Lords Sitting of 6 June 1962

Preamble
The House met at two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Norwich
The Viscount Falmouth—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

DEARTH OF NORTH SEA HERRING
2.5 p.m.
LORD BOOTHBY: My 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 any conclusions have been reached by the Herring Committee of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea as to the causes of the dearth of herring in the North Sea in recent years.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE): No, my Lords. This is a complex subject, and the investigations of this Committee are not finished. The Committee set up a Working Group in October, 1960, with instructions
"to make a detailed appraisal of all existing data on stock separation and identity for the North Sea herring populations and on the effect of fishing on these herring stocks".
The work of the Group is therefore directed to the question which the noble Lord has raised, and we are all conscious that it is important to get an answer to it as soon as we can. But it is undeniably a difficult problem and I understand that the report of the Group may not be ready until next year.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, in the meantime, will the noble Earl give an assurance that Her Majesty's Government will direct the attention of this Committee to the importance of the examination of the trawling of immature stocks of herring for what is called
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"industrial fishing"—namely, for conversion into oil and meal?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: Yes, my Lords. I think this is one of the matters that they are undoubtedly looking into; and, of course, we have British scientists working on this Committee.

MONMOUTHSHIRE TERRITORIALS AND NEWPORT BARRACKS
2.7 p.m.
LORD RAGLAN: My 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 a decision has been made regarding the allocation of the Artillery Barracks, Newport, to the Monmouthshire Territorial and Auxiliary Association.]
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for War is planning to concentrate Monmouthshire Territorial Army units into these barracks.
LORD RAGLAN: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his right honourable friend has been planning to do this for several years?
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I do not know what my noble friend means by "several years". He will appreciate that only as from 1960, with the reorganisation of the Territorial Army, have the needs of this group of units really been studied in the light of today's circumstances.
LORD RAGLAN: My Lords, may we hope for an early decision on this matter, because it is a matter of some urgency?
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, it has in fact been agreed that the Territorial Army shall have the use of these barracks. When they actually move in depends on the work of adaptation, which it is expected may take from two to three years.
LORD RAGLAN: My Lords, I understand that these plans were approved by the War Office last year.

REVISED FINES FOR CRIMINAL OFFENCES
2.9 p.m.
LORD SWAYTHLING: My 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 are satisfied that the current maximum fines prescribed in the Statutes creating criminal offences are in all cases adequate, having regard to the fall in the value of money since they were enacted: and, if not, what steps are proposed to be taken to bring them into line with modern requirements.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (EARL BATHURST): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government agree that there is a case for the revision of some fines in the light of present-day monetary values. A comprehensive review, covering several hundreds of small statutory fines, has been in progress for some time, and is being carried forward as rapidly as its nature and other commitments permit. It involves the examination of a large number of Statutes and a consideration of penalties for a wide variety of offences. In the pre-1914 Statutes alone there are nearly 600 fines scattered through 150 Statutes. Her Majesty's Government hope that when this review, on which substantial progress has been made, has been completed, an opportunity can be found for legislation.
LORD SWAYTHLING: My Lords, while I thank the noble Earl for his reply, may I remind him that when I asked your Lordships to give a Second Reading to the Fines Bill in March, 1960, he, replying on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, said what he has said to-day: that they were reviewing all these fines according to modern circumstances, and he then said he thought it was a considerable task? He went on to ask us to show a little patience. He stated that he thought the review would take into account the difficulties and anomalies which the Fines Bill was designed to deal with. Therefore, after this lapse of time, can he give us more definite information about when he
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expects something concrete to be done, more especially for those offences which come most often before petty sessional courts?
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I regret that I must ask if the noble Lord would show a little more patience. I assure him that there is no short cut and I am certain that the noble Lord, and other noble Lords who are experts in this matter, will appreciate that fact. I ask the noble Lord to show a little more patience—I certainly appreciate all he has said in the Question he has asked.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I should like to inform your Lordships that my noble friend Lord Waldegrave will be making a statement on cotton textiles at a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m. I should like to take this opportunity of informing your Lord ships that after we return from the Whitsun Recess dinners will be available in the Dining Room on every Sitting night. I hope your Lordships will take advantage of this, and if it is a success we might possibly continue it after the Summer Recess.

KENT RIVER BOARD (HARBOUR OF RYE) BILL [H.L.]
2.12 p.m.
Read 3a.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD MERTHYR): My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill do now pass.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Lord Merthyr.)
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, I must declare my direct interest in this Bill because I am the President of the Port of Rye Protection Society, which went to the great expense and trouble of petitioning against it. It was naturally a keen disappointment to the Petitioners that the Preamble to the Bill was found by the Select Committee to be proved, but their disappointment was to some extent relieved by the decision of the Select Committee to accept certain Amendments which will help to safeguard navigational interests in the future. I confess that I find it astonishing that

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these elementary safeguards should have had to be fought for and won at private expense. But, even now, the future of the port and harbour of Rye is left dangerously at the mercy of a drainage authority whose regard for amenities in-including navigation has been manifestly shown to be lacking. I should have thought that such a Bill should have been shelved at least until the passing of the legislation promised by Her Majesty's Government to deal with the whole question of water conservation and to set up new river authorities to serve the interests of all river users. That is the Bill on which we had a debate a few days ago in which I very briefly intervened.
My object now (and I have been told I must be brief) is neither to divide the House nor to criticise the Select Committee, but to draw attention to one outstanding fact which emerged from the evidence given by the Promoters of the Bill. The sum of £400,000 is to be spent for the direct benefit of only 6,000 acres of agricultural land which even now is valued at £100 an acre; that is an average rate of expenditure of £60 per acre, which seems quite a lot. Disregarding all its other defects, these figures alone suggest that it would be very unwise for the Government to allow this Bill to reach the Statute Book without further investigation from this financial aspect if from no other.
Before I sit down, may I remind your Lordships of what I said previously when I raised this question on, I think, March 1, when the Bill was referred to the Select Committee? I ventured to submit to your Lordships we are in fact a very odd people. We have recently had the example of a superb advocate, Lord Birkett, convincing the House that the loss of Ullswater was not in the public interest—and he carried the House with him, God bless him! It was the last speech he ever made and it was a magnificent effort. The House of Lords is here, thank Heavens! and it acted. I must not compare small things with great, but as a matter of fact the "great township of Rye" is in itself rather unique. It is a remains of mediaeval England, if you like. It is the last of the Cinque Ports. It is not actually a Cinque Port; it was a limb, which
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is a curious subdivision, but it is the only Cinque Port harbour left. And these people, with all respect, come along with what is a drainage Bill at this enormous expense for 6,000 acres already drained.
I have been to see them. The 6,000 acres in question have already been drained—I refer to Shirley Moor; I have been to look at it. Why spend another £400,000 on that? Whatever we may say or do, they are going to sink a great obstruction in the middle of the river fairway. That cannot improve the prospects or attractions of the harbour. We are indeed a most extraordinary people. We have one or two things one might call national heirlooms left, and what do we do? Throw them aside with a flick of the finger; who cares? The public is not alerted. The Rye people are alerted; they are furious; but what can a poor humble member on these Cross Benches do to stop it? It wants public influence and the day will come—the day is not far off—when the public, when we all, will regret these things, these national losses. Now is the time; yet we go on fiddling, just letting things drift. My Lords, I have had my say.
On Question, Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

LETCHWORTH GARDEN CITY CORPORATION BILL
2.20 p.m.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: My Lords, as those of your Lord ships Who are concerned with Private Bills know, it is my practice to hold an unofficial meeting each Session in January to assist me in deciding to which Private Bills I should direct the attention of the House, under Standing Order 91, as containing provisions of special interest, and to any special circumstances relative to the Bill. It was agreed at the meeting this year that I should make such a statement with regard to this Bill.
The following are the circumstances. In 1903 a company known as First Garden City, Limited, was formed to develop and manage Letchworth for the benefit of the town and its inhabitants. The company was originally non-profit-making and, as set out in its Memorandum of Association, it was intended to promote and further the distribution of

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industrial population upon the lines suggested in Sir Ebenezer Howard's book Garden Cities of Tomorrow. In December, 1960, control of the company passed to a company known as Hotel York, Limited, and although in the offer to shareholders it was stated that the company would ensure the future of Letch-worth as a unified estate in accordance with the principles upon which the town had been developed since its foundation, the Promoters, the Letchworth Urban District Council, claim that such an acquisition will be prejudicial to the fulfilment of the earlier intentions of the company and to the interests of the town and of its inhabitants.
The Bill is promoted for the purpose of establishing a corporation which, in return for appropriate compensation, would acquire the undertaking of First Garden City, Limited, and in its opinion safeguard the position in the future. The Bill was opposed in the House of Commons and was given a Second Reading there by 241 votes to 13; and, there being two Petitions against it, it was committed to a Select Committee of nine members. The Committee sat for six days, and the Bill was reported with Amendments. The Bill reached this House on May 31 when it received its First Reading and was referred to the Examiners. I anticipate that it will be petitioned against in this House also, in which case it will be referred to a Select Committee. As at present arranged, I intend to put the Bill down for Second Reading on Thursday, June 28.

POPULATION PRESSURE IN ASIA
2.24 p.m.
LORD CASEY rose LORD CASEY rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have considered the consequences of the present rate of population growth in Asia, and in the Commonwealth countries in Asia in particular and, if so, what they propose to do to stimulate scientific research in the United Kingdom towards a socially acceptable solution of the problem applicable to Asian conditions; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, my reason for bringing the subject matter of my Motion to your Lordships' notice is because I believe that it is of first class importance; otherwise I should not have ventured to take up your Lordships'
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time by discussing it. I have on previous occasions, in debates on wider topics in your Lordships' House, raised the broad subject of population pressure in Asia, but I must admit to not having received any great encouragement. That could well be due to the fact that I did not put the matter as succinctly or as convincingly to your Lordships as it should have been put.
The simple facts of the situation are these. More than half the total population of the world—that is, 1,600 million people out of about 3,000 million—live in Asia. Nothing that I shall venture to say to your Lordships to-day will have reference to the situation in Japan, which is a wholly different case, because they have kept entirely on top of their problem of population pressure; but in respect of the rest of Asia, the factors in the situation in most Asian countries are high population density, a high and rising rate of increase of population, and a low standard of living. It is the combination of high population density with a high and rising rate of population increase in many of the countries in South and South East Asia that creates the problem which I am venturing to lay before your Lordships to-day. A high rate of population growth also exists in Africa and in most of the countries of Latin America. However, these countries cannot be regarded as over-populated; therefore the problem has not the urgency and importance that it has in Asia.
Another factor that underlines the importance of this subject so far as we in the Commonwealth are concerned, is that well over 80 per cent. of the total population of the Commonwealth live in Asia—about 550 millions out of a total of about 650 millions—and it so happens that the combination of overpopulation and excessive population growth is most intense in the Asian Commonwealth countries. Also there is the melancholy fact that, according to the United Nations published statistics, the average national income per head in the Asian Commonwealth countries is £23 sterling per year, whereas the average national income in what might be called the older Commonwealth countries is £421 per year.
By way of example in particular, let me speak of the case of India, with

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its immense population of now approaching 450 million people. That is more than the whole of the population of Africa and of Latin America combined. The population growth in Ceylon, Malaya and Singapore is even more intense than that in India, but let me concentrate on India as a large and typical case, though, as I have said, the problem is by no means confined to that country. The figures and statements that I make are applicable almost precisely, in proportion, to Pakistan. The Indian population has grown by 22 per cent. in the ten years between 1951 and 1961. The figure of at least 22 per cent. yearly increase is the accepted present rate of population growth in India. If this rate of population growth is projected into the future it will mean that the population of India will double in about 30 years. I realise well how imprudent it is to project a curve into the future, but this is offset by the fact that the most informed demographers on this subject tend to believe that the rate of increase of population in India, and indeed in Asia, is more likely to increase than it is to decrease.
The problem of population pressure at its present and growing rate of intensity in India and elsewhere in Asia is relatively quite a recent one—in fact, it may be said to be a product only of the last fifteen years. In 1947, when India achieved independence under the Crown, it was 310 million. To-day, fifteen years later, it is close to 450 million—an increase in fifteen years of 140 million people. In the same period of fifteen years prior to the independence of India the increase in population was only 33 million, as against 140 million in the past fifteen years. I submit that these two figures are in effect a numerical justification for what I am about to lay before your Lordships. All the figures that I use I have drawn from relevant official sources.
As those of your Lordships know who follow the series of Indian five-year plans, a vast effort is being undertaken there to raise the pathetically low standard of living of the vast population by development of all the relevant factors in the Indian economy.
It is common knowledge that the Indian Government cannot achieve their
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developmental objectives on the basis of their own domestic financial resources, but they are relying to an appreciable extent on financial and economic aid from the more highly developed countries, particularly the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the other developed countries of the West. However, as the Indian population is growing at a rate of at least 9 million persons per year, any increases in national production tend to be spread progressively over a constantly and largely increasing number of people. The large amount of effort and finance that is being put into the Indian Government's effort to increase production and to improve the Indian standard of living is now being practically cancelled out by reason of constant and formidable population increases. The unemployment problem in India annually gets more and more acute each year in addition to widespread under-employment. As has been said, they have to run fast in order to stand still This means that the very large amount of developmental money spent by the Government of India itself, by ourselves and by the United States is being largely wasted, in that it is not helping to achieve the primary purpose—that of improving the standard of living of the Indian people.
It is widely agreed among demographers, scientists and relevant men in public life that the only possible solution to the problem of growth population in Asia must be some form of family planning, some form of contraceptive that is socially acceptable. As your Lordships know, family planning has been an important part of Government policy in India—and indeed in Pakistan as well—for a great many years. Increasing amounts of money have been devoted to it in successive Indian Five Year Plans. In the third Five-Year Plan, now about a year old, many millions have been allocated to be spent on family planning. There are about 2,000 birth-control clinics in India, and it is planned to increase them by a great many thousands in the course of the present Five-Year Plan, The problem of those in charge of birth control in India is that they have only the methods of family planning of the past to work on, which are by no means adequate, appropriate or effective for Indian conditions.

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They are waiting impatiently for science to evolve something better and more appropriate to their needs. As your Lordships will know, there is no religious or other prejudice against birth control in India. In fact, no fewer than 125,000 operations for sterilisation have been conducted up to the present in India alone.
The steady increase in net population growth in India and other Asian countries over the last fifteen years, has been due very largely to the increasing effectiveness of public health measures and preventive medicine, which can be said to have started to be put into effect only in 1945 and which have resulted in a constantly declining death rate. The birth rate has not significantly increased, but the declining death rate has had the effect of a steady increase in the net rate of population growth, and this situation may be expected to become more pronounced and acute as the years go on.
Scientific research into biological methods of contraception have been going on for a number of years in this country and more particularly in the United States of America. Appreciable success has been achieved in certain directions, in particular, the pill developed by Dr. Pincus, known as Enovid in the United States, and as Conovid in the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom it is now available on doctor's prescription, for medical purposes under the National Health Service, but it is not in use for what may be called general social purposes. However, the biological contraceptives developed so far are almost certainly not suitable for Asian conditions, by reason of the fact that they have to be taken no fewer than 20 times a month, which is a practice that is most unlikely to be observed by illiterate women in Asian villages. A great deal more research is needed into the whole of the male and femal reproductive machinery, before the ideal and socially acceptable contraceptive is likely to be evolved for use in Asia. Compared with other forms of medical research, the amount of work being done on population control is very small, and in the ordinary course of events the appearance of the final answer is likely to be long-delayed. Such research can be effectively done only in countries with large resources of scien-
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tific personnel and of money, notably the United Kingdom and the United States. The resources of the Asian countries in this regard are relatively small.
That brings me to the point of what I am endeavouring to say to your Lord ships, that a major direction, possibly the major direction, in which the United Kingdom can help India (and the other Asian countries similarly afflicted with excessive growth population) is to encourage the pursuit of scientific research directed towards the discovery of a socially acceptable contraceptive suitable for Asian conditions. I know very well that the United Kingdom by reason of the foreign exchange position and the problem of our balance of payments, is limited in the amount of economic aid that can be given to overseas countries; but scientific research that I speak of, in an effort to evolve a practical and acceptable contraceptive suitable to Asian conditions would have no impact whatsoever on the United Kingdom's foreign exchange position or on her balance of payments. And the same thing can be said of similar accelerated research in the United States.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord one question? When he refers to "a socially acceptable contraceptive", does he mean a contraceptive that would be socially acceptable in India, or a contraceptive that would be socially acceptable in India and in this country?
LORD CASEY: My Lords, I am speaking solely of India and other Asian countries similarly afflicted with population problems, not of contraception in the United Kingdom.
The end-point of such research, if it were to be successful, might be some form of contraceptive (it is not for me to say what that form would be) that would put into the hands of the Governments of India and of the other Asian countries the means of curbing their high and growing population pressures. They would, of course, have to take the normal prudent steps to assure themselves of its efficacy and suitability, and that it did not produce unwelcome side effects. They would be under no obligation to accept and use it unless they were satisfied as to its value. Once the scientific work is done and a successful

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result achieved, as I have no doubt it will be, the rest is up to the Governments of India and the other countries concerned to take advantage of it, to manufacture it and put it into use. That aspect of things is entirely within the "say-so" of the Government of India.
When I speak of Her Majesty's Government encouraging such scientific research, I am not speaking solely of such research being done in Governmentally sponsored scientific research establishments. There is a great deal of scientific research potential in this country under the aegis of foundations, in the universities, by the pharmaceutical companies and in other directions that are not dependent on Government sponsorship or funds. If Her Majesty's Government were to be convinced of the importance of the matter of which I speak it would not be difficult for encouragement to be given in many ways, publicly or privately, to let it be known that the matter might be given the necessary priority. I believe that something between £100 million and £200 million a year is currently being provided by Her Majesty's Government, in the form of aid of various kinds to overseas countries that are in need of it. Might I suggest that a million or two out of this substantial amount might be devoted by, or in, the United Kingdom, to the encouragement of scientific research in the direction of which I am speaking?
It is reasonable to expect that scientific research in this direction will be successful in due course, but at the present rate at which such research is being conducted, the successful result is likely to be rather long delayed. Meanwhile, population pressure in India, and in Asia more generally, is mounting year by year—by nine million persons at least in India each year, and by a great many more in Asia as a whole. I find it difficult to believe that Her Majesty's Government can be indifferent to the economic, social and political consequences, particularly when the means of seeking to shorten Asia's period of dangerous travail is in their hands.
My Lords, I realise very well that the importance of any statement tends to lie in the individual who makes it. I have said a number of things, in the course of what I have ventured to lay before your Lordships' House to-day.
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but it may be said that I am no expert in these matters, although I do claim to have given an appreciable amount of attention to them over a number of years. However, let me now quote some individuals whose names and standing will be well known to you, and who have expressed themselves with authority and force about the problem of population pressure in India. I have on past occasions quoted to your Lordships. Mr. Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, and President Ayub Khan of Pakistan, in each of whose countries family planning is an important matter of Government policy. Each of them has spoken in the most serious terms of the need for effective family planning in each of their great countries. I will not repeat the quotations I have made of each of these highly placed individuals, in what I have said in your Lordships' House in 1960 and 1961.
I have also quoted Mr. Chagla, the late Indian Ambassador to the United States, now the Indian High Commissioner in London. I have quoted his words in the fervent and moving public appeal that he made in the United States two years ago, addressed to the Government and people of the United States, to press on with scientific research directed towards the evolving of an acceptable contraceptive appropriate to the conditions of India and of Asia. I personally have reason to believe that Mr. Chagla's views are even more strongly held now than when he expressed himself so pungently two years ago.
Now let me quote, if I may, from what Mr. Eugene Black, the distinguished President of the International Bank, said in an address to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in April last year. He said this:
"Population growth threatens to nullify all our efforts to raise living standards in many of the poorer countries. We are coming to a situation in which the optimist will be the man who thinks that present living standards can be maintained. The pessimist will not look even for that. Unless population growth can be restrained, we may have to abandon for this generation our hopes of economic progress in the crowded lands of Asia and the Middle East. This is not a field in which international agencies can do much. But there is scope for Governments to act: it is time that they gave earnest attention to this threat to their aspirations."
Senator Fulbright, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United

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States Congress, speaking of population pressure in Asia, has said this:
"The Indians and the Pakistanis have both very frankly said that something has to be done about it. Their Finance Ministers came to see me and said that something had to be done about this. This is fundamental to the success of the economic programme. I do not see why the Government should be so reluctant about it."
The noble Lord, Lord Brain, who has a long and distinguished record of concern with this subject, is I believe, here to-day and I will not attempt to take words out of his mouth, but I have no doubt that he will let your Lordships know his views in his own terms. Professor A. S. Parkes, lately of the National Institute for Medical Research in London, now Professor of Reproductive Physiology at Cambridge, has said, speaking of scientific research directed towards the finding of an effective contraceptive:
"Work must be pushed on at top speed, both ad hoc investigation into possible applications of existing knowledge and fundamental researches to broaden the basis of existing knowledge and therefore of possibilities of practical application. More research workers and more facilities are needed but they will take time to produce."
Sir Henry Dale, who is distinguished in the fields of medicine and public health, has said, speaking on this same subject:
"We ought to begin to ask ourselves what we are going to do about it. … There is much to be gained by removing this subject of birth control from whatever remains of its furtive associations . … I think that the time has come when we should advocate, insistently, if need be, that the whole subject should be, as it were, brought out from under the counter, discussed at the highest levels and raised to the full dignity of a proper and important objective, for all that the best of medical and pharmaceutical research might be able to offer towards its eventual solution."
My Lords, I have picked out these few distinguished individuals to quote almost by chance. There are a great many others—Sir Julian Huxley, Sir Solly Zuckerman and others, whose names are household words in the scientific world. Let me end by quoting Mr. James Reston, the well known representative of the New York Times in Washington, who said not long ago in this same connection:
"Probably never in history has so obvious and significant a fact as the present population explosion been so widely evaded or minimised by the Governments of men."
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If any further authority for the seriousness of this subject is needed, I would refer your Lordships to the United Nations Report on "The Future Growth of World Population". I do not believe that what has been said, by the highly placed and responsible individuals whom I have quoted, can be lightly set aside.
I may say that, in what I have said I am not speaking in any way of contraception in the United Kingdom, which from the strictly national point of view is less urgent, however important it may be to individuals. There is a great deal to be said with truth about contraception in the United Kingdom in this context, but this afternoon I am speaking particularly and only about the situation in Asia and in India. The population of the United Kingdom is growing only at the very small rate of about one half of 1 per cent. per year.
Whilst I have spoken of the need to curb the excessive population growth of India and of other Asian countries, in order to enable the pathetically low standard of living to be raised, this is not on the rather longer view the only consideration, or even perhaps the principal consideration. In India itself, continued Jack of success in the task of improving the standard of living will have unfortunate political repercussions. In the larger context, the ideological competition between democratic India and Communist China is well known. If mainland China can get ahead significantly faster than democratic India over the next ten or twenty years, then the people of India may well come to the conclusion that Communism is a more fruitful form of Government and of social system than is Democracy—with appalling consequences for democracy, for Asia and for the world.
Before venturing to address your Lord-ships this afternoon, I reminded myself of a great debate that took place in your Lordships' House, and in another place, on the Indian Independence Bill in July, 1947. Much was said—and very movingly said—about good will and help to the two great nations, India and Pakistan, that were in the course of emerging as independent countries under the Crown. Among the many contributions to this great debate, the noble Earl,

