Lords Sitting of 3 November 1965

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Lincoln

FLYING HEIGHT OVER CENTRAL LONDON
2.35 p.m.
VISCOUNT MERSEY: 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 there is a minimum permitted height level at which civil airliners may fly over central London; what penalties are enforceable against owners of airliners failing to observe the regulations in force; and whether any prosecutions have been brought in this connection during the last twelve months.]
THE MINISTER OF DEFENCE FOR THE ROYAL AIR FORCE (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, under Rule 5 of the Rules of the Air and Air Traffic Control, an aeroplane must, except when landing or taking-off from Government or licensed aerodromes, fly over a congested area of a city, town or settlement at such a height that in the event of engine failure it can alight safely clear of the area. In addition, it must not, save in certain exceptional cases, fly over such an area below 1,500 feet above the highest fixed object within 2,000 feet of the aircraft—that is in any possible direction. However, civil airliners which noble Lords see flying over central London will almost invariably be in the process of approaching or departing from London (Heathrow) Airport. These will be under control from the air traffic control authorities at the airport in accordance with Rule 27 of the Rules of the Air and Air Traffic Control, and will not normally
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be authorised to fly at a height of less than 2,000 feet.
Any person who contravenes the rules of the Air and Air Traffic Control, is liable, on summary conviction or indictment, to a fine not exceeding £200, or to imprisonment for a term of six months, or to both such fine and imprisonment, unless it can be shown that the contravention was necessary to avoid immediate danger, or was due to any cause not avoidable by the exercise of reasonable care.
No prosecutions have been brought in connection with flights over central London during the last twelve months.
VISCOUNT MERSEY: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his full reply. But in view of the enormous increase of the traffic that we see coming over central London every day, can he assure the House that the present heights laid down, which, if I understood his answer correctly, appear to be not very great, are sufficient to make sure that, should one of these huge machines get into trouble and have to make a forced landing, it will be able to get clear of the central area?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, all the civil airliners approaching London Airport fly under the direct control of London Airport. My right honourable friend the Minister of Aviation, concerned as he is at the noise, especially as more and more jet airliners come into service, is urgently considering whether the minimum height should be raised to 3,000 feet.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, could my noble friend tell me whether the Government have taken into account the fact that aeroplanes which fly over sleeping populations, and so disturb them, must undermine the capacity of the working population? Is this in the interests of increased production?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I think the noble Baroness and I both live in a period when it is difficult to harmonise these conflicting interests. I do not think anyone would minimise the nuisance that is caused, and the concern it causes as a result.

SOLWAY FIRTH WATER
2.39 p.m.
LORD INGLEWOOD: 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 what is the average amount of water daily flowing from Scottish hydro or other electric installations or reservoirs into channels or rivers flowing into the Solway Firth, and what use is made of this water either for industrial purposes or domestic supply.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND (LORD HUGHES): My Lords, the total amount of water reaching the Solway Firth from power stations averages about 700 million gallons a day, and normally varies from about 10 million gallons to about 2,400 million gallons a day, depending on the demand on the power stations. Apart from a small quantity of water made available to New Galloway, if required, none of this water is used for public water supplies; nor, so far as is known, is any of it used for private industrial supplies.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. Could I ask him to give us an assurance that when the water resources of this country of ours are being planned water supplies on both sides of the Border will be taken into account, and that the Border between England and Scotland will not be used as a watertight barrier, even though the Statutes governing both supply and distribution are different on each side?
LORD HUGHES: Yes, my Lords.

CAMBODIA
2.41 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: 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 what decision has been reached on the proposal of the International Control Commission that an international conference on the basis of the Geneva Con
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ference of 1954 should be convened to consider the questions of Cambodia's neutrality and territorial integrity.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD WALSTON): My Lords, the position of Her Majesty's Government remains as set out in the White Paper on this subject published in June. Whenever the Soviet Co-Chairman and other Governments concerned favour this course, Her Majesty's Government will be happy to join in promoting such a conference, but the obstacles described in the White Paper make this unlikely in the near future.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether any approach has been made to the Soviet Government since this recommendation was published? Do the Government bear in mind that it is a unanimous recommendation by Canada, India and Poland; that they point out that on eight occasions troops of the Saigon Government have violated Cambodian territory, and add these grave words:
"The recurrence of such serious incidents may even cause armed conflict."
In view of this, is it not urgent that something should be done in the matter?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, the Co-Chairman, the Soviet Government, are well aware of Her Majesty's Government's readiness to join with them in issuing an invitation to a conference on the lines which were originally suggested by the Soviet Government themselves; but, so far, we have had no favourable response from them.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I put one further supplementary? Whilst such a conference would concentrate upon the dangerous situation in Cambodia, might it not also be useful if, outside the conference, there were an opportunity for some discussion between the Governments concerned about peace in Vietnam itself?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, the noble Lord has put his finger on the heart of the problem. These incidents have arisen, and will, I am afraid, continue to arise, so long as there is fighting in Vietnam. We should hope that any opportunity would be taken to bring people together to discuss this. But in so far as

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there is any chance of there being a conference on Cambodia itself, the Cambodian Government has made it very clear that it cannot be used as a back-door excuse for a wider conference on possibly very important issues.

STATEMENTS
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, at a suitable moment after half-past three there will be two Statements, the first by my noble friend the Leader of the House on Rhodesia, and the second by my noble friend Lord Mitchison on the development of Whitehall.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion on the Order Paper standing in the name of my noble friend the Leader of the House.
Moved, That Standing Order No. 41(No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with for the purpose of taking the Honourable Lady Hylton-Foster's Annuity Bill through its remaining stages this day.—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

RACE RELATIONS BILL
Returned from the Commons, with the amendments agreed to.

SPACE-AGE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
2.45 p.m.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH rose to call attention to problems of space-age science and technology; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, it is nearly four years since we had our only other debate on space research and technology. That was in December, 1961, and also on my Motion. To-day I suggest that your Lordships may care to extend the discussions, not only to space research, both basic and applied, but also to cover a broader range of space-age scientific and technological activities. I hoped that this broadening of the Motion might encourage noble Lords, such as the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, and the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, also to take part.
We all know, of course, the important contribution which space is making to communications, meteorology, mapping, optical and radio-astronomy, to ion, electron, and radiation studies. But the important connections between space and, for example, underwater research are perhaps less well known. Observation and photography from space is certainly beginning to reveal some mysteries of the depths, and—who knows?—it may not be long before we are obliged to colonise the oceans for food purposes. The emphasis which I propose to lay this afternoon on space science and technology should, none the less, not blind us to some of the most urgent scientific and technological needs in the world to-day, especially in the less developed countries. I refer, of course, to the provision of adequate food and water supplies, the improvement of health, a better understanding of population programmes, more effective use of natural resources, the development of industry in those countries, and the application of new educational techniques.
These are, indeed, the objectives to which the United Nations Committee on Science and Technology attach the greatest importance. The Committee's second Report, published in May of this year, merits wide attention and, perhaps, a separate debate in your Lordships' House. However, my remarks to-day will

