HL Deb 01 July 1964 vol 259 cc595-606

3.20 p.m.

LORD McCORQUODALE OF NEWTON

rose to call attention to the world emergency created by the population explosion and to urge Her Majesty's Government to press, in the Agencies of the United Nations Organisation, for practical measures to help member nations, who so desire, to spread the idea and practice of voluntary family planning; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is two years since your Lordships discussed the world population problem, on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Casey, and I am sure we are all delighted to know that he will take part in the debate to-day. I make no apology for returning to these questions and asking your Lordships to consider them afresh. Very much discussion and much publicity has been given to the matter, from all possible angles, in the meantime, and, personally, I think this is all to the good. But what I am asking of your Lordships and of the Government to-day is to give attention to one aspect of this matter which seems to me possibly not to have received all the attention that it deserved.

The Prime Minister has recently emphasised in another place, and your Lordships endorsed this view in a debate last week in this House, that the gap in wealth between the affluent and the underdeveloped countries is a matter of the first importance in world politics to-day. This view was forcibly expressed during the summer, at the recent United Nations Trade and Development Conference at Geneva, and in the fascinating Report of Dr. Prebisch (which has been before your Lordships), the distinguished South American economist who was Secretary-General of the Conference and who is generally regarded to-day as the spokesman for the 77 nations that come in the category of "underdeveloped".

I would refer, in passing, to one sentence in the Report, and I am not going to refer to this matter again in particular. Dr. Prebisch shows on page 5 that in relation to pre-war times the per capita food production in the developing world in general has remained stationary ever since the war. I am no expert, and would not for one moment pretend to be, on the question of food production, but it appears to me that many people are far too complacent in this matter and about the world food situation in general. Per capita it has not improved. And have we not to-day more than half the world undernourished?

I must apologise to your Lordships for the fact that in the remarks I shall venture to make to-day there will be a number of statistics. Some of them were given in the last debate by the noble Duke, the Duke of Devonshire, on behalf of the Government, but I fear that they are necessary to my argument this afternoon, and I ask your Lordships to bear with me. It is, as I have said, two years since we debated this question, and in those two years the world population has gone up by well over 100 million people, or more than twice the population of this country. The basic figures, of course, are very sobering. If I may put it in this way, since Adam and Eve, it took up to 1830, roughly 130 years ago, for the population of the world to reach 1,000 million. In the next 100 years, up to 1930, this figure doubled, to 2,000 million. In the next 30 years, up to 1960, it reached 3,000 million. By 1970 it will be well over 3,500 million. And it is certain that by the year 2,000 it will be well over 6,250 million; indeed, it is estimated officially that the figure will be slightly higher than that.

With the world's population doubling, and continuing to double every 30 or 40 years or so, it means that in some 70 years' time, while our grandchildren will still be alive, the world's population will be 12,000 million, and growing at an ever faster rate. For this world population figure to-day does not grow on an arithmetical progression basis, of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, but doubles itself: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and upwards. After that the figures become fantastic. And who knows what may happen thereafter? I will not weary your Lordships with the figures, but I think I have said enough to show that this population explosion which is already with us is a major problem of the world to-day. Indeed, I believe it is the supreme problem before us at this moment.

What I wish to emphasise in general in this debate is that this increase is enormously more serious in the underdeveloped countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America than in Europe and North America. Birth rates of between 40 and 50 per 1,000 people are found in these underdeveloped countries, where two-thirds of the present population of the world reside. In Europe and in Japan the figure is about 19 per 1,000. In the United States, Canada and the U.S.S.R. the figure is 25 or 26 per 1,000. The rate of population increase, which, after all, is the vital statistic, shows that, even though the death rate in these underdeveloped countries is much higher than in the others—and still far too high— the economically more advanced parts of the world, where birth rates and death rates are both love, have a much slower rate of growth in general.

I do not intend to weary your Lordships with many more figures, but the rates of population increase are roughly these: in Asia, 2.5 per cent. per annum; in Africa, over 2 per cent. per annum; and in Latin America 2.5 per cent. per annum. When we come to Europe, we find that it is 0.8 per cent. per annum; in Japan it is just under 1 per cent. per annum; and in the United States and the U.S.S.R., which curiously enough run exactly parallel in this matter, it is about 1.6 to 1.8 per cent. per annum. These are overall figures taken over very large areas. In several countries they have growth rates of 4 per cent.; and I am told that in Costa Rica at the present time the rate is something like 5 per cent. To refer to a specific country, the official estimate for India, for example, is that over the next fifteen years the population of India will grow by 187 million, or rather more than the entire present population of the United States of America.