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the late Lord Halifax, said this OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 150, col. 834]:
"… they"—
that is, the people of the then undivided India—
"will know that in the British Government and people they have friends who will be prepared to place … a measure of unstinted help at the service of the new Indias which are now emerging."
I realise very well that the pledges of help that were given in that great debate have been appreciably redeemed by way of economic and financial aid by successive Governments in this country, to the extent that conditions have made possible; and this can also be said of other Commonwealth countries by way of aid to India and Asia.
The interdependence of Commonwealth countries was also stressed in that great debate. I venture to say to your Lordships that if "interdependence" has a meaning—even, I might say, if the word "Commonwealth" has a meaning—it surely means that India and the rest of the Commonwealth countries in Asia should be able to count on the work of a few score, or a few hundred, additional scientific workers, in an effort to cure the most intractable problem of which I have been speaking, with its almost incalculable social, economic and political consequences, and for which the Commonwealth Asian countries do not happen to have the scientific and other wherewithal to do fox themselves. It has been said—and I tend to agree—that, short of preventing another great wax from breaking out, there is no more important matter than to curb the excessive population growth in Asia, with the devastating effects that will follow if it is not coped with.
I have some realisation, I think, of the problems at home and abroad that Her Majesty's Government face and with which they are so valiantly endeavouring to cope. What I have ventured to suggest will not add appreciably—I might even say it will add microscopically—to these burdens, but if the Government were to be successful I believe it would represent the greatest boon that the United Kingdom could provide for the overburdened, underprivileged and underfed countries of the Commonwealth in Asia. Those of your Lordships who take comfort
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in the belief that population pressure is not one of the great problems of the world that demand attention will no doubt take added comfort in the fact that, in any current assessment of world problems, high place is given, and very properly given, to the limitation of armaments, East-West relationships and, a little closer to home, to the European Common Market and British-American relations, with practically never a mention of population pressure. Holding the belief in the importance of this subject that I do, I ask myself: Why is this so? It is no doubt because it is not happening here, but to a large section of mankind half the world away. It may be because it is regarded as a problem for those countries which suffer from it and not for us; it may be because it is not an immediate menace of to-day or to-morrow but is a gradual, creeping, relatively slow-motion menace; and perhaps it is because one of the great churches has so far been antagonistic to its consideration.
As against this, I submit that those people of consequence in India and elsewhere who know the facts and the inevitable trend believe that the need for action now to cope with it is urgent, as it is approaching the point of no return. Every year that goes by makes the problem more intractable, with its devastating economic and political consequences if nothing is done about it. It is also the fact that the remedy for it is in the hands of the West and not in the hands of those who suffer from it. My Lords, I end with a plea to Her Majesty's Government, and perhaps, in particular, to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and to the noble Viscount the Minister for Science, to give heed to this great problem—heed and sympathetic understanding. I beg to move for Papers.
2.52 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Casey, has on other occasions drawn the attention of this House to the rapidly-growing population of South-East Asia and to the abysmal poverty which is the common lot of millions of families in those regions. In his opening remarks he said we had not reacted favourably. I can only say to him, as I took part in the debate last year, that if this House has

613
failed to provide a solution to these vast problems, at least the noble Lord has always had a sympathetic response.
We must all appreciate the anxieties of small countries like Australia and New Zealand as they watch the rising population in South-East Asia. Nevertheless, I believe we must welcome the fact that the Malthusian doctrine has not prevailed in Asia or India—a high degree of malnutrition, perhaps, but the gloomy predictions of Malthus have been disproved, and hunger has not decimated those densely populated regions. The West have learnt that a high birth-rate, which is always associated with poverty, ignorance and fatalism, can be effectively reduced by raising the standard of living and introducing compulsory education. It is significant that in those countries where there has been compulsory education for two generations the birth-rate has been stabilised. However, I recognise that this is a long-term solution in regions with a high population density; and, of course, this is not the occasion to examine the economic and fiscal problems of these countries. I say, with all due deference to the noble Lord, that perhaps it is not the time to examine the racial policy of Australia, either.
My concern with the noble Lord's speech is not that I view the situation with complacency: I share his apprehensions, but I dissent very strongly from his specific short-term solution—namely, the use of oral contraceptives.
LORD CASEY: My Lords, may I venture to correct the noble Lady? I did not pretend to say what particular type of contraceptive: nor, I think, did I mention oral contraceptives.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: If the noble Lord examines his speech of last year, he will see that he referred to oral contraceptives and mentioned the kind that were being used in America, and if he examines Hansard to-morrow he will discover that he actually mentioned Conovid. I listened to the noble Lord very carefully. He will surely recall that just before my noble friend intervened and asked him what he meant by "socially acceptable" he said to this House to-day that the oral contraceptive which was acceptable in this country could not be used in Asia because
614
twenty pills had to be taken every month. I think the noble Lord said that. I understand my hearing was accurate.
LORD CASEY: We must look at Hansard to-morrow.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: He said last year that that would not be suitable for Asia; that the ideal thing would be to find an oral contraceptive which functioned in the same way but which called for the illiterate women of Asia to take only two pills a month. If the noble Lord examines his speeches, he will find that I am absolutely correct.
Unfortunately, last year I had spoken before the noble Lord did; otherwise, I would have advanced some of these views then: but I must say that, in view of certain statements by eminent doctors in this country during the last year, I am in a much stronger position to review his suggestions than I was last year. I believe that the noble Lord has shown a genuine concern for the vast, under-nourished populations of South-East Asia. One does not question his sincerity, but his solution of the problem may well aggravate, not alleviate, the misery and wretchedness of millions of illiterate, inarticulate women. I am not opposed to birth control. As a woman doctor, I have always regarded it as a most important form of preventive medicine. The mechanical forms of birth control are widely used in this country, and the planned family is a concept which is now accepted by all income-groups—and that is precisely why the noble Lord, in his final remarks, quite rightly reminded this House that the population increase in this country was very small. By all means allow people in overcrowded countries to obtain means of using harmless methods of birth control, but we must not further encourage some members of the pharmaceutical industry hastily to produce new products which can be effective only by inhibiting the ovulatory process.
The noble Lord has quoted a number of eminent men (most of them, I think, big businessmen), who approve of the principle of birth control; but among them he did not mention one endocrinologist—that is, an authority

615
on the ductless glands—who whole heartedly approved of the oral contraceptive. Nevertheless, again he advances the same argument as he advanced last year: that this is the answer to the population problem. He mentioned the names of some of the oral contraceptives on the market last year, as I have said, and to-day he mentioned Conovid, which so many doctors in this country—and this is a very good test of any drug—refuse to prescribe for their patients. There have been only limited trials of this American preparation, some in this country but mostly in other countries; and in view of the opinions expressed by eminent authorities I doubt whether any doctor would prescribe the pill for his own wife and subject her delicate pituitary gland to the bombardment of this compound.
Professor Sir Charles Dodds is one of the foremost endocrinologists in this country, and therefore an authority on this subject. In fact, he is now the President of the Royal College of Physicians. In a lecture to the Society for Endocrinology—whose members were men and women Who devote their lives to the study of this subject—this is what he said; and I ask noble Lords to forgive me if I quote his words in some detail, because it is a highly technical subject and has a tremendous importance to-day to this country, and, indeed, to the whole world. He said:
"The continuous or cyclical use of these compounds may foreseeably have other undesirable effects which the trials conducted to date have not resolved. Such effects, for instance, when their use is continued throughout the reproductive period of a woman, might involve the pituitary, mammary glands or ovary."
He went on:
"The fact that in a relatively short period nothing has been found does not really indicate very much. Whilst everything might appear all right on the surface, there may be deep-seated changes going on in the body. It would seem very unlikely to me that the abolition of a cyclical process such as ovulation can be accomplished over a long time without profoundly affecting other processes, and the fact that there appears to be no change for a period is not, I suggest, reassuring."
He then said:
"Even if you thoroughly understand the mechanism of a clock, provided it is going well it is very much better to leave it alone; but to interfere with its mechanism if you do not understand it can be disastrous."
616
He expressed his fears to the Family Planning Association in October of last year, and warned them of the dangers, particularly if the treatment is prolonged.
Later on, no doubt, other doctors may be quoted; but I think that the noble Lord, Lord Casey, should hear what the British Medical Journal said, because they are there to assist both sides who express opinions on this matter. On September 16, 1961, in an editorial on the contraceptive pill, the British Medical Journal said this:
"The mechanism by which these drugs inhibit ovulation is not precisely understood, but they are believed to block the synthesis of certain hormones in the anterior pituitary gland. In the present state of knowledge, based first on animal experiments, and later on clinical trials, no certain answer seems possible to several important questions. One is whether the endocrine system will become permanently impaired, and perhaps fertility reduced or destroyed. Another question is whether these substances could be carcinogenic. Though the likelihood of these oral contraceptives being carcinogenic is probably extremely remote, and though fears that they might cause congenital defects in babies born subsequently are probably groundless, it still remains to be shown that the suppression of ovulation over long periods is harmless to the endocrine system and to ovario-uterine relations."
May I now ask noble Lords to go into the Library this week and to look at the Lancet? An editorial in the Lancet, which is a paper that tries to collect the voices of the medical profession, and to approach matters objectively, is devoted to the danger of oral contraceptives, and echoes the warnings of the British Medical Journal. It says:
"The use of oral contraceptives cannot be contemplated without considerable trepidation. … Twenty years may go by before we can be sure about the safety of the present oral contraceptives."
These are words of wisdom. I believe that when the American company originally responsible for the oral contraceptive practice conducted their trials, they used Puerto Rican women as the guinea pigs for these tests. I say, let twenty years elapse, and let us see what happens to these women, and whether these fears of one of the finest endrocrinologists in the country are realised, before we enter into more trials or before we take these drugs to densely populated areas.
My Lords, I want to be constructive. I favour the view of Mr. Linton Snaith.

617
Mr. Linton Snaith is the senior obstetrician and gynæcologist of the Newcastle General Hospital. He has written considerably on gynæcology and obstetrics. He has expressed concern about oral contraceptives in family planning association clinics, and he says:
"It is best to limit the contraceptive pill to experiments already in progress, to hospital clinics, and to patients suffering from gynæcological conditions which justify this treatment."
That, I believe, is the sane and the reasonable approach. Many of us deplore the fact that the Family Planning Association, with its splendid record, has not shown greater caution. I realise that the noble Lord, Lord Brain, was chosen as the President of the Family Planning Association, and his well-known name has been very useful to them. But he, of course, as a neurologist, can look at this matter objectively.
The noble Lord, Lord Casey, discussed various means whereby further progress could be made. I can assure the noble Lord that the pharmaceutical firms producing oral contraceptives are not waiting for encouragement from the Government to investigate a cheaper pill for the Asian market. Indeed, they are showing a reckless haste, in this country and abroad. Last week I read that a conference on birth control is being held in the Near East with the co-operation of a pharmaceutical manufacturiing firm concerned with the use of oral contraceptives. Surely, to say the least, this is premature, having regard to the illiteracy existing in the Near East and the shortage of doctors, which would preclude careful supervision.
Doctors who oppose the new oral contraceptives have been called "fuddy-duddies" and "old-fashioned" by the London organiser of the Family Planning Association. I have never in the past been called a "fuddy-duddy" or been accused of being "old-fashioned" but I am quite prepared to accept that label because I feel that I am in very good company in this matter. A British Medical Association spokesman said last week that he was very surprised at the tone of these remarks. He said:
"I think it is rather unwise to sneer at the caution felt by a lot of doctors towards these pills. The pills, to my knowledge, have only been tested for about five years. There are
618
many things we still do not know about their side effects."
I was further astonished by the noble Lord when he suggested that £1 million or £2 million should be taken from the quite inadequate aid given to underdeveloped countries for research into these oral contraceptives; and, indeed, that some of this money could be directed towards the pharmaceutical companies. I can assure him that the pharmaceutical companies are making colossal profits. If he cares to read the Report of the Public Accounts Committee, he will see that the profits which they make out of the National Health Service are such that there is an ample margin for research, without supplementing their profits with some of the money now sent to underdeveloped countries for food and social services. Unfortunately, my Lords, powerful new drugs are marketed to-day by some men who are not moved by human compassion or guided by high ethical standards. They adopt the same methods in selling their wares as the producers of detergents. Doctors are deluged every day with their highly-coloured advertisements, and a constant stream of smooth tongued commercial travellers waste the doctors' precious time.
This modern menace of the drug purveyors has become a social problem in the United States. I would remind noble Lords of the recent glaring case in this country, which I raised in this House and which was raised in another place—the"example of the distribution of Distaval, a so-called tranquilliser, which, when taken by the expectant mother, causes severe abnormalities in the foetus. It will shock the House when they hear that on May 14 of this year Professor Graham Wilson, Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at Sheffield University, stated that in the last year more than half the drugs issued had not been clinically tested.
Of course, there has been no shortage of customers for cheap oral contraceptives. A woman's happiness depends primarily upon happy personal relations in the home. The fact that an oral contraceptive might have most serious long-term ill-effects will not deter some women, desperately anxious to establish short-term personal happiness. The woman who has had a number of unwanted pregnancies will consume

619
contraceptive pills reckless of the consequences, just as she will resort to an abortionist at the risk of her life. The marketing of oral contraceptives promises a colossal margin of profit, for there is no frontier and no limit to the market. The sex instinct is universal. The consumption of this pill would not be limited to a group suffering from a specific disease. All the powerful media of advertising and propaganda would be directed at the healthy, with a promise of enjoyment without fear of the consequences. Even if the doctors could exercise control or afford any protection, they are in such tiny minorities in the Asian countries that their protection would be negligible. The ignorant and illiterate would be the victims of some unscrupulous purveyor of drugs. For all these reasons, I would ask the noble Lord sincerely to reconsider, between now and next year, his immediate solution to the problem of over-population.
3.13 p.m.
LORD MIL VERTON: My Lords, until yesterday I had no intention of taking part in this debate, but it occurred to me then that perhaps it would be no bad thing if somebody spoke on the subject who looked at this problem from the point of view of an administrator and was not a political idealist or a medical expert. The Motion starts by asking Her Majesty's Government
"if they have considered the consequences of the present rate of population growth in Asia".
However blind or deaf one might think the British Government are, they cannot avoid being conscious of this, because they are still responsible for Hong Kong, and the normal population of Hong Kong, which was about 600,000, has risen since 1949 to about 3,250,000, and Hong Kong is now bursting at the seams with refugees from China. Conditions there are inevitably appalling. Hong Kong has been left to bear this terrible burden alone. If ever the conscience of the world ought to have been awakened, it surely should have been over a situation like this. The refugees from Europe, the Arab refugees from Israel, and refugees from other parts of the world have had funds collected and generously distributed to help them,
620
but apparently the world is blind to this appalling Asian problem.
The way I am trying to look at this question this afternoon is that birth control can be only an adjunct, not the final solution. I am not denying the value of increased knowledge of birth control, but even if the miracle which the noble Lord, Lord Casey, seems to have dreamed of, a new method of birth control, which could suddenly be used and would be socially acceptable, were found, it would not have its effect now. The problem before the world to-day, a problem which has caused wars in the past and may yet cause something like a world war in the future, is what is going to be done with these millions of surplus people who are craving some outlet and some means of a better and higher standard of living. One has only to read the First Report of the Colombo Plan Committee, in which they detailed how they had poured millions of pounds into India to help the people there, and the net result was merely to cause scores of millions who would probably otherwise have died to go on living on the margin of subsistence.
This is an administrative problem of the highest order and, whatever way one may look at it, there is no possible short-terms solution; it is bound to be a long educational, cultural and economic solution and it lies with the Governments concerned. The countries we are speaking of are independent countries. How can we approach them with the idea that we have perfected a scientific method for curtailing the growth of their race—one which, I understand, we are not prepared to apply in this country? We have been assured this afternoon that this is not for England. I have had experience in countries abroad where birth control is not socially acceptable and the cry arises that this is a new trick of the European in order to stop the growth of races whose increase he does not desire to see. The accusation that we are engaged in genocide is so easy to raise and so difficult to combat or disprove. As your Lordships will gather, I am a pessimist in relation to the immediate solution of this problem. I do not think that there is any scientific solution which can be other than an adjunct to education and economic and cultural influences, and these must be long-term influences.

621
If your Lordships will pardon a reminiscence of mine, some years ago, when I was in Jamaica, I had the opportunity of spending a day in the company of President: Roosevelt. He talked to me about these problems and asked what we were doing about them in the West Indies. I said: "Mr. President, I have devoted a great deal of thought to this and I do not know of any short-term solution. The opposition one creates by trying through Government sources to promote birth control, as any administrator will tell you, is grave and serious. It is apt to defeat its own purpose. "The President said to me:"In my opinion there is only one solution, and it is this. First of all, we must make children a liability and not an asset, which means that you get people to the stage where they do not allow child labour and things of that kind." Then he said: "You must teach people, through education and so forth, to want things that only money can buy, and by this means you will slowly get them to restrict their families voluntarily, because otherwise they cannot live the sort of life they would wish to live". That may sound very material; but, again speaking as an administrator, one has to consider these material things.
It is no good being too lofty-minded; one is dealing with human nature. I suggest that that is precisely what we shall have to look forward to doing, with the assistance, of course, which the doctors can give and which I do not decry for one moment although it is only a secondary thing. Finally, I should like to emphasise the fact that the problem before us now is this: what are we going to do about these millions of people who are spilling over? It is no good thinking too far ahead. That is a problem that will upset all our plans unless we deal with it at an early date. For that reason I feel that, while I could not agree more with the eloquent way in which the noble Lord, Lord Casey, has described the situation which has arisen, I could not possibly concur with what he suggests is the solution.
3.22 p.m.
LORD BEVERIDGE: My Lords, I return to-day for the first time, after a month or more in the hands of doctors, to active action in this House, and I am glad to have the chance of doing so on
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a Motion such as that moved by the noble Lord, Lord Casey. I congratulate him on raising a problem common to all the world—namely, the size of population in relation to the standard of living. I heard the noble Lord on this occasion making much the same general observations as he did on a previous one. I want to urge that this is a problem that must be left to each country to decide for itself. The density of population of each country is for its own decision, as also is the question of any steps to be taken to give effect to that decision. It is not, I think, for an outside nation to take any action to influence the decision of another nation on this point. It is not for us to adopt a policy designed to force the people of another nation to accept a plan of contraception which they do not want, or to say that we will not help them financially in some way or another unless they do what we want them to do.
But while it is for each nation to decide on the density of population of their own country, it is most important to point out what effect the density of population may have on the standard of living. I happen to be studying the history of this country. I think I can say quite certainly that when, in the sixteenth century, we set out to industrialise the country much more, and increase its population, we also raised its standard of living. There was unquestionably a large increase of population in Britain, although we have no definite figures; and there is no question that what happened in the sixteenth century was the beginning of a new life in this country and of an improvement in the standard of living.
I want to suggest that this problem of the relation between the total population and the standard of living is a question for each country to decide for itself. It is not a question for any one country to decide for another, or to use its power to enforce on others its own policy. I do not think it is the business of any one country to interfere in this matttr with another country. It is not our business, because there is no reason to-day to fear the power of other countries in war, in so far as population is concerned. War to-day does not depend simply on numbers. Success in war, as we all know, has come to depend upon the

623
strange, unusual powers which we have learned to use in nuclear war and on our devotion to killing people, irrespective of the risk to ourselves. I would say, therefore, that it is not right to make the question of economic co-operation with other countries depend in any way upon their numbers, and least of all on their attitude to contraception. I hope that we shall make known the facts in regard to the growth of population. I am thankful for what the noble Lord, Lord Casey, has done to bring these facts before us, and I hope that what he has said here will lead to their being brought before others. But I repeat that, having the facts before it, each country must decide for itself.
There are some countries to which any form of contraception would be most unacceptable, while there are others who would find it more acceptable, or might find some method which they could use with safety without destroying any of the traditions of their country. This is not an international problem; it is a purely national one. I think that, subject to all countries having taken any necessary steps to put an end to war, within that limit, every country should be free to manage its own domestic arrangements, and all will be helped towards doing that by having put before them the kind of facts which the noble Lord, Lord Casey, has tried to put, and others may also try to put, of the relation between the size and density of a population and the growth of a population in relation to the standard of living. My Lords, that is all I have to say. I hope that I may have other occasions of listening to addresses as interesting and as important as those of the noble Lord, Lord Casey, and of learning by them.
3.30 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON: My Lords, many of us would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge—whom we are glad to see back in this House restored from the clutches of the doctors and, we hope, to many years of participation with us—that this question is one which ultimately can be determined only by the nations concerned. In the previous debates on this general subject, a good deal has been said from these Benches to indicate that on the side of the Christian Churches we would per-
624
haps wish to take that limitation even further. In the debate last year the right reverend Prelates, the Lord Bishop of St. Albans and the Lord Bishop of St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich, expounded the general position which was taken up by the Lambeth Conference of 1958. I would not wish to traverse again the ground which they covered so adequately. In brief, our belief then was and, I believe, still is, so strongly in the importance of personal relationships that we would wish to put the responsibility for the regulation of birth directly upon the parents, without any interference by anyone else.
If I may remind your Lordships, in Resolution 115 of the Lambeth Conference we stated our belief that
"the responsibility for deciding upon the number and frequency of children has been laid by God upon the consciences of parents everywhere and that this planning, in such ways as are mutually acceptable to husband and wife in Christian conscience, is a right and important factor in Christian family life."
To those general principles, I think we in the Church of England, by and large, would still adhere.
The noble Lord, Lord Casey, in his moving speech, has shown again his deep concern for the problems of overpopulation, and we all need to remember this as essentially a human problem. Behind the statistics lie vast numbers of persons and children who are suffering from malnutrition, of youths and adults frustrated by the inability to find land to till or jobs to perform. The Christian conscience must be deeply concerned with their needs, and there can be no shadow of doubt that those needs claim the compassion and such assistance as can be given of the whole world. In the long-term, I would agree wholeheartedly with what has already been said, that the solution of the problem lies in the education of the people so that they can make better use of the resources which they have, and so to assist them with capital, machinery and the technical skills that they can increasingly help themselves to meet their own needs.
Perhaps, too, we need to pay more attention to securing a better distribution of peoples, so that the rapid increase of population is not only centred in areas where national resources are depleted and the soil already exhausted. We need education in the responsibility

625
of parenthood and family life. I am perhaps more optimistic in these matters than the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, appeared to be, but I have no illusions about the length of time which will be needed to establish, through education and economic development, a balance between the increase of population and the increase in productivity. So we feel a need for short-term measures. Among them, the limitation of population by the regulation of birth is most certainly something which must be considered by those who are responsible for the decision in other lands.
But there is a very deep division upon the proper means of regulation. I was disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Casey, emphasised the need for research to produce a socially acceptable solution in terms of what he called a biological contraceptive which would be simple and effective. Christian opinion is deeply divided upon the moral legitimacy of birth regulation by the use of contraceptives of any kind. Whatever one's own personal views on that may be, it is to be hoped that there will be research not confined to only one method of family planning. We need more scientific inquiry into all the possible and effective methods of birth regulation which do not remove from parents the responsibility for choice, which rightly belongs to them, and to them alone.
Under the mounting pressure of hunger—the certainty that if another child is born other children will have less to eat—people resort to means of control such as infanticide and abortion, which are so cruel, so insensitive and contrary to moral law that we must rule them out of our calculations. Is sterilisation an acceptable means of controlling population? Here again, the medical evidence is conflicting, and the question whether male sterilisation is reversible seems in doubt. The ethical arguments involved are extraordinarily difficult for the Christian conscience. Are there other alternatives which can be socially acceptable and which will not offend the conscience? If so, we need to know them, and it is to that I would hope that such research as goes on may be increasingly directed. Whatever its results, there remain problems of ethics and conscience for the Christian Church. But as was said in a recent report of
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an inquiry fey a group acting on behalf of the Church Assembly Board for Social Responsibility:
"Traditional moral theology has not been called upon to consider the extent of the obligations of parenthood under the threat of over-population as we are to-day."
We who believe that the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth must be prepared for modifications of former attitudes. But it is truth in its fullness which is promised us in Holy Scripture, and what we need more and more is what scientific research can tell us about the whole truth connected with population regulation.

