, if your Lordships look at the Second Schedule you find that improvements which are eligible for grants relate not only to properly equipped units, but also to units which are land only. The first is:
"Erection…of permanent farm buildings (other than dwelling houses)…"
If you want an economic farm unit, but have no buildings, surely, you have to erect buildings; but under this Bill the man who erects those buildings will not benefit at all. You may get an area of land that you want to develop for farm purposes; and you may make an improvement on roads, or on the
"provision of pens and other fixed equipment for use in connection with sheltering, gathering, marketing, dipping, spraying…"
and the rest of the treatment and feeding of cattle. To my mind, that obviously refers to land which at the moment, for the purposes of grazing or for other purposes, may be bare agricultural land. When we come to discuss the Bill further, if we can put a reasonable case from this side of the House for doing it I think it would be advisable for the Bill to be widened in that respect, so that it is not confined merely to farm units which are already in existence. I hope that the Government may be right (I use the word "may," because I heard my noble Leader discuss the words "may" and "shall" earlier on) in their thoughts that this Bill will inspire confidence in the agricultural industry, but I will con, elude by saying that I seriously doubt it.
4.59 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONSDALE: My Lords, unlike the last speaker, who thinks that this is a small Bill. I regard it as the most important agricultural measure that has been produced since the Agriculture Act, 1947. It is, in fact, as important as that Act. It is a Bill that one would have thought would have generated a great deal of feeling if it were not basically a sound Bill. In the country, by and large, it has had a general measure of approval and no condemnation to speak of. It has, of course, had its fair measure of criticism, but most of that criticism has been directed not so much to the principles behind the Bill as to the extent to which it goes, in that it does not, perhaps, go quite far enough. It is considered that the possible percentage reductions allowed for in Part I are too large; that the £50 million allocated to the farm improvements scheme in Part II is not enough, and that in Part III there are no proposals for the continuation of the Pig Marketing Board, or something similar.
The Agriculture Act, 1947, assured a reasonable standard of living by a general guarantee of prices, which was to be reviewed year by year for those involved in the industry. It also gave much greater security of tenure, which was necessary if the industry was to become stable. As a quid pro quo, increasing efficiency and good husbandry were called for from the industry. In the ten years since the 1947 Act was passed, less and less use has been made of the good husbandry provisions—to my mind, regrettably so. There is still too much land little or improperly used in the country, when there is such a demand for farms by energetic, young, modern-trained people.
During the ten years since the passing of the 1947 Act, there has also developed a general awareness that the provisions of the Act give only a general assurance that the Government in power will not drastically reduce prices to a hopelessly uneconomic level. That gave rise to a fear that economic conditions might change with Governments. Part I of this Bill allays once and for all that fear, in that it fixes percentages for the maximum reductions in prices in any one year—4 per cent. for any one commodity and 9 per cent. over three years for livestock
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products. Naturally, the agricultural industry does not want any reductions at all. It wants is increasing efficiency rewarded somewhat. However, the Bill is a general move in the right direction, putting on to the Statue Book, in effect, the general assurances contained in the 1947 Act that prices will be maintained so as to give those involved in the industry a reasonable standard of living.
It is disappointing that Part I makes no concrete provision to deal with the recurrent problem of surpluses, which agriculture always has had, and, presumably, always will have. At the moment, milk is causing the most anxious thinking. Milk is one of the basic products of the industry, the others being arable land and meat farming. There is too much milk for the present demand, though sales and advertising, which many people talked about, should help to some degree. I believe, however—and I hope I am not an alarmist—that the output of milk will continue to increase in the future. Milk production, by and large, is the mainstay of the small family farmer—in fact, I believe that half of all the liquid milk produced comes from small family farms. They cannot change to alternative production, even if they desire to do so, often because of the size of their farm, bat more usually because they have not the liquid assets to accept biannual or annual cheques for their products, instead of a monthly cheque.
A small price drop, as can occur under Part I, and the farm improvement grants in Part II—which, after all, it will be impossible or undesirable to deny to milk producers if they are at the moment reasonably economic and likely to continue to be so—will, to my mind, encourage output to increase. Small farmers, when they see that it is not so profitable to produce milk and find that they have not such a big monthly milk cheque, will go and buy another cow to get the milk cheque up. And that is bound to result in more surplus milk unless there is an undesirable enormous price reduction. It is the size of the farms, and the limited extent of their resources, that will prevent so many farmers from changing from milk production. The time will come, to my mind, when the Milk Marketing Board must have powers to limit the production from individual farms by initiating a quota

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scheme. But we shall see what happens. I hope that milk production will not increase further, and that the general public will drink more milk.
Part of course, is the real "meat" of this Bill. The sum of £50 million to £55 million is to be provided towards rehabilitating the dilapidated and inadequate fixed assets. The economists have said that at least £350 million was required; and one noble Lord opposite who spoke put it at £400 million to £1,000 million. Some economists have said that if £350 million were spent in the industry in capial improvements in the next ten years, the industry might well be able to stand on its own feet without subsidy support at all. This Bill, with its £50 million, and the Livestock Rearing and Hill Farming Acts, will go a long way to providing this £350 million which has been estimated as being required to make agriculture free of subsidy. The improvement scheme deals exclusively with land improvements, land reclamation, farm buildings, buildings for stock and implements, and crops, et cetera. It does not touch the problem of housing and cottages at all. To my mind, good housing is more important even than adequate or good buildings. Good housing will attract the best and most skilful type of man, and will hold the hardworking and skilled man on the land. Especially is it high time that these beautiful rose-covered cottages had the fungus removed from behind the roses and had bathrooms and lavatories put in.
The Second Schedule to the Bill provides for grants for sewerage, but not for farm houses. It provides grants for the supply of electricity to farms, but not to farm houses or cottages. I appreciate that under various Housing Acts grants are available for this sort of work, for reconstruction and modernisation of farm houses and cottages, up to £400 maximum. But the total reconstruction of even a moderate-sized farm cottage can cost anything up to £2,000 or more, so that £400 represents only 20 per cent. Apart from that, it is difficult in many cases to obtain a grant. Some local authorities do not give grants for agricultural housing. New building of houses and cottages is treated rather differently. No initial grant is given when the building is built, but a repayment of £10 per annum for forty years is made. In effect,
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it does not help to finance the original building of the new cottage or farm house. Yet, side by side, we have the Livestock Rearing Act scheme, under which 50 per cent. grants are available for reconstruction of houses and cottages, and the building of new houses and cottages. The Second Schedule includes grants, if not for reconstruction (perhaps that was considered to be going too far), if not for new farm houses (perhaps that was considered unnecessary), at least for new cottages, for workpeople, so as to get and hold better and more skilled men on the land.
Lastly, on Part II, I should like to make some mention of the cost of administering the scheme. It has been stated in another place that the cost of administering the farm improvement scheme is expected to be of the order of 8 per cent.; or up to £400,000 a year if grants of £5 million a year are to be distributed. This seems to me unnecessarily high. It may be due in part to the whole process, whereby receipts for all work done have to be collected, inspected, summarised, audited and all the rest of it. I hope, therefore, that the standard cost system will be used as extensively as possible, even to the extent of adaptations and alterations. Ministry staff with adequate architectural know-ledge are available to give advice on levels and to put a cost figure on work, even of adaptation and alteration, and that can go a long way to cut down the administrative cost of the ultimate checking of receipts, et cetera.
The standard cost system should, and would, take into account the use of the farmer's own labour. At present, particularly on small family farms, on any land improvement or reclamation work the farmer himself often does much of the work, and he cannot claim a grant for the work that he himself does, often in the evening after a long day at his normal farm work. I appreciate that the Treasury cannot, perhaps, accept accounts for a man's own labour, because it could lead to abuses, but, if this standard cost scheme could be made as widespread as possible, in the same way as the silo scheme, which is worked totally on standard cost and is operating very successfully, that should go a long way to take account of the farmer's own labour and keep the administrative costs down. It would be interesting to

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know in this respect how the cost of this scheme is expected to compare with similar livestock rearing and marginal land schemes which were worked in the same way and which have been in operation for some considerable time.
Part III charges the pig producers to set their house in order and to turn out, at long last, a standard product. I myself keep pigs, along with many other forms of livestock. I know there is an enormous variety of pigs passing through the markets. It defeats me how the markets can cope with the immense variety in shape and size that is given to them. I hope that, as a result of the operation of Part III, the day will not be far distant when the pig producers will at last match up to, if not excel, the standards of the best pig producers. Finally, I want wholeheartedly to support this Bill as a reinforcement of the 1947 Act, as a genuine step forward in increasing the efficiency of our agricultural industry, and as genuine progress towards the day when this once pre-war depressed industry will he able to stand entirely on its own feet.
5.15 p.m.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, nearly everything that could have been said for and against this Agriculture Bill in this House has already been said. I therefore find myself in some dilemma as to how to avoid boring the House with repetition. I am sure that most of your Lordships, with perhaps the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Archibald, will agree that on the whole this is a sound Bill and, in fact, that the agricultural policy of Her Majesty's Government since the Agriculture Act, 1947, has been highly beneficial to agriculture. Several noble Lords have shown concern over the fact that milk, eggs and pig-meat are shown at a disadvantage in the price guarantees for 1957; but surely we should study the price guarantees in relation to the benefit to be derived by the agricultural industry as a whole and, therefore, by the nation. I agree it may be disappointing to those who have dairy cows, pigs or poultry—I myself am among the throng. But if the nation has a surplus of milk, eggs and pig-meat, it would be entirely incorrect for the Government to encourage an even greater surplus by giving increased guarantees for these products.
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The same, of course, applies to the decreased guarantee on wheat. There is a vast surplus of wheat in the world, and not only in the hard currency areas. It is, therefore, surely pointless to encourage the growing of this crop, especially in areas where the land can so much better grow oats and fodder crops generally, than it can wheat. Our temperate climate is particularly suited to grasses and clovers, and we should make the best use of it to do exactly as the Government desire to do in the production of beef and mutton. I understand that we produce about three-quarters of our mutton in this country, but we could, I believe, produce all of it. Many farmers are scared of keeping sheep owing to the problem of finding shepherds to-day, because shepherds are rather a dying race. It is not, however, necessary to-day to have a skilled shepherd if you intend keeping two or three hundred sheep, because with all the excellent types of movable fencing, improved sheep dips, dipping machines and all the other gadgets that there are on the market, the labour of keeping sheep is much reduced.
There are in England large areas of downland which used to support flocks where now a sheep is a rarity. Lambourn Downs in Berkshire is one of those areas. Surely, instead of giving the ploughing-up of grasslands subsidy to such areas of light soil, would it not be more practicable to give a small subsidy for sheep re-introduced to such land, for a period of three years after their introduction? I feel sure that some slight encouragement, if combined with publicity to explain that shepherding is not some ancient and mysterious art handed down from father to son, would bring in many newcomers to sheep farming.
When we come to the question of increasing our beef production the problem is not so easy, but it is more urgent. We produce in this country one-third of our beef; but the trouble is that the exportable surplus of beef from beef-producing countries throughout the world is slowly but surely drying up. The time is not far distant when, owing to their growing populations, these countries will have to consume all their beef. The grants under this Bill for farm improvements will, of course, help the production of beef over a long period, but the question is, how to step up production in the meantime. I

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believe it has been calculated that if 3¼ million acres of our upland and marginal lands could he improved to support 39 instead of 25 mature beasts per 100 acres, we could dispense with one-third of our imports of beef.
Apart from the grant for farm improvements which, as I say, will help over a certain number of years, could not the Government devise some scheme for transporting in the summer months the cattle from the lowland areas to the upland grazing areas where thousands of acres of hill grass are virtually left ungrazed? I myself have extensive hill grazings, and owing to the problem of winter keep I can graze those grazings only in the summer, with about one-tenth of the stock that they would otherwise hold. The average area of arable ground of these hill farms, especially in the Western Highlands, is sometimes as low as 1 per cent. It is quite impossible to provide the necessary winter keep to keep the number of cattle on the land in the summer. This scheme will enable the lowland farmers to use more of their ground in the summer for growing hay and other crops, and will therefore indirectly help to increase the stock of cattle by providing further winter keep.
My Lords, before I sit down I should like to point out, with reference to these improvement grants, that, as the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, said, it will not be easy, especially for some small farmers and landlords on the poorer land, to find the two-thirds of the capital for these improvements. I wonder whether it would not be possible for the Government in certain cases to lend a portion of the farmer's two-thirds share, interest free, to be repaid over a period of years out of the increased productivity of the farm. I am extremely glad to see that under Clause 12 in Part II of the Bill, the Government are not going to pass improvements for grants unless the benefit to be derived justifies the capital cost. It is so easy to pour money into elaborate improvements, on marginal land especially, without any adequate return resulting.
The noble Lord, Lord Archibald, appeared to be disappointed that the Government were going to spend only £150 million on agriculture in the next few years. He compared that capital expenditure with the capital being used
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in providing nuclear power stations. I personally cannot see how you can compare nuclear power stations and the capital required for those stations with agriculture. Nuclear power stations are virtually a new invention and a completely new industry. Agriculture has been going in this country for a thousand years, and it has great capital resources of its own in its buildings and equipment, whereas atomic energy stations have none and have to be helped. There is one question on which I am not quite clear. How are the grants for amalgamations to come about? The human element would appear to be the stumbling block here, for although we are told, "Love thy neighbour as thyself," we very seldom do so.
I can only hope that the help now given to agricultural capital development by Her Majesty's Government will manage to slow down the drift of farm workers from the land. This exodus, which I believe averages about 18,000 to 19,000 each year in the United Kingdom, has so far, owing to the great advances made in machinery, not decreased agricultural production; but if the exodus continues it is bound to affect agricultural production. Perhaps the whole answer does not lie in better amenities and wages, although of course those factors will always help. It may well be that many young people born on the land to-day prefer the comparative comfort and protection from the elements to be had in urban life to the more vigorous life in agriculture; but if this is so the problem appears insoluble. To conclude, I consider that in introducing these capital grants Her Majesty's Government have done the greatest service to agriculture since the passing of the Agriculture Act, 1947. It is now up to the landowners and farmers to make intelligent use of this assistance. I fully support the Bill.
5.33 p.m.
THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: My Lords, in his opening remarks the noble Lord, Lord Wise, referred to this Bill as a small and not very important one, but he went on to discuss the Bill in a way that struck me as suggesting that he thought it was important. I regret that the noble Lord is not in his place at the moment—perhaps I should have warned him that I was going to mention his speech. Though the Bill may

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be a small one, it is, I believe, a very important one; and for that reason I, too, welcome it. We are coming to the end of a debate which has been important and useful, and because I do not want to keep your Lordships long I will make only one or two points. With regard to Clause 8, it is interesting to note that the Minister cannot now change the percentages under Clauses 2 and 3 until after the Price Review of 1960. I am sure that this will be encouraging to farmers, and I was somewhat surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Archibald, should criticise this. I could not possibly agree with him.
In my speech on January 30 last, when your Lordships were approving this general policy in the White Paper, I referred to the availability of grants under the farm improvements scheme. I said [OFFICAL REPORT, Vol. 201 (No. 26), col. 309]:
"I think we can understand that it is difficult to make those grants more retrospective than they are likely to be."
Since then, my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture has done me the honour to appoint me a member of the Buckinghamshire County Executive Committee and at my first meeting a point was raised on one of the papers received for discussion, which I should like to raise here. May I quote from the important note under Appendix B of what is officially known as Preliminary Instruction to the Agricultural Land Service, 1st May—1st September, 1957, but which one might call their "bible". It says:
"This leaflet outlines the Ministry's arrangements, and explains how to apply, for inspecting proposals beforehand in order to speed up consideration of applications if and when the necessary authority is given by Parliament—probably ham 1st September, 1957. If you have your proposals ready and would like them examined beforehand without commitment, read this leaflet and send in the application form. As there will be many urgent applications, please do not do this unless you expect to complete the work before 31st March, 1958. You must remember that you will not be able to start work without the Minister's formal written approval which cannot be given before the Scheme comes into operation, probably on 1st September, 1957."
My Executive Committee were very exercised about this date—March 31. They fell that from September 1, or even from now, to March 31 is a very short
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time to elapse between an application and completion of work, especially for farm buildings. I have here a pamphlet with which I will not weary your Lordships. It was issued by the Joint Consultative Committee of Architects, Quantity Surveyors and Builders and is called, Plan Before you Build. I believe that many noble Lords will agree with what is said in the opening remarks in that pamphlet, that:
"Failure to plan building jobs completely before work starts delays the completion of contracts and involves heavy additional costs."
Under the Farm Improvement Scheme, we cannot start planning seriously until it is known whether the Scheme is likely to be approved. The noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, referred to the small man, and several other noble Lords have also referred to him in different ways. Apparently the small man has only six months between putting in his application and the completion of the work; otherwise it has to be put off. The farm building industry is likely to be fully occupied, and I would ask that the Minister has this instruction looked at again in regard to that particular point.
One or two noble Lords have referred to Clause 16 (2). While I welcome this, in view of the grants towards cost of amalgamation, it is not clear, as the last speaker also mentioned, just how one can work this amalgamation in view of the fact that one cannot get a farm tenant out. In his opening speech, the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, referred to these amalgamations as "voluntary". I should be grateful if, in his reply, he could tell us whether such amalgamations have to be entirely voluntary and whether the 1947 Act will still apply in regard to getting tenants out. Finally, I would just refer to the Second Schedule and bring out a point which I am afraid I have brought up before—it concerns grain stores and grain dryers. Do these come under this Schedule? I raised the matter of grain stores in my speech in January. I did not mention grain dryers, but the Minister, I believe, did refer to them in his reply. Can we have the matter clarified? Can it be stated whether or not, in certain circumstances or in certain parts, these grain dryers and grain stores will come under the Second Schedule and be available for grants? I beg to support the Bill.
5.40 p.m.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, we have had a most interesting debate this afternoon, and I think that the Bill has received a very reasonable measure of support. I do not say that it has not been criticised here and there, but we rather expected certain criticisms from certain quarters. A large number of your Lordships have asked me a large number of questions, and I will deal with as many of them as I can. The noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, was the first to put a series of questions to me. He raised the question of application for grants, and asked if applicants were getting the two-thirds without too much trouble. I can only tell him what has happened up to now under the Scheme, which, admittedly, is in the early stages and not in its final form. At the moment, only one in twenty is asking for any form of loan, and every applicant is being asked if he wants a loan from the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation or the Land Improvement Company. That means that either farmers are providing the money themselves or they are getting it without trouble from other sources.
LORD WISE: May I just ask the noble Earl if he can say whether the applications, generally speaking, are large or small?
EARL ST. ALDWYN: I am afraid that I have not the figures broken down at the moment. As I understand, they are fairly well distributed. There are a certain number of large ones and a certain proportion of small ones from owner-occupiers. But I cannot give the noble Lord the proportions.
The noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, also asked whether grants would be available where existing buildings continued to be used for existing purposes and the object was to improve working facilities, cut down labour costs and generally to assist in the production of the same article. The answer is definitely, Yes. Any alteration to a building which will increase the efficiency of the holding will be eligible for grant. The noble Viscount also asked me how we should judge a reasonable return. The improvement, I think, will have to show an increase in the rental value and will also have to add materially to the occupier's earning power. I am not suggesting that that principle can be broken
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down into fixed rules. But it has been used very successfully in the Livestock Rearing Scheme, and the officials of the Agricultural Land Service have familiarised themselves with it and have succeeded in working it very well under that Scheme. I hope that the Advisory Committee of which I have the honour to be chairman will be dealing with this, as a particular item, in due course and will be giving advice on it.
The noble Viscount also raised questions about amalgamation. Really, the answer to him on that matter, I think, is that any reasonable proposal will be considered if it will serve to create an economic holding out of an uneconomic one, and if the land affected by it will be increased in value and productivity as a result of the amalgamation. With regard to the detailed working out of Clause 16, I am afraid that my Committee has not quite reached that yet, but we shall be getting to it at our next meeting. In the circumstances, I am afraid that I cannot at the moment enlarge on the details. But I can assure the noble Viscount that that will be very carefully considered at our next meeting.
The noble Viscount also asked me about oats. He wanted to know whether there was going to be a deficiency payment this year. I am sure that he appreciates that the cereal year does not finish until the 30th of this month. Until we have been able to collect all the figures and average out the prices for the cereal year we shall not be able to say categorically whether there will be a deficiency payment or whether there will not. But I can say that it appears likely that there will be. Upon its magnitude I should not like to speculate, but, frankly, I do not anticipate that it will be very large.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, would the noble Earl undertake to ask the Government to have another look at the method which is followed? The experience of some parts of the country in the production of oats this year clearly shows that the result of the present method is unfair. If, for reasons which are not within the power of the producer to control, he gets a poor crop, and he was going to use his own oats upon his own farm but he has to buy at higher prices than would be normal, he then gets no acreage payment at

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all. In that respect the system does not seem to work fairly. I hope that that matter will be very carefully examined.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: I do not think that I follow the last part of the noble Viscount's remarks. I do not see why the producer of whom he speaks could not get any deficiency payment because he has had to go and buy oats outside.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Because he is not a seller. Acreage payment, as I understand, is made to producers of oats whether selling oats or not—even if they keep them to use them on their own farm. The whole idea was that if the general situation of the oat production of the year justified a deficiency payment, then those people using oats themselves would also get the acreage payment. But in many cases they were going to grow oats for their own use, but because of the very bad season and very poor crop they have not enough oats for their own farm. The prices at which oats are available goes up on the market and therefore the Treasury, or the Minister of Agriculture or someone, says that no payment is due to those people who have gone out to buy expensive oats, and they get no acreage payment. It seems to me to be unfair.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: I appreciate the noble Viscount's point. The whole object of having it in the form of acreage payment is that the producer can consume oats grown on his own farm and still get deficiency payment if there is one available. The noble Viscount was also disturbed about the Pig Industry Development Authority. He said that he thought we had not given specific representation to the Co-operative Movement. Actually, the Co-operative Union, which I think could be said to represent the Co-operative Movement, have been asked to nominate members to serve under no fewer than four different headings—producers of bacon, distributors of bacon, distributors of pig-meat and manufacturers of pig products. I do not say that every nomination by the Co-operative Union will be accepted, but it seems to me that that is very fair compared with any other single section of the industry.
The noble Viscount was also concerned about the representation of agricultural workers, and said that he would like their representation increased from one to
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two. As the Reorganisation Commission said, it will be necessary to limit the number on the Authority if it is to act as an effective working body, and they recommended a total membership of sixteen. This has already been increased to seventeen, and any further increase would have to be justified up to the hilt. The membership of the Authority at present is pretty well balanced, in that it has three independent members, seven members representing production interests and seven representing the processing and distributive side. An extra seat for an agricultural worker would put the balance out. We should have three, eight and seven. Probably that would be followed by demands from the processing and distributing side for a further representation, and we should be faced with a further increase. We have considered this matter carefully and I think that one representative for the producers-labour side and one for the processing employees' side is really fair.
The noble Lord, Lord Archibald, criticised the provisions under which prices for crops will be fixed for the harvest following the Annual Review. I think that the farmer is in a much better position under this arrangement than he was under the last. He will know with absolute certainty that the price of the cereal which he is planting cannot be less than 4 per cent. of the price he received last year, and he has the satisfaction of knowing that all relevant factors, including increasing costs, have been taken into consideration practically at the time he is planting. Consequently, he will be in a much stronger position than he would be in having to forecast eighteen months ahead, because, as the noble Lord is fully aware, up to now we have had considerable fluctuation in the amount of costs the industry has had to bear.
The noble Lord was rather critical of our £50 million, as compared to the £400 million, which I think he quoted from the paper by Mr. Cheveley and Mr. Price. We must remember that that £400 million represents till the capital expenditure and not just the expenditure under the Bill, which deals with the requirements of industry which are not already grant-aided, as things like housing and water supplies are. When the amount proposed for this section is put into the whole picture, I think that it is adequate.

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The noble Lord, Lord Archibald, also followed up the line taken by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in an earlier debate, that we should appoint a Royal Commission to consider the needs of agriculture as a whole, agricultural subsidies and the methods of giving them. For many years it has been the policy of successive Governments to assure to the agricultural industry a reasonable measure of stability. The means employed have been guarantees, for which the 1947 Act provided, and numerous production grants for which provisions have been made in a succession of other Statutes. The Bill before the House to-day reinforces and develops that policy, both by strengthening the guarantee provisions of earlier Acts and by providing new guarantees under the farm improvements scheme. It is the result of long and careful consideration by the Government, in close consultation with the representatives of the Farmers' Union. As for the levels of guarantees and production grants and the balance between them, these are matters which are considered every year, again in consultation with representatives of the producers, and every Annual Review is made in the light of any changes that have taken place. As for the method of giving guarantees, a great deal of thought has always been devoted to that, as circumstances change or as further experience is gained. Once more, such consideration includes discussion with the farmers' leaders. I must say that I think that the case for a Royal Commission, which, after all, could not determine policy—that must be the responsibility of the Government in power—has not been made out.
The noble Lord, Lord Forbes, asked me a number of questions. He pointed out that these grants would probably have been unnecessary if rents had kept pace with rising costs. I think that that is true, but we must bear in mind that the rise in rents has taken a considerable time, and although there is a steady movement now in a forward direction, for a long number of years the industry had to content itself with at most a level, if not a decreasing, return in the form of rents. Obviously, to switch that round to a steady increase must take time. The noble Lord also criticised the level of taxation in recent years, saying that that had made considerable inroads into the amount
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landlords would otherwise have spent in maintaining and improving their property. To a certain extent he is right; but, on the other hand, the noble Lord has to bear in mind that the tax code provides a number of valuable concessions which benefit landowners—for example, the preferential capital allowance on agricultural building and improvements and the 45 per cent. rebate on agricultural property for death duties.
The noble Lord, Lord Forbes, asked whether we were certain that grants for improvements would he used for schemes that really would be improvements. The Agricultural Research Council, in consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of Agriculture for Scotland, has set up a Committee to co-ordinate the work which is already in progress at various centres throughout the country. They will also recommend new lines to the Government. We attach so much importance to this Committee that we asked for, and were successful in obtaining, the services of my noble friend Lord Rothschild as its Chairman. I am glad to say that, even when he retires from the chairmanship of the Agricultural Research Council next year, he will continue to serve as Chairman of this Committee. I myself think it would be premature, until there has been further consideration, to judge whether more research stations are desirable or not.
My noble friend Lord Forbes and, I think I am right in saying, the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, too, were concerned that we should not use these grants to encourage or discourage any particular line of product. Noble Lords will be glad to know that it is the view of the Government that we should consider these cases on their merits from the point of view of the farms. We feel that the production grants are the right medium for influencing increased production and that it would be wrong to consider short-term increases or surpluses in various commodities, which may, after all, only be temporary, when considering long-term improvements to farm buildings.
My noble friend Lord Ferrers quoted several passages from Clause 23 of the Bill, which deals with the functions of the Pig Industry Development Authority. So far as I can see, he seems to have overlooked Part I of the Third Schedule,

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which appears to me to set out in considerable detail the functions of that authority. For instance, they may take over national pig records, supervise progeny testing, introduce an accredited herd scheme, develop an artificial insemination service, introduce a British bacon mark, advertise pig products, and so on. My noble friend asked why they would not be involved in marketing. The answer there is that we believe that this market should be left free both for pigs and for pig-meat, and, therefore, we have not given the authority any specific marketing powers, although they will be able to investigate any particular distribution problem.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Earl one question. As I understand it, part of the purpose of the Pig Industry Development Authority is to carry out some research into the efficiency of marketing, processing and so forth. How are they going to "put over" the information that they gain? Have they any authority to do that, or do they just give the information that they find to the bacon curers, and so on, and let them use it to the best of their ability?
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, they are empowered to advertise and to indulge it propaganda, and they will be obviously a body of such sufficient standing that all sides of the industry will pay considerable attention to any recommendations that they make. They will not be in a position to compel, but obviously they will carry considerable weight. The noble Earl also asked me about consultations that have been going on between the National Farmers' Union and my Department about loans. I am afraid that I cannot at the moment give him any further information on that point. I dare say that an announcement will be made before long, but all I can say now is that the consultations have been extremely co-operative on both sides and I trust that something useful will come from them in the end.
The noble Lord, Lord Wise, was concerned about the costs of amalgamation. I would quote to him an example of what those costs are likely to be on a smallholding. On a 40 acre holding, which is worth, say, £1,200, the solicitors' fees would be of the order of £67 10s., and stamp duty an additional £6, making a
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total of £73 10s., or nearly £2 an acre; and if there is any compensation for disturbance, that might easily range from sonic £200 to £250. Therefore, it is a considerable item.
LORD WISE: Has the noble Earl any idea how many amalgamations there are likely to be; or have the Department made any estimate of what costs will arise per annum?
EARL ST. ALDWYN: I think it is quite impossible to make anything approaching an accurate estimate, because, although we have a fair idea of the number of holdings that are strictly uneconomic, there is no reason for thinking that all, or even necessarily a high proportion, will come up for amalgamation the next year or two, or even within the period of this Bill. The noble Lord also raised the question of hare land receiving grants. As my right honourable friend said in another place, he is strongly resisting the idea of paying grants on bare land, because if he did that there would be considerable danger of encouraging the splitting up of existing holdings and so increasing, rather than decreasing, the problem of uneconomic holdings, I think we shall have to stick to that view.
My noble friend Lord Lonsdale suggested that we ought to put housing grants on a national basis and include them in the Schedule of eligible improvements in Part II of the Bill, instead of, as at present, leaving them to the discretion of the local housing authorities. I appreciate that by no means all local authorities are paying the grant which they could, but it seems to me that if we were to bring farm houses, or even cottages, into this we should get two aspects of rural life rather muddled. First, we have the housing side, which surely must be the responsibility of the housing authority; and I think it would be an error for my Department to be involved in that.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I hope that it will not be outside the realms of possibility that the noble Earl can make representations in the matter. I think I the point was an important one. I have mentioned before my personal experience. If you get an island like Mersea, with an urban district of 4,000 people at one

