Lords Sitting of 31 July 1958

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

Prayers
The Viscount Maugham—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.
The Lord Redesdale—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his brother.

SOUTH BUCKS AND OXFORDSHIRE WATER BILL
BUCKS WATER BOARD BILL
READING AND BERKSHIRE WATER &c. BILL
MID-WESSEX WATER BILL
KENT COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [H.L.]
ANGLE ORE AND TRANSPORT COMPANY BILL [H.L.]
3.5 p.m.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD TERRINGTON)THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD TERRINGTON) rose to move that the House consider Messages from the Commons giving the promoters of the said Bills leave, subject to certain conditions, to suspend any further proceedings on the Bills and to proceed with them in the next Session of Parliament. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move that the Messages from the Commons be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Messages be now considered.—(Lord Terrington.)
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend the Deputy Chairman of Committees a question? It is only for guidance. I am interested in the first three Bills to which this Motion refers. These three Bills have now completed their course before the Select Committee of another place. The opposition not only in another place but also from outside parties has been so great that it is unlikely that these Bills will reach your Lordships' House in their present form. They may, after due deliberation, be concentrated into two Bills, or may be altered, or some other course may be followed. May I
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ask the noble Lord what the position of your Lordships' House is and what the House can do, if anything, to safeguard the interests of the citizen?
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES: My Lords, as your Lordships know, when Private Bills fail to complete their course in both Houses of Parliament, they can be carried over from one Session to another by Resolution of both Houses. The six Bills that are mentioned in the Motion are the subject of three Messages from the Commons: the first relates to four Water Bills, the second to the Kent Council Bill and the third to the Angle Ore and Transport Company Bill. The sole purpose of the Motion standing in my name is to enable the Bills to be kept alive. As regards the position of your Lordships' House, that does not arise until the Bills reach this House. If your Lordships are good enough to pass the Motion standing in the name of the Lord Chairman of Committees, the effect will be that the House is co-operating with another place in enabling the Select Committee of that House which has been sitting this Session to continue to consider the problems of the water supply of the areas covered by these Bills.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord for his reply? The last sentence he has used touches the point I had in mind, and I am grateful to him.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, may I ask a question on the Kent County Council Bill? The noble Lord, Lord Terrington, will remember that it was the subject of some slight controversy in this House. We were then given to understand that although a large number of clauses were to be deleted from the Bill, that step was not necessarily final. I do not entirely understand the procedure—that is my own fault—but I gathered that that decision was provisional and that it would be possible for those clauses to be restored to the Bill. I should like to ask the noble Lord whether he can say if that is still the position—namely, that in the next Session the clauses that have been struck out might be restored to the Bill.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot answer that particular point. I said before that the sole purpose of this Motion is to enable the Bills to be carried

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on in precisely the form in which they are now. What can be done next Session I really do not know.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, could the noble Lord ascertain, because it is an important point? I think that the House did understand that there would be this possibility of restoring the clauses that had been struck out.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: My Lords, I will certainly ascertain what the position is and see that the noble Lord is informed.
On Question Motion agreed to.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: My Lords, I beg to move that the Motion standing in the name of the Lord Chairman be agreed to.
Moved, That the promoters of each Bill have leave to suspend any further proceedings thereon, in order to proceed with the Bill if they shall think fit, in the next Session of Parliament, provided that notice of their intention to do so be lodged in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments not later than three o'clock on the day before the close of the present Session, and that all fees due thereon up to that period be paid;
That each such Bill shall be deposited in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments not later than three o'clock on or before the third day on which the House shall sit after the commencement of the next Session of Parliament, with a declaration annexed thereto, signed by the Agent, stating that the Bill is the same in every respect as the Bill at the last stage of the proceedings thereon in this House in the present Session;
That the procedings on such Bill shall be pro formâ only in regard to every stage through which the same shall have passed in the present Session, and that no new fees be charged in regard to such stages;
That the Standing Orders by which the proceedings on Bills are regulated shall not apply to such Bill in regard to any of the stages through which the same shall have passed during the present Session.—(The Deputy-Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to: Ordered, That a Message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

GERMAN GOODS IN CYPRUS N.A.A.F.I.
LORD WINDLESHAM: 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 aware that German goods, many of them from the Krupp factory, are being offered for sale to our troops and married families at the N.A.A.F.I. in Cyprus at prices at which they are obtainable in the home market; and whether Her Majesty's Government do not consider that home manufacturers should be given preference except where a definite disparity in price exists.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD MANCROFT): My Lords, I understand that a limited range of German goods is offered for sale by N.A.A.F.I. in Cyprus. It consists of such things as leather goods, musical boxes and cuckoo clocks. These meet a demand from the Forces for gifts and souvenirs at low prices. The quantity is small and the total value insignificant in comparison with the value of British merchandise sold by N.A.A.F.I. in Cyprus.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his reply, may I say that the information which I have and the list with which I can supply him, bear no relation to the Answer he has given?
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, if the noble Lord will supply me with his list, I shall be grateful; but I must point out that the Government do not interfere in the day-to-day business of N.A.A.F.I. They are admittedly responsible for the general economic and trading policy of N.A.A.F.I., but not for cuckoo clocks.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, as the noble Lord has now come up with a second answer, perhaps I may ask him this further question. Although it is a fact, as he says, that Her Majesty's Government do not interfere with the day-to-day running of the N.A.A.F.I., in order that the Services and their families should get the best value for their not very plentiful money would he consider putting out to tender by other firms and organisations premises occupied in camps, barracks, et cetera everywhere, in order

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that competitive prices might be obtainable by the Services, instead of, as now, having to shop under a monopoly.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, that is another and rather alarming question.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Lord this question. Is he aware of the strong feeling among British manufacturers that Herr Krupp, a convicted war criminal, who has hurled defiance at the 1953 Deconcentration Agreement and broken his word in relation to that Agreement, should be allowed into this picture at all in competition with British manufacturers?
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I am well aware of the feelings of the noble Viscount about Herr Krupp, but I am not as yet aware of the connection between Herr Krupp and the N.A.A.F.I.

EGYPT: CLAIMS OF FORMER BRITISH OFFICIALS
3.15 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: 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 will state what help they are prepared to give to former British residents in Egypt evicted therefrom in 1951]
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM): My Lords, although the noble Lord's Question is somewhat more generally framed, I take it that he refers to the former British officials of the Egyptian Government who were dismissed from their posts in 1951 and subsequently left Egypt. As the noble Lord is aware, Her Majesty's Government have been urging a settlement of those officials' claims in the Anglo-Egyptian financial talks, and will continue to seek it in that framework.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, are Her Majesty's Government not prepared to give some help to those individuals who, through no fault of their own, have been dismissed and are in great financial difficulties? Are they leaving it entirely to what can be extracted from the Egyptians?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, nobody is left entirely in that way in
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this country, as the noble Lord knows. In this case, maintenance allowances on the grounds of hardship have been granted by the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board, and where reckonable assets are in the ownership of the persons concerned they have been considered for loans under the loans scheme.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that we are receiving specific cases and instances of very great hardship? I should have thought, in view of all the relations we have had in the Egyptian questions over the last six or seven years the Government would have been prepared to give special consideration to these cases.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I cannot see that they are entitled to more consideration than the others who have to go to the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board. Maybe they are not entitled to less.
VISCOUNT ALEXAN DER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may we be told whether they are receiving any grants at all from the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: As I have already told the noble Viscount, maintenance allowances on the grounds of hardship have been given.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, is the noble and learned Viscount aware that according to a Press report published in the Financial Times last Monday the Egyptian Government have broken off negotiations in Rome indefinitely?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: I cannot take responsibility for the accuracy of a Press report.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, the noble and learned Viscount told me, in answer to a Question on Monday, that the whole matter depended on negotiations with the Egyptians. Does he not know whether these negotiations are proceeding or not? It seems very peculiar.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I told the noble Lord the Answer to that Question the last time he asked it, which was less than a week ago.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, I am sorry to pursue this, but I do not think the noble and learned Viscount did. I

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have not the Record here, but I do not think he said, one way or the other, that the negotiations in Rome were going on now or had been suspended. I ask simply: Have they been suspended?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I gave the noble Lord the exact position, so far as I knew it, less than a week ago, and I should like to refer him to my Answer then.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Viscount whether he does not appreciate that the answers he has given are entirely unsatisfactory and to say that we shall return to the attack at the earliest possible moment?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I do not consider my answers unsatisfactory, and the noble Lord is perfectly free to return to the attack as often as he likes.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Killearn, will as well. We thought it very unwise of him to leave it without going to a Division on the previous occasion, when, in spite of assurances, we received an entirely unsatisfactory answer.
LORD REA: My Lords, if the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, proposes to lead his Party in this attack, may I assure him of support from the Liberal Benches?

FARM DANGERS FROM SUPER-GRID
3.19 p.m.
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 if they are satisfied that those who operate farm machinery are not exposed to undue risk in consequence of the presence of 275 K.v. super-grid lines over many farms and fields where harvesting operations are carried on, in view of the fact that these lines sag down to within 25 feet of ground level and in wet or humid weather a flashover of approximately 14 feet can occur.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE): My Lords, my noble friend Lord Mills has asked me to reply to this question on his behalf. I am glad to reassure the noble Lord that Her Majesty's Government are satisfied that those who operate farm machinery are not exposed to undue risk. Our records show that no accidents have occurred from flashover from the 275 K.v. super-grid, and in any case, I am advised that a flashover would be 3½ feet and not 14 feet, as suggested. The noble Lord will appreciate that electricity boards are required to construct overhead electric lines in accordance with statutory regulations which lay down the minimum height of the conductors. In accordance with the practice first established before the last war the divisions of the Central Electricity Generating Board, in agreement with the National Farmers' Union, normally send warning letters to farmers at times of hay-making and harvest. In addition, for several years past the National Farmers' Union and the Country Landowners' Association have themselves published similar warnings in their journals.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, may I thank the noble Earl for his reply? Will he explain to his noble friend the Minister of Power my understanding as to why he is not in his place to answer the question himself? I am grateful to the noble Earl and fortunate indeed that he has answered this question himself, because I would draw his attention to the paragraph in the letter to which he has referred which gives rise to the concern. If the noble Earl would allow me to quote the latest circular letter issued by the Generating Board, it says:
" The need for care, as you no doubt appreciate, arises from the fact that if stacks are built under or near the lines, it is difficult for farm hands to be certain of keeping the necessary distance away so as to avoid contact either directly or through elevators, pitchforks, et cetera. I need hardly remind you that the voltage of the lines is high, and that if contact were made the result might easily be fatal. Perhaps I should add that a flashover can result from approaching too near a line without necessarily making actual contact."
Might I ask the noble Earl, who must have the interest of agriculture at heart, whether, if these lines are so low that contact may be made by an elevator, a combine harvester or even a pitchfork,

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it is not conclusive proof that they are far too low, that the clearance between the stack and the lines is far too little, and that the lines should be raised higher. Is he also aware that if they are raised to overcome this difficulty, other complications will arise?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, that was rather a long question, but I am aware of the complications that would occur. What the noble Lord is suggesting would be over-insurance. If the grid lines or any power-conducting lines were put high enough, of course nobody could possibly touch them or get in contact with them at the top of an elevator or anything else. But this would be an extremely costly and unpractical course to take, and it would also affect the amenity problem, in which I know the noble Lord is particularly interested. I should like to emphasise that there have been no recorded accidents from flashover from the super-grid or from the other grid, and I think perhaps the danger is a little exaggerated.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, is the noble Earl waiting until there is an accident before any action is taken?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: Certainly not my Lords, but I do not know exactly what the noble Lord wants me to do. We consider that these regulations are satisfactory and that "no undue risk" (that is the term the Question uses) from flashover is likely. The evidence is that it has not happened yet, and we do not think it is likely.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask whether the noble Earl is aware that if those of us who have such pylons and grids on our farms have not yet had a fatal accident, we have had the threat of it, because we are often left without any light or power at all, because in a thunderstorm it is the first thing that connects and puts things wrong on the farm. That is a fact; that is my own farm experience.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I am not quite clear what the question was.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I am only pointing out that I think the actual dangers of flashover on these things are clearly proved by the
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constant complete stoppages of current to farms, sometimes with a very dangerous flash indeed. We had one quite dangerous flash recently, in one of our animal sheds. I do hope that some more attention will be given to this matter.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I cannot quite accept that. From the information given to me there is no evidence of accidents from flashover from a grid at all. There was one accident with the minor grid. It was not a farm accident at all, and it was through contact and not through a flash.
LORD BRAYE: My Lords, as a subsidiary question may I ask Her Majesty's Government whether the danger and menace of aerial crop spraying at the large farms has been taken into consideration when siting these super-grids?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I should like notice of that question. I hardly think it comes as a supplementary to this particular Question which I am answering.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Oh!
EARL WALDEGRAVE: I am sure that it has been taken into consideration. But this must be a matter of balance and judgment. It could be argued that you should never have any overhead grids at all.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Hear, hear !
EARL WALDEGRAVE: If noble Lords want to go as far as that, perhaps they will say so.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: We have argued in season and out from these Benches that these grids should be underground and not above. The noble Earl will soon be caught between the upper and nether electric grid.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, will the Minister bear in mind that farmers already pay a great deal for having the electricity brought to them, and that there would be deep resentment if unnecessary regulations were made which caused electricity to be more expensive on our farms?
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: If that is going to be borne in mind, perhaps the Minister would also consider that there is deep

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resentment among the farmers, who are paid the magnificent sum of 1s. or 1s. 6d. a year for these dreadful nuisances on their farms and still face the danger of an accident.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I beg to ask Her Majesty's Government a Question of which I have given them Private Notice—namely, whether Her Majesty's Government can to-day make a statement on the discussions concerning the proposed Summit Meeting, and whether they can make a further statement on the meeting of the Baghdad Pact Powers.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a statement on the proposed Summit Meeting some time after half past three this afternoon, and he will be making a further statement on the televising of the State opening of Parliament. May I add that my noble friend Lord Perth will also be making a statement on Malta.

SPECIAL ROADS (CLASSES OF TRAFFIC) ORDER, 1958
3.28 p.m.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, the two statutory instruments which are on the Order Paper are closely allied, and I think it might be to the convenience of your Lordships if we were to consider them together. I have frequently reminded your Lordships' House—and I hope not with unjustifiable pride—that there is more work in progress on the roads of this country to-day than at any time since the Romans. This autumn sees another milestone in the history of the roads of this country—eight milestones to be exact: on the eight-mile stretch of the Preston by-pass which will be the first motorway to be opened in this country. The Birmingham motorway will follow in the autumn of 1959.
A "motorway" is now an accepted term in international traffic parlance. It is roughly the equivalent of the German autobahn or the Italian autostrada. Unlike a lot of technical jargon (I am glad to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Conesford, in his place), this means what
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it says. It is a motorway—not a traction-engine way or a milk-float way of a "push bike" way. The road is specifically designed for swift, indeed very swift, motor traffic. All other classes of road users will be excluded. There will be no level intersections as in the ordinary road system, and the secondary roads will pass above or below the motorway. No house will have access to the road. It will be fenced off for its entire length. A motorway is, therefore, a road cut off like a railway line and intended exclusively for the fast movement of motor traffic.
A motorway, incidentally, is not a term recognised in our law. The road, legally, is a particular kind of road built under the Special Roads Act, 1949. But special provisions will obviously have to be made to govern the use by and control of traffic on this road—it is this new general procedure which these two instruments seek to define. Other and more detailed regulations will follow. I must emphasise that they are all of necessity experimental. We have, as yet, in this country no experience of motorways. These regulations I am asking your Lordships to approve will stay in force for only a year. We can then see how they have worked and what improvements are necessary. We have taken all the best advice we can. We have consulted those interests at home who are likely to be concerned. We have consulted our opposite numbers abroad who have experience of this type of road. We hope that we have taken good advantage of their experience, but I am perfectly prepared to admit that amendments, additions and subtractions may well prove necessary.
The view has been expressed that Her Majesty's Government have not given sufficient time to the representative organisations whom they have consulted to formulate their views for the Government and that the Government have shown undue haste in presenting these Orders and Regulations to Parliament. I can assure your Lordships that no discourtesy was intended. I admit that the time given for consultation has been shorter than usual in such cases, but I think that it was not inadequate since the general views of most representative organisations were already well known from preliminary soundings taken as long as a year ago. The issues involved were