This enormous population explosion did not become acute until after the Second World War. It has been due to the impact of new drugs, and to the remarkable success of the World Health Organisation, about which we do not hear nearly enough. They have had wonderful successes in various parts of the world in combating the scourges of malaria, tuberculosis and many other killer diseases. This has dramatically reduced the death rate, especially among infants. It is this factor, the reduction of death rates, rather than an increase in birth rates, which has caused this explosion. If one might describe the decline in death rates as "death control," this is expected to continue for many years to come; and that is good news for all of us. But there is little prospect, unless something is done, for a decline in birth rate. I think the comment made by the writer Mr. Aldous Huxley was apt when he wrote: It is self-evident that a society which practises death control must at the same time practise birth control. In the underdeveloped countries this dramatic rate of population increase tends now to wipe out all the efforts that are being made on all hands and all the aid that is now becoming available and is being given—there is not enough of it, but a great deal is being given —in an endeavour to raise the standard of living of these poverty striken countries. It would appear to me that, because of this, this effort is all for nought, as I will endeavour to show in a moment. This is the position at the present time, and it is likely to deteriorate, not improve. In many of these countries, in Latin America, in Africa and in Asia, nearly half the population of the countries is under fifteen years of age. I would ask your Lordships to consider what that means in terms of education, food and water, and, when they grow up, in terms of jobs.

In a debate two years ago the noble Duke, the Duke of Devonshire, on behalf of the Government, made some remarks about the great efforts that had been made since the conception of the Colombo Plan in 1960. I refer to the OFFICIAL REPORT of June 6, 1962, at col. 659. The noble Duke said that in the eight or ten years the Colombo Plan had made available to member countries in South and South-East Asia assistance of something like £3,600 million. Since then, there has been an official report about the Colombo Plan, and I venture to quote two or three sentences from it to your Lordships. It said: in terms of numbers the population of the region in 1950 was 625 million; and it increased to 800 million in 1961–62. One of the main causes of this increase (of 175 million) has been that mortality rate has rapidly declined while fertility, on the other hand, has generally remained constant. The Colombo Plan has contributed in no small measure to the fields of health and medicine to cause this decline in the mortality rates. This rapid rate of population increase has inevitably caused some concern to those countries which are densely populated and which are trying to achieve speedy economic development"— I would emphasise these words in this report— with the result that, as the recent E.C.A.F.E. study observed, there is even a danger"— in these areas which have been the subject of special attention and special aid— that the development effort will not be large enough to offset the effect of a rapid population growth and that per capita income will decrease. To give one other interesting sidelight, British Guiana is much in the news at the present time. It is one of the most disturbed countries within the British Commonwealth. Incidentally, the rate of population increase in British Guiana is possibly the most rapid in the world. A remarkable development has taken place since the war, and they have reduced the death rate for infants under one year of age from the appalling figure of something like 250 in every 1,000, to about 60 in every 1,000. That was a magnificent achievement, but it has meant that the population increase in British Guiana is greater than anywhere else in that part of the world.

The High Commissioner for India saw this Motion on the Order Paper and has been good enough to write me a letter on the subject, as it refers to his country. This letter I received only yesterday evening, and it is of such importance that I would venture to quote verbatim two paragraphs from it. I trust your Lordships will not mind if the quotation is rather long. Doctor Mehta has taken such trouble, and has put the matter in such a nutshell, that I should like to read it to your Lordships. After referring to the Motion, he goes on: We in India are greatly interested in the practice of voluntary family planning and have taken such educative and practical measures as have been possible. As a result of a large number of measures taken to improve living conditions of the people and their health during our successive Five-Year Plans, death rate in India has rapidly been reduced, increasing the expectation of life. From 27.4 in 1941 the death rate in India in 1960 declined to 17.9. By 1971 the expectation of life at birth may be as much as 47.5 years as against 32 years only a decade ago. The birth rate, however, remains the same, with the result that the rate of increase of population during the years 1951 to 1961 was 21.49 per cent. Since then it has actually risen, so that the last figure given by the United Nations was something over 2.3 per cent. per annum. Doctor Mehta goes on: At this rate, we may be 625 million in 1976. The problem indeed calls for an effort on a gigantic scale. I scarcely need say more here than to quote our Health Minister, Dr. Sushila Nayar: 'Family planning is, therefore, considered an essential element in the strategy of development. The challenge of rapid population growth faces not only India, but the whole world. I am impressed that many other countries are showing increasing concern in this subject. Some of those countries where the rapid growth of population is not a problem now will be faced with it sooner or later. This calls for international co-operation on a wider scale. Countries in different parts of the world should pool their resources and experience to meet this challenge. Perhaps some sort of consortium might be developed whereby interested countries could pool and share resources and experience. Thus we might altogether deal with this problem rapidly for the good of future generations everywhere.' That is the official regard for this problem that India has to-day.