IMPORTS OF COTTON TEXTILES
3.38 p.m.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I should like to make a statement on behalf of my right honourable friend the Minister without Portfolio, similar to that which my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade is making in answer to questions in another place about imports of cotton textiles and other matters affecting the cotton industry. I will use his own words.
"The Government have received, through the Government of Hong Kong, an offer from the Hong Kong industry to continue up to the end of 1965 the present ceilings on their exports of cotton piece goods and made-ups for retention in this country, and, in addition, to limit yarn exports to the 1961 rate. The limitation of yarn exports is a new feature which would come into operation shortly.
"The Government are aware that the British industries concerned regard these levels as excessive, and very strong representations have been made by the Cotton Board to secure a reduction.
"On the one hand, the Government recognise the serious difficulties which a large volume of imports cause to these industries; on the other hand, the Government are bound to take account of the importance of textile exports to the economies of the Commonwealth

627
countries concerned. They believe that the proposed ceiling is reasonable in all the circumstances and they have decided that the offer should be accepted.
"This offer is subject to the acceptance of similar arrangements on the part of India and Pakistan, which I am expecting shortly.
"Certain matters remain to be settled and the arrangements would be on the basis of the present system whereby cotton textiles from Commonwealth countries enter Britain duty free. If, as a result of the negotiations in Brussels, there were to be any change in this system, the Governments and industries concerned would naturally reserve their right to reconsider the matter.
"The long-term Geneva Arrangement is due to come into operation in October next. The Government intend to accept it for the United Kingdom subject to a reservation exempting us from obligations under the Arrangement to admit increased imports.
"These measures will ensure stability over a large part of the market. Supplies from all the major low-cost Asian producers are now regulated either by voluntary means or otherwise. Imports from Japan, Formosa, China and the Eastern bloc countries are under licensing control. This will continue. Imports from Spain are limited by agreement with the Spanish industry. All imports of cotton cloth from foreign countries pay import duty. I am circulating in the OFFICIAL Report Tables of figures relating to different areas since 1959.
"Cotton textiles is a trade where exports from new sources may grow
628
very rapidly. The Government intend to keep the situation under review and are therefore introducing a system of open individual licensing. This involves the withdrawal of the present Open General Licence under which cotton piece goods, certain made-ups and yarn may be freely imported from most sources, but it does not entail new restrictions. A full announcement of the details of the licensing arrangements is being isued to-day.
"It would be unfair to those countries who are voluntarily restricting their supplies to this market if other countries took advantage of such restraint to increase their own sales. Countries with no traditional trade in cotton textiles should not count on being able to build up a new market in Britain.
"There is one further matter to which I should refer. The Cotton Industry Act, 1959, allowed three years for the submission of applications for re-equipment grant. This period ends on July 8. Firms intending to submit applications to the Cotton Board should do so without delay. They will still have another year to place their orders with machinery makers and up to July, 1964, to complete installation of the plant.
"This statement will enable firms in the industry to judge where they stand and to decide upon their future action. Much special help is being given to the industry, but the industry itself has a great deal to do."
My Lords, that is my right honourable friend's statement.
Following are the tables referred to in the statement:

STATISTICAL TABLES

TABLE 1

ANNUAL CEILINGS FOR CLOTH AND MADE-UP GOODS (CLOTH EQUIVALENT) IMPORTED FOR RETENTION

Million sq. yds.

—

Original

Current*

Hong Kong

164 (February, 1959-January, 1962)

185

India

175 (January, 1960-December, 1961)

195

Pakistan

38 (January, 1960-December, 1961)

42

377

422

* NOTE: Provision is made in the present arrangements for the issue of supplementary quotas, on certain conditions, if this is necessary to ensure that the voluntary restraint exercised by these countries does not prejudice their share of the United Kingdom market in relation to other exporting countries.

TABLE 2

IMPORTS, FOR RETENTION, FROM HONG KONG, INDIA AND PAKISTAN

Million sq. yds.

—

1959

1960

1961

1962 (1st Quarter)

Piece Goods

305

320

259

60

Made-up goods (cloth equivalent)

61

77

73

23

366

397

332

83

TABLE 3

IMPORTS OR COTTON PIECE GOODS

Million sq. yds.

—

1959

1960

1961

1961

1962

1st Quarter

2nd Quarter

3rd Quarter

4th Quarter

1st Quarter

Total imports of which for re-export

525

713

714

221

192

163

138

143

153

191

193

55

54

47

37

30

For retention of which

372

521

521

166

138

116

101

113

A. Duty free

From Hong Kong India and Pakistan

305

320

259

83

72

61

43

60

From Canada

—

10

22

5

6

5

6

3

From other Commonwealth countries and Irish Republic

4

6

11

2

3

2

3

2

Total duty-free

309

336

292

90

81

68

52

65

B. Dutiable

From countries now restrained

17

74

90

27

22

22

19

16

From Western Europe and U.S.A

44

82

95

31

24

17

22

23

Other countries

2

29

44

18

11

9

8

9

Total dutiable

63

185

229

76

57

48

49

48

* Western Europe: West Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland.

LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Earl for the statement he has just made. It is undoubtedly true that the cotton industry is in very considerable difficulties to-day, and the high hopes which the Government must have had, and which I think were also held in certain sections of this House, that the Cotton Industry Act, 1959, would create an atmosphere in which the cotton industry could reorganise itself and face its problems have not, regrettably, been fulfilled. Any form of restriction, particularly on Commonwealth countries, must be regretted, but I think in these circumstances it is necessary, and it is indeed good to see that Hong Kong has voluntarily agreed to these restrictions. I hope that we shall shortly have news that India and Pakistan will also agree to some arrangement. But the question which no doubt we must ask ourselves is what is going to be the position with this country's possible entry into the Common Market? These countries may well be excluded from the arrangements and this may well mean that instead of having these voluntary quotas within which they may work they will have fairly high tariffs acting against their imports. This is, of course, something which we must take into account, particularly as we listen to the debate this afternoon, and when we consider the recent large numbers of refugees that have made their way to Hong Kong.
I should like to ask the noble Earl this point and if he is not able to answer this afternoon perhaps he would convey these remarks to the Minister. Under the Cotton Industry Act, 1959, the period for their application for a re-equipment grant will end on July 8. I am sure the Minister would agree that there is considerable uncertainty and lack of confidence within the industry and very few firms have taken the opportunity of making applications for re-equipment. I wonder therefore whether the noble Earl would consider the extension for, say, twelve months in which cotton industry firms could make application for this re-equipment grant so that we can first of all see the effect of the measures which have been announced this afternoon and also take into account what may arise if the Government is successful in its negotiations in Brussels.
LORD REA: My Lords, I should like also to thank the noble Earl for this Statement and to ask him just one thing. I think he said that Her Majesty's Government have received an offer from the Government of Hong Kong. Could he tell us whether that was a voluntary offer by the Hong Kong Government or whether pressure was exerted from this country or some other country? After all Hong Kong is a very grave responsibility of ours and with its population trouble I am sure none of us would like to see its employment dropping in any sense. I wonder how it is that Hong Kong, being in the rather difficult situation it is, are making a voluntary offer to reduce its exports to this country.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I will very briefly reply to those points. I am glad that your Lordships welcome this Statement. There will, of course, be increased competition from European textiles in the British market if we join the European Economic Community and, of course, increased scope for British exports. It is not possible to say what will be the outcome of the negotiations on Commonwealth Asian textiles. I will bring to the notice of my right honourable friend the request that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, made that there should be an extension of date for the re-equipment grants, but I should not like to comment on that at all. I have just spoken fully about applications for re-equipment grants in this Statement. With regard to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, I would not be able to say at this juncture what pressure, if any, brought about this offer from Hong Kong. I would not like to go any further than that.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down I should like strongly to support what the noble Lord, Lord Rea, has said. As a very frequent visitor to Hong Kong over a great many years I have been astonished at the growth of that area. It is hard to realise, sitting here, that they are within 30 miles of the edge of a volcano, yet they carry on regardless and most courageously. I do not think we should in any way embarras them if we can avoid doing so. I do not know what has been done in the way of consultation but I rise only to say that as an enormous admirer

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of Hong Kong I hope we are not putting undue pressure on them.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I just say to the noble Earl that in Hong Kong it is not a question of development in textiles. What they want is diversification of their industry.

POPULATION PRESSURE IN ASIA
3.48 p.m.
Debate resumed.
THE EARL OF LYTTON: My Lords, being not entirely familiar with the procedure of your Lordships' House I thought that in the last few minutes there had been a declaration and that it had occurred just before I was due to bat. I think we go on now with the debate on birth control, and I should like to offer my respectful congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Casey, whom I cannot directly address owing to the position of my microphone but who, with his resounding voice, certainly raised the subject above the furtive level.
I want to begin by saying that I recognise the problem which he has put and sympathise with the Government to whom he has put it to-day. I came in feeling, as other noble Lords have expressed it, that we were perhaps out of order in addressing ourselves to a subject concerning the peoples of Asia, but I remember that the noble Lord in his speech said most emphatically that his friends in India, I believe Mr. Nehru and others, had been pressing for this matter to be examined in the United States, and therefore from the point of view of people at the top it seems quite fitting that it should have been done. However, I share the misgivings of other noble Lords who have implied that we are telling other people to limit their population. I have a strong feeling that we, and even the leaders in India, might find ourselves in the position of certain Victorians in this country when they said to themselves quietly over the port, "What can we do to prevent the lower orders breeding so rapidly like rabbits?"; and that is the kind of expression I have heard. We have in this country and in Europe, so far as I can make out, multiplied our population in the last 250 years about ten-fold, and
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our wealth also ten-fold. But for the increase in the population it would not have been possible to raise that wealth. It seems to me that we are preaching that others should operate in a different order. What seems to have happened with us was that we multiplied in poverty, we organised our power and resources in intelligence and made people better off and then they had smaller families. That was the order in which it occurred.
I share the misgivings with regard to the speed at which this pill, even if it is desirable, can be discovered. It does not exist, and twenty years seems a short time for the experiment to take place. Then these people have to be taught how to manage it, how to distinguish between one pill and another. I have lived amongst primitive peoples; there is the heat and the flies, the endemic malaria and the dysentry, their needs, which are so great, and the squalor and burden of life. It seems to me that if we take twenty, fifty, sixty, a hundred years as the time by which the increase can be halted we are being exceedingly optimistic.
Meantime people are alive to-day and people will come into being regardless of what happens. Even if we are successful with the pill beyond our dreams—those who have dreams about it—people will come in and exist. As regards numbers, I have no objection to Indians multiplying exceedingly; I like Indians; I like Africans. It seems to me we have not made the point in this debate that it is not absolute numbers or absolute over-population which is in question; it is the relationship between people, food, power. These things are interrelated. It does not matter if the coloured peoples of this world come to number a hundred to every white man. That does not worry me in the slightest, and it is most likely to happen. What is important is the relationship between the resources on earth and the people. It has been said by everybody, I think, who described it that we have had a population explosion, and an explosion is something which comes and rises to a peak and then dies away. I do not believe anybody expects that the rate of increase everywhere will go on throughout the world. If it does, as the United Nations experts have predicted, in 600 years there

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will be a square metre per person. It is not expected, even if there is no such pill.
Meanwhile, people are alive, and some time or other I hope we may have a debate in which a less one-sided study of the problem should be embarked upon. The earth has resources in space; there are under-populated areas. I read only a day or two ago of the insoluble problem of American farm surpluses, in spite of dust bowls 50 million acres in extent, and of thousands of millions of dollars spent in holding surplus wheat while people starve elsewhere. There are unpopulated and under-populated areas in America, Canada, Brazil, Borneo, New Guinea and elsewhere, almost all over the world. Movements of people can take place in emergency, and they do. That is one of the things that might be done. The squandering of the earth's resources in erosion, as I have seen in Africa and America, can be stopped; it can be reversed.
There is also power. I might call attention to a book by my right honourable friend and kinsman, Mr. Philip Noel-Baker, a book which won him the Nobel Peace Prize. On pages 96 and 116 of that book he dwells upon the new sources of power which are beyond any dreams we have ever had. For example, deuterium in the oceans, if it can be harnessed other than in an explosive context, is available in such abundance to provide for 1,000 million years power many times greater than we use at present. This is the threshold of new things at which we stand. As regards the application of that power, he quotes an English authority as saying it would be reasonable to expect that sea water could be distilled for the irrigation of Australia at 5s. per million gallons. An American calculates that at present standards, with such irrigation, Australia could hold a population of 200 million. On Indian standards that would be about 1.600 million, or half the population of the world as it is to-day. I hope that sometime this problem of population will be considered in its balanced context, as, I submit, it has not been to-day. I should like to say two things as regards the question of the limiting of families. First, in going about among primitive peoples one cannot help but be exceedingly sorry and wish for a change in the
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status of women and their children. In many primitive countries they are nothing much better than slaves, and it is an improvement of their status which is required. A family of more sensible size would then come about. Instead of marrying at ten, it should be eighteen. There is no room in Africa, for instance, for the spinster. I have female relatives, getting on in years, who, like Dorcas, are full of good works. They have no families, but they have a place. There is no such place for spinsters in many parts of the world. Then there is the question of the spacing of children.
May I give an illustration of a tribe in Africa where this limitation is practised? One way, which would be, I think, approved by everybody in this House, is used by the Borana, who have tribal customs whereby the husband may have no intercourse with his wife during the weaning of her children, which lasts for two years. That means that there must be a space of three years between the wife's children. There is no intercourse between unmarried people, and any man who seduces an unmarried girl is liable, or was until after occupation by other empires, to punishment, even the punishment of death. There were three crimes which warranted the death penalty in this tribe: murder, intercourse with unmarried girls, and intercourse with the wife who was weaning her baby. These habits of abstinence are not peculiar to highly refined Christians; they are found everywhere, and the things we have done in Africa which are not so good have damaged the systems which held the tribes together. It is true that in some other tribes different customs prevail for which we should not care so much, or at least some people would not, but they resemble the contraceptive methods in use in this country.
I should like to say how much I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, said about the risks of this pill. There is one thing only in connection with it that I should like to say—namely, that it seems to me that, if it were developed, one might produce a solution welcome to a great many people other than herself. Even then, according to what she says and what I have heard, there is this bombardment and interference with the process of ovulation. It sounds, on the face of it, the wrong line

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to pursue as a scientific study, in view of the fact that the rhythm has its periods of low fertility which perhaps, with the aid of drugs or more scientific knowledge, could be more accurately ascertained than it is at present. I do not believe that the use of relative abstinence or contraceptives can be practised without discipline and education. The only way I differ from the noble Baroness is that I think education cannot come in utter squalor; you must have wealth first.
Therefore I would say that our contribution to the East is the contribution that the wealthy must bestow on the less wealthy by means of trade and capital investment. I do not agree with those who say that it is entirely the affair of these countries. I am doubtful whether that can be proved, established practically, at any time. We in this country have experienced the clamour for fair shares between those who have less and those who have much. I feel certain that this clamour is going to be transposed into the field between struggling Asia and the wealthy West; and that unless help on a massive scale is forthcoming—by "massive scale" I mean something like sacrificing half of our progress in the next 25 years, involving all the countries of the West—I do not think we can justify ourselves in preaching to them doctrines of birth control. They come asking us for capital, for bread, and we give them a pill. That does not seem to be right.
4.4 p.m.
LORD BRAIN: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Casey, has said, the population problem is second only to the problem of disarmament in urgency and in the extent and importance of its implications, and in some respects it is more complex. Although as President of the Family Planning Association I am particularly concerned with one method of dealing with it, it is in my view essential to look at all the aspects of the problem; and if this debate does no more than draw more attention to a crisis in human affairs which is going to determine the future course of civilisation, it will serve a useful purpose. But I hope it will do more than that, and that Her Majesty's Government may be persuaded that they have some
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responsibility in this matter and should take some action.
As we have heard, the population of the world is now increasing more rapidly than ever before. Any estimate is necessarily to some extent speculative, but it is as likely to be too low as too high. At present, the world's population increases at the rate of about 50 million people a year—that is to say, since this debate began 5,000 additional mouths to feed have been added to it. On a minimum estimate made in a United Nations study, the present world population of about 3,000 million is likely to be about 6,000 million in the year 2,000. Why is this happening? As we have heard, it is because the great advances which have been made in preventive medicine are saving millions of lives, and not only is the expectation of life prolonged but millions who would have died survive to have children. We must face the fact that, whatever can be done, much of this increase in population is inevitable, simply because, owing to the spread of preventive medicine, developing countries tend to have a high proportion of children and young people in their populations, and even if these young people themselves have only small families such populations will still increase substantially.
The primary problem, clearly, is to feed this growing mass of people, and since the need for birth control is primarily related to the need to avert starvation and disease I must give some consideration to the food problem. The main facts are substantially agreed by all authorities. The first is that we do not start from scratch. We have to cater for this expanding population at a time when a large proportion of people already alive are getting too little to eat. Dr. Norman Wright, Deputy Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, said to the British Association in 1960:
"Even if food production did continue to keep pace with population, the present production figures are themselves related to diets which are so deficient as to lead to the undernutrition or malnutrition of a large proportion of the world's population."
It is not easy to discover accurately how large this proportion is, but it is so large that a considerable error one way or the other would make little difference.