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very tricky ones, and when my right honourable friend had come to the conclusions embodied in the instruments now before the House there was little enough time left to secure the necessary Affirmative Resolutions of Parliament before the Summer Recess. I hope your Lordships will agree with me that it would have been disastrous had the Preston By-pass been constructed and ready for opening, only to be held up while the usual statutory instruments were pursuing their measured course.
There are only two or three points to which I would draw attention which I think may arouse controversy. The original scheme of the motorway makes most of the necessary exclusions—pedestrians, cyclists, slow vehicles and so on. But the Special Roads (Classes of Traffic) Order, 1958, seeks to do three additional things. It excludes from the motorway motor-cycles with a cylinder capacity less than 50 c.c.—for instance, pedal cycles with auxiliary engines. It excludes agricultural machinery and abnormal indivisible loads. All three are obviously slow-moving categories, and their existence is inconsistent with the purpose of the motorway. These cycles are not capable of speeds above 30 m.p.h., and their exclusion, I should have thought, would have been obvious. So, I think, is the exclusion of agricultural machinery. We do not want the boy "Charlie," with his combine harvester, mixed up with the Jaguars and Bentleys. In any case, there will be no access from the motorway to any farms or farmland lying alongside.
The exclusion of abnormal indivisible loads is a little more difficult. We have discussed the question of abnormal indivisible loads on twelve separate occasions during the six years I have had the honour to speak in your Lordships' House for the Ministry of Transport. I hope the fact that this is the thirteenth time is not a bad omen. I also hope I may assume that your Lordships know by now an "abnormal indivisible load" when you see one. I appreciate that the decision we have come to on this point has not met with universal approval. I can assure your Lordships that the Government have net reached the conclusion embodied in the Order without many consultations and a great deal of thought.
The question we have had to decide is whether the public interest is better served by having ships' propellers or a clutch
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of nuclear reactors proceeding on the ordinary roads where, as your Lordships on twelve occasions have pointed out to me, they can be an unmitigated and stroke-promoting nuisance, or on the motorways where their presence would defeat the whole purpose of the roads and might lead to a series of terrible accidents. We have decided that the latter is the worse evil. We are not prepared, initially at any rate, to allow any use of the motorways which might defeat their purpose. I realise, of course, that there is a great deal to be said on both sides of this argument, but I think on balance our decision is the right one. However, we propose to conduct some experiments. We propose from time to time to let a few abnormal indivisible loads on to the by-pass under special control and then wait and see what happens. If the result goes against us, we shall not be proud. We shall certainly consider the matter again when it is considered, as it must be, in the summer of 1959.
The Motor Vehicles (Speed Limit on Special Roads) Regulations, which are linked with the Order, and of which I seek approval in the next Motion, are also by way of being an experiment. This Order, also, of course, is a controversial one—everything to do with speed limits always is. But the Government are firmly of the view that since the motorways have been designed for fast driving it is wrong in principle that any speed limit should be imposed on them. General speed limits have not been found necessary on the Continent. We prefer to follow the Continental example, rather than the American example, where every road, as well as motor roads, has its often unenforceable speed limit. I believe that traffic will soon settle down to our motorways at civilised speeds which are within the capacity of both the drivers and the vehicles.
A fixed speed limit on those roads of this country which are really suited to fast driving, where there is no speed limit on the ordinary open road, would be illogical and unjustifiable. I cannot see the logic of putting a 70 m.p.h. speed limit, as has been advocated, on the Preston By-pass, which is designed for speed, and then allowing people, as we do now, to drive at speeds up to 100 m.p.h., which can be achieved on, say, the Diss-New-market-Royston road, which was never

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designed for fast vehicles. I believe that the ordinary motorist can be trusted to adopt a fair speed for this class of road, and I believe that on the whole the fast driver is a good driver—I repeat, in case by any chance the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice should read my words: "on the whole." If we are proved wrong, then we may have to think again.
I realise that in pursuing the course I am indicating to your Lordships we are taking a calculated risk. We are relying on the fact that the good sense of motorists will not prove this risk to have been unjustifiable. I wish to make it clear that in the unlikely event of motorists abusing the freedom they are now being given my right honourable friend will not hesitate to apply such restrictions as may be necessary, including speed limits. With one exception, therefore, we propose to abolish all statutory speed limits on motorists on the motorways. This obvious exception is the trailer and, in particular, the caravan towed behind the family car.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: If I may interrupt the noble Lord, he mentioned one type of vehicle that I have not read in the Regulations, the trailer, and in particular the trailer drawn behind the car. Is it proposed to interpret the Regulations as meaning that all trailers behind commercial vehicles will be banned as well?
LORD MANCROFT: No, my Lords; they are not being banned at all. The noble Lord has misunderstood it.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: So far as the heavy commercial vehicle with trailer is concerned, is it to be subject, as well as the close-coupled trailer behind the motor car to the 40 m.p.h. limit?
LORD MANCROFT: I think that if the noble Lord looks at the Regulations carefully he will see that a distinction is made between those trailers having brakes running hydraulically right through and the trailer to which I am now referring, which has only a contact brake—namely, the caravan or week-end yacht behind the car.
I was saying—and this is the point I want to emphasise—that no driver is
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compelled to drive faster than he considers safe or reasonable. The absence of a limit in no way exempts all drivers from the obligations of safe and careful driving, of which, of course, speed can be an element. All these Regulations do is to remove an arbitrary speed limit from special categories of vehicle when driving on a special class of road where the restrictions seem inappropriate.
My Lords, I do not doubt that there are many points which I have not mentioned, for which I apologise, upon which your Lordships would like to express a view. One of the things that is not excluded from being driven down these roads is pet hobby-horses. I do not, however, wish to worry your Lordships by raising all the multitude of points which may lie dormant in these two instruments. I ought perhaps to repeat, in case I have been misunderstood, that further regulations about such things as parking and turning, and so on will be required, but they will be subject only to the Negative Resolution procedure. An amendment to the Highway Code to deal with these special conditions of the motorways will eventually be needed. A Committee, the Anderson Committee, is actually in session this particular afternoon to consider the question of signing the motorways. I hope that I have now said enough to give your Lordships a general idea of what is proposed in this most interesting and important experiment, and I hope your Lordships will give it a fair wind. I beg to move that the first Order be approved.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, before the noble Lord finishes his speech would he give one item of information which would help the House to consider this matter intelligently? Would he give the House the measurements of the Preston By-Pass? As I understand it, the Preston By-Pass is a two-lane traffic dual by-pass. Could he give the width of the two lanes?
LORD MANCROFT: I cannot offhand, but I will soon find out. The noble Lord is perfectly correct in saying that it is a two-lane by-pass. It has two lanes one way and two the other—four altogether. Eventually, it will be a six-lane by-pass. We should have liked to make it a six-lane by-pass immediately, but that would have cost £100,000 or

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more, and we thought that at the moment that money could be better spent elsewhere. In due course, when these bypass links form part of a motorway chain, of which, on its completion, this will be an integral pant, it will be converted into a six-lane by-pass. The noble Lord is quite right. At the moment it has only four lanes, but the plan is to convert it into a six-lane by-pass.
Moved, That the Special Roads (Classes of Traffic) Order, 1958, be approved.—(Lord Mancroft.)
3.43 p.m.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, the Minister is right, or perhaps I should say nearly right, because he has, for the first time, accepted the fundamental principle of good traffic control: that all traffic on any road should travel at the same speed. That has been held to be correct by experts all over this country. And how right he is in regard to this principle contained in the Order he has just moved, only proves how wrong the Minister was when he imported the crazy idea and put it into force on our arterial roads in London of a 30–40 m.p.h. speed limit which does just the reverse. That is the negation of successful traffic control, because immediately on coming out of a 30 m.p.h. speed limit some traffic may go at 40 m.p.h. and some must remain at 30 m.p.h. The noble Lord does not shake his head.
LORD MANCROFT: I do; I shake it very loudly!
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: It did not remove the 30 m.p.h. speed limit from the commercial vehicle. One virtue of the present proposal is that it will eliminate largely a major cause of accidents to-day—that of one vehicle overtaking another. Having said that—and I support the Minister in his removal from these roads of certain vehicles and the doing away with speed limits—I want to know why he deviates from his course, first of all in the case of trailers that are drawn by motor cars. What he proposes to do, dealing first with the speed limit regulation, is to remove from the traffic using this eight or nine miles of road at Preston all speed limits on commercial vehicles, coaches, and motor cars. Vehicles on that road can travel at what speed they think fit, except that there is a 40 m.p.h.
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limit on what I have always considered to be the most dangerous vehicle on the road—that is, the trailer caravan drawn behind a private motor car. Why does he not eliminate that vehicle from these roads as well? Why make that exception? We all know that if, when travelling along the roads of this country, we get behind a queue of motor cars, usually one of three things is the cause of the holding up of the traffic: it may be the indivisible load, a subject to which I shall return later, as the noble Lord expected; it may be the gentleman to whom the noble Lord referred the other day, driving the car at about 8 or 10 m.p.h. with both feet down pressing every pedal he can, and still not able to go faster, or it may be the caravan.
If I read this regulation aright—and perhaps I ought to get the exact phraseology—it includes "all Service vehicles that are built for the purposes of defence". Why? Is the noble Lord going to allow on this road a crocodile of 3-ton lorries carrying "L" plates, travelling at the moderate speed of 20 m.p.h., teaching the learner driver how to drive? Would the type of vehicle falling into this category include the Pickford tank transporter? If he is going to eliminate from these roads all the abnormal loads, why allow "Queen Marys", Royal Air Force vehicles taking huge, half-assembled aeroplanes along them? Would the noble Lord give me the answer to that question when he comes to reply? I can understand the free use of the roads for the Services in times of emergency. But why make the distinction between an abnormal load that is trailed along by one of the Services and an abnormal load trailed along by anybody else?
I now come to the indivisible or abnormal load. Here, I know that I shall cross swords with the noble Lord, Lord Derwent. I have done so on many occasions on this particular subject; it is about the only traffic matter upon which he and I disagree. The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, said that this was the thirteenth time your Lordships had discussed this matter. Well, the thirteenth time is an unfortunate one for him, because he has now had borne in upon him, after twelve times, the sense of the argument that I have advanced, that these abnormal loads should not be allowed on the roads. He is now taking them off

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these motor roads. I have listened attentively to all the arguments that have from time to time been brought forward in your Lordships' House in defence of what I call the abnormal load; and I remain unconvinced. I reiterate that abnormal loads should certainly be taken off roads that are made primarily for fast-moving traffic.
I believe it would be as well if your Lordships could know what an abnormal load is. The width of a vehicle, including load, that is normally allowed to travel on the roads of this country is 9 ft. 6 in. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, a question: whether he could tell your Lordships the width of the Preston bypass. I do not know, but perhaps the noble Lord's advisers have now told him. I should think that it is about 24 ft., dual carriageway. Perhaps the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong. The width of a normal vehicle is 9 ft. 6 in.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, the width of the Preston by-pass is 24 ft.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I thank the noble Lord. Now the width of the normal vehicle being 9 ft. 6 ins. to 10 ft. means that when we allow one foot one side and one foot the other it will take up most of one lane; and an abnormal load is anything over 10 ft. 6 ins. in width. Permission of the Ministry of Transport for an abnormal load to go along a road is not necessary unless it reaches or exceeds a width of 24 ft. and exceeds 150 tons. There are graduations in between the two, and in the case of some the permission of the police has to be obtained and in others the permission of the highway authority as well as that of the police.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt him, for I am sure he does not wish to make any mistake? I think he will find that the permitted width is not 24 ft. but 20 ft.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I am grateful to the noble Lord. The limits are 20 ft. and 150 tons. Now a width of 20 ft. leaves only 4 ft., so that that load will completely block the road. I aim not an anti-industrialist, for I have lived my life in industry, but I say to your Lordships, without fear of contradiction, that no road user has more abused the roads
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of this country than those who have propelled along it abnormal loads; and the wider we make our roads the wider will the abnormal load become.
I have heard stories. The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, has stood at the Dispatch Box in times past and has brought tears to our eyes, saying that if we should turn abnormal loads off the roads of this country our export trade would be greatly affected. Nonsense! Some 85 per cent. of the traffic that uses the roads of this country in normal times is connected with trade and industry, and if a balance sheet could be drawn of the advantages to the abnormal load carriers in cost of production and transit as against the disadvantage to the cost of production and the industrial inconvenience to the rest—that 85 per cent. who have travelled behind these abnormal loads and been pushed into lay-bys so that abnormal loads could pass—I believe the balance to the disadvantage of the majority would be overwhelming.
As the noble Lord has just asked, why should ships' lifeboats be carried from Liverpool and the Tyne to Southampton? Why should ships' propellers be carried from the Clyde to the South Coast? Even ships have been transported from Portsmouth by road—small ones, I admit. Surely that is not because the modern sailor is afraid to go to sea. No, it is because those people responsible for abnormal loads get the services of the police for nothing and handicap and inconvenience every other road user at no cost to themselves. My experience is that if we made it impossible for them to carry those loads on the roads of this country they would soon find another way of carrying them. If British Railways had a spark of initiative, instead of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on building steel trucks for coal traffic that is getting less and less they would build trucks and load carriers for carrying on the railways these abnormal loads which at the present time are put on the roads.
I am certain that the brains of British industry can find many ways of fabricating these abnormal loads differently so that they are not such a terrible inconvenience to the ordinary road user, and so I commend the Minister for turning these things off these motorways. What is the good of spending £250,000 per mile in building these motorways and then allowing them to be cluttered up by all the

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slow-moving and cumbersome traffic? Let us learn the lesson. Years ago we built by-passes to by-pass crowded areas. Then we succumbed to the blandishments of the speculative builder. He built houses all along the by-passes and so we have had to build by-passes to by-pass the by-passes. That is how we shall go on with these motor roads if we allow the encroachment upon them of all these abnormal loads. I want to say one further word on this question of experiments. I do not know why the noble Lord's right honourable friend wants to carry out any experiments to see the obstruction factor of these abnormal loads. If he drove on the roads as some of us do he would soon find out and know all about it. I have a suspicion that he is doing it only to placate some of the opposition which, as the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, has rightly said, will arise.
I want to say a word also about this question of speed. I deprecate people speaking of those who travel on these roads at 100 miles an hour. Of course we shall get "road hogs"—people who "hog" the crown of the road and are just as dangerous as "road hogs" who travel at 100 miles an hour. I would suggest to the noble Lord that if these motor roads are freed of all obstructions and all speed restrictions, within a very short space of time the traffic on them will settle down to a speed of about 55 to 60 miles an hour. That is what will happen.
I want, also, to do something to ease the minds of some of those people who are afraid of speed, especially the speed of some of the coaches that are now predominantly in favour with the travelling public. I want to tell them this, and I speak from a lifetime's experience of the motor industry: there is more care and thought and brilliant engineering put into the safety factor of passenger coaches on the roads of this country to-day than is put even into the majority of private motor cars. I have a great admiration for the engineers who are building our passenger coaches. The hydraulic braking systems are really first-class and there is no undue danger in the modern coaches of this country travelling at anything up to sixty to seventy miles an hour on a road, as the noble Lord quite rightly says, specially built for that—but not on a road like a snake. And we have some. Take the A.34; take the road from the
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Midlands to Gloucestershire and the Channel ports.
There is one other point I should like to make on this subject. I hope that the Minister will stick to his guns. I am sorry that the Preston by-pass is being restricted to two carriageways on either side. That only illustrates the fallacy of our road policy. Cannot we make up our minds as to what is essential for the future of the motorways of this country? Why do we build one stretch of road with two lanes each side, with another, a third, in reserve? And now we are going to link it up with the London-Birmingham Road that has three lanes each side. Is there in the Ministry of Transport no policy on road width? Surely we cannot humbug about like this, as we have done for thirty or forty years. We buy the land, and by the time it comes to building the other carriageway and making three lines of traffic I expect the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, will have gone and will be directing something else in another place. But a Minister will say, "We cannot afford to do it now because it will cost too much."
One final word. I have noticed in the Ministry of Transport recently, and in those who speak on behalf of the Ministry of Transport—and may I now add a caveat: present company always excepted—a certain arrogance and a certain conceit about motor roads. Would the noble Lord accept from me that the conception of motor roads and a motor-road system in this country originated with the Government of 1946 and my right honourable friend Mr. Alfred Barnes? I do not think that the present Government should take too much to itself. If it wants something which will take some of the conceit out of it, then I would ask whether the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, has seen to-day's front page of the Manchester Guardian. If he has not, I have a copy here and I should like to make him a present of it, so that he can frame it and hang it over his bed; and every morning he can look at it and see the "Ten-year plan for motorways" and "Twelve year's progress".
In 1946 my right honourable friend had a wonderful conception. So have a thought for those who struggled to get this present motorway system inaugurated. Let others not take too much credit to themselves. The people who really have

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made it possible have a more warmhearted and sensible attitude than that shown by the Treasury. I hope that the noble Lord will answer my criticisms. I hope he and the Minister will not be deflected from the course of giving this country the opportunity of affording a literal interpretation of what was said so many years ago:
"The measurement of the civilisation of any country lies in the speed and the safety with which it can transport goods and people from one place to another."