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be concerned, in the first place, with space science and technology and the progress in space activities since our last debate. This will, of course, also involve saying something about rocketry. I hope your Lordships will not think that I am, with liquid oxygen or some new solid fuel, anticipating by two days what Guy Fawkes intended to do with gunpowder. I can assure noble Lords and noble Ladies that there is no need to leave the Chamber in a hurry.
It was, as your Lordships know, in October, 1957, eight years ago, that the Soviet Union successfully sent their first Sputnik into orbit. That was followed by the first American launching in February, 1958, and four years ago, when we last discussed these matters, the Russians and Americans had already carried out some 116 orbital space shots. Now—only four years later, remember—the Americans have launched a total of 305 spacecraft, 293 in earth orbit, 5 which have achieved lunar impact and 7 in solar orbit. They have also successfully obtained data from spacecraft passing close to Mars and Venus. The Russians, so far as we know, appear to have launched well under half that number, that is to say, a total of about 134 spacecraft—the last only yesterday, the heaviest of all, a 12-ton research station in the Proton series. Of these 134 Russian craft, 124 were sent up in earth orbit, three achieved lunar impact, and 7 are in solar orbit. This makes an overall total, American and Russian, of 441 successful launches, and about 190 of the satellites are still in orbit. This is not science fiction, my Lords, it is science fact. Moreover, in manned flights, nine Americans have orbited the earth 406 times, and 11 Russians, including one woman, have orbited the earth 359 times. I wonder how long it will be before the first British astronaut orbits the earth?
Our own activities in space, though limited, are, let me add, by no means insignificant. Britain made an important contribution in the establishment of the European Launcher Development Organisation, with Blue Streak as its first stage, and we also played an important part in establishing the European Space Research Organisation. I am glad to learn that the noble Lord, Lord Ironside, is to make his maiden speech on the subject of ESRO this afternoon. Indeed, with so
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many spacemen these days, let me welcome (shall I call him?) the first "space maiden".
Then, of course, there are the American assembled satellites, U.K. 1 and U.K. 2, which contain British instruments, and U.K. 3 which is a wholly British satellite which is shortly to be launched by an American Scout rocket, probably from the West Coast launching site. I may say that my American space friends, with whom I have had numerous discussions on the subject, the last only a week ago in Washington and at Cape Kennedy, consider the British instrumentation in these satellites is as sophisticated as any in the world. Moreover, 10 out of the 17 foreign experiments on American satellites, chosen by the American space administration on their merits in open competition, have been British. We should indeed pay a tribute to all those in our universities, in industry, the Meteorological Office and the Radio and Space Research Station who have been responsible for the conception and the design of these instruments. Britain has given considerable assistance also to the American space programme itself. I need hardly remind your Lordships that it was in 1945 that Arthur Clarke, then a radio engineer from the Royal Air Force, first proposed the use of the kind of communications satellite system which is now in existence and in which Britain is the second most important shareholder after the United States of America, even if it is only a small share compared with that of America.
Here I would ask the Government my first question. I ask for their views on the economics of this communications satellite system. Am I not right in thinking that at present the Early Bird satellite circuits are not being fully used, either by broadcasting organisations for television purposes or by telephone subscribers? Am I not also right in thinking that the cut weekend rates have not proved economic, in so far as they have resulted in a fall in the use of the circuits on Fridays, and consequent overheads in the form of increased staff and overtime for the weekends which have meant a loss to the G.P.O.? I should be interested to know what the Government feel about future COMSAT prospects, assuming Early Bird satellites to have at least five years' life and knowing that

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the Corporation has ordered a further four satellites? I would also ask the Government what is their intention in regard to the proposed £20 million research programme for fifteen countries which it is proposed should be undertaken by the Conference on European Communications Satellites. Will Britain support this? At the moment we seem to have no policy, and many of those concerned are, not unnaturally, disturbed by the slow progress. I repeat, we have already made striking contributions. But where do we go from here?
When I visited the Manned Spacecraft Centre at Houston last year I had the opportunity and the privilege of taking my seat in a Gemini capsule, albeit remaining on the ground. But I might say, my Lords, that to sit weightless in a capsule in orbit is considerably more comfortable than reclining on the Benches in your Lordships' House; indeed, astronauts tell me that it is almost euphoric. At any rate, you do not get a sore arse—I hope that the noble Ladies will forgive the expression. At all events, when I was in Houston last year I was shown various types of space suits which are being tried out by astronauts who are to take part in the Apollo moon-shot. I found that the one which was most favoured was a water-cooled costume designed by our own Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. I also found at Cape Kennedy last week that the other vital equipment for the Apollo mooncraft includes the fuel cell—the most important element in the whole operation—which was researched, and its feasibility demonstrated, in this country by Dr. Bacon.
Of course, both the Americans and the Russians welcome our contributions in radio-astronomy; in particular, the successful transmission last year of signals from Jodrell Bank to the Gorki Astro-Physical Observatory in Zimionki and the part played in this by Sir Bernard Lovell. The Americans are also greatly indebted to us for the tracking facilities which we provide for them, in conjunction with the Radio and Space Research Station at Slough. I do not have to remind your Lordships, either, that there was a British Flight Controller at Houston, in Texas, for the launching of Gemini 5, and, incidentally, that the Director of
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Research at Lockheed is also British. I mention these examples to show the extent to which British science and technology is assisting the American effort. But I ask again, "Where do we go from here? What will be our policy in the future?"
We in Britain should be proud of the remarkable record of our own Blue Streak launcher, which was adopted by the European Launcher Development Organisation and which has proved very reliable, both in its static firings at Spadeadam and in the three launchings so far carried out at Woomera, in Australia. Moreover—and this is perhaps even more remarkable—all 21 Black Knight firings have been successful. In view of the success of Black Knight, I was glad to learn—or I thought I had learned—while in the United States that the Government had at last decided to go ahead with the launching vehicle Black Arrow, which is based on Black Knight technology. This it seemed to me would certainly give us a modest—and I repeat, modest—stake in space. However, the year's delay in taking this decision seemed to me to be deeply regrettable. I have thought in the past year that Black Arrow should be vigorously followed up within our domestic United Kingdom space programme, but I understand that this is now in doubt and that the "Go-ahead" signal has not yet been given. Are we therefore to countenance further delays? I should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, if he could explain the present confusing situation. I am glad that he will be taking part in this debate, for he made a most interesting and important speech on these subjects four years ago.
From what I have said, it is clear that while Britain's activities in space may so far be marginal, they do indicate our ability to play our part effectively. I am, therefore, somewhat distressed that France, whose expenditure on space research has been running at the equivalent of over £25 million sterling per annum, and who appears now to be linking up with the U.S.S.R., may well be outstripping us. It may take three years to launch Black Arrow, but France should any day be launching its own satellite, the Diament, and all three stages

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of their launching vehicle are of French design.
But, what I particularly want to ask the Government to-day is whether they consider that the overall proportions of our research expenditure in some of the main fields can be right. France, for example, seems to be spending more on space than we are ourselves. How does our expenditure in space research compare, let us say, with our expenditure on nuclear physics? The research programme of the Atomic Energy Authority and of the National Institute for Research into Nuclear Sciences has been running for some years at between £50 million to £60 million a year, and to this should be added a substantial contribution to CERN.
These are very large sums, when compared with what we have been spending over the same period on space. In the last two years this has amounted, I think (although it is difficult to get at the figures), only to some £15 million a year; that is to say, £10 million less than France. And as I understand it, of that £15 million a year, some £8 million to £9 million has comprised our contribution to ELDO; £3 million to £5 million to ESRO and the remainder—a sum which some describe as derisory—to our purely national effort. I read recently a report that the official German Space Research Commission (DKFW) had recommended a West German space programme calling for a total outlay of the equivalent of £165 million in the four-year period 1966–70. Within this proposal their expenditure on their national space programme would be over double the size of their international contributions, a very different proportion from our own, and this, of course, would mainly be to ELDO and ESRO. But, at all events, this would mean that Germany would be spending about three times the amount per annum that Britain is currently spending on space, and when you remember what we are spending in Germany at present on our military commitment these figures are somewhat impressive.
In this country the sums that we have been spending on nuclear research are certainly high in relation not only to what we are spending on space but also to what we allocate to the other research councils, and it is certainly high when compared with the American percentage. If there is to be a cut-back in
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some fields of atomic energy research in this country, I would suggest to the Government that the unused potential might be taken up not only by the new studies and work on harnessing atomic energy to the desalting of water—this, we know, is going ahead—but also to the design and construction of nuclear propulsion rocket systems which would then be included under the heading of space technology. There is little doubt that conventional rockets operated by chemical propellants may prove uneconomic and inadequate for the propulsion of interplanetary spacecraft, and that more efficient devices, such as nuclear electronic propulsion systems, should be actively investigated.
Leaving aside the simpler and more modest programme of the radio isotope generators for powering equipment in the satellites, I am advised by my scientific and technical friends that we should also consider investigating if not nuclear thermal at least nuclear electric motors for the upper stages of launchers. I recognise that their use may be a long way off and that a nuclear rocket motor may be worth while only in the event of interplanetary manned missions, for example to Mars; but I suggest that such motors should be researched, perhaps on a Western European basis, and developed, no doubt also in conjunction with the American Space Administration. This would involve work on high temperature liquid metals which would be an extension of a field in which the Atomic Energy Authority is already well qualified.
We know that the United States is sustaining its research in nuclear rockets and has demonstrated their feasibility. I know, too, from conversations with Soviet scientists concerned—I spent seventeen days with them earlier this year in Moscow and in Novosibirsk—that the U.S.S.R. is also pressing ahead here. I wonder whether any of our own scientists who recently visited the Soviet Union with Lord Florey, under the auspices of the Royal Society (I do not see the noble Lord here this afternoon) have any further information. I know that they arrived at a satisfactory agreement in regard to the exchange of scientists, and I should be interested to know whether they have further information. Perhaps also the noble Lord, Lord

