§ 2.38 p.m.
§ LORD WALSTONMy 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 when the official translation of the agreement on agricultural policy reached by the European Economic Community in January, 1962, will be available.]
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEMy Lords, the final texts were approved by the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community on April 4. They will be published in the Official Journal of the Communities in due course. Nine texts comprising six regulations and three decisions have been received (together with two supplementary documents) and have been placed in the Library of your Lordships' House. We expect to place the remaining five texts there this afternoon. An English translation will be made available to noble Lords in the Printed Paper Office as soon as possible.
§ LORD WALSTONMy Lords, I am grateful to the noble Marquess for that information. I wonder whether he could amplify in a little more detail than he did in his answer to the first 840 Question from the noble Lord, Lord Killearn, what is meant by as soon as possible" in this context. I think it is slightly simpler to be more precise when it is a question of translating from French and not of disposing of Egyptianised assets.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEMy Lords, I should like to be precise on this, but it is quite a tricky piece of translation, as I am sure the noble Lord is aware. We have set to work on the translation. I cannot give your Lordships an exact date, but I hope that it will be soon after Easter.
§ VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHMy Lords, I happen to have been the recipient of a promise, some months ago, in regard to the simple task of supplying Parliament, which ought to be informed as to what happened, with a plain and official English translation. What on earth is the matter with the Minister's Department? If it is a tricky translation, what are you "tricking" with? Can we not have a plain translation of what was in the agreement?
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEMy Lords, I should very much like to help the noble Viscount, the Leader of the Opposition. The point is that the translation which we give to your Lordships must be the translation of the final and substantive document. We have the French version and are going to translate from the French. In the Library your Lordships will find the copies to which I have already referred, and the five others that are coming; they will all be there, in French, in the Library. We are now going to set to work to put them into English, which will be done as quickly as is humanly possible.
§ VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHMy Lords, there may be some phrases used in this House which are still in Norman French. I am not ashamed of having been to a board school and of having worked ever since I left it. There is no reason at all why your Lordships' House should not have a translation of this important document within days, not within months. It is quite unreasonable that information is apparently being withheld from Parliament.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEMy Lords, with great respect to the noble Viscount, I think he has misunderstood the situation. We have only just received these documents; therefore, it has not been possible for us to translate them sooner.
§ LORD HENDERSONMy Lords, when British Ministers attend meetings with the Six they do not speak in French, I presume, but in English. Therefore, their speeches do not need to be translated. Is it not possible to have their speeches issued direct for public consumption, instead of merely handing a précis to the Press for publication?
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEMy Lords, that is quite another question. What we are dealing with now is the texts of decisions and regulations, which are in French—they are in fact in French and will be issued in other languages, but the language from which we propose to translate is French. If your Lordships care to look in the Library you will find them there in French. They are all very highly technical—
§ VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHThank you very much.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEThat is all we can do for the time being, my Lords.
§ VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHI think that the Government's action in this matter deserves a hearty vote of censure from all sides of the House.
§ LORD KILLEARNMy Lords, I have not been to any of these international meetings for quite a long while now, but there used to be a good old rule that French and English were equally binding. If that still applies, how does it come about that these documents are in French and not in English as well?
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEBecause these are documents which have been discussed among members of the Six.
§ LORD STONHAMMy Lords, is the noble Marquess aware that there is a real point involved here? It takes the Six three months to decide what they mean in French. What precautions are being taken by Her Majesty's Govern- 842 ment to make quite sure that the translation, when we get it, means exactly the same in English?
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEMy Lords, what the noble Lord has said is very helpful. There have been, as your Lordships are perfectly aware, a number of texts, provisional and now final, which have had to be carefully Checked and cross-checked. In order to hurry the thing up, we are working both from the provisional text and from the final French text, and I can assure the noble Viscount he should not be angry with us, because we are doing this as fast as we possibly can.
§ VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHI will go off and count up the number of days you have had since you made the promise, and I will come to you again.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEIt is not physically possible to translate a text that you have not got.
§ VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHIt would not be impossible for a really up-to-date and enterprising Government, who would have obtained the text much earlier, as between friends.