THE MIDDLE EAST
4.4 p.m.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, I am afraid that I must take your Lordships' minds off the wonderful vision of the Minister without Portfolio lying in bed, looking down roads without end, and come to one or two statements which your Lordships may wish to hear. The first is on the Middle East. I will make it in the words which the Prime Minister used in another place:
" With the leave of the House, I will make a statement regarding the arrangements for a high-level meeting to discuss the Middle East.
" The House will realise that not only do we have to consider our own decisions in these matters but we have to try to have the maximum possible consultation with our Allies and with other Commonwealth Governments. This necessarily means some delay between the receipt of a letter from Mr. Khrushchev and our reply. On this particular occasion I have had to weigh this consideration together with the natural wish of the House to be informed as to the character of our reply before they adjourn. Although, therefore, our own conclusions had in fact been reached yesterday, I have thought it right to accept the short delay inevitable in making our consultations not merely a perfunctory exercise but a reality.
" There is one other consideration which I have tried to bear in mind. I feel that it is courteous as far as is possible to keep to the rule of not publishing the reply to a letter until it has been delivered. For this reason, I
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have arranged that our reply should be delivered to the Russian Government at 3 o'clock this afternoon. In view, however, of the forthcoming adjournment of the House I propose, with your permission, to read my reply and thus to make it fully available to honourable Members before the adjournment.
"The following is the text of the message:
'I have received your letter of July 28.
'I will not reply to its many accusations against allied policy in the Middle East. None of these has any foundation in fact.
'In my letter of July 22 I proposed a special meeting of the Security Council to be attended by Heads of Governments. On July 26 I elaborated this proposal. I said that I was glad that it was acceptable to you and I suggested that the necessary arrangements should at once be made through the Permanent Representatives of Members of the Security Council. I hope that on reflection you will agree that this is the best course; I am encouraged in this hope by the passage in your last letter where you call for a return to my original proposal. From this proposal I have never departed.
'In addition to meetings of the whole Council under Article 28, it would of course be possible to arrange less formal meetings of Heads of Government on the questions which the Security Council is considering. The procedure would thus be flexible and should promote the chances of making progress.
'As I said in my message of July 22, it would not be our intention that any resolutions should be put forward at this special meeting of the Security Council unless they arose out of previous agreement.
'Of course, this meeting would not preclude the holding of the Summit meeting for which we have been working for some time.
'I am now instructing the United Kingdom Permanent Representative at the United Nations to propose to the President of the Security Council a special meeting to take place under Article 28 on August 12. Meanwhile the Permanent Representatives should discuss arrangements for the special meeting, and decide where it will take place. If this meeting is agreed I shall be there on August 12; I hope you will be there too. So far as I am concerned New York, Geneva or any other place generally agreeable will do.'"
4.9 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I thank the noble Earl for giving us the statement which the Prime Minister has made in another place; and say that in general I welcome the reply which has been sent, and hope very much that it will lead to the Summit Conference on August 12.

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I hope that if there is any smaller question than is covered by the actual wording of the letter we shall be reasonably flexible in meeting any requests, provided that the basic principles in the letter are observed. I do not think the country wants to be associated with any further delay in getting to the Summit; and if we can rely upon Her Majesty's Government to proceed on that point of view I am sure it will be a matter of gratification for the whole nation.
LORD REA: My Lords, I also should like to thank the noble Earl and say that we are grateful to Her Majesty's Government for making this decision known before the House adjourns for the Recess. Like the noble Viscount, I am not going to venture on any criticism at all, but give this a fair wind and wish it well.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, it is not absolutely clear from the Note whether our Allies have been consulted and whether they approved the terms of this Note. So far as I could gather from hearing the terms of the Note, it would look as if there is nothing left except the time of the meeting and the place. We are suggesting August 12. May I take it that that is agreeable to our Allies, and may I take it also that it is agreeable that the meeting should take place at New York, Geneva, or any other place that may be agreed upon?
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I understand the noble Lord's anxieties, but this message was sent, of course, only after we were able to discuss the line of our reply with Mr. Dulles. We have been in very close consultation with Paris, and I think the reasons for Her Majesty's Government's line of approach are well understood there. So there really has been very full consultations, and we have fully in our own minds the attitudes of other Governments. I am obliged to the noble Viscount the Leader of the Opposition and to the noble Lord, Lord Rea. We really want to get on with this Conference now, if we possibly can.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, arising out of the statement by the noble Earl the Leader of the House, may I ask whether his attention has been called to a statement made by Soviet Russia yesterday that the United States and Britain are planning to liquidate the new Iraq Republic? And will the noble Leader of the House take this opportunity of
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refuting that charge, which is not calculated to reduce Middle Eastern tensions on the eve of the coming high-level Conference?
THE EARL OF HOME: Yes, my Lords, of course: there is no truth whatever in the Russian allegation.

TELEVISING THE STATE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT
4.12 p.m.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, with the permission of the House I should now like to make a short statement on the proposal for the televising of the State Opening of Parliament. Her Majesty's Government have been considering requests that facilities should be granted this year for televising the ceremony. They have decided in principle that such facilities should be granted, and the Queen has been graciously pleased to give her consent. To avoid undue disturbance, the facilities will be given only to one operator. The British Broadcasting Corporation will prepare the broadcast, but they will make the results available to the Independent Television Authority. The necessary arrangements will now be concerted with the Lord Great Chamberlain. It is intended that inside the Palace of Westminster the television should be confined to the Royal Gallery and the House of Lords Chamber.
I should like to make it clear that the Government regard this ceremony as a State occasion, quite distinct from the day-to-day work of Parliament, and they have no intention of proposing that facilities to televise those day-to-day proceedings should be allowed.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, as I put the Question originally, may I thank the noble Earl for his statement?
THE EARL OF HOME: I am much obliged. The noble Viscount has had some time to wait, but I hope that he is satisfied.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I am sure the Answer which has been given by the noble Earl will be received in the country with very great interest. There is only one point that has been raised on this question, to my knowledge, and that is whether or not,

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with this kind of broadcast, there may be some confusion, not in all minds but in some minds, as to the content of the Queen's Speech. Could arrangements be made prior to the broadcast to make it quite clear that the Speech from the Throne—which is, in effect, the Government's presentation of a programme or case to the country—is the Government's and not the Crown's? I appreciate that many people know that, but many others do not. If it is now going to be a question of a physical broadcast like this I think it may be as well to take the necessary steps to make the position quite clear.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, the noble Viscount is quite right. I think this point does need to be explained to the country, and steps will be taken to ask the B.B.C. to give adequate explanations. It may indeed be that this television broadcast will help the country to understand our constitutional processes and the way Parliament works, as well as its relationship to the Sovereign: it may be a valuable way of educating the people.
LORD REA: My Lords, arising from the answer, may I ask the noble Earl whether he will endeavour to see that steps are taken to ensure that such technical fixtures as will have to be made will not spoil the atmosphere of this traditional ceremony, the State Opening of Parliament, and that their Lordships will not be blinded, as mere puppets on a stage, but will have as much opportunity of witnessing the ceremony as before?
THE EARL OF HOME: Yes. There was a suggestion made at one time that a colour film might be taken of the ceremony, but I am afraid that the intensity of lighting required made that almost impossible. So far as the television apparatus is concerned. I think the cameras can be confined in quite a small place, and the lighting will not have to be excessive in any way. I think I can reassure the noble Lord on that point.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether it would not be possible to have a film made of this ceremony, with a view to its distribution throughout the Commonwealth, and also to foreign countries?
THE EARL OF HOME: I think there is no difficulty in making a film from the television cameras, but the noble Viscount
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will understand that it will be in black and white, and not in colour. I was talking about the difficulty of making a colour film.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, following on that answer, would the noble Earl the Leader ask the B.B.C. whether they will make these films available to the Commonwealth?
THE EARL OF HOME: I have no doubt about that, my Lords.

MALTA
4.16 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COLONIAL AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF PERTH): My Lords, with your Lordships' permission I rise to make a statement on Malta. The discussions between my night honourable friend and the Governor of Malta have covered a number of problems, and I am circulating details in the OFFICIAL REPORT. They have had as their aim the restoration in Malta of the economic and political conditions which would facilitate a resumption of stable and responsible government.
On the economic side, the future of the dockyard has naturally taken first place. As the House knows, the use of Malta for naval repair work will decline after 1960. Her Majesty's Government have accordingly decided that the naval dockyard Should be converted? to a commercial yard and transferred to a commercial ship-repairing firm. I am very glad to say that preliminary negotiations have been concluded with Messrs. C. H. Bailey of South Wales and, subject to the completion of a satisfactory agreement, this firm will form a company registered in Malta to take over the dockyard on long lease. The company will start immediately their preparations for taking over the yard, and it is planned that they should assume responsibility some time in 1959.
The cost of converting and re-equipping the yard will be heavy. Her Majesty's Government are prepared to contribute very substantially towards the capital cost of the new enterprise, which is estimated at about £5½ million. Messrs. Baileys, in association with the Colonial Development Corporation and Maltese interests, will provide £750,000 of equity capital. Her Majesty's Government will make available the balance of £4¾ million

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partly in the form of a debenture and partly as a special grant. The return on the grant would depend upon the prosperity of the enterprise. The House will be given full information when the negotiations with the firm 'have been completed.
The people of Malta have already been assured that there will be enough Admiralty work at the dockyard to maintain about the present level of activity until the end of 1960. Naval work will then decline, but there will be some warship repairs for at least a number of years thereafter and the naval base will remain, though on a somewhat reduced scale. Commercial work will meanwhile be built up, and secondary industries will be established. Her Majesty's Government are satisfied that in these various ways the prospects of maintaining employment after 1960 are good. The firm's plan is to make such arrangements as will enable employment to be offered on comparable terms to most of those engaged on naval ship-repair work for the Admiralty.
The Governor is also making plans to push ahead with the diversification of the economy, which Her Majesty's Government regard as of the highest importance as a means of providing further opportunities for productive employment. Details are given in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
On the constitutional side, we have been discussing with the Governor how a start can be made towards the return of responsible government. This presents difficulties because of the events which led up to and followed the resignation of Mr. Mintoff's Government and particularly because of the conflicting positions taken up by the Maltese political Parties on whether new elections should be held under the 1947 Constitution. We and the Governor have agreed that the next step must be to try to reach an agreed solution in discussion with the Maltese political parties and Her Majesty's Government therefore propose to invite the parties to 'talks in November on Malta's future constitutional arrangements. In the meantime, the Governor is reviewing the state of public order in Malta to see how far the present restrictions can be relaxed or lifted.
Following are the details referred to in the Minister's statement:
The Governor has been in London since early June for discussions on Her Majesty's Government's future policy in Malta. These discussions have had as their aim the restoration in Malta of the economic and political conditions which would facilitate a resumption of stable and responsible government.
Priority has naturally been given to Malta's economic problems. In the past, the Maltese economy has depended on Services' expenditure; and Her Majesty's Government have recognised that the long-term changes in United Kingdom defence policy, particularly in so far as these affect the requirements of the Royal Navy in Malta, will necessitate major changes in the traditional pattern of the Island's economy.
This is not a new problem. It has been the common object of Governments here and in Malta for some time to diversify the Maltese economy and thereby to reduce dependence on the Services. This was one of the aims of policy in the joint statement issued by Her Majesty's Government and the Maltese party leaders in 1955. Her Majesty's Government have always held to this aim and when changes in defence policy looked like causing major chances in the pattern of Services employment in Malta they stressed their readiness to work out remedial measures with the late Maltese Government. Earlier this year, Her Majesty's Government also offered the late Maltese Government to set up a working party to devise plans to deal with the problems that might arise if there should be substantial unemployment after 1960 owing to changes in defence policy. This offer was turned down by Mr. Mintoff.
The Dockyard has for generations been the industrial core of Malta and it is an economic asset which should be used to the full. It will no longer be possible to keep it in being as a naval yard, and it would offer good prospects, if converted, for commercial ship-repairing. Her Majesty's Government have therefore decided that the yard should be transferred to a private ship-repairing firm. The continued use of the Dockyard in this new rôle will be a major step in the direction of diversifying the Maltese economy.
Preliminary negotiations have been concluded with Messrs. C. H. Bailey, of South Wales, and, subject to the completion of a satisfactory agreement, this firm will form a company to take over the Dockyard on lease during 1959. The intention is that the take-over of the Dockyard should be in two phases. During the first phase, which may last for about a year, Messrs. Baileys will finalise their requirements for converting the yard, study the Admiralty management on the spot, and make the necessary preparations for the assumption of full responsibility. In the second phase, which will start some time in 1959, the firm will take over complete responsibility.
The Dockyard is not suitable for commercial work as it stands. It will have to be converted and re-equipped. The total capital cost involved is estimated at about £5½ million

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Messrs. Baileys, in association with the Colonial Development Corporation and certain Maltese interests (subject to the negotiation of satisfactory agreements) will provide £750,000. Her Majesty's Government will make available the balance of £4¾ million, partly in the form of a debenture and partly as a special giant on which the Government would look for a return as the enterprise grew in prosperity. It is hoped to arrange for a batch of shares in the new company to be allocated for sale to Maltese people, including dockyard employees, who wish to become shareholders, Further information will be given to the House on these arrangements when detailed negotiations with the firm have been completed.
Her Majesty's Government recognise the special difficulties of launching this new enterprise, and the need for the most careful planning during the transition period. They have therefore welcomed an approach which Messrs. Baileys have made to Vice-Adrniral Sir Gordon Hubback to become the Managing Director of the company which is being formed to take over the Dockyard. Admiral Hubback was Commodore Superintendent at Malta, and is now the Member of the Board of Admiralty who deals with the Naval Dockyard. He has unrivalled knowledge and experience in this field. The Admiralty are naturally most reluctant to let Admiral Hubback go, but fully appreciate the importance of the Malta task, and I am therefore deeply grateful to my noble friend the First Lord of the Admiralty for having agreed to release Admiral Hubback from his present duties for this purpose in a few months' time.
There will be enough work to keep the Dockyard going at about the present level of activity until the end of 1960. Over this period commercial work including secondary industries will be built up. Thereafter naval work will decline. The naval base will remain though there will be some gradual reduction in its size. Her Majesty's Government are satisfied that this transition will not lead to widespread unemployment and distress in Malta. The plan is to make such arrangements as will enable employment to be offered in comparable conditions to most of those engaged on naval ship-repair work for the Admiralty, and every effort will be made to mitigate individual hardship and to ensure that the transfer is carried out as smoothly as possible.
The conversion of the Dockyard alone is however not enough. The whole Maltese economy must be developed, and to that end a number of other steps are being taken now to attract industry to Malta and to develop its natural attractions. The construction of a new civil harbour, which should be of immense commercial benefit to the Island, will be begun this year. The industrial estate begun by the late Maltese Government will be further developed and as a third major step an Aids to Industry Bill will shortly be enacted. Her Majesty's Government have also approved the Governor's new plans for expanding the Island's tourist industry, which could become one of Malta's major assets.
Hitherto there has been no overall development plan for Malta. This is now being remedied. Her Majesty's Government have
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already made known their readiness to assist Malta by substantial capital grants towards an agreed plan which, among other things, aims at improving the standards of living of the Maltese people. They will also assist in balancing the budget on recurrent account so as to maintain and raise the standard of education and other social services. The ways in which practical effect can best be given to this undertaking can be decided when there is an agreed development plan.
With all these prospects Malta's economic course promises to set fair. The Maltese people will have to face competition from industry in neighbouring countries, but provided the commercial work done in the Dockyard and the products of Maltese industry remain competitive, the Maltese people need not fear for their future.
The discussions with the Governor have also covered constitutional matters. Since the disturbances at the end of April the situation has become sufficiently tranquil to justify an early review by the Governor of the present restrictions on political activity. This he proposes to undertake as soon as he returns. The return to normal Parliamentary government is, however, more difficult because of the conflicting views held by the political parties in Malta on the 1947 Constitution. Furthermore, Her Majesty's Government have an obligation to protect individual members of the public service against victimisation for their loyalty and devotion to duty. Her Majesty's Government have therefore decided that the best step would be to try and reach an agreed solution to the constitutional problem in discussion with the Maltese political parties. They therefore propose to invite the parties to join them in November in discussions on 'Malta's future constitutional arrangements.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, we are much obliged to the noble Earl. Obviously the statement he has just submitted to us is of great importance. I believe that much of it will be received with some relief. We feel that we are well on the way to doing some things that we want to be done. I should like to ask for a little more detail about the difference between the civil shipbuilding and repair yard which is to be allocated to Messrs. Baileys, of Newport, Mon., and the Admiralty base. Is the base to continue to do their own major repairs? What is the difference here? Are the major repairs after 1960 to be done by the civil shipbuilding and repair organisation? The position is not very clear. If only part of the yard is to be converted to civil purposes, then I should have thought, unless I am thinking of the wrong part of the yard, that £5¼ million seems to be rather a large sum for conversion only. I am not saying that at the moment in any critical tone, because