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Bowden, whom I see here this afternoon, and who is also, I believe, shortly to visit the Soviet Union, may be able to enlighten us.
At this point I should like to refer to the recommendations which have been made to the Government by an organisation which is called the British Interplanetary Society, a very serious and highly qualified technical organisation whose views in these matters are certainly worthy of your Lordships' attention. It is an independent and a disinterested society, since it is not financed by industry. The Council of the Society recommended already in April this year that the United Kingdom should participate in space research and the development of space technology with an expenditure of at least 5 per cent. of its national research and development budget; that is to say, to the extent of probably £25 million per annum, compared with the existing expenditure, which, as I say, may be calculated as being something of the order of £15 million—a fairly modest increase.
I should also like to think that the Government are considering the establishment of a United Kingdom Space Authority to co-ordinate and plan this country's efforts in space research and technology and to bring the interests of the different Departments together; that is to say, Aviation, Science, Technology, and the G.P.O. The United States has its National Space Administration and France its National Space Centre; Germany has one, too. What are we doing? Do the Government realise the importance of this? And, if so, what are the Government's views on this Council's recommendations; and have they sent them any reply? The recommendations were, I believe, addressed to the Prime Minister over six months ago, but I understand that up to this morning there had been no reply beyond a formal acknowledgment.
It is, of course, the great cost of research in the principal fields I have mentioned that makes it increasingly important that there should be fuller international co-operation in the more expensive projects. That is obvious. Even the United States is alarmed at her ever-growing research expenditure on space.
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It is at present 5½ billion dollars a year. That is why we must continue to work for greater international co-operation. ELDO and ESRO are already European co-operative efforts, and I hope that perhaps they may be merged in a stronger European Space Authority. But I hope that, in building up these organisations, there is no question of competing with the United States: we should be thinking in terms of complementary European and American efforts.
In my view, we ought certainly to press ahead on an international basis, a United Kingdom, Commonwealth, European and American basis, with projects involving vehicles larger than our present satellite launching capacity. I hope that it may ultimately be possible, in the '70's or '80's, to organise a joint American and European Space Authority project, perhaps a Jupiter probe. All this is looking very far ahead. Black Arrow—a reasonably modest programme—must come first, but we should look also to the more distant future, and plan ahead.
To come nearer to earth and consideration of suborbital, but none the less supersonic, flight, we are, I think, thanks to France, and despite a four to six months' delay on the part of the present Goverment, definitely proceeding with the great Anglo-French supersonic airliner, the Concord. From a visit I made recently to Toulouse, this project seems very promising. But the delay has certainly been regrettable, and may prove decisive; for, as your Lordships will have seen, the United States is definitely going ahead with its own supersonic airliner. Although at present we may be two or three years ahead of America, this is not a very substantial lead, considering her vast industrial potential. Then there are the strike trainer, the Jaguar, the variable-geometry aircraft and the aero bus. I should like to know whether the Government intend definitely to go ahead with these and any other co-operative projects of this kind, not only in the air and in space, but also, for example, in the electronics industry. And I should be very interested to know what is the state of our negotiations with France on this subject of co-operation in electronics.
A debate of this kind would not be complete without some reference to the fringe benefits consequent upon larger

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expenditure on our part in space research and technology. On reading again what was said on this subject during our debate four years ago I cannot help feeling that some of us tended to disparage the technological "spin-off", as I have learned to call it, which has resulted from American space activities. I exclude from these remarks the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, for he made a very good case four years ago, and I dare say that others will do so again this afternoon. I will not burden your Lordships with examples. They are numerous, involving new materials, new processes, new concepts, new management techniques and generally raising the whole technical, scientific and educational level.
At this moment in history a great effort is being mounted by the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. with the aim of exploring space and our neighbouring worlds. In this sense the inevitability and imminence of space exploration is already determined. Failure on Britain's part to participate more fully, even if modestly, could prove disastrous for this country. It is essential to maintain a balanced programme of research and development, and as the programme stands it can be said that space is being neglected. In the past much of the incentive has been of a military nature. But there is now, I think, a trend towards reducing advanced weapons development, and perhaps even military expenditure generally. There may be some agreement on both sides of the House on this. It seems to me, therefore, to be more than ever important that a significant proportion of any effort released from military work be applied to other challenging scientific and technological endeavours—and what more challenging than space?
It is never possible to say exactly where research and exploration of this kind will ultimately lead us. As the then Lord President, Mr. Quintin Hogg, said in this House four years ago, Columbus thought he was heading towards India rather than the West Indies. He and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, had a small exchange on the subject. And as Colonel John Glen said in his lecture in London a few weeks ago, Sir Alexander Fleming never knew that penicillin would be the ultimate result of the experiments which he was making in mould. If we go in for
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space research and technology in a bigger way, we cannot tell what great goals we may attain.
Remember that it is the young, rather than the elderly, or even, I am afraid, the middle-aged, who see the potentialities in space. We must not disappoint them, particularly at a time when we are doing everything possible to popularise technology and those engineering subjects which make to-day's fantastic achievements possible. The noble Lord, Lord Bowden, I know, played an important part in speaking up and down the country and trying to get more of our teenagers to go in for engineering rather than pure Science or the Arts. Sir Solly Zuckerman has also stressed how vital this is; and I think that my right honourable friend Sir Edward Boyle went to the root of the matter when, in a remarkable paper read recently to the British Association, he said that any hard and fast distinction between science and technology was no longer tenable. Mr. J. C. Dancy, the headmaster of Marlborough College, whose interview is well reported in the Press this morning and was of great interest, has said that technology should rank high among the creative arts, that, indeed, it requires the three creative skills of science, art and craftsmanship. A further effort by Britain in space would encourage and inspire more of our young to go in for engineering, appeal to their imagination and make it less likely that they will want, as most of them now do, to emigrate to the United States.
Are there, however, any indications of a clear, bold Government lead in this matter? I fear, not so far. Instead, there is the Government's decision to create a new Ministry of Technology which, according to a Written Answer by the Minister yesterday in another place, has during the past year cost approximately £6½ million. I recognise that a considerable part of this sum covers the cost of sections of the D.S.I.R. which have been taken over by the new Ministry; but I should be interested if the noble Lord, Lord Snow, could tell us before the end of the debate what the cost of the new Ministry has been over and above the cost of those parts of the D.S.I.R. which it has absorbed. I am sorry that I did not give the noble Lord any notice of that question, but I

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hope it may be possible to obtain the answer before the end of the debate. I agree that it may have been necessary to do something about the D.S.I.R., but I personally think that the solution proposed by the last Government, to establish an Industrial Research and Development Authority to cover those sections of the D.S.I.R. which were concerned mainly with applied research and technology, would have been a better solution than to create yet another Ministry.
We know that the all-Party Estimates Committee in another place said recently that they were not satisfied that the teams in this new Ministry comprised the right sort of people. Nor did they consider that the speed with which the teams were being set up was satisfactory. Yet this does not seem to have stirred the Government into action. The only two pieces of legislation passed by the Government in the field of technology—the Science and Technology Act and the Development of Inventions Act—were mainly concerned to put into effect proposals which had been announced by the Conservative Government. Therefore, quite apart from the invidious position of the present Minister of Technology himself, I wonder whether the Government have got their organisation right. I should be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Snow, would give some indication of the conclusions which he has reached after a year's work in his new Ministry. I, for one, am by no means happy about the ministerial division between science and technology just when we want to bring the two as close as possible together. And I may say that those of our more advanced technological allies abroad find our present set-up quite incomprehensible. I hope that noble Lords opposite will be able to give answers to some of the questions I have put to them to-day, especially in regard to the future of our space programme.
Do the Government really believe that delays on Black Arrow and the Concord, and the cancellation of TSR 2, really assist the growth and progress of advanced technology in this country? Do they really believe that this is the way to keep Britain great in the world? No one—I say no one—who has not been present at a launching at Cape Kennedy, as I was last week, can conceive the drama of the scene. No colour filming
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or television tape can give an adequate impression of the roar of an Atlas rocket, the brilliance of its after-burn, which in its first stage is like a sun in itself. To see such a launching is an inspiring sight, and symbolic of man's great endeavours on this earth. We have already begun to explore our own solar system, and we know that it must surely be only a matter of time before we explore the universe itself. Whether it is the Americans or the Russians who are the first to do so, I shall not predict. But I should not like to think that this country will fail to play its full part in so momentous an adventure. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.18 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, on his follow-up on a previous debate, on his eloquence, particularly in his closing passage, and indeed on his wide planetary if not interplanetary movement—he certainly gets around. He has asked so many interesting questions that I am not sure whether I should deliver the speech in which I had intended to give some information about Government policy, or answer his questions. I will do my best to combine the two. This is the kind of debate in which, of course, your Lordships' House excels. I think we all greatly look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ironside, who himself has interests in this field, working in the field of cryogenics. I am sure we shall all listen to him with great interest. We cover many wide subjects in our debates, and by definition space must be the widest of all. The noble Earl, not content with space, has proceeded to cover a good deal of earth and earth policy as well. Indeed, to range from intergalactic travel to the Estimates Committee in one speech is quite an achievement. I propose to concentrate rather more upon what is actually going on in the space field.
Perhaps I should declare an interest, if my speech is thought to be somewhat too earthbound. I have for many years been a Fellow of the Inter-Planetary Society and have believed for a long time that space travel was coming. Indeed, in 1950 I refused to join the World Government Movement on the ground that I did not wish to be associated with a purely