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end, and a rural district at the other end which refuses to come into the urban district and comes under a rural district council outside, the rural district council in all cases adopts the Government's permissive powers for assisting farm housing. The urban district, covering farms on the other side of the island, refuses to adopt it at all. So there is completely different treatment of housing policy within eight square miles. That seems to me to be utter nonsense.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I agree that it is not entirely consistent, but it is one of those inconsistencies which are inevitable if we are to have the system of local government in this country by which I think most of us swear.
My noble friend Lord Buckinghamshire questioned the bar on applications for an early inspection for work which was expected to be completed after March 31 next. This is no more than a request not to apply in these cases, because there will be many applications which will be considerably more urgent. It is not in any sense of the word the Law of the Medes and Persians: it is merely a guide. We want to get the most urgent work done as soon as possible, and we do not want that to be delayed because work of less urgency is being considered merely because the application has come in first. My noble friend also criticised some of our instructions. Those frankly are purely for official use, and I can assure him—and I hope it will relieve him—that ordinary members of the committee are not expected to be entirely familiar with them.
THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: My Lords, I regret if I gave my noble friend the impression that I was criticising the instructions, because that was not intended. What I wanted to get clarified was the point about March 31.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, several noble Lords raised the question of builders' prices possibly going up as a result of this scheme. I think my noble friend raised that point.
THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: I did not mention it.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: I thought one noble Lord did. Frankly, I think most local builders are sufficiently anxious to
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retain the goodwill of their regular clients not to take advantage of a scheme of this sort and raise their prices unduly.
THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: My Lords, may I again interrupt my noble friend, and I very much regret doing so. He has, however, mentioned this point. It is strongly the feeling in my part of the world, including the feeling on the agricultural executive committee, that these prices may go up.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: That is the noble Earl's forecast. My forecast is that I do not think they will go up very much. We shall see who is right. I have answered as many as I can of the questions that have been put to me, and if I have not covered all the points I have no doubt that noble Lords will raise them on the next stage of the Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

GENEVA CONVENTIONS BILL [H.L.]
6.15 p.m.
Order for the Day for the Second Reading Read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): My Lords, the object of this Bill is to make certain changes in the law which are necessary in order that the United Kingdom may be able to ratify four Conventions drawn up by an International Conference held in Geneva in 1949. I am glad to be able to say that the representatives of this country played a useful part in negotiating these agreements. The agreements, of course, have been signed on behalf of the United Kingdom, but they still await ratification. Your Lordships will find the Conventions set out in the Schedules to the Bill, and I hope that this will be found of convenience for reference.
May I briefly explain what they are? The first deals with the amelioration of the condition of the wounded and sick in armed forces in the field, and is a revision of the Geneva Convention on the same subject of July, 1929. The second one deals with the amelioration of the condition of wounded, sick and shipwrecked members of armed forces at sea, and is a revision of the tenth Hague Convention of October, 1907. The third one

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deals with the treatment of prisoners of war, and is a revision of a Convention concluded at Geneva in July, 1939. The fourth one is a new Convention, and deals with the protection of civilian persons in time of war. We now have in these Conventions a comprehensive and up-to-date code of rules for the protection of these four classes of the victims of war, replacing the older codes in the light of experience of what is needed, and containing new material that appeared desirable and useful if the Conventions were to be as comprehensive as possible. The Conventions set out in a large number of provisions rules of conduct for the parties, and these rules are in accordance with the highest demands of humanity. While there may be room for discussion on points of detail or interpretation, no enlightened nation would wish to dissent from the fundamental principles on which they are based.
I should make it clear at this stage that the great majority of the provisions of the Conventions deal with matters of administration and organisation and, therefore, do not require legislation. Many of them can be given effect under powers already available. May I here make the suggestion (although I am entirely at the service of my colleagues and noble Lords who wish to deal with any point that is in the Conventions—and I shall be pleased to give any explanation if they will write to me or come and see me) that it would perhaps be convenient for the-Purpose of our discussions if we limited ourselves, as far as possible, to the Bill that is before us; and that I propose to do.
I ought to say that Her Majesty's Government have already indicated, in answer to an inquiry from the President of the International Red Cross, that we accept the Conventions and have every intention of applying their conditions, should the occasion arise. Before we can complete the formal process of ratification, however, it is necessary to make certain amendments in our law; and this, as I have said, is the purpose of the Bill. The necessity arises because certain matters dealt with in the Conventions cannot be provided for by administrative action or under existing powers. I should like to say that we have carefully examined all four of the Conventions and
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are satisfied of our ability to give effect to their provisions, apart from the matters dealt with in this Bill. If Parliament agrees to this legislation, we shall therefore be in a position formally to ratify the Conventions.
There was one reservation in regard to our signature to the Convention of 1949, and that was in regard to Article 68 of the Convention. I need only tell the noble Viscount who leads the Opposition that I entirely agree with the reservation which his Government made, and we can go into it at a later stage if any point is raised upon it. If I may summarise the provisions of the Bill under three headings, they are as follows. The first provision is for the punishment of those who commit what are called "grave breaches" of the Conventions. The second provision is for the rights of persons protected by the Conventions; the third is the prevention of the misuse of the emblems of the Red Cross and other corresponding emblems.
May I first say a word about the Punishment of persons who commit grave breaches of the Conventions. The grave breaches are the acts described in Article 50 of the Sick and Wounded. Convention, set out in the First Schedule to the Bill at page 42, and the corresponding provisions in the Conventions set out in the other Schedules. These are referred to in Clause 1 (1) of the Bill. The acts are breaches of the Conventions involving (a) the wilful killing, serious ill-treatment and certain other kinds of misconduct in relation to persons protected by the Conventions; and (b) in relation to property protected by the Conventions, extensive destruction and appropriation not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly. These are acts which are universally agreed to be reprehensible and punishable.
The Conventions require the parties either to try in their own courts persons accused of these offences, wherever the breaches are committed and regardless of the nationality of the accused, or else to hand them, over to another party to the Convention for trial. As noble Lords will see, we hake dealt with this by making the offences felonies and providing that they shall be triable in the United Kingdom wherever and by whomsoever the offences were committed. This is an unusual extension of our jurisdiction, but

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it is made necessary by the special circumstances against which we are providing.
As I have told your Lordships, the second matter with which we have to deal is to ensure that prisoners of war and civilian protected persons—that is to say, enemy aliens and certain other classes of aliens—interned in the United Kingdom in time of war, in the event of their being tried for criminal offences, have certain rights and facilities which are required by the Conventions. These are additional to the rights already secured to anyone tried under our law, and they are necessary because of the special circumstances in which the accused may find himself. Your Lordships will see that Clauses 2 to 5 deal with these matters.
Clause 2 gives effect to the requirements of Article 104 of the Prisoners of War Convention, which is to be found at page 79 of the Bill, and the second and third paragraphs of Article 71 read with Article 126 of the Civilian Convention, as your Lordships will find in the Fourth Schedule, at pages 113 to 131. In accordance with these Articles, this clause provides that a trial of a prisoner of war or a trial of a protected internee for certain offences shall not proceed until it is proved that twenty-one days' notice has been given to the protecting Power and, if the accused is a prisoner of war, to the accused himself and to the prisoner's representative. A prisoner's representative is either a comrade who is chosen to help him or the senior officer in the prisoner of war camp. It is a useful and effective provision.
Clause 3 gives effect to the provisions of the second and third paragraphs of Article 105 of the Prisoners of War Convention, which your Lordships will find at page 80, and also to provisions in all the Conventions dealing with trials of "grave breaches." It ensures the legal representation of persons in the protected categories, or accused of "grave breaches" tried before our courts. If neither the accused nor the protecting Power has appointed a legal representative the court must do so. Clause 4 is made necessary by the provisions of the second paragraph of Article 74 of the Civilian Convention as applied by Article 126. It provides that the time within which a person in the protected
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categories must enter his appeal shall not begin to run until notice has been given to the protecting Power. Although the Prisoner of War Convention does not contain similar provisions, we have thought it right to insert it. Subsections (1) and (2) of Clause 4 deal with trial by civil courts. The remaining subsection deals with trial of prisoners of war. Clause 5 allows effect to be given to the second paragraph of Article 103 of the Prisoners of War Convention, which your Lordships will see at page 79, and the fourth paragraph of Article 118 of the Civilian Convention which provide that periods spent in custody before trial shall count towards the sentence.
The third matter which is dealt with by the Bill is the prevention of the use, except as permitted in the Conventions, of the Red Cross and the equivalent emblems of the Red Crescent and the Red Lion and Sun, which are used for the same purposes by certain countries. The Wounded and Sick Convention also provides for the protection of the Swiss Cross. It seems to me that these are perfectly straightforward protections. If my noble friend Lord Woolton, in his position, has any special points, I shall be glad to consider them, but I do not think I need go through the details of the Bill on what is a fairly simple and simply stated point.
I want to make it clear that this Bill does not purport to be a general code for dealing with war criminals. Nor do the Conventions—indeed, many of the most heinous of war crimes are outside their scope. The fact that these Conventions have been signed and have been ratified by many countries, and by this country, as they will be after this legislation is passed, will be a great step forward in ensuring humane treatment for the non-combatant and also for combatants who are wounded, sick or taken prisoner in time of war. The Conventions cannot cover every point, but they do show at what we are aiming, and we can make further provisions if it is necessary. I am happy to have the opportunity to-day of recommending this Bill. I hope that your Lordships will give, it a Second Reading and will help it on its way, with the dominant purpose in our minds that it will enable this country to ratify these Conventions and take its proper place in supporting them in the eyes of the

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world. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
6.30 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I should like to say at the outset that we are greatly obliged to the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack for the careful explanation he has given of the Bill, which covers the proposal to ratify the four Conventions that he has mentioned. I think we should out on record from the Opposition here that we owe a debt to the noble Earl, Lord Woolton, for his efforts to bring forward this ratification instead of letting it remain for so long in abeyance, because it is going to be a step forward if this country, still with its position of influence in the world, becomes one of the fairly early ratifying nations.
The difficulty about dealing with some points that may arise in your Lordships' minds about the details of some of the Conventions has, I think, to be faced in this way—I have had the opportunity of consulting with my noble and learned friend Earl Jowitt upon the matter—that whilst every one of us may not agree with every clause or sub-clause of a Convention and may not think it is going to do the best thing in the right direction or in the right way, nevertheless we can all be convinced that the general objective of the Convention is good, and that the actual provisions of the Convention are progressive as compared with what has been the practice in the past. We cannot deal with the adoption and the ratification of a Convention against the Conventions themselves—that is to say, we either accept them as they are or we refuse to ratify them. If we are prepared to take them as they are, then we ratify and become one of the nations who are really doing their job in trying to move forward in the matter.
I was going to say a word or two about the question of the changes in powers in trying in our courts certain of the offences committed by persons of other nationalities; but after what the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor has said there is no need to do anything of that kind. I feel most strongly, and I am sure your Lordships' House will feel, that whilst we know that when a great and
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savage war occurs Conventions are often overridden, nevertheless Conventions have played their part when they have been almost universally observed by those engaged in the strife. Looking at this Bill and the Conventions which this draft Statute will cover, and listening to what the Lord Chancellor has said by way of explanation, I am sure it must be in our hearts and minds that if these Conventions had been ratified before the last great war a great many of the horrible actions that occurred and which disgusted humanity so much might never have been perpetrated at all. So I think we are taking a good step in the right direction in seeking for this ratification, and we are indebted to those Members of your Lordships' House who have urged that it be expedited.
6.34 p.m.
THE EARL OF WOOLTON: My Lords, this is a Bill of such importance to this country and to its prestige in the world that I have, as the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, has just said, rather pressed upon Her Majesty's Government the importance of bringing it forward as soon as possible—I scarcely dare say "at an early stage" because it is a little late for any such observation. But we are extremely grateful to the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack for the speech that he has just made.
It is obvious from the delay that has taken place that the Government have been faced with considerable difficulties. There can be no doubt about it that their intentions throughout have been such as would have been approved by your Lora-ships. But there are complications in the making of the laws of one country—and, after all, that is the main purpose of the Bill that the noble and learned Viscount has introduced to-day—and making those laws fall in with the wishes of some sixty-nine other countries. By its nature that is a difficult thing to do, but it is a particularly difficult thing to do when you are dealing with problems arising from the war. If the noble and learned Viscount will allow me to say so, Her Majesty's Government have indeed been singularly fortunate in this respect in having the present Lord Chancellor as their senior legal adviser, for surely there is nobody in the whole world more acutely seized of the problems that arise from the misdemeanours of war than

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Lord Kilmuir, who made for himself a lasting reputation in the Nuremberg trials.
My Lords, nothing would be easier than to submit to your Lordships long arguments as to whether these changes are sufficient to meet what may well be regarded as the just and almost universal demands both of retribution and of justice. When one considers that, whatever the gravity of the offence against humanity may be, the culpable person can, under the provisions of Clause 1 of this new Bill, only suffer life imprisonment, it might well make one wonder whether the Government have not been too lenient, on the ground either of mercy or of political expediency, with culprits whom the whole world would condemn. I take some consolation from the fact that, as the noble and learned Viscount said in the speech that he has just made, these provisions are not the only means whereby such people as those whom the noble and learned Viscount prosecuted after the last war can be brought to justice. I am bound to say that I do not think that any potential offenders of the future, if, unhappily, such there be, will be encouraged in their malpractices or get any consolation from the fact that under this Bill no greater penalty can fall upon them than a lifetime of imprisonment in which to reflect upon the enormities of their crime. Perhaps, indeed, it may be true that such a prolonged agony of conscience might be a punishment of greater severity than a quick death.
I would venture—I hope perhaps unnecessarily—to plead that we should not allow such considerations to hinder us in giving a speedy approval to this Bill. National honour is involved and is damaged by delay. This action of the Government has already been long delayed. We must not again fall into the ignominious position that we were in in Korea and in Egypt, when we had to announce that we would abide by the terms of these Conventions although Parliament had not had time to ratify them. I know that the Parliamentary timetable is very crowded. I know that this Bill has been introduced into this House at this time because Her Majesty's Government have realised that there is a desire in all sections of your Lordships' House that the position should be made clear to the world. Therefore, I venture, most respectfully, to suggest to the House that
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we should give every facility, not only tonight but in the subsequent considerations of the Bill, so as to try to get it through during this Session of Parliament.
The fact that the Government present to us in one Bill not only a Bill amending the law but the detailed Conventions is, I think, sufficient indication of their desire to adhere unreservedly to those Conventions that have already been signed on Executive level. The Conventions will therefore become a part of the law of the land. There are in this legislation points that I would particularly commend to your Lordships. The prisoner, whatever the crimes with which he is charged, is to be given the privileges not only of English law but of English procedure. He will be defended, and not only he but justice will benefit from the high traditions of the practice of the English Bar.
Your Lordships will understand what satisfaction and gratitude I, as Chairman of the British Red Cross, feel in seeing the use and definition of the Red Cross and similar emblems of other nations given statutory status. The Red Cross has proved of immeasurable value in previous wars and its sign is worthy of the protection of English law. I am honoured to be allowed to support this Bill, and I should like to express my personal gratitude to the Leader of the House and to the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack for having brought it in at this stage.
6.42 p.m.
LORD McNAIR: My Lords, I had intended to make a few remarks upon these Conventions and the Bill, but having regard to the warm reception which the Bill has had and to the clear and helpful exposition of the contents of the Conventions and the Bill which the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, has given us, it seems quite unnecessary that I should say anything more. I feel sure that your Lordships will accept the assurance of the noble and learned Viscount, to the effect that this Bill is adequate to enable Her Majesty's Government to ratify these Conventions; and, that being so. I sincerely hope that your Lordships' House will do everything in its power to expedite the passage of this Bill through this House.
6.43 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, after the kind tenor of the speeches

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that have been made on this Bill, there is little left for me to say. I should like to say, not in return, but because I feel it so strongly, that, apart altogether from myself, it is at once typical, and the pride of your Lordships' House, that we should find a Bill of this kind welcomed for the Opposition by one like the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, who during so many anxious years of war was in charge of one of the great Fighting Services of the Crown, and then welcomed by the noble Earl, Lord Woolton, not only as himself, which means so much to his friends, but as Chairman of the British Red Cross; and, lastly, welcomed by my noble and learned friend Lord McNair, one of the greatest international lawyers of the twentieth century. I do not think any Minister in charge of a Bill could ask for a better or more distinguished reception, and I am very grateful to noble Lords for the help they have given.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

PROPOSED NEW POLICE STATION AT PONTYPOOL
6.45 p.m.
LORD RAGLANhad given notice of his intention to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they can explain the reasons for their sudden change of policy with regard to the proposed new police station and court house at Pontypool; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is not now necessary for me to address your Lordships at any length. The construction of this building was first proposed in 1952. In 1954, we were given to understand that we might proceed with it as soon as the plans had been passed by the Home Office. There followed two and a half years of consultations and alterations, and on May 2 this year we were informed that the Home Secretary had passed the plan. We then assumed that we might get on with the building, but on May 22 we were instructed by the Home Secretary to hold up the building indefinitely. I then put down this Motion on the Order Paper. Within the last few days, however, we have been notified that the Horne Secretary has reconsidered the
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matter and that we may now proceed to build forthwith. In the circumstances, I do not propose to move my Motion.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, I have to inform your Lordships that it has been arranged through the usual channels that we shall meet at half past two, instead of at three o'clock, on Thursday next.
Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers
The Earl Graham (D. of Montrose)—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

PRIVATE BELL STANDING ORDERS
2.34 p.m.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE): My Lords, in moving the Motion that stands in the name of my noble friend, Lord Drogheda, I should explain in regard to Standing Order No. 11 that the purpose of the three Amendments is to provide that where a Bill affects Scotland and Northern Ireland. as well as England, the respective Gazette notices should contain only such material as is relevant and helpful to the reader in the country concerned. I should add that the House of Commons Standing Order will be similarly amended. So far as Standing Order No. 106 is concerned, the effect of the two Amendments will be to provide against the failure of a Peer to attend the first meeting of the Select Committee as well as his failure to continue his attendance. These Amendments bring the Standing Order into line in this respect with the corresponding House of Commons Standing Order No. 121. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the following. Amendments be made in the Standing Orders relative to Private and Provisional Order Confirmation Bills, etc., vizt.:—
Standing Order 11, page 17, line 32, leave out ("or") and insert ("Gazette or in the")
Standing Order H. page 17, line 42, leave out ("whether") and insert ("either")
Standing Order 11, page 17, line 43, at end insert—
("Provided that a notice published in the Edinburgh Gazette or in the Belfast Gazette need contain such only of the particulars referred to in the foregoing paragraphs (c)and(d)as relate to Scotland or to Northern Ireland, as the case may be.")
Standing Order 106, page 55, line 11, leave out ("continuing his attendance") and insert ("attending")
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Standing Order 106, page 55, line 12, leave out ("continue its sittings") and insert ("sit").—(The Earl of Buckinghamshire.)
On Question. Motion agreed to.

BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION BILL
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
DARTFORD TUNNEL BILL
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, I have to inform your Lordships that there will be a statement at about half past three on the position in Muscat.

EMPTY BEER CANS AND LITTER
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are using the following text in their anti-litter campaign. "Take your litter home"; whether they are aware that some brewers are giving, the opposite advice, and that Watney Combe Reid and Co., Ltd are advertising, their canned beer as follows: "No Returns. When you've enjoyed your Watneys, just throw the cans away" and "Canned Watneys might have been designed for holiday. makers, hikers and picnickers…there are no empties to carry back with you" whether Her Majesty's Government are aware that the brewers' advice is being widely followed; and what action, if any, they intend to take.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD MANCROFT): My Lords, in answer to the first part of the Question, the slogan adopted for the anti-litter publicity issued on behalf of Her Majestys' Government is
"When in the country, don't forget…take your litter home."

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With regard to the second part of the Question,. Her Majesty's Government have been supplied with a copy of the leaflet containing the phrase quoted by my noble friend Lord Conesford, and Messrs. Watney Combo, Reid and Co., Ltd. have expressed their regret, through the Brewers' Society, that it should have been capable of being construed as encouraging the indiscriminate throwing away of empty beer cans. I am informed that they have stopped the issue of the leaflet and are preparing a fresh one, which will emphasise to consumers that care should be taken to see that empty beer cans are placed in litter receptacles.
I readily agree that it is deplorable that any encouragement should be given to the disgusting habit of depositing litter. I have taken the matter up with the Brewers' Society, who inform me that they are recommending their members marketing canned beer to do all in their power to impress on imbibers the need for avoiding litter. One firm has already arranged for an anti-litter slogan to be printed on its cans. I hope these steps will be effective, but Her Majesty's Government intend to watch the position.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for that Answer and ask him whether he realises the extent to which this deplorable habit has already spread? Is he aware that no fewer than 52 beer cans which had been thrown over the hedge had to be removed from a single property? Will Her Majesty's Government take effective steps, by legislation and otherwise, to protect public and private property from this growing nuisance?
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I think I have said enough on this and on previous occasions when we have discussed this matter to enable your Lord ships to realise how seriously the Government regard it, and the active steps that they are taking to mitigate this appalling nuisance.
LORD LAWSON: My Lords, does it not show that the morale of this country is very low, if such a well-known firm can issue an advertisement of this kind? What effective steps, if any, are the Government ever going to take upon this matter of litter?
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I think I have shown in the Answer to the
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Question of the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, that the Government are taking steps, and those steps are proving effective.
LORD WINSTER: My Lords, does not the noble Lord think that the excuse put forward by this firm of brewers was extremely disingenuous and carries no conviction whatsoever?
LORD MATHERS: My Lords, this question relates solely to cans. Are the Brewers' Society taking any action in respect of bottles, which are much more dangerous? Instead of carrying home these bottles, as is well known, it is considered quite a sport for them to be smashed.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I know that the noble Lord is not very conversant with the details of this, to him, sordid trade, but you do get a little back on a bottle and you do not on a can.

EMPLOYMENT IN THE JUTE INDUSTRY
2.38 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords. I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they can give any estimate of the probable increase in unemployment in Dundee and Angus resulting from the reduction in the price of imported jute cloth announced by the President of the Board of Trade on July 17, and to ask further what precise steps are now being taken to extend the industrial estate in Dundee and to introduce new industries into this area under the Distribution of Industries Acts, and whether the Dundee office of the Board of Trade, recently closed, will now be reopened.]
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, some decrease in employment in the jute industry must be expected to follow the reduction in the mark-up from 40 per cent. to 30 per cent. on the price of certain imported hessians; the industry would, however, have faced serious difficulties from competition of other materials even if the Government had taken no action. It is very difficult to estimate to what

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extent employment is likely to be affected. This depends on a variety of factors, including how far manufacturers are able to reduce their costs and diversify their production.
The Government intend to continue and to intensify their efforts to encourage manufacturers to establish new industries in Dundee and to create new employment opportunities in the area. It is not necessary for this purpose to reopen the Board's district office in Dundee since the main work in this field in the Dundee area has always been carried out by the Board's chief Scottish office, in Glasgow, working in conjunction with the Board of Trade in London. The Board will meet any reasonable request to provide factory space for leasing to firms who will bring new employment opportunities into the area. Further, the Treasury will be ready, in appropriate cases, to make loans under Section 4 of the Distribution of Industry Act. 1945, to firms in this Development Area.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his sympathetic reply, but is he aware that, owing to full employment in the jute industry, which is now being brought to an end, there has been very little extension in the Dundee industrial estate for a number of years, and that it will take some time to get it started again? Can the noble Lord say whether any new ground suitable for development under the Distribution of Industries Act has yet been agreed on; and will the Government give the highest priority to the acquisition and servicing of suitable ground, so that new factories may be persuaded to go there before unemployment becomes serious?
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I can assure my noble friend that Her Majesty's Government take this matter very seriously and will do everything possible to mitigate any hardship that may result.

MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (COUNTY OF BERKS (CONSENT TO LETTING)) BILL
Read 3a(according to Order), and passed.
READING CORPORATION (TROL LEY VEHICLES) PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL
Read 3a(according to Order), and passed.
DONCASTER CORPORATION (TROLLEY VEHICLES) PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL
Read 3a(according to Order), and passed.

WINFRITH HEATH BILL
House in Committee on Recommitment of the Bill (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of July 15), Bill read 3a and passed.