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Dr. Sukhatme, of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, said last year that
"between one-third to one-half of the world's people suffer from under-nutrition or malnutrition."
Under-nutrition is not getting enough to eat, and malnutrition is, in addition, getting such an ill-balanced diet as to lead to disease and physical inefficiency. These are statistical calculations, but they stand for men, women and children; and one can never utter that abstract word "malnutrition" in the same way again after having visited villages and hospitals in the developing countries and seen it in terms of human misery and disease. It would be a tough assignment to raise the standard of living of those already alive without having, as we do, to feed 100 more people a minute.
Sukhatme calculates that
"should population grow according to the United Nations medium forecast the world's total food supplies would have to be doubled by 1980 and trebled by the turn of the century in order to provide a reasonably adequate level of nutrition for the peoples of the world."
What is the prospect that this can be done? Here let me quote an agricultural expert, Professor H. D. Kay:
"If the amounts of home-grown plus imported food supplies are rising at all in the underdeveloped countries, they are rising at a rate well below the net rate of population increases."
While the export of surplus food from one country to another is obviously extremely valuable, it hardly touches the essential problem. To quote Professor Kay again:
"The only practical short-to-medium range solution to the hunger problem for the majority of the underfed countries is greatly to increase human food production from their own acreage."
That means, of course, education and a change in cultural traditions as well as technical aids to agriculture and better roads, all of which take time. Professor W. A. Lewis, speaking in the same symposium, said that India will not be able to grow enough food for her own population but
"will have to import more and more food for as far ahead as we can see, and pay for it by exporting manufactures."
If that is true, India's future food supply depends upon industrialisation, which is very difficult for a country already struggling to make its food supplies catch
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up with its population. The Indian Ministry of Health has published a Report of its Health Survey and Planning Committee, which says:
"It will be seen that at the present rate of growth, at the end of 25 years the population increase would be of the order of 102 per cent. as against 13·5 per cent. increase in income. Even with a 50 per cent. reduction in rate of population growth between 1966 and 1981 the increase in income will still not catch up with the increase in population."
That, my Lords, is an outline of the world's food problem. Food production is clearly the first and most urgent need, but I cannot share the optimism of those who say that we need not bother to restrict population growth as well. Let me quote again from Professor Kay. In his view
"It is essential to combine increasing food production with a diminishing birth rate".
Let me also complete my quotation from the Report of the Indian Ministry of Health:
"The Family Planning Programme has rightly come to occupy the key position in the Five-Year Health Plans."
It is true that birth control implies other things, education and acceptability especially. But the fact that some remote and primitive regions are not yet ready for it does not mean that it is not desperately needed elsewhere, especially in the towns. In Singapore, for example, the average birth rate is 44 per 1,000, compared with 16 in the United Kingdom. As the population is one million, that means 44,000 births a year. The Government of Singapore not only gives grants to the Family Planning Association there, but it has conducted its own campaign to give the subject the maximum publicity.
But, my Lords, the population question is not solely a matter of food for the body. Unless population growth is controlled, millions of people will continue to live in physical conditions in which the full development of man's spiritual nature, and even his education, are impossible. I agree heartily with the noble Baroness when she stresses the importance of education as a factor. But how, in the housing conditions of a seething and squalid Asian city, is a child to do its homework? Why, it may be asked, should we do anything? Some political and economic reasons have already been mentioned which I shall not

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go over again, but I would mention one which particularly concerns me, and which must surely concern all of us: population conditions in Asia breed epidemics which air travel brings it to this country in 24 hours. John Donne said: "No man is an island". Nor is any country, paradoxically not even this one. Does it need smallpox to prove that
"any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankinde?"
What, then, can we do? Let me begin by emphasising a point which noble Lords have already made as to what we ought not to do, and I am sure that any attempt to dictate population from outside is very rightly resented. What any country does about its population is primarily its own concern. Help is likely to be accepted only when it is asked for. But right action presupposes knowledge, knowledge in many fields, and that knowledge is still very largely lacking. Here I do not think we can separate our policy at home from our attitude to the developing Commonwealth countries. We are perhaps hardly likely to do for them what we are unwilling to do for ourselves. And surely it cannot be right that in this country the State should take no interest in birth control. Contraception has entered a phase of rapid advance. It is a subject of the greatest social and personal importance, increasingly related to physiology and medicine, and we have to depend for research upon a small private fund and the pharmaceutical industry, and to rely for the clinical testing of these new and powerful biochemical agents upon a voluntary association to which the State contributes neither guidance nor money.
I am very glad that the noble Lady raised the question about the pill, and particularly that she quoted the Lancet article. This is not the place to discuss these complicated technical questions, but there are three things I would say. The first is that all the information which the Lancet article contained was known to the Association before it expressed the view that the pill was safe to use under the conditions which it laid down. And of course, we did not take that step without obtaining the best advice we could. We have an Advisory Medical Council whose membership includes two endocrinologists and several distinguished gynæcologists, and I can
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confirm that it had the advantage of discussing the whole question with Sir Charles Dodds. The second point is this. Surely the best way to exclude long-term ill-effects is to keep a careful watch for any short-term reactions, and this is being done.
My third comment is that in this new field, where much is still unknown, the course of events has imposed on the Family Planning Association a great responsibility. Is it not time that the State shared it? Is it not time that Her Majesty's Government, in the interests equally of this country and of those abroad who look to us for guidance, actively encouraged research into human fertility, with all its biological, physiological, medical and social implications? I particularly welcome the words of the right reverend Prelate, and I share his hope that such research may be conducted on the widest possible lines. The potentialities of human science at this time are so great that it may well be that the future will hold methods of contraception which will in fact prove morally acceptable.
So I would urge the Government to hold a watching brief on the clinical tests of all contraceptives, or, better still, to sponsor such tests themselves. And is it not time that they gave a lead to the World Health Organisation, which can hardly much longer shut its eyes to the fact that population is a major factor in world health? All I ask is that Her Majesty's Government should encourage the search for knowledge, which should be available to all countries that want it; and that, surely, is the answer to any possible charges of genocide. The urgency of the problem, my Lords, is of our own making. We who are of the Western tradition have carried hygiene, preventive medicine, and curative drugs all over the world, and made the growth of population inevitable. Should we not now, in the same spirit of humanity, use all the resources of science to avert the reproach that we have freed men from disease only to let them die of hunger?
4.21 p.m.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I think it is particularly fortunate that the noble Lord, Lord Casey, in framing his Motion did so in such words that this debate has not been confined solely to the ques-

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tion of family planning or contraception. The actual wording, as your Lordships will remember, is:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government … what they propose to do to stimulate scientific research in the United Kingdom towards a socially acceptable solution of the problem".
That gives a very wide field to cover, and several noble Lords have taken full advantage of it; in particular, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, with whom I found myself in very strong agreement.
It surely must be a confession of complete failure on the part of our civilisation and the Western way of life if in fact we admit that we want fewer people in this world. Setting aside all the religious aspects of the question, what is the point of having people born into this world? If a man produces more than he consumes, the world must be, materially at least, a better place. It is only if he consumes more than he produces that the world is poorer. If a man gives greater happiness than he creates unhappiness, the world must be a happier place, and therefore a better place, the more people there are in the world. So there can be no justification, surely, for our saying; "Let us have a world where there are fewer people rather than more people". We can say that only if at the same time we are saying: "We are denying, or our way of life is denying, to the people who are going to be born into this world the possibility of contributing something, whether it is material or whether it is on a somewhat higher plane".
So I think we must direct our thoughts in this problem, at any rate, as a long-term project, not towards restricting the number of people who are born but rather towards ensuring that, no matter in what part of the world they are born, they have the full potentialities and possibilities that we have in this country and, on the whole, in this Continent. That does not mean to say that we should turn our backs entirely on any form of family planning or even on any form of contraception. It is, unfortunately, true that at this stage we are out of step, and, as I understood it, that was one of the major points of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. We have, now reached a stage where population is increasing faster than the possibilities
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to create wealth and to lead a happy life. So it may well be that as a temporary step we must do research into, and make possible for others, some form of restriction of birth. But I am very sure that what several noble Lords have said is perfectly right: that from the purely practical and political point of view, for us to act in any way which might be thought to be, or could be represented as, pushing our ideas of family limitation upon the countries of Asia while not practising it in our own country and in Europe, would be an extremely unwise thing for us to do.
By all means, let us do research; let us find out the best ways; and let us make the results of that research available to others. But, again—and I am quoting the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge—the decision must be left to the country itself as to whether or not it is going to make use of that knowledge. The worst of all things would be if, having made our investigations, having continued our research into how this family limitation should be done, we then said: "We have achieved our purpose, and we need do no more about it at all". We are only just beginning. That is only a temporary expedient, to overcome the immediate and very serious problem.
From then on, what are the things that we must do? As the noble Lord, Lord Brain, said, food is one of the fundamental requirements. Undoubtedly more food must be produced. I am not so pessimistic as some about that. The potentialities of the world as a whole are almost limitless. One has only to fly over such places as Brazil, the Amazon valley, to see hundreds of thousands of square miles of potentially fertile soil, which could grow food. The soil is there. The people are somewhere. But it cannot be done easily, and it cannot be done as we are attempting to do it at the present time. It will mean a complete re-thinking and a complete abandonment of many of our existing ideas.
There, again, I think that the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, was very right when he drew the analogy of our Victorian fathers, pointing to the poorer classes and their proliferation. The answer to that problem was not birth control. In fact, the answer was—coupled with

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education, which probably comes first—a redistribution of wealth, so that more of what was produced was spread among the people who formerly had less. We have gone a long way in this country—not far enough, but we have gone far. But when we look at the world as a whole we have scarcely started at all. Any solution that may be achieved in this matter, can come only if the rich countries of the world—and we are one of them—are prepared not only to practise voluntary charity in the world as a whole, as our Victorian parents and grandparents did and as, to some extent, we are doing now, but to submit ourselves to the international Welfare State, rather than the national Welfare State. Without that there can be no real solution to this problem.
The noble Lord, Lord Milverton, would undoubtedly say that this is just starry-eyed idealism and will get us nowhere. I am not such a disbeliever in idealism. I think it is something that we should aim at; that we should know, ourselves. But we should not "kid" ourselves into thinking that, just because we see the ideal, it will automatically arrive without any effort. We must be practical in achieving our ideals; but do not let us throw our ideals away because we are so proud of being practical men of business.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I interrupt the noble Lord for a moment to point out that I understand the essence of an ideal is that it should be unattainable.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I will not attempt to enter into any argument with the noble Lord on that line, philosophical or otherwise, but I must say that, although I myself do not have very great expectation of achieving any of my ideals, I think they are attainable; and I think the same is true in our more corporate and social existence as a society—I hope, a civilised society.
However, to come back to the more practical position of what we can do now, and what, in the terms of the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Casey, Her Majesty's Government can do now, I would suggest that there is one specific thing which could be done at the present time, and that is for Her Majesty's Government to sponsor, by making funds available, at some suitable
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place of learning in this country, something which might be called an institute of demographic research. They have such a thing at Harvard, which is doing very useful work indeed. In this country we have many individual departments doing research work into ecological, nutritional, economic and public health problems; but there is nothing which ties those things together, co-ordinates them and helps them direct the form of research which should take place, or which utilises the results of such research as has already taken place.
There are many of them, clearly, which deal with the technical agricultural problems which are involved, and much work of that kind is already going on; but they should also carry out a far more detailed and knowledgeable study than we have at the present time of systems of land ownership, share cropping, of the rôle of the moneylender in underdeveloped areas and the various other very important but detailed matters which anyone who has any knowledge at all of the underdeveloped areas to-day knows play such a very important part in proper utilisation of the soil and the proper growing of crops. That is one of the items which should be studied with far more intensity than it is at present.
There is the whole question of nutrition, not purely from the point of view of the building up of the body but from that of the effect of nutrition on the reproductive system: whether in fact an excess of carbohydrate does, as some people assert, tend to a higher reproduction rate, or whether a high protein diet leads to rather smaller families. Matters of that sort should be studied. The question of leisure in such countries as we are talking about now cannot be ignored, either. What is the effect of leisure of a cultural kind upon reproduction? I believe, and I think that most people who have had experience of such countries would agree, that, on the whole, the birth rate tends to drop the more leisure people have of a cultural kind. What the relationship is, I do not know. It may be entirely fortuitous, but it may be an important factor in helping to solve this problem.
Of course, at the basis of it all is the genuine education of all the people involved: simply learning to read and write, learning how to understand what

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possibilities and potentialities the outside world offers, and learning as well the purely technical matters of health, hygiene, agricultural techniques and all the rest of it. That, my Lords, I believe to be a small but very definite step forward that could be taken by Her Majesty's Government, if they were so minded, at the present time.
I know that it is difficult, as things are to-day; and, having listened to the debate on Government Assistance to Universities and to the Government's views on the shortage of the money we now have to spend on even our own education, I realise it may be a hopeless task to try to persuade the Government that they should make available funds for the setting up of some now institution; but if on this issue we are in any way serious, if we are in any way anxious to see our ideals become, even in small measure, a practical reality, we must make the sacrifice of a few million pounds from this great and rich country to start studies of this kind. They will not be of benefit immediately, perhaps, to ourselves, but they will be of benefit to so many people in so many parts of the world who are completely incapable, in this respect at least, of helping themselves. Although we may not as a result of this debate receive from the noble Duke an assurance that something of this sort will be done, I hope we shall at least be given the assurance that serious thought will be given to co-ordinating such research and knowledge as there is; to deciding the priorities of fresh research; and, above all, to doing ever more research on these matters.
4.37 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Casey, for initiating a debate on a subject which affects, or could affect, so many millions of our fellow human beings. Whether or not we agree with his views—and, on the whole, his views have not been generally accepted—we must all applaud his sincerity; and I, at any rate, envy him his delivery, from which I think a good many of us in this House could draw considerable profit. I should like to endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Walston has said, and I would single out three points that he
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made simply to repeat them to the House in view of their great importance.
There was the stress he laid upon his idea of a demographic institute; his stress of an international Welfare State; and, above all, his insistence that human life is good, that a large population is better than a small one. There, I side with him absolutely. To me, a human being is someone of infinite value, and I hope that humanists can accept that along with Christians. I hope that no one will disagree with the view that it is better to have 600 million human beings somewhere rather than 300 million if the quality of the life is at any rate no worse. I hope that that, at least, can be accepted, because one or two things were said earlier which implied that this growth of population was in itself bad, and that every extra 5,000 people was a source of calamity, something to make one's flesh creep. I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Brain, although he may not have meant it, implied that we ought to be discouraged to hear that 5,000 children will have been born this afternoon. Personally, I am delighted to hear it, and I only hope that he has underestimated his figures.
LORD BRAIN: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Earl? I do not feel that way at all. I think that population growth is good, provided that it does not in itself have a stultifying effect on the spiritual and cultural growth of the increased number.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: I am glad the noble Lord puts it that way. I am afraid he gave us that calculation in a manner which made it seem that the intention was to make our flesh creep. For instance, he did not give us the figures for the enormous amount of food which will have been produced at the same time. He tended, I thought, to give us only the bad side, or what seemed the bad side. Now I realise that he did not intend to convey that impression at all.
I think it is extremely good, if I may say so, for the noble Duke, the Duke of Devonshire, to reply to this debate. It must be the first time he has ever missed the Derby. I assume that he was taken there in his cradle, and will be finally taken there, so to speak, many years after I have passed on, in his hearse. I think it is an example of his public spirit that he has been with us to-day. I

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am told that this is the first time the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has ever attended the Derby, and the first time the noble Duke has not. It seems to me it needed only that in each case to produce a perfectly rounded personality, and I am glad that that result has been accomplished to-day. I think it was some years ago that Lord Randolph Churchill said that the upper classes are united with the working classes in their love of horse-racing and their love of immorality. This was altered, by the time it reached the Press, to "a love of horse-racing and a love of morality"; and it is, of course, in that latter sense that I associate the noble Duke with the utterance of Lord Randolph Churchill. At any rate, a Derby which is deprived of the services of Lester Piggott and of the Duke of Devonshire on the same day seems to me a very unsatisfactory affair. I gather that they got along without them, but it cannot have been the same thing at all.
My Lords, I am not sure why I am speaking, except that it might be misunderstood, so to speak, to be a birth control debate (or something which, heavily disguised, would be generally understood to be a birth control debate) without any utterance from someone who was last year referred to as a "noble Cardinal", which was a bit of sarcasm by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara. I did raise the question on Monday whether it was desirable that I should speak; and I was pleased afterwards to hear somebody say that he had spoken for 35 minutes less than usual. I will try to follow the same rule to-day. I need not perhaps reaffirm the Roman Catholic attitude to artificial birth control. We do believe—not just because we are told to, but those of us who do try to think it out do believe as a result of our own cogitations—that enormous harm must result from a widespread use of contraceptives. I only touch on this in passing, but there is one side of it which I submit, in all seriousness, must cause anxiety to-day.
The question is sometimes raised whether our national morals are worse than they used to be. I do not know when they were supposed to be good, but it is sometimes suggested that they are now worse than they were. Particularly it is suggested that the morals
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of the young are worse than at some earlier time. I do not take that view at all. I do not believe that there is any evidence of that, although I am not saying that the contrary can be proved. But I think it is impossible to deny that, whereas there is some advance in our national morals, in that there is much greater concern for those in distress who do not belong to our immediate circle—and that is a great advance—on the other side, sexual morals are in many respects more lax; and in particular it must be conceded that, so far as one can possibly judge, pre-marital intercourse is much commoner than it was.
The proportion of girls who are pregnant when they are married appears to be higher than it has been in past years. I think that that must be said on the debit side, though I am not saying that, on balance, our morals as a nation, or the morals of young people, are worse. I am certainly not saying that girls are the main delinquents in this matter. If they are in "the family way" far more oftener, then it is the boys who put them there; and I think that the men must take more than half the blame. That seems to me to be a fact. I would challenge anyone to deny that the use of contraceptives has increased with pre-marital intercourse. It might of course be said that if contraceptives were 100 per cent. perfect, these particular results of pregnancy would not occur; but as they are nothing like perfect, and for other reasons, these results do occur. And I link that situation and the development of that kind of morality in far too many cases with the philosophy that regards sex as fun, without any responsibilities. It is a philosophy that treats sex as something that is purely a matter of enjoyment, without dedication or community of ideal. But I say that in passing: the Roman Catholic attitude to artificial birth control is well known.
I was deeply struck, if I may say so with respect, not only by the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of London but also by the spirit in which he showed his clear desire to say no word that could be painful to any Christian Communion, and, at the same time, to move the subject forward. When we had a debate last year—and this is the only point from my own

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remarks which I wish to quote—I mentioned something which had been said by the late Pope, where he pointed out that regulating births is compatible with God's law. In other words, he pointed out that planning through the regulation of births, as distinct from planning through the use of artificial birth control, is acceptable to Roman Catholics. Unless I am much mistaken, the right reverend Prelate, and other speakers, were bearing that position in mind when they were talking about the kind of research that could be socially acceptable; and possibly when the noble Lord, Lord Casey, replies, he may find it possible to move a little in that direction himself. I hope that that was also, perhaps, in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Brain.
I do not want to say more; but I myself should be ready, simply as an individual Roman Catholic not at all expert in these technicalities, to suppose that many of us in my Communion have not taken sufficient interest in the kind of research which would be acceptable from our point of view; and, if that is so, I think we must show greater interest in the future. Naturally, that leaves the matter vague. How could I do otherwise? I think the noble Lord, Lord Brain, used the expression "research which would be generally acceptable"; but, at any rate, if lines of research can be mapped out which are acceptable to all the great Christian Communions, then, of course, that would be an advantage. But I do not want to say anything which would seem to whittle down the well-known view of my own Church about artificial birth control.
Now, to me, there were two very striking speeches, among others, which left a big imprint on my own mind, apart from those I have already mentioned. One was delivered by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, from whom we hear all too seldom. He comes and speaks without any notes, and sets us all an example. I do not know why he does not come oftener, except that he seems to travel the wild places of the world, and perhaps is not close at hand. But we certainly all enjoyed his speech enormously. My noble friend Lady Summerskill hit very hard in a way which I hope made a great impact, as
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I believe it did, without causing personal pain to the noble Lord, Lord Casey. I hope he will feel influenced by what she said, because in my opinion she demolished a great deal of what I thought was in his mind; though it may be that she demolished something that was not in his mind, or, if it was in his mind, it had, so to speak, disappeared since last year. If that is so, there again we are all moving forward together.
I recall that, speaking last year on the subject of food and population, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, who seemed, I think, dispassionate, and certainly had access to greater information than I myself had, or most of us had, took a rather definite stand on the general comparison. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Casey, will not mind my reminding him of what the noble Viscount said; it is not a personal point. Lord Hailsham said OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 232, col. 1126]:
"… contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Casey, said but as correctly stated by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, the best view appears to be that food production is also increasing, and increasing somewhat faster than the population of the world."
This afternoon the noble Lord, Lord Casey, did not argue the contrary. So that is the general position: that food production as a whole is increasing faster.
But, of course, we are all well aware that a lot of it is not in the places where it could be most valuable, and many of us would feel that Mr. Ritchie Calder, who is himself a supporter of birth control, has summed it up quite fairly. Because in his recent book, The Commonsense about a Starving World, he says that the problem of distribution defeats the present system; and he indicts the world for its failure to distribute the food which exists, and for its failure to produce much more. Mr. Ritchie Calder quotes United Nations authorities (I am not going to do much quoting because that can be so very selective) and says:
"The existing land resources with the application of the best existing methods could feed at least 16,000 million people"
that would be eventually—
"against our 3,000 million in the world to-day".
But the writer points out that the prospect of having a quarter of that total

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by 1980 is frightening. I quote 16,000 million only to show that, however far we look ahead, someone like Mr. Calder, who is extremely keen on birth control, sets no practical limit to the supply of food that could be forthcoming. But he says—and I think the thought is common to all of us—that we have the tremendous duty of increasing the existing food supply of the world, either by greater efficiency in the use of existing methods or by the development of new ones. As I say, I suppose that we are all at one in that great objective.
No one seems to have challenged the statement of the noble Baroness (if I may say so, from his demeanour, the noble Lord, Lord Casey, is not likely to challenge it when he replies), that it is still a completely open question whether this oral pill will do grave harm or not. We do not know.
LORD CASEY: My Lords, I did not advocate the oral pill.
LORD BRAIN: My Lords, to put it fairly, there is no evidence at the moment, and we cannot foresee the unforeseeable; but the pill has been used for six years without any discoverable ill-effects.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: As the noble Baroness said, the Lancet has offered the opinion that it will be 20 years before it will be safe for use. On the strength of these statements, I question whether there is a single noble Lord who would wish his wife to use it. That seems, from this afternoon's debate, to be the accepted position. It would be clearly monstrous to organise research and to use Indians as guinea pigs, as I gather they have been used in producing this pill. The noble Lord shakes his head, but the noble Baroness says that they have been used, and I say that it would be monstrous to continue using people for such experiments whether they are Indians or anybody else. Obviously, there are going to be great difficulties in the researches involved. I do not want to end on that note, however. We seem to have retreated from the idea that there is some easy solution in the oral pill. I think sthat every noble Lord must be conscious of a guilty feeling when these figures are brought out. We must ask ourselves how it would look from outside and how it would look
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above, with all this food and the tremendous possibility of increasing it, yet with so many people near the starvation line.
If I end on a rather sombre note, it will not do us any harm, if it braces us and strengthens us for the task ahead. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Casey, has been pointing in the right direction. But I hope that everybody who cares for the future of the world will agree that socially acceptable research, research acceptable on moral grounds to the great majority of the civilised world, is something which should continue. I do not think that the noble Lord has had much support this afternoon, but the fact that he has enabled us to offer our views may be welcome to him, and perhaps next year his progress towards us will be more rapid than it has been in the twelve months that have elapsed.
4.55 p.m.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, before the noble Duke replies, I should like to address a few words to your Lordships, not about pills or "'guinea pigs" but about wars. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Casey, has put his finger here on a problem of vital world importance. I had the experience of service at home and abroad which goes back a long way, and I can remember the war in the Mediterranean between the Turks and the Italians, which was provoked by over-population. Later on I was in the Far East, where, it so happens, most of my service was passed, when Japan annexed Korea. That basically was again a question of over-population. I was then quite a young Secretary at the Embassy at Tokyo, and I remember saying to my Japanese friends, of whom there were and still are, many: "You've been and gone and done it. You used to be an island Power, just as we are. Now you have deliberately expanded on to the Continent and you are going to be a Continental Power with all the results."
That is all past and gone long ago, but the problem remains; and throughout the years this question of overpopulation has been almost a nightmare to me, especially in the Far East. I remember talking to the late Lord Reading, our excellent and beloved friend, when he was going to an International Conference at Bageo. I told him: "It is