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earth bloc. I remember having discussions before the war, when I was wintering in Northern Greenland, on the probability of space travel. An interesting thing about space travel and about scientific and technological advance—this point was made so very well by the author to whom the noble Earl referred, Arthur Clarke, with whom I remember sitting on the terrace in the House of Commons in 1948, when he was still in the Air Force, discussing the likelihood of space travel—is that I was quite convinced, as was he, that, if we did not see space travel, at least our children or our grandchildren would, and yet within the space of very few years it was upon us.
When we look at the prophets in science fiction—and I think the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, is a reader of science fiction; I know at any rate that he reads Eagle, like myself—we realise the extent to which so many of these events have been clearly predicted over a long period of years. Perhaps one of the greatest of science fiction writers was Olaf Stapleton, who was a logical positivist, a don at Liverpool University. In his First and Last Man he made a number of prophecies which came true. One that was wrong—and he was writing in 1932—was his forecast of the first nuclear explosion in about 5,000 years' time. I think the moral of this, to which Arthur Clarke has pointed, is the tendency, on the part not of those who say that things are impossible, but of those who believe them to be possible, to underestimate how quickly there is possibly even a "spin-off" into our own debates that we should consider in regard to these striking areas of future regard to these striking areas of future development. However, what I have to say in this debate as a member of the Government is mainly earthbound. I hope to go on to give some account of Government policy in this field, in both national and international terms, and to inform your Lordships of present developments and developments in the immediate future.
There is one point in what the noble Earl said that I must take up. I know that the noble Earl felt bound to put in his Party piece, especially towards the end. He asked what had happened to our policy in a period of twelve months. Of course, it must be admitted that inevitably we tire carrying on with the policy of the previous Administration, but we are seek
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ing to think rather more clearly about it than perhaps they always did. This is one of the reasons why the Bondi Committee was appointed and has produced such an extremely brilliant Report. It is a great tragedy that a Report as clear and as brilliant as that cannot for security reasons, be published. It was a special committee, and I am sure the House will accept that. I do not feel very inclined to deal with the noble Earl's gentle gibes about Government policy. My noble friend Lord Snow—and nobody could be better equipped than he—will deal with the civil and scientific side of the question, of what I might call the ESRO rather than the ELDO end of the business. Although this will not be my main theme, I would stress that the first effective movements into space were in pursuit of science. This is as it should be, because it is from science and the advance of knowledge in a disinterested way that so much progress and technological development comes.
One of the difficulties in this vast and rapidly developing field of activity is in determining where our best interests lie, and where we should concentrate our resources. I should have been interested to hear, except that I did not want to interrupt the noble Lord's flow, what criteria he applied when he was Minister in deciding between physics and biology, in deciding between the 300 Geiger electron volt accelerator and some money for the Bureau of Animal Population in Oxford. It is obvious to me that the previous Government never solved this particular problem, and my noble friend Lord Snow is rather more likely to do so than some of his predecessors.
Before turning to what we do on our own account, I should like to deal with the part we play in international organisations. The noble Earl has already spoken a good bit about ELDO, but I would remind the House that there are two main space European organisations: ELDO, which is the launcher, and ESRO which is the research organisation. ELDO is in principle designed to provide the vehicle and ESRO to ensure its use scientifically and provide the scientific load. We played a leading part in setting up these organisations, on the ground that it was much better to do so internationally rather than on a restricted national basis. As the noble Earl said, the first part of the programme, based on Blue Streak, has

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gone very well, and congratulations are obviously due to Rolls Royce, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics, the Ministry of Aviation, and all those responsible for successful firings from that excellently equipped range which our Australian partners have made available at Woomera.
The original estimate of the cost of the first ELDO programme was £70 million, and our share was 38·79 per cent. This is higher than our proportionate share on the basis of a comparison of gross national products, because a large part of the work is being done in this country. It was thought that the programme would take five years to complete. While it was in progress, studies were to be made to help towards possible further programmes, and these studies are now nearing completion. This was the first project of its kind, and time has shown that the original estimates were optimistic. It must be borne in mind that more powerful launchers of the type under study, as well as an equatorial launch site, would be necessary to put an operational communications satellite into a geostatic orbit.
Perhaps at this point I might refer to the word "geostatic". There are two terms which are now in use. One is "synchronous", referring to a satellite moving at the same speed as a fixed spot on earth, but this is not necessarily fixed in relation to latitude, whereas a geostationary orbit is. I personally object to the word "geostationary". I do not like the mixture of Latin and Greek derivations, and I should prefer, as I hope the House would, the expression "geostatic", which I should now like to introduce firmly into the English language. The extension of the time-scale and the technical difficulties which have had to be overcome have inevitably meant that the cost of the ELDO programme is considerably greater than was foreseen. This increased cost is at present under review. Consequently, when the studies for further programmes are available early next year, we shall, together with our partners, have to consider very carefully the estimate in relation to the technological advantages to be derived from the present and possible future programmes.
I should now like to turn to satellite communications, on which the noble Earl had quite a lot to say. As I said, my
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noble friend Lord Snow will be dealing with the vital and possibly, at the moment, most important part of space activity—namely, scientific research. As everybody knows, the first experiment in practical satellite telecommunications was made with the American satellite, Telstar, in July, 1962. In connection with these experiments the Post Office designed and built their satellite communication earth station at Goonhilly Down, in Cornwall. The experiments and the station were brilliantly successful; our station, certainly at that time, was the nearest approach to the operational earth station of the future. This all demonstrated that satellite communications were practicable, but that a great deal had still to be done before communications satellites could become an integral part of a world communications system.
The ideal in this field—and I should like to stress this point—is to have a single global commercial system, and I am sure that the noble Earl will agree with that. The United Kingdom, France and a number of European countries established in 1963 the European Conference on Satellite Communications—CETS. I am sure that all these letters become rather difficult, but I shall try to make them clear as I go through. The purpose was to harmonise European views and to undertake discussions with the United States and other countries for the establishment of a world system.
The following year negotiations began with the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, which led to the drawing up of two interim agreements covering the establishment of a global satellite system under the Interim Committee on Satellite Communication—I.C.S.C. The United States Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) is the United States member of this Committee, and acts as its manager in the development and operation of the system. A total of 46 countries have now signed the agreement, and the world system is in course of development. These agreements are binding until about 1970.
At this point I should mention one very important condition of the agreements. At present there is no practical alternative to the use of American launchers and American satellites. As I say, the earth stations are outside the