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should like more details. From my knowledge in the Admiralty over many years I have great confidence in the firm to whom the Government propose to make a lease.
LORD W1NDLESHAM: My Lords, may I say from these Benches how much we welcome the statement which has just been made by the noble Earl? I feel, however, that perhaps it would be premature to be too optimistic about the reception which this plan may get in Malta. The Maltese people, whom I know well from personal experience, during the war and since, are in rather a touchy state, and it is possible that they will view this plan with modified optimism. Nevertheless, I welcome it.
Before I sit down, I should like to ask the noble Earl a short question. I do not believe that I have ever seen a statement by a Government speaker drawing attention to the fact that, while employment at the dockyard has suffered recently, the amount of Maltese labour employed at the three great airfields must be greater than it was at one time, especially during the war and just afterwards. I do not know how the figures compare in this respect, but it has always surprised me that the Government, who are under heavy fire from various quarters on this matter, have never used the figures of the additional Maltese labour employed there, which must have provided employment for some who were formerly employed in the dockyard.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, in reply to the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, it is good to hear of his confidence in the firm. On the question of what the commercial firm are to take over, the answer is that they will lake over all the dockyard. All the work at the naval base will continue, but the repair work on naval ships will be done in the dockyard by the commercial firm. That is one of the ways by which we hope to ensure adequate work in the commercial dockyard after 1960.
I think that the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, is a perfectly valid and good one. Although there has been a great talk about potential unemployment, in fact, owing to other work, whether on the airfields or with other services, unemployment has
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been very little, if any, more than at any time since the end of the war.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, may I support my noble Leader in his tribute to the firm of C. H. Bailey and Company, who, from my knowledge, have a long and fine reputation in South Wales, and I am pleased that the Government have been able to make these arrangements with them. I am also glad that the co-operation of the Colonial Development Corporation has been obtained in this field. There are one or two points I should like to put to the noble Earl. The first is about what will be the business in the civil dockyard. Has there been any indication of the volume of business that is likely to he obtained, and have any preliminary arrangements been made for ships to be repaired there? I realise, of course, that there may be some difficulty about giving this information, but if it is possible to do so, we should be interested to have some facts. Secondly, I notice that the conference is to take place in November. In view of the situation in the Middle East., would it be possible to expedite that and have it earlier than November? And where will the conference take place: in London or in Malta?
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, no specific arrangements have been made for ships to come into the commercial dockyard. It is, if I may say so, far too early. Probably the preliminary takeover will not start until 1959, and until some time in 1960, probably at the very end of the year, the commercial work will not be the real work to be done, though when occasion for it offers they will take the opportunity. Nevertheless, the question of what may may expect has been carefully examined. For example, over forty tankers outward bound and in ballast pass within five miles of Malta every day, and we believe that the prospects are very good for attracting some of these tankers for repair work at Malta.
The question of the date of the constitutional conference presents a problem, partly due to other conferences which are coming beforehand. All through October we have the conference on the future of Nigeria, and I expect that that will occupy more or less all our time.

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But that does not mean, because the conference cannot start until November, that we shall not be doing a great deal of preparatory work—of course, we shall. Where the conference will take place has not yet been decided.

SPECIAL ROADS (CLASSES OF TRAFFIC) ORDER, 1958
4.29 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I rise to continue the debate on by-pass roads. Your Lordships must have become rather bored, because every time I speak on road matters I start by saying that I wholeheartedly agree with every word that has fallen from the mouth of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth. It will be somewhat of a relief, therefore, to your Lordships for me to say to-day that I disagree with at least 85 per cent. of everything the noble Lord has said. I rather deprecate that he gave so little credit to the present Minister—although, of course, the noble Lord and I both agree that we are not going fast enough and far enough. He gave the credit to previous Ministers of Transport, because he said that motorways were their brainchild. But, after all, the present Minister is the first Minister who has built anything, and I think "the proof of the pudding is in the eating."
I am not going to indulge in a two-way debate with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, to-day, not only because I have already said in the past what I have to say in answer to his arguments, but because I am keeping it "up my sleeve" for the time when we get more permanent Regulations. These are only temporary Regulations. What I want to bring to your Lordships' attention is the form of the Orders themselves, and the results that may or may not spring from them. The more one studies these Orders, the more it appears that the results of them and the method of carrying out the results which the Minister wants have not been properly thought out.
Why did the Minister make this form of Order? It cannot have been to deal with those very heavy and large, slow-moving loads, such as the noble Lord,
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Lord Lucas of Chilworth, mentioned—ships' propellers that occupy one and a half lanes of traffic width and so on—because the Minister already has the powers to deal with those. So obviously he is not considering that type of load. Or is he? I find people strangely muddled in their knowledge and thinking about these abnormal indivisible loads; and, regrettably, the person who appears to be most muddled is my right honourable friend the Parliamentary Secretary in another place. He seems to think that all these abnormal indivisible loads are the very large ones.
In case my noble friend Lord Mancroft takes me to task for this, I would refer him to the OFFICIAL REPORT of the other place of July 29 [Vol. 592, col. 1266]. The Parliamentary Secretary then used these words:
"One has to use one's imagination about the effect of abnormal indivisible loads travelling along such a road—one of these vast loads perhaps occupying a whole lane, or as much as a lane and a half, which some could occupy, the largest travelling at a very low speed—only four or five miles an hour—which might constitute a really serious danger to the general flow of traffic. Therefore, the eventual conclusion of my right honourable friend and myself was that we should start by excluding these loads from the motorway."
Evidently, according to the Parliamentary Secretary it is only these very heavy loads that are to be excluded. But that is not what the Order says; and I do not believe it is what the Order means. As I say, the Parliamentary Secretary seems to think there is only one form of abnormal indivisible load, and that is the very large one.
What I want to know, first of all, is: why has the Minister done this? Unless this Order is passed, nobody applies to the Minister for the smaller loads—those under 150 tons, or less than 20 ft. wide—to use any road; they apply to the highway authority, the local authority. For the very big loads they have to apply to the Ministry, and so the Minister already has the power to control them. I suppose the Minister thinks that if he were to leave this matter to the local authority they might use their common sense. They would say to themselves: "With this motorway and this type of traffic, there would be less hazard and less congestion than if we passed the traffic through the middle of Preston." Indeed they are right, and it is a perfectly valid reason.

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What the Minister is doing is taking those powers away from the local authority.
How is this going to work? The Minster says that he is going to admit for, say, a week at a time abnormal indivisible loads. Does he mean the very large ones—because he can do that or not, as he likes; he has other powers in that respect—or does he mean these smaller loads? How is he going to admit them? Under the Road Traffic Act, application for these smaller loads has to be made to the local authority, and the police have to be notified; and nobody but the police is entitled to alter the route or vary the times when these loads shall pass. Is the Minister going to use the police as his agents? I hope that my noble friend will be able to answer that question. If he cannot answer it, then it is as I suspected: that this Order has not been properly thought out. How is the Minister going to open this motorway for a week to the smaller type of indivisible loads? With these smaller loads, from two to six days' notice of application has to be given to the local authority, depending on the size of the load. There is no method, so far as I can see, by which application in respect of these loads can be made to the Minister. If his Order is passed, he can stop them using the roads. But if he wanes it as an experiment, how is he going to admit them? It will be nothing to do with him at all. Even if he says to the police: "You act as my agents. You vary the route, and you bring these things round", an application must still be made, and it will not be made to the Minister.
A further point is with regard to the legal powers of the Minister. I wonder whether he is trying to do something for which he has not legal powers. Something of this kind was hinted at in another place and no answer was forthcoming, but I hope that an answer may be given to-day. Under the Special Roads Act, the Minister can vary the class of vehicle admitted to motorways—and these are the words which have come out of the Act—" on occasion or in an emergency ". The meaning of "in an emergency" is quite clear; and for experimental purposes, presumably, the Minister does not intend to allow this type of vehicle to use roads under the heading of "in an emergency" unless there is one. But what is meant by "on occasion"?
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One would think he would say: "There is the vehicle. This is the occasion. Let us admit it." It is not much use as an experiment. The Minister said in another place that he intended to admit various types of vehicle—he did not say what—for a week at a time. If this Order is going to pass, I should prefer it to be done that way, but I have been advised that it is probable that the Minister has no legal powers based on the words "on occasion", to open the road for a week.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: The noble Lord has evidently given a great deal of study to this matter, and we are grateful to him for raising the point. Would he give the House the benefit of his view? The words of the Minister are:
"I want to try as many combinations and permutations of traffic on these types of road as we can in the hope that when we come to the House we shall have the result of this experience."
The noble Lord is saying that the Minister has not the right to do this. He is saying that the Minister has not the right to say: "I will take off all private motor cars, or some private motor cars, or all cars over a certain speed."
LORD DERWENT: The noble Lord has misunderstood me. The Minister has a perfect right to exclude classes of vehicles. But this is to be an experiment; he wants an experiment, and to some extent I am on his side. But when it comes to allowing them "on occasion", that is where the difficulty arises. I doubt if the Minister has power to allow them on for experimental purposes. I should like an answer on this point. If "on occasion" means for a week at a time, well and good, because that is the obvious way to try it out. But I am advised that he has not the legal power to do it in that way. If the words "only on occasion" are to be used in their true meaning, I am afraid it will mean that only the very large slow-moving types of abnormal vehicle will be covered. But the Minister already has that power and it would not be much of an experiment.
May I say a word about this experiment? I do not like this Regulation, but I see the force of the argument. If we are to have an experiment, let us have a proper one. I hope the Minister will not try to prove any theory he holds, or disprove other people's theories, without

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a full and proper experiment. I would suggest that the only way to have a full and proper experiment is by some method—subject to the legal argument which I have put forward—of having these abnormal indivisible loads watched by a team of experts during the period when they are admitted to this road. Quite frankly, I can see no possible team of experts who have the recognised knowledge except the Road Research Laboratory. There is not another team who are capable, from a technical point of view, of doing it properly.
If the experiment is going to be worth anything when this team report they should be asked to report not only on the disadvantages of allowing these abnormal vehices to use the by-pass motorway but also on the advantages, by way of cost, speed of passage, and so on, to the commercial vehicle. Both sides should be shown, and in about the same period of time. If the experiment is going to mean anything, both the advantages and disadvantages should be examined of a similar vehicle moving through the middle of Preston, and the report should show the comparative advantages and disadvantages of all questions dealing with this matter. Provided that that sort of experiment is carried out, it will be worth something, but anything less will be useless. There is no point in carrying out an experiment to see if an abnormal indivisible load is a hazard on a motorway. You do not need an experiment. I will tell your Lordships that now—it is a hazard anywhere, on any type of road. What we want is an expert report as to whether the hazard on a motorway is greater than the hazard on other roads in the neighbourhood; and which, taking one thing against another, is the greater hazard. That is the sort of experiment we want. If that is what the Minister intends to carry out, well and good. Anything else is a waste of time and money.
I hope that my noble friend will be able to answer the few questions I have put to him. If future permanent regulations for other motorways are in this form, I shall have a great deal to say, and I shall probably move to annul them. But this is an experiment. I sympathise with the Minister, but I do not think I quite like the way he is doing it. I say, give it a chance if he has any method by which he can do it, but I
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rather doubt his powers in this matter or what the results will be
4.44 p.m.
EARL HOWE: My Lords, this is the first occasion that I have ventured to address your Lordships on the subject of the indivisible load. At the outset, I should like to say how cordially I agree with the policy of the Minister, which I think could be described as one of trial and error. It is obviously reasonable and, I should have thought, obviously the best thing all round, and is likely to get us away from a good many personal theories on the subject of motorways. When I have said that, I cannot help regretting very much indeed that the Minister should have had to choose such a roadway as the Preston by-pass. The Preston by-pass, as has been pointed out to your Lordships this afternoon, and as was pointed out in another place, is a two-carriageway road with two lanes of traffic going in opposite directions. What is the good of using such an inadequate artery as that as any real guide to the London-Birmingham motorway, which is going to have three lanes of traffic in each direction? Furthermore, the Preston by-pass will be an incomplete motorway. It is only going so far, and then it is going to turn off and go to the village of Broughton. That is already one of the worst bottlenecks in the whole of the North of England at week-ends or holiday periods, with an extreme concentration of motor vehicles.
One realises that perhaps the Preston motorway is the only one, and that is why the Minister has chosen it. But there are section of roads in other places. For example, there are already certain sections of the Western Avenue that have three lanes of traffic in each direction. I hope it will not be long before the remaining portions of the Western Avenue are extended so that we shall have three lanes of traffic right through. They are badly wanted, Heaven knows!, and a certain amount of work is already in progress there. But I feel that the Preston motorway, or by-pass—call it what you like—is incomplete and may, to that extent, produce fallacious lessons.
In my submission, the whole question of motorways requires careful consideration. Those of your Lordships who have driven abroad on the autobahnen in Germany, the autostrada in Italy, and the

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motorways in Belgium, already know quite a lot about the problems that one is likely to encounter. Your Lordships may think I am rather straying away from the subject, but I can promise you that I am coming back to the question of the individual load. We are now asked to confirm Special Orders which are to last for a year. At the end of that time, they will be subject to reconsideration, and I want to ensure, if I can, that the experience which many of us have had abroad and elsewhere of the condition of motorways can be taken advantage of and brought into consideration when the final chapter comes to be written.
The indivisible load is not a common thing at all; it is an uncommon thing. Occasionally it varies in size and content. It may he a catalyst tower or a ship's propeller. A ship's propeller is one of the worst things one can meet, because it takes up of itself at least fifteen and maybe twenty feet of roadway. Take this Preston model which the vehicle has to use. That means that one line of roadway is going to be completely out of action.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Two.
EARL HOWE: One carriageway, I meant. Two lines of traffic, or one whole carriageway, are going to be out of action. It seems to me that if the Minister allows indivisible loads of those dimensions, or the police allow very large indivisible loads to go down the motorway at all, that should be done only at night and as an exceptional circumstance. I want to make another submission to your Lordships and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, will give it consideration. When an indivisible load is launched out on a motorway, whether it is a two-lane motorway or a three-lane motorway, either by day or by night, a special signal should be put at the entrance to the motorway, so that the person driving, maybe, a light motor car rather quickly in the wet will not suddenly and unexpectedly come up to one of these large vehicles and its huge content. The signal would be a warning to him. I should not have thought it would be difficult to have a signal of that kind. There must he people looking after the motorway at intervals—I have in mind the London—Birmingham motorway, not the Preston motorway. If there could
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be some sort of special signal, the moment one saw it one would look out for one of these huge vehicles and its large contents. I cannot help feeling that that might be worth doing, and certainly worth doing on such a limited experiment as that of the Preston motorway. I throw it out for consideration; whether it will have any value or not I do not know.
It seems to me that there would not be quite the same objection to the indivisible load on a three-lane carriageway that there is to it on a two-lane carriageway. I cannot help feeling that we should not be carried away too far by the idea that there are going to be processions of them. I am sure there will not be; I am sure the Minister would not allow it. We must rely on the Minister and the officials of his Department, and I am perfectly certain that it will be possible on occasions to get an important and very large indivisible load along a motorway without causing extreme congestion and without causing extreme difficulty to other forms of traffic which might be found on it.
What I am very anxious about is lane discipline. We can have all our discussions, animated as they may be, on the subject of indivisible loads and whether they are a possible obstruction. But why worry our heads so much about a thing which is not going to happen often, if it happens at all, and, at the same time allow very often small—but not always small; sometimes rather big—light vehicles, motor cars and the like, to wander at will down the middle of the motorway, whether it has two lanes or three or the extreme right hand section of it. It must be your Lordships' experience—it certainly is mine, and most of my friends say the same thing—that there is a certain percentage of drivers who drive light motor cars on these improved roads and who simply have no consideration whatever for other road users. They go sometimes quite slowly on the crown of the road. Traffic coming up behind wants to get by, and after a few miles of waiting one finds that the driver in the middle of the road will not do anything about it. What is one to do? There is a sense of frustration all round; everybody loses his temper. Eventually somebody makes a dart to get by on the near side—very wrongly, but it happens—and just at that moment the man in the middle of the road pulls over. There