If I may take one more small illustration of the present position which was given to me—and I think it is striking—recently there has been a great deal in the newspapers about the Aswan Dam, this great enterprise going on in Egypt at the present time, the hundreds of millions of pounds it has cost, and the wonderful things it is going to do. We read that by this dam the cultivatable land in Egypt will be increased by about one-third. That sounds a magnificent. achievement. But in the fifteen years it will have taken to complete the dam, the population of Egypt will have increased by a great deal more than one-third, and therefore, from that point of view, although they are running as fast as they can, they are not keeping up with the tide of population.

Two years ago the United Nations, as your Lordships will no doubt remember, set an ambitious target for each of the underdeveloped countries, and said they should aim at, as a target, a figure of an annual growth of 5 per cent. by 1970. What does this target really mean? It is what we are aiming at; not what we have got. Yet it means that if you take a poor country with, say, an income per head of 100 dollars per annum and a population growth rate of 3 per cent. per annum, even if they fulfilled the target to the letter the increase in income per head in ten years would only be about ten times; or one dollar (6s. 8d.) per head per year. It would be 100 years before those poor countries could even double their income of to-day.

I would conclude this part of my argument by quoting to your Lordships some words from that great public servant. Mr. Eugene Black, who, until recently, was President of the World Bank, and, I suppose, more than any other man, with the possible exception of the United Nations Secretary-General, able to obtain information on this subject. In the foreword to a recently published book he said: To-day's extraordinary and accelerating growth in world population receives far less attention than its due.… But the difficulties by population growth will not be banished by ignoring them. The Present surging increase in population, concentrated largely in the poorest countries of the world, affects us now. It threatens directly the success of the greatest enterprise of our day—the international development effort which is attempting to provide tolerable living standards to that two-thirds of mankind which is now almost always in want. And if this enterprise fails, the consequences for our own comfortable civilisation will be grave. I have endeavoured in these few remarks to outline the world problem as I see it, and I hope I have not bored noble Lords with this subject. My Lords, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to do nothing? Are we going to wait until the world is submerged by its own fertility or driven in its despair to resort to such things as indiscriminate, induced abortion on a wholesale scale? Surely not, my Lords. I would put three points to your Lordships on how I think this problem should be tackled. First, and above all, it is essential that peoples and Governments know accurately the conditions, not only in the world but in their own countries, too, and arrive at a full understanding of the acute problems which population growth poses, for both their own economic and their own social progress. This job of communication is a big one, and we cannot expect all the underdeveloped and poor countries to tackle the problem alone. I say, therefore, that this dissemination of knowledge should be a high priority job for the United Nations; in fact, one of their paramount jobs.

In the last debate some speakers suggested that it was perhaps impertinent that the United Kingdom should appear to be lecturing underdeveloped countries on their population problems. I am not one who holds that view; but, even so, if that criticism had any validity to this country alone, it could surely have no validity at all if the information is provided from the United Nations itself. I believe that dissemination of knowledge, my Lords, is the first step.

The next step, surely, is to start now planning for and building up adequate maternal and child welfare services throughout the world, in which education in family planning should be an integral part. The methods of family planning must, of course, be in harmony with the cultures and religions of the areas and peoples affected, for nobody wishes to shove these things down unwilling throats. But this problem will, in turn, require an extensive effort in the training of doctors, midwives, nurses and welfare workers in the methods involved. The International Planned Parenthood Federation, which has thirty or forty different countries as members and of which our Family Planning Association is one of the founder members, is endeavouring to do this, so far as voluntary subscriptions allow; and within this small area we claim, I may say, remarkable success. Some colleagues and I have been endeavouring to raise more funds for this work, and I am glad to say that since the autumn, when we started our campaign, we have had a good response, and, indeed, have been privileged to raise something like £80,000 already for this work. But this is only a small pioneering effort; the United Nations and the World Health Organisation must step in if we are to make a real and effectual impact on the problem.

My Lords, results can be shown. One might refer to Japan, but Japan in its emergency followed methods—abortion and the like—which none of us in this House, I think, would support. Wiser counsels, I understand, are being followed in Japan and abortion is now frowned on, and family planning methods are the ones encouraged. On a smaller scale, the efforts of the Planned Parenthood Federation have shown striking results in family planning in such countries as Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Puerto Rico and Chile. I have details here, but I will not weary your Lordships with them to-day. There are results which can be shown even from small pilot schemes that we, with our small resources, can make available; and if the whole impact of the United Nations and the World Health Organisation were thrown into this matter the whole position, in my opinion, would be transformed.