COAL-MINING SUBSIDENCE BILL
2.42 p.m.
Amendments reported (according to Order).
Clause 1 [Duty of National Coal Board in respect of subsidence damage]:
THE MINISTER OF POWER (LORD MILLS): My Lords, with your Lord ships' permission, I will take Amendments Nos. 1, 2 and 3 together. They are being introduced to meet last-minute representations made by the associations of water undertakings. They deal with the treatment of things like pipes and wires. Our intention under Clause 1 (1) (a) has been to include all structural damage occurring to buildings and structures; and following the 1950 Act our intention has been to include things like pipes and wires as being a part of the structure when they are installed in the building, or the structure for the purpose of supply gas, electricity and other services to the building. Then we have also sought to include, under Clause 1 (1) (b), all service pipes and lines that run between buildings. It appears that we have not entirely succeeded in carrying out these intentions—it would seem, for example, that a water main, while running through a junction box, which is a structure, or passing through a reservoir, which

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is also a structure, would be excluded from the Bill. I am advised that the small drafting Amendments which I am now moving remedy this particular defect and make our intentions unmistakably clear. I trust that they will be acceptable to the House. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 13, leave out from ("drain") to ("and") in line 14 and insert ("situated in a building or structure which it serves").—(Lord Mills)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD MILLS: My Lords, I beg to move the next Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 4, leave out from ("descriptions") to ("that") in line 5.—(Lord Mills.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD MILLS: My Lords, I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 7, at end insert ("being either works situated outside any building or structure or works in the nature of mains situated in a building or structure in which they neither begin r or end;")—(Lord Mills.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4 [Powers of Board with respect to preventive works]
LORD MILLS: My Lords, this is another Amendment introduced to meet representations made at the last moment by the associations of water undertakings. Clause 4 as drafted provides that if anyone unreasonably refuses his consent to the execution of preventive works by the National Coal Board to minimise or eliminate subsidence damage, his claim may be lost or diminished if subsidence damage subsequently occurs. This is fair and reasonable. The purpose of the Amendment is simply to dot an "i" and cross a "t" by making it clear that if a statutory undertaker refuses consent in those cases where Parliament has decided under Clause 1 (3) that works ought to be undertaken not by the Coal Board but by the undertaker, no-one can say that this refusal was unreasonable. The water undertakings attach great importance to this Amendment, which clarifies our intentions, and I hope that the House will see its way to accepting it. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 29, at end insert—
("(iii) the withholding by any person of consent to the execution of preventive works on any property by the Board shall not be deemed to be unreasonable in a case which, if those works were remedial works consequent upon subsidence damage to that property, would fall within paragraph (i), (ii) or (iii) of subsection (3) of section one of this Act.")—(Lord Mills.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 5
Special provisions with respect to damage affecting land drainage
5.—(1) Subject to the two next following subsections, the Board shall, in any area in England and Wales outside the Doncaster Drainage Area within the meaning of the Doncaster Area Drainage Act, 1929, from time to time carry out such, if any, measures (in this section referred to as "remedial measures") for remedying, mitigating or preventing any deterioration in any land drainage system by reason of subsidence damage which has occurred or appears likely to occur. being a drainage system maintainable by a drainage authority, as may be agreed between the Board and the appropriate drainage authority, or. in default of such agreement. as may be determined in the manner provided by regulations under subsection (5) of this section. to be it all the circumstances reasonably required and not unjustifiable on economic grounds, and any such remedial measures shall be carried out in accordance with such arrangements as to the timing thereof as may be agreed or determined as aforesaid.
(2) Without prejudice to the next following subsection, the Board may elect, in respect of all or any of the remedial measures aforesaid, not to carry out those measures themselves but—

(a) to make to the appropriate drainage authority a payment equal to the cost reasonably incurred by that authority in carrying out those measures; or

(b) if that authority propose to merge the carrying out of those measures with the execution of other works, to make to the authority payments equal to any sums from time to time shown to have been expended by the authority in carrying out the merged operations up to such aggregate amount as may be agreed or determined as aforesaid to be equal to the expenditure which would have been incurred by the Board or by the authority, whichever would have been the less, in carrying out the remedial measures;

and the Board, in a case where the remedial measures fall to be carried out in connection with property comprised in a main river for the purnoses of Part II of the Land Drainage Act, 1930, shall make the appropriate election under this subsection and in any other case shall not unreasonably refuse any request to

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make the appropriate election under this subsection received from the appropriate drainage authority:
Provided that the Board shall not be deemed to act unreasonably in refusing any such request received after the Board have begun to carry out the remedial measures.
LORD BURDEN LORD BURDEN moved in subsection (1) to leave out "being a drainage system maintained by a drainage authority." The noble Lord said: My Lords. I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name on the Marshalled List. May I say at the outset that, with other Members of your Lordships' House. I happen to be one of the Vice-Presidents of the River Boards Association, and to that extent I suppose one could say one has an interest. I readily admit that in the revised Clause 5 Her Majesty's Government have gone a long way to meet the wishes of the River Boards Association. For that I would thank the noble Lord. Lord Mills. who no doubt played a very great part in the re-drafting of Clause 5. There are, however, just one or two minor points that I wish to raise; and I can assure your Lordships that in view of the importance of the debate which will shortly come on. I will detain you no longer than is absolutely necessary.
The point of this Amendment, which is linked with the last Amendment on the Order Paper, is to deal with the position of what are known as "white" areas. How those areas came to get that name I was rather curious to discover. I find that it arises from the fact that the areas covered by river boards and internal drainage boards are coloured on a map in the Ministry. These other parts which are the white areas are not coloured; hence this term "white areas". It has nothing to do with purity or anything of that kind, but is used because the areas concerned do not have a colour on the map.
The position is that the river boards and internal drainage boards have no authority whatever over these white areas. The Bill provides for compensation to the landowner, in the event of any subsidence, but there is nothing in the Bill, so far as the associations read it. to see that once the damage has been put right—which I take it will be a responsibility falling on the National Coal Board—the watercourse is maintained in good condition. It is a point that is of great importance to local authorities,
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because it may happen that the sewage works have been damaged and repaired, but unless the watercourse which takes the surplus water or sewage is maintained in good order, the whole thing will be of no value. So far as I can see, there is no incentive on the particular landowner, except, it may be. his own interest or public spirit, to maintain his watercourse in good condition. In fact, he may think. "This is a little unfair on me," because of course, internal drainage board work is financed out of the rates, and the river boards precept on the authorities within their areas.
There is a lot more that I could say on this matter hut, quite briefly, that is the case for this Amendment. I would ask the noble Lord to consider that the Doncaster Act, which has worked so well in the interests of all concerned, has in it the word "maintain". I believe that it was contended in another place that one of the subsections in this Bill places upon the National Coal Board the responsibility of maintaining, but if the noble Lord, Lord Mills. will look at the clause he will see that that responsibility falls only within the area of a drainage board, and that these "white" areas are outside—or outwith. as they say in Scotland—the area of the drainage board.I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, leave out line 3.—(Lord Burden.)
LORD MILLS: My Lords. this Amendment. as the noble Lord, Lord Burden, has indicated, can conveniently be considered with the noble Lord's Amendment to page 11, line 34 that is, number 9 in the Marshalled List. I am afraid that I cannot accept this Amendment. Its effect would be to extend Clause 5, as the noble Lord has explained, to cover drainage systems not maintainable by a drainage authority. This would be contrary to the purpose of the clause, which is to provide for joint action by the National Coal Board and the drainage authority on the measures needed to deal with deterioration of important drainage systems for which a drainage authority is responsible, and to provide financial relief to the river boards and internal drainage boards in carrying out the responsibility already entrusted to them by Parliament. It would be inappropriate

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to bring within the clause minor drainage works for which a drainage authority is not responsible. If one of these works suffers physical damage as a result of coal-mining subsidence, the owner or other person liable to make good that damage has a claim against the Coal Board under Clause 1, and I suggest to your Lordships that that is the proper way to deal with it.
Another reason why I do not like this Amendment is that it involves extending the field of activities of the drainage authorities and, together with Amendment No. 9, would give them new powers to undertake drainage works. There may well be a case for doing that—that is really outside my responsibility—but I do not think the Coal-Mining (Subsidence) Bill is the right place to extend the scope of the drainage authorities in this way. Such an extension would require careful consideration and full consultation with organisations representing landowners, farmers, and others, as well as with the drainage associations, and it would then have to be dealt with in a Bill amending the general land drainage legislation. This does not mean, however, that Clause 5 will apply only to drainage systems which are at present maintained by a drainage authority. If a watercourse is of such importance as to make it desirable to apply Clause 5 to it, the river board concerned can take steps to have this watercourse declared a main river under the land drainage legislation. In these circumstances, I hope the noble Lord will not press this Amendment.
LORD BURDEN: My Lords, in view of what has been said by the noble Lord in charge of the Bill I am obviously not in a position to press the Amendment. With the permission of the House, I will just comment for a moment or two on what the noble Lord has said. I agree that, under the Land Drainage Act, a river board can take over a watercourse of that kind, but that would place heavy financial responsibilities upon the river hoard in question, because the board would afterwards have to maintain it. Already, to my own knowledge, many urban authorities are watching very carefully the increased precepts which come from the river board in connection with work in rural areas. However, I have made the protest. With due respect, I feel that it would have been in the
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national interest for this small extension—and I agree that it is an extension—of powers to be conceded to the river boards. But in view of the attitude of the Government, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD BURDEN LORD BURDEN moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "and not unjustifiable on economic grounds". The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment is designed just to clear up what I think is rather an ambiguity in this clause. When the Bill was in another place the words used were:
"reasonably required and economically justified."
but as a result of discussion it was decided to turn this part into a double negative and to substitute the words:
"not unjustifiable on economic grounds."
It seems to me to be a distinction without a difference, but no doubt the Minister has reasons for it. To me, it appears to be a new principle to import into legislation. There is nothing of this kind in the Doncaster Act, and the Doncaster Act has worked very well. Who is going to determine the meaning of that phrase? Has it to go to the courts, or to arbitration, or what? I think that this Amendment would remove an ambiguity, and so I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 8, leave out ("and not unjustifiable on economic grounds").—{Lord Burden.)
LORD MILLS: My Lords, I will do my best to satisfy the noble Lord on this point—not by agreeing to the Amendment but by explaining to him the reason for the inclusion of these words. The National Coal Board's obligation under Clause 5 as it stands is to carry out remedial measures to drainage systems which are agreed or determined to be "reasonably required and not unjustifiable on economic grounds." To omit the words "and not unjustifiable on economic grounds" would run counter to one of the basic principles of the Bill: that the Coal Board's liability to carry out or pay for remedial works should be limited to works which are economically justified. The principle appears, for example, in Clause 1 (4), which permits the Board to make a depreciation payment when the reduction in the value of

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a property caused by subsidence damage is less than the cost of remedial works; and it appears in the present provision in Clause 5.
As the noble Lord has said, we had originally provided in Clause 5 that the remedial measures would have to be "reasonably required and economically justified." But we were able to amend the. Bill in another place to change the economic criteria to "not unjustifiable on economic grounds." This is a slightly less stringent criterion, and it makes it clear that the economic factor is only one of the factors to be taken into account when a decision is taken on the remedial measures to be undertaken under the clause. In another place, the right honourable Member for Blyth, Mr. Robens, described this change as "leaning over backwards" to meet the views expressed on this point. I am sure it would be wrong to go further and omit the economic criterion altogether. That could lead to wasteful expenditure—for example, if the cost of remedial measures to a drainage system were vastly greater than the value of the land which would suffer from flooding if the measures were not carried out. In such a case it would probably be sensible to let the flooding take place; this would not involve hardship to the owners of the flooded land for they could then claim against the Board under Clause 1.
But while I cannot agree to omit the economic criterion altogether, I can say that disputes between the Coal Board and a drainage authority about what is justifiable on economic grounds will have to be determined in accordance with regulations which are to be made jointly by my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture and myself. It is our intention to prescribe in these regulations that if either party to the dispute so wishes, the dispute may be referred to the two Ministers for settlement. I can assure the House that in dealing with such disputes we shall not interpret economic in a narrow sense but will take a broad view of what is economic in the national interest. I am afraid, therefore, that I cannot accept this Amendment but I suggest that the assurances I have given go a long way to meet the noble Lord and I trust he will not press the matter further.
LORD BURDEN: My Lords, having regard to the sympathetic approach to the problem of what the Amendment was designed to achieve, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.6 p.m.
LORD BURDEN LORD BURDEN had given notice of an Amendment in subsection (2) (b). to leave out all words from the second "equal" to the end of the paragraph, and to insert instead:
"the amount which it is agreed between the Board and the appropriate drainage authority or, in default of agreement, determined as aforesaid it would have been reasonably necessary to have incurred to carry out the remedial measures;"
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I believe that this matter has been looked at and that an Amendment in substitution for this one would be acceptable to the Government. With the permission of the House, therefore, I will not move this Amendment, but I beg to move the following Amendment in its place. I think that it makes the position quite clear.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 25. leave out from ("be") to ("in") in line 27, and insert ("reasonable in all the circumstances having regard to the expenditure which would have been incurred respectively by the Board or by the authority").—(Lord Burden.)
LORD MILLS: My Lords, this Amendment which is in substitution for Amendment No. 7 on the Marshalled List, is entirely acceptable to the Government.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD BURDEN LORD BURDEN moved, after subsection (4) to insert:
"(5) (a) In any case where the remedial measures carried out under this section comprise the execution of any permanent work the Board shall make an annual payment to the appropriate drainage authority of an amount agreed between the Board and the authority or in default of agreement determined as aforesaid equal to—

(i) if the permanent work consists of the construction of a new bank or watercourse, the cost reasonably incurred by the authority in maintaining the bank during the previous year;

(ii) if the permanent work consists of the alteration widening or improvement of a watercourse or a bank, so much of the cost of maintaining the watercourse or bank in the previous year as is reasonably attributable to such alteration widening or improvement;

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(iii) if the permanent work consists of the provision of a new appliance, the cost reasonably incurred in operating and maintaining the appliance in the previous year;

(iv) if the permanent work consists of an alteration or extension of an appliance, so much of the cost of operating and main-wining the appliance in the previous year as is reasonably attributable to such alteration or extension.

For the purposes of this paragraph "appliance" means a pumping station, pipe, weir, dam, water stop or other appliance or structure for regulating or controlling the flow of water or for retaining water.
(b) In calculating the cost or additional cost of maintaining a permanent work a drainage authority shall be entitled to take into account a reasonable proportion of their overhead expenses.
(c) The liability of the Board under this subsection may by agreement with the appropriate drainage authority be discharged by a lump sum payment agreed between the Board and the authority or, in default of agreement. determined as aforesaid to represent the capital cost of the liability."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, although this is a very long Amendment I think I can confine what I have to say upon it to a few words. It all centres upon the problem of maintenance. I am not so hopeful of the Government's accepting this Amendment, but may we have a definite assurance that the official interpretation of the subsection is that it doe; cover maintenance. That is the essential point, and an assurance on it would enable me to withdraw the Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 11, line 8, at end insert the said new subsection.—(Lord Burden.)
LORD MILLS: My Lords, the noble Lord asked me for an assurance in regard to Amendment No. 8. May I have your Lordships' permission to give that assurance?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): My Lords, I can give the noble Lord no permission, but I am sure that all noble Lords would be glad if he would deal with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Burden.
LORD MILLS: My Lords, I am afraid that I have to appear churlish by again refusing the noble Lord's Amendment. I considered carefully whether it would be possible to accept this Amendment in principle and make changes in detail, but I came to the conclusion that it was not
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possible to legislate in advance for all the complicated circumstances which might arise in practice. I understand, however, that the noble Lord's main concern is whether Clause 5 requires the Coal Board to pay the extra expenses of maintaining drainage works which are needed to deal with the effects of subsidence damage. I think I can give the noble Lord complete reassurance on that point.
The Board's obligation under Clause 5 is to carry out
"such measures for…remedying, mitigating or preventing any deterioration in any land drainage system…"
as are
"in all the circumstances reasonably required and not unjustifiable on economic grounds."
I am advised that the mere erection of a pumping station, for example, would not by itself remedy, mitigate or prevent anything. It would also be necessary to operate and maintain the pumps, and their operation and maintenance are included in the Coal Board's obligations under this clause. In addition, I am advised that Clause 5 (3) clearly envisages that the Board will be involved in recurring expenditure on maintenance. I am glad to be able to give this assurance, which I think meets the noble Lord's main point.
LORD BURDEN: My Lords, in view of that assurance, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of July 15):
LORD MILLS: I beg to move that the Coal-Mining (Subsidence) Bill be read a third time. In doing so, I should like to say how much impressed I have been, in following the debates on the Bill, to hear Members of your Lordships' House and of another place with much Parliamentary experience say that they have never known a better atmosphere than that in which this Bill has been handled, I certainly could not have wished to have had a pleasanter task in my first Session with your Lordships than to pilot this measure through your Lordships' House. The Bill is to me, however, not just a pleasant and valuable Parliamentary experience; it is also a really constructive measure which I should think any Minister would be pleased to foster.

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I believe that it provides a real basis for dealing with the problem of coal-mining subsidence and for alleviating the hardships which that inevitably causes. I was particularly pleased during the Second Reading of the debate to hear the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor, who has so much experience of these matters, say that although the debate would not get a lot of publicity, there were thousands in the mining areas who would welcome the Bill warmly. The noble Lord was certainly right about publicity, and I know that he will prove to be equally right about the reception which this measure will have in the areas which suffer from mining subsidence.
The Bill is now, I suggest, a better Bill than when it was first introduced. This result is due to the hard work and the spirit of co-operation and give-and-take with which both Houses and all Parties have tackled it. Much is due also to the many outside organisations who have been consulted and who have given us helpful suggestions and constructive criticisms. We have not been able to meet every point which has been raised in Parliament or by the outside organisations, but their work has left many marks on the Bill. As this Bill nears the end of its Parliamentary passage, I should like to thank all those who have helped us with it.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Mills.)
LORD MACDONALD OF GWAENYSGOR: My Lords, because I see that there is a list of sixteen names of noble Lords who intend to take part in the later debate, my remarks will be few, but they will be sincere. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mills, on this Bill. It is one of the best Bills that has been brought before Parliament for a long time. I have seen many Bills pass through your Lordships' House but I have seen few passed with greater pleasure than this Bill. I do not think it is the final word on mining subsidence: I think the noble Lord will agree that experience will show the need for further legislation; but for the moment I would say that he has introduced a very good Bill. The noble Lord will yet have the task of introducing other legislative proposals, but none, I think, which will give more satisfaction to those affected—the thousands of mining families who have
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lived for generations in the mining areas and the hundreds of local authorities. I welcome the Bill.
LORD LAWSON: My Lords. I know that there is a Motion which your Lordships are anxious to debate, but I think it would be wrong to let this Bill go through without underlining what my noble friend Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor has said. This is the end of an ancient wrong, under which thousands of people, and also those who have built up companies, have suffered. It is righting a wrong to what has been a silent throng by making it impossible in future for mining subsidence to inflict the same hardship on the people in the mining areas. Many of the seams that have been worked by hand and undermined the earth and the property above are now worked by opencast. Opencast mining can go something like 200 feet down. In my own district the old-time shallow seams have been worked by bulldozers and I am hopeful that this method will not affect the seams underneath.
I think it should be made clear that, while this could not be settled in the two centuries that have gone by, a great wrong was done to multitudes of people. Only those who were wealthy, the companies, which sometimes combined together, could get this wrong righted; the great mass of the unheard-of people had to suffer their houses being undermined. with the loss of furniture and everything else without any repayment for what they suffered. Now this is to be done. But it is laying a great burden on the National Coal Board. I hope that when the National Coal Board issue their financial statement for the year it will show how much this will cost the Board. It should be understood that this is adding a new financial responsibility on to the Coal Board. But it is worth while to do the right thing to humble people who have in the past suffered to a great extent.
3.21 p.m.
VISCOUNT HALL: My Lords, associated with the mining community as I am. I cannot allow the Third Reading of this Bill to proceed without saying a word or two. We are indeed grateful to the Government for bringing in this Bill. It is a good Bill, and involves legislation which should have existed for a long time past. I put one question to the Minister, and that is the reason for

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my rising now. I mentioned the fact that subsidence really cannot be cured but that we can reduce its effect upon the surface by doing what is done in Germany and what was done in the coalfields of this country up to about twenty years ago. I hope that the Minister and the Coal Board will consider putting into operation a little of the old system which did so much good. If they had these tight-packed waists, the expenditure for the damage caused by subsidence would not be so great, many of these ugly pit tips would be prevented, and everyone would be satisfied.
On Question, Bill read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

THE UNITED NATIONS
3.23 p.m.
EARL DE LA WARR EARL DE LA WARR rose to draw attention to certain defects in the working of the United Nations Organisation and to ask Her Majesty's Government to open discussions with other nations at an early appropriate moment in order to remove these defects, and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I feel that I owe your Lordships something of an apology for putting down a Motion on so important a question as this on a day when it could be preceded by legislation. However, I think I should inform your Lordships that I did it on, as I thought, a definite understanding that if I moved the Motion from a Wednesday to a Thursday the legislation would be dealt with on the Wednesday and that Thursday would be left clear.
Perhaps I should also apologise to your Lordships on another point—namely, that this Motion has been on the Paper for so long. The truth is that the moment never seemed to be quite appropriate to move it; and, looking back, I think most of us will agree that it is just as well that we did riot discuss this matter before. After all, a question of this character cannot usefully be discussed in a spirit of heat or anger, and I feel sure that many of us would feel that during the last few months of last year and the first few months of this year it was difficult for an Englishman always to survey quite dispassionately the activities of the United Nations. At that time we found ourselves on the defensive, virtually placed in the
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dock, while we had the spectacle of the United Nations Organisation building up Colonel Nasser as the aggrieved party. There is no doubt that to-day many of those who are now speaking of the deficiencies and weakness of the United Nations Organisation were at that time seeing the "be all and end all" of foreign policy in those sacred words "United Nations Organisation."
To-day it is rather difficult to speak of the deficiencies of the United Nations without uttering a number of platitudes. However, at the outset of my remarks I want to be clear on one point—that anyone who thinks for a moment that the affairs of the modern world can be conducted without an organisation of this character is just not a realist. If Mr. Balfour was right many years ago in saying that, if there were not a League of Nations, then someone would have to invent such a body, he would certainly be doubly right to-day. The only question before us, therefore, as I see it, is how this organisation can be operated so that it may function more satisfactorily than it does at the moment; and the only value of criticism is to endeavour to uncover some of its weaknesses so that it may function better. I use the word "better" quite deliberately, and omit any reference I had in the first draft of my Motion to its being "ineffective".
If we give any serious thought to the problem we have to realise that ineffectiveness is not necessarily the only, or even the main, weakness of the United Nations. After all, as an organisation it was extremely effective in its attitude towards Britain and France during the Suez crisis; and it was extremely effective in ensuring that the Suez Canal was cleared only according to a strict timetable laid down by Colonel Nasser himself. The fact is that the United Nations knew perfectly well that in dealing with Britain, France and Israel it was dealing with fundamentally law-abiding countries, devoted to the cause of the United Nations, and that therefore it was safe to "talk tough" to us. In dealing in the past with Mossadeq over the question of Abadan, with Nehru over Kashmir, with Russia over Hungary, and with Egypt during assaults on the Israelis over a period of ten years and their robbery of the international highway, the picture was very different. I am afraid that the principle which seems to have

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been operating in the mind of the United Nations is only too disastrously clear: that law-abiding nations can and must be disciplined, but law-breakers, on the other hand, are dangerous animals and must he treated with the utmost caution, if not respect.
That is really why I have felt it difficult to question very strongly the principle of the Veto on the Security Council. Without that Veto, the control of the Security Council over us, and the challenge to our sovereignty and the sovereignty of nations, would be so great that I believe few of us would care to contemplate it. The Security Council, protected by the power of the Veto, was originally devised on the assumption of basic unity of purpose between the Great Powers. That assumption, unfortunately, has proved to be wrong. Then, of course, there is an attempt made to by-pass that difficulty by transferring a number of activities and problems to the General Assembly. That body's influence is not limited by the power of Veto; it can act on a two-thirds majority—or rather (I am wrong in using the word "act"), it can pass resolutions on a two-thirds majority, but it has no executive power and no power of compulsion. If it had, the whole problem would, of course, be much intensified, and I think the position would be worse.
The United Nations is an organisation composed of eighty or eighty-one nations—I think the number is now eighty-one. Many of those nations have no responsibility for world affairs, and it is true to say that most of them would be utterly unable to carry any of the burdens consequent on the making of a wrong or unwise decision out of which serious conflict might arise. That problem is intensified very frequently, by our British policy of giving independence and self-government to more and more nations. It is further intensified, of course, by the principle that operates at the United Nations of "one nation, one vote". That means, for instance, that the new state of Ghana, which we all hope will be successful, has exactly the same power and influence in voting strength as, say, America or ourselves. Yet one may ask: Who bears the brunt of any world conflict that may arise as a result of an unwise decision of the United Nations?
I do not think that quite finishes the summary of the problems connected with
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this issue, because the problem is not only one of numbers. There is another important point, and that is the nature of the challenges with which we have been lately faced, and which seem likely to lie ahead of us. For the time being. I think we can say, without undue optimism, that a major clash between major Powers seems almost to be ruled out by the fear of mutual destruction in a nuclear war. Therefore, the problem today is something different from that. It is the sort of problem that arises out of the Arab-Israeli dispute, out of Abadan and Suez, and which seems to be arising to-day in Oman. There we are faced with the type of potentate who is prepared to tear up any agreement or take over anybody else's property. whether national or international, and then rally behind him the Russian nine (or is it ten?) satellites, the Afro-Asian group, and sometimes, alas! even America, in a great and glorious cry of "anti-colonialism." Thus inspired, the United Nations appears to forget entirely the original crime and the nation which committed the original crime, and throws the whole of its moral and legal force against the victim of the theft or aggression who makes bold to attempt to defend himself or his interests or, in the case of Suez, an international interest.
How are we to try to meet this situation? One thing is quite clear: that there is no easy panacea. I think we shall all agree that we should be wrong to say, because there is no easy panacea, that there is nothing that can be done, albeit many of the things which I believe can be done have to be looked at on a long term basis. I do not know if your Lordships would agree with me, but I should think that the most important step to make the United Nations an effective body is that we and America should be able to understand one another and stand together. To that end, it is vitally important to do everything in our power, by propaganda, by action, and in every other way, to remove this fear of British colonialism which, I believe, poisons the attitude of so many Americans in dealing with these problems.
Speaking personally, from what I gathered during a speaking tour I have carried out lately in America, I would say that there are strong indications that some of what I would call the anti-colonial complex over there is definitely

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weaker than it was. I believe that there are a great number of Americans who are beginning to understand something of what British colonialism has done, in terms of civilisation and freedom, for many hundreds of millions of people in the world. I raise this point with no fear of an accusation of irrelevance, because I believe it is a vital point in the problem we are discussing to-day.
I say, secondly, that it is important to bring to bear all our influence against a system that I am afraid has tended rather to grow up in the United Nations lately, and that is what I call a system of group politics. We should, I think, be optimistic to hope that we can persuade Russia and her satellites to give up acting as a group, though I should certainly say that if Russia is anxious to convince the rest of the world that the change she says is taking place in Russia has, in fact, taken place, she could probably take no better step than this. But I relieve there is room for effective action in dealing with what we may call the Afro-Asian groups. I think we can bring to their notice what, after all, are their own interests, and, I would say, their own vital interests. The United Nations is the great hope, especially of those who are not great Powers, living as we are to-day in times of great danger for the weaker nations. There is nothing more likely 10 weaken, if not actually destroy, the influence of the United Nations than these group politics, based on prejudice relating to geography, race or colour. Here, surely, we can say to our friends of the Afro-Asian group that they have a tremendous and magnificent opportunity to prove that they have achieved not only their independence but also a full adult attitude and status.
Thirdly, may I say a word on the question of our representation at the United Nations and, indeed, the representation of all countries? Britain has a fine record there. During the existence of the United Nations, we have had three representatives, every one of them of first-class calibre. But, for all that, should we not cast our minds back to the old League of Nations days when we had Ministers with national position (I need only mention two names: Lord Cecil of Chelwood and Mr. Anthony Eden, as he then was) operating as almost full-time League of Nations Ministers?—though I do not think that Lord Cecil
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was actually so called. We know there is a great deal to be said against Ministers spending too much of their time abroad, but without in any way altering the diplomatic representation which we have been making to the United Nations, should we not think in terms also of Ministerial representation of that calibre?
Then, fourthly, have we not reached the stage where the United Nations might he prepared to tackle some of the challenges that I have mentioned, with greater courage, if they were in possession of an international police force? I particularly stress the word "police" rather than "army". It may be that in times to come an international army may become a practical proposition, but I do not think that many of your Lordships would feel that it is so to-day. A police force, whether permanent or ad hoc, is a practical proposition, and it is just the sort of force that is needed for dealing with the kind of challenge that I have ventured to mention to your Lordships. Its strength would lie not in its capacity to make war but primarily in the danger to any aggressor of attacking an international force.
Finally, may I remind your Lordships of the discussion last autumn on the Suez dispute, when there was a great disagreement between the Lord Chancellor and the noble and learned Lord, Lord McNair, on the interpretation of Article 51 of the Charter, which deals with self-defence. It is not for me, as a layman, to take any side in that matter, but if it is possible for as eminent a lawyer as the noble and learned Lord, Lord McNair, to cast doubt on or, as I think he did, assert positively that Article 51 ruled us out of court for acting in defence either of our own interests or of international interests, then all I can say is that the sooner that Article is redrafted the better. If the United Nations is prepared, by its organisation, to relieve individual nations of the need to defend their own interests, so much the better. We should all be delighted. But unless and until they are able to do that, we must be able to defend ourselves. The fact is that no sane man or sane nation is prepared to give up the right of self-defence unless it knows that there is a firm system of law and order that can be enforced by an effective force.
The United Nations Organisation, my Lords, is on trial today. Let there be no doubt in our minds on that point. It has done splendid and most useful work, particularly in the field of the Specialised Agencies. Another instance is the occasion when, fortunately for the world, Russia was sulking and not taking part in the Security Council, and the United Nations was then able to act effectively in Korea, as Russia was not present to use her Veto. But the United Nations has failed in dealing with the ten years' dispute between the Arabs and the Israelis. It failed in dealing with Abadan. In the minds of many of us, it failed in dealing with Suez. It failed to clear the Canal in the time in which it could have been cleared, and it failed in its undertakings to Israel when Israel was persuaded to leave the Gaza Strip and had a definite undertaking that that Strip would not be allowed to be reoccupied by Egypt as a base for hostile action, and when Israel understood that she had an undertaking as regards the freedom of the Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba. I repeat, let us be very clear in our minds that the United Nations is on trial today.
I would venture to suggest to your Lordships that this debate is dealing with such a colossal problem that I do not think we can hope to come to any very definite conclusion. As I have said before, there is no easy panacea, but we can, at least, help by trying constructively to uncover at least the realities of the problem. We must have no fear of admitting its deficiencies, and no fear of admitting its faults. After all, the acceptance of one's limitations is often a part of growing up, and the premature efforts on the part of the United Nations or any other organisation in trying to take on responsibilities for which it is not ready can only do more harm than good. In the case of the United Nations, it only diverts attention from what it has already done and can do in the future.
It can, as I have said, provide a forum and a meeting place for the diplomats and statesmen of the world. It has done, and can do, immensely important and valuable work on the economic, social and humanitarian side, through its Specialised Agencies. It can build up the idea of an effective International police force. I do not think we ought to discount
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the value even of one of its last pieces of work, its report on Hungary. We may consider it is ineffective. In many ways it is, but we are living in a day of cold rather than hot war, and I believe an open disclosure of what has happened is at least of some value in that cold war. I would venture to appeal to your Lordships that we should all agree to emphasise what the United Nations really can do, and can do now. I believe that that is the real hope of success and of further growth into a body that can ultimately free mankind from the fear of war, and from that type of international behaviour that so frequently in the past has led to war. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

THE SITUATION IN CENTRAL OMAN
3.50 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF GOSFORD): My Lords, I must apologise to your Lordships for once again having to intervene in the middle of a debate, but with your Lordships' permission I will make a statement similar to that being made in another place by my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary about the situation in Central Oman.
I informed your Lordships on July 23 that discretion had been given to our local military authorities to take certain limited action. Since then, after warning, air action has been taken against military targets. I would remind your Lordships that these are limited operations, but the necessary forces are being placed at the disposal of the local military commanders as they are required.
I should like to take the opportunity of warning your Lordships against giving any credence to the false and misleading information which is being disseminated from Cairo.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether he can make any statement about the use of ground troops—because an Air Force cannot occupy a country; ground forces are required for that purpose? Is it contemplated that the troops that have been moved from East Africa to, I think, Bahrein, will be employed in Central Oman?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I regret that I have no information whatsoever at this stage to give the noble Viscount.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: Then, my second and final question is: can the noble Earl say whether he has had any consultation with the State Department in reference to this matter? Last time he spoke most confidently about their being kept well-informed, but some remarks that were reported in the newspapers do not seem to support that view.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, as I told your Lordships on a previous occasion, we have kept the State Department fully informed of everything that is going on—everything of which we know—and I would advise the noble Viscount not to believe everything that he reads in the newspapers.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, in that case, would it not be as well that Parliament should be informed from time to time by the Government as to what the United States authorities have said to them, so that we may have a little information? Another point that I should like to ask about is whether actual military operations have begun on behalf of the Sultan of Muscat, and whether proper notification has now been given by our Government to the United Nations of the action that they are taking.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, as to the first part of the noble Viscount's question. I will certainly bring his suggestion to the notice of my right honourable and learned friend. As I said, I think the day before yesterday, we have not, in fact, informed the United Nations, as in this case there is no necessity to do so.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: What does the noble Earl mean by "no necessity"? Troops are in action. It is likely that ground troops will be soon in action. There is evident discord between our-selves and the State Department. What does the noble Earl mean by saying that there is no need to brine the matter to the notice of the United Nations?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, this is an internal affair relating to the Sultan of Muscat. The fact that he has appealed to us for help does not, in our
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view, oblige us to inform the United Nations.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: It is most interesting, in view of the debate we are having, to have that piece of information—that the Government do not think it necessary to inform the United Nations of the action they are taking inside another independent State. That is rather important. Perhaps it will affect the course of the debate we are having to-day. I hope that the noble Earl will continue to give us all the information he possibly can on this matter before the House rises.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, how will the Government get into touch with the other parties concerned—namely, King Saud and his friends, whoever they are—except through some such agency as the United Nations?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: It is surely up to the Sultan, if it is up to anybody, to inform the United Nations.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: Is Muscat a member?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: No, but the Sultan can still inform the United Nations.

