§ 11.35 a.m.
VISCOUNT STANSGATEMy Lords, I beg leave 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 publish a Paper showing the chief resolutions voted on in the various organs of the United Nations at the present session and the votes cast by the delegations of the British Commonwealth.]
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF HOME)My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Viscount for giving me the opportunity of reminding your Lordships of the very comprehensive information available about the activities of the General Assembly.
Each year, Her Majesty's Government present to Parliament and publish an extensive Report on the proceedings of every Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. This Report, which appears in the spring, contains a full summary of the chief resolutions and the voting on them.
In addition, the texts of all the resolutions, together with copies of all other documents issued by the United Nations for an Assembly Session, including the summary and verbatim records of the debates, are available to noble Lords through the Library of the House. Those records contain full details of the voting.
These arrangements have been followed by successive Governments and have, I believe, in practice met the needs of noble Lords and of the public generally,
VISCOUNT STANSGATEMy Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Earl. May I ask him whether the papers available will be right up to date, to the time he left New York this Session?
THE EARL OF HOMENo, my Lords, I do not think that that is so. I think that the paper covering the whole of the Assembly's activities is published at the end of the General Assembly's meeting. If the noble Viscount wants to know the voting record on any particular item, I may be able to extract it for him; but he will find the whole report of last year's Assembly in the paper published last April, and the whole report of this year's Assembly in the paper that will be published next April.
VISCOUNT STANSGATEMy Lords, of course, the noble Earl realises that in the debate that he will lead very shortly in your Lordships' House this will be of the greatest importance. We have the Foreign Secretary here, straight from New York, and it is no good referring us to the record to be published later when what we want is a report of what has happened. Later on is not sufficient.
THE EARL OF HOMEMy Lords, I will examine this. As I say, if the noble Viscount, for the purpose of the debate, wishes to know how the United Kingdom voted on a particular item, I will see whether I can provide that information for him urgently. But if he wants a record of all the votes, so that he may compare the voting on one item or another with the voting last year, then I think he will have to wait until the Assembly's session is finished.
VISCOUNT STANSGATEMy Lords, what I want is a record of the opinion of the Commonwealth as a whole on the great issues which have been discussed. I can look that out for myself but it will take a very long time and probably I shall make many mistakes. I should have thought that a plain answer of "Yes" to the question was possible.
THE EARL OF HOMEMy Lords, it would mean a great deal of work to collate the number of items that have been discussed in the Assembly and voted upon, and to present the information in the form of a paper or of a Written Answer. I will look at this again to see what I can do, but I would 1149 discourage the noble Viscount from thinking that it is a good practice that from month to month we should sum up the findings of the Assembly.
VISCOUNT STANSGATEMy Lords, it is not for me, in my position as an individual Member of your Lordships' House, to press this matter, but it must be obvious that everybody wants to know why it was that the United Kingdom delegation voted in a minority of active positive votes on the Chinese question and what the other members of the Commonwealth thought on that question.
THE EARL OF HOMEMy Lords, that is what I was trying to get at: whether there was any particular item on which the noble Viscount wanted information. I will look at this particular Chinese item and see whether I can give him that information.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGHMy Lords, I am much obliged to the Foreign Secretary for his answers. I understand from the conversations through the usual channels that the noble Earl will be speaking at a very early stage in the debate next week, and with regard to what my noble friend Lord Stansgate has said, I am sure that the noble Earl will be giving us all the information that it will be possible to give.
VISCOUNT STANSGATEMy Lords, if what I say proves to be clumsy or inaccurate, I hope that the noble Earl will not lay the whole of the blame on my quite inefficient shoulders.