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agreements and are built by the countries that own them. But the agreements guarantee that there will be an opportunity for industries in member countries to obtain orders for equipment, provided that they are competitive in quality, price and timely performance. The Early Bird satellite, which is now in regular service and carries part of our transatlantic telephone service, was commissioned by COMSAT before the agreements were signed. Further orders have been placed for satellites to extend commercial communications to the South Atlantic and Pacific areas, including also communication in Project Apollo. In connection with Apollo, Cable and Wireless Ltd. have placed with a British firm the order for the earth station on Ascension Island.
The I.C.S.C. has agreed a specification for a satellite for use either at synchronous altitude, which is about 22,300 miles, or at medium altitude which is lower. Tenders have been received, and a number of British firms are interested, but it is probable that their most effective role at present will be as sub-contractors to main American contractors. However, along with our European friends, we are urgently considering in CETS how we can best play a part in the provision of satellites.
The largest part of the international market in equipment for satellite communications is, however, probably represented by the earth stations themselves. There are four such stations in Europe, all experimental, and none equipped for continuous operation. To provide a reliable service using the Early Bird satellite, they are co-operating; and I understand that this form of co-operation will be copied on the other side of the Atlantic when the Canadian station is ready.
Perhaps I might try to answer one or two of the points which the noble Earl made about the Early Bird system, and about why it is not fully used. I am grateful to him for giving me notice. I have already mentioned that it is the expectation that we shall have a global system and that this will render an economic return in due course, but that it will take some time for the system to reach a level of development which will be economic. Satellite Early Bird was primarily an experiment; first, to determine
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whether a satellite of this type—i.e, a geostatic satellite at a great altitude—would provide a telephone service acceptable to its users; and, secondly, to gain operating experience with a communications satellite giving service to the public. Any revenue which this satellite draws from commercial usage will be purely incidental, I am informed. There are certain difficulties as to whether a geostatic satellite is best for communication, because of the time delay, as opposed to a medium-altitude satellite. With the latter, of course, it is necessary to switch from satellite to satellite, which is more expensive.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: And you have to have more of them.
LORD SHACKLETON: And you have to have more of them. But I am told that it is a fact that the geostatic satellite, if it is acceptable for ordinary communications, will be the best one. At present this satellite is used twelve hours a day. During working days it works to the three large stations in Europe, and in this condition is capable of providing 240 telephone circuits. On Saturdays and Sundays it works via the Italian station, when it can provide only 24 circuits. There are two reasons for restricting the use to these hours; first, the earth stations are really only experimental stations and they are not capable of functioning 24 hours a day without considerable modification; secondly, there is a whole series of technical and economic questions. I appreciate the points which the noble Earl has raised, and they are serious ones, but if I were to give a full explanation this speech would go on rather too long. However, if he wants to press me further I will certainly let him have this information.
I should say that the specification for future satellites which has now been drawn up aims at an average life of five years, and we hope that in future ten years will be achieved as a regular thing. Having regard to the expected rate of growth of world traffic, such a rise would give a very good prospect of the system's earning a satisfactory return. As I say, the Post Office have themselves played a very important part, and have made available to industry some of their own technical experience.

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I think I should now like to press on to another aspect of ELDO. The United Kingdom and ELDO have the splendid range and supporting facilities at Woomera. However, for certain purposes, such as satellite communications, there are great advantages, as I have indicated, in equatorial orbits, and the Woomera site is 31˚ south of the Equator and not well placed for easterly firings, which are best to place a satellite in equatorial orbit. ELDO is, therefore, giving some consideration to the possibility of an alternative launching site nearer the Equator, possibly in the far North of Australia, possibly in French Guiana where France is developing a launching site. But all this adds to the complications and expense of ELDO.
If the noble Earl will forgive me, I think I will not deal with the Concord, except to say that I am advised that there has been no delay and that it is going extremely well. Perhaps we can return to battle on this at another time, but I share his own interest and enthusiasm and we hope it will turn out to be an economic success.
May I turn now to our national programme? The first requirement was a basic satellite technology programme, and for some years work has been going on in Government establishments and in industry. This has covered design and technological problems relating to satellites, including studies for astronomical satellites and communications satellites, and research and development on such items as solar cells, the effect of space environment on electronic components, attitude sensing and control systems and so on. This programme consists of a series of relatively small projects. I was interested in certain of the points to which the noble Earl referred, including the application of nuclear energy. Of course, some work is going on—a good deal in America—as to the possibility of an ion-drive, and there are possibilities of using some form of plasma-drive as well. I will not go into the technicalities of these, but, as the noble Earl says, for longer travel in space there is no doubt that a different form of thrust is required which may be slower in its build-up but is extremely economic in the use of its own energy, and, clearly, chemical energy
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is in this sense much more quickly expended than a nuclear or electronuclear source.
The basic programme at the moment, however, is concerned with the provision of the scientific satellite U.K. 3 which the Americans have very generously offered to launch for us free of charge as part of our scientific space research programme; and the practical experience of building this satellite complements the basic technology programme in helping to establish a capability for British industry in this field. It has already borne fruit, in that a British firm (I believe the noble Earl referred to this) has, in the face of intense European competition, won a contract for the first ESRO satellite.
One of the proposals we are considering at the moment is for the development of a small satellite launcher, Black Arrow. Black Arrow, as the noble Earl said, would be based on the techniques which have been proved in the course of the highly successful Black Knight programme, and the purpose and use of this must depend on the wider consideration which is being given by the Government at the moment to our space policy. I cannot, therefore, I am afraid, give the noble Earl any definite answer, beyond saying that the work is going on; and, so far as I can judge, it is extremely important that we should in fact develop a capability in this field, both for testing for technological purposes and so that we should have a capacity for putting up our own satellites.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: The work is going ahead at the moment?
LORD SHACKLETON: The work is going ahead on the development on Black Arrow, but the carrying of it to full completion is a matter which must be a subject of further consideration. My own impression is that decisions will be taken in the near future. I would ask the noble Earl not to press me too hard, because this is one of the matters which is in the melting pot at the moment. There would, of course, be no competition between Black Arrow by itself and the ELDO launcher, but it may have a wider rôle, as part of a more highly developed European launcher programme; and, of course, we have to take into account the resources that we shall use; but I shall have something to say on that later.

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I should like to say a little about military interests in space. The most significant improvement in military capabilities (of course, the Bondi Committee were particularly concerned with the military field, but it reaches across into the civil field) that we can expect from the use of space techniques is in the field of communications. Our present defence communications consist largely of high-frequency radio circuits supplemented by a few submarine cable channels. A system of this kind suffers from a number of inherent defects. We see in the use of satellites a method of obtaining a communication system free from those defects. For example, a geostatic satellite over the Indian Ocean would meet our requirements for communications between the United Kingdom and Western Australia and all places in between without any intermediate relay station; and, of course, it would cover large parts of Africa, also.
Moreover, satellite ground stations can be designed to permit redeployment at short notice, and we expect that air portable stations could be developed, suitable for use in tactical headquarters, and that smaller terminal equipment could be developed for use in ships and field units. Thus, a satellite military communications system appears attractive in giving us a rapid, reliable, flexible and secure communications system—and any noble Lord who has been involved in communications under war-like conditions will realise what a tremendous factor this could be. There have been instances recently when the whole of our communications have in fact been blanked out for a period of hours due to some radiation effect.
We are hoping to participate in an experimental satellite military communications system—and I am talking now about the military side, which is quite separate from the civil and commercial side—which the Americans intend to establish early next year. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence announced in another place on July 21 that negotiations were in progress to this end, at the invitation of the United States Secretary of Defence. It would not really be appropriate for me to say more at this moment, because of the advanced stage which the negotiations have reached, except perhaps that a co-operative system offers us the prospect of a military satellite communications system
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earlier and more cheaply than we could achieve on our own. But, of course, before we take any final decision we shall have to look at the capital and operational costs, as well as the question of being able to rely on the system wholly when we wanted to in the national interest.
It may interest your Lordships to know that the Defence research establishments have been working on methods of space communication without resort to the use of man-made satellites. For example, the S.R.D.E. establishment at Christchurch in Hampshire has been communicating with Malvern by bouncing signals off the moon. A further possibility (although, of course, the lag would be even longer from the point of view of using it for telephoning) is the use of the ever-increasing amount of space junk—old satellites and objects in space. One day there really will be a job for a space dustman, I am sure, if we go on throwing up stuff at the rate we are doing now. This method of using space junk could not, of course, provide all the facilities we need for military purposes, but it could provide a useful fall-back to cover the unlikely event of a communications satellite failure, or the disappearance of a satellite. But to make use of space junk would require very precise orbital data.
This leads me on to another subject. When we last discussed this subject the noble Lord, Lord Waleran, drew attention to the need for keeping track of objects in space. I have mentioned one good reason for doing this; there are others. We are therefore considering the establishment of a satellite information centre whose task would be to provide up-to-date information of all objects in earth orbit and computing facilities capable of manipulating orbital data and producing the numerical information for any purpose we may require. If this proposal goes through, we envisage that the centre would be manned by the Royal Air Force and would work in close collaboration with Farnborough and Malvern. The Air Force Department have had, and hope to continue, discussions with the United States Air Force on the possibilities of co-operation in these activities.
Usually in discussing space and defence somebody refers to the possibility of attack launched by space vehicles; and,