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really must be a vastly improved lane discipline, if you like, on all the roads of this country.
Last Whit Sunday it so happened that I had to drive from Köln on the motorway running south through Germany along the line of the Swiss frontier at Basle. I was enormously struck by the lane discipline of the Germans; and not only by the lane discipline but by the way in which the drivers were all obviously looking in their mirrors. The moment a faster car came up behind they would pull over. There was not 1 per cent. of them who failed to do this. Even if they were not looking in their mirrors, the moment they became aware, by the use of the horn or headlights, that another car wanted to overtake, they got out of the way. How very different from the experience one finds on the crowded roads of this country, where it is far more important that it should be done!
Again, in Germany on the autobahnen—I do not think the same rule applies in Italy; I have only come across it in Germany—one German heavy vehicle is not allowed to pass another going up a hill. I do not know whether that rule will be necessary on the London-Birmingham motorway; I do not know whether it actually follows the contours and goes up hills, or goes through cuttings. It is an important rule and it has this advantage. Your Lordships will often have followed a heavy vehicle trying to overtake another on a hill, and you will know what happens. All of a sudden a cloud of noxious vapour comes out of the vehicle through the driver "revving" his diesel engine much too fast. It is poisonous to people on the side of the road and to anybody in following vehicles. Could we have it laid down, if not immediately, in a year's time when we come to think about these things again, that heavy vehicles are not to try to pass one another going up hill? It is going up hill where it matters; on other sectors of the road it does not seem to happen to anything like the extent. The Germans have found it necessary to make that order, and I think we might follow their example over here.
To return to the question of lane discipline, could we not do something about that? Could not the driving examiners help us? Could they not emphasise to the learners that one of the
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special things they must learn and must think about is their present position on the road as well as getting ready for the next turning and things of that sort? Again, it is important that they should got, and keep, in the right lane of traffic, and, thirdly, that before turning out of their lane of traffic they should use their mirrors.
Reverting to the question of the indivisible load, I cannot help feeling, from what has been said this afternoon and from what I have heard of the matter, that we should be careful not to over-emphasise the difficulties. I think the Minister is quite right in having his experimental period and sticking to it, as he did in the teeth of a certain amount of criticism the other day in another place. I have read the whole of the debate there, and I cannot help feeling that the approach of the Minister on this question is right—in fact, I entirely support him.
5.0 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord So ers for allowing me to speak now. My opening remarks will be the concluding remarks of a study which was made by the Union Routiere de France after consideration of three important documents, particularly with regard to the part transport must play in the years to come. These three documents were A Study on the Economic Situation in Europe in 1956, produced by a Commission of the United Nations in Geneva in 1957, Europe Today and in 1960—the Eighth Report of the Economic Committee of O.E.E.C. in Paris; and Touring in Europe, a document also produced by the O.E.E.C. in Paris. With your Lordships' permission, I should like to quote a few words from their conclusions—it is a translation of their remarks. They state:
"Road traffic is in a constant state of development. One must not hamper its impetus but give it the means to expand freely; any hindrance to the day-to-day activity of traffic and transport automatically has its repercussions on costs, and consequently on the standard of living of the nation."
Equally, as that applies to Europe on the whole, I think it applies in part to this country.
In 1955, Statutory Instrument No. 677 came into operation—the authority for the special road, Bamber Bridge-Broughton scheme; in other words, the

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Preston By-pass. Section 1 of this Instrument states:
"The Minister is hereby authorised to provide along the route described in the First Schedule to this Scheme a special road for the use of traffic of classes I and II set out in the Second Schedule to the Act "—
that is, the 1949 Act. The Minister now proposes to prohibit certain categories of vehicles from using this road except under what I would term artificially created conditions. Here, I have particularly in mind vehicles carrying heavy, abnormal and indivisible loads. The noble Lord, Lord Derwent, is not in his place at the moment but I must say that I agree with much that he has said this afternoon. As these regulations are purely experimental I should have seen greater logic, with all due respect to the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, in allowing these vehicles access to the Preston By-pass on the basis of the normal requirements of the industries concerned, and then checking the effect on traffic flow or congestion. As mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, the Road Research Laboratory would be a perfect body to undertake that check.
In the same way that this Laboratory was able to assess future traffic conditions at Hyde Park Corner only by means of large weaving sections at Northolt, not linked into a roundabout—in the words of the Director of the Laboratory,
"The experiment suffered from a degree of artificiality inherent in controlled testing and due to the fact that the weaving sections were isolated ones "—
I believe that the conditions that would be obtainable on the Preston By-pass would be artificially created conditions. That really is the point I wish to make.
I should not like to weary your Lordships with a long list of instances of where these indivisible loads have suffered from complicated routing. Apart from complicated routing, the conditions under which some of these loads have had to be carried have added considerably to the time taken for the load to reach its destination, and, naturally, have added also to the cost. For instance, over the last eighteen months one firm in Preston has been exporting to Rhodesia a number of locomotives—I believe twenty. These locomotives were too large to go by rail, and in view of the fact that the bridge at Warrington was inadequate to take the load they had to
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be routed via Bolton, Manchester and right down to Newcastle-under-Lyme, and then up again to Birkenhead—in other words, the journey was three times as long and the time taken was five times greater.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Could the noble Lord tell us why the Manchester Ship Canal was not used?
LORD MERRIVALE: I was just coming to the point about the use of shipping. It is much more expensive; it adds to the cost. That is the important point with regard to exports or any other commercial consideration. I should like now to refer to the question of a chemical plant which had to be sent from Renfrew, near Glasgow, to Fawley, near Southampton. In this case, the route had to be extended by 30 per cent. If the load had gone by ship it would have cost approximately 50 per cent. more than by sending it by road.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, referred to the advisability in a number of cases of sending loads by rail. I have a case in mind where a load was sent by rail. A heavy commercial vehicle had to be sent across England just to carry this heavy plant from the railway sidings to the site, which was a matter of two miles. For that the vehicle had to go from one side of England to the other. Another small instance I think stresses the inadequacy of our bridges, but it also highlights the fact that, as I think, we do not want to make the problems of the industries concerned any greater than they are already by legislating in a manner which would make matters more difficult for them. I have in mind the case of a toad which could not cross the Severn on account of there being a bridge which was inadequate for road traffic. The load had to be off-loaded and then carried by rail, and then reloaded again on the other side of the Severn, and the empty commercial vehicle had to travel a matter of sixty miles. To the expense thus incurred must be added the cost of providing rail sidings and also unloading berths. An important point here is that hauliers as well as manufacturers are of the same opinion in this matter of indivisible loads. That is why I feel it would be regrettable if Her Majesty's Government were to press for an experiment on the Preston By-pass by

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means of artificially created conditions. May I therefore beg the noble Lord the Minister without Portfolio to ask his right honourable friend whether he could reconsider this point and tackle it in a different manner?
I should like to say a few words on the aspect of the speed limit. Here I am in agreement with Her Majesty's Government. I believe that this "no speed limit" principle should work, providing strict lane discipline is maintained and rigidly enforced, as has been so clearly mentioned by my noble friend, Lord Howe. My experience on motorways abroad is that in general traffic lane discipline is maintained to a large degree. This brings to my mind the question of three-lane and two-lane dual carriageways. I have driven a number of times on the Autoroute de l'Ouest, just outside Paris, and have found that on the three-lane portion even under heavy traffic conditions one can maintain a high speed on the outer lane. In fact, traffic can travel quite easily at from 70 to 75 m.p.h. while slow traffic is keeping to the inner lanes, and there has been little congestion—the flow has been very good. On the other hand, on the two-lane portion, the outer lane is used by the faster traffic, but under heavy traffic conditions similar to those appertaining on the three-lane highways, there has been a complete stoppage. That is why I heartily hope that wherever possible Her Majesty's Government will provide three-lane dual carriageways.
5.15 p.m.
LORD SOERS: My Lords, I do not want to take up much of your Lordships time for I know that we have another debate to come, but there are one or two points that I should like to make. The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, opened his speech by telling us that more work is being done on British roads to-day than ever before. I do not think any of us will question him on that, because certainly there could hardly be less. I think I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, up to a point, in that I hold that these very heavy excess indivisible loads should be banned altogether when possible; but, as has been pointed out, that is not always possible from a commercial point of view, and one has to face that fact.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, when the noble Lord says "very heavy", does
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he mean very heavy loads or loads up to 150 tons?
LORD SOERS: My Lords, when I said "very heavy" I meant very large loads, such as would make it impossible to overtake; for where we have a two-lane carriageway a load up to 20 feet wide would make it impossible to overtake. That, I believe, is the extreme width.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, the noble Lord must not lose sight of the fact that, although width is of first importance, a vehicle with a load of 150 tons and capable of travelling at only 5 m.p.h. is as big an obstacle on a road like the Preston motorway as one of extreme width.
LORD SOERS: My Lords, I quite agree; it is a question of whether one can overtake. I believe that both width and weight count, but we must realise that those examples are few and far between. I believe the suggestion of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, that there should be some signal at the beginning of the motorway is an excellent one. I also believe that it would perhaps be possible to prevent these loads from increasing too much by making a slight charge for excess loads—loads excessive in both size and weight—with an increasing charge according to increasing size and weight. Perhaps such loads might then be economically less satisfactory, so that those responsible would think of some other way of sending such loads. On the other hand, with smaller excess indivisible loads, I am not sure where the normal load stops and the abnormal load begins. In any case, obviously, there are many technically abnormal loads which do not prevent one from overtaking on a two-lane dual carriageway.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, that is, of course, laid down by Act of Parliament.
LORD SOERS: My Lords, I realise that, and therefore I certainly do not think those loads should be excluded from the motorways. I hope, however, that the Minister is holding it very firmly in his mind that this is to be an experiment. He has said so, but of course one cannot make an experiment without trying both ways. We cannot ban all these excess loads from motorways for a year and then say that we have made an experiment, because we shall not have tried the other

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way. The only course will be for the Minister to try both ways and to have the experiments thoroughly supervised, as the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, has suggested, by a team of expert advisers, to see which one works.
5.19 p.m.
LORD WOLVERTON: My Lords, in rising to support the Orders which the noble Lord, the Minister, has laid before the House I shall be very brief. Like many other noble Lords, when I came down to the House this afternoon I had a large amount of literature on this subject from various organisations. The matter on which we are legislating this afternoon is of very great importance, for it is the first experiment with motorways in this country. Until I made inquiries before this debate, I quite thought, in my ignorance, that the Preston motorway was to have three lanes either way; but it is to have only two each way.
As the noble Lords, Lord Derwent and Lord Lucas of Chilworth, have said, it is a little unfortunate that this experiment should be made on a road which is not going to be very wide. When all is said and done, the Great West Road and Western Avenue—or parts of them anyway—were built twenty years ago, and there are already three lanes either way. I do not think we shall get the full result of the experiment we want until the Birmingham motorway is open. We have always been told that the object of these motorways is to speed up traffic for the trade of this country and to get stuff more quickly to the ports. That has been one of the reasons why we have been pressing to get money out of the Treasury; it is going to save hours and hours on the roads and save money for the country because we shall be able to export material more cheaply. I hope that this is only an experiment and that the exclusion of these heavy loads from the main arterial roads will not be permanent.
I regret that the present by-pass, for matters of finance, was not able to be made three-lane either way, because it is always expensive to enlarge afterwards. If these heavy indivisible loads are allowed on the road, I hope that it will be done only in the daytime, because it has to be done under police supervision and it is much more dangerous, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said, to allow
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them to travel at night, when we hope some of the faster commercial traffic will be travelling.
EARL HOWE: My Lords, I dislike interrupting, but I did not say that. I said that I hoped they would be used at night, because I thought they would be less of an obstruction then, especially at holiday time and week-ends.
LORD WOLVERTON: My Lords, did the noble Earl not say that the roads should be especially marked?
EARL HOWE: My Lords, I thought that a signal at the entrance might he possible to warn all drivers making use of that particular section of motorway that there was a heavy load in front and to watch out.
LORD WOLVERTON: My Lords, I am worried about these loads travelling at night because some roads might not be lighted at night. If the road is lighted, as the Great West Road is, it will be much safer. However, I am naturally prepared to give my support to this experiment. I regret that it is not an experiment, as we should like to have it, on a wider track; but I think that in many cases vehicles may be safer on these roads, under escort, than when taken through narrow streets in very congested towns. I fully appreciate what has been said, that these very heavy loads will take more than one lane—perhaps one and a half lanes—and that therefore it may be necessary to work just a single-line track on the other side. As I say, I think we must try the experiment; I am not altogether happy about it, but I trust that it will be the success the Minister hopes it will be.
5.23 p.m.
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA: My Lords, I rise to draw attention to the fact, which no one has mentioned, that we are turning off the road the very tiny motor bicycle. I am not pleading that it should go on these new roads or that it should not, but I want to draw attention to the fact that abroad the little bicycle, with a motor of under 50 c.c., is not viewed as being a motor cycle. One has not to get a number for it; one has not to get a driving licence, or go through all the fuss and rigmarole which there is in this country. Would it not be a good thing to adopt that practice in this country, in

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view of the fact that from now on you are not going to allow the tiny bicycle to go on these roads? If the owner is to be required to go through all the paraphernalia that he has gone through up to now—he is already too slow—it is about time that he was treated decently: here he is to be penalised. I realise that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, need not pay attention to this point to-day, but I think it should sink deeply into the head of the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation.
The other point I wish to make is the fact that under this Order military vehicles are allowed upon these roads. No one who motors on the English roads has missed the fact that the most poisonous form of transport is a tank-transporter. Tanks are very sensitive animals. They have to go from one end of the country to another for a change of air, and when one lot are going East another lot are going West; and these changes for the health of tanks invariably occur on Saturday afternoons or Bank Holidays. I think that that should be controlled by the Minister and not left to a local commander, because he can cause the most frightful congestion on the roads. Finally, I would ask the noble Lord whether he would get the Ministry to put an Order in rather more intelligent language than that which we find in this Order No. 3. It is almost, though not quite, incomprehensible.
5.26 p.m.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, the noble and gallant Admiral, Lord Cork and Orrery, has steam up and obviously wants to put to sea, so I shall not keep him longer than possible. I should like to thank your Lordships for the extremely detailed examination which you have accorded to these Orders. Fortunately many points which your Lordships made have cancelled each other out, which makes my task slightly easier Fortunately, also, this is, as your Lordships have all agreed, an experiment. Everything that has been said this afternoon will be carefully examined by those who have to carry out this experiment. Anything put forward will be tried, and I can assure those noble Lords who have doubted whether this experiment will be bona fide or not that it will be.
May I content myself by answering just two or three of the principal questions
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that have been directly put to me? The first is concerned with Service vehicles. The noble Lords, Lord Brabazon of Tara and Lord Lucas of Chilworth, and other noble Lords, put this point. I readily agree that the fact that Service vehicles, including tanks, are allowed by these Regulations on the Preston By-pass is on the face of it a little illogical. I do not think that my right honourable friend would have allowed this to happen had this not been an experiment. We want this by-pass, and similar by-passes, to be available to military vehicles in an emergency. On behalf of my right honourable friend the Minister of Defence I can say that we will see to it that the vehicles do not as a habit make use of this by-pass. It might seem more logical to have put into the Order the fact that these vehicles could use the by-pass only in an emergency; but to have done that would obviously have been much more complicated and difficult. We have, admittedly, taken the easier way out of allowing them to use it and by making the promise that they will not use it during this year of experiment except with the agreement of the Minister for experimental purposes or in an emergency.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, a far easier method still would have been to put these in the same category as the unwieldy loads and to allow them to go on to the by-pass by order for experimental purposes. Once they are on, I feel sure, knowing the military authorities, that it will take more than the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation to get them off.
LORD MANCROFT: No, my Lords, your Lordships need not worry about this. It is not proposed that the Preston By-pass should be used exclusively for the Saturday afternoon airing of tanks and similar vehicles, to the detriment of the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara.
Another question is this question of the legality concerning abnormal indivisible loads. My noble friend Lord Derwent asked under what power the Minister can permit abnormal indivisible loads to use the motorway. This power is contained in Section 12 of the Special Roads Act, 1949. This empowers the Minister by regulations to authorise, or enable some other specified authority,