THE UNITED NATIONS
3.55 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD GLYN LORD GLYN had given notice of a Motion to call attention to the increasingly widespread misunderstanding of the respective functions and powers of the Security Council and of the General Assembly of the United Nations; to the grave danger to international peace arising out of the uncertainty as to the precise nature of these functions and powers; and to the urgent need of clarification by means of some form of authoritative pronouncement from the United Nations organisation itself; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to introduce my Motion, in conjunction with that of my noble friend Lord De La Warr. I should like to draw attention to the limited points in the Motion which stands in my name, which deals with the functions of administration at present exercised by the United Nations, and I also want to deal with one or two aspects of the finance of the United

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Nations. As I have indicated, this is a very limited Motion. It occurred to some of us that there was grave misunderstanding as to the respective functions of the Security Council and the General Assembly, and that the more light that could be thrown on to the limit of the functions of both these bodies the less likelihood there was of a misunderstanding.
I think that none of your Lordships will disagree that nothing is more dangerous than to believe you have a screen which is effective but which is, in truth, quite ineffective, because it means that you base a great deal of your hopes and desires on something and then it turns out to be a mere paper or tinsel screen; and the result is that all your hopes for effectiveness are dissipated by the reality of the uncertainty of the strength upon which you are relying.
I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the purpose of the Security Council as originally set up. I think that has been forgotten; and it is well worth while to read the sixth volume of Sir Winston Churchill's book, which deals with the Yalta Conference and all that took place in regard to the establishment of the Security Council, and why it was laid down that it would never do for the General Assembly to have powers in excess of their proper function, which was to discuss matters. It was clearly laid down that if any matter was under consideration by the Security Council, that matter should not be the subject of a resolution by the General Assembly. That was deliberately done, and it is quite clearly stated why it was done. But there is no doubt that there has been a departure from that principle; therefore, I think it is important to clear up that matter.
The next point that I think is of importance is that the power of decision of the Security Council was always intended to end with the unity of the Great Powers after the war. As we all know, the tragedy is that that unity has been dissipated; there is not, in fact, unity between the Great Powers. Therefore, we see a system of "ganging up", as Mr. Menzies called it, by members of the General Assembly which tries to bring, and in fact does bring, a good deal of influence to bear in the various groups to which my noble friend Lord De La Warr referred.
There is another matter in this connection which I think is worth mentioning. To-day, I believe, the General Assembly numbers eighty members (I think it is actually seventy-eight who are effective), and a two-thirds majority is needed for any decisive resolution—that means fifty-two. There are twenty-one American States south of the Canadian border. Western European countries, plus Canada, Australia and New Zealand, add up to twenty. There is thus a total of forty-one, which is eleven short of the required number. It does not require much imagination to realise the amount of lobbying that goes on in regard to those eleven. As we all know, there is nothing so bad as Parliamentary lobbying. Mercifully, we do not have in this country, what is called "log-rolling", or the approach of "You back me on this and I will back you on something else". That is going on all the time in these lobbies in New York. It is a kind of seething mass of corruption, with some trying to get what they want at the expense of what is wanted by the rest of the world. That is something on which we should not rely. It was never intended; and though the words I have used may sound harsh, they are true. One has to realise that the time has come for reality.
On the other side of the picture we have the Soviet group, numbering, with the satellites, ten; and the Arab countries, numbering eleven, making a total of twenty-one; added to which there is the Afro-Asian group. As my noble friend Lord De La Warr has stated, the Afro-Asian group number fifteen, but I believe that four of those adopt an attitude of independence and do not always vote as a group. From our point of view, those four are therefore very important, but I do not for a moment suggest that we should enter into the field of lobbying to try, by improper means, to get their support. The real matter turns on the fact that there is now a situation almost of stalemate in regard to the powers and functions of the Security Council, which is a situation that no noble Lord wants. Those of us who believe in the necessity of something in the nature of the United Nations want to see an effective body, not an ineffective one. We therefore want to wipe out all those things which are wrong and detrimental to the great

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cause in which we all believe—something in the nature of a world-wide organisation.
There is one other matter which I believe is of importance. The United States recently introduced a motion which was carried. That was done without any revision of the Charter. In the opinion of some people, that led to a change of status as between the General Assembly and the Security Council. I do not believe that it did, nor do I think it was the intention of the United States Government that that should be the effect. But, so far as I know, the supreme authority of the Security Council has never been challenged; and the Charter has never been amended, so that, whatever that action may have been, it in no way altered the original conception that power should rest with the Security Council and not with the General Assembly.
The next point I want to take is that in these circumstances it is surely ludicrous for any of us to call the United Nations a "World Parliament." One too often sees it quoted as such in the newspapers. It is less like this Parliament than anything that has ever existed. It has no powers of procedure that we understand; matters are put before the General Assembly without any adequate time for consideration, and are sometimes rushed through in the hope of getting a decision. That is not the way in which the British Parliament works. The complaint usually is that the procedure of the British Parliament is almost slow, but it would be a very good thing for the United Nations if it could adopt some of our procedure and take more time to consider matters before voting upon them; because to-day there is danger in these rushed votes, carried out as a result of "ganging up."
Another matter which is not without interest is something which has been going on, quietly, steadily and all the time, in spite of, or because of, the United Nations—that is, the gradual building up, outside the United Nations, of a number of world-wide organisations. Added up, to-day they become a very formidable number. They are all dovetailed in, and normally work closely in conjunction with the United Nations. If we go through the dates on which those different organisations were formed, we
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get a kind of diary of crises in which the world was faced with some appalling risk, when there was an immediate dash into the idea of creating another organisation or some other group of States which would work and function together. If the United Nations was an effective organisation, that kind of thing would not be necessary. It is because of the ineffectiveness to-day of a body which we want to see effective that all these world organisations outside the United Nations have grown up.
First of all, there is the International Co-operative Administration, set up in 1947. Then there is the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, also set up in 1947, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which came into being in 1949. Then, as everybody remembers, the Brussels Treaty was signed in 1948. There was the Colombo Plan of 1951. There was the Organisation of American States which, in fact, was in existence before the United Nations, on the basis of the Monroe Doctrine; and there is the Arab League. It may be (though I do not say that it will happen) that in the future those bodies will coalesce together and may become a joint and efficient organisation without destroying the United Nations—and I think it would be a disaster if that should happen. I believe that people who talk about abolishing the United Nations do not realise the risks that they are proposing. What we want to know is how to make that organisation better and to make it a reality instead of a sham.
The last point to which I want to come is a matter on which I believe we have been very slack—the finance of the United Nations. I do not know whether your Lordships have seen the budget of the United Nations for 1957, a copy of which I have here. During the time I was in another place I spent a good deal of time on the Public Accounts Committee and the Estimates Committee, and I can assure your Lordships that we should never have passed these accounts in either one form or the other. I believe that it is very bad for a world organisation to have no auditing body or authority to check its accounts, because that situation leads to a grave danger of people getting jobs which they are not particularly qualified to hold and creating investigations which involve a large proportion of these people. I do not think it is

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generally realised what very large sums are involved, both directly and indirectly. There is also the fact that, so far as I can find, never since the United Nations was set up has there been any outside review to check over this expenditure and to make suggestions for economies.
The expenses of the Secretary General's office alone amount to 28,462,800 dollars for 1957, and if we analyse that sum we find some very extraordinary things. Then all kinds of committees have been set up, some of which do not seem to be very effective but all of which have a contingent of members who sit and get a certain number of dollars for attendance. And such a session may last a fortnight, a month or more. The list of these committees is an extraordinary one. There is one on the status of women, a subject which has been argued since Adam and Eve. That consists of a very large number of members who are expected to sit for five weeks this year, for which they will gain a good many thousand dollars; and what the result will be I do not know. At any rate, we pay our contribution towards that, and the annual increase of expenditure each year since the United Nations has been set up is something that I think deserves inquiry, because if you do not inquire into these things a scandal undoubtedly results.
Lastly, my Lords, I want to mention one thing with which I had to deal a little time ago. It is a very difficult subject. Your Lordships will forgive me for dealing with it now, but I think it is a good example of the lax way in which financial administration is exercised by the United Nations. All those who know the East and the Middle East have, for a long time, felt guilty about the misery suffered by the Arab refugees. Those of us who know the country and its history feel that it is a real blot that we should allow these people to suffer in misery, without expectation of something better. But I am afraid it is largely because of the lax administration of the United Nations that this happens.
The United Nations Relief and Works Organisation is in the ludicrous position at the present moment of preventing refugees from doing any active work The one hope for these poor Arab people and for their children who are coming on, is for them to be given work. Yet, under these regulations, that
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is barred. These refugees get a certificate, which is the only form they have to show what they are and what their life can be. But as soon as a refugee accepts work, his relief is cut down proportionately to the salary he receives for the work, so that he is no better off when working than when idling. Should he accept work at a salary which is locally equal to that of a non-refugee and is supposed to be adequate to maintain himself, his certificate is taken away and he loses all nationality and becomes a Stateless person. That is done under the regulations of the United Nations Relief and Works Organisation. There is no hope for that man of getting back to the position he was in before, and still less hope of his life in the future.
I know, my Lords, as we all know. that this is a political scandal which has been kept going because certain Arab countries want to have this misery in existence for political purposes. Surely, if the United Nations take the responsibility for these refugees, is it not the business of the great Powers—if it is right to call anybody that nowadays—to inquire how the administration is being carried out and what extra misery is being imposed on these people? There has been no inquiry since the mission which was appointed, I think, six or eight years ago, and which made definite recommendations about the re-settlement of these people in the Tigris Valley. There is no reason why that should not be done, if we had the will to do it and woke up to the misery that inaction is causing to these poor, wretched, defenceless people.
EARL JOWITT: May I make a suggestion to the noble Lord? I am largely in agreement with him about this matter; I have seen the thing on the spot. It is a matter well worth discussing, but would it not be well that he should put down some substantive Motion dealing with it? He will agree that the Motion he has on the Order Paper contains no reference or hint of this subject at all, and no one has come prepared to deal with it.
LORD GLYN: I quite agree. I am at fault in this matter, but I mentioned it as an example of the need for some oversight of the way in which the money of the United Nations is being misspent. But I agree that there is nothing in my Motion about it, except that it is time

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there was a definition of the functions and powers of the Security Council and the General Assembly, and I include in that the need for an inquiry into the way the finance of the United Nations is spent.
So that I do not make another slip and very rightly get checked by the noble Earl opposite—I apologise to the House for riot having put down anything about Arab refugees—may I say one thing in conclusion? General Smuts, in the discussions in September, 1944, was largely responsible for the shape of the United Nations. On September 26 in that year he said:
"Whilst a world organisation is necessary, it is equally essential that our Commonwealth and Empire should emerge from this ordeal as strong and influential as possible, making us an equal partner in every sense for the other Big Two."
I think that when General Smuts stated that, when the war was just coming to its end, he recognised that the United Nations, which he so strongly supported, could exist only if it was effective and strong and supported by those Powers who stood together in the Great War.
4.18 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE THE EARL OF DUNDEE had given notice of his intention to move to resolve, That this House deplores the decision of the United Nations requiring Israel to withdraw her forces from Gaza and Aqaba without any guarantee against future aggression and interference with shipping, and that this House considers that no confidence can be placed in the authority of the United Nations until that institution has proved itself willing to enforce all us decisions impartially upon all its members. The noble Earl said: My Lords, the first two Motions which we are discussing together are of great interest, and I think they would have been equally interesting at any time. I am grateful that my own Motion should have been selected as the third one to be debated. I did not expect that it would be, because it is obviously a Motion which was rather more topical when it was put on the Order Paper last February, than it is now.
I certainly do not want to distract attention from the wider questions which have been raised by my two noble friends who have preceded me. I entirely agree with both of them that the United Nations Organisation, like your Lordships' House, can do a great deal of good by
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publicly discussing all matters of public interest, and that it probably ought to be reformed, but I think that the reform of this House may very likely happen long before the reform of the United Nations Organisation, about which it would be even more difficult to get people to agree. I think that for the time being, at least, we have all got to try to make the best of the United Nations as it is now.
The United Nations Organisation was not designed to deal with a permanent cold war between two gigantic Powers, one of which tries to base its policy on the United Nations while the other has not the slightest intention of ever accepting any United Nations decision except when that decision should happen to suit the designs of Communist aggression. However desirable it may be—I am sure it is desirable—to reform the United Nations Assembly, I do not think that any constitutional reform of this kind would have a great deal of effect on the world struggle between Communist tyranny and human rights which dominates every other question in foreign affairs.
My own Motion refers to Israel, and I have always thought that the history of Israel is a good example of the dangers to peace which may result from trying to base your foreign policy on an international authority which is always obeyed by one side and never obeyed by the other. The modern State of Israel was a creation of the United Nations, which did not approve of the British endeavours to establish peaceful co-existence between Arabs and Jews in Palestine itself, and which obliged us to surrender our Mandate. As soon as the new State had come into being, it was immediately invaded on all its frontiers, and the United Nations was utterly incapable of protecting its own creation. It was like a maternity nurse who helps to bring a baby into the world and then, when the baby is attacked by a savage dog, retires into a corner and whispers to the dog that it is not behaving quite properly.
But this Jewish baby happened to be a good fighter: it was capable of looking after itself, and the Jews not only inflicted a humiliating defeat on all their enemies but also expelled, or at least caused to emigrate, about one million Arab refugees who have since been living in conditions of the utmost misery and destitution. I certainly hope very much that, as the

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noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, suggested just now, there may be a separate debate on this subject, because it is an example of a matter in which the United Nations have greatly failed in their responsibilities, and I do not think that we have time to pursue it properly now. What has happened is that there is now, so far as we can see, a permanent condition of the most implacable hostility, armed hostility, between the Arabs and the Jews.
However much we may sympathise with the more liberal elements in Arab nationalism and however much we may want (as we all do) to help the Arabs towards greater freedom and greater prosperity (which we all want to see), we cannot promise the Arabs the one thing that they want above all others—that is, the extermination of Israel. But Russia can, and has promised to give them that. It cannot be too often repeated that the principal object of Russian diplomacy in the Middle East is to draw Middle Eastern oil into the Communist orbit by helping the Arabs to destroy the State of Israel. The Russians are good strategists, and it is a principle of good strategy to strike where your opponents are weakest. In Western Europe, the North Atlantic Alliance is not entirely weak, not entirely divided. In the Middle East it is both, and if the Russians can gain their objective there, where their opponents are weak, they will then have won the cold war without ever having had to strike in Europe at all.
I think that I should probably be right if I added this—that the political strategy and the military strategy of Russia, with very extensive military preparations, is now giving priority to the Middle East over all other objectives, both in Europe and in Asia; and it may well be that if Russian policy in the Middle East should fail, the regime in Russia may collapse. I have always held the view that the Israel-Egyptian War last Autumn was really a Russian war in which Egypt was the tool of Russia. But, however that may be, the United Nations, again, were not only entirely incapable of stopping this war but they did not even begin to understand what the war was about. When the war was temporarily stopped by French and British action, the United Nations
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promptly intervened, not to save Egypt, but to save Russian policy from total defeat—in which they were entirely successful.
And I am afraid that everything which has happened since then has tended to re-establish the dangerous position which existed last Summer. I have often asked the Government whether they can give me information about the extent of Russian arms now being sent to Egypt or which have been sent there within the last six months. The Government have not been able to give any precise information. I do not know whether they have any more now. But your Lordships have no doubt seen reports in yesterday's editions of The Times and the Daily Telegraph of the review of the Egyptian Army which took place on Tuesday—that is, the day before yesterday—in Cairo. It is stated that hundreds of Soviet-built tanks, self-propelled guns, truck-drawn heavy artillery, and other equipment, including a group of barrelled rocket launchers mounted on Soviet-built truck carriers, droned past for three hours in the hot sun. Most of these new armoured weapons for Egypt had been coming in, according to my information, in the last six months. At the same time, Soviet submarines which have been supplied to Egypt, have now been seen following Israeli ships in the Gulf of Aqaba.
Nothing has been done by the United Nations to implement the assurances on which, we understood, Israel agreed to withdraw her forces from Gaza and Aqaba. There are many people in this country who are comforting themselves by telling each other that Egypt's prestige in the Arab world is now declining. I do not know whether that is so or not. But I am afraid that Western prestige in the Arab world is certainly declining, because everything that is happening strengthens the impression among the Arabs that if they back an irresolute and divided West they will be backing a loser, and if they back the Communists, who know what they want and know how to get it, they will then be backing a winner.
I think that we have now got to make the best we can of the United Nations. And may I conclude with one word about what seems to me to be the most hopeful line of policy which the United Nations might be persuaded to follow? One

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result of the Suez incident was the establishment of a United Nations police force in the area, in whose favour first Britain and France and then the Israelis withdrew. And it should, of course, be remembered that we had always said that it was our intention to withdraw in favour of such a force as soon as it effectively fulfilled its functions. I am told that a fortnight ago a deputation from both Houses of Parliament—with members of different Parties in it—went to see the Foreign Secretary in order to represent to him that the United Nations should be pressed to form a larger and more permanent world police force. I understand that their arguments were favourably received by Mr. Selwyn Lloyd. I had nothing to do with that deputation, but the noble Lord opposite, Lord Pakenham, was kind enough to suggest to me last night that I might try to say one word about this matter, since the noble Lord himself, to our great regret, is not able to speak in this debate. I am sure he is right in wishing that the subject should be discussed by your Lordships.
I do not think anyone would suggest that a world police force could have any effect in a world war. Nor would it be able to stop even a minor war, which might have more serious consequences, unless it happened to be there. The Korean War could never have been stopped by the United Nations if the American troops had not been there to begin with, and the Israeli-Egyptian war could not have been stopped by anybody if British and French troops had not been ready stationed in the Mediterranean. Therefore, it would be no use having an international police force stationed say in New York, ready to be sent to any quarter of the world where there was trouble, because by the time the force could be transported to the scene of action, the minor war would probably be finished and the major war might well have begun. Therefore, I think that if an international United Nations police force is to be of any use, it must be permanently stationed in one or possibly two areas in which it is anticipated that trouble is most likely to occur, and in present circumstances I think there is no doubt that this area is the Middle East.
I should like to see the present United Nations Force in the Middle East strengthened and provided with some aircraft and armoured fighting vehicles. It could not be expected to defeat a major act of aggression against Russian armour manned by Russian volunteers, but if preliminary police action, which might prevent a more serious situation from arising, were to be taken by the United Nations Force, it would have an enormous advantage from our point of view, because it could not then be said by any country that this police action was prompted by British colonial imperialism. When Britain has to take police action it is nearly always represented in Asiatic countries, in parts of the Commonwealth and all over the United States that this is an example of British colonialism. I hope that if the Americans have to take any action under the Eisenhower doctrine we shall always support it and not condemn American police action as they have condemned ours. But in the neutralist countries, the Eisenhower doctrine is already being represented as a new kind of American imperialism. I think that a permanent international police force, although it may not be strong enough to defeat aggression, nevertheless might be of the highest value to the cause of peace by removing those misunderstandings and divisions among the free nations which until now have always played into the hands of the aggressor.
4.33 p.m.
EARL JOWITT: My Lords, we have listened to speeches from three noble Lords who sit on the Benches opposite. If I may say so, they are all noble Lords from whom we on this side of the House derive, and have derived, help and whose views we sincerely respect. It always seems to us that they talk good sense and with sound knowledge, though we think that, unfortunately, it is coloured by a wrong political point of view. Having said that, I must say that to-day it seems to me that all three of them have fallen far short of their own standard. In preparing the few remarks that I am going to make to your Lordships, I have found great difficulty in getting to grips with this matter at all. I think the noble Earl who introduced the debate, Lord De la Warr, found just the same thing because he apologetically said that his speech was going to consist largely of platitudes. I

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feel just the same; I am afraid that my speech will also consist largely of platitudes.
I found little in the noble Earl's speech which was really constructive. That there are defects in the organisation of the United Nations is plain for everybody to see—anybody who does not should have his head examined. The trouble is that it can be amended only by common consent, and at the present moment there is not the slightest chance of getting that common consent. That is the realistic point of view. The noble Earl did not seem to me to be ready to offer much consolation on that particular point. The noble Lord, Lord Glyn, realised what a difficulty he was in, and went boldly right outside the course and jumped a great many hurdles—he jumped very well—which had nothing to do with the competition at all. There is nothing whatever in his Motion dealing with the Arab refugees or with the lack of control of finance. On both these topics, if I may humbly say so, he has my deep sympathy; and if on either of these topics, on a different occasion, he will put down some Motion, I should very much like to take part in the debate. But I have not come prepared to-day, and indeed no-one, reading his Motion, could possibly have been expected to come prepared to-day, to say anything about those matters.
What the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, has done to-day is to suggest that there is great danger to international peace arising out of the uncertainty about the precise nature of the respective functions and powers of the Security Council and the General Assembly. That there is an uncertainty is undoubted. Perhaps it is desirable that that uncertainty be cleared up; I will accept that. Somebody recently—I cannot remember who; perhaps noble Lords would be able to help me, but I think it was a distinguished living statesman—said with regard to Constitutions that he thought they should be short and obscure.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: Talleyrand.
EARL JOWITT: I thought it was someone more recent than that—Sir Winston Churchill. But never mind. There is much to be said for those who take the view that an unwritten Constitution is better than a written one. But
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I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, that there is uncertainty, and by all means let us clear it up. But I cannot think that that is the real danger to peace in the world to-day. If we are going to be realistic, surely the danger to peace in the world rises from imperialist Communism, and from nothing else. Whatever force we have, whatever treaties we have, that will be the fact. To the references of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, to Israel, I find myself exceedingly sympathetic. Perhaps I ought not to be, but I am. But I do not at all like the conclusion of his Motion, which seems to me to have the effect of denigrating the United Nations, which, after all, imperfect though it is, is better than nothing; and so I cannot bring myself to accept that.
I think that the long and short of the matter is that there are two schools of thought about this question. There are those who hoped that the United Nations would solve all problems and enable the countries of the world for ever afterwards to live happily together; and there were those of the other extreme school who thought that the United Nations was a mere talking shop, which prevented people from taking any action on their own account and did nothing, and was therefore mischievous. Sometimes, the two points of view are combined in the same person. Sometimes somebody will say that the United Nations was blameful for not having stopped the tragedy in Hungary, and that in regard to Suez, where it had the opportunity of stopping the invasion, it was guilty of acting as a mere interfering busybody.
So, my Lords, it comes to this; that there are some who want it mended and some who want it ended. I think that to-day everybody agrees that to end it would be a disaster. Then, if I may say so, I think the menders are completely unrealistic. Look at the speech which the Foreign Secretary made in another place, a few days ago, on July 10. He said that the Russians had said—and, of course, all their satellites—that any change would be a change for the worse. Well, my Lords, if that is so, they are asserting the doctrine of perfection; and that is a strange doctrine to assert about this or any other human institution. But, equally, it is to my mind quite unrealistic to think that you can talk

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about changing the United Nations at the present time, which I think I am right in saying involves the consent of everybody. The Foreign Secretary made it plain that he was trying. Let us by all means, as the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr said, get closely in touch with our American friends, and keep closely in touch with them for ever, and see what we can do. But I do not see much chance at the present time.
The maintenance of peace really depends upon the unity of the great Powers, and that we have not got. Of course, if a Power is prepared to disregard its pledged word, and disregard the opinion of the world, then the only way of stopping that is to wage a successful war against such a Power. The only way of stopping Russia from invading Hungary, in the brutal way she did was to declare war on her, and to win that war. I see no other way. If a Power is sufficiently "thick-skinned" and removed from the impact of world opinion that it does not care what people think, what else can be done? All the same, I think that the United Nations was useful. In the Suez case, by a majority of 64 to 5, the Assembly called on us to withdraw. We were sensitive to world opinion, and rightly so; and we withdrew. In the case of Hungary, the Assembly called on Russia to withdraw, in an equally strong resolution.
LORD COLYTON: I am grateful to the noble and learned Earl for giving way. I should like to ask him, on the interesting point he made about what the United Nations could have done about Hungary, this question: If, in fact, the Secretary General had arranged for his team of observers to be flown in during that twenty-four hours or so during which the Nagy Government were in power, would not that have made a difference to the situation?
EARL JOWITT: It might have done; but I doubt it. I am anxious not to say anything controversial. I myself think that it was a Godsend for Russia at that time that the limelight was rather deflected from what she was doing in Hungary by the unfortunate Suez crisis which took place just at that time. I think that if world opinion had been absolutely focused on Hungary there might have been some chance of doing something.
LORD ST. OSWALD: Would the noble and learned Earl agree that the inaction, which he accepts, and the action, which he applauds, both served Soviet Russia?
EARL JOWITT: I do not think the first did. As I have said, I do not want to be controversial, but I believe intensely that our attitude over Suez was wrong and in breach of our Treaty. I had hoped not to have to go into that matter, but if I am right in that view, then I am sure the noble Lord would agree that we should not have acted as we did. It is for this country to keep its obligations, at all costs. But I do not want to go into that.
I would say this. The Assembly passed these resolutions. Do not let us assume too readily that the resolutions are worthless in the case of Russia. The Assembly appointed a Committee; that Committee made a report, and I think that that report shocked the conscience of the world. It is a fact that a week after the report came out Molotov was dismissed. I cannot pretend to say whether one followed from the other, but it is a coincidence. I am by no means sure that, even in the case of Russia, the conscience of the world and public opinion may not have some effect. The noble Lord is laughing at me—well, he may be right. In spite of the fact that Hungary has for years been under oppression, the young Hungarians do not seem to like living under a system of oppression; and in spite of the fact that Poland has for years been under oppression, I do not believe that the desires for liberty are killed in Poland—and I have heard that they may not even be killed in Czechoslovakia. Is it not possible that these stirrings of the human conscience may in time make themselves felt in Russia also? It could be a long time, or it could be a time shorter than that which the pessimists believe. But do not let us belittle the importance of the collective judgment of the world as to what is right and wrong. Therefore I welcome the fact that the "Uniting for Peace" resolution of 1950 did transfer to the Assembly powers which perhaps it did not have before.
I am entirely at one with the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, in saying that the voting system is ridiculous; and no one could say to the contrary about that. But if the conclusions of the Assembly are mere recommendations, does that matter