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of course, a great deal of thought has been given to counter-action. Such weapons are undoubtedly technically feasible, but they would be complex, expensive, inaccurate, inflexible, dangerous perhaps to the launcher as well as to the object of attack, and liable to interference. I hope this may reassure noble Lords. Altogether, they are a doubtful proposition, and we do not consider there is any serious threat of the use of this type of weapon. The painful fact is that, if you wish to bombard another country, it is easier to shoot straight there without going into orbit first.
Another military interest in space is meteorology; and here, of course, any improvement in weather forecasting is good news for both civilians and the military. Notable advances in forecasting have already been made through the use of space techniques, and the Meteorological Office is going through a very interesting and exciting period of development. Most of the credit in this field is due to the work of the United States. The receiving equipment—I am talking about meteorology—is simple and cheap; and various other countries, including the United Kingdom, have readout facilities with locally-manufactured receivers. There is little doubt that there will be further significant developments in satellite meteorology and that other nations, as well as the United States, will contribute.
There are other Defence and civilian interests in space (and I am, of course, dealing with some of the points that have arisen from the Bondi study and trying to give the House as much information as I can) and one of them is navigation. We are keeping a close watch on this; but it is uncertain whether there is a use which would justify the expenditure. We are interested in the geodetic applications of satellites and are considering increasing our present modest contribution to the U.S. Army's programme in the Pacific area. We are also studying the possibility of limited orbital reconnaissance systems and are comparing their usefulness and cost effectiveness with other ways in which tactical reconnaissance might be undertaken. I would repeat that we are studying this possibility
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and are comparing it with the other forms of tactical reconnaissance.
My Lords, I think I have demonstrated that we are giving a good deal of thought to the military, as well as the civil, use of space; and I am happy to say that so far as we are concerned I think the military and the civil interests contribute to one another and the military aspect of the use of space seems to be a particularly peaceful form of military activity. When account is taken of the costs of launchers and bases, the total cost of developing a space capability is very considerable. We are considering the extent to which it is possible to play a part to meet our own likely needs at a reasonable cost in collaboration with our friends; but, at a time when defence and all other types of spending is under heavy pressure, we must weigh very carefully the prospective importance of space applications against their extra costs, taking account of possible savings from existing systems which might be superseded. There is no doubt that space is providing some very powerful techniques and we are determined to keep ourselves informed and abreast of all the developments which are taking place in this dynamic field of endeavour.
There is this problem, to which the noble Earl referred, of interdepartmental co-ordination. Of course, the Government will take careful note of what your Lordships say on this subject. We are still feeling our way towards the best method of control of space activities; but we are of the opinion that at the moment the balance of advantage lies in making each aspect the responsibility of the Minister most closely concerned with the related terrestrial activity. We could argue this at some length. I am deeply interested in this question of co-ordination; but I would certainly say that it would be very premature to say that in this country we need a system which may be essential in the United States. But I have taken note of what the noble Earl has said. In the last resort all major issues have to be brought to the Cabinet for decision. My Lords, I now come to the level of expenditure. Here I would only say that in the current year it looks like being around £20 million, or a little more. This is not far off the order of magnitude which the Interplanetary Society suggested. I

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think the United States are spending more on space than we are spending on the whole of our defence budget and it is not possible for us to compete. I find it difficult to make comparisons with the French effort; it is not very easy to get final and reliable figures. I would say that our effort is comparable; but certainly I take the point that the noble Earl made. He complained that the Interplanetary Society had not had an answer. Of course, if you put in recommendations you do not necessarily expect the Government in the course of consideration to give answers. I can say that the recommendations have been studied. I have studied them myself with my own advisers. Quite a number, I think, were known to other people who are interested; but I would say that they are relevant and were properly considered.
It is not possible for me to cover all the points. Man's activities in space are only part of present and future human activities. There are vast other scientific fields which are also filled with promise. None the less, consideration of these does provide a convenient framework for taking almost a galactic, or intergalactic, look at man's place in the universe. It does us no harm to remind ourselves that man has existed (if you go back to Zin-janthropus boisei, which I think is about half a million years ago) for a relatively short time. Civilisation goes back 10,000 years to Sumerian times; and probably it will be another 2,000 to 4,000 million years before the earth becomes uninhabitable. We wonder, then, not only where humanity will be, but even what it will be. The barrier to the planets has gone; but I think the barrier to the stars, to which the noble Lord referred, at the moment appears to be insuperable, and is limited by the inability to travel beyond the speed of light. I think that any scientist or anyone else who, on logical grounds, thought this was a total impossibility for ever should learn humility; which we as politicians also have to exercise in the light of these amazing prospects.

RHODESIA
3.56 p.m.
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (The Earl of Longford): My Lords, with the leave of the House I should like to make a statement on Rhodesia; and perhaps I may be allowed to repeat the words now being used by the Prime Minister in another place. These are the words of the Prime Minister:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a further statement on Rhodesia. On Monday I said that the two Governments had agreed in principle to recommend to Her Majesty the appointment of a Royal Commission for the purpose of testing the acceptability to the Rhodesian people as a whole of a draft independence arrangement which, we hoped, would be agreed between the two Governments and would be based on the 1961 Constitution with such amendments as we might consider necessary. I went on to say that the two Governments were in discussion to see whether it was possible to agree on the contents of a document which the Royal Commission could take for this purpose.
"My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and my honourable and learned friend the Attorney General have now returned and reported on their discussions. It is now clear that there is no prospect—and the House would realise from what I said on Monday the kind of issues involved—of agreement being reached on the amendments which should be made to the 1961 Constitution, as a basis for use by the Royal Commission.
"In these circumstances we have had to consider our position. This we have done with a deep sense of the responsibility lying upon us, for ensuring that this House, before there is any question of its being asked to take a decision about independence, should have before it an authoritative statement of the views of the Rhodesian people as a whole on particular proposals for independence. Mr. Smith considers that independence on the basis of the 1961 Constitution is acceptable to the Rhodesian people. Neither we nor our predecessors have been able

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to accept this as a fact without the most rigorous proof being forthcoming.
"In this connection I must refer to statements made yesterday by Mr. Smith about the discussions he had with my predecessor, the right honourable Gentleman the Member for Kinross and West Perth, in September, 1964. Mr. Smith said that he had made an agreement with my predecessor that Rhodesia could have independence on the 1961 Constitution, if it could be proved that this was acceptable to the people of Rhodesia as a whole.
"I want to make it clear that we do not accept this interpretation and we have so informed Mr. Smith. The right honourable gentleman"—
that is Sir Alec Douglas-Home—
"made it crystal clear again and again that the British Government had as yet no evidence that the majority of the population supported the Rhodesian request for independence on the basis of the present Constitution and franchise, and indeed in the final agreed communiqué, the following statement occurs:
'The British Prime Minister said that the Brtish Government would take account of any views which might be freely expressed by the population on the issues involved; but he must make it plain that the British Government reserved their position.'
Against that background, and unequivocally re-confirming the statement I have just quoted, the British Government have decided, and I have so informed Mr. Smith, that we are now prepared to agree, subject to certain conditions I shall outline, that the Rhodesian Government's constitutional proposals should be put to the test of acceptability to the people of Rhodesia as a whole. But if this is to be done, it must be known that we ourselves disagree with these proposals for the reasons I stated on Monday and which I will not weary the House by repeating. Indeed, Mr. Smith himself recognised in his broadcast on Monday night that we disagreed with them.
"Second, we continue to hold the view that the Royal Commission, before canvassing the views of the Rhodesian people as a whole, should submit, for approval by both Governments, a
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unanimous interim report on how they would propose to determine acceptability. If the Royal Commission's suggestions for this purpose were approved, they should themselves supervise whatever procedures were adopted in order to implement their findings.
"Third, when the Royal Commission have completed the process of ascertaining the opinion of the people of Rhodesia as a whole, they will submit a final report which we have agreed must be unanimous. The British Government cannot, of course, be expected to commit themselves in advance to accept that report, particularly as in any case the eventual decision rests with Parliament alone. But I must also inform the House that we have made it clear to the Rhodesian Government, and I do not want there to be any misunderstanding about this here, in Rhodesia, or anywhere else, that if, in the event, the Royal Commission's findings showed that the Rhodesian Government's proposal was unacceptable to the people of Rhodesia as a whole, the British Government reserve their freedom of action as to the future course to be followed. We would feel free to pursue other means of dealing with the problem such as reviving our earlier suggestion of a Royal Commission with the substantive task of devising a new Constitution for Rhodesia, or our proposal that the issue should be remitted to a Constitutional Conference.
"I greatly hope, Mr. Speaker, and I am sure the House will share this hope, that after all the efforts that have been made in these past few weeks to secure a solution fulfilling all the requirements of honour and of justice, that what I have said will enable us to go ahead with the Royal Commission, on the principle of which we agreed last week, and that the Royal Commission can get down to its vitally important work without delay.
"If what I have said is unacceptable to the Rhodesian Government—though I am sure the whole House would find it difficult to believe that this could not be acceptable to them—I have one last alternative proposition which I have put to Mr. Smith, as a fall-back on which agreement could still be reached. We