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such as the police, to authorise the use of a motorway on occasion or in emergency by traffic other than that traffic authorised to use it by the scheme under which it is built. In other words, the Minister may, by regulations, under Section 12, on occasion or in emergency, permit, a motorway to be used by any class of traffic he thinks fit. It is this power which the Minister will use to authorise the occasional and experimental use of the Preston By-pass by abnormal indivisible loads.
The regulation in question will be one of several which the Minister will make under Section 12 in order to regulate the manner in which, and the conditions subject to which, the motorway may be used by the class of vehicles permitted to use it.
LORD DERWENT: I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend, but have the Law Officers given their view as to whether the words "on occasion" cover a week? Has the Minister still the power—I am all for his having this power if he is going to experiment—to open the roads for a whole week under the words "on occasion"?
LORD MANCROFT: I am instructed that my right honourable friend is assured that he has the necessary power to conduct these experiments. My noble friend Lord Derwent will realise that I cannot possibly from this Dispatch Box give him any information on what the Law Officers have said or what the Law Officers have not said; but I understand that my right honourable friend has this power. I can assure him also that the arrangements we propose to make to give effect to this power are being very carefully considered. Also, of course, the Preston Borough Council, the Lancashire County Council, the police and others have to be consulted. The Government do not propose to take final decisions, until all these authorities have been consulted. The ultimate arrangements will, I think, be given ample publicity, both in the normal way and through the representative organisations of interested trades.
I come back to the original point, that this is an experiment. It may be that this road is not an ideal road on which to conduct an experiment, because at the moment it has only a two-way and not
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a three-way lane. The bridges and the the other engineering aspects have all been drawn up with a view to its eventually having three lanes each way. That will certainly be necessary when the two roads into which it leads at each end also become three-lane roads, but they are not so at the moment, and therefore it is not quite so necessary as it will be later. There is no point in carrying out this experiment on the Western Avenue or on the Great West Road, which have houses on them and roads leading into them, and the rest.
I will make another suggestion to your Lordships if I may. We are now about to go away for three months' well earned holiday. I hope that some of your Lordships will take your holidays in the neighbourhood of the Preston By-pass—
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Not on your life!
LORD MANCROFT: —preferably sandwiched between the largest possible trailer and a quantity of nuclear reactors, and then I hope your Lordships will come back after the holidays and report what you have found. I hope your Lordships will be still alive to tell the tale, and I hope that I shall still be in a position to hear it.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, before the noble Lord finally resumes his seat, would he mind answering the question I put to him? Why is an exception being made in the case of the car and trailer, which is the only vehicle allowed to use this by-pass that is to be subject to a speed limit of 40 m.p.h.?
LORD MANCROFT: Yes. I am sorry I did not deal with that point earlier. There is the difference between the two sorts of traffic. There is no speed restriction on the ordinary commercial trailer which has four wheels and hydraulic brakes, but there is a restriction on the kind of trailer which has two wheels and on the four-wheeled close-coupled trailer. The great majority of that class of trailer have only what are called "over-run brakes". I think some of your Lordships will bear me out that, at a speed of 40 m.p.h. the tail ends of such trailers start to swing in a dangerous way. That is why, in those particular cases, a limit is imposed.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I quite agree that, with an inexperienced driver at the wheel, a very light trailer is dangerous even below that speed. What I am surprised at is that the Minister has not put that into the category to be taken off that particular road altogether.
LORD MANCROFT: From what I know of those who drive trailers carrying their yachts behind them, they drive them as if they were untold gold.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

MOTOR VEHICLES (SPEED LIMIT ON SPECIAL ROADS) REGULA- TIONS, 1958
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I beg to move that these Regulations be approved.
Moved, That the Motor Vehicles (Speed Limit on Special Roads) Regulations, 1958, be approved.—(Lord Mancroft.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT, 1932
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Chesham I beg to move that these Orders be approved.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for extending section one of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Urban District of Gelligaer, be approved.
That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for extending section one of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Urban District of Ryton, be approved.
That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for extending section one of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Urban District of Whitefield, be approved.
That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for extending section one of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Rural District of Truro, be approved.
That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for extending section one of the Sunday
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Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Rural District of Tutbury, be approved.—(Earl Bathurst.)
On Question, Motions agreed to.

DISPOSAL OF RESERVE FLEET SHIPS
5.34 p.m.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY rose to move to resolve, That in the opinion of this House the selling and scrapping of ships of the Reserve Fleet has gone far enough, and, under prevailing conditions, is now becoming a national danger. The noble and gallant Earl said: My Lords, my object in bringing this subject up again so soon after the debate of about a fortnight ago is because the several very unsatisfactory answers that were given then were not debated in any way. I would ask the House to note the words in my Motion. "under prevailing conditions", by which I mean I am not in any way trying to criticise what steps are being taken to provide the Commonwealth with a nuclear Navy. I am going to confine my remarks entirely to the present time. I am not able or qualified in any way to criticise the modern weapons and ships. In the debate the First Lord said, in addressing the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough:
" Are you prepared or does the country want to spend very much larger sums at the present time? "
I think the answer to that question is that the country has not had any opportunity of forming an opinion. It has not been given the facts which will enable it to form a judgment. Anyone reading the Explanatory Statement made on the Estimates, unless he were well-informed, could hardly fail to be under the illusion that all was well and that we have a modern Navy; or, if we have not actually got it, that we are just about to possess a modern Navy strong enough to protect our essential interests at sea and to guard our communications should we unhappily become engaged in a global war. But that, of course, is not the case. We have drastically reduced our conventional Navy, and we have not yet got the start of a nuclear Navy. We are in the position of having fallen between two stools—never a comfortable position to occupy.
As to the dates which have been given for the completion of vessels and for the

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completion of modern missiles, I would point out that we shall not have a nucleus of modern vessels for years to come. During the period of our rearmament there will undoubtedly be several setbacks and disappointments. That is inevitable. There are great difficulties to overcome, and we cannot expect to go sailing through with a fair wind. But is there not the best of all reasons for keeping what we have until we can replace it with something better?
The kind of case I have in my mind is that of the striker aeroplanes which were approved by the Navy in 1955, but no production has yet started. I fully understand that it is due to unforeseen happenings, but we must expect those. We may, of course, be lucky and win the gamble against time—for that is what it is—but in the state of the world at present I submit that the odds are heavily against us. We have been reminded by the First Lord that our very existence depends upon our ability to pass freely and safely across the ocean routes, and that it is the business of the Navy, as it always has been, to maintain this freedom. But I add this proviso—provided they are given the means to do it at the proper time; and that is certainly not the case at the present. The policy of this "run-down" is to take away even what they have.
The views that were put forward in the recent debate cannot, in view of the experience of the various speakers, be pushed on one side. The Motion was moved by the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, who has a unique knowledge of naval affairs and of defence matters, probably unequalled in the United Kingdom except by that of Sir Winston Churchill. He said in his remarks [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 209 (No. 74), col. 717] that it stands out a mile that
" the main purpose of the Government, through its Treasury and the Ministry of Defence, is to drag down the strength of the Fleet the whole time."
I do not think it could be better put.
The noble Lord, Lord Teynham, then spoke and supported that view. He was followed by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Chatfield, who was the leading sailor of his time and the Minister of Defence in the early stages of the war, and he certainly did not agree with the
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policies put forward now. He was followed by the noble and gallant Viscount, Lord Cunningham of Hyndhope, the outstanding naval commander of the last war and First Sea Lord in its later stages. He gave many facts and figures to show why he considered [col. 753]
" that unacceptable risks were being run at sea."
There is no real need for me to give your Lordships the figures again, for we have it from the First Lord, who, speaking on the Royal Navy and Dominion Navies, said:
" I think it is fair to say that this is a force roughly comparable to the pre-war Royal Navy."
Well, "roughly" is an elastic word, but, in any case, even if we accept this comparison, surely the First Lord stands condemned out of his own mouth. If there was one thing that stood out crystal clear at the beginning of the last war, it was the absolutely inadequate number of the anti-submarine and escort vessels we had. In consequence, we had to appeal to the United States to let us have fifty destroyers, which they did. But how easy that request might have been short-circuited if a lesser mart had been President of the United States at that time! After we had received those destroyers and they had gone into action, we find this directive to the Admiralty from the Minister of Defence:
" In view of the great need for larger numbers of escorting destroyers, the better equipping of the American destroyers must be held up until this critical period has been passed."
That was eighteen months afterwards.
Less than a week ago President Eisenhower told the Canadian Parliament that:
" We stand at a pivotal point in history. All we believe in is challenged as it has never been challenged before."
On the same day we find Mr. Khrushchev warning the United States that they are on the brink of war. Now we have this crisis upon us, to show how right Mr. Khrushchev was. We have certainly chosen an extraordinary year in which to cut down our three military Forces. If the Summit Conference does manage to avoid war, then let us view our narrow escape as a warning and reconsider our defence policy.
We learn that it is the policy of the Government that the British Navy is to

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be content with the rôle of an antisubmarine force. Well, if that is so, let it be so. But let us be ready to carry it out from the very first, and not to have to rely again on the mixed bag of ships we had to use at the beginning of the late war. Yet we are selling or are just about to sell or scrap some thirty frigates, destroyers and corvettes—ships built for anti-submarine work—not because they are useless or unsuitable, but as was said in another place, because "they are surplus to requirements". All that I can say to that is, God help us!
Many noble Lords comfort themselves with the thought of, in the First Lord's words, "…the growing strength of the Commonwealth Navies" and the help we shall get from the United States of America. The Commonwealth Navies are very small forces and they have sufficient work to carry on in their own countries. They have long coastlines, many of their cities are vulnerable from the sea, they have coastal trade to look after and they will be fully occupied. They will not send ships over here. They had to recall their divisions in the last war. As regards the United States of America, do not forget that there are one million soldiers who will have to be brought straight across, with a vast amount of stores and ammunition, and if they do not come quickly there may be another Dunkirk—that is not by any means an impossibility.
We get such contradictory statements about the rundown of the Royal Navy. We are told that carriers are the core of the Fleet. Yet we are scrapping six carriers and intend to have only six, although we know that that number was quite insufficient in the late war. We finished the late war with double the number we started with and the Americans trebled their number. Now we are told that six carriers will go because again they are "surplus to the requirements of the Navy." There is H.M.S. "Warrior", about which my noble friend Lord Howe asked some pertinent questions. What is the truth about this ship? We know that she was one of the most recent of the group finished in 1945 and large sums were spent on her since then—some £800,000. In an obviously inspired article by a well-known naval correspondent, we are told that she is
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" too old, too slow, too small and structurally weak to operate existing naval aircraft."
Yet we are trying to sell her. After that description, I do not see who is going to buy her.
The First Lord told us that helicopters "vastly extend the destroying range of convoy escorts" and that helicopters will be useful not only against conventional submarines but also against nuclear submarines. The "Warrior" has been flying helicopters in recent years and she is certainly not too slow or too old to work with 10 to 12-knot convoys, several of which were maintained in the last war and several of which will have to be maintained in the next war. Are we asked to believe that none of the other carriers could be used either for transport work or for convoy work, flying, helicopters and so with an extended range? Of course, they both could and should.
Why are these ships in such a bad state? Who is responsible for it? I happen to be interested in this matter because for many years I was commander in charge of the Reserve Fleet and I had to travel about and look at the ships in reserve. I do not remember going aboard ships that were falling to pieces. They were mostly in good order and ready. The destroyers in the first line were at four days' notice. Do your Lordships realise that all the battleships and battle cruisers that started the late war, except the "Nelson" and the "Rodney", were over twenty years of age, and so were many of the cruisers? Yet two classes of destroyer—" W "and V"—were far better ships than the 50 destroyers we were so glad to get from the United States of America.
Before leaving the carriers, I would remind your Lordships of how quickly the "Courageous" was lost at the beginning of the late war. I will not at this time give your Lordships an account of the incident because it is getting late. The "Courageous" was lost through having to be used with the "Ark Royal" to help anti-submarine vessels, which were far too few, to repel an attack by German submarines on our shipping. They had a rich harvest. It might be asked why the "Courageous" was not escorted when she was torpedoed and went down with her captain and over 500 officers and men. She was escorted by four destroyers, but two of them had

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to be sent to a large merchant ship which was not escorted at all. In the four months at the end of 1939 we lost 222 of our merchant ships. The Germans were then using 60 submarines, not 260, as the Russians might well be using.
Mr. Khrushchev has told the United States (I agree that this is a little outside my domain) that we are on the brink of war. Is it not just possible that all this talk about Summit meetings is a cloak and a smokescreen under which the Russian submarines are rushing to their war stations? I suppose it would he indiscreet to ask the First Lord if he has any news of where the Russian submarines are now. That is a possibility, and if it turned out to be the case where should we be? We should have to withstand a far more serious attack than we had to withstand in 1939, and at that time we had had a year to prepare for the attack. The majority of the ships that would be used against us would be the conventional types, and the ships that we have of the conventional types, which we are busy destroying so fast, would be much more useful to us than those on the drawing board, ordered, half-completed or not laid down. And that is the state of our new Navy.
It is not much use considering numbers if you do not also look at the geographical position. We have world-wide interests. Some of them have been taken from us by our sister nations, and no doubt our Allies will assist when they can and if it does not interfere with their own arrangements. But a potential enemy has stated what his object at sea will be—namely, to cut the Atlantic communications. For that purpose, he has built up a powerful submarine fleet which now has such numbers of submarines that it can well afford supply forces to contain the American and Canadian forces in the Pacific, and to watch over their long coastlines and their cities and harbours, many of which are vulnerable from the sea. We may be sure that if those cities are not content with the protection they are given they will not remain silent. I do not suppose many of your Lordships will remember the Spanish-American war, but I happen to remember it. The point of mentioning it is the tremendous uproar which the Americans made when four old Spanish cruisers went out of the Spanish ports and crossed the Atlantic. An energetic Russian commander with
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imagination could certainly keep double his own force fully occupied on the Canadian Pacific coast, if he wished to do so.
We have been told officially by the British and American officers who took part in the recent exercises designed to test out the point of numbers, et cetera that we have not nearly enough aircraft or ships for our needs in the anti-submarine campaign: the words used were "desperately short". But Whitehall knows better and is now complacently selling or scrapping some thirty frigates or corvettes; and according to the latest information I have, they are now going to sell some twenty-six motor torpedo boats, some of which were finished only a few years ago.
I read recently that the Minister of Defence had been down to Portland and witnessed exercises by the anti-submarine school between a frigate and a sub-marine. You will understand, my Lords, that when an establishment is told that a "V.I.P." is coming down to see their work they do not put their most inefficient men on to work the instruments; they are probably members of the staff who know every move of the game. But how different the results would be if it were done by, say, half-seasick young seamen, who had just been through war training, in a small, stuffy compartment in a small vessel, in a medium sea in the middle of the Atlantic ! A similar visit was paid by a V.I.P. to the same establishment in 1936, with the result that the nation was told that "we had the measure of the submarines" and that "we should never again be troubled by them as we were in 1917". Let us hope that this last visit will not result in similar opinions being formed and acted upon. But I fear the worst; it would be a good excuse to get rid of more ships.
It was not long after these optimistic statements about the limitations of the submarine were made that we were only too glad to get the fifty old American destroyers, which were about to be scrapped, but which rendered us good service and really pulled us through. I wish to read to your Lordships an account of those destroyers as they were taken over:
" The American destroyers all belonged to the era of the 1914–18 War; they had not been

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fully modernised and only essential work had been done on them; none were Asdic fitted, and their guns and torpedoes were by no means efficient. Our need for escort vessels was so acute that any type of ship with a turn of speed with even rudimentary anti-submarine performance and obsolete guns was most welcome. The gift was of immediate value."
My Lords, let those who, for some reason—I cannot discover what it is—think that a ship is quite useless when she reaches the age of twenty—" reaching her limit "is the expression used—ponder on these words. There is much more that I could say on this subject, but I will not. I am not trying to urge a building programme, but merely that we should keep what we have and make the best of it. The Royal Navy must be unique among fighting services in not having any reserve—I am not speaking of men (we are well off there), but of ships; and sailors who have no ships are not of much use. We are told that the Active Fleet will be replenished; but replenishment is different from reinforcement. I am getting "off my chest" what I have wanted to say for a long time, because I know that in a few hours' time Parliament will be dispersing. When we come back and ask, "Where is this or that ship?" we shall be told: "Oh, scrapped and broken up long ago." They have three months to do it in, and I am sure that it will be well done.
When I divide the House, I hope your Lordships will support me in saying that you do not approve of the naval policy in so far as scrapping the Reserve Fleet is concerned. One thing that is often overlooked, and I am afraid is being overlooked now, in studying this situation, is that we have 50 million people to feed. We have to get the food to them. We shall have our roads and railways dislocated, and perhaps our harbours destroyed; but the food must still come in. All the small ships of the mercantile type will be needed to run in cargoes from the ships at sea and to get them on to the roads; and all the small men-of-war to protect the ships as they lie off to tranship the cargo. There will be a tremendous demand, greater than ever before, for small ships. I suggest that my Resolution, if it could be carried, would remind the Government that it is not quite the plain sailing they think to build new ships which will be ready in three or five years' time, and "never mind the old ones". I beg to move.
Moved to resolve, That in the opinion of this House the selling and scrapping of ships of the Reserve Fleet has gone far enough, and, under prevailing conditions, is now becoming a national danger.—(The Earl of Cork and Orrery.)
6.0 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I must say that I could have wished we had a very large attendance to listen to the speech from the noble and gallant Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery. He has made a remarkable presentation of his case out of a very great experience. He joined the Royal Navy when I was two years old—and look at him now ! He looks years younger than I do. He has been Admiral of the Fleet for twenty years, with great war service in both wars, and speaks from an experience and personal example that takes a great deal to match. The speech that he has made to your Lordships tonight—the few of you who are here—is worth sending out to the Nation. The safety of our country and the minimum requirements of our overseas and on-the-seas safety are the concern of every Party and the nation as a whole. I know that there would be many people in my own Labour Party who would not go all the way with my own views upon the matter which the Admiral of the Fleet has been presenting to us.
I was at the Admiralty altogether for nearly nine years, in charge of the political administration of the Board of Admiralty. The longer I was there, the more I was convinced that, come what may, our position as a nation, our geographical situation, our overseas communications and the requirements of our Commonwealth and foreign trade, are such that not only have we an insistent demand upon us in the interests of our own people at home and abroad to keep the minimum strength required for the maintenance of our free sea communications, but from our actual experience we have also to be ready in war time to become the complete maid-of-all-work to the other Services, always filling the gap when necessity arises.
We have had long, detailed and interesting histories of the war, written from different points of view. We have had them from Sir Winston Churchill, and we have had the Official Naval History of the War. I recognise that these books, fascinating as they are, often make long