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so much? If there is some better system, what is the system to be? Is it going to be based on population? If so, would India, for instance, have seven times the number of votes that we have? How would it be arranged? I follow the noble Lord in saying that the point should be cleared up as to whether the effect of the resolution of the Assembly is a mere recommendation or something beyond that, something to which we have committed ourselves. But it does not seem to me, if it is a mere recommendation, that it matters so much what the system of voting is, so long as a substantial majority—a two-thirds majority, the sort of majority which obtained in the Suez case and in the Hungarian case—is required. Then I think we may fairly claim that that does in some sense mirror public opinion of the world, an opinion which, in my view, cannot be lightly disregarded.
I should like to say a word or two on the Motion of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, because I confess that on the particular matter of Israel, which he mentioned, I find myself in a position which is not far removed from his. As your Lordships know, for a lone time past in this House, and particularly when I was Leader of the Labour Party here, I have pressed the Government of the day to give further arms to Israel to offset the arms which were being given to the Arabs. I pressed them to say, categorically and clearly, not merely that they would get together with other like-minded Powers to see what should be done if there was an invasion, but to make it quite plain that, if Israel was invaded, they would all come to her assistance. Unfortunately, those steps were not taken. It is, of course, easy to be wise after the event; but if those steps had been taken, perhaps the action which Israel herself took would not have been necessary.
I have expressed in this House my view that the action which Israel took was justified, faced, as she was, with threats which intimated that the whole State was to be extinguished—thrown into the sea. But I have since talked over this matter with many distinguished jurists, of many nationalities, and undoubtedly the prevalent view is that Israel's attitude was not justified. Article 51 makes it quite
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plain that the right of self-defence arises in one case, and in one case only; and that is in the event of armed attack. I have not the Article before me, but I shall be corrected if I am wrong. Unless you can say that what Israel had to endure was armed attack (of course, there were the border raids), then it would follow that Israel was not justified in taking the law into her own hands. If she was wrong in taking the law into her own hands, then I suppose it would follow that any judge would have to say thin the territory which she gained by so doing—namely. Sinai and Gaza—should not be retained by her by what, on that hypothesis, was a wrong.
Equally, however, it is abundantly plain that she has the right to pass her shipping through the Suez Canal, and that she has the right to use her own territory, the port of Alat in the Gulf of Aqaba. I saw in to-day's papers, as others of your Lordships did, that a Danish ship had been allowed through the Gulf of Aqaba, and that the one Israeli seaman on board the ship had been arrested and was restored at the other end, so that it could not be claimed that any Israeli had passed through the Gulf. But at any rate the Danish ship, with its cargo to Israel, was allowed to go through.
LORD BIRDWOOD: May I, with great temerity, interrupt for one moment over the question of the position of Israeli ships passing through the Canal? I think we need to be very careful here, because the Egyptian case, as I understand it, is based on Article 10 of the 1888 Convention, which has the effect of excluding those Articles of the Convention which interpret the Convention as allowing complete freedom in peace or war to ships passing through the Suez Canal, even those of belligerents. I think we have to be very careful if we say that the law is against Egypt.
EARL JOWITT: It is not for the noble Lord or me to announce a decision. There is the International Court at The Hague. I would most humbly suggest that the time has now come when the opinion of that Court ought to be taken. It is open either to the Security Council or to the Assembly to ask for an advisory opinion. I readily understand that it might be difficult for Israel to ask for that opinion, but I suggest that it would be a good idea if either the Security Council

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or the Assembly were to ask for an advisory opinion on two points; first, is Israel entitled to pass her ships through the Suez Canal; and, second, is she entitled to use the Gulf of Aqaba for the purposes of her shipping as she desires? In view of the difficulties we have reached, that seems to me to be the best solution we can take in this matter.
My Lords, I felt that I ought to say what I have said. I want to make it quite plain to the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, that I agree with him in saying that if there is any country which has been exposed to unbearable threats and difficulties it is Israel, and that she has shown great patience in the face of these provocations. I had thought that she was justified in the course she took, but I think l should be right in saying that the majority of jurists would say that in that respect she was wrong, because she could not establish that an armed attack had been made against her.
All that remains for me to say is this. I think it is perfectly true that there are great criticisms to be made of the United Nations—first of all, the elementary fact that the United Nations has no power to right a civil wrong. You may have the Canal snatched away from you in breach of the plainest contract. The United Nations cannot afford you a remedy. All she can say is that you must not take the law into your own hands and provide your own remedy. That, I think, is a weakness. It is a weakness, too, that there is nothing in the United Nations which provides for change or development. Things are constantly changing in this world, and the United Nations, of course, is based on the status quo. But when all these things have been said, I agree with (I think it was) the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, and the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, both of whom said that it is far better to keep what we have got than to go back to the international anarchy which prevailed before we had anything at all. I believe that in that respect we are all at one.
I sincerely hope that the United Nations will grow and develop. I regard it as a living organism which will improve, or may improve, with time. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Earl, Lord Dundee: I should like to see some kind of a force developed. At present we have an ad hoc force which went into the Canal and did very useful service
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there. The noble Earl, as I understood him, did not envisage a force that could stand up against one of the great Powers, or anything of that sort, but a force which might be extremely useful in border disputes and the like, with the authority of the United Nations, formed rather on the lines of the French Foreign Legion. I believe that would be valuable.
When the deputation went to the Foreign Secretary the other day, he said that he wanted people to go on canvassing this idea and working it out. That has been done. My noble friend Lord Pakenham, for one, and many Members on the other side of the House have contributed ideas to this, and in the fullness of time it may come about. I will encourage all those things. But just because we cannot get all those things at once, do let us realise that we must keep what we have. We must not jettison what we have, slender protection though it may be. The hopes of those who worked so well in forming this body—my noble friend Lord Attlee, who is with us now; the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, who took a most distinguished part; Sir Anthony Eden, who also took part, and many other distinguished public men—have not been realised to the full. That they would admit at once. Their hopes have not been realised because, unfortunately, the unity for which we hoped among the great powers of the world has not been achieved. At the present time, anyone who is completely realistic must recognise those facts. Everybody must recognise that something better could perhaps be evolved. All I would ask your Lordships to do is to show patience and hope, trusting in the ideal that public opinion throughout the world may ultimately have a stronger effect than to-day we can realise. Do not, I urge, jettison what we have, although the sad fact is that the immediate prospect is that there is no chance whatever of amending it along the lines I have indicated.
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, I interrupt to inform your Lordships that, as it is probable that we shall go on for some time, dinner will he available in the Dining Room.
5.0 p.m.
The JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF GOSFORD): My Lords, I should like at

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this stage to comment on some of the points made by the noble Lords who have already spoken, and in particular those noble Lords whose Motions we are debating to-day. I thank them for their courtesy in having let me know in advance what they were likely to mention during debate.
The Charter of an organisation, like the United Nations, however brilliantly thought out it may be, must in the last analysis depend on the support of its members. The fact that the United Nations organisation has the appearance of having two sets of rules is not the fault of the Charter but of the fact that there are two types of morality in the world to-day. This is no reason for saying that the United Nations is powerless. It is imperative for the peace of the world that it is made to work, and to work effectively. Her Majesty's Government is making, and will continue to make, every effort to this end. The noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, has pointed out some of the defects and has suggested some possible remedies. Although the noble Earl did not specifically suggest reviewing the Charter itself, I should like to take this opportunity to explain the present position.
Your Lordships will recall that on June 6 a Committee consisting of representatives of all members of the United Nations met in New York to consider the organisation, the timing and the procedure of a conference to review the Charter. This was in accordance with a resolution adopted at the Tenth Session of the General Assembly in 1955. Although we and a number of other nations were strongly in favour of holding this conference, the Committee came to the conclusion that all it could do was to recommend to the next Session of the General Assembly that the Committee itself should be kept in being and should report to the General Assembly, not later than its Fourteenth Session: that is, in the autumn of 1959. The reason for this somewhat negative decision was that the Russians and their satellites had at the Tenth Session of the General Assembly made it plain that they would oppose any idea of such a conference. They repeated their objections in the Committee. Their abstention in the vote on the Committee's recommendation was due to the fact that
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their opposition to Charter review was so firmly rooted that they would not even take up a position on any resolution referring to it.
The Committee's recommendation was accepted by 67 votes to none, with the 9 abstentions from the Communist countries. This is most regrettable, to say the least, but it is no use flying in the face of reality; and we had to agree, as did nearly all the other countries represented on the Committee, that a review conference would be pointless, if not in fact harmful, unless it were to take place in auspicious international circumstances. The fact is that until the Russians change their minds the circumstances will not be auspicious, as no amendment to the Charter can be accepted unless it is ratified by two-thirds of the members of the organisation, which must include all the permanent members of the Security Council. In these circumstances, the Committee's decision was the only practical one to take at the time.
As there is no possibility at present of altering the Charter in order to remove the double standard which appears to exist, let us examine one or two of its faults. As the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, said, the United Nations was extremely effective against Britain over the Suez issue, and in fact backed up Nasser who had by then become an aggrieved party. On the other hand, it has been notably ineffective over Hungary and in other places mentioned by the noble Earl. In other words, it is successful where the countries concerned are willing to abide by a United Nations decision in the case of the Security Council or of a recommendation in the case of the General Assembly. Surely, though, this is not the fault of the United Nations, but of the members who make it up.
In 1950, in Korea, the United Nations provided with reasonable promptness a United Nations Command which was eventually effective in halting the invasion of South Korea by North Korea. True, Russia had at that time withdrawn from the Security Council and therefore was not in a position to exercise her Veto. Nevertheless this is an example of rapid and effective action of which the United Nations is in fact capable, if allowed to do so. Further, we must not forget that the fact that the United

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Nations was at least trying to promote a settlement made it possible to maintain some measure of control over the turbulent situation in Palestine up to the Israeli attack on Egypt last year, so that for years, despite constant trouble in the area, there were in fact no full-scale hostilities. In the same way, the Kashmir problem has been kept below boiling point, and, while this is due in large measure to the wisdom and moderation of the Indian and Pakistani leaders, a good deal of credit should and must go to the United Nations.
The noble Earls, Lord De La Warr and Lord Dundee, asked whether the possession of a police force might help to give the United Nations the confidence necessary for tackling its problems a little more courageously. Her Majesty's Government have always made it clear that they would like to see the creation of some form of permanent United Nations police force which could be used in emergencies and to keep law and order. That is why we hope that something permanent may develop out of the present United Nations Emergency Force; and in this connection I would refer noble Lords to a statement made by my right honourable and learned friend, the Foreign Secretary, in another place, on July 10. I do not propose to follow the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, into the details of the working of the United Nations emergency force, but I should like to emphasise that this force continues to provide a considerable guarantee of peace in Gaza and at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba. Egypt maintains no troops in the Gaza strip; the frontiers of Israel, with the recent exception of that with Syria, have been relatively free of incident; and the right of passage in the Gulf of Aqaba and through the Straits of Tiran is at present being exercised.
I should like now to turn to the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Glyn. He mentioned the confusion which exists over the respective functions and powers of the Security Council and the General Assembly. I agree that there is misunderstanding, to say the least of it, and that this is dangerous. It is perhaps natural that some misunderstandings should arise, because the functions of the two bodies overlap in certain respects. The United Nations Charter makes it quite clear, for example, that it is the Security Council, where the five Powers have the power of veto, which is vested
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with the primary responsibility for mainaining international peace and security.
It is also true, as the Charter again makes clear, that the General Assembly has a secondary responsibility in this sphere also. But those who framed the Charter knew very well what they were doing in assigning the primary responsibility to a compact body of eleven instead of to a body designed mainly for debating purposes. There is, of course, another most important distinction which has already been mentioned. The Security Council can take decisions which are binding upon members, while the General Assembly, except in practice in certain administrative and budgetary matters, cannot. The General Assembly can only recommend, and its recommendations are not mandatory. It is the nature of the General Assembly to be a debating forum where ideas are exchanged. It cannot by its nature wield executive authority.
The fact is, however, that the Assembly has lately tended to acquire some of the executive powers which the Charter recognised were unsuited to it. The main cause of this has been the use of the "Uniting for Peace" procedure. This has been used twice since October last year, once in the case of Hungary and once in the case of the Middle East. This procedure, which is described in some detail in the White Paper on the proceedings at the last Session of the General Assembly, was approved by an overwhelming majority of the General Assembly in 1950, after the Korean war had demonstrated the danger that, in any emergency, action by the United Nations might be blocked by a Veto in the Security Council. Whether this procedure was properly invoked is not the point at issue. We took the view that it was not properly invoked in the case of the Middle East but was properly invoked in the case of Hungary. Be that as it may, twice recently the General Assembly has had to deal with vital questions concerning international peace and security, in a manner very different from what was foreseen by those who drew up the Charter.
Moreover, the large expansion of membership of the United Nations has, not unnaturally I think, contributed to this tendency by the Assembly to try to increase its power and status where it can. I think this tendency might have been at

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least partly arrested had it been possible, as Her Majesty's Government wished, to expand the Security Council last year after the admission of the main batch of new members. It is a matter of great regret to Her Majesty's Government that this proposal, which we fully supported, failed because of Soviet opposition: the Soviet Union insisted that there could be no expansion of the Security Council until Communist China was seated in the United Nations.
To sum up, the distinction between the powers and functions of the Assembly and the Security Council is there for all to see, and should be respected if the nations are willing to do so. Once again, we come back to the old, old difficulty, which is that, while some nations are prepared to observe and to abide by the spirit of the Charter, others are not. I doubt, therefore, whether it would be possible to have an authoritative pronouncement by the United Nations itself setting out the differences in the powers and functions of the Security Council and the General Assembly. In a sense, as I have tried to explain, it already exists in the basic United Nations document—the Charter. On the other hand, if it were possible by an amendment of the Charter to make the distinction and differences clearer, in a manner acceptable by those concerned, then such a proposal would have the full support of Her Majesty's Government. Her Majesty's Government will do all in their power to have the authority of the Security Council maintained.
The noble Lord, Lord Glyn, called attention to the deficiency of the United Nations' budgetary system and mentioned that it has no equivalent of the Estimates or Public Accounts Committees. It may perhaps be helpful to your Lordships if I explain the budgetary procedure adopted by the United Nations. I think your Lordships will understand from this that it is not perhaps quite so loose as the noble Lord seemed to suppose.
The expenditure of the United Nations is controlled by the General Assembly under powers derived from Article 17 of the Charter. The United Nations budget is drawn up by the Secretariat and appears in its first form as a report by the Secretary-General. This report is considered by the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions.
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After a detailed review, which generally lasts about two months, the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions passes its own report and version of the budget to the Fifth Committee, where it is further considered. It is at this stage that individual sections of the budget are considered in detail. Each section gaining a majority in the Fifth Committee is returned to the Secretary-General, who produces a revised section. This is continued until all sections have obtained a majority. The Fifth Committee then submit their report, containing the revised budget, to the Assembly in plenary, where the budget is finally accepted. Budgetary questions require a two-thirds majority under Article 18 of the Charter.
Finally, I turn to the second part of the Motion of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee: that the United Nations should prove itself willing to impose all its decisions impartially upon all its members. I should like to say at once that I am not without great sympathy for what he says. The trouble is that the United Nations does not have the means, at present, to enforce its decisions. This derives from the fact that the Charter has never been enabled to operate as its drafters intended. As I said at the beginning of my speech, the Organisation has to depend upon the good will of its members, upon their willingness to abide both by the spirit of the Charter and by the recommendations of the Assembly or the decisions of the Security Council. Until this situation is rectified the authority of the United Nations will undoubtedly suffer. But I am sure that your Lordships, with the world divided as it is now, and the United Nations reflecting these divisions, would not contend that the representatives of the United Nations of a certain point of view, however morally justified, should invariably attempt to impose the authority of the United Nations by force. That, I think your Lordships would agree, in the Hungarian affair could easily have led to nuclear war.
The fact that the Russians should have got away with ignoring the resolutions of the United Nations on Hungary, however reprehensible, is a reflection of Russian international behaviour. That world opinion is flouted is not to say that world opinion is wrong, or that it can always be enforced. Indeed, who

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knows what effect the attitude of the United Nations over the Hungarian affair may yet have on the conduct of Russian policy in the longer term?
Recent events will have performed a valuable service if they have brought home to members of the United Nations a better understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Organisation. Unfortunately, I cannot say that it follows that steps will be taken to put things right. This requires not only a wide measure of international agreement, but a greater respect for international law. I can assure your Lordships that Her Majesty's Government, for their part, will not fail to support all proposals which would have the practical effect of strengthening the United Nations.
5.20 p.m.
EARL ATTLEE: My Lords, after the speech of my noble friend Lord Jowitt I shall not detain the House for long. I recall that it was a little over twelve years ago that, with others, I was engaged at San Francisco on the work of forming the Charter. On looking back, one can say that there was a certain amount of illusion and lack of a sense of reality at the time. For instance, the view most prevalent at the time in the minds of our American friends was that they and Russia were the two "big boys"; that they would agree and all the world would go with them. We found that influence later. Since then, the Americans have swung right the other way. There was also the illusion, which I never shared, that at that time China was a great Power. It was not. Since then it has become a great Power. Yet at that time China, which was then in a general state of civil war, was put on the Security Council. Now that China is an effective Power in the world she is disregarded.
One has therefore to look and see. In particular, it is all too easy to view the proceedings of the United Nations from the angle of the interest of one's own country at a particular time. For instance, the action of the Assembly over Suez caused quite a revulsion of feeling among a number of people who felt that, whatever might be done by other countries, it was shameful that their country should have acted in the way it did. We must take a pretty realistic view of it. If, as a matter of fact, we were wrong, it is just as well to confess it.
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I agree that at the moment there is not a great hope of getting the change we want. It is really quite useless to think that all the wrong is on the one side. I think that Russia has been completely wrong in the way she has used the Veto. I think that Russia is completely wrong in her obsession and fear—it is largely fear—of the West. I think the United States is wrong in her objection to putting China on the Security Council. I think we have a rather better balance in regard to these things—that may be merely a matter of national make-up. Obviously, we want the United Nations, and we must continue to work it. We can only hope that in time it may develop. But I certainly think that a time will come when there must be an overhaul. The Security Council was created at the end of the war. As was natural, the victors in the war were placed on the Security Council. The time must come when that situation must be reviewed. Since then, Asia has attained a much bigger position in the world than before. We have to get away from the old obsession that it is only Europe and people of European descent who matter in the world. China, certainly, and India, I think, must, in time, have a place on the Security Council. No doubt in time we shall also have to consider ex-enemy countries. Therefore, one ought to keep one's mind wide open to changes which are necessary.
I have seen a number of detailed proposals for changes in the Constitution of the United Nations. I do not believe in them much. One could have a wonderful Constitution, but Constitutions do not work unless people want them to work. Our Constitution could break down at dozens of points: it does not do so because we want to work it. Your Lordships' House could not work if it were not for the fact that we want to work it. The United Nations' Constitution does not work logically one bit. Therefore, I think one must view this matter with a calm and judicial air, and must not expect the United Nations to achieve wonders all at once. Progress has been made. After all, there has been great progress in those parts of the organisation of which we hear least—that is, all the non-military and non-quarrelsome parts. That is something to build on.
The actual Motions before us call attention to certain defects. They are

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there; and I do not think they are the only defects. Therefore, as I say, we have got to work at it. But fundamentally, as things are to-day, the United Nations must depend primarily on its effect on public opinion. Let us remember that, in all the years during which it has been operating, public opinion behind the Iron Curtain has practically never been able to express itelf. Now, a breach has been made there. One has at last begun to get expressions of opinion from people behind the Iron Curtain; and if that relaxation continues, so much the greater will be the effect and influence of the United Nations. As to the rivalry between the Assembly and the Security Council, I do not think there is a serious difficulty there. One thing we should beware of is this tendency to think of the United Nations as a kind of parallel to Parliament. That is perfectly ludicrous. You could not work it, even if you had a vote such as we have at the Labour Party Conference in which the trade unions stand for so many hundreds of thousands of members; it is impossible to equate the different parallels and allocate a vote. It is quite useless to think that you can act by a meticulous consideration of votes and small majorities. It is only when you get a large consensus of opinion that you get something really effective.
My final point is this. Among other matters brought up to-day has been the subject of an International Police Force. I remember being most enthusiastic for that idea in between the wars. Lord Davies carried on a great agitation for that, and I was pleased to associate myself with it. I have always believed that that should be done, and I opposed the kind of criticism made by people who said that you could not get a composite force made up of people speaking different languages. Of course, in the war we had a demonstration of what could be done, by that remarkable army under General Alexander in Italy. Since then, we have had examples of it by what has been done in Korea, and to-day in the Near East. It can be done, and it is a great object lesson.
We have to get away from nationalist rivalries, and have people belonging to a force which is quite definitely serving the cause of peace and humanity, and not
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one individual interest. Therefore, while I do not profess to suggest for a moment that any major conflict could be settled by an International Force, I believe that where difficulties arise such as we find in borderline places, where law and order have not always been stable, there would be a great advantage if an International Force could be sent to keep the peace, rather than a force belonging to one particular Power, because, whatever is happening in these areas, there is still the taint of imperialism. I remember particularly at the time of the Korean campaign stressing how important it was that any action taken there should command the assent of Asiatic as well as European Powers. That was done. I think, too, that in dealing with any of these minor disturbances we must be very careful that we do not have interference by some Power which, rightly or wrongly, is suspect. That was one of our troubles over Suez. I offer no more than these brief remarks to your Lordships. I think we need to have great patience. We cannot afford to scrap the United Nations. It may be years before we get effective peace, but, after all, we have had centuries of war.
5.30 p.m.
LORD MCNAIR: My Lords, I think I should begin by declaring an interest in this matter, because my pension as a former member of the International Court of Justice depends upon the budget of that Court, which budget forms part of the budget of the United Nations. Several aspects of this debate have gratified me very much. I should like to say a word or two about the proposal for a permanent United Nations Force, which was endorsed by two of the three noble Lords to whom we are indebted for this debate. I believe that such a Force could be created within the limits of the Charter and without breaking the law.
It is most illuminating to examine the process of the establishment of the United Nations Force that operated in the Middle East towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year. It will be noticed that the most meticulous care was taken, in communications between the Secretary-General and the Governments contributing contingents to that Force, to see that everything that was done was legal and constitutional. But the proposal now under consideration

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differs in one or two respects from the establishment of the Force of a few months ago. The proposal now is that the permanent Force should be formed not by the contribution of national contingents by different Governments but by means of voluntary and individual enlistment; and I attach great importance to that. I believe that we are much more likely to get the kind of men who are wanted in such a Force if they have personally enlisted in it and thus are volunteers in the true sense of the word.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, would the noble and learned Lord explain whether he means that the United Nations should have an air force and an army—armed forces—of its own and for which it pays? I am asking purely for information.
LORD MCNAIR: The proposal which has been made recently by a group of Members of this House and another place, and from all Parties or no Party, does not go to the extent indicated by the noble Earl. The suggestion for the moment is simply that there should be a lightly armed Force of some 20,000 men, available to be flown at short notice to any sensitive spot in the world—not that this Force should engage in warfare in the ordinary sense of the word. In the light of our experience of the last ten years, and indeed the years before that, one can easily imagine that it would be of great value to have a Force immediately available for the temporary occupation of a danger spot, pending, for instance, the conclusion of an armistice, the holding of a plebiscite or the reference of a dispute to some kind of pacific settlement. It was very gratifying to note that quite recently this proposal received a very encouraging response from the right honourable gentleman the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and having regard to the welcome that has emerged in so many speeches to-day, I sincerely hope that those who were responsible for putting forward this proposal will now study it even more closely and endeavour to ensure that it has the fullest consideration in the highest quarters.
If your Lordships will permit an obiter dictum, I must say a word or two about
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one statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, which rather surprised me. I am wondering whether he had firsthand information on the point. The noble Lord said that there was no auditing authority in the United Nations. I can speak only from my own first-hand experience in this regard. I know that when I was responsible for the budget of the International Court this question of the budget was each year a quite lengthy and substantial matter. In the first place, it was necessary to send a representative of the Court to appear before the appropriate committee of the Assembly which prepares the budget. There the representative of the Court would have to justify the various items for which he was asking. Secondly, it was necessary to have somebody present during the meeting of the Assembly to appear before the Finance Committee of the Assembly in order again to justify the contents of the budget. But thirdly—and perhaps most important—I recollect that each year the auditors visited The Hague; and they were not officials of the United Nations but responsible financial officials of the Member States who had been seconded for that purpose. Your Lordships will therefore understand my surprise on hearing that statement from the noble Lord. I have never examined the whole accounts of the United Nations. Indeed, my knowledge of accountancy is so slight that they would not convey very much to me.
Another gratifying thing about our debate so far has been the realisation of the fact (I hope I am not exaggerating) that the United Nations is not an external body, a foreign body, seeking to impose its will upon this country and others, but a body in the creation of which we have ourselves played a part. If I may say so it was very well described recently by the Prime Minister, when he said that, like any other human organisation, it is no more than the sum of its partners; and it is only the partners in this organisation which can improve it. It is a good thing that we should have an opportunity of doing a little stocktaking and considering in what way we can suggest improvements to our fellow partners, members in this organisation. I think it is quite possible to do that without holding a post-mortem on Suez, although it is inevitable that Suez should be in all our minds.

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If we may attempt to construct a balance sheet of the United Nations in the light of the last twelve years, we find certain items on the credit side, and certain items on the other side, I hesitate to say as much as I should like to your Lordships upon the non-political work of the United Nations. Unfortunately, both nationally and internationally, political activities receive much more attention than the social work of Governments or of any organisation. But we cannot lose sight of the solid progress in these non-political activities that has been made by the United Nations in the last twelve years. I will mention one or two of them very briefly: the prevention of disease, such as malaria, and the improvement of health; the relief of poverty and destitution, particularly amongst refugees; and the control of evils such as the drug traffic and the white slave traffic.
And now I come to labour conditions. I consider that this has been one of the League of Nations and of the United Nations. At one time I had unusually good opportunities of observing the work of the International Labour Organisation. By a large number of Conventions, always preceded by most expert study and investigation, they are gradually enacting a labour code dealing with conditions of labour in the widest sense of the word, in which I include such things as maternity protection, prohibition of night work for women and children, fixing proper minimum ages for the entry into this or that kind of employment, labour inspection and so forth.
The reason why we in this country are so little aware of this aspect of the work of the International Labour Organisation is that most of it has consisted in levelling up labour conditions in industrially backward countries so as to be more approximate to the conditions that prevail in this I country and in half a dozen other of the leading industrial countries. But from the point of view of the workers in the industrially backward countries, I am quite persuaded that this Specialised Agency, the International Labour Organisation, which is, I believe, the only one that has I had a continuous existence since 1919, has brought untold benefits to millions of people who were too weak to do anything for themselves. I would willingly continue
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on that social theme, because I think it is so important, from the point of view of establishing the moral authority of the United Nations in the world, that there should be the greatest possible public realisation of what is being done in this unsensational social sphere.
I turn now to the debit side, the political side, the political side. There can be no doubt that the high hopes that were formed in 1945 have been deeply disappointed—one must be quite frank about that. I do not propose to deal with any particular incidents marking that decline of hope; I prefer to ask you to look at the three principal things that have brought about this decline. It was, as we all know, intended by the framers of the Charter that the eleven members of the Security Council, five of them permanent, should bear the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. But the discharge of that responsibility has been frustrated by three things: first, the absence of good relations between all the permanent members; and secondly, the abuse of what is commonly called the Veto, although I believe that word does not occur in the Charter but it is the popular method of describing the effect of the provision that in decisions in non-procedural matters there must be an affirmative vote of seven members, including the concurring votes of the permanent members. Your Lordships will notice that I have said "the abuse of the Veto" rather than "the existence of the Veto," because I should be very surprised indeed to see the great Powers join in eliminating this so-called Veto from the Charter altogether. And thirdly, there is the failure of the provision in the Charter which was designed to place armed force at the disposal of the Security Council for use with the assistance of its Military Committee. Those are, as I see them, the three main factors that have brought about this frustration of what we all regarded as the primary responsibility of the Security Council.
Those three things have produced a certain shift of the centre of gravity. I should like to explain that. As to the function of maintaining peace and security, the centre of gravity has been shifted from the Security Council to the Assembly and to regional organisations such as N.A.T.O., S.E.A.T.O., and so

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forth. As to sanctions for the power of the United Nations, the centre of gravity has shifted from military measures to public opinion—we had a striking demonstration of that not very long ago. One of the main ways in which this shift of the centre of gravity from the Security Council to the Assembly took place is to be found in what is popularly called the "Uniting for Peace" resolution. I do not propose to take up your Lordships' time by examining that resolution, but I would most earnestly direct your attention to what appears to me to be the clearest statement of this "Uniting for Peace" resolution that I have yet seen, and it occurs in the Report of the Proceedings of the Eleventh Session of the General Assembly, which was presented to Parliament within the last week or two. Your Lordships will find there Annex I entitled "Uniting for Peace Procedure" which gives a clear statement. It is interesting to note that Great Britain was one of the principal sponsors of the resolution that brought about this change, and we are told here that the views of the United Kingdom delegation were closely reflected in the resolution as adopted.
In spite of that frustration, I think any fair-minded person must agree that the Security Council, confronted by one acute problem after another throughout the last twelve years, has, nevertheless, been able, not by the exercise of force but by the exercise of powers of persuasion and negotiation, to bring a large number of those disputes to a successful conclusion, and has been doing precisely the sort of work that the Council of the League was doing. And it will be recollected that the Council of the League had no force at its disposal.
I think it very unlikely, as things stand at the present moment, that there can be any wholesale revision of the Charter. I do not doubt that Her Majesty's Government, who are keeping in close touch with their like-minded partners in the United Nations, will choose the right moment at which proposals for either minor or major revision of the Charter can take place. The framers of the Charter had the foresight to see that the Charter, like any other human document, could not remain unaltered for all time, and they made express provision for its revision after a period of ten years. But, of course, in the present political climate, it would be folly to attempt that.
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My Lords, there are only one or two other things that I wish to say. I think your Lordships will all agree with me that the existence of eighty-one independent sovereign States without any closer and more effective organisation than exists to-day is a standing danger to the peace of the world, and that no person of good will can or ought to relax efforts to do everything in his power to make that organisation closer and more effective.
There is one aspect of the Charter (and this is my final point) that has been borne in upon me in my contacts with many foreign colleagues, and I do not think it is fully realised in our own country. We in this country have no written Constitution: there is no single document to which we can look as enshrining our liberties and our main purposes. But though I, for my part, believe that the relevant Statutes and Case Law and constitutional conventions, which together make up our Constitution, suit us better than a written Constitution would, nevertheless the majority of the inhabitants of this world think otherwise, and in most countries there is a single document which they call a Constitution. Notably is that the case in the United States, where, as your Lordships know, the Constitution is the subject of deep reverence. Children receive instruction upon it in the schools, and it occupies a unique position in the general make-up of the ordinary American citizen.
LORD WINSTER: It gets them into great difficulties at times.
LORD MCNAIR: The result of that habit of looking upon a Constitution in that way is that the Charter, with all its imperfections, is looked upon by large numbers of people as a Constitution for the nations of the world.
That habit of mind, that way of looking at the Charter, has produced that degree and that kind of devotion and emotion which in those countries habitually surround their Constitution. Possibly our nearest approach to it is the way we feel about Magna Carta and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. But that widespread devotion to the Constitution is a fact that we cannot afford to forget. And now that the legal ties between the members of the British Commonwealth are