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high time somebody of your calibre got up and talked a little about this ever-threatening danger of over-population". I believe that he did. Look at Japan now. It is at the bursting point. What are we to do? I suppose that industrialisation is one answer; otherwise, expansion. I do not profess to know the answer to this problem of the growth of population in these countries which (if I may use the word) breed very rapidly.
There has been a great deal of talk this afternoon, interesting and illuminating, about all sorts of things. But to my mind we come back to the words used by the noble Lord in his Motion:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government if they have considered the consequences of the present rate of population growth in Asia, and in Commonwealth countries in Asia in particular …"
It so happens that I spent about half of my career in the Far East and became labelled as a "Far Eastern Expert". Heaven forbid that I should be considered on anything. But as a Far Eastern expert—I ask you! But the reason I have risen to speak now is that I have seen this working in the nature of an explosion which comes automatically. The population in Japan is over-spilling, in spite of all the things they do. Their surplus cannot go to Canada or Australia, because of the White policy there; and the people in Singapore do not like them. I do not know what the answer it. No doubt there is birth control, but if you can succeed in putting birth control over in Japan, God bless you. I should be surprised.
My Lords, I do not believe that the public in this country attach a fraction of the importance they ought to do to the Far East. Their thoughts are on Berlin, and never on what is going on at the other end of the world. Believe me, it is far bigger than what is going on in Europe. It does not follow that the Russians are the people to be afraid of, in the near or in the ultimate future. However, that is as may be. I should like to join with other noble Lords in expressing my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Casey, for raising this question of first-class importance. I am sure that the whole House owes him a debt of gratitude for doing so.
5.0 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (THE,lb/> DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE): My Lords, I rise to reply to this debate with considerable diffidence, because I am conscious that I have very limited qualifications for answering many of the problems that have been raised. I should like to say at once how much I appreciate the generous tribute paid to me by the noble Earl, Lord Longford. While I am afraid that my absence from the Derby will be noted only from your Lordships' House, it will no doubt be a very famous Derby, in that during the course of it the race was deprived of six of the contestants; and I am sure that in the future more will be heard of this Derby than my absence from it. I should like to say, also, at the outset how pleased we were to see the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, back again, and to have a contribution from him to the debate.
I join With other noble Lords and noble Ladies who have taken part in this debate in saying a warm word of thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Casey, for introducing the Motion. I can assure him that any possible regret on my part at missing the horse race to-day has been more than adequately compensated for by listening to his speech, and, indeed, those of other noble Lords. I have not had very great experience of your Lordships' House, but I consider the debate this afternoon to be one of the highest-level debates to which it has been my privilege and good fortune to listen.
The noble Lord, Lord Casey, gave us a full and thoughtful review of the problem; and, if I may say so with respect to him, it was very much in keeping with his contribution to the similar debate which was held in your Lordships' House about a year ago. The first part of the noble Lord's Motion asks whether Her Majesty's Government have considered the consequences of the present rate of population growth in Asia, and particularly in the Commonwealth countries of Asia. In answer to this, I can tell the noble Lord that Her Majesty's Government are well aware of the tremendous increase in the population of Asian countries, and naturally note, in particular, the increase in

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Commonwealth Asian countries; and we are acutely conscious of the problems that these increases pose.
As the noble Lord pointed out in his speech, more than half of the population of the world—that is, 1,600 million out of about 3,000 million—live in Asia; and the population in this important part of the world (and I join with the noble Lord, Lord Killearn, when he draws attention to the importance of this part of the world) is at present increasing at the rate of about 1·7 per cent. every year. I am told that if the current trends in fertility and mortality rates continue, the rate of increase of the population in Asia will probably rise to about 23 per cent. within the next 20 years or so. The demographers would, therefore, seem to be of the view that the rate of increase will remain fairly constant at that level for some years thereafter.
As anyone who has studied the subject will know, population trends are difficult to predict, even in this country, where more detailed and accurate statistics are available than in most of the countries of Asia. But even if the assumptions I have mentioned are not falsified by events, it has been estimated that by 1980 some 2,300 million people, out of an estimated world population of about 4,200 million, will live in Asia. By the end of the century it is thought that the estimated world population will be over 6,000 million, of whom some 3,700 million will be Asians. If, as the noble Lord, Lord Casey, has told us, leaders of Asian opinion, such as Mr. Nehru and President Ayub Khan, are concerned at the over-population in the Asian countries to-day, there is real cause for dismay at the thought that there will be two and a half times as many mouths to feed and people for whom employment must be found in 40 years' time. I must confess that I find it disturbing that, despite the enormous sums of money devoted to agricultural development and improvement in Asia since the war, there has not been a larger increase in the level of food production.
If I may go back a short while in time, during the war years the production of food per head of the population in fact fell by about 15 per cent., and it did not begin to recover until some years after the end of the war. The pre-war
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figure of agricultural production per head, depressed as it was by the massive increase in population during the period, was, in fact, not reached until a year or two ago. However, it is encouraging that actual supplies of food per head are beginning to show a small increase every year, as new land is brought under cultivation and various means of improving the yields from existing lands in the course of development programmes come into effect.
I suggest, with respect, that the ways in which the problem of rapidly rising populations can be solved should not merely be negative ones, such as contraception, although, of course, I fully admit that this has a most important part to play. Here I find myself very much in agreement with what noble Lords have said in all parts of the House. I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Brain, had to say on the matter of the great need to increase food production; and coming from a man of his great distinction, it was most encouraging to me, and to the Government, to hear our view endorsed from an outside source. I also found myself in agreement with what the noble Lord, Lord Walston, had to say on this aspect of the problem, and, indeed, with my noble friend Lord Milverton and the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of London, who said they wished the problem to be looked at in its full, wide sense. I am sure that, if nothing else has come out of this debate (and, in my view, much else has), we are all aware that we cannot take the question of rising population and of contraception in its narrowest field, but must look at it in the widest possible framework, so that all possibilities, both positive and negative, can be applied to meet it. As many noble Lords have said, there are positive ways of doing this, and, of course, the increase of food production is one. Here I should like to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, on a magnificent speech, one that was a real joy to listen to.
I feel that the countries of Asia, in wrestling with these gigantic problems which face them, might take comfort from what happened in agriculture in this country during the war years. My noble friend the Leader of the House made an allusion to this in last year's debate, when he pointed out that we doubled our food in about seven years

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from 1939. He went on to say that the striking thing about that increase in food production was that it was not achieved by the sudden use of startling new processes, but by applying well-known and longstanding practices of good husbandry.
While the problem to which the noble Lord, Lord Casey, refers, must primarily be one for the countries concerned to tackle—as, indeed, they are doing—I think we should all be well advised to bear in mind that, no matter what steps are taken by way of educating the peoples of Asia in the practice of birth regulation, both the Governments of the countries concerned and, indeed, we of the more well-developed countries (and here I endorse what several noble Lords have said) have a real duty to do everything possible to increase the food supplies of those countries. We have, of course, done much in the past. The noble Earl, Loud Lytton, if I remember rightly, went so far as to say that we should cut our standard of living to about half, in order to provide the necessary assistance to these less fortunate peoples. I cannot pretend that I think it would be feasible to go as far as that, but certainly we are aware of our responsibilities; and, as I hope to show now, we have a proud record in this field.
Since the inception of the Colombo Plan in 1950, the Governments of the donor countries contributing to the Plan have made available to member countries in South and South-East Asia assistance in various forms to the value of £3,600 million. This total includes aid through technical assistance, loans and grants, the provision of agricultural commodities and the supply of equipment. Assistance within the framework of the Colombo Plan is still running at the rate of approximately £500 million a year.
Since the inception of the Plan the total of our own Governmental commitments has been about £300 million, much of which has gone directly or indirectly towards increasing the food supplies of the countries concerned. So we have made a contribution. Noble Lords may say it is not enough, but still we have made a very considerable contribution in this way.
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The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, raised the point of the food surpluses in the world. I think the noble Earl, Lord Longford, also made references to them; certainly one or two other noble Lords have done so. I should like, if I may—I hope I shall not weary the House—to repeat what my noble friend the Leader of the House said on this subject last year, because it is still relevant. He had this to say OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 232, col. 1127]:
"One solution that has been suggested is the distribution to scarcity areas of the grain surpluses at present being produced in the more developed countries. During the past decade these have amounted to over 125 million tons, enough, in theory, to supply the full calorie needs of 45 million people for a year. Some such movements of grain surpluses do in fact take place, but there are tremendous difficulties in achieving its widespread distribution. Moreover, once the present surpluses have been distributed, only an annual surplus of 10 million tons will be available for disposal—which is by no means sufficient to enable the distribution of surplus grains to affect appreciably the calorie levels. And to alleviate malnutrition, what are required are protein-rich foods, not cereals—though grain surpluses have proved to be an invaluable aid in the alleviation of famines and severe food shortages in particular areas."
I am not saying that we must explore every avenue in this field, but I give that quotation merely to set that particular solution in perspective.
The facts of the population situation in Asia are by now, I think, fairly widely known in this country. But the terms of the noble Lord's Motion perhaps carry the implication that Her Majesty's Government in this country has some responsibility for this situation. It is unnecessary for me to remind this House that the causes of over-population in any country are deeply rooted in economic and social conditions, involving religious and ethical considerations which can be influenced—and that often slowly and with great difficulty—only by the movement of opinion within the countries concerned. I most warmly agree with those noble Lords who have said that it would be impertinent for us to comment on many of these questions. It is for those countries themselves to solve it, and I cannot emphasise too strongly how much I endorse that point of view. But I can perhaps say that it is encouraging to note the increasing attention now being paid by the

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Asian countries themselves and by international organisations to population problems in their own area.
I understand that the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, under the ægis of the United Nations, which is closely concerned with Asian development, is making plans for an Asian Population Conference which will study the question of balancing population growth against resources. As an earnest of Her Majesty's Government's interest and concern in this problem, your Lordships may be aware that we expect to support the inscription on the Agenda of the next Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations of the item proposed by Denmark and Sweden on population growth and economic development.
As the noble Lord, Lord Casey, has said, both the development plans of the Government of India and that of Pakistan make substantial provision for family planning. The Government of Pakistan's Second Five-Year Plan, recognising that it is essential that family planning should receive high priority, provides a sum of nearly £2½ million for family planning purposes, including research on reproductive behaviour, on factors which motivate parents to have large or small families, and on the acceptablility and effectiveness of different methods of birth limitation. The Government of India's Third Five-Year Plan makes provision for 25 crores of rupees—which I understand is some £17 million—for similar purposes. I am sure that the House will agree that these are very substantial sums for even such large countries as these to spend on such purposes.
This afternoon's Motion goes on to ask what the British Government propose to do to stimulate scientific research in this country. I say the next part of what I have to say with even greater diffidence than the rest, because I am speaking here before experts about subjects on which I am a layman, so I beg your Lordships' forgiveness. I should like to say a word about the true implication of the word "research". To find a cure for some particular ill, one needs more than money. It is first necessary for those qualified to know to discover evidence of a line of inquiry, which it would seem fruitful to pursue, in order to prevent that particular ill.
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Once a lead of this sort is discovered, and provided there is a man or the men qualified to pursue that lead, then—and only then—does the need for money for that particular purpose arise.
The noble Lord, Lord Casey, asked what steps Her Majesty's Government propose to take to stimulate research. Scientific research into the various methods of contraception cannot be undertaken in isolation from other research work. For example, I understand that it is fairly closely bound up with research work into the whole field of infertility, and I further understand there is a close connection with certain fields of cancer research. In both these two fields, infertility and cancer, a vast amount of research work is being carried out, financed both by Government funds and the private foundations which there are in this country. I am glad the noble Lord saw fit to pay a tribute to these private foundations, which provide such very large sums for research work.
I think it fair to say that there is no indication that there would be any shortage of money for particular lines of research into promising ideas that may suggest themselves; the money would be found somehow. So I can assure the noble Lord that as a byproduct of the work in these two fields alone, much information is coming forward on the subject of contraception, and this information is made public and is therefore available to independent scientists concerned with the problem. As a Commonwealth Minister, I am very happy to say that there is very close co-operation between scientists in this country and scientists in India and elsewhere in Asia in these particular fields.
A great deal of work on the physiology of reproduction is being undertaken in university departments and by the Medical and Agricultural Research Councils, in addition to a certain amount of research directly aimed at the control of conception which is being carried out by industrial enterprises. This fundamental research on the factors affecting human fertility and infertility, which is also in many respects applicable in conditions in countries other than Great Britain, may well in the end provide the vital clues to the solution of the problem of contraception.

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I was at this stage in my speech going to make some reference to the pill mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Casey, but having heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, had to say, it would be impertinent of me to add anything to that and also to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Brain. If I may say so to the noble Lady, with all respect, everyone here who listened to what she had to say must have been forcibly struck, not only with her immense erudition and knowledge of this subject and the extremely clear way in which she put it, but also with the burning conviction which carried her when she was speaking. It was a very memorable moment during this afternoon's debate.
As I have said, although the researches that I have mentioned are not, for obvious reasons, related to the conditions of Asia, where, in my Government's view, the work can best be carried out in hospitals and research institutions in the countries concerned, the Government will always be ready to accede to requests for help from Governments under the Colombo Plan for technical assistance from this country. Unless and until we receive such requests for collaboration with the work which is being done on this question in the Asian countries themselves, we think that our main contribution to this great problem of over-population is to continue to spend as much as we can afford on the programme of capital aid and technical assistance on which we are already engaged and to which I have alluded. To do more than that would be, to return to what other speakers have said, really impertinent to the countries concerned. The programmes of aid which we do provide leave it to the Governments concerned to judge how the help we give can best be applied to overcome the poverty and ignorance which, alas, as we all know too well, far too often accompanies an excessively high birthrate.
I was very much interested by the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Walston, for the setting up of an institution of demographic research. I can, of course, give no possible undertaking beyond saying that I will bring the suggestion to the notice of my noble friend, Lord Hailsham. It interests me per-
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sonally very much because, as Chairman of the Overseas Migration Board, I have touched on the fringe of the problems of demography and I find it increasingly of absorbing interest. I know that the noble Lord's suggestion will be very much welcomed by members of the Board, and if the noble Lord wishes I will bring it to their notice as well as to that of my noble friend.
I have talked for long enough, and I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I do not go into any details of the pros and cons of the various methods of contraception, for the simple reason that I simply am not qualified to do so. Furthermore, were I to do so, I would not try to influence any individual or any country to alter their views on the subject of contraception. It is a matter which is highly personal, likely to be controversial, and must be one that individual peoples and countries settle for themselves. Nevertheless, having said that, I would say this to the noble Lord, Lord Casey. I have no doubt that there is great value in to-day's debate, as there was indeed in the debate we had a year ago, and the value is that it draws attention to a very serious problem and one for which there can be no immediate solution, as indeed the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said. I give the noble Lord an assurance that the Government are aware that this is a world-wide problem which, together with the Governments of other countries, they must play their part in helping to solve.
5.25 p.m.
LORD CASEY: My Lords, I thank the noble Duke for the courtesy of his reply and for the great deal of work that he has obviously put into consideration of my Motion and in listening to this long debate. But I must admit to a certain disappointment at the noble Duke's reflection of the views of Her Majesty's Government on this matter. Perhaps I may correct him in one matter that he evidently suspected: that is, that I made the point that there was some degree of responsibility on the part of Her Majesty's Government. I do not think that at all, taking "responsibility" in its normally accepted meaning. There is a moral responsibility, I certainly believe; that is, an international responsibility of a great country towards countries that are very much poorer, both in

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money and also, particularly, in their ability to carry out scientific research. I think there is a responsibility there, but I can only interpret what the noble Duke has been good enough to say as meaning, in effect, that this country is proposing to leave the burden of research in this matter to the United States. In effect, I think that is so. A very great deal more research is going on in the United States in the relevant field than in this country, although what is going on in the United Kingdom is quite considerable.
Perhaps I may be allowed to say this without extending this debate beyond a very few moments more: that I was surprised—and perhaps it is my own fault again—that so many noble Lords in effect took me to task for believing that in the terms of my Motion I was attempting to push the Government into contact with Asian Governments on something which was their own business, and so trying to force something on them that they might resent. I thought, perhaps wrongly, that in what I had said in moving this Motion I had made it clear—at least, I hoped I had done so—that the Governments both of India and of Pakistan have specifically, time and time again, made requests to the United States of America, if not to this country—I happen to be aware of many of the requests—and they have been made by the highest people in the Governments of those two countries.
I quote—and this will take only one moment—what was said not long ago by the present Indian Ambassador to the United States. This a cut-down of what he said:
"There are three specific kinds of assistance of which India is desperately in need."—
He was talking to the American people.—
"The sharing of experiences"—
as he called it—
"in population control by the advanced countries; the very substantial increase in research in the United States for a simple and inexpensive contraception method; thirdly, technical aid, especially of manufacturing facilities for family planning supplies."
I pick that out as only one of a number of most pointed requests that have been made to the Government and people of the United States for scientific aid in producing and evolving an improved contraceptive suitable for Indian conditions.
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I hope that after very nearly a generation in public life I have not to be told that one country cannot interfere in the domestic affairs of another. That knowledge is child's play, as anybody with any knowledge of international affairs knows. But if it had been interference, India and Pakistan would never have made their views and requirements known in almost desperate terms to the United States and, I should have thought, also to this country.
I should like to canvass a number of other things said in this debate but I cannot continue for more than a few moments. I could follow the noble Earl, Lord Longford, on the subject of food in Asia, on which clearly, he and I completely disagree. And I think the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, really took certain liberties with what I said in trying to pin the word "oral" contraceptive on to me, when I never used the word at all in respect of contraceptives which might be used in India. I used the words "Conovid" and "Enovid", but never in anything that I said this year did I mention or recommend the use of oral contraception, although I would not eliminate it from the possibilities. If I may say so, the noble Lady replied to the speech I made twelve months ago. I think if I go further than that I shall get rather deeper than I want. I should like to join with the noble Duke in thanking all noble Lords who have taken part in this, to me, very interesting debate, which I agree has had some usefulness in ventilating this subject; and, my Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
MAIDSTONE CORPORATION (TROLLEY VEHICLES) PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL
PIER AND HARBOUR PROVISIONAL ORDER (GREAT YARMOUTH NEW BRITANNIA PIER) BILL
PIER AND HARBOUR PROVISIONAL ORDER (GREAT YARMOUTH PORT AND HAVEN) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.

PENSIONS OF FORMER COLONIAL SERVICE OFFICERS
5.30 p.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL rose THE EARL OF LISTOWEL rose to move to resolve, That this House urges Her Majesty's Government to increase the basic rate of pensions paid to former Colonial Service officers and their dependants, and to publish the White Paper requested in this House on February 20 last (Hansard, col. 695). The noble Earl said: My Lords, time is getting on, and I shall be as short as possible. Moreover, a lot of the ground was covered in an earlier debate, and several of the speakers who will follow me this afternoon—including, I hope, two ex-Secretaries of State, and two former Colonial Governors—are far better qualified than I am to put the case for these pensioners. Anything I leave unsaid will, I am sure, be said by them.
When your Lordships discussed this subject on February 20, on a Motion of my noble friend Lord Ogmore (who has written me a letter saying that he is very sorry that he cannot be present to-day, and asking me to apologise for him to the House), every speaker during that debate, on both sides of the House, supported my noble friend's request to the Government for pension increases for retired Colonial Service officers and their dependants. My noble friend Lord Ogmore withdrew his Motion on the undertaking given by the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, that he would draw the attention of his ministerial colleague to the strong feelings expressed by the House.
The noble Lord also told us that there would be a further meeting in the near future between Ministers and representatives of the Overseas Service Officers' Association. I understand that that meeting has now taken place and that the Association is still far from satisfied. In the same debate I asked for the publication of a White Paper, and the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, said he would look into that. As three months have passed since those requests were made, and the Government have been given plenty of time for further consideration, I think your Lordships will agree that the moment has come when
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we should ask for the result of their cogitations.
Let me first deal with the question of the White Paper, because that is the less important of the two requests that I am putting to the Government. What is the case for a White Paper? This question of pension increases for Colonial Service officers and their dependants is a matter that many of us in both Houses, as the noble Lord opposite will already be aware, think touches the honour of our country and our Government. The Government deny this. They say that it concerns other Governments in the Colonies and in the Commonwealth. Anyway, this is a matter that has aroused so much Parliamentary interest that there have been two debates in another place during this Session, and we are now embarking on the second debate in your Lordships' House. Surely the least the Government can do, in view of this widespread interest and deep concern, is to give Parliament and the public the relevant facts and to accompany those with a statement of policy.
I should like those facts to include (and this would be the substance of the White Paper for which I am asking) some reference to the number of retired Colonial Service Officers and their dependants who are receiving smaller increases in their basic pension than United Kingdom Civil Service officers, and the annual cost at the present time of "topping up" those pensions to the United Kingdom level. Secondly, there should be sufficient background material to explain the present position of Colonial Service officers; and thirdly, some account of our arrangements with India, Pakistan and Burma—particularly Pakistan and Burma, because I think they furnish a very close parallel. These facts, I should have thought, are indispensable to anyone who wants to judge the merits of this case.
I am not asking for any information not already known to the Government and in their possession. I am not asking for anything of a secret or confidential nature. It is therefore quite irrelevant, if I may say so, for the Government to answer that they cannot get information about their own pension schemes from Commonwealth Governments. I repeat: I am not asking for any information the Government have not already got.