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and heavy reading to the ordinary members of the public. Following up the general ground covered by the noble and gallant Earl, I should like to see all people read the short history of the last naval war written by Lieutenant Commander Campbell, now Librarian at the Admiralty, an ex-submarine officer who was injured, not in war time but in peace time, and who has given much of his life to the study of these matters.
Over and over again when there was a disaster—not a Naval disaster, but an Army disaster, and sometimes a miscarriage of air capacity for the time being—it was the Navy that had to be ready to come to the help of the others. Often we were asked to mount great naval forces to support our main aggressive objectives overseas, just at the very moment when we were stretched to the utmost to defend our bare sea communications to save us from starvation. That was happening over and over again. I was thinking of those days as the noble Earl was speaking this afternoon, and looking back to a meeting we had when we were attempting to mount very heavy naval escorts to a big campaign.
Speaking for the Board of Admiralty, I raised the difficulties that would have to be faced and other tasks which might have to be undertaken in the daily watch on our food and war supplies. I remember that we were gathered at a particular meeting and Sir Winston Churchill said: "That is all very true." He turned to me and said, "It has got to be done. Don't forget your name is Albert Victor". That was a great spirit, but, as the noble and gallant Earl has pointed out, if you have not got the right stuff at the right moment, human sacrifice alone cannot do the job effectively.
Over arid over again we had cases in the Mediterranean where armies had to be put in and armies had to be taken out. We had a great story running in the war of a Jack Tar who suddenly burst into a place within the meaning of the Act to have some refreshment. In between the air raids two civilians had been quarrelling about who was prior to the other in the way of armed service to the Crown. One was against the Army, and one was against the Air Force. Then Jack Tar came in and they put the question to him about the Army. Jack said, "Well, the Army is all right. We puts 'em in and we takes 'em out." It is a repetition of
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that kind of thing right through our operations which makes us feel certain that we must equip our Fleet to such an extent that it can meet all the obligations that can be reasonably foreseen.
In the case of the opening of the war of 1914–18, we were certainly not sufficiently equipped to meet all the requirements. Yet if it had not been for the London Treaty in 1930 (though the Labour Government were often severely blamed because, it was said, we had not got enough out of the Treaty) which made provision for a specific tonnage of cruisers—315,000 tons, I think the figure was—a minimum of 150,000 tons of destroyers, and a laying down of one new flotilla of destroyers per annum, we should have been in dire straits in 1939. Every credit is due to the noble Lord who sits in this House for the fact that he saw to it that the programme was carried out up to 1935. I think the present First Lord of the Admiralty will be ill-advised if he is not prepared to stand, whatever the views of his Party may be (some of us have had in the past to stand against Party views) to see that the Navy is properly equipped with the minimum requirements.
May I take some of the categories? Let me take, as an outstanding example, the requirement of anti-submarine craft. As I said in the debate on June 11 (when, unfortunately, the noble and gallant Earl was unable to speak), the programme so far carried out by the Admiralty, of converting the older, faster destroyers into very fast frigates, with proper equipment, is a very good start on the way to making provision—and we must never examine these questions without taking into due account what has been done. But when I look at the actual number of destroyers and fast frigates which are available to-day, with a potential strength of 360 to 400 submarines likely to be more or less ready at the outbreak of a conflict, then I would say, with my experience in the last war, it would be quite insufficient.
The noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, has reminded us what a sigh of relief there was and what an actual reinforcement was received when we bartered away 99 years' lease of our possessions in the West Indies for 50 very old destroyers. It is true that they brought some relief, but they had to be much in our dockyards to be made fit

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for service. The amount of time needed for repair was astonishing. I say, without fear of contradiction, that the old "V" and "W" class destroyers of the Reserve Fleet, kept more or less in reserve ever since 1919, were far better for us than any of the Town class destroyers from the United States. You would be very well advised not to take out of moth-balls any destroyer or frigate that can be reasonably cheaply maintained, because they will always be effective, even at their present speeds, against the submarines that are likely to appear.
It is all very well to talk about the new forms of protection for our sea communications against submarine attacks. I think I indicated enough to the noble Earl, the First Lord of the Admiralty, on June 11 to show that I have some doubt, at any rate, about the efficacy of attacks against submarines by helicopters. It is true you can give, in peace time, demonstrations that rather capture the imagination. But what a difference takes place on a dark night when the modern submarine steers straight ahead of a fleet and submerges at once, after firing starboard and port or forward torpedoes, firing from the front and suddenly disappearing! Where is the helicopter in such circumstances as those? If the helicopter is used in daylight, what sort of effective action can it take compared to the proper, regular provision of the escort carrier aircraft for spotting, for bombing and for generally keeping the convoys in order?
If the helicopter, in daylight or even bright moonlight, has to hover to become an attacking force on a submarine, do you think the modern submarine is not in those circumstances going to carry something near a 4-inch gun, certainly nothing of less than the elevation and power of the Bofors? At the height at which helicopters can be effective they would be, in my view, little removed from what naval officers described to me in 1940—merely sitting birds as a target. I had to consider the matter myself with great care when representations were made to me. When we had not anything like the ordinary escort and reconnaissance aircraft we needed, people were suggesting trying helicopters for the purpose, even before the Sikorsky (the
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only one in existence of a practical character) had demonstrated that it could carry any great load, and certainly not the heavy bombs that would be required to be effective if it were not shot down as a sitting bird. The helicopter will require a lot more demonstration than has yet been given before it can excuse the provision of the effective destroyer and the effective frigate and the retention of sufficient escort carriers to go with the convoys.
I look back to my memories of those early days when we had nothing effective in the way of escort carriers. The noble Earl is quite right about the "Glorious." Carriers of that sort are not suitable carriers for escort work. They can be used sometimes, sometimes even at greater distances, but they have not the close effect of the kind of escort carriers which, after the disaster of PQ 17 convoy to Russia, became steadily and more widely used, and became so effective that, in spite of the early disasters to convoys to Russia, by the end of the whole campaign the American and British Navies combined had delivered to Russia 94 per cent. of all the cargoes consigned. It is an amazing record. How much that had to do with the proper use of the escort carrier!
We lost the "Activity", the noble Earl will remember, after only about four months in service. I remember all my anxiety over the fitting out, when she was going to sea for the first time, wondering how soon she would get to sea and do things. She lasted four months. But she did enormous damage to the enemy. Then think of the "Avenger" and ships of that kind: they all went to build up a gradually improving situation in our safe convoy deliveries, a reduction in our convoy casualties and gradual relief of the enormous burden in our own country. At times I had three million tons of merchant shipping on my hands, not under repair but awaiting repair. How often can that be too easily forgotten ! It is an enormous task.
I beg the House, I beg the members of any political Party, to consider that there must be certainly a minimum strength. I do not want to go so far as the noble Earl and say, "Do not build any so long as you keep others"; I do not think he meant to convey that impression. Nevertheless, if you are short of the right amount

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of money in a particular year to extend widely your capital building, why on earth throw away what you have? You do not know when the challenge will come. Twice in my view, in the last few years, even with the so-called high efficiency of our present forces on their reduced scale, we have seen, in Suez and other directions, that they are insufficient even for limited operations and for readiness of an immediate and effective character. I hope that more attention will be paid to this matter.
I had intended to put a Motion on the Paper to-day, to follow the debate in another place last Monday on the general organisation of defence as laid down in the published White Paper of July. I must say that I am wholly dissatisfied with the progress which is being made in providing for the minimum forces required. I cannot on this Motion discuss the strength of the other Services; that would be trying the patience of your Lordships too much, because the Motion is confined to the Royal Navy. But certainly somewhere in the state of Denmark, as they say, things have gone a bit wrong. I do not believe that the setting up of a reorganised high Staff under the Minister of Defence is going to improve the situation. What we really want is sound, voluntary co-operation between the Services, and if you are going to have a permanent Staff Officer to the Minister of Defence at the top he will now always have literally two votes against one in the Chiefs of Staff, because he will probably vote, in the first instance, for his own opinion, as an air officer advising the Minister of Defence, and he will have strong support probably from the other Chief of Staff, the Marshal of the Royal Air Force, who happens to be the Chief of Staff for his own Service at the same time.
When I was Minister of Defence, we never had any difficulty at all in letting senior staff officers in each Service succeed one another as they retired. We got a "club" of really co-operative officers on the staff. It would be quite sufficient for the professional, secretarial side of the Ministry of Defence to have a well-qualified officer of whichever force was available, but not with the voting strength as set out in the last Conference with the Minister of Defence. It would be a quite unfair position to set up. I feel that something has gone wrong in that
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connection, and that certainly the Royal Navy, in face of an enormous potential demand upon their powers and efficiency, is left with a diminishing strength which does not provide the minimum required for our general safety. I beg the First Lord of the Admiralty to think again. I beg him to accept that we are not attacking the Board of Admiralty—though we may do one day: we may have to—because we feel that in regard to the rationing of the Supply money which is available for defence the Admiralty has not been getting its proper share.
The First Lord's White Paper speaks of the aircraft carrier being the core of the Fleet. Apparently the country will never have more than about three in commission—it may he four; there may be one in reserve and one under repair. Perhaps the First Lord will be able to tell us how he proposes to manage with his total overall number of six retained carriers. Compare that total to our programme in the Admiralty when we really found what we were up against in a war even of the calibre of the last one, when we lost the services of carriers like the "Ark Royal", which we lost altogether, the "Glorious", the "Courageous", the "Formidable" and the "Illustrious", after months and months of concentrated attacks upon them as they tried to defend the passage of troops in the Mediterranean. Taking our experience then, what happened? We laid down a programme—because we wanted to build them as rapidly as we could—of 25 light fleet aircraft carriers of 25,000 tons, capable of a really fast speed. To-day, those light fleet aircraft carriers could be reasonably modified for keeping in reserve and, in the event of a sudden conflict, could be used for a multitude of purposes. I do not believe that can be denied.
Even to-day the First Lord has to be made a maid-of-all-work. When a little trouble is brewing, whatever the result of political policy may be, the Services have to do their duty by their Government and to carry out their commands. When you have not an airlift, you send for your aircraft carrier and fill it up with all the stuff you want for the Army and the Air Force. Off goes the aircraft carrier. If you want to relieve the position in Libya, you send for the Royal Marine Commando, and then wait until you can get the help of a lift. I think it was the

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Sussex Regiment which was sent to Libya. How did they get there? The Navy took them. If there is any trouble in the West Indies, who deals with it? Does the Air Force deal with it from this country? Not likely ! I have seen that happen in all kinds of ways in regard to relieving. A few years ago I remember that we even sent to the West Indies the old "Devonshire"—the old County class 8-gun cruiser, manned in the main, for that particular trip, by cadets from Dartmouth. But it got the relief there.
The Navy is necessary to this country; it is necessary for its defence. It is impossible to believe that we shall ever be in a position to command the immediate services of Allied navies to meet our own requirements. We shall be able to cooperate in the course of the Alliance so as not to have too much duplication between the two, but think of what would happen if the same situation arose as in 1940. It was never anticipated in 1938 by the Government, when we did not go to the help of Czechoslovakia at the right time, that by 1940 we should be alone. My own words in another place, on October 8, 1938, were.:
" If you go on in this way you will go into a war, and when you have been in it a very short time you will find yourselves standing alone."
Unfortunately, those words came true, and we were left alone. All that stood between this country and utter defeat was the sacrifice of a handful of men in the fighter squadrons of the Air Force and the gallant fellows in a Fleet that stood all the attacks of the enemy, whatever the losses incurred. I beg my colleagues in the House Lords to get the Government to think again.
6.27 p.m.
EARL HOWE: My Lords, we have certainly listened to a most remarkable speech from the Leader of the Opposition in this House. When the White Paper on Defence was published, and the Minister of Defence stated that the rôle of the Navy in a future war was uncertain, and that sort of thing, it altogether destroyed my faith in him, in his judgment and in his appraisal of the Navy for war purposes. If only he could have been here this afternoon to hear the remarkable speeches of the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, and the noble and gallant Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Cork and
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Orrery, it might have given him cause to think, if anything could—though personally I doubt it. I have absolutely no confidence in him.
Look at what is happening with regard to the Navy. Look at the disposal of ships. Ships are built according to the Estimates for the Navy. Those Estimates are voted by Parliament. The extraordinary thing is that at some future date those ships are disposed of without Parliament having any sort of say whatever in the matter. I put a Question, which has been referred to this afternoon, on the subject of our aircraft carrier strength. The Minister of Defence, in his peculiar Statement on Defence, has indicated that the Navy is going to be organised as a series of task forces round a carrier. That will certainly lead to those ships being the main object of enemy attack. And if any one of them is sunk, what happens to the remainder of the task force?
It seems to me a very peculiar thing that at this moment, when we have only a very limited number of carriers, we should be contemplating disposing of no fewer than six. The First Lord has explained to us in this House that those six are weak, inefficient, in a bad state of repair and require a lot of money spent on them; and I have not the slightest doubt that we shall be told we have not got the crews to man them anyway—and probably that we have no aircraft for them. But if we lose our first-line strength we are driven back on our second line, and those ships are definitely our second line.
Another thing: as the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, has said this afternoon, in the last war we wanted escort carriers. Surely, having got these carriers, even if they are not all that is to be desired at the present moment, they are worth retaining until we are quite sure we can replace them by something better. It seems to me that those ships would make excellent escort carriers, if nothing better. It is very difficult to improvise an escort carrier; it takes a long time, and during that time heavy damage may be done by the enemy. If only we could be given a little more information ahead, so that we knew that the Admiralty were contemplating disposing of, shall we say, six carriers and a dozen destroyers ! We have disposed of destroyers which, as has

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been said by both the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, and the noble and gallant Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Cork and Orrery, would be invaluable in another war. Those destroyers have been handed over to all kinds of countries, Norway has had some; Sweden and India have had some—they have been scattered about all over the world. Our destroyer strength is hopelessly inadequate for the calls that might be made upon it. The Russians have a large number of really fast, up-to-date destroyers. They have thirty cruisers of the "Sverdlov" class and so on; and, I suppose, a very large number of aircraft.
It seems to me that the whole subject of Naval strength, which, as has been said this afternoon, is absolutely vital to this country, requires further consideration. But how to get that further consideration for it I do not know. We cannot blame the noble Earl who speaks for the Admiralty in this House: it is not his fault. The fault now lies with the right honourable gentleman the Minister of Defence who apparently has power to override the Naval Staff, perhaps the Army Command and the Higher Command of the Royal Air Force. Unfortunately we have agreed to have a Minister of Defence, and it is all working out exactly as I remember was foreseen in another place in the old days.
I then listened to and took part in many debates on the whole subject of a Ministry of Defence; and the danger that was always emphasised was that we should get a Minister of Defence with insufficient appreciation of the needs of the Services, with the result that one or more of the Services might suffer. I believe that the Navy has suffered tragically in what has gone on so far. I only hope that the noble Earl the First Lord will be able to reassure us this afternoon. He may tell me that I am just another alarmist. The fact is that I am alarmist; and I do not in the least mind being told that I am. I believe that the Navy is vital to this country—as vital to-day as it has been throughout all our history. If only we could get the Minister of Defence to study history a little more that might do some good.
6.35 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I hope the noble Earl the Minister, after listening to this debate in your Lordships' House
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this evening, will go back to his colleagues in the Cabinet determined to provide a Navy to meet the commitments of this country and the defence of its coast. I hope that he will have listened to and will take heed of the warning given by my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition. The reason why I am intervening in a naval debate is that a few weeks ago I was part of a N.A.T.O. Parliamentarian delegation which went to America to see the Strategic Air Command and also to visit Admiral Wright, the Commander in Chief of the N.A.T.O. Atlantic Forces.
I should like to take this opportunity of expressing publicly in your Lordships' House my thanks for the great kindness that this delegation received from Admiral Wright, his Staff Officers of the United States Navy and all the officers who represent the Navies of the N.A.T.O. forces. I will not say that Admiral Wright, in his full briefing to us, expressed views critical of Her Majesty's Government or of the N.A.T.O. countries; but I feel entitled to say that this delegation from Britain, which came from all the main Parties, came away with the impression that all was not well in the defence of the Atlantic.
Admiral Wright pointed out the vast area that he was called upon to defend—the whole of the West Coast of Europe down to Morocco, straight across to the East Coast of America, North to Greenland and then across to the Northern tip of Norway. This vast area is under his command and there was in our minds no doubt that the forces that were available to that command were completely and utterly inadequate. In fact, basically those force are provided by the United States. They are forces based on United States ports. If war should come, whatever may be the choice available to Admiral Wright, I believe that the Navy, which is basically American, will be used for the defence of the American East Coast. There will be few vessels available for the defence of the European coast and few forces available for convoying.
I should like to draw attention to that gap in the North Atlantic between the Faroes and Iceland. It is through that gap that the Russian submarines will come. I do not believe that any forces are available for that gap. This is a terrible position. It is bad enough to-day,