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should still be willing, as an alternative, to agree that the Rhodesian Government's constitutional proposals should be submitted to the test of a refendum of the whole of the Rhodesian people, provided that it was conducted without restriction of free political activity by all sections of the community, was subject to adequate impartial supervision, and that it incorporated stringent safeguards against intimidation from any quarter.
"I will, of course, keep the House fully informed of any further developments."
My Lords, that is the Prime Minister's Statement.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, the whole House will be grateful to the noble Earl for having repeated the Statement. It is of course a very important one, and we shall study it with great care as it is very long. We must now await the reply of Mr. Smith. For my part, I think I shall reserve anything I have to say until that reply has been received.
LORD REA: My Lords, may I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, the Leader of the Opposition? I think it would be a little irresponsible to comment at this point on a very important matter which we have not had quite enough time to study. I am sure the Government may rest assured that they have the whole of the British Parliament behind them in their best endeavour to find a way out of the difficult position.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I do not wish to add anything material to what has already been said. Obviously it is a grave Statement to the extent that it recognises that agreement has not been reached. However, the door is not yet finally closed. The Statement was inevitably an elaborate one, and I am sure that all of us, whatever our views on this difficult subject, will wish to study it. In the meantime, as the Leader of the Opposition has said, we shall await the reply of Mr. Smith. No doubt, after that we shall have a further opportunity of examining the position.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lords who have spoken, and to the House as a whole, for the attitude of restraint that has been shown this afternoon.

REDEVELOPMENT OF WHITEHALL
4.8 p.m.
The JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY of LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES (LORD MITCHISON): My Lords, I hope it will be convenient if I make a short Statement on quite a different matter. I am repeating the words that have just been used in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of Public Building and Works. His Statement was as follows:
"With permisison, I will make a Statement about the Government's plans for the redevelopment of Whitehall. On July 19, I announced to the House the Government's attitude towards the Martin/Buchanan Reports, and made a declaration of intent about them. I have recently received a letter indicating the strong general support of the Royal Fine Art Commission for the recommendations.
"The Government now propose to take firm second steps about the architectural arrangements for three main buildings which will form the first stages of the development. These are the new Parliamentary building and the new Government offices on the Bridge Street and Richmond Terrace site, and the redevelopment of the Foreign Office site.
"These three projects must form a coherent development. Careful co-ordination is therefore essential, and I am glad to say that Sir Leslie Martin has agreed to continue to work with my Department as planning consultant for the area as a whole.
"For the individual buildings we need a range of architectural talent. We shall keep in close touch with the views of Parliament about proposals for the Parliamentary building. We propose that the architect for this building should be selected by means of a competition open to the whole Commonwealth. The assessors would include at least one distinguished Commonwealth architect. Consideration of the results of the competition would be entrusted to a small Committee of this House"—
that is to say, the House of Commons.
"The design of the Government offices on the Bridge Street/Richmond Terrace site will be entrusted to my Department. For the new building on the Foreign Office site we have in mind that it would be appropriate to commission a distinguished architect in private practice.
"The design of all three schemes should be based on a close study of the users' needs and on planning principles evolved in consultation with Sir Leslie Martin. In this work, my Directorate General of Research and Development will take a prominent part."
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, for repeating that Statement. I should like to say straight away that I welcome the announcement that the Government are going ahead with this proposal, and I also welcome the Government's decision to appoint Sir Leslie Martin as planning consultant for the overall area. I am sure that most Members of your Lordships' House will agree that there could hardly be a better choice.
There were few questions on the last Statement which was a very important Statement, but I should like to ask the noble Lord a few supplementary questions on this one. The first is that I notice that the Statement deals only with architectural arrangements. Can the noble Lord give us any idea of the programme for the actual building, the timing for the construction of the three important buildings? Secondly, can he explain why different methods, for the selection both of architect and of design, are being chosen for these three buildings? If one method is right for one, I should have thought that, in logic, it might well be right for all three.
Thirdly, can he tell us whether I am right in assuming that the new Parliamentary building will be part of the Palace of Westminster; and, if so, should not the views of this House be taken into account regarding it, as well as the views of another place? After all, we can field a fairly strong team on these architectural matters. Fourthly, can he tell us about the recommendation, which I think was made by the Royal Fine Art Commission, that there was an urgent
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need for a single comprehensive study of the Trafalgar Square end of Whitehall? Fifthly—and, the noble Lord will be glad to hear, finally—can he tell us anything about how the urgent road studies associated with this whole plan by the Government Commission of the Greater London Council are progressing?
LORD REA: My Lords, may I be allowed to add one more, making six supplementary questions to the Minister? Can he assure us that the Martin/Buchanan plan for the precinct in Parliament Square, down to Lambeth Bridge will not be shelved in any way, and that that part of the programme, which to many of us is most important from an æsthetic point of view, will be carried out?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, if I may answer first the last supplementary, I do not think that there is anything in this Statement which goes beyond the three projects I mentioned, and I see no indication in it of shelving anything or changing from the position as outlined in July. As to the other matters, the timing of the building seems to me something which can hardly be dealt with yet. The first stage, a very important one, is to get beyond the general planning we have had from Sir Leslie Martin to the architectural studies that my right honourable friend has in mind. I feel very doubtful whether he can say anything as yet about the phasing and timing of that part of the programme.
The second note I have is about method, but for the minute I do not quite remember what the question was.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, it was a fairly simple point. I noticed the different methods proposed for selecting architect and design of these three buildings.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I, too, noticed that. I do not think that this is a question of abstract logic. It may well be—I imagine it is—that my right honourable friend has wished to have this particular machinery with Commonwealth connections for the buildings here because of the association of the Palace of Westminster over long years with Commonwealth activities, its links with the Dominions and so on.

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The third question was about the Parliamentary building and it came to this: ought we in this House to have a say in the matter? I hope that I am not being indiscreet in saying that I went to my right honourable friend and asked, "What about this?" His answer satisfied me, and I hope that it may satisfy your Lordships. What we are considering here is purely an extension and adaptation of the Commons part of the building. It is nothing else. It is entirely for Commons activities and connected with their end of the building. Your Lordships will remember that recently a division was made between those parts of the Palace that were devoted to this House and those parts devoted to the Commons, and this is the Commons part entirely. That is the reason. May I add that I feel, as did the noble Earl, that we could have fielded a very good team indeed. Obviously, "No names, no pack drill", but one can think of them at once.
The other two points raised were about road studies and about the Trafalgar Square end of the scheme. All I can say is that that must come later. The Statement I have made to-day is concerned with something different. Here again, as I said in my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, I do not think that there is any intention whatever of abandoning anything that was accepted in the July Statement and covered by the plan that was then accepted in principle. If I remember rightly—and here I am speaking from memory—even in that plan the Trafalgar Square end and the road studies were not covered so fully or immediately as various other parts of the scheme. I hope that I have answered the noble Earl's questions.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord will be aware that a large number of distinguished architects, both in this country and abroad, are unwilling to enter public competitions of the kind which has been suggested from which the architect will be chosen to design the Bridge Street building, partly because it involves a lot of extra work and partly because not all of them like competition. Will the noble Lord ask his right honourable friend to ensure that the list of architects who enter for this public competition is really representative of the best architects and that we are not going to be fobbed off
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with second choice in this matter? I think that this is very important.
Though I accept what the noble Lord has said about the part of the building concerned being solely for the use of the House of Commons, it will, of course, be a most important building in London. We are all going to look at it, whether Members of the House of Commons or not. And the decision of the Committee of another place which originally reported on this matter, and the taste which they showed on that occasion, were, to say the least of it, not encouraging.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I do not think I can possibly associate myself with the noble Lord's last remark, as I was a Member of the other place at the time. The matter on which the small Committee of another place is to be consulted is consideration of the results of the competition. I noticed that, as regards the proposals for the Parliamentary building as a whole, the phrase my right honourable friend used was that:
"We shall keep in close touch with the views of Parliament."
There may be some distinction; but, of course, the views of the noble Lord will be conveyed fully and personally to my right honourable friend.
On the question of the architect, here, too, I will convey his views to my right honourable friend but I notice, as did the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, that the method is to be slightly different. In the case of the new building on the Foreign Office site, the Statement says:
"We shall have it in mind that it will be appropriate to commission a distinguished architect in private practice."
Perhaps that was a concession on my right honourable friend's part to the point made by the noble Lord.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, what worries me about it is this: that if one method is right in one case, one would suspect that it might be right in all three.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I am not quite sure that that follows. There are different considerations.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I only want to ask a question on this matter of the proposed alterations applying to the House of Commons only.