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If the Government tell us that it is contrary to usual practice to publish White Papers about matters that are the responsibility of other Governments, my reply is that it is quite manifestly prejudging the issue. Our whole contention is that this matter is within the competence of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. If the Government accept this afternoon my request for a pension increase, I shall, of course, withdraw my request for a White Paper. But if the Government refuse this request, there will be an even stronger case for the earliest possible publication of a White Paper setting out the facts and the Government case. All Members of Parliament, and others, should be in a position to judge for themselves; and that is all I am asking for.
Let me now come to the problem of the elderly Colonial Service officers and their widows, who are now living on pensions based on pre-war salaries which have not been increased, like those of United Kingdom officers, to keep up with the rising cost of living in this country since the war. I should like to remind the House that their number is small, though in many cases there is hardship, even distress, and it would cost the Government very little to bring these pensions up to the United Kingdom level. Perhaps I might be permitted to give the House these few essential figures about the number of people concerned and the cost of paying these increases. There are 2.830 retired colonial servants getting less than the United Kingdom rates of increases. The cost of supplementary pensions for these persons would be £176,400 per annum. To this number of retired colonial servants should be added the 2,300 widows of Colonial Service officials, and they would require another £110,000 to bring their pensions into line. Thus we are concerned with 5,130 persons who, directly or indirectly, have rendered outstanding service to their country overseas and who need £286,400 per annum to bring them into line in their retirement with their fellow civil servants who have spent their lives in Government service in Whitehall. I am told that these Colonial Service officers are dying at the rate of about one a day, so that this is a rapidly diminishing figure.
I think the simple issue before the House is: Who should pay these pensions? Are they the responsibility, as the Government contend, of the colonial and former colonial territories in which these pensioners were employed, or are they the responsibility of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, as the employer of the Colonial Service? One thing is perfectly clear—and noble Lords opposite will agree: this is not a matter of legal responsibility; it is a matter of moral responsibility. None of these officers was serving under a contract with a colonial or ex-colonial Government which stipulated that they should receive increases in their basic pension.
In the case of the independent Commonwealth Governments, Her Majesty's Government negotiated a Public Officers' Agreement on their behalf before the transfer of power. The standard clause in these agreements about pension rights deals with basic pensions payable before or after independence, not with increases made in the United Kingdom which would be paid to supplement these basic pensions. I am not going to quote the words, but there is a standard clause to that effect, and I am sure the noble Lord opposite will agree with me that it is therefore as clear as daylight that independent Commonwealth countries have no legal obligation for the payment of pension increases. Nor is there any reference to the payment of pension increases in the White Paper which was published in 1936 on the Reorganisation of the Colonial Service. The paragraph dealing with pensions in this publication refers only to the basic pension of Colonial Service officers. It does not put any legal responsibility on Her Majesty's Government for the payment of these increases.
The whole issue is therefore one of moral responsibility: who ought to pay? I have one suggestion to make to the Government, and I hope that it will receive the noble Lord's consideration. In view of the conflict of opinion about where the responsibility should lie, is it not highly desirable that in future Colonial Service officers and their dependants should have a legal right to pension increases made in the United Kingdom, as well as a legal right to their basic pension? Will Her Majesty's

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Government therefore include a provision to secure pension increases in any agreements they make in the future with Colonial Governments before they reach independence? I need not remind your Lordships that Jamaica will be independent in August, Uganda in October; and negotiations are now in progress about Trinidad. Surely in all these cases, and in many others that will come up in the next few years, a provision of this kind should be included. Let me say, in passing, that none of these countries is likely to be able to pay such increases out of their own revenue, and the legal right would be meaningless unless Her Majesty's Government were prepared to lend the money or to provide it by way of grant.
May I now return to the main question before the House? During our debate in February two former Secretaries of State, both of whom are here this afternoon, expressed in the strongest terms their view that the Secretary of State remained responsible for the Colonial Service officers from enrolment to death, even if they had been employed during part of their service by independent Commonwealth Governments. Indeed, there was not a single speaker, apart from the Government spokesman, who expressed a contrary view. The authority of these two noble Lords is buttressed by the terms of the 1954 White Paper on the Reorganisation of the Colonial Service. This White Paper makes it absolutely clear that these officers continue in the employment of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, as members of the Colonial Service, and are still liable to posting by the Secretary of State after they have stayed on in the public service of a successor Government.
Because these words seem to be the basis of the claim that the Secretary of State is responsible, I should like to quote just a couple of sentences from this White Paper. Paragraph 6 says:
"Should the territory in whose public service they"—
that is to say, Colonial Service officers—
"are employed attain self-government, these officers are entitled to expect that the following conditions will be observed."
Conditions (1) and (2) are irrelevant. It is the third condition to Which I wish to draw attention—namely:
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"They shall continue to be regarded by Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom as members of Her Majesty's Service and as such to be eligible for consideration for transfer or promotion to any posts which the Secretary of State may be requested to fill in other territories."
That is to say, after they have gone to serve in an independent Commonwealth Government they can still be posted by the Secretary of State, and his all-over responsibility for their welfare and conditions of service remains paramount.
The other argument used by the noble Lord opposite, and by the Government, against assuming financial responsibility for these increases seems to me to be invalidated by the fact that they have, in fact, been paid these increases in the case of Pakistan and Burma, without any of the disastrous consequences to other Governments which have been so freely predicted by the noble Lord opposite. I am not clear about the agreement with India to take over responsibility for their pensioners. I am not clear whether this includes pension increases as well as the basic pension. I am absolutely clear that in the case of Pakistan and Burma we top up the basic pension, while these countries pay the basic pension out of their own revenue. This is surely the best possible precedent for doing for Colonial Service pensioners what we have already done for Indian Civil Service pensioners who retired from Burma and Pakistan.
I remember particularly clearly what happened in Burma, because I was Secretary of State at the time Burma became independent, and I negotiated the Treaty which laid down the terms of pensions for retiring officers. We undertook to pay the basic pensions, but there was no mention at all of any increase on that pension. We did not undertake in the Treaty to pay any pension increase, because we said that we could not discriminate between the members of a unified service, in this case the Indian Civil Service. These were the reasons given by the Government—I am quoting the Government's own reasons. We took over the payment of these increases out of United Kingdom funds.
This seems an exact parallel to the position of the Colonial Service. But wherever the moral responsibility for supplementing a basic pension may lie, the fact is that it is quite useless for

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Her Majesty's Government to go on pressing independent Commonwealth Governments for payment. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will ultimately realise that it is simply a waste of time; that they are not doing any good. They cannot really expect anybody who knows the circumstances to coerce these Governments, as we can a Colonial Government, because with many of the Colonial Governments Her Majesty's Government are ultimately in control. That is why the Colonial Governments have paid up magnificently.
In the case of the other Governments, they are unable, or unwilling, to meet this claim. We must appreciate their real difficulty. How can they increase pension payments to expatriate officers without increasing their payments to their own officers? Moreover, how can they justify to their own public increasing taxation in order to compensate for inflation here? We are thinking of countries where the annual income of the average inhabitants is something like £35 a year. In fact none of these Commonwealth Governments has passed legislation to cover pension increases made in the United Kingdom since they became independent. What increases have been given, as the noble Lord pointed out last time, have been based on agreements made before independence. So I think we can conclude that if Her Majesty's Government cannot, or will not, find the money, whether directly or in any other way, no one will pay.
While we cannot, of course, compromise about the principle of Her Majesty's Government's responsibility, on the other hand there is plenty of room for compromise about the priority given to the various claimants, and also about the method of providing the money required to make these payments. I hope that the Government will at least say that they will give the highest priority to the pensioners who have retired longest and to widows living on a prewar pension. The Government might start by drawing the line somewhere in the 'fifties, and say that they will pay all the people concerned pension increases given before that date. That would be one form of compromise, and it would take in the hardest cases.
Again, there is plenty of room for compromise in the method of payment,
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not necessarily by direct cash payment to the persons concerned. In order to uphold their respect for principle, the Government might very well make a loan to an overseas Government to meet this obligation, or make a grant in aid, or deduct the money from financial aid. In Tanganyika and Uganda, pensions have been paid mainly by loan provided by Her Majesty's Government.
These are all methods of payment. We are not insisting on any particular method. We should welcome any compromise which would meet the claims of the people who are hardest hit. But we ask for justice to be done and to be started without delay. I beg to move.
Moved to resolve, That this House urges Her Majesty's Government to increase the basic rate of pensions paid to former Colonial Service Officers and their dependants, and to publish the White Paper requested in this House on February 20 last (Hansard, col. 695).—(The Earl of Listowel.)
5.50 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, in rising to speak for one or two minutes in this debate I am in duty bound to declare my interest, as I myself am a Malayan pensioner. First of all, I should like to thank the noble Earl for the admirable way in which he has summarised the position in relation to these pensioners, and especially in relation to widows and orphans. I have made so many speeches over the last two years on this subject that I do not propose to weary your Lordships by repeating what I have already said—and said as recently as last February. But it is simply a question of the moral responsibility of the British Government, which I thought was established beyond any possibility of contradiction by the devastating speeches made by two former Secretaries of State during our last debate. It would ill become me to try to better the speeches they made then, and I am glad to see they propose to enlarge upon them to-day.
I had the privilege of serving under the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, and I also had the privilege, after I retired, of having dealings with the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd of Merton. There is also an ex-Under-Secretary of State about to speak, and one of the recently retired heads of the Colonial Service,

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Lord Twining, who will at least cast a fresher light on this matter than I am able to do. I would put in a special plea for the widows and orphans, which seems to me to be so easy of gratification, and it is incomprehensible that the Government should maintain their attitude. In the last debate I expressed a hope that it might have touched the brain of Her Majesty's Government, even if their heart had been hopelessly petrified by being kept in store in the Treasury. My Lords, I have great pleasure in saying that I warmly support the noble Earl, Lord Listowel.
5.53 p.m.
LORD TWINING: My Lords, I too must declare an interest because I am in receipt of a modest pension in respect of the period of my service in three Colonies. As the noble Earl has said, this subject has been debated in another place twice in recent months and in your Lordships' House as recently as February 20 last. It has also been the subject of Parliamentary Questions both in another place and in this House. It might be thought that there is no more to be said on this subject, but the fact that it is persistently raised and strong speeches are made indicates that there are widespread misgivings about the attitude of Her Majesty's Government in the matter. I will try to confine myself to what I consider to be the salient points.
We are dealing with two classes of persons: the former officers of the Colonial Service, and widows and orphans. In studying the reports of previous debates in Hansard, it is clear that there is a general awareness that there is a need, indeed a pressing need, for something to be done towards topping up the pensions of these deserving people to bring them into line with the increases in pensions in the United Kingdom. The stand which Her Majesty's Government have taken is based on what they call the principle that the pensions of officers of Her Majesty's Oversea Civil Service are the responsibility of the Governments that employ them. This, my Lords, seems to be less of a principle and more of a policy.
In the debate of February 20, my noble friend Lord Boyd of Merton most
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eloquently stated his view about the position. He referred to a statement contained in paragraph 3 of a Colonial Office Paper issued in 1954, called Reorganisation of the Colonial Service, which reads:
"Constitutionally all officers of the Colonial Service are servants of the Crown, and the conditions of their employment are embodied in Colonial Regulations. These Regulations constitute the Secretary of State as the ultimate authority for appointment, discipline, promotions and general conditions of service."
My noble friend Lord Boyd of Merton went on to say that this statement had been taken at its face value and that he, for one, believed that it represented a pledge from which we cannot honourably depart. My Lords, I endorse this view. I have had wide experience of the Colonial Service and I can say that it has been generally taken for granted that the authority which had the responsibility for the recruitment of these men and women, for posting them to a particular Colony, for transferring them, for disciplining them and for laying down the conditions of their Service, must also have the responsibility for their welfare and for ensuring that their rights are fully protected.
What have Her Majesty's Government done about pensions? In 1959 a dispatch was sent to the Governments of all the former and then existing Colonial Territories inviting them to give the pensioners of the Oversea Service the same increases as had been granted to the pensioners of the Home Civil Service. Out of a total of 43 Governments which were consulted, 33 agreed to grant increases not less generous than those under the United Kingdom Pensions (Increase) Act. This information rather distorts the picture because some of the Governments had a large number of pensioners, while others had but few. I understand that at the end of 1961 there were some 11,000 Colonial Service pensioners paid by the Crown Agents, of whom 2,900 were in receipt of sub-standard pensions. In addition, there were 4,000 widow and orphan pensioners, 2,300 of whom were not receiving increased pensions.
I am informed that the estimated cost of topping up these pensions would be £180,000 per annum in respect of former officers and £110,000 in respect of widows and orphans. But these figures can be misleading because

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the position is constantly changing, on the one hand through deaths, and, on the other hand, through new retirements, especially at the moment from East African territories. This does not include local pensioners or pensions paid through agencies other than the Crown Agents. I most strongly support the suggestion of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that a White Paper should be published setting out the known facts so as to enable us to get a proper measure of the problem.
In the replies of the Government spokesmen in previous debates it has been stated that negotiations are continuing with the Governments concerned, but these do not seem to have been very effective so far; nor does there appear to be that sense of urgency which the position demands. The Government seem to fear that if they admit any responsibility in the matter there might be a general default by these overseas Governments in respect of their liability for the payment of pensions. I do not really believe that we should have undue fears on this score. The Secretary of State can still exercise his authority in the case of dependent territories, especially those that are in receipt of grants-in-aid. As regards the former Colonies which are now independent, we are dealing with honourable people who have accepted the public service agreements which were negotiated as a vital prerequisite to independence. Moreover, from a purely practical point of view, the leaders of these countries are well aware that they must preserve their credit status if they are to attract the capital they so badly need, and it is unlikely that they would risk impairing their credit by such a default.
Her Majesty's Government are already taking responsibility in respect of the compensation to be paid to officers whose careers are being cut short when a Colonial territory attains independence, and this is part of the price that has to be paid for the "wind of change" policy. Furthermore, Her Majesty's Government are granting substantial aid to these States, so there would be nothing unusual in attaching conditions to such aid and this question of pensions could well be made one of the conditions.
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There is one point—perhaps it could be described as a technical point—which I do not think has been raised before. Under the regulations governing pensions an officer has the right to commute a portion of his total pension and receive a gratuity and a reduced pension. In such cases, where an overseas Government has increased pensions, this principle has not been followed, and the pensioner has been denied the right to commute any part of the increase. This is surely illogical and contrary to the spirit, if not to the letter, of the pensions policy.
I must now turn to widows' and orphans' pensions These were introduced, rather tardily, perhaps, in the 1920's or a little later. In some cases, Colonial Governments did not agree to introduce a scheme under which all contributions were placed into a special fund, but they preferred to pay into general revenue the contributions compulsorily taken from serving officers, whether or not they were married or single. Those officers who complained—and in those days there were no Civil Service associations to protect their interests—were assured that their contributions were as safe as gilt-edged securities. The Colonial Office exerted no pressure on Colonial Governments to do otherwise. Perhaps they found that in some cases, without these contributions, the local budgets would not be balanced, which would necessitate the payment of grants in aid by Her Majesty's Treasury. As a result, there are many pensioners and contributors, who feel that their widows' and orphans' pensions are not secure.
Even in those cases where a scheme has been introduced, the position is not altogether satisfactory. It is very difficult to get information about the state of the funds. Surely the contributors have a right to know how the funds of these schemes stand, and whether there are periodic actuarial reviews which, it is generally believed, would show that these widows' and orphans' pensions could be materially increased from those funds, without any extra payment to an overseas Government by Her Majesty's Government. I hope that the Government will seriously consider this matter,

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and arrange for an annual report of these schemes to be published and a copy sent to each contributor.
In conclusion, my Lords, may I say that the Colonial Service has a proud record and deserves well of this country. I find it shameful that these pensioners have cause to feel a strong sense of grievance, and I hope that Her Majesty's Government will do everything possible to alleviate the position, either by exercising their influence with the Governments concerned, or, if necessary, shouldering the moral responsibility which I believe is theirs.
6.2 p.m.
LORD COLYTON: My Lords, I am particularly grateful to the noble Earl for moving this Resolution to-day, since owing to my absence in Africa I was unable to take part in the debate in your Lordships' House on February 20. I should like to say right away that I fully support all, or nearly all, the arguments put forward by the noble Earl. He has had warm support from two former Governors, and my noble friend Lord Boyd of Merton, with his vast experience as Secretary of State, who is to follow me, will no doubt develop these arguments in other directions. I must say that when I read his notable contribution to the last debate I really felt that the last word had been said. I thought that the Government at last—and, of course, basically it is the Treasury—would have to address themselves to the task of meeting the demands both of justice and of honour.
I should like to turn to the position of the former British officials in the Sudan Government and their dependants who, though they are not, strictly speaking, covered by the terms of this Motion, are in an analogous position, or even worse, than the former Colonial Service officers; and I believe this is the first time that this subject has been raised in your Lordships' House. In the course of my speech I shall try to show that the arguments which apply to the former Colonial Service officers about the need for adjustment in the basic rates of pensions apply equally strongly to the former Sudan officials. Perhaps I may justify my right to do so, because for four years before the war I occupied what
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might be called the Sudan desk in the Residency and subsequently the Embassy in Cairo, and spent much time visiting the Sudan. I know from my personal knowledge, and I feel sure that your Lordships will agree, that there was no finer body of British officials than those who served in the Sudan, and I would most strongly urge that their case, also, should be given fresh and sympathetic consideration by the Government.
On my return here in March I was very struck by the note of extreme bitternes that had crept into the correspondence emanating from the Sudan Government Pensioners' Association, with whom I am in contact. I have a number of friends among the former members of the Political Service, and many of them have done good work in this country and abroad since their retirement. I am told that, quite apart from the elementary requirements of justice, there are now many cases of real hardship, especially among widows.
My Lords, what are the facts? On January 1, 1956, the administration of the Condominium of the Sudan was handed over to the Sudanese. While the negotiations between the British and Egyptian Governments on the future status of the Sudan were proceeding, the Sudan Pensioners' Association made representations about their position. They received a letter from the Private Secretary to the Governor-General dated December 21, 1954, from which the following is an extract:
"His Excellency the Governor-General has had discussions with H.M. Government regarding the payment of pensions of past and present British members of the Sudan Civil Service and their dependants. H.M. Government are well aware of their anxieties in this matter, and recognise their obligations towards officials who hold or held their posts as a result of having been appointed to them by the Governor-General during the period of the Condominium.
"These officials are entitled to expect that the pensions and other benefits for which they and their dependants may be qualified under existing laws and regulations shall be safeguarded, and that these pensions will continue to be paid at their present value in sterling H.M.G. in the United Kingdom accordingly make known their intention, when the Sudan determines its future status, to ensure observance of this safeguard by securing its embodiment in a formal agreement to be entered into between H.M.G. and the Government of the Sudan."
This assurance did provide the safeguard which the pensioners had sought,

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but, unfortunately, Her Majesty's Government failed to secure the embodiment of this safeguard in any formal agreement with the Sudan Government. All their efforts since then to persuade the Government of the Sudan to enter into such an agreement have been unsuccessful.
As a result of representations by the Association over a period of seven years, concluding with a Memorial to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Office conveyed to the Association in July, 1959, what was described as an "assurance" in the following terms:
"Although it has not been possible to complete a formal agreement with the Republic of the Sudan to secure the continued payment of pensions to British officials of the former Condominium Government of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan at existing rates of exchange, the Secretary of State cannot envisage a situation in which the pensions of these officials and their dependants would not be secure."
This fell very far short of the undertaking which the Association had hoped to receive, but it was, nevertheless, decided to accept it in the spirit in Which it was given. But the fact remains that, unlike the case of all other independent overseas territories, no formal agreement whatever exists between Her Majesty's Government and the Sudan Government safeguarding the rights of the pensioners. In the light of this unsatisfactory situation, it was really not surprising that, when the Sudan Pensioners' Association sought to obtain increases in basic pensions to meet the rise in the cost of living, they came up against extreme difficulties.
After the independence of the Sudan, the Foreign Office informed the Association that it was "up to them" to negotiate direct with the Republic of the Sudan. A closely-argued case was prepared, but owing to the Suez crisis this was not presented until January, 1957. The Sudanese Government refused to consider the Association's case and an appeal was made in August, 1958, supported by a new statement. No reply was received from the Sudanese Government, but the Foreign Office notified the Association on October 17, 1960, that Her Majesty's Ambassador in Khartoum had been informed by the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they could not afford to pay any increases beyond the supplements
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already granted to those pensioners who had retired before 1950. This confirmed the Association's conviction that no further post-service benefits could be expected from the Sudanese Government, and that their only recourse, therefore, was to the United Kingdom Government.
In approaching the matter from that angle, the Sudan pensioners felt, as did the ex-Colonial Service pensioners, that their case was analogous to that of the retired members of the Burma, India and Pakistan services. I am well aware that the Government have held that the circumstances of these pensioners were quite different from those of the former members of the Colonial Service. I know the position is a complicated one, but, as I understand it, the basis of the Treasury argument is that the Secretary of State for India, and later Burma, had a different statutory responsibility from that of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Quite frankly, I have never seen any very clear explanation of this distinction, but, even if it exists, it seems to me that it is of a highly technical nature.
Now in the case of the Sudan pensioners, as well as in the case of the Colonial Service pensioners, the issue, in my view, is fundamentally a moral one. At any rate, a request by the Sudan pensioners to be given the same treatment as those of India, Burma and Pakistan was rejected by Her Majesty's Government. Not only that, but it was stated, in a letter from the then Foreign Secretary, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, to Sir Duncan Cumming, chairman of the Sudan-British Government Pensioners' Association, that the Sudan was never a part of the Commonwealth, and that its officials were at no time in the service of the Crown. My Lords, I must tell you frankly that that statement caused great distress to former British members of the Sudan service. They had always regarded themselves as servants of the Crown in peace and in war. Indeed, when the last war came they were forbidden, under penalty of imprisonment, to leave their posts to join the Armed Forces, in exactly the same way as other members of the British Civil Service were forbidden. It was therefore a great shock to them, and one which one must not minimise, when they found that they were being

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put in an inferior category and treated as the servants of a foreign Government.
At any rate, having had their appeal for increases in basic pensions rejected, first by the Sudan Government on financial grounds and then by Her Majesty's Government on legal and technical grounds, all that the Sudan pensioners could do was to invoke the assistance of the Foreign Office in some further representations to the Sudan Government.
What, in fact, is involved in all this? Your Lordships have had the figures for the ex-Colonial Service pensioners quoted this afternoon. In the case of the Sudan, there was a total of 932 pensioners in March of this year, of whom 244 had received supplements up to £100 a year and 321 had received supplements ranging from £100 to £135 a year. These numbers, as the noble Earl (I think it was) said, are rapidly decreasing. About 660 of the pensioners are between the ages of 60 and 80. The total cost of applying the principles of the Pensions (Increase) Act, 1959, to the Sudan pensioners would be between £60,000 and £70,000.
In 1959 we lent the Sudan £5 million. Last year we lent them £500,000 for aircraft, and in March this year, again, £500,000 for veterinary services. I am certainly not against any of these things. On the contrary, I am strongly in favour of giving all the financial aid we can afford to the Sudanese Government. But if we do, is it really unreasonable to ask them to meet what is an elementary obligation on their part to their former officials? In addition to these loans, the Sudanese Government are getting at the present time the Egyptian compensation for the High Dam scheme, and they have had a record cotton crop, with good prices. Is it really asking for too much to urge them to accept this small, additional, financial burden? Yet, my Lords, in another place on April 18 my honourable friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said that he did not consider that further representations to the Sudan Government would serve any useful purpose. My Lords, if this really is the last word of the Foreign Office, are we not bound to demand Her Majesty's Government to assume this obligation themselves? I know very well that it is said that to
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"top up" the basic pensions from British funds would act merely as an invitation to those Governments who had made the appropriate increases to abandon or to decrease them in the future; but in the long run, surely, it must be the interests of the pensioners themselves which must have the first priority.
I submit to your Lordships that in the last resort it is the positive duty of the British Government to accept responsibility, whether in the case of the former Colonial servants or in the case of the Sudan pensioners. It all forms part of the same problem, and I hope that the representations which have been made again this afternoon in your Lordships' House, as well as those in another place, will lead to a new approach to the whole question. We hope that the Government will work out some scheme for cutting through the "red tape" in one of the ways that have been suggested to-day, so that these loyal servants of Great Britain overseas may receive fair treatment along with other sections of the British people. I am reminded of the fact that, at the time of the establishment of the Condominium of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1899, the then Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, said that he did not allow himself to be unduly bound by precedent and convention. I hope that the present Government will do likewise in dealing with the consequences of that decision.
6.17 p.m.
VISCOUNT BOYD OF MERTON: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, who I understand is to reply, will have a more cheerful story to tell this evening than he was able to tell us on February 20 last, and that his speech to-night will in fact go to the core of the problem—that is, where the ultimate responsibility really lies. My Lords, since we had the last debate we have had not the White Paper for which we had hoped on this particular subject, but another White Paper called Recruitment for Services Overseas—Future Policy. All of us welcome, I think, that White Paper, and the realism that it shows, and we wish success to all the plans outlined in it; but I am bound to say that I think the response to it in the future will be better if justice is clearly shown to have been done to those who have served us so well in the past.