Thirdly, comes the question of research, which is equally important and was much emphasised in the debate two years ago. We want research into the present facts of economic growth and effective measures of fertility control—methods suitable not only for different societies and different religions, but different educations and different standards of education. We want research into the best methods of countering obsolete attitudes and practices, especially among the illiterate populations. Surely, here again, in research, the United Nations Organisation is the one which should be paving the way. That is why in my Motion I call upon the Government to do all in their power to influence the United Nations on this problem.

I now come to a difficult question. It seems to me that to-day one of the essentials is to see, as a first step, that the wide areas of agreement on this subject that are now established and already achieved by Roman Catholics and non-Roman Catholics alike should be known. It does not seem to me to be realised that there are wide elements of agreement between us all on this matter. We should not only concentrate on that area where there is still disagreement; and, of course, this disagreement is largely concerned with methods. I must confess that at the moment agreement on methods is not in sight; but I emphasise the words "at the moment", for I am sure everyone who is interested in this problem awaits with especial interest the announcements on these problems which we understand are going to be made from the Vatican in the autumn.

I venture to propound two propositions, and I wonder whether my noble friend, Lord Longford, or anyone else who may be speaking from the Roman Catholic point of view, will give them consideration. I have already informed my noble friend Lord Longford of them. Could we not all agree to this?: first, that no person or Government has a right to impose family planning practices which are contrary to individual religious beliefs; and, second, that no religious group has a right to impose a veto, explicit or tacit, on public policy towards family planning research or towards Government response to requests for aid from countries who want it.

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

My Lords, am I allowed to intervene since I have been mentioned by name? The noble Lord was good enough to show me these propositions, and I indicated that I thought the second a very unfair way of ventilating the question. Certainly in this country to suggest that Roman Catholics are so dominant that they could impose a veto is quite fantastic.

LORD McCORQUODALE OF NEWTON

My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Earl's intervention. I am not referring only to this country or largely to this country. It is in large areas, especially in Central and South America and others on the Continent, where this position is very much more striking.

A Gallup Poll in this country last year showed that 68 per cent. of the public would approve if the United Nations supplied help and information on this problem of birth control to nations who asked for it, and only 10 per cent. in the country disapproved. It was very interesting to note that, of the Roman Catholics asked, only 22 per cent. disapproved and 78 per cent. approved that those who asked for it should get this information from the United Nations. America carried out a similar questionnaire and got a very similar response. An inquiry in India, run jointly by the Indian Government and the World Health Organisation, showed that at least 75 per cent. of the couples asked expressed the desire to learn methods of family planning, and similar attitudes have been seen in Ceylon, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and other countries. The High Commissioner for India sent me with his letter a book on family planning programmes, published by the Indian Government, which has gone very closely into these matters and is setting up all sorts of clinics and organisations in the villages throughout the country. There is a mine of information in this book. I refer to it only to show that these things are desired by many in those countries.

Given a chance, I believe the people of this country and people all over the world, are anxious to obtain knowledge. I believe parents everywhere in the world, of whatever race or colour or educational standard, want to give their children the best prospects in life. And if this is so, I venture to say we must be concerned with population trends. Surely it should be our ambition that no unwanted child should be unnecessarily thrust upon this crowded earth. I hope I have done sufficient to justify my claim that this is the most pressing world problem of our time. Some have said that the most pressing world problem is the possibility of nuclear war. Fortunately that would seem somewhat to have receded. But this problem is right on us and we are in the midst of it at the present time. It would appear that it is an essential task of our time to stabilise population growth before it smothers us.

May I quote, just before I finish, words which have been quoted in this House before but have a peculiar significance. They were used by the late High Commissioner for India, Dr. Chagla, who I know is a friend of many in this House. He was talking to a group discussing the Freedom from Hunger Campaign, which had such a remarkable response from the ordinary people in this country, and he said: Unless we can fight this population explosion, which is as dangerous and more subtle than atomic explosion, then all this aid is like writing on the sand; you write on the sand and the tide of population comes in and wipes out all that has been written. The United Nations Agencies, which as I have said have wonderful records in their fields, are so vitally concerned in improving the health and economic position of the people of these countries that it seems to me that in a few years historians will think it quite ludicrous that those Agencies should not assist in this sphere which, as practically every one of them involved in this work privately admits, is so vital to the success of their work in feeding and caring for the human race. If we can persuade the United Nations in this matter: if the Government will be more forthcoming, more positive in their action here than they were at the last sessions; and if the American Government will do the same, as we have some reason to hope they will, then I believe we can step out on to the road of facing up to this problem and ensuring that it does not do damage to the world. I beg to move for Papers.