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weakening, the Charter seems to me to be assuming a new importance for us in our relations with our fellow members of that Commonwealth. Here we have a legal tie with them, in this common membership in the United Nations; and. looking ahead, it seems to me that we are not likely to be able to get the fullest measure of co-operation with our fellow Commonwealth countries, and with the United States of America, unless we can adopt something of that attitude towards the Charter of the United Nations as a Constitution.
One thing we all seem to be clear about; that is, that the United Nations is quite indispensable. No one has proposed that we should leave it. I would go further and say that I think it would be a disaster, both for us and for the United Nations, if we were to give the impression that we were dragging our feet in our allegiance to it and our co-operation with it. It has been very gratifying to me to hear so many noble Lords speaking in such a way that it is clear how important, both to us and to the United Nations, the continued support of this country is.
5.58 p.m.
LORD BIRDWOOD: My Lords, my first duty is to offer my profound apologies to the noble Earl who is to reply for the Government for my inability to be here at the close of the debate. When the date of the debate was changed from July 24 to July 25 it found me with an engagement in the country which I have to keep. In the circumstances, I can only offer my apologies and also thank the noble Earl opposite, Lord Lucan, who has so kindly allowed me to speak now. The noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, referred to the difficulties that the first three speakers had had, perhaps, in getting to grips with their problem. That all the more emphasises the difficulties that subsequent speakers have in delving into a rather large bran-pie.
So far as the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, is concerned, it dealt specifically with the case of the Middle East, and I should like to try to redirect our minds to the position of the United Nations in regard to both the Israelis and the Arabs. It seems to me that the case is always presented as the United Nations operating so as to assist the Arab cause
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at the expense of the Israeli cause. To give but one example, the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, has said that the modern State of Israel was created by the United Nations. I submit that that is not quite correct. The United Nations created something considerably less than the modern State of Israel, which created itself in 1948. In fact, the United Nations created a partition, in November, 1947, which represents less than the modern State. That is an example of the way in which the operations of the United Nations are invariably interpreted as assisting the Arabs at the expense of the Israelis. If we were to delve farther back in history, I could quote some telling examples where the United Nations had operated to frustrate justice, as the Arabs interpret it. I suggest that when we attempt to show the United Nations as always acting to the detriment of Israeli interests, it operates as a boomerang.
I shall not attempt to follow the three noble Lords who, with far more authority than I can command, pushed deeply into the difficulties of the United Nations. We might remind ourselves that it is not so much the machinery which is at fault as the mechanics who work the machine; and if we were to follow that sidewalk off the main road, we should be in the realms of philosophy and metaphysics. So I do not propose to follow that kind of argument. I propose to confine myself to the issue, which has been referred to several times, of the prospect of a permanent United Nations Police Force and, secondly, to refer to a matter of theory, where it seems to me I shall be ploughing a completely lonely furrow and on which I would ask your Lordships to reserve judgment until we come to the way my mind operates on our association with the United Nations in future.
Whilst we all recognise the defects well enough, instinctively we regard the fortress as impregnable. I am going to put forward the view that in certain circumstances the fortress is not impregnable. I would put it this way. The noble Earl said that anyone who can deny the need for some such organisation is not a realist. I would put it in a different way, and say that we all recognise the need for such an organisation but that the realist may be the one who believes that the only way it can ever be effective is to make a

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fresh start. That is something a little different from what the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, referred to when he spoke of deliberate sabotage.
The idea of a United Nations permanent Police Force is of course as old as time. It owes much to Sully, King Henry of Navarre, and the late Mr. Davies, in our own country. It is one of those matters the logic of which is quite indisputable but the practical difficulties of which seem to me to be equally overwhelming. All the familiar analogies can be deployed: the policeman, the court, the criminal and his victim—I will not repeat them. I come straight to the practical creation of such a Force, and I take as the basis of my argument the Report, which has been referred to, of the Commission set up, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, under the auspices of Federal Union in combination with our own Parliamentary Group for World Government, which was published on May 27. I agree with much of that Report, which well repays reading, but I would select one or two points on which I am in disagreement.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord McNair, reminded us, the Commission discussed whether the Force should take the form of contributions by national contingents or of individual enlistment, and they come down heavily on the side of individual enlistment—a view which the noble and learned Lord supports. High qualifications of education and character are advocated, and, wisely, it is laid down that no one member of the United Nations shall command more than 10 per cent. of the total Force, the idea being to obviate the possibility of the Force coming under the control of one particular Power. But the main argument they produced for such a Force, which seems to me to bear some resemblance to the French Foreign Legion, is that the withdrawal of a national contingent on instructions from its own Government would not arise, because in a system of individual enlistment the individual would be insulated from politics. I am not convinced by that argument. Certainly individuals can be isolated in time of peace, when they are training; but it seems to me that directly the Force is put into operation, a national Government could demand the withdrawal of individuals just as easily as it could demand the withdrawal of a national contingent.
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Here we are up against the old type of problem in which the best is the enemy of the next best and the practical. We have to ask ourselves: "What works?". The fact is that in two world wars we have seen national contingents do not too badly. They won two world wars; and the same applied to Korea. To-day, the whole conception of the North Atlantic Treaty is based on national contingents. Anybody who visits Paris recognises quickly what a high degree of successful co-operation naticnal contingents have been able to reach. Even the much-maligned United Nations Emergency Force in Sinai, a modest and very cosmopolitan symbol of belated United Nations solicitude for international justice, was put on the ground within twelve days of the Canadian resolution of November 4 which was responsible for its creation. And though it may be said that that Force could be by-passed by either Israel or Egypt, supposing they so wished, since its inception there has been no major land incident in the Sinai Peninsula. I think the fair way to regard such a Force is to regard it as a 6 lb. baby which will one day, perhaps, grow into a vigorous adult.
I should like to comment on this question of the size of the Force. We have been reminded that the Commission concentrated on a small force of 20,000, because they foresaw that that was the only type of Force which the United Nations would be prepared to accept. I would suggest, however, that a large Force is not necessarily the answer, provided, as noble Lords have pointed out, that the Force set up can be moved into, or near to, the probable area of operations and can be interposed between prospective belligerents. If I may use an analogy, before it is born a baby hardly needs much force to stop it from being born; but once it is born, a much larger force is needed to prevent it from growing. My mind moves back to Palestine in 1948. At that time, if we had had a Force of some 15,000, well-led and well-trained, they would, apart from saving the life of a very gallant international servant, Count Bernadotte, in my opinion, have brought the whole of the Palestine situation under control. It is not so much the size of the Force as the representation in the background that matters, the knowledge that he who attacks the Force attacks the world.

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I would criticise one feature of this interesting Report—that is, the presumption that a Force could enter a country only with the consent of the Power concerned. I am not quite sure whether the implication is "with the consent of" or "at the request of"; there is a subtle difference between the two. The situation, if it is "at the request of," is not so outrageous, because it could be argued that any real victim of aggression would not hesitate to invoke an international force to come to its aid.
But is that always the case? Suppose, for instance, that in the case of Suez we had not acted, and an Anglo-French force had not gone on to the Canal; and suppose that there had been an international force available to go: would Egypt have asked it to go? I very much doubt it. All the indications are that Egypt would have turned to her neighbours in the Arab League and would have far preferred their assistance to that of an international force. In other words, it is not sufficient, to my mind, to depend upon the invocation of aid by the State concerned. But, in any case, I submit that the whole concept of a force which has been set up by the United Nations being allowed in only on the consent of the nation concerned is also linked to the right to demand the same force to go out; and immediately you admit that, the Security Council, in its rôle of custodian of international peace and justice, becomes a mockery. I would say that a force which cannot be ordered in by the responsible United Nations authority is not worth the creation.
It is here that we face a dilemma. It is quite easy to create an effective and foolproof force, to organise it on a regional basis, and to have all the plans ready to bring it to any part of the world by air or sea. Any group of officers in the War Office or in the Imperial College could in a month or so thresh out a perfect plan on paper. But, when all that is done, are you going to risk placing that force at the disposal of an international dispensation in which international democracy has gone completely mad? By all means let us continue to think out ways and means of improving this force; let us recognise that the ideal is a force on the basis of individual enlistment. There will be other Koreas and other Suez situations,
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and it would be folly to abandon the idea of collective United Nations action. But let us remember the long-term problem implied in the prospects of its misuse, or a refusal of its use, by the wrong authority at the helm.
In conclusion, I would turn to the theoretical side and refer to my ideas of this long-term problem. To my mind, it all depends on a grave decision: are we going to view the future progress of the international family in terms of expediency or in terms of morality? If the former is to be the pattern of the future, then, remembering that the Charter revision requires separate ratification by eighty-one Powers, we can drift on for a century or so in coexistence, watching international injustice thrive in successive situations. I can give an example that passed unnoticed the other day but which is extremely significant. In April of this year the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, after much argument, adopted a quite innocuous resolution concerning the right of asylum of refugees in a foreign country—and, of course, the case of 120,000 Hungarian refugees was in mind. Hungary was not specifically mentioned in the debate, but the Soviet representative was quick to assume, and quite rightly, that Hungary had been in the mind of the Commission, and therefore proceeded completely to frustrate and obstruct the proceedings. I am sorry to say that he was supported by the Indian representative, and in the words of The Times this gentleman
"also objected that extraneous matters of political consideration should not be included in the resolution; and in a spirit of compromise the offending phrase"—
that is, the phrase referring to Hungary—
"was eliminated."
In other words, a moral issue—and let anybody who doubts that go and seek medical advice—was interpreted as a political issue at the behest of a minority of the Commission and was therefore discarded. Justice in terms of morality was negatived, and the compromise was hailed as a success.
My Lords, I submit that continued recognition of that kind of process is utterly degrading for a great Power to accept as a permanency; a Power which has twice in this century risked its existence in discarding expediency and supporting justice. So let us get the United

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Nations and its future clear in this matter of priorities. I would remind your Lordships that the Afro-Asian bloc and the East-European bloc to-day together command thirty-five votes, sufficient always to block a two-thirds majority. May I, in this situation, revert to a familiar analogy, often given, of the case of a kind of social club to which most of us belong, and I would put it in this way. In 1945 a club was formed and rules were framed for its conduct. Persistently, one influential member of the committee breaks the rules and persuades a number of others to do so with him.
What then happens in your normal social club? In normal conditions the members turn round and expel the offending member. But if the rules have been so framed as to make that explusion impossibie—and in this case it means that Article 18 of the Charter cannot be implemented, because you are never going to get your two-thirds majority—there is only one thing remaining to do in a normal club in our country, and that is for those members who agree that the rules have been broken to leave the club. The subsequent fate of the club may be a matter for regret, but the logic of placing your priorities in their right order, at least, would have been faced.
The United Nations is an instrument to protect principles, and if the instrument fails to protect principles, surely the thing to do is not to scrap the principles, but to scrap the instrument. I am not going so far as to say that the instrument can be scrapped; but what I will say is that if the members who feel that way leave the club, then something. happens: either the club reconsiders its rules or one may see some of these professional international negotiators, who "to and fro" around the world, trying to sort out these situations, get to work and try to persuade the members who have left the club to go back again. In those circumstances, they are in a fairly safe bargaining position to have the rules revised.
These views may seem hardly compatible with a Question that I have down for next week concerning the recall of the United Nations in the case of the Hungarian situation. I would submit that there is a clear line indicating a parting of the ways between a full use of the United Nations and pushing every
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issue you can lay your hands on into it by a decision when the thing is failing you; and therefore it is perhaps better to leave the club. It is the doubt and ambiguity of the qualified use, or merely using it because it is there, that seems to me so dangerous.
In effect, I am not suggesting the destruction of the Agencies. I am suggesting only a decision concerning the political machinery. I may have shocked some of your Lordships in doing so. If so, I ask those who dislike these harsh words about the United Nations to believe me if I claim that it is far easier to reconstruct from new foundations with no ties with a completely arbitrary kind of past, than to revise an existing failing organisation. The very conception of the Security Council with its "Big Five" is based on a purely arbitrary point in history. In another generation the children may come along and say. "Big Five? Who are they? Why are they?" The whole conception is purely arbitrary.
But do not let us necessarily scrap the Agencies which we have been reminded of, in the cultural and educational sphere, and so on. They have done excellent work. It may be that by keeping them sustained we may find common ground, and perhaps in time the political issues may be overshadowed. Conversely, I suggest that if every time we meet on the political level we disagree, might it not be better not to meet for a time? We should then revert to a laissez faire kind of system, of friends and groups of friends, seeking themselves out, on an international scale, in the kind of game which we used to play as children, known as General Post.
I have not forgotten that the policy of the great United States, implicit in the formula, "Action through and in complete support of", faces up to no question of any showdown. I have also not forgotten that perhaps the question of the admission of Communist China is involved. If I were to follow those two particular alleys we should be talking about other things. I think it was Palmerston who said that we have no permanent friends, only permanent interests. All I have hoped to show is that our permanent interests and the defence of permanent principles are indissolubly linked and inseparable.
6.23 p.m.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: My Lords, I rise to deal with only one aspect of this subject, and I rise as a substitute, because my noble friend Lord Pakenham is the person who is, above all others, qualified to talk about the question of a permanent Force for the United Nations. My noble friend was Chairman of a Commission which was set up by Federal Union to study this question. I think your Lordships should know something of the composition of this Commission, because it was a remarkable essay in all-Party agreement. There were members of the House of Commons; Admiral Hughes-Hallett was Vice Chairman; and there were two Conservative Members and two Labour Members. The noble Lord, Lord McNair, gave his advice. Major-General Lyric, the Chairman of the United Nations Association, was a member, as was Captain Liddell Hart. The Commission, moreover, had the advice of many highly qualified officers and ex-officers of the Services.
The noble Lord, Lord Birdwood, gave his views and his criticisms on the proposals for a permanent light Force published by this Commission. The short answer to his criticism is: What more would it be possible to get at the present time? Admittedly, such a Force would in no sense be a means of asserting the authority of the United Nations against opposition, but how many Powers in this world at the moment would give up their sovereignty to the extent of allowing foreign troops on their soil? There is no country, our own not excepted, which I believe would go to those lengths towards world government and the rule of law. We all hope to get there some day, but the study that has been made was done on strictly realistic lines, on the grounds that something in the nature of a token force, or a symbol of United Nations opinion, is better than nothing at all.
LORD BIRDWOOD: Could the noble Earl tell me whether the Commission studied what is the existing situation, as I understand it—that is, that under the Charter as it is at present nations are in a position to earmark certain contingents to be available to deal with an international situation? That was, I think, the original conception. Is that, in the view of the Commission, not sufficient?
THE EARL OF LUCAN: I was directing myself more to the noble Lord's complaint that the Force would depend upon the consent or the invitation of the country concerned. The Commission considered carefully the composition of the Force. They weighed up the alternative methods of composing it, either by individual enlistment or by national quotas. The conclusion to which they came was that the individual enlistment offered the best prospects.
I think I should explain what the proposals were. They have been referred to by nearly all noble Lords who have spoken, and referred to almost without exception with approval. We know that the Foreign Secretary, in another place on July 10, expressed agreement with the principle, and hoped that further studies would go on and that the idea would be widely canvassed. There has just come into my hands an important piece of information from the United States on the subject. I am informed that on July 9 the Foreign Relations Committee of the American Senate reported favourably to the Senate on a Bill to express the sense of the Senate that the United States should support the creation of a permanent United Nations Force. The sponsors were Senators of both parties, and from several States. We also hear that the Carnegie Endowment has set up a project to study a permanent United Nations Force, and they expect to issue a report in a few months. None of these reports is final and definitive. They are all searching for something that will lead us a short way on the road to the rule of law in the world. So it is of the greatest importance that the studies, such as they are, have received so much approval from such authoritative quarters.
Briefly, the scheme which was evolved by this all-Party Commission took as its starting point the present United Nations Emergency Force. They proposed that this should be replaced by a permanent force of a moderate size—a total of 20,000 is envisaged, in order to cope with two emergencies at a time, each requiring about 10,000 men. The crux of the matter, the vital point of the proposal, is that this should not be a fighting force—let us get that clear. My own view is that the fact that it is not a fighting force should be made clear by its title, and I think some such title as "Constabulary"

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or "Gendarmerie" would be much better than calling it a "Force", which may be thought to be a fighting force.
The whole point of this idea is that, for a variety of reasons which would take too long to go into, it is impossible, in the international climate at the present moment, to envisage a Force under United Nations control capable of engaging in hostilities with any national organised armed force. That is the basis of it. It is not what we like, of course, but I submit that in the present situation it is the best we can hope for. Therefore the force would have nothing more than personal arms, light automatics, lightly armoured vehicles, and light reconnaissance aircraft; no offensive weapons. They would be capable of defending themselves against attack, individually or by small units, but would not be capable of engaging, and would not be intended to engage, organised armed forces.
The question of direct recruiting is also one that would take far too long to go into; but the conclusion the Commission came to was that individual recruitment was likely to produce the best men and would run less risk of hostility or bad feeling between nations having national quotas; and that, in short, it would be the best starting point for the idea of an international Force which we visualise. The point which the noble Lord, Lord Birdwood, made, about individuals being under the power of their own Government is, I think, met by the proposal that while under contract of service to this Force members would suspend their own nationality; in other words, they would cease to be citizens of any national State and would become citizens of the United Nations. They could resume their national rights when on leave, going home or after retirement. The finances for this Force, like that of the Specialised Agencies, would come from quotas from Member States.
The control of the Force is obviously one of the most important things about it. It would have to be constituted by the General Assembly and the Security Council, under a permanent Statute setting up a Military Council; and it would be the Military Council which would directly control the force. Members of the Military Council would be elected by the General Assembly and by
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the Security Council from a list of candidates nominated by the Secretary-General. As the noble Lord, Lord McNair has told us, there is no legal or constitutional objection to that proposal; no amendment of the Charter would be necessary.
Now as to the use to which this force could be put: a number of cases have been quoted by noble Lords, but it is obviously an instrument that could be interposed in any area which was likely to become an area of conflict. It could, by the consent of one of both neighbouring countries, occupy or garrison one or both sides of a frontier line—a disputed frontier or one on which hostilities were likely. It could occupy areas that were in dispute or where disturbances were likely to occur, and although, as I have said, the Force would not be designed to take on, or capable of taking on, a national army, the mere fact of its presence there would cause a temporary lessening of tension and lowering of the temperature, and remove fear from the country that considered itself in danger. It would allow time for negotiations to take place and a political settlement to be arrived at.
The Military Council, as intended in the scheme, would be separate from both the Security Council and the General Assembly and would therefore not be subject to the Veto. The Commission looked ahead, of course, to the ideal of the future, which would be a situation in which the United Nations had power in its hands and in which all power resided in the United Nations. But that is so far in the future that it is really beyond the scope of our thoughts now. Similarly with a medium-sized Force capable of fighting small nations. Either of those, it seems to me, is so far in the future that we need not concern ourselves with them at the moment. Briefly, my Lords, this Force would be symbolic of public opinion as expressed in the United Nations; and, as a number of noble Lords have said, this public opinion does count in the world to-day. If this Force were placed in areas of dispute or areas of conflict, it would be a token, and anyone who attacked the Force would be attacking the world. It is not what we should like, but it is something; and I submit that if it succeeded it would in the short term remove fear and suspicion,

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and in the long term would certainly generate some confidence for the future rule of law in the world.
6.40 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I should like, first of all, also to apologise to the noble Earl who is going to reply for the fact that I shall be unable to be here to listen to him. I, too, have been slightly put out by the change of date, and I have to take a train to Scotland in the early evening. I hope he will forgive me. I should like to add my thanks to those of other noble Lords to the noble Lords who put these Motions on the Order Paper for to-day, because I feel that this debate has been of great value in clearing our minds about the United Nations. I venture to make a few brief comments only because I spent some four or five months in New York last winter as a member of the British delegation to the Assembly.
The Motions before your Lordships' House to-day illustrate, I think, in their different ways, what is a very general and justified sense of disquiet at the way in which the United Nations is fulfilling—or rather, perhaps, is not fulfilling—the functions for which it was set up. And it is indeed quite obvious, as many noble Lords have already pointed out, that it has so far been frequently unable to implement its resolutions or enforce its authority. For myself, I believe that this chronic impotence has two fundamental causes. The first, I think, comes from the existing balance of authority as between the Security Council and the General Assembly. As your Lordships have heard, that, paradoxically enough, has come about from an attempt at improvement. I am referring to the "Uniting for Peace" resolution which was agreed to in 1950, by which the General Assembly was enabled to meet and call for collective action in matters where the Security Council was not able to act. The events of the last year have, I think, shown that this well-meaning bird has come home to roost and that the Assembly itself is really no effective substitute for the Security Council.
Apart from the Anglo-French withdrawal at Suez, which was a voluntary action, the chief achievement of the General Assembly, as has already been pointed out by many noble Lords, has
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been the creation of the United Nations Force; but it is in general equally recognised, I am sure, in the body of the United Nations as well as outside, that Assembly resolutions are nearly always ignored or set aside; and, in any case, as noble Lords will know, they are not legally binding. But I think also that this unreal authority with which the Assembly has been invested since 1950 has given rise to other problems. In the first place, it has inevitably led to a strengthening of the position and authority of the Secretary-General.
This may not be a bad thing in itself, but I feel that there is a danger that the Secretary-General is likely to become a kind of world Foreign Secretary, because he is inevitably charged with implementing the resolutions that are passed by the General Assembly. I myself feel that, with the already crushing burden of administrative and routine work that the Secretary-General has on his shoulders, and for which I am sure he deserves the highest praise, it is too much that Mr. Hammarskjoëld should be asked to undertake delicate and difficult diplomatic missions which, in any case, are frequently too broad in scope for any one human being.
Secondly, your Lordships' attention has been drawn to the fact that what I may call the bloc system has been increasing. I am sure that this is due to the fact that voting in the General Assembly has assumed more importance, the result, of course, being that the deadlock between the various blocs has frequently been almost as bad as the Veto. The greatest possible difficulty has been found in getting the necessary two-thirds majority, and this has generally been only at the price of great bargaining and haggling to reach a compromise. I think that there is ground for hope that the rigidity of the bloc system may have already reached its highwater mark. I quite agree with one noble Lord who said that we can expect no change in the attitude of the Soviet bloc, but the Latin Americans are to a certain extent under the influence of the United States.
I think that the Afro-Asian bloc is not necessarily bound to remain unanimous. For one thing, it contains the largest proportion of the new member States. I think that, of the last seventeen, twelve or thirteen are members of the Afro-Asian

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bloc and, like all new boys, they tend to band together to seek strength. I think that time will alter this. In addition, I feel that the Afro-Asian bloc is held together primarily by colour bars, which give it a tendency to be emotionally anti-white, a tendency which is sometimes described more conveniently as "anti-colonial". It comprises so many different races, creeds, strains, stresses and shades of colour that I do not think there is any reason to suppose that ultimately the coloured peoples will be any more unanimous than the white peoples have been.
So, to minimise so far as possible these factors, I would agree that the Assembly should return to its original rôle as more of a forum for debate, exchange of views and the making of recommendations on world problems. I think it has a value as a minor of world opinion. I feel, for instance, that its reactions both to Suez and to Hungary last year were on the whole fairly representative. Attention was drawn the other day—I think it was by Mr. Menzies of Australia—to the fact that the Assembly should get a little more order into its proceedings. I would agree that it is certainly unwieldy, cumbersome and undisciplined. But it must also be borne in mind that there are eighty-one member States in it. The majority of them are small countries and, as I think has already been pointed out, their financial contribution is small and their sense of responsibility is about proportionate to it. Some of them have no experience whatsoever of democratic government. Therefore, while I would join the plea for better organisation and ordering of the Assembly's own internal affairs, I should like your Lordships also to remember that it has taken several centuries for this country to evolve its disciplined Parliamentary system, and a great many heads have rolled in the process. I think it would be too much to hope for overnight perfection from the General Assembly of the United Nations.
To return to the original conception of the Assembly's function in the United Nations, I would suggest, presupposes the re-establishing of the Security Council as the centre of United Nations authority. Of course, I recognise that here at once we are up against the crux of the whole problem, which is the Veto. I would agree that at present there seems to be
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little or no chance of getting agreement on any alteration of the Charter with respect to the Veto. Nevertheless, I feel that, in principle, the ideas of the founders, the originators or the creators of the United Nations were right—I speak of the principle of having the Security Council as the executive authority. For one thing, its resolutions have legal force; for another, it is a smaller and. one hopes, therefore, a less emotional and more efficient body. Of course, one must recognise that if things really come to a showdown it is going to be the great Powers that have the say in what is going to happen, and those great Powers are to be found among the five permanent members of the Council. In addition, I hope it is not being unduly optimistic, or indulging in wishful thinking, to suggest that the present ideological lineup as between the East and the West may not persist for ever, and that there is hope that one day the Veto will prove less paralytic than it has in the past.
I was sorry to hear from the noble Earl, Lord Gosford, that the negotiations regarding an increase in the size of the Security Council had broken down. I feel there is quite a strong case for this. After all, since it was founded the United Nations has increased by, I think, thirty member States, and I feel that a limited and balanced increase in the size of the Security Council would be logical. I should not like to think that the end has been heard of this matter—I doubt whether it has been, just as I doubt whether the admission of Red China to the United Nations has died a natural death. But I agree that the two are probably bound up together.
So far, I have tried, briefly but I am afraid inadequately, to analyse from what I saw out there some of the reasons for the past and present ineffectiveness of the United Nations. Noble Lords have touched on various matters by which the situation could be improved, and I would agree with them. The first concerns the United Nations Force. I am not going into this any more; we have heard quite a lot about it to-day from a wealth of expert knowledge and in detail. I would only say that I hope that the Force will be developed. I think it is very important that there should be some sign of the visible authority of the United Nations, and I also feel that it could have great use in different parts of the world, not