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but we are now to scrap ships of the Reserve. If war comes it will not be good intentions that will matter; it will not be prototypes, programmes and drawing boards. What will matter will be the forces we have available at the moment of attack—
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: Hear, hear¡
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, if we have not got those forces we are doomed. I do not want to turn this debate into a Party matter but I must say this: the whole of the defence policy of Her Majesty's Government is so retrograde and is so unrealistic in relation to the foreign policy which they adopt that, frankly, it "scares me stiff". We see the hand of the Treasury everywhere. We have troops in Jordan. We are calling upon the Americans to provide aircraft. What happens if we have to go to Persia? The Navy, as my noble Leader has said, will be called upon to support the forces. The Navy is ill-equipped; it has insufficient ships. My Lords, I earnestly ask the Minister to go back to his colleagues in the Cabinet and say that there must be a stop to this retrenchment; that we must have military, naval and air forces capable of meeting our obligations to the defence agreements that we have made, and defence forces that are capable of defending this country.
6.41 p.m.
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (THE EARL OF SELKIRK): My Lords, we have had a very moving and powerful speech from the noble and gallant Lord Cork and Orrery, as we have had also from the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, who speaks with such very real authority on this subject. Some of their remarks have perhaps wandered a little wide of the actual subject of the Motion. On that wider issue may I content myself by saying just this: I have no doubt that if at any time in this country we lose interest in that sea power on which our political position and our economic strength have been built, then something will happen which will affect all the inhabitants who live here. As Winston Churchill has said, in Britain, whatever our shortcomings, we understand the
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sea affair very thoroughly. If I may put it simply, as the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, said, the Navy is necessary; and it was never more so than to-day, particularly for the reason that it constitutes in a full sense a key point in the N.A.T.O. structure, to which the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, referred. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said that the hand of the Treasury is everywhere. Of course it is. Otherwise I should have no money at all. The Treasury must play its part in this.
What I should like to do is to concentrate my remarks a little more narrowly on the subject of this particular Motion and I should particularly like to deal with what I think is the main point of the debate, which was reiterated by the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, when he asked: "Are you throwing away what you have got?" I think, in a word, that was the pith of the repeated remarks which were being made. Of course we are in the difficult position that we have a very wide choice of possibilities. We are in the danger of being accused either of preparing for the next war in terms of the last or, alternatively, of forgetting the lessons of the last war altogether. But what we really have to do is to bring our experience and equipment up to date; and, quite frankly, that is what we are trying to do. I do not think we can envisage exactly what sort of war we are going to have; nor do I think it is really practical politics, as the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, suggested, to try for a 100 per cent. insurance against all contingencies. I really do not think that that is right.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, I did not mean to suggest a 100 per cent. insurance. I said, "Let us keep what we have until we replace it by something better."
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: I thought that the noble Earl was suggesting that we should prepare in the Atlantic for all contingencies. That is a very big order. What I should like to emphasise is this. In this wide range of possibilities the Navy presents a natural flexibility which can meet a wide variety of circumstances, with substantially the same armament and equipment. That is the reason why one gets such excellent value for money from a Navy.

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Our central policy is to prevent war from taking place. There is nothing new about that; we have always done so; but it involves perhaps rather a change of method. We do so by the united strength of ourselves and our Allies, and by the instant readiness of all forces for action. I do not mean simply nuclear power alone, but all forces of the Western World. It is for that reason that I want to emphasise the development of new construction, rather than the maintenance in various stages of obsolescence of our older ships. I noticed that the noble and gallant. Viscount, Lord Cunningham of Hyndhope, though he made a number of criticisms in the debate on the Navy Estimates, was quite clear in his remarks about the importance of the new construction programme of antisubmarine vessels. That is the policy of Her Majesty's Government.
I should like to explain how, within the resources which are available, we are carrying out that policy, but first may I say one word about what the reserves consist of? The noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, was Flag Officer commanding the Reserve Fleet, so perhaps I need not say it to him; but perhaps I may explain that I am not talking about reserves of men—although they are of great importance—many of whom serve in a volunteer capacity, but of ships. The Reserve Fleet consists of three parts. First, there is the Operational Reserve. This consists of ships which can put to sea, fully equipped and manned, within a very short period. It consists of a quite substantial force which would materially increase the number of escorts that we could make available.
The second part consists of the Supplementary Reserve. These ships are in good condition, but since they are "mothballed" they are at rather longer notice for service than the ships of the Operational Reserve. Together these two Reserves form, in destroyers and frigates, a force of about the same size as the seagoing Fleet. And I can tell the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, that we are not taking any ships out of "mothballs" to scrap them. We do not allow any ship to disappear from these maintained Reserves before its useful life has ended. The third class is the Extended Reserve. The only attraction of the Extended Reserve is that because the ships are unmaintained, they cost a
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comparatively small amount of money. But they are all ships of war-time design and construction and have not been modernised since then. The majority have not been refitted for four or five years, and in many cases even before that. They are lying unmaintained and therefore they deteriorate. What are these ships? They are cruisers which are from eighteen to twenty years old; destroyers which are from fourteen to seventeen years old; ocean minesweepers of wartime construction; and frigates mostly built between 1941 and 1944.
I now come to the aircraft carriers, which are really at the origin of this debate. All these were laid down either before or during the war. They simply cannot be modernised to bring them into step with the requirements of the aircraft we are using to-day. It is not even a question of money. Even if we cut them down to the waterline, they would still not be suitable. It has been suggested that even if these older carriers cannot carry modern aircraft they could carry anti-submarine helicopters for trade protection. Incidentally, in answer to the noble Viscount, I think that a submarine would not find a helicopter a very easy thing to deal with by surfacing and shooting at it. The helicopter will go much faster and can almost certainly discharge a homing torpedo while a submarine is coming to the surface.
The difficulty of providing carriers for this purpose, with the additional expense of providing helicopters, and keeping both at the right degree of readiness, is that it would cost a very great deal of money. But there is a further objection. We have to hold a reasonable balance between the naval-air side and conventional surface forces. I would ask noble Lords whether they would not prefer us, instead of having a rehabilitated carrier, equipped only with helicopters— that is, without fighters; without strike aircraft—to spend the same amount of money on modern anti-submarine frigates. That really is the question.
I should just like to say one word about frigates. A great deal of emphasis has been put on the importance of convoy work, and with this I entirely agree. It is, of course, quite right, and I am fully aware that many of these tasks will fall to the Royal Navy. I am aware that many noble Lords think that the United States Navy will remain on

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the Eastern seaboard, but I have no reason to think that this will be the case. We shall have to fulfil these duties along with our Allies.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I should like to recall to the noble Earl's mind the incidents in 1942. I know I am going back over the old war. We had fifty destroyers from the United States, and when the United States came into the war, forced in by the experiences in Hawaii, they had such a submarine attack on their East coast that, with all the ships they had available in different parts of the world, they still had to come to us for assistance, and we could send only oceangoing trawlers and the like. They lost a million tons of shipping in a week on the East coast of America. I think as a minimum, we ought to be able to stand on our own.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I just amplify what I said about defending the East coast of America? The great fear in America is of missile submarines with nuclear warheads attacking their East coast. That is their great fear.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: I am aware of that and quite appreciate it, but the point I was going to make was that we are very much better in the modern circumstances, having modern equipment, with the more advanced type of antisubmarine weapons and radar, than we should be in bringing up these older ships. I should much rather concentrate on the modern ships than I should on the older ships. May I give just one or two examples of what is involved? Naval frigates vary a great deal, but I should like to give you one example. Take the example of a "Castle" or a "Bay" class frigate. It would cost several hundreds of thousands of pounds and would take many months' of work to bring it to its original condition; that is, the condition it was in when it was built somewhere in the early 'forties. But even then its speed would be quite inadequate to cope with any modern submarine. That is the difference between the position in 1941, when we had these American "Town" class destroyers, which I concede were very useful indeed.
There is another point, and that is that these American "Town" class destroyers
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were maintained by the Americans right up to the time when they were handed over. They went to sea, I say with great respect, within a week or so of being handed over, and that is the big difference. What I am talking of now is the unmaintained reserve, and, quite frankly, we simply have not the money at the present time to maintain this extended reserve. I cannot pretend that we have. If we do not maintain it, I am afraid I do not think there is a great deal of point of keeping it indefinitely.
Between the wars, submarines made comparatively little progress, but to-day there has been a tremendous advance in submarine development and in the speed at which they can work. The frigates of the last war would be practically useless against them. What I have to face is that I know that submarine development is going on further still. It is not going to stop where it is now. What are required are frigates with a speed of some 26 knots. The war-time frigates would really not meet the job of anti-submarine chasing at the present time.
I accept that we could spend money. We could modernise these war-time frigates. We could spend, perhaps, £1½ million to £2 million over two years, and we could bring them up to a modern standard with the whole range of Asdic, anti-submarine weapons, radar and wireless. But once you have done that, if you compare that with a new Type 14 frigate, costing £1½ million and taking 2½ years to build, there really is not any advantage in doing it. And, of course, with a new ship you would get a better hull than the five or ten-year-old hull which you would get with a modernised old frigate. You would have a 20-year life. I must say that the noble and gallant Admiral of the Fleet makes me wonder when he says that he does not know why hulls have only a twenty-year life. His long experience, I am sure, would make him think that that is quite inadequate and that they should be given a much longer period.
I have to put the question quite frankly: how far is it worth while maintaining ships in reserve which would be called into use only at such high cost and after such an extended length of time? Are we likely in any future global war to have enough time to use ships which would take months to bring

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forward? I must say that I have considerable doubts on that, and I think it is better to concentrate on instant readiness rather than on diverting our resources to a reserve which we should probably never use. I would go further. I would go so far as to say that ideally we should have no reserve at all. All the ships should be manned and ready for service at the proper time.
There have been suggestions made at some time that we should disperse these ships around the Commonwealth, and particularly to such places as Australia and Canada, but the moment the details of this plan come to be examined it presents considerable difficulties. I have no reason to suppose that the Commonwealth countries have any money to spend on these ships. They would prefer, I believe, to spend their money on new sea-going fleets. If they were modern ships, of course it would be quite different.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I should like to apologise to the First Lord because I have to leave, but may I say that the arguments that he is using (and I think very fairly using) about costs and the possibilities of new developments are exactly the arguments I had to meet from the Treasury in 1929–31. If we had given way to all their arguments and not kept the reserves we did, we should certainly have lost the first twelve months of the war. I ask him to keep that in mind.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: I do not believe to-day that these old destroyers of war-time construction would really be of any use, whereas I think the ships which had been maintained from the First World War were of some use because of the limited development in submarine construction.
I would only go on to say this: that we could, of course, at great expense bring these older ships forward to current use, but what I am concerned with is what the position is going to be perhaps seven to ten years hence. I am sure we are wise to keep our eye not on ships which would not even meet the current situation but on those which will meet our requirements in the years to come, and it is for that reason that I should like to concentrate attention on
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our building programme. Before doing so, however, I should like to ask this question: am I right in thinking that the noble Earl would rather concentrate on new equipment than on spending a lot of money on bringing older equipment to a more modern condition? I imagine he would say "Yes" to that question.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, may I answer that question? As circumstances exist, nobody could say at the present time that we are safe from a sudden declaration of war. Nations snarl at each other like a lot of dogs, and a declaration of war may come at any time. I should much rather see ships ready to act instantly than in seven years' time, when we might be a Russian colony.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: I have tried to explain that these ships are not ready for instant action and that they could not be put into use for a period of one or two years. If I may, I would repeat the words which I have already used: we are scrapping no ships which have a useful life still left in them. We are not scrapping any ships of that sort. Those are not the ships to which I have referred. What I am saying is that in so far as we have resources, I am sure we are right in concentrating them on modern equipment.
Now, if the noble Earl wants defence expenditure to rise substantially, as I think he probably does, that is another matter. I am only considering to-day how I use the resources which Parliament is able to put at my disposal. That is where I think I can tell a not altogether discouraging story. We have coming into the Fleet in the next two years two aircraft carriers, two cruisers, thirteen destroyers and frigates, sixteen minesweepers and seventeen miscellaneous craft and a number of submarines. As the noble Earl is probably aware, the first post-war submarine, the "Porpoise", is now in the Pool of London. All these will come into service as either new or completely modernised ships. I am sure that this is the right policy, and I believe that the noble Earl will not disagree with me.
I believe that the correct emphasis is on a seagoing Fleet rather than on the Reserve Fleet, though I do not underestimate the importance of the Operational Reserve, to which I have referred.

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But I do not think that we should concentrate on a large Reserve Fleet. The immediate readiness and flexibility of a seagoing Navy, maintained on a world basis, from the West Indies to Hong Kong, and from the South Atlantic to the Firth of Forth, is of far greater value than keeping ships which can be used only after a considerable length of time. Moreover, I do not think it is worth keeping the highly trained personnel we have in present circumstances except with the best equipment. Though the amount of equipment may seem scarce compared with what we want, I can assure your Lordships that the Fleet is maintained at a very high order. Although I can understand the emphasis which the noble Earl has put on the Reserve Fleet, and while I appreciate very much his reasons, it is not the emphasis which I think should be accepted to-day. In placing our emphasis on a seagoing Fleet and on the Operational Reserve we are acting fully in line with our N.A.T.O. Allies. I do not think that they would be in the least interested in an Extended Reserve Fleet which could not be used quickly. That is the emphasis which Admiral Wright put on the matter.
What I am concerned with is what we want to have in ten years' time. With respect to the noble and gallant Earl, it is no good thinking only of today. I do not think that the immediate danger of a major conflict is great, but I am not prepared to say what the position may be in five, six or more years' time. Before the 1914–18 war it was clear that supremacy at sea would rest on Dreadnoughts. During the period 1918 to 1939 it was equally clear that the aircraft carrier would be the key to naval strength. But what are we going to forecast for today? I do not pretend that I can give the answer, but what I can say is that I have set up with the highest authority and best advice I can get a Fleet Requirements Committee, under the Deputy-Chief of Naval Staff, to look into this problem, to see what kind of ship we should look for in ten years' time. So far, the Committee have confirmed the correctness of the decisions already made.
We are building a Fleet with modernised aircraft carriers with the latest aircraft, guided missile destroyers with a new form of anti-aircraft defence, general
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purpose frigates, embodying all the lessons we have learned on frigate design and incorporating new types of asdic and radar which we believe to be the best in the world, and, most important of all, nuclear-propelled submarines. The decision to buy an American reactor for the "Dreadnought" will, we hope, accelerate its introduction into the Royal Navy by at least two years. These are the things on which I think we ought to spend money, not on obsolete ships. I believe that that is right and I believe your Lordships will agree, when you see the position, that that is a wise decision to take at the present time. I do not think that the noble and gallant Earl is wise in putting too much emphasis on an Extended Reserve. In view of what I have said I hope that the noble and gallant Earl will not feel inclined to press his Motion.
7.4 p.m.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, the noble Earl has answered with such a flood of speech that I hardly know where to get in on it. But the terms of my Motion, as I said at the beginning, are limited to the present time; and the present time I consider is until this present crisis is over and there is some settlement between the powers. Until that situation arises, I feel that we are living in a dangerous atmosphere and that we ought to keep what we have until we get something better with which to replace them. If a man has one pair of trousers and they wear out, he cannot throw them away until he gets another pair. I am all for the kind of Navy the noble Earl said we should have in ten years' time. Thank God, I shall be dead by then ! It is an adequate Navy for the present that I am trying to urge. If we have our food supply stopped, as we might well have from the number of ships we have now, what will be the result? The whole country is going to be roused. The people will not be able to get food and there will be riots, revolutions and abject "Red terror." We must have a number of small ships and the Air Force to keep the submarines under at the present time—I am not talking about ten years ahead.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, can I give this assurance to the noble and gallant Earl. No ship which could be

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brought forward for service within a matter of months will be destroyed.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, it is late and I am not proposing to divide the House, but I should like the noble Earl to give this message from me to the members of the Government. It is not original. It is what Tennyson wrote in 1886, when there was a naval crisis:
" You, you who have the ordering of our Fleet,
If you should only compass our disgrace,
When all men starve,
The wild mob's million feet,
Will kick you from your place.
But then, too late, too late ! "
I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

WALLASEY CORPORATION BILL
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.