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We have not had the White Paper we hoped we should have, but, as the noble Earl pointed out, other things have happened since our last debate. If it is true, as I fear it may well be, that Colonial Service overseas pensioners are dying at the rate of one a day, it means that something like 100 Colonial Service pensioners must have died since we last discussed this problem. The White Paper which we hope to see—and I join with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in pressing that we should have it—will, I hope, give us all the facts we need. I do not think anybody could claim that the talks that have taken place between my right honourable friend the Secretary for Technical Co-operation (Which we all welcome) and overseas pensioners are any substitute for that particular White Paper, and I must express my own surprise that one reason given, I think, to some of the pensioners for not publishing a White Paper is that Her Majesty's Government are not fully informed about the payment of pensions by those independent Governments Which formerly employed overseas officers. A second reason given, I understand, is that information regarding the number of overseas pensioners paid by the dependent territories is also incomplete. I find this extremely puzzling. I also find it very puzzling that there is apparently some hesitation about publishing a White Paper Which will include in it references to action taken by independent members of the Commonwealth. I cannot believe that, in a society like our Common wealth, a way round could not be found to include observations by independent Governments, prefaced by some such phrase as, "We are greatly indebted to the Government of Ghana", or whoever it may be, "for having supplied us with this information".
My Lords, I have said that I hope we shall have some good news to-day, and that we shall also have answers to some of the points that were raised in the debate on February 20; points that have been repeated again to-day—the separate treatment of India, Pakistan, Burma and Palestine, for example. The argument which I have tried to demolish is that the territories which have behaved properly and generously would resent it if pensions were topped-up elsewhere, or
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that some might go back altogether on their future obligations. I hope that we shall have some statement that will be some answer to the general scepticism with which these arguments were held in the House. I also hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, will be able to tell us of some practical results of the current talks which he said were going on between five of the eleven independent Commonwealth countries, where the level of pensions for those receiving less than £400 a year falls below the level in the United Kingdom. If any good results have ensued from these talks—and there are rumours that in one or two small territories they have done so—I hope we shall hear how many people are affected. I also hope that we shall hear how many people in the larger territories are not affected, and are still in real need of this topping-up of their pensions.
The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, was good enough to say on February 20 last that he was impressed by the contents of the speech I then made, and that he felt sure that his right honourable friend would have the same reaction. I very much hope that reflection and consultation together has not caused him to vary that view. He was good enough to tell me yesterday that he intended to deal to-night with the speech which I then made, and that there were certain points which he did not then answer. Of course, I do not know what my noble friend Lord Hastings has it in mind to say to-night; but I hope he will not suggest that I or anybody else have ever denied that colonial territories have some duty in this matter. Of course they have a duty in this matter, and we rejoice when so many of them freely and generously acknowledge that duty. We are very glad that they have done so. But it is the ultimate responsibility, which is invoked only when territories do not carry out their preliminary duty, that in my view unmistakably rests on the shoulders of Her Majesty's Government.
I do not know whether my noble friend has perhaps delved into past speeches which I may have made during my exceptionally long tenure in the Colonial Office, but if he has been able to bring out occasions on which I may have appeared at the time to subscribe to the view which he put forward on

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February 20 I hope he will remember that it was four, or sometimes seven or eight, years ago, and at a time when there was good reason to hope that many, if not most, of the territories concerned would accept their own responsibility. If my noble friend, by delving into any of my past speeches, could find an occasion when I might have strayed into putting what is from time to time called the "Treasury view", I hope he will show the same understanding of my problems then as we all feel for him to-day. And I hope that, when the time comes—which I hope is long postponed—and he is released from his present responsibilities, we can meet and compare notes and views together, though I hope very much that long before that day comes about justice will have been done in this case.
My Lords, I fully agree with my noble friend Lord Twining that the real test is this: that the appointment of officers, their allocation to particular posts, their transfers, their salaries, their pension conditions, the compulsory levy on their salaries for widows and orphans (surely a most unusual thing, and one which puts a particular obligation on all of us), and their retirement, were, and still remain, our responsibility; and when we consider that this responsibility can be discharged by a payment now of about £286,000 a year, which payment is, unhappily, diminishing every year, I am frankly very surprised that we should have any difficulty in getting consideration for this case. As noble Lords know, and as has been pointed out to-night, we are giving very large sums to a large number of colonial and former colonial territories, and we all rejoice that we are doing so. But many of us feel that a less spectacular though equally valuable form of help might be to relieve those territories, who do not feel able to carry it out, of their responsibility (if it is held to be their responsibility) of topping-up, by allotting some part of the payments now being made to them for this particular purpose. I do not, of course, know what the noble Lord will say, or whether he has any suggestions to make. If he has, we shall all rejoice if they are practical suggestions which will go to the core of the problem of where the responsibility lies, and not merely delay the decision and pass a bit
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of time. But in my opinion, and that of many others who have had to deal with this problem, this responsibility lies fairly and squarely on our shoulders.
6.26 p.m.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, as thirty years or more ago I was for some years Secretary of State for the Colonies, I have no doubt that I was responsible for recruiting quite a number of the retired civil servants who are the subject of this Motion to-day. That being so, I feel bound in honour and duty to give my whole-hearted support to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in his Motion. I should have thought that certainly nobody who has been a Secretary of State, like Lord Boyd of Merton and myself, or indeed nobody on any side of this House, could possibly deny, whatever the legal niceties of the case, that the moral responsibility for these men who gave such good service, and for the widows of those who have died—and not a few of them died actually in the Service—is, without any question, our responsibility.
The Secretary of State recruited every one of these men. The Colonies were not independent when these men were recruited, and they did not have an independent financial responsibility. No doubt regulations were issued by colonial Governors, such as my noble friends Lord Twining or Lord Milverton; but those instructions, those regulations, those ordinances, were made by the colonial Governments either on the express instructions, or with the approval, of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. The Secretary of State laid down what these men were to be paid, their conditions of service, the conditions and the terms under which they would retire, and, without any question, he transferred them from one territory to another. Indeed, it was part of their terms of service to be transferred from one territory to another, to wherever the Secretary of State thought they could best render service.
My Lords, there is no dispute to-day that these people ought to be paid. That the Government have themselves laid down, because they have informed all the Governments, whether they are now Governments of independent territories or whether they are still Governments of

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dependent territories, what ought to be the increase which morally these pensioners should receive. The question of the cost concerns a very small sum. It has been pointed out that the amount diminishes year by year; but I suppose the Government really must know, near enough, what are the figures. I suppose the figures are certainly under £200,000 a year to-day; and then there is the small addition in connection with the Sudan, which I am very glad Lord Colyton mentioned. But there is no question about what the sum should be; the only dispute is as to who should pay it.
The Governments of the Colonies, or of the Territories who were Colonies but are now independent, should pay if they can. Quite a number of them have—and more honour to them! I agree with Lord Twining: I have no doubt that they will go on paying. But the extraordinary argument is advanced that our Government should not accept their obvious moral responsibility, where the pensions have not been increased, for fear that some Government may take advantage of that and either withdraw or reduce what it is now doing. In forty years or so of public service, I have heard some odd arguments come out of the Treasury, but I have never heard an argument more odd than this one.
What does it come to? We must not do what we know is right for fear that we should encourage somebody else to do what is wrong. I do not know whether we are a Christian country today. Certainly that is the oddest Christian doctrine I have ever heard announced. Even if I cannot appeal to my noble friend on grounds of Christianity—and I know very well I can—I sympathise with him because I know exactly where his heart is, whatever his tongue has to say on instructions from other quarters. Did anybody ever hear a more unethical argument than that?
The Government have been very firm in doing exactly the opposite and laying down the opposite principle in other matters. I recall on one occasion when I pointed out that about four-fifths of the members of the United Nations had failed to pay their subscriptions, and ventured to suggest that it might encourage them to pay if we reduced our subscription a little for the moment and
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said we would "top up" (if that is the right expression) when the others had done the same, I was taken to task by no less a person than the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who said that that was a most immoral suggestion. I do not know if it was moral or not. I thought it was rather sensible. But the Secretary of State said that it was our duty to pay our subscription and we should be much more likely (I paraphrase what he said) to encourage other people to do their duty if they saw that we were doing ours. Clearly the Government cannot have it both ways. If it is right that we should do our duty and pay our subscription to the United Nations, whatever anybody else does, it is our plain and bounden duty to pay this tiny sum (tiny compared with the vast Budgets with which we are faced to-day) to people whose need is very great, whose claim is beyond any question and who deserve as well of this country and this Parliament as any set of men there are.
6.33 p.m.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, we have heard the most shocking tale of what is little more than the legalised evasion of responsibility. The responsibility for this has been laid by the noble Earl who has just spoken at the doors of the Treasury. It is probably true that it originally stemmed from the Treasury, but I do not think it is fair to them to place the blame on their shoulders. It must be the Government's responsibility for accepting the advice of the Treasury.
Shocking though the story is, and almost unbelievable to many of us, the issues are very simple. I would ask the noble Lord who is going to reply a question to which I should like a straight answer, and I am sure that I know what it will be. Let me give him an example, not of Government action, but of the action of a private individual. Let me take as an example a neighbour of the noble Lord who owns an estate which he has farmed for many years and on which there are old farm servants who have been working there all their lives. The farm is sold and there is an understanding that the new owner will take on these people and look after them. However, shortly after that one or two of these old farm servants retire, the

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new owner refuses to take the responsibility of looking after them, and they are left in poverty, even in destitution. What would the noble Lord think of the former owner of that farm if he turned his back on those who had served him and his family for generations and said that it was no responsibility of his—it was the responsibility of the new owner? He made the arrangements with the new owner and if the latter did not live up to them, the farm servants who had retired could not come back to him for anything. I am certain that the noble Lord would have a pretty low opinion of that neighbour of his, and I am even more certain that if it happened in his own case he would not for one moment consider turning his back on those men.
Should we have a different standard of behaviour for the Government than we have for individuals? If I am right in thinking that the noble Lord would turn his back on his neighbour who behaved in that way, what is to prevent his turning his back on his Government, if it behaves in this way? Should we be more charitable to the Government just because it happens to be large, almost amorphous, and happens to have the Treasury behind whispering what to do?
It is no good saying that in the case I have cited a man is dealing with his own money whereas the Government are dealing with the taxpayer's money. Of course, the Government are dealing with the country's money; and though they must safeguard the money of the country, they must also safeguard the conscience of the country and of the taxpayer. I cannot, for the life of me, see how this simple analogy can be gainsaid or shown to be different in any way from the present position in respect of this small number of unfortunate public servants who made the mistake, often not of their own accord, of serving in the wrong Colony.
I hope that even if he cannot say so today, the noble Lord will be able to tell us before long that all the arguments that so many noble Lords with so much experience from all sides of the House have pressed upon the Government are being listened to and that we shall have a Government, in this respect at least, who behave no
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less well to the country's servants than we expect any individual to behave to his own.
6.39 p.m.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, only two-and-a-half months ago we had an interesting debate on this very subject of increases in pensions for former overseas civil servants and officers of the old Colonial Service. In view of what was said on all sides on that occasion and of my own closing remarks, I think it is no surprise that the noble Earl should have brought forward his Motion this afternoon. As he said, he has timed it at the most convenient moment, when he thought the Government had had time to consider the previous debate, and one week after the meeting with the Overseas' Pensioners' Association, to which I referred on the last occasion, and which the noble Earl seemed to think had by no means satisfied the delegation from the Association. I will take the opportunity of referring to this later on in my speech.
Meanwhile, I should like to thank the noble Earl for the coherent and comprehensive manner in which he introduced this debate, and also for the opportunity that it gives me to continue an argument of two-and-a-half months ago, and, I hope, to bring new information to it which will be of interest to your Lordships. At the same time, I think it is significant that every speaker who took part in the debate then has returned to your Lordships' House to take part to-day, with the unfortunate exception of the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, who moved the previous Motion but cannot be here to-day: and we have to welcome additions in the persons of the noble Lord, Lord Colyton, who has introduced a completely new angle to the general subject which is of great interest, and the noble Lord, Lord Walston, who has added his experience of overseas territories to that of other noble Lords.
Of course, a large part of the argument, and really most of it, hangs around the question of the moral obligations of Her Majesty's Government. I am sure every noble Lord realises that I fully understand this point of view and appreciate the strength of feeling with which it is held by all those overseas

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civil servants who have been employed in the colonial territories. Having lived in Africa for a number of years and known a good many of them, I could hardly fail to sympathise with their point of view. But it is difficult to argue on moral questions, and, in spite of the analogy drawn by the noble Lord, Lord Walston, about the farmer and the estate owner, both of which We are ourselves (though he "got at me" very nicely in that way) when it comes to Governments, it is difficult to argue about moral obligations.
I rather liked the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Twining, who said that it was not really so much a matter of principle as of policy. Taking that as a cue, I feel that I am bound to quote from one or two documents to indicate that this policy or principle, whichever it may be, is not a new thing which stems from the Colonial Paper No. 306, which has been quoted so many times in aid of the case of noble Lords here, and particularly, of course, paragraph 3 of that document. If noble Lords are going to quote paragraph 3, although it may seem legalistic (and I apologise for that) I think one must, at the same time, read paragraph 2. In paragraph 2 it says:
"Although the members of these Services are directly employed and paid by the territorial Governments, they are under the general direction and patronage of the Secretary of State for the Colonies."
That puts a slightly different emphasis the other way from the way in which the quotation from paragraph 3 is interpreted by noble Lords who have used it.
VISCOUNT BOYD OF MERTON: My Lords, would the noble Lord read the next sentence?
LORD HASTINGS: Noble Lords have chosen the pieces that they wanted to quote, and I was choosing the piece that I felt I should bring to your Lordships' attention. However, paragraph 2 goes on to say:
"They have, rightly, regarded themselves and have been regarded as belonging to a general service under the Crown as well as to the local services of the territories in which they are immediately serving."
If that were the only thing I was going to quote, I would not have brought it up; but I think I must also draw the
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attention of your Lordships to a colonial regulation issued by the Colonial Office in 1911 relating to pensions and gratuities made to European officers serving in the British Protectorates in East Africa. That says:
"Pensions and gratuities will be submitted to the Lords Commissioners of H.M. Treasury for their sanction and, when sanctioned, will be made a charge on the Protectorate revenue."
And if we go further back than that, there is a document of 1887 which is even more specific. Section 2 of the Pensions (Colonial Service) Act, which dealt with mixed employment in the Colonial and Home Civil Services, states:
"No payment should be made from the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom or moneys voted by Parliament in respect of any employment in the permanent Civil Service of the Colony."
THE EARL OF SWINTON: The noble Lord has quoted with great accuracy a regulation of 1911 and a regulation of Mr. Gladstone's in 1887. But is it not a fact that when those regulations were made by the Government here, the Colonial Secretary of State here was entirely responsible for telling the local Governments exactly what they had to do? It is true that the Government said that Kenya had to pay this; but then the Colonial Secretary ordered Kenya to pay it and was in a position to see that Kenya did pay it. That is the difference.
LORD HASTINGS: I welcome the intervention of the noble Earl, although I am not going to reply to that particular point at this moment, because I was trying to show that this is not a new policy. In the estimation of the noble Earl there may be new conditions which require a change of policy; but to argue that this policy is something immoral is not really fair, because it has always been the policy of the Government.
LORD DERWENT: The policy, I suppose, could always have been wrong.
LORD HASTINGS: I can only say: ask Mr. Gladstone.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to explain what would have happened if one of these Colonies had made default in payment? Would

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not the British Government have felt themselves responsible for paying?
LORD HASTINGS: I am only at the very beginning of my speech, and I am afraid it will take rather a long time if I answer all these points, most of which will be covered in the course of my speech.
LORD SILKIN: Will this point be covered?
LORD HASTINGS: This one is covered more or less somewhere later on. I am not going to pursue this difficult moral argument now, because really it is quite impossible to continue in that way. In fact, I have to state, quite frankly, that at the moment Her Majesty's Government continue, and will continue, to insist on the responsibility of overseas territories for their obligations in respect of pensions. Therefore, I believe it would be much more fruitful if I were to consider the practical problem before us and whether anything can be done to meet that problem.
In our last debate the discussion centred upon this topping up of pension increases to the level in the United Kingdom, especially for the older officers and their widows; and those were more or less the terms of the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore. The noble Viscount, Lord Boyd of Merton, spoke in that debate with great force, and we are glad to see him in his place to-day. Incidentally, I am most grateful for his mention of something which can go to the credit of the Department of Technical Co-operation, responsible for the publication of the White Paper Recruitment for Service Overseas: and, indeed, he has seen a previous White Paper on the preliminary work of the Department, and I am glad he mentioned that. But in that speech he referred to the dispatch of October 2, 1959, which he circulated a week before he retired as Secretary of State at the Colonial Office, and to which reference has already been made. The noble Viscount put up a tremendous and very clever defence of himself, if I may say so, without knowing precisely what I was going to say. But I will not take him to task very much.
On re-reading that speech, I could not help thinking to myself that while he
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was Secretary of State for five and a half years there was no indication at all that Her Majesty's Government were thinking of taking over the pension increases, or topping them up at that time. In fact, just before he retired, he issued a circular inviting all overseas territories to do just that. Evidently he was disappointed with the results, because only two and a half years later he comes here and says that there is a wholly new situation (and this has been said also by other noble Lords) which demands our consideration. Therefore, apart from the fact that I wonder why he was not successful in persuading the Government to top up pensions at that time, I think it is reasonable to examine what has happened since he issued that circular.
VISCOUNT BOYD OF MERTON: The noble Lord fairly said that I sent out that circular seven days before I left the Colonial Office. Clearly, what action I should have taken had I stayed on and seen the replies, I cannot say now. But I think I should have tried to follow the line I have taken to-night.
LORD HASTINGS: The point really was that this problem of the older Civil Service pensioners was with us in 1954, and the noble Lord lived with it for five years and then sent out this circular. He felt disappointed at the results, and perhaps would have done something which we have not yet done. I will give a few figures, because they are interesting.
The noble Lord, Lord Twining, mentioned many figures, but I am afraid he did it so quickly that I could not take them all in. This is important. At the time of the circular there were 27 dependent territories—including Nigeria, at that time one of the largest countries with most pensioners—which had schemes inferior in general to that pertaining in the United Kingdom. After that despatch, 9 of these 27 countries introduced schemes directly related to the terms of our United Kingdom Pensions (Increase) Act, 1959, and a further 6 introduced schemes on a somewhat different basis, but at least as generous as, or better than, the terms of that Act. Of the remaining 12, as the noble Viscount reminded me, with 5 of them negotiations are still proceeding. I think that what the noble Viscount has heard is probably fairly correct. and