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so much in preventing fighting but in calming down passions to enable quarrels and disputes to be worked out in a less highly charged atmosphere.
I think difficulties will be run into over the question of payment of the Force. I must confess that when I was in New York last winter there was quite a lot of difficulty concerning the payment of the existing Force, and I think that any increase in it, and in its rôle, is going to mean trouble. However, I think it is a duty on all member States to do everything they can to ensure its continuance and its growth. Secondly, I believe that the influence of the Commonwealth delegations in New York can be of great value. In so far as the Commonwealth contains States and Nations spread all over the world, who share to a large degree common and, it is to be hoped, stable political conditions and symptoms, it gives a unique example of how the bloc system can be cut across and how to tackle the more wild emotions which are to be found in New York.
I was very glad frequently to attend meetings out there of all the Commonwealth delegations, at which current problems were discussed and, so far as possible, common policies agreed upon. I thought that was a wonderful example of the kind of global co-operation which could usefully be extended to other nations in the United Nations. But everything that I have said in the long run depends really on the attitude of each individual member of the United Nations. So long as there are members who treat it cynically, as nothing more than a political platform, I feel that it must make a sham of co-operation. So long as there are delegates who treat it or use it for their own publicity, with an eye on their political reaction at home, it remains what it has been described as—a talking shop, with a premium on hot air. So long as there are States who attempt to use the United Nations for what they can get out of it irrespective of what they contribute, any attempt to improve its efficiency must, to a large degree, be a waste of time. I am sure it is obvious to your Lordships, as it was to me, sitting in the debates in New York, that there is a fair proportion of such offenders. Admittedly, any huge human gathering presupposes, to a certain extent, such failings, but I think we have the right to try to see that they are
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minimised so far as possible. At the same time, I think we must recognise that the United Nations comprises many States and individuals who are tirelessly and selflessly trying to make it work, and I think they deserve all our support and, indeed, our gratitude.
The noble Earl, Lord De La Warr has already, I think, paid a tribute to the permanent British delegation there and I should like wholeheartedly to support him in that. I feel I may have strayed somewhat outside the terms of the Resolution and the Motions on the Order Paper. If so, I must apologise. But I feel very strongly that the United Nations is an experiment which is worthy of civilised peoples. The opportunities it gives for human contacts are of inestimable value and, with all its faults, it is the most remarkable and exciting and, I feel, potentially useful attempt at international co-operation and understanding that the world has yet seen. I feel that it is almost the duty of the more mature of its members, like ourselves, to take the lead in trying to attempt to realise the ideals and aims which inspired its creators. At the same time, anybody who has had experience of working in the organisation realises how far short it falls of the hopes and trust that world opinion placed in it at the beginning. If it is a deterrent to war, it is not the only deterrent. I think that while it is essential that we should never regard it as a substitute for foreign policy or for other deterrents to war—atomic weapons, regional pacts and military alliances—we must, I venture to say, at the same time set about doing all we can to improve it.
6.59 p.m.
LORD WINSTER: My Lords, I wish for one moment to refer to the Motion of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. This states that Israel withdrew from Gaza and Aqaba without any guarantee against future aggression and interference with shipping. That is, of course, the case—without any written guarantee. But my recollection of the events at that time is that words were used which might very well have given Israel the impression that, were she to become the victim of aggression or interference with her shipping, she would receive support from the United Nations, and could safely rely upon that support.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, my Motion is intended to imply that, and to condemn the United Nations for not implementing their unwritten guarantee.
LORD WINSTER: My Lords, that was my impression, but I am sure the noble Earl will not mind my emphasising that point; it was my only reason for referring to it. The noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, in opening his remarks, apologised for the fact that he would have to use a great many platitudes. That cannot be helped, of course, for all the great truths have long ago been enshrined in platitudes and it is impossible to debate such a matter as this without using them. To my mind, the only difference that exists is that some people detest platitudes and use all their ingenuity to avoid usirg them, while others find, in well-worn platitudes. a convenient refuge from the tiresome business of having to think.
The main fact underlying this debate on the United Nations is that law can exist on an international scale only if an international will to obey the law exists; but as things are I fear that it is not respect for law, but only political and economic considerations, which prevail. Military, economic or financial might seems to me to "rule the roost". I believe it would be foolish to deceive ourselves on this point. No country is guided by morality where its national interests are affected. Foreign policies are certainly not decided upon a basis of moral principles, and we only deceive ourselves if we are so foolish as to think they are. When foreign policies are so decided we shall have reached a stage in civilisation where force and such institutions as the United Nations can be dispensed with; but we are still a very long way from that stage. We are really only at the stage where some nations are perhaps slightly better principled than others. The whole international system to-day is an affair of control by force in one form or another. To believe otherwise is hypocrisy and, I am sorry to say, very often it is, in some months, unctuous hypocrisy. There was a time when the British Navy controlled matters. That time is over, and now it is the American dollar which has replaced the British Navy as the controlling force in the world.
I hope I am not too much of a pessimist in saying that I am not even sure
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that we are progressing towards a higher stage of civilisation. I would say that all we are doing is to run very fast indeed in the hope of remaining where we are and not slipping still further back. To imagine that the United Nations has moved us further forward on the road to civilisation is, I believe, a delusion. If United Nations countries respected the Charter, there would be no need for the United Nations. Progress will be effected only by recognising these rather unpalatable facts and looking them in the face. One depressing thing about the United Nations is that some if its own members have little respect for the Charter. For instance, Chapter XII of the Charter established a system of international trusteeship, and Article 77 said that that system should apply to territories held under mandate. Well, South Africa held South-West Africa under mandate and the International Court of Justice has ruled that South Africa is bound to render to the United Nations annual reports on South-West Africa. But South Africa consistently defies this ruling and renders no reports; and the Union of South Africa has enacted legislation which, in effect, makes South-West Africa a fifth Province of the Union. Some of these countries which have lately become members of the United Nations are not likely to have much respect for the Charter when they see a member of the Commonwealth disregarding the Charter in such a manner.
As regards the enforcement of United Nations decisions, it is the case that, if the Security Council arrives at a decision for the maintenance of peace, then, by Article 25 of the Charter, members must agree to carry it out. Article 42 assumes the existence of a Force for this purpose, yet no such Force has existed from the time that the Charter was adopted; and, in any case, even the making of an appeal to Member States to assist in, the enforcement of a decision can be vetoed in the Security Council. So long as the United Nations disposes of no forces for use by the Security Council, the United Nations has to depend upon the response by States to an invitation to act. And we have seen what happens when such invitation is issued. At the time of Korea, one country responded, I believe, by supplying a stretcher to the Korean force.
There again, while we have heard this afternoon about the constitution of a

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United Nations International Force, it must be remembered that no such force could be constituted without some sacrifice of national sovereignty; and to the best of my recollection (and I have tried to read these things as closely as I can) the Veto was enshrined in the Charter because of this very principle of national sovereignty. It was put into the Charter so that no nation should be compelled to put its armed forces at the disposal of another nation without its agreement. I believe that to be the reason why the Veto exists to-day. We have heard about the institution of a Force for the United Nations—that has been very clearly set out to-day by my noble friend Lord Lucan. I doubt the possibility—and I believe other noble Lords have expressed the same doubt—about the setting up of a fighting force. I doubt whether, at best. we could get any further than the establishment of a gendarmerie; but even a gendarmerie would be capable of acting as the voice of civilised opinion in the case of an aggression or of provoked trouble—and that itself would have value. As we have heard to-day, however, the idea of a permanent Force is in the air and it has met with quite a wide measure of agreement. I am sure that it is well worth while to continue the investigation into that idea to see if we can get some distance with it.
On the question of reform, the British and Canadian Governments are agreed upon
"the need to strengthen and improve the working of the United Nations as an instrument for preserving peace with justice".
We can all agree, but the question is: how is this attractive aphorism to be converted into constructive policies? What has happened up to date has not been very encouraging. At San Francisco in 1945 great importance was attached to provision being made in the Charter for changes in the Charter in the light of experience. So strongly was that felt that it was laid down that such a review was automatically to be placed on the agenda in 1955 and that (this is the important point) the Veto was not to apply to this being done; no Veto was to prevent that. In 1953, Mr. Dulles described the Charter as a pre-atomic Charter and said the United States would press for amendments when the matter came up, if it did come up, in 1955. I
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think it was clear that he wanted to restrict the use of the Veto by making the admission of new members and the election of the Secretary-General" nonvetoable", if I may coin such a phrase. But amendments of such a nature as that, amendments of the nature that Mr. Dulles had in mind, are themselves subject to the Veto, and there could be no hope of any such amendments being carried, because the Russians have made it clear that they would allow no tampering with (these are their words) "the sacred principle of unanimity."
The question of review, of course, came up in 1955. It came up, as it happened, after the "love feast" at Geneva, and believing the Russian smiles to have been genuine, nobody at the United Nations wanted to deal with this thorny subject of review. So approval was given to the idea of a review conference, but that it should not be held until the international atmosphere was auspicious. I remember that Admiral Fisher was fond of signing his letters "Yours till Hell freezes", and I think the international situation seems likely to become auspicious somewhere about the same time. As things are at present, postponement is the order of the day.
As well as the amendments affecting the Security Council, there has been brought under fire the "one-nation one-vote" principle in the Assembly. There is a move for weighted voting in the Assembly. I do not think the small nations will give up their votes, any more than Russia will give up her Veto; and as regards enlarging the membership of the Security Council, all I would say is: enlarge it to any number you like, but the Russian Veto will still remain. However large you make the Security Council, you do not affect the Russian Veto. But I think there may be some advantage in enlarging the Security Council, because a larger vote, a heavier vote, against Russia in the Security Council would emphasise her intransigence. But the snag in these things is that no amendments can become effective without the agreement of all the great Powers. I think that on this question of reform we may leave the last word to The Times, which, in a very sane and sensible leader on June 3, said this:
"The United Nations Committee which meets to-day to see if there is any hope of improving the Charter might just as well try to get a little order into the weather or the

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new influenza epidemic. Radical cures for the Charter are unlikely because the Communist block is content enough with it as it is."
I think that is the last word for the moment on the question of reform.
My Lords, I want, in conclusion, to call attention to what I think is a matter of real importance. The fact is that the centre of gravity of the United Nations has now shifted to the neutralist Afro-Asian countries, with the admission of twenty-one new members in December, 1955. This Afro-Asian bloc totals over a third of the United Nations membership. It can block any policy recommendation of the Assembly. With the ten Communist members, it musters about half the total membership, and it may also at times enjoy, as it has done, the support of the Latin-American nations. That is the state of affairs to-day. The centre of gravity has shifted, and the United States, after having controlled almost every Assembly before the package deal in December, 1955, has had since to give up on the Middle East and leave it to "George"—"George" being the Secretary-General. I imagine that the popularity which the United Nations has enjoyed in the United States has been conditional upon the United States having its own way; and we must now see what is the effect in the United States of this shift in the weight of voting.
My Lords, Soviet Russia reckons on this rift in the non-Communist world to swing the balance against the Atlantic Alliance. An illustration of this rift is that France maintains that the United Nations has no right to discuss Tunisia, whilst the Arab-Asian countries maintain that this is an international question. So far as I can make out, the American line in this situation has been to say "Let Tunisia be discussed, but let nothing come of the discussion except words requiring no action". I believe that this is likely to make the Tunisian situation worse, and not better. We must face it: things have been going badly with the United Nations. In America, people are not only asking, "Can it survive?" but voices have been raised asking whether it ought to survive. There is a widening gulf between the North Atlantic democracies and the nations of Asia and Africa, and the endeavours of the Atlantic nations to
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maintain themselves in these Asian and African nations result in expensive, exhausting and discouraging conflicts.
If my voice could reach so far, there is one word, in conclusion, that I would address to the smaller nations. It has been said to-day that the "wangling" and the wrangling and the lobbying which go on at the present moment in the United Nations are something that have to be witnessed to be believed. I have paid two visits there, and it is impossible to speak too harshly about the lobbying and "wangling" that goes on. I wish someone whose voice could reach so far would point out to the smaller nations that they have got far more to gain by the existence of the United Nations in health and vigour than they have to gain by exploiting some given opportunity which presents itself. It is not enough for the United Nations to table a resolution merely because the majority will vote for it. A vote should be a commitment to action, action which ought to continue until a solution is achieved. A vote is only a vote and nothing more, in a question involving peace or war, and a vote of such a nature is only irresponsible. But I feel that reform of the United Nations must come from within, and if the Western Powers are to maintain their influence in the United Nations it can be only for two reasons: that their policies outside the United Nations stand for right things, and that their military and economic strength is maintained. Only upon those two conditions can the Western Powers maintain their influence in the United Nations.
7.20 p.m.
LORD STRANG: My Lords, it is perfectly natural that informed British opinion should be deeply interested in the proceedings of the United Nations and should keep an attentive eye upon its shortcomings, because it is a fact that the United Nations, like the League of Nations before it, owed much in its inception to British initiative and British political conceptions. British opinion is, therefore, naturally disturbed when it finds that the United Nations is not succeeding in fulfilling its two main, twin and inseparable objects—first, to maintain international peace and security and, secondly, to safeguard justice. The United Nations, as the noble Lord, Lord McNair, has very rightly emphasised, is

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doing admirable and quite indispensable work in the social and economic sphere, but in its main objects, which are political, it is not succeeding, and the three Motions before the House to-day are, it seems to me, symptomatic of this present disquiet about this situation.
The Motion of the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, refers generally to certain defects in the working of the United Nations. The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, are more specific. Lord Dundee points to lack of impartiality on the part of the United Nations and a failure, therefore, to do justice as between one member and another. And I think that that charge is justified, both in the particular case which he mentioned and also in a more general way. Lord Glyn, for his part, has drawn attention to a point of some importance—namely, the lack of clarity as to the respective powers and functions of the Security Council and the General Assembly. I think that this lack of clarity is regrettable, but I do not agree with him in thinking that it is a danger to peace. In any event, it is a highly complex question. It may be said, however, that if there is uncertainty in these matters—and I think there is—this is due, in some part at any rate, to the fact that, in order to adapt the practice of the United Nations to the conditions of the world in which we live, the Charter has been somewhat stretched—I do not say violated, but somewhat stretched.
One stretch to the Charter was given when the so-called "Uniting for Peace" procedure was adopted by the General Assembly in 1950. Under the Charter, as has been explained already this afternoon, members of the United Nations agree to carry out decisions of the Security Council, even when those decisions are taken by a majority vote of only seven out of the eleven members. But there is a proviso that on non-procedural matters these seven votes must include the votes of all five Permanent Members of the Council. This is the so-called "Great Power Veto": it is the safeguard that is provided, or, if you will, the price that is paid, for the power of the Council to take enforceable majority decisions, a power which was not possessed by the Council of the League of Nations. It is an innovation
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introduced in the United Nations Charter, and to my mind it is a reasonable provision. I think that as certain other noble Lords (the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, was one of them) have said, without the Veto we should certainly not have had the United Nations under its present Charter, because without it neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would have joined the United Nations.
Let us note, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord McNair, that it is not the existence of the Veto but the abuse of the Veto by the Soviet Union that has crippled the Security Council, and reduced it, to a large extent, to impotence. This, as was explained by Lord McNair, is the reason for the adoption of the "Uniting for Peace" procedure. That procedure, approved by the Assembly itself, enables the General Assembly, acting by a two-thirds majority, to exercise some of the Security Council's responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security, even to the extent of recommending extreme measures in defence of the Charter—in other words, sanctions. But these will be recommendations only. Members of the United Nations will not be obliged to comply with them. But the expectation of those who framed the "Uniting for Peace" procedure was that, given a two-thirds majority, the members of the United Nations chiefly concerned would probably comply. The Russians said that all this was quite illegal. It was, they alleged, amending the Charter by Assembly resolution. And there are some authorities in other countries who think that the "Uniting for Peace" procedure was a departure from the intentions of the makers of the Charter, and that the right of the Assembly even to recommend sanctions is disputable. However that may be, the "Uniting for Peace" procedure has itself broken down in the aftermath of the Suez affair, and the Charter has had to be given yet another stretch.
Just as the Security Council has been crippled by the Soviet Veto, so the action of the General Assembly under the "Uniting for Peace" procedure has been frustrated by the power of members of the Afro-Asian Group, with their Communist associates, to prevent the passage, by the necessary two-thirds majority, of any Assembly

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resolution unpalatable to one of themselves. So a new device was adopted, a new, small stretch to the Charter. The only way to get any action taken at all in the circumstances was to enlist the services of the Secretary-General, to request the Secretary-General to make recommendations for action, giving him general terms of reference, and requiring him to report back to the Assembly within a stated period of time. And even the Secretary-General's operations had to be supplemented by the action of individual Governments through diplomatic channels. In this particular case of the Middle Fast it was the United States Government who undertook this duty, very helpfully but not altogether successfully.
This, my Lords, is a regrettable picture of the relapse of a great institution, and it may be asked, why has it happened so? It might be argued that the framers of the Charter set their sights too high. It it natural, but unfortunate, that the United Nations Charter, like the Covenant of the League of Nations, should have been drafted under stress of war: natural, because there was a desperate need on the part of the peoples of the world to avoid a repetition of the disaster of war; unfortunate, because in times of hardly bearable strain, governments and peoples are apt to give comprehensive and far-reaching undertakings which, later on, in more normal times, when the worst danger has passed, are found to be difficult, if not impossible, to fulfil. But as things have turned out, the sights have been set even higher than people thought. Two things which have since happened have upset all calculations. As Lord Dundee has pointed out, one is the polarisations of power in the two great concentrations in Washington and Moscow, and the, consequent great cleavage among the nations of the world. The other is the influx of a large number of new and still somewhat inexperienced Governments into the United Nations, with formidable voting power but with—for the present, at any rate—an inadequate sense of responsibility. The result is that the United Nations is not at present in a position to ensure either security or justice.
How is the remedy to be found? So far as security is concerned, the Western Powers have found their own remedy. They have set up their own mutual
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security organisation outside the United Nations, but in harmony with the principles of the Charter. If there is any security in Western Europe, it is not due in any sense to United Nations; it is due to N.A.T.O. and, behind N.A.T.O., to the nuclear power of the United States and the United Kingdom. So much for security. But how do we safeguard justice, when the United Nations, as at present functioning, is apt to protect the delinquent State and to restrain the injured State from seeking its own remedy? That is a much more difficult question.
Mr. Hoover, speaking for the United States, put his finger on the crux of the problem when he said, a short time ago, that the United Nations had demonstrated its capacity to rally world sentiment against the use of force, but that it was much harder to rally the same amount of sentiment in favour of remedying the injustice which caused the resort to force. It may be that only time can solve this problem; that we shall have to wait until the newly formed States acquire wisdom and responsibility, by dint of bitter experience; and indeed that well may happen. Certainly there are no short cuts. To amend the Charter would serve no purpose, even if it were possible—which it is not. To abandon the United Nations would be a counsel of despair, not to be contemplated.
I think that some words of great wisdom were used on this subject of the future hopes for the functioning of the United Nations a short time ago by the Australian Prime Minister, Mr. Menzies—there was nothing spectacular about them, but they are none the worse for that. Mr. Menzies said that there were three things to hope for. The first was a self-denying ordinance amongst the smaller States to refrain from using the General Assembly as a forum for irresponsible faction. That same thought has been expressed in your Lordships' House this afternoon by the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, and the noble Lord, Lord Winster. Mr. Menzies' second point was the adoption by the General Assembly of proper Parliamentary procedures, with adequate notice of meetings and adequate opportunity for informed debate—a point also made by the noble Lord, Lord Glyn. His third point was extremely interesting. It was the recognition by the Great

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Powers—not the small Powers this time—of the new character and status of the General Assembly, and their recognition of the duty which this laid upon them to present their own views to the world with clarity and force, and the opportunity which it gave them to secure the widest measure of support for their policies. Those, my Lords, I repeat, were wise words, and I think that members of the United Nations would do well to give heed to them.
7.34 p.m.
LORD BOYD-ORR: My Lords, it has been said this afternoon that the high hopes which had been raised when the United Nations was constituted have not been realised. They have not been realised because the people who held these high hopes did not realise the enormous difficulty of bringing them about. What had to happen if those hopes were to be realised? Nations had to give up some of their absolute sovereignty. No nation in the past has ever done so except after defeat in war. Nations had to give up the resort to war to decide their conflicts. Since the beginning of history conflicts have always been decided by ordeal by battle, in the interests of the nation with the biggest political power. Nations had to decide to organise together, to co-operate for the benefit of all mankind. Those were good ideals. But the idea that this could be brought about in a few years was obviously illusory. The fact is that this rather ramshackle structure, thrown hurriedly together, has existed for all these years, and it is now the general opinion in this House and throughout the world that some kind of world government, some kind of world organisation, has to be made to work, for the sake of the whole human family. Never before in world history have eighty nations come together with at least the avowed intention of realising these great ideals.
I should like to speak for a moment or two on some of the new conditions which have arisen in the world owing to the advance of science. The great problem of the United Nations is to adjust human society to these new conditions. The first is the shrinking of the world. The world is now so small that no event can take place in any part of it without
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almost every country being more or less involved. Under the old world order these conflicts of national interests and ideologies would be decided by ordeal by battle, but to-day, with nuclear weapons, we cannot decide them by battle. So we are left with the generally agreed principle that we must have some supranational organisation to resolve these conflicts.
Most of the discussion in connection with the United Nations is taken up with the prevention of war. But there is another aspect which is almost equally important. The great scientific powers that brought about the hydrogen bomb also brought about a great capacity to produce wealth. To-day, with the advance of technology, we could abolish hunger and poverty throughout the world in one generation. With the same number of men working twenty hours a week, we could produce as much as we can with these men working forty hours a week. And the advance in medical science in the last fifty years has added twenty years to our expectation of life. All these things have been brought about by the great power which science has given to mankind; but the problem is how to pass from the old world, with its long hours and persistent poverty for the majority of mankind, to the new world of peace and economic prosperity.
Many people are interested in drawing up a new Charter. The difficulty about that is that Russia would not sign it. I question whether America would sign it. I question whether they would abide by it if it were drawn up and signed. The best we can do is to work, with flexible rules for guidance, for world government if and when the United Nations is resolved into a world order. In my opinion, a world Government has to evolve slowly and we have to reach it step by step. I should like to indicate some of the steps that might be taken. A World Police Force, which would show the flag and exercise the authority of the United Nations, has been discussed. Everybody seems to approve of that. It has been suggested that the United Nations might be given some power over part of the world—the Antarctic or extraterritorial waters—which would give it greater prestige. But, even more important than these, the United Nations could bring about co-operation among

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the Specialist Agencies which have already been formed to promote the welfare of the people of the world: organisations like the Food and Agriculture Organisation, designed and shaped to eliminate hunger and raise the standard of living of the poor peasants of the world, and the World Health Organisation, formed to eliminate preventable disease. If we could get the nations, including Russia and Red China, to appoint representatives to sit down and consider these huge problems—because we are talking not about capitalism, Communism or conflicting national interests, but about limited concrete objectives—then I think we might bring about a better atmosphere in the world and a better understanding of the difficulties of the different nations, which would make it easier to resolve some of these problems.
When that question has been raised, people have said: "Where is the money to come from?" In my view, it could be provided from disarmament. Obviously, we must gradually disarm if we are to secure peace; otherwise the piled up hydrogen bombs will explode in a world war. If you get all the nations to agree to cut their armament programme by, say. 10 per cent., then half of that saving could go to relieving the intolerable burden of taxation in the various countries, and the other half could be put into a development fund, under the control of the United Nations, to be run by a commission of businessmen to be appointed by the United Nations, on business lines, with no charity and no political strings, with grants made to be repaid after a certain date. Then you would have a better atmosphere in the world. An encouraging fact is that the world is gradually moving along all these lines.
A big difficulty raised often this afternoon is as to what can be done with Communist Russia. You cannot destroy Communist Russia by force; that is impossible. Russia has a first-class system of scientific and technical education, and people who are educated in science will think in accordance with the facts and not in accordance with ideologies. It is true that they have been indoctrinated with those views; but once people are educated, it is very difficult to maintain a totalitarian Government. The hope is that Russia will change. And if
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all the other nations were prepared to carry through co-operation, such as they do in the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Health Organisation, and were prepared to cut their defence programmes by 10 per cent., and put half of that saving into this fund, could Russia afford to keep out? If so, she would be ostracised.
These are great changes that are taking place in the world, and human society must be adjusted to them, otherwise we shall never have a World Government. I think this nation of ours should take a bold lead in promoting ideas like these. We are better able to do it than America, Russia or any other nation. We have given freedom to our possessions; we have established the Welfare State; and no nation is afraid of economic domination or military domination by this country. At the end of the last war I travelled through all the Latin American countries and through all the Eastern European countries. Poland, Czechoslovakia and so on. They look to this country for leadership. We threw away the leadership of the world at the end of the last war, and I feel that we should regain it.
Ministers in office are very harassed and have to deal with day-to-day difficulties. But they have in the Houses of Parliament a Parliamentary Group for World Government, where ex-Cabinet Ministers and experts meet and discuss these world problems and try to work out solutions; they then discuss them with the Foreign Office, the Secretary for War, the Secretary for the Colonies and so on. By doing that in a free and independent atmosphere, and trying to work out solutions, carrying them to the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office, they are doing excellent work. And it is all the more so, because there are thirty other nations with Parliamentary Groups doing the same thing. With that association of people, I feel there is great hope of getting the nations to agree to the measures needed to bring about the wonderful new world that modern science has made possible.
7.55 p.m.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I feel strongly about the matter of this debate, and I can only hope that, despite a sore throat which I have been attempting to cure for nearly a week, my feelings

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will be apparent, and even intelligible, to those of your Lordships who remain. Part of my determination to intervene in this debate springs from the fact that I fought under the United Nations flag for a year, during 1950–51, in Korea. I went as a volunteer at the behest of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who was then Prime Minister. I cannot assume that he was conscious of my solidarity and support on that occasion, but I should like to make it clear that to this day I am glad I went. I am positive that the decision of the noble Earl and his Government was right, and I feel privileged to have taken part in that unique campaign—a campaign which was made legal, as the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, has reminded us, only through a fit of sulks by the Soviet Government. But I want to go further and declare my view that not only was this campaign entirely successful in the very properly limited military scope in which it was set, but that the moral success entirely outweighed the military success.
Indignant, peaceable men from a dozen countries gathered upon an unsavoury peninsula, for some of them as far across the world as they could travel, because an aggressor had crossed an unheard-of frontier, and broken the rule of law. They fought under the most repulsive conditions until that aggressor was thrown back across the frontier. I am certain that this action gave serious pause to the aggressor personified by the Soviet Government. They must have wondered in the Kremlin, if men of peace were ready to fight in Korea, where would they not fight? They must have wondered if a bully's right of way would ever again be safe, or ever again go unchallenged. A thin beam of light broke out over the world.
Since the Korean campaign, prospects have needlessly and inexcusably darkened. Looking back over the years that followed, it seems to me that every shred of advantage gained at such cost by the Korean campaign, has been thrown away. All the moral territory won (has been cravenly, almost cynically, abandoned; the sacrifices (I must not wax sentimental over this, but when I speak of "sacrifices" certain of them are bound to come personally and poignantly to my mind) appear to have gone for nothing. After that East effective effort to face a threat
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and to overcome it, every subsequent threat has gone unopposed. Aggression has gone unchallenged. Initiative has been cast aside.
Noble Lords have already fixed upon some instances, and I should like to fix upon that of the Hungarian report, perhaps the most blatant example of moral cowardice before our eyes at the moment. On June 26 the twenty-four nations sponsoring the last General Assembly resolution on Hungary met to discuss the convening of a special meeting of the General Assembly. At this meeting no date was agreed, but sometime in September, before the 17th, was suggested. This was after it had been unanimously agreed that the report should be considered
"as soon as practicable to do so having regard to the interests of the Hungarian people and the issues involved."
Is it really seriously true that the earliest practicable moment is some time in September? Do we honestly suppose that the Hungarian people would agree that their interests were best served by this delay? Is it not conversely true that the greater part of the impact of the Hungarian report will be lost by September?
This September proposal came on the same day that the United States Congress and Senate had both passed resolutions calling upon their Government to seek immediate reconvening of the General Assembly to consider the Hungarian report. Are those two Houses satisfied that their demand for immediacy has been met? I must say that on this occasion, a small touch of American hustle would have had my support. And I should have been happy to see it accompanied by British decisiveness. I am told that the reason given is that in September more Foreign Ministers can be present. I should not have thought this occasion required great fanfares of silver trumpets and banquets of oratory. Indeed. I feel that it would tend to cloud the simplicity of the issue, and would give the opportunity for filibustering and procedural delay, in which the Russians have lately shown themselves such masters.
It seems to me a time to declare as simply and directly, and above all as promptly, as possible that we believe every charge contained in that Report to be entirely accurate, and to pronounce the condemnation of the human species upon

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the criminals. Do we need a quorum of Foreign Ministers to do that? If we get that quorum, will it compensate for the time that has been lost since the publication of the report? Finally, is it truly an honest reason for the delay? Is it not more realistically a desire to put off an uncomfortable meeting? I believe that a separate and unworthy explanation exists along these lines. There is a kind of moral sickness in the United Nations which touches each member. It explains why that building, which should be the shrine, the oracle of peace-loving men, has become a sort of up-ended wind tunnel. It explains the existence of one law for the compliers and another law for the defiers of United Nations authority.
When the noble Lord. Lord Henderson, spoke of this the other day, he called it a "double-standard" and claimed, as I remember, that the charge was not justified because it was not the United Nations which set that double-standard but one of its founder members, Soviet Russia. I must question the argument of the noble Lord, because it is the United Nations organisation which accepts that standard. It becomes a de facto standard upon which the Russians can count with positive confidence, without being bothered by the de jure aspect. I cannot exculpate the organisation itself because it has not written this double-standard into the Charter. It is there between the lines until expunged. In yesterday's debate in your Lordships' House, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, delivered himself of a searching and incontestable aphorism in a quite different context. He said, "Justice is always difficult." As he spoke the words, I was struck by a pang of unease, relating to this debate. If public relations officers of the United Nations read their Hansard, they may well snatch up that phrase and we may find it emblazoned over the doorway of their building. But whereas the noble Lord, as I understood it, employed the phrase as a challenge, the United Nations Organisation, in its present mood, will employ it as an excuse.
I have one more anxiety to air, or perhaps one satisfaction to disturb. It has grown fashionable of late to refer to the Hungarian revolution in almost optimistic terms. It has been described as an imperishable monument, as an enduring example, as an act of national
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heroism never to be forgotten by humanity. I wonder how soon it will, in fact, be forgotten by the majority of free men, of well-cushioned humanity. I suppose that most men living in the free world can quote certain figures. By mid-November of last year, 22,000 Hungarians had been killed by the Red Army. How many Members of your Lordships' House, how many Members of Parliament, how many delegates at the United Nations, can recall the death roll of the Warsaw rising thirteen years back? Can even the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, who has such faith in collective judgment and the consciousness of the world, recall that death roll? Two hundred and forty thousand killed in sixty days: slaughtered as much by Russian calculation as by German savagery. Small wonder that, on the one hand, the Russians, and, on the other, the persecuted peoples and the endangered peoples give little credence to the rolling phrases, the ecomiums, the unconscious valedictories of the West, from such good-hearted and legally minded gentlemen, as the noble Earl, Lord Jowitt!
LORD PAKENHAM: My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt because, for various reasons, I have heard very little of the debate. It is within my recollection that when we discussed Hungary in this House, and some of us made sad and overwhelmed speeches, the noble Lord made the most optimistic speech. He took a bullish line about the whole thing. Am I quite wrong?
LORD ST. OSWALD: I think I took a positive line about the whole thing, and I think my criticism of the United Nations is that in its present mood it is incapable of taking a positive line. I do not think the views. I expressed on that occasion in any way conflict with the views or the dismay which I am expressing at the moment. It is extremely timely that the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, should have spoken, and I am delighted to see him here, since I am now going to mention him. Not long ago I listened to the noble Lord making a most moving peroration in respect of Hungary and he said [OFFICIAL. REPORT, Vol, 204, col. 754.]
"If it proves that these very brave men in Hungary have stimulated us into a more self-sacrificing way of life they will not have died in vain."

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I must wonder what hope we have that the noble Lord's words will be widely and permanently taken to heart in the world as we know it to-day.
To me, the most piercing words in that debate were spoken by my noble friend Lord Birdwood, who has already left the Chamber. He was the mover of the debate, and was winding up. The words slipped away almost as an oratorical phrase. They were not reported in any paper that I read, but in fact could be taken, I feel, as a lesson by the whole of Parliament and by the whole of the United Nations organisation. They are fully applicable at this hour tonight. My noble friend said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 204, col. 759]:
"I realise that many of us have missed our trains and meals, but let us keep things in proportion. While we have done that, probably somebody has been condemned to death for nothing at all in Hungary."
Knowing my noble friend as I do, I know also that it was not an oratorical phrase. I am bound to ask how many Hungarians, condemned to death by the time the United Nations meets to discuss and admire their immortal sacrifice, will understand the reason for this delay. I am bound to ask, also, how many in the Parliament of this country, how many delegates of the United Nations, have the humanity of thought—and the courage to express it—of my noble friend? Because unless there is a preponderance of such men; unless they speak up soon; unless the United Nations organisation can re-acquire the reputation it won in Korea; unless it can become the effective forum of nations which my noble friend Lord De La Warr desires; and unless the considerable defects mentioned in the noble Earl's Motion can be removed; unless it can be revived to be the living organism which the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, imagines it to be, instead of the dying organism which it is in fact, then that whole organisation might just as well dissolve itself placidly and apologetically with the smallest delay, to make way for a more realistic and less hastily devised instrument, which would, by the nature and practice of civilised man to-day, come into existence.
My Lords, one of the principles that is taught to a young soldier is never to reinforce a failure. Your Lordships are
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free to dismiss my words to-night as the simple opinion of a simple soldier of the United Nations. But it is we who believe most deeply in the United Nations who are most deeply disillusioned by its record of failure in the past few years. It is a life-saving operation which is required, and it is in the hope of that operation that I support the motion of my noble friend Lord De La Warr to-night.
8.1 p.m.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, I am greatly obliged to the generosity of Lord Silkin who has allowed me two or three minutes to intervene in the debate. I think the feeling that many people have is that we have been discussing the matter from a European point of view or an Anglo-American point of view, and that we have left an enormous gap, not altogether untouched—indeed, very ably touched on in the impressive speech of my noble Leader Lord Attlee—in the case of Asia, India, China and South-East Asia. As it happened, I spent the spring in those areas and, of course, one gets a sort of third dimension by travel. You can hear about it and you can read about it, but if you visit it you can see the true perspective. The future great power is going to be in the East. When you get, say, from Saigon to Prague 1,000 million people consolidated in one land mass, all organised together; and when you think that the great bulk, 600 million, or perhaps 630 million, of them, are excluded entirely from this organisation, then you begin to wonder whether it is possible that the benefits we hoped for can be achieved.
Now I am not blaming the Government at all. We know very well that the reason China is not in the United Nations is because America will not have it. That is the reason, and it may be a valid reason for the Government to use to defend themselves. Many people feel that to quarrel with the United States is a mistake and we must pay this enormous price.
But I must point out very briefly (because I must not abuse the kindness of Lord Silkin) one or two things which are ineluctable factors. The first thing you have is this enormous mass. I was amazed to find in Peking that one could telephone to Albania, say, more cheaply

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than to West Berlin because there was a sort of beneficial rate for the people in the "club". That was only a small example. Then I remember in Warsaw a lady showing me a lovely silk dress. I said, "Where did you get that?" and she said it came from China. I was on the airport at Prague the other evening, and they pointed out an enormous machine, a modern turbo-jet, and I was told, "If you get into that machine you can have breakfast in Peking." When we are shutting our eyes to these things, it is time somebody raised his voice.
The boycott measures we are using against China are ridiculous. I can give you an example. I was in hospital in Peking and I had to have antibiotics. It was a wonderful hospital, beautifully run, and they said, "You will be all right because it is a Rockefeller hospital." They said, "The Korean war drugs were stopped because they would go to the army." And they laughed and said, "Of course they all went to the army. We made a drug industry ourselves, and the antibiotics you are having are coming from all-Chinese sources." Well, that is a small illustration of the futility of the boycott.
Now take three simple examples of what we are suffering ourselves. One of the strangest things that I found was the utter indifference of China to what we thought. I fancied they might be wondering when we were going to relent and take them in; but not at all. They are going their own way and they are utterly indifferent whether we recognise them or not, because they are in a great mass which sooner or later they will dominate. Do not think, either, that by pleasing the Chinese you are going to seduce them from their friendship with Russia; they are much too dependent for the moment on the industrial resources of Russia.
When you are told (and this I have from highly qualified authority) that 12 million to 15 million people are added every year to the Chinese population you realise you will want a lot of atom bombs to keep level with that. I was talking to a Chinese farmer, and I asked him, "How much land do you farm?" He said, "1,200 acres." I am not a farmer, but I was told that about twenty men could run such a farm in England, but this man had 1,600 labourers. Well,
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that is manpower, and it will take the place of a good many tractors. This kind of thing is going on the whole time and we are just ignoring it. The people are contented and resilient; the machine so far is working well, and land reforms are going forward; but still we do not recognise it. It is exactly like a Chinese play: when a man draws a black veil over his face he is not on the stage any more. You can either recognise China and bring her into the United Nations and deal with her, or you cannot recognise her. If you do not recognise her, you get let in for those very ramshackle defence organisations called S.E.A.T.O. and the Baghdad Pact. One wonders whether it is worth being in, it provokes so much trouble to our friends.
That brings me to my final point. The great moral position we gained in the world by the liberation of India is being thrown away. India is not in S.E.A.T.O.—there is nobody in S.E.A.T.O. that matters except the Western Powers whom the Chinese think of as organised for a new Boxer expedition. The real power is China, India, Burma, Indonesia and the rest. None of those people is going to touch a policy of hostility to China; you would not get even one single vote against China throughout Asia. These are points I am sure the noble Earl who is going to speak later will remember. This is not an attack on the Government; it is an attempt to state obvious and indisputable facts in the hope that somehow, at some time, they will be recognised for our benefit and for the benefit of the world.
8.10 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I am sure noble Lords in all parts of the House will agree with me that it was worth while making room for my noble friend Lord Stansgate. He always brings to the House a refreshing point of view, and on this occasion many of us will agree with a great deal of what he said. Now I want to come back to the debate, and at the end of sixteen speeches it would be very surprising if I had anything fresh to say. The best I can do is to summarise what has been said and see how far we are in agreement. Starting with a somewhat unpromising series of Motions which seemed to have little connection one with the other, we have had a very interesting and well worth while debate.

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The Motions all related to the United Nations, but, except for that, they seemed to be wholly unrelated. Nevertheless, a number of common themes seem to have evolved. I think that nearly every speaker expressed disappointment at the ineffectiveness of the United Nations. Some went as far as to say almost that it was not worth while any longer. Some had hopes about it. Some wanted to strengthen the United Nations and put forward suggestions as to how it could be done Some wanted to give it "teeth". But everybody, I think, recognised that it was not working in the way in which it had originally been hoped that it would.
There is, of course, a considerable measure of disillusionment about what has happened in the United Nations. The view I want to express is that it is not the United Nations that is at fault. After all, the United Nations, as has been truly said—and I think my noble friend Lord Attlee has already said it in this debate—represents the sum of its members. It cannot be better than the composition of its own members. The United Nations could work perfectly if its members wanted it to work, and, in my view, no amount of tinkering with the machinery or the procedure will make it work any better so long as there is the division of the world into two almost equal, conflicting ideologies. This was something that was not foreseen at the time of the creation of the United Nations. Perhaps it should have been. Perhaps my noble friend ought to have foreseen much more than he did that these conflicting ideologies would grow. That is, of course, wisdom after the event, and we can all be wise to-day. But at the time it was not foreseen. We were still fighting a war; we were fighting together on the whole as comrades working for a common cause, and we believed that we were creating an organisation where we could all work together for the benefit of the world as a whole.
This has turned out to be an illusion. We have to-day what the noble Lord, Lord Strang, referred to as the polarisation of the two sections, the Soviet Union and its satellites, and the United States of America. I rather got the impression from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Strang, that he had at the back of his mind that this polarisation was somehow the fault of the United Nations Organisation
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or that in some way that organisation was responsible for it or for accentuating it. The noble Lord shakes his head in disagreement. I am delighted to see it. The fact is, of course, that this polarisation would have existed whether there had been a United Nations Organisation or not. Without the United Nations Organisation, it might well have come about that there would have been armed conflict between the two sides. The opportunity of exercising moderating influences at the United Nations Assembly and at the Security Council. and the opportunities for meeting which have taken place from time to time, have prevented it.
But, although these conflicting ideologies exist to-day and may exist for a long time to come, one day we shall have to learn to live together in spite of these conflicting ideologies. Or it may be that there will be changes on one side or the other—we hope, of course, in the Communist ideology. But let us remember, as the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, has just reminded us, that there is an enormous mass of population representing—I do not know whether this is exactly right, but roughly—half the population of the world, who support an ideology which is either Communist or near-Communist. We cannot go on for ever merely with the deterrent that either of us can use nuclear weapons against the other, and in that way preserve the peace. At some time in the future—and I hope sooner rather than later—we must make up our minds that we have to live together, and accept the fact that there is this enormous conflict in the world, whether we like it or not.
There has been some talk of the United Nations having two standards, one for the Soviet Union and Hungary and the other so far as we were concerned at Suez. That, again, is utterly untrue. The United Nations Organisation has condemned both in equally clear terms. It condemned ourselves and France because of our action at Suez; it condemned the Soviet Union because of its action in Hungary. The difference between the two is that we accepted the view of the United Nations and the Soviet Union did not.
Before noble Lords on the other side express too great self-satisfaction about that, I should like to remind them of some of the facts. We accepted it, but I

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would remind noble Lords that we accepted it in spite of the fact that a great many of their own supporters were opposed to our accepting the views of the United Nations. A great many of them thought that we ought to have gone on, stayed on in Egypt and seen the job through. The noble Earl who is going to reply cannot possibly deny that a great many of his supporters took that view. Moreover, when we had to make up our minds whether we were going to leave Egypt, we had to face the fact that we had the United States, the majority of the Dominions and a very big section of public opinion in this country against us. Whether it was out of respect for the views of the United Nations, whether it was out of respect for other matters or whether it was a combination of both, I do not know, but it was not a clear-cut decision; it was not solely because of our respect for the United Nations that we did it. Other factors were involved. Therefore, to say that there are two standards adopted by the United Nations is utterly wrong. The circumstances were different. On the one hand we did, for whatever reasons may have existed, leave Egypt. On the other hand, the Russians did not leave Hungary. But, if we had remained on, the United Nations would have been perfectly helpless to do anything about it, just as they have been helpless to do anything about Hungary.
LORD ST. OSWALD: Surely the phrase is not "two standards adopted" but "two standards accepted". I think there is an important difference there.
LORD SILKIN: Frankly, I do not see the difference in the concept. There was a suggestion in the debate that somehow the two sides were being treated rather differently by the United Nations; that we have been treated much worse by the United Nations than the Soviet Union have been. But, as I say, that is not the fact. If we had remained on, the United Nations would have been just as helpless, so far as we were concerned, as they were with Hungary.
It has been said by the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, that the United Nations is on trial. I wonder what he means by that. Does he mean that, unless the United Nations can do better than it has done in the past, we shall have to take action by leaving it? I
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wish he had been a little more explicit. It is not the United Nations that is on trial, but the members of the United Nations. As I said earlier, and as has been said by many others, the United Nations can work quite well if the members want it to work. One of the ways in which the United Nations can be made to work is as the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, said, by giving it "teeth." I do not think he used that expression to-day, but I have heard him use it on a previous occasion, and it is a common method of expression.
I wonder whether he really means that? Giving the United Nations "teeth" would mean giving it the power to act, possibly against the views of its member nations in certain circumstances. Would it not mean, in other words. the surrender of a certain amount of sovereignty on the part of the various member nations? Are we ready to sacrifice that amount of sovereignty? Is the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, ready for us to make a sacrifice of a certain amount of sovereignty, in order that the United Nations should have "teeth"? Speaking for myself, I unhesitantly say, Yes. I think the time will come—it has got to come—when the member nations will have to make sacrifices of sovereignty in order that the United Nations shall work. Indeed, if one talks sincerely about disarmament, one must have in mind the possibility of surrendering one's own sovereignty in order that some supranational authority should be able to take command, should it be necessary; and of course, the same applies to a permanent International Force.
The setting up of a permanent international force must involve the sacrifice of a certain amount of sovereignty on the part of the member nations. I was delighted to find that the idea had such a favourable reception in this House. Like my noble friend Lord Attlee, I was a member of the New Commonwealth Organisation, founded by the late Lord Davies before the war. I think I was a vice-chairman or a vice-president, or something of that sort—at any rate, I took an active part in its work at that time. One of its main tenets was the setting up of an International Court of Justice, and an International Police Force to enforce the decisions of the International Court. We are moving along

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in that direction now. We already have in existence, by general agreement, some form of international force, although it is not permanent and not wholly international. It consists really of a number of separate national forces. But the acceptance of the idea of a permanent International Force is most gratifying, and I was greatly impressed to hear from the noble Lord, Lord McNair, that this could be secured under the terms of the present Charter. All that is required once more is that there should be general agreement among the member nations.
There has been some talk about reform of the Charter. I agree entirely with what was said by the noble Earl, Lord Gosford, on that subject. I think that one could conceive a great many respects in which the Charter could be improved; but merely to say "reform of the Charter" does not mean anything until you begin to show in what respect you want to reform it. Then the trouble begins. At the present time there is not even complete agreement that it should be reformed at all. We are a long way from agreeing upon the respects in which it should be reformed. As I have said all along, it is not so much the machinery that needs improving; it is the desire, the will, to agree.
I was glad that nobody went quite the whole way of suggesting that we ought to leave the United Nations—though one or two noble Lords went pretty near it; and one or two gave us an ultimatum that unless the United Nations mended its ways we should have to leave it. But nobody actually stated that we ought to leave it straight away; on the contrary, a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Strang and Lord Boyd-Orr, pointed out the valuable work which is being done by the United Nations from the social and economic point of view. It is well worth remembering that from that point of view alone, if from no other, the United Nations has been well worth while.
But I believe that, apart even from those advantages, we ought to do everything we can to preserve the United Nations, even if we cannot do better than we are doing now, because it provides us with a world platform, with the possibility of creating world opinion and, we hope,
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of exerting an influence even in those quarters where it can be least expected. I know that some noble Lords are cynical about the possibility of influencing world opinion or of influencing those with whom we are at the moment in ideological conflict. It is interesting to note that it is not among the oldest of us that this cynicism exists: it exists equally among the younger people. None the less, I believe that we can actually see the influence of world opinion already; we can see it operating—slowly, if you like, but it is operating. It has operated in Poland; it has operated in Hungary. The noble Lord may pour scorn upon what has happened there; it has not been successful. But, quite obviously, opinion is moving there. It has been suppressed but it is moving. It has moved in East Germany, in Yugoslavia, and, I believe, even in the Soviet Union; and I feel that a great deal of the credit for that is due to the operation of the United Nations organisation.
There is another factor. The manning of the United Nations organisation by the separate nations means that a considerable number of foreign nationals meet together in New York at the different committees, and they are bound to have some influence on one another. They go back to their own countries and talk, and that must make an impression. Perhaps the process will take a long time, but that is infinitely better than for these various countries to remain in isolation, without the opportunity for their nationals to meet at all.
Moreover, all the various meetings that are taking place, of sportsmen, scouts, and scientists, and various conferences, are all playing their part in helping to create a world opinion. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, I believe that that is going to have an influence on world affairs. and that the United Nations is helping. It will take time, but as my noble friend Lord Attlee said, we have had war for a very long time, and we must be patient. I hope that the effect of this debate will be that we shall not minimise the value of the United Nations and the work that that organisation is doing, even while realising its defects. We must take a balanced view of the United Nations, and anyone who does that will, I believe, come to the conclusion that the work is well worth while; that

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it is worth preserving, and that there is hope in the world so long as nations can meet and talk on this common platform.
8.33 p.m.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has said we are deeply indebted to three of my noble friends who have put down their Motions on the Paper to-day and for the debate which has been the result of those Motions. A large number of noble Lords have spoken with great knowledge and authority; and if I may borrow the ball and return it to the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, we view with great respect what is said by those who speak from the opposite Benches, and the only thing wrong with them is that they are the wrong political colour.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I thought that this would be an extremely difficult debate to wind up, but, curiously, as we have proceeded we have found that there is a significant identity of approach to the problem and to the conclusions to which noble Lords in all parts of the House have come. The debate has been enlivened by a robust contribution from the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, the only one in this House who can claim to be a strictly international body in the physical sense. I had the unusual experience too, of agreeing with practically everything that was said by the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate.
Since 1914 when, as we all so vividly remember, the Kaiser tore treaties into scraps of paper, and thus destroyed the only existing basis for international confidence, all the countries of the world have been groping their way towards some international system which would maintain international law and justice and guarantee security against agression. The League of Nations was the first experiment on a world scale, and as the concentrations of power in the twentieth century have become more dangerous, and as subversion has become an instrument of national policy, the need for some such organisation has become even more urgent. Of course, no international organisation, neither the League of Nations nor the United Nations (and this has been said many times in this debate in one way or another) had, or has, any existence apart from the countries which compose it. I think it was the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who said that it is the
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sum of its partners. One has to expect that the facts of the world will be faithfully reflected in whatever international organisation there is, and that will be true of the principles which the international organisation proclaims and the procedures of co-operation which it can adopt.
I believe that that was illustrated in the framing of the Charter at San Francisco. Hitler's aggressions were then fresh in the minds of all the countries, and there was not much difficulty in framing principles which were high-minded and, indeed, impeccable. But when the rules of procedure to be included in the Charter came to be worked out, the facts of the world situation had to be strictly recognised. The noble and learned Lord, Lord McNair, is right. The Veto (as we loosely call it) in the Security Council was deliberately embodied as one of the main elements of this structure. I shall return to the significance of the Veto in a few moments. I believe that all the framers of the Charter realised at that time that this involved a departure from the ideal, but nevertheless they included that—even though a United Nations organisation could not be ideally perfect—because a world organisation, even an imperfect one, was in the interests of all.
It has been made quite clear from the start by successive Britain Governments that a world organisation of this kind is a British interest—perhaps more of an interest for Britain than for many other countries in the world, because no country is more vulnerable, and none has more to gain from collective security or from the rule of peace and law in the world. So the universal mood during these last few years has been not to scrap the United Nations but to improve it, and that was, as lately as a few weeks ago, the finding of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers when they met together. It has certainly been the theme of the debate in this House to-day, for all of us have insisted that a world organisation of the kind of the United Nations is anyhow a British and a world interest.
The purpose of this debate, as I understand it from the Motions moved with such skill by the noble Lords concerned, has been to analyse the reasons which, in practice, prevent the United Nations from fulfilling the obligations made upon it by

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the Charter, and, if possible, to suggest remedies. I feel we must confess that the debate has been more successful in analysing the defects than in suggesting the remedies. Nevertheless, attention has usefully been concentrated on the two main aspects of this question—first, upon the Charter itself. That is right, for if the principles and the main controls are wrong, then the whole machine may get out of gear, and there is no doubt that the principles of the Charter should, from time to time, be put to the most stringent test.
Secondly, attention has been concentrated upon the very relevant question of the procedures which have been evolved since the Charter was framed, an aspect raised particularly by my noble friend Lord Glyn. I cannot help agreeing with him that procedures in this matter are very important in an organisation of this kind. He hesitated to draw the analogy with Parliament, and I hesitate, too, because the United Nations is not a World Parliament; but, nevertheless, I think the illustration is a good one. Parliament is designed to sustain democracy, and it could not be done without the most elaborate and balanced machinery, and without the most elaborate and balanced machinery clearly understood by those who participate in Parliamentary proceedings the whole purposes of democracy could be defeated. I think it was the Prime Minister of Ceylon who, during the Suez Crisis, complained that the proceedings of the Assembly were conducted at such speed that he did not know himself, and had no communication, as to what the debate was about therefore he was unable to instruct his delegate to the United Nations what line to take on behalf of his country. I will return in a moment to some of those difficulties of procedure mentioned by the noble Lord. Lord Glyn.
But, in general, it seems to me that the debate has revealed the same sense of frustration that the purposes of the Charter have been baulked which has clearly been in the minds of the members of the United Nations. The framers of the Charter were realists. In the then state of the world, they realised that the Security Council must contain the great Powers. They had the means to keep the peace and therefore the largest share in the responsibility for
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doing so. They included what is known as the Veto because the limit on international action clearly had to be set short of interference with the national sovereignty of the different countries. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strang, that as a piece of international machinery the Security Council could have worked if it had been worked and used with discretion. But in fact the Security Council has been used really as an instrument of Russian policy to stifle joint action by the great Powers and to prevent collective help coming to the victims of a lawbreaker. Lord Dundee very pertinently pointed particularly to the Middle East as the latest field of Russia's operations
I do not want to dwell on that particular aspect of this question. but it seems to me that there have been two consequences from Russia's use of the Security Council—or abuse of the Security Council. The first is that as security could not be guaranteed to the members of the United Nations by all the great Powers, therefore the members were forced to the alternative provided for in the Charter—collective defence pacts. When Russia or some of the uncommitted countries criticise these collective defence pacts amongst friends it is worth remembering that the emphasis has fallen there only because these nations could not get what was truly collective security from the United Nations. Russia made collaboration by the great Powers to keep the peace impossible.
The second consequence—it has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord McNair, and many other noble Lords in the debate to-day—was that, thwarted and baulked in the Security Council, the nations tried to find a way whereby the Assembly could assert the authority the Security Council failed to achieve. The "Uniting for Peace" procedure was, in effect, an expedient to reassert the principles of the Charter through a change of the machinery within the United Nations. This has, as the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, pointed out (and indeed this was one of the purposes of two of the Motions) raised the whole question of the relationship between the Security Council and the Assembly. There may be much to be said for the mobilisation of world opinion through the Assembly. It has a latent strength and a moral force which has to be reckoned

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with It has to be reckoned with by those who respect international law and it may even pierce the armour of those who flout it.
But the new composition of the Assembly and the new activities it is assuming, it seems to me, need to be clarified. Legally, on paper, there is no change in respect of the functions of the Security Council and the Assembly. I think the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, speaking of the Assembly, said, "Does it very much matter if their function is limited to recommendation?" Well, just let me list, if I may, some of the questions which immediately leap to the eye and which have come to the public eye because of the increased activities of the Assembly in the last few months. First of all, there is the size of the Assembly, increased from sixty to eighty-one in less than two years. Then there is the voting system, which gives power without responsibility to some of the smaller countries. There is the tendency to bloc voting. There is the lack of rules controlling the speed of discussion and voting. Then there are things like the tendency to put executive responsibility on to the shoulders of the Secretary-General. There is the possibility of the establishment of a permanent international force growing out of the force at present in the Middle East. I am not judging; I am not saying whether the additional power on the shoulders of the Secretary-General is a good thing or not.
I am not raising the question of the double standard—whether the Assembly applied one standard in the case of Hungary and another in the case of Egypt, so that the law-abiding suffer and the law-breaking profit. But I think these questions which I have listed, and some others noble Lords have listed. require clarification, because, although I agree with Lord Silkin—and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, overstates it when he says these are a danger to peace—nevertheless muddles of procedure of this kind may be dangerous. But if there is to be clarification, probably my noble friends Lord Glyn and Lord De La Warr Would agree that the reform of the United Nations machinery should be approached with great caution and care. Indeed, is it possible? To take only one illustration, which I think was touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Winster, supposing we
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wanted to change the voting system, it cannot be done without the assent of all the permanent members of the Security Council—and of course Russia is a member.
For this reason, the more I look at the actual reform of the Charter or the procedure of the United Nations, the more I am forced to the conclusion, which I think was also that of Lord McNair, Lord Dundee and Lord Silkin—and I think also Lord Jowitt and a good many other noble Lords—that the defects in the machinery of the United Nations are really the direct by-products of Soviet obstruction. Until there is a change of heart on the part of the Soviet Union, we shall continue to be frustrated in our attempts to make the machinery of the United Nations more effective.
My Lords, it has been recognised in this debate—and of course it is true—that the United Nations performs the most valuable work in the field the noble Lord. Lord Boyd-Orr referred to—the solid social advance; and he rather advanced the thesis that if we could concentrate more on economic collaboration through the United Nations. we should have a better chance of securing world peace and of getting away from our political difficulties. We are making modest beginnings—for instance, the International Bank for Reconstruction; and I would agree with the noble Lord that there is a great deal that can profitably be done on the economic side. Even on the political side there is some credit that we can reasonably mark to the United Nations. In the field of world security, war has not, in fact, broken out. I rather agree with the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt (I believe I am right in attributing it to him) that that was due more to fear of the deterrert than to the positive acts of the Security Council. Nevertheless, perhaps discussion in the United Nations has contributed to a slight lessening of tension and prevented a world war. Local situations have arisen in which there are acute political tensions. In fact, these have not—or, at least, only once lately—snapped. That, again, may be due to the moderating influence of the United Nations.
Again, a development of some significance, and a good deal of hope, has emerged in the fact that there is an International Police Force on the spot in the

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Middle East at the present time. My noble friend Lord Gosford, who addressed the House earlier, at a time when the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, was absent (I know that he was unable to be here), told your Lordships that the Foreign Secretary has expressed the hope that something permanent might develop out of this present United Nations Force. On the subject of a permanent Force, as indeed on everything else, agreement by the Powers has, of course, to be achieved. It would probably be a mistake to try to put forward at this stage any agreed plan.
The debate has revealed a number of differences of approach to this subject. The noble Lord, Lord McNair, argued for an individually recruited self-contained Force. The noble Lord, Lord Birdwood, suggested that nationally chosen contingents were the most effective way of building up an effective Force. Most noble Lords were doubtful, I think, as to how such a Force could operate if neither party to a dispute wanted it on their territory. These are questions which have been put forward, and which are probably best explored quietly, and with patience, behind the scenes in the United Nations. But we are in favour of the principle of an International Police Force—let there be no doubt about that.
Finally, I would say this. I think we are all agreed that there are imperfections, and we feel frustrated. But until there is a change of heart on the part of Russia, there is probably very little to be done in the way of effective alteration of the machinery; and until that change of heart comes about, trust in the United Nations can be only a part of a country's foreign policy. Peace will rest with those who wish to sustain law and order and who have a preponderance of the power; and security will lie in collective security arrangements between friends and, in fact, in the closest understanding between the United Kingdom and the United States of America. It may be that in the future we may be faced with a United Nations that has proved itself futile. In that case, all of us would have to review our
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national policies. But, meanwhile, as the noble Lords who put forward the Motions have stressed, and as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has underlined, we must hope to live together in this world. So far as the United Kingdom Government are concerned, we will work loyally within the United Nations to create truly collective action, because we believe that that is the primary interest of the British people.
8.55 p.m.
EARL DE LA WARR: My Lords, there is always a temptation, when exercising the right to reply to a debate on a Motion which one has moved, to remake one's speech into one that is just a little bit better. But it is now very late and I do not intend to fall into that error. May I just say that I think it has seemed to all of us that this has been a most useful and constructive debate. We have all tried to face honestly the difficulties and problems that confront us in regard to the United Nations. There have been a great number of criticisms, and some constructive proposals; and I think it is satisfactory to reflect also that there has been quite a bit of agreement. So perhaps I might just withdraw my Motion and, in doing so, thank those noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Home, who has just spoken for the Government, for their co-operation and the contributions they have made. I now beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

THE SUMMER RECESS
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, before the House adjourns may I tell your Lordships that Parliament is expected to rise for the Summer Recess on Friday next, August 2. It appears likely that your Lordships will have concluded your Business by August 1. We hope, therefore, to adjourn on Thursday, August 1, till Tuesday, October 29.
House adjourned at three minutes before nine o'clock.