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although I cannot give any information at the moment, because negotiations are not completed, the prospects in those five cases appear to be pretty good. So I think one can say quite fairly that that dispatch was a success, and has not been the failure that some noble Lords have made it out to be. Therefore Her Majesty's Government will continue to press the Oversea Governments, and we believe that we shall do so with success, now and in the future.
Now we come to the request for top-ping-up increases which are said to cost, including widows and orphans, £286,000—that is based on the figure we were using in our last debate. I do not think it is very useful to speculate about figures, but I understand that that is probably a considerable under-estimate, and that it will be rather more than that. If Her Majesty's Government ware to undertake to top up these increases, I think we must ask ourselves what the consequences would be. Obviously, there would be no further increases from any territories, independent or dependent. I think we must all agree with that. Therefore, Her Majesty's Government will be taking over an obligation for all time until even the present officers serving are with us no longer, which will be many years yet, I am glad to think.
In addition to that, I think the Government would have to consider whether, by taking this step, they might not find themselves obliged in due course to take over all increases in pensions. I will not produce the argument to which the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, so strongly objects, and, in fact, to which all noble Lords object, that the basic pensions would be in any danger. But I think that in any White Paper such as is asked for by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the possible consequences for the Government if they were obliged to take over all increases in pensions must at least be considered. I thought that one or two figures would interest the House, and perhaps surprise some of your Lordships. Because, after all, two-thirds of all pensioners now enjoy pensions as good as, and in many cases much better than, they would enjoy if they were being paid at the United Kingdom level. For instance, among the lowest-paid pensions, on a basic pension of £200 the
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increase under the United Kingdom 1959 Act is in the order of £143 over and above the basic of £200. In the Bahamas, it is £288, and in Hong Kong £245—a very important difference indeed to those people living on such small pensions. On the basic level of £300, the United Kingdom increase is £166.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will excuse me for interrupting. I should be the last person to interrupt his speech, if I did not feel it was necessary, as I know how irritating it is. Surely these examples are taken from two of the richest Colonies. They are extremely small, and will affect very few people indeed. They really cannot be used as a basis for generalisation.
LORD HASTINGS: Nevertheless we are dealing with individuals. Noble Lords have insisted that this is a human problem, and I suggest that every individual counts. But these are not the only territories I am going to mention. In the Bahamas the figure is £388; in the United Kingdom £166, and in Fiji, again a small territory and not very rich, £300. In the middle grade on a basic salary of £700, the United Kingdom level is an increase of £259. In Nyasaland, which is not rich, it is £382, and in Northern Rhodesia, £463—over £200 more. These are very important differences. In the top level, I have before me figures relating to pensions paid to people who retired before the first post-war revision on a basic pension of £1,200. In Sarawak, for instance, the increase is £600, compared to only £352 in the United Kingdom. I just make that point. It is only fair, and to be expected, that the Government must consider the condition of these people if it were ever to become involved in taking over all increases in pensions over and above the level of the basic pension.
The noble Earl said (and this really reinforces the point he just made in an interjection) that independent territories never "cough up"—never give a pension increase except that based on an agreement made before independence. I do not think that is strictly accurate. In Nigeria, the increase arose from an agreement made prior to independence, but I believe that the situation there is not final. In Somaliland, an increase was given based on negotiations begun

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before independence, but they were not completed before independence. In Ceylon, the increases are now based on the local Ceylon cost of living.
I come to a suggestion which I think was put forward in relation to compensation payments in Tanganyika. I believe that the noble Earl said something about that, as did the noble Lord, Lord Twining. I think the suggestion made was that these Governments find it difficult to give pension increases because they are already saddled with payments for compensation. Did the noble Lord make that point? I thought he did—at any rate, he mentioned the large sums of compensation. I think it is worth pointing out two things. The first is that half of that money which falls to the Colony (as it was, now the independent country) to provide and pay to the expatriates by way of compensation as its own share is loaned from Her Majesty's Government as an interest-free loan. In the case of Uganda, for example, agreements have been signed which allows that loan to be repaid over a period of 25 years, interest-free, with no payment at all for the first six years. I think that that is a fairly generous arrangement. The other half is provided under the Overseas Services Aid Scheme, and is entirely a grant from Her Majesty's Government. So I do not think it can be said that the payment of this compensation handicaps countries and makes it more difficult for them to give any pension increases.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, the point the noble Lord is making is that these countries cannot afford to pay compensation or pensions out of their own revenue. If Her Majesty's Government do not pay, they have to get a loan from here; which is exactly what we have been saying. If the Government do not pay, these countries cannot afford to pay: they have not the money.
LORD HASTINGS: They have to pay only half of the total; half is loaned from this Government, but interest-free, and they do not have to pay anything for the first six years. That does, I think, give them a fair chance to get on their feet. Therefore, the immediate effect of the Overseas Services Aid Scheme is that these Governments are
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relieved of paying a salary to their expatriate servants over and above the local level and are relieved also of paying children's, educational and travel allowances. Therefore they are making an immediate saving rather than the other way round.
The noble Lord, Lord Twining had a point about commutation of these pension increases. Of course every Oversea Civil Service officer is entitled to take approximately a quarter of his pension in a capital payment when he retires, with a lower rate of income payment thereafter. I imagine that the noble Lord would like him to be able to do that in respect of any increases received, but the difficulty about that is that increases are not given while the officer is serving, because he would not be having a pension at all if he were still serving. After he has retired he then gets an increase on his pension. How can he commute that and capitalise it? Because, after all, the Treasury, or whoever is paying it—that is, the Government concerned—does not know how long that person is going to live. It would involve difficult actuarial calculations and a life insurance scheme. That really is the answer to the noble Lord.
The noble Lord also mentioned widows and orphans and many other noble Lords were very concerned about them; and certainly in many cases their situation is very hard. At the same time I do not think there is any reason to doubt the security of their pensions, because these are also covered by Public Offices Agreements. As regards compulsory contributions which were made for a long time, in many cases, in order to obtain these pensions, and which were referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, and others, of course there are compulsory contributions for widows' and orphans' pensions in the Civil Service of this country; and there is no discrimination in that respect in respect of people serving overseas. There was a special question which the noble Lord, Lord Twining, had about widows and orphans. He kindly gave notice of his point, and this enabled me to obtain an answer, which I will read out, to make sure that I have it quite accurate. He complained about not being able to get sufficient information.

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The answer to his query is that annual accounts are prepared for all funded widows' and orphans' pensions Schemes, and provision is made in the relevant legislation An the majority of cases for the account to be laid down before the overseas Legislature concerned or otherwise published, for example, in the Government Gazette. Reports of actuarial valuations and annuities are made to the Governor or responsible Minister. Although not normally published they may be made accessible to staff associations, and I am not aware that any access has in fact been denied in any ease. The valuation reports on the Ghana Fund for instance may be inspected at the Grown Agent's Office. Copies of reports on the East African Widows' and Orphans' Pension Scheme have been made available to the appropriate pensioners' association. I can only add to the noble Lord that, if there is any scheme in which he is particularly interested and about which the information is unsatisfactory, if he will let me know I will do my best to find out the right people for him to contact, so that he can obtain the additional information, which is certainly there and available if one knows how to get it.
I think I should now say something about this vexed problem of India, Burma and Pakistan which was raised in the last debate, when I was not able to answer it fully. It has come up again to-day, and I should like to explain as briefly as possible that very complicated situation. In 1948, both India and Pakistan bought tapering annuities from their sterling balances in London in order to satisfy their liabilities and enable them to pay their Civil Service pensions for as long as those people were likely to remain alive; and they gave that capital to the British Government and bought the tapering annuities with it. Then in 1955 a further arrangement was entered into because the India and Pakistan Governments were anxious that Her Majesty's Government should take over full responsibility for all pensions, so relieving them of the whole thing.
All the pensions remaining to be paid by India were valued actuarially, and the capital value of the annuity payment to India due after 1955 was calculated; and from that was deducted liability for the pensions, less the income tax which
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India would have collected from them. As a result, India got the better of the balance and received a lump sum in payment. Pakistan, on the other hand, came out the wrong side, on balance, and would have had to pay a lump sum in capital to Her Majesty's Government which they could not afford at the time. That is why they continued paying basic pensions and India did not. The situation is exactly similar, the only difference being the result of these capital calculations. In respect of pensions increases, in 1947 both India and Pakistan agreed to a request from Her Majesty's Government to give increases to pensioners of their armed forces but not to their civil pensioners. That was taken into account when these capital schemes were agreed to. The result was that Her Majesty's Government realised it was quite unfair that the armed forces should get increases if the civilian officers did not; and that is why they took them over at that time.
In 1955, of course, they took over the armed forces pensioners as well, and in fact gave them an increase based on the 1952 Act, because the Indian Government had limited the increase to the 1947 Act. So the situation is that first the civilian officers were taken on by the Treasury, because they would have been treated unfairly, and after that the armed forces pensioners. There is no difference at all between India and Pakistan when it comes to the payment of increases.
Burma, as the noble Earl mentioned, gave increases in the first place to both military and civilian pensioners, but those increases were limited by treaty to pensions existing at the time of independence. Therefore, Her Majesty's Government took on a Burmese increase in pensions in 1952 as well. There was the additional reason that, prior to 1937 there was a unified Civil Service right throughout the Indian continent, India, Pakistan and Burma. Therefore, it was impossible, in equity, to separate any of those pensioners, one from the other; and that is why Her Majesty's Government took it upon themselves to act in that manner. They were also reinforced by a point which has been brought up by a noble Lord and which relates to the constitutional position of the Secretary of State for India. Because the India Act,

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1935, specifically provided that as from 1937 appointments to the Indian Civil Service, and the other Services mentioned there, should be made direct by the Secretary of State for India. In that respect there is a difference between his position and the position of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, which I think was mentioned, although not appreciated or understood by, the noble Lord, Lord Colyton.
When it came to giving further increases to the pensioners of India, Burma and Pakistan subsequent to 1955, of course, the Government here were really standing in the shoes of those overseas Governments. So that when the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd of Merton, sent a despatch to overseas territories he would have sent it to those Governments if we had not been acting for them. The increases were given because it was utterly impossible for Her Majesty's Government to refuse to give increases being asked by the Colonial Secretary, with the approval of his colleagues, from other overseas territories. I hope I have explained that position thoroughly and noble Lords will not find in it anything unduly complicated or irrational.
We have had really a continuation of the debate of two and a half months ago; we have been over some of the same arguments. I have tried to put some new points to your Lordships, and to answer those raised by various speakers. But I think it is now time we turned to the specific terms of the Resolution. After all, that is what we are here to debate. I would ask your Lordships to read it very carefully. The noble Earl is moving to resolve:
"That this House urges Her Majesty's Government to increase the basic rate of pensions paid to former Colonial Service Officers and their dependants."
That is the first part of the Resolution. What we were discussing two and a half months ago, and what we are discussing to-day, is an increase of pensions, topping-up pensions. We have not been talking of increasing the basic pension. I thought I must draw your Lordships' attention to the actual wording of the Resolution. I do not wish to quibble; I do not wish to be legalistic. But in point of fact the Resolution is asking us to accept something different from what
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noble Lords have been talking about and what we were talking about two and a half months ago.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, may I say I accept every word of what he says? This Resolution is abominably badly drafted and literally means exactly what he has said. But I think everyone who has spoken understood exactly what I meant, in spite of the bad drafting, and I hope the Government do too.
LORD HASTINGS: We all understand what the noble Earl means and that is why at rather unseemly length I have dealt with the resolution in the way in which the noble Earl meant it to be dealt with. Strictly speaking, perhaps I need not have done. But I thought it right to point out this discrepancy to noble Lords.
There are only two ways (without boring your Lordships) as to how basic rate of pension is calculated, which is no doubt known by many but perhaps not all. There are only two ways in which basic rate of pension can be raised. One is by salary revision, which obviously cannot be made in the case of former Colonial Service officers, and the other is by changing the constant or, in other words, the percentage calculalation which is used. Normally, one takes the final pay of the retiring officer—say it is £1,600 when he retires—and counts the number of months he has served. I am thinking of a particular instance I gave to the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, when I wrote to him after the last debate. Say it is 263 months; and every month he gets one-six-hundredth of his final pay. The officer in this case in fact got £700, which is the basic rate. The only way you can change it is by salary revision, which is impossible after retirement, or by raising the constant; that is, instead of saying he should get one six-hundredth, saying he should get one five-hundredth for every month of service. I do not know whether it is possible to do it for former overseas civil servants who have retired, but if it were possible you could hardly do it without doing it for the existing ones. And that, of course, would affect all the local officers employed by countries, independent as well as dependent, and we should have to get their agreement to it.

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The point I want to make is this. If this were a Motion and we were having a useful debate and the noble Earl was going to withdraw his Motion at the end, I would not complain; it would be perfectly all right. But in fact this is a Resolution and the House is being asked to divide on a specific Resolution which is in fact asking us to do something which is virtually impossible of fulfilment. I have to point that out to the House, because if we were to divide and vote for this Resolution the House would be asking the Government to do something which, in the first place, is probably undesirable, in the second place is something which the noble Earl does not mean, and in the third place is something which it is impossible to effect.
Having dealt with that part of the Resolution, I would turn to the noble Earl's request for a White Paper. Other noble Lords have referred to the difficulties which they seem to know the Government are in in producing a White Paper. Of course, it is in fact true, I regret to say, that there are locally paid officers—I mentioned in the last debate about 2,000—and it is not known precisely how much they get and it takes time to collect this information. The figures we were working on three months ago are out of date. They were barely in date at that time, but they are even more out of date now, and it would be desirable to get much more accurate figures. Things have changed rapidly in the last year or so because other countries have come to independence. It goes back for more than a year. Annual accounts are eventually eighteen months out of date, and it is the same with these figures. There is the difficulty of getting the information from these independent territories, or at least publishing information in a Government White Paper here which purports to give information about the policies of independent territories. Therefore, in those circumstances, any White Paper on the subject of overseas pensions produced at the present time would contain serious gaps.
I come now to the most important part of my speech. Noble Lords have referred to various undertakings which were given, or which were thought to have been given in the last debate. I
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can assure your Lordships that the Department of Technical Cooperation has not been sleeping upon this matter. We had a meeting last week which I was privileged to attend with the Overseas Services Pensioners Association, and my right honourable friend the Secretary for the Department was able to make an announcement which I am now going to make. I will read it carefully and slowly because it is an offsicial announcement, and the purport of it will, I understand, appear in the OFFICIAL Report of another place to-morrow morning in the form of a Written Answer to a Question. The announcement reads as follows:
"A Working Party has been set up by the Secretary for Technical Co-operation to study the problem of increases in Colonial Service, Overseas Civil Service and Sudan Civil Service pensions, including dependants' pensions. The Working Party will examine the nature and extent of this problem and the various courses which might be adopted. It should be made clear that the setting up of this Working Party, which comprises representatives of the Overseas Departments and of the Treasury, does not presuppose any change in the policy of the British Government with regard to responsibility for overseas pensions. Work has already been put in hand to assemble the basic information necessary for this study, and it is hoped that the Working Party will submit its Report in the autumn."
I should make it clear, because I am sure the noble Earl would ask the question otherwise, that this is an inter-Departmental Report, Which, of course, would not normally be published, and this one will not be published. But Her Majesty's Government undertake to look again into the question of publishing a White Paper after consideration of the Report of this Working Party. There is no intention to conceal information on this subject, Which would in any case be made available to the Overseas Services Pensioners Association in so far as the facts are concerned, and, of course, it will be made available to the Members of both Houses in regard to the facts.
I want to be quite fair about this in respect of the feelings of the Overseas Services Pensioners Association to which the noble Earl referred in his speech. They still maintain all their reservations on this question of the moral obligations of Her Majesty's Government. That is clearly understood and I do not deny it. But they welcome the appointment of this Working Party as progress in the right direction and as a definite break

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through, because this Working Party is going to produce all the facts which the noble Earl opposite and other noble Lords are asking for, and I think it will probably produce a good many facts which have not been asked for as well; and it will be able to examine the whole question and to make its recommendations.
I do not think I can say more than that. I would simply end by saying that I believe your Lordships can be satisfied that the previous debate in this House has had its influence and that such promises and undertakings as were given have been carried out. I am sure my right honourable friend has shown his serious intention in this most difficult matter of overseas pensions, and I hope your Lordships will be satisfied with what I have had to tell you. Therefore, I would invite the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to withdraw his Resolution. I hope he will feel that the information which has been given is satisfactory. If, however, my plea to him is unsuccessful, I must ask the House to reject this Resolution on the three grounds that I have given: first, that we are being asked for something which is incorrect and is impossible of fulfilment; secondly, that there is in existence a Working Party which will produce all the facts necessary for further information to the House, and possibly for the publication of a White Paper which in fact cannot be produced without the work of the Working Party first; and finally, that the Government have carried out their undertakings and shown their serious intentions in this matter.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, can he give any indication as to the timetable of the Working Party?
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I think it was in the statement. It is hoped to complete the report in the autumn.
7.27 p.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. Again, every single speaker, apart from the Government spokesman, has taken the view that it is the responsibility of Her Majesty's Government
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to top-up the pension increases of the retired members of the Colonial Services and their dependants. This, in itself, must have been a vast encouragement to all the people whose faith has been deeply shaken by what the Government have done. I cannot say that what the noble Lord has said has given me personally any comfort. I asked for two things: first, that some financial payments should be made immediately to the hardest cases, and the noble Lord has answered that no payments will be made. I also asked him to publish a White Paper, and he has not said that a White Paper will be published. He has said that a Working Party will be appointed. But this Working Party will be within the framework of Government policy, which apparently remains completely the same: there is no change in Government policy in regard to accepting this responsibility. And, of course, the essential facts are already known; we do not need a Working Party to find them out.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, might I ask the noble Earl why he is asking for a White Paper if the essential facts are known? I imagine that a great many more facts than are now known will be produced by this Working Party. There was something else with which I disagree, but which I have for the moment forgotten.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, can the Working Party recommend that Her Majesty's Government shall accept responsibility where the pensions are inadequate?
LORD HASTINGS: I read the statement. If I can find it again I will clarify the point, or see if it makes that clear. The Working Party is
"to study the problem of increases",
whatever the problem may be,
"in the Colonial Services, Overseas Civil Service and Sudan Civil Service pensions, including dependants pensions."—
that is already in and—
"the Working Party will examine the nature and extent of this problem and the various courses which might be adopted."
I think that is all-inclusive, and I see no reason to suppose that the Working Party cannot produce the facts or say what it wants to.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: On the first point that the noble Lord made, about knowledge of the facts, I would say that the facts are known to those who study them; there are a certain number of people in both Houses who have made a fairly close study. There are many other people in and out of Parliament who would like to know them and to whom they would be available if a White Paper were published.
I should be perfectly willing to withdraw my Motion if the noble Lord could say, as the noble Viscount suggested, that the Government would consider changing their present policy and accept responsibility for these payments, in the light of the recommendations made by the Working Party, and that the terms of reference would include recommendations about policy. The other condition I would suggest to the noble Lord as being a reasonable condition for the withdrawal of my Motion, is that a White Paper should be published when the Working Party has concluded its deliberations. The noble Lord said that a White Paper might be published if it were possible, but I think the least the noble Lord could offer would be an assurance on those two points.
LORD HASTINGS: In regard to the latter, I cannot go any further than to say that the Government have undertaken to consider publication; but I did say at the same time that there was no intention of concealing information. That would be made available both to Members of Parliament and to the Overseas Services Pensioners Association. What was the other point the noble Earl made?
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: That was the major point—whether the terms of reference of the Working Party included the policy of the Government, which we have been debating in this House for two days.
LORD HASTINGS: It is difficult to enlarge on an official statement, as the noble Earl knows, but I understand that an examination of the nature and extent of the problem and the various courses which might be adopted does naturally lead to a consideration of every aspect of the matter and every possibility. If the Working Party gathers all the facts
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and points out how much it would cost Her Majesty's Government if they were responsible for taking over overseas pension increases—present, future, and possibly even past—it would no doubt put all the courses before the Government, with all the pros and cons. I do not myself think that anything is excluded, but I cannot say. Specifically the Working Party is entitled to recommend a change of policy to the Government, although the facts and figures and the arguments which it produces might lead the members of the Government who peruse the report of the Working Party to come to a certain conclusion. I cannot really go further than that.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I am sorry to press the noble Lord on this. I think we must get one very simple thing clear. It is not as if you were appointing an outside body to make this inquiry. These people are functionaries; they are civil servants. I imagine one will come from the Treasury, one from the Foreign Office, one from the Colonial Office, and, I do not know, but there may be one from the Commonwealth Office. These are officials appointed by their Ministers to do a job. Presumably the Ministers will tell these officials what they are to do. They will not be told in terms what they are to report, but surely the Ministers will give them an instruction as to whether or not it is within their terms of reference to say that pensions should be the responsibility of the Government. I am not asking the Minister to take a responsibility for changing Government policy. All I am asking him is, what is going to be the meaning of the terms of reference of this Working Party?
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I am sure I am right in saying that the aim of this Working Party is not only to produce facts, but also to produce means and methods and to examine possibilities. Whether the Working Party itself, consisting of Departmental civil servants, would recommend one course or another is one thing, but what they will do is to set out the possible courses—which obviously would include the possibility of Her Majesty's Government's being responsible for pensions increases. Although they themselves might not actually recommend it,

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the whole thing would be set out for the responsible Ministers of the various Departments to decide upon. I hope that that will satisfy the noble Earl. Everything will be set out so that the final decision can be taken, and the alternative will be there clearly before the Government—not only just a set of figures and statistics, but also arguments pro and con.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I appreciate that the noble Lord is doing his best, but I must say I am very far from satisfied. I think it is perfectly clear that this Working Party is a body of civil servants Which is to inquire into the facts and present them so that the Ministers can take a decision on the fullest possible evidence. We know that all Governments appoint these bodies
Resolved in the affirmative, and Resolution agreed to accordingly.
when they want to look into something. It is not like an outside Commission, a body with eminent persons serving upon it, such as the Commission that went to Central Africa, containing persons who can make recommendations about policy. This Working Party would be operating within the framework of Government policy, and that is exactly what we feel must be changed if these people are to get any satisfaction. I am also disappointed that the noble Lord cannot even guarantee that, when the facts are available, they will be published. In view of that, I do not feel I can withdraw my Resolution.
On Question, Whether the said Resolution shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 21; Not-Contents, 19.

CONTENTS

Ailwyn, L.

Fortescue, E.

Silkin, L.

Albemarle, E. [Teller.]

Listowel, E.

Stratheden and Campbell, L.

Alexander of Hillsborough, V.

Longford, E.

Swinton, E.

Boyd of Merton, V.

Moyne, L.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Champion, L.

Peddie, L.

Twining, L

Colyton, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Walston, L.

Derwent, L.

Shepherd, L.[Teller.]

Williamson, L.

NOT CONTENTS

Bathurst, E.

Dundee, E.

Kilmuir, V. (L. Chancellor.)

Bossom, L.

Falmouth, V.

Lansdowne, M.

Buckinghamshire, E.

Goschen, V.

Newton, L. [Teller.]

Chesham, L.

Hailsham, V. (L. President.)

St. Aldwyn, E. [Teller.]

Colville of Culross, V.

Hastings, L.

St. Oswald, L.

Craigton, L.

Jellicoe, E.

Waldegrave, E.

Devonshire, D.

House adjourned at fourteen minutes before eight o'clock.