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It seems to me that this House ought to be taken into consideration at the same time. It must be remembered that the numbers of another place are constant. The numbers of this House, on the contrary, are steadily rising, and the accommodation which will be required here, therefore, will rise also. It would be a great pity if the whole requirements of another place were satisfied and then we were to be told at a much later date that there is no room for further expansion in this building, and your Lordships' House should have no consideration whatever. I should like the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, to put this point to the Minister and to ask him whether it would not be wise that, if further accommodation for another place is to be under consideration, this House, also, should be mentioned as part of a comprehensive scheme.
LORD MITCHISON: Yes, my Lords; I will certainly and gladly put the views of the noble Marquess to my right honourable friend. It seems to me that what is under consideration here is a physical extension and alteration of some buildings that are already in existence, and one cannot very well justify one's right to be the Upper House by going and living in the attics on top of the Lower one.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether his Statement means that it has now been irrevocably decided to destroy Richmond Terrace?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, in answer to that question, I think I should have to refer the noble Lord to the plan. Some of the area is going and some is staying. The noble Lord will find it rather fully set out in Sir Leslie Martin's plan. So far as I remember—and I speak from memory—Richmond Terrace is likely to go. But I should not like to charge myself with that.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, may I ask one further question? The noble Lord said that it would be wrong for this House to seek to take accommodation which is above the other place. Is it not a fact that accommodation above this House has already been taken by the House of Commons?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, perhaps it was rather a bad joke on my part.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I want to ask a similar question to that asked by my noble friend Lord Ilford. Has it now been definitely decided that the Foreign Office is to be pulled down; and have those of us who are opposed to the destruction of this particularly beautiful building now no further course of action open to us? The second question I should like to ask is this. Since we are talking glibly about pulling buildings down all over Whitehall, is any action being taken at this stage to erect a building on the only open site available to us—namely, the Stationery Office site?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, on the first point, I think the previous Administration came to a decision in principle about the Foreign Office and intended that it should be pulled down, and I have not announced, either to-day or previously, any change from that decision. So far as I remember—and again I must plead that it is only my own memory—the plan itself contemplated this. I am afraid I cannot add to that. I did, however, check the point with my right honourable friend.
The other question was about the Stationery Office site, and that again is covered in the plan in general. I understand that what is being proposed now is what my right honourable friend calls the "second steps", as regards three groups of buildings. That is the first action. None of it concerns the Stationery Office. One must begin somewhere, and I would suggest that my right honourable friend is right in beginning where he is beginning.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, referring to the noble Lord's first answer, may I ask whether he would please accept one lone voice of protest, in memoriam?
LORD WOLVERTON: My Lords, I should like to ask one question on the important matter of the rebuilding of the Foreign Office. Am I to understand that the Minister will select an eminent architect, advised by Sir Leslie Martin, or will it be entirely at the Minister's discretion to try to pick out an eminent architect? There are many eminent architects in the country, and it is difficult to select one, without perhaps some small Committee of Parliament, for such an important building. Is the recommendation of

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the architect to be left to Sir Leslie Martin?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I am sure we all agree on the importance of the Foreign Office building and what is going to be done about it. As to the selection of the architect, I cannot add to what was said in the Statement. If one is carrying out a plan devised in its broad outline by Sir Leslie Martin, I should have thought that in practice any Minister would feel bound to consult Sir Leslie Martin, whomever he might also consult in selecting his architect.
LORD COLYTON: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord—
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CHAMPION): My Lords, perhaps I might intervene.
LORD COLYTON: I have been waiting five minutes to put this question. May I ask the noble Lord whether the Government and their advisers and all those concerned in this matter will have regard to the original Inigo Jones plans for the Palace of Whitehall, which were, to some extent, incorporated in the present Foreign Office, and of which the Banqueting Hall forms only a part? My second question is also important. Will they, in regard to any buildings which are to be put up, be sure that they are harmoniously related to the eighteenth century buildings of the Scottish Office, the Horse Guards and the Admiralty, with its famous screen?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, as to the points the noble Lord has put, surely these are questions for the planners, for, in fact, Sir Leslie Martin, whose plan has been approved in principle by the Government and who, I thought when I saw the plan, had paid great regard to the past of the area—past buildings, past traditions and so on—as well as to the rather urgent requirements about the future of the centre of Government. I do not think this is a question for the Government in that form. They have said already that they accept the plan in principle, and, if I may say so with respect, I should have thought that was the right way to do it.
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: My Lords, as office building has been banned by the present Government, how can they build a new Foreign Office?

SPACE-AGE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
4.28 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD IRONSIDE: My Lords, I think we can safely say that we are back in orbit. In speaking for the first time in this House, I should like to ask for your Lordships' indulgence, which is very kindly given on these occasions. So far as I can recall, my father never spoke in this House during the nineteen years that he was privileged to take his seat here, and I should straightaway like to reassure your Lordships that I have no intention of making up for lost time in order to make the family speaking statistics look more favourable, especially after the excellent example set by the noble Lord, Lord Egremont, in the last Session.
In new and specialist technologies, such as those which are involved in to-day's Motion, some speakers will naturally have interests to declare, and I am no exception in this respect as I am associated with a group of companies who are engineering products for space research and development. This has brought me on to the space scene in Europe, where already a number of bright stars are beginning to shine. I, for one, am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, for introducing this Motion, which embraces a wide spectrum of interest, and indeed very much wider than the 1961 Motion. The noble Earl, with his experience of visiting Cape Kennedy and being in close touch with a number of space interests, is able to speak, as it were, straight from the control room. I do not think the noble Earl realised when he referred to my speech as a space maiden that I was actually born under the sign of Virgo. In intervening this afternoon, I shall be limiting my remarks mostly to a very small part of the spectrum and that part which concerns the European Space Research Organisation, with which I have come into contact.
Taking the 1961 Motion as a launching pad for to-day's Motion, I think the most significant single event that has occurred in the intervening period is the bringing into force of the European Space Research Organisation Convention on March 23, 1964. Without

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going into the details of the European Space Research Organisation itself, as by now most of your Lordships will probably be familiar with this organisation, known as ESRO for short, I would point out that there are now ten countries participating in various degrees and contributing money. Out of the original list of twelve participating countries, Austria and Norway have fallen out and the remaining ten countries, the last of which was Italy, have now ratified the ESRO Convention.
Allied with ESRO are ELDO, which is a Government organisation, and EUROSPACE, which is a commercial organisation, both having widely differing constitutions. In the case of these two latter organisations other noble Lords are probably more closely concerned with them than I have been and are, therefore, more qualified to speak about them. It is clear that ESRO is tangible evidence on this side of the Atlantic that European countries now have a specific investment in space technology. In terms of money, the Treaty countries are contributing in this financial year something like £7 million, and this is due to rise to something like £20 million per year in two or three years' time. At present a lot of money is being devoted to capital expenditure, but the emphasis is slowly shifting to project work which is to be carried out under the headings of short, medium and long term projects during the eight-year period for which the Treaty is in force. The United Kingdom's contribution towards the finances of ESRO is now, I believe, fixed at 25 per cent., followed by Western Germany at 21 per cent., France at 18 per cent. odd, Italy at 10 per cent., and others at diminishing percentages.
I believe that developments in ESRO are tremendously important for British industry, and the rate at which ESRO is now setting about its tasks at its various establishments which are located in the Treaty countries is extremely rapid indeed. The growth rate of the organisation is clearly nothing short of startling, and recruitment of staff from the member countries is now accelerating to meet the programme of work facing the organisation. In saying this, I sincerely hope that they will never become the slaves of Parkinson's Law.
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Out of the many ESRO establishments, I have been able to visit only one of them, nevertheless probably the most important one, and this is the European Space Technology Centre in Holland, known as ESTEC for short. The nucleus of the centre was originally formed in a hut in the gardens of Delft University, and I have seen it grow from this in the early months of 1964 to a staff now of something like 700, which is due to rise to 800 at the end of this year or the beginning of next. The main body of the staff is now housed at Noordwijk, where the major part of the research and project work is to be carried out. What was only a piece of waste land behind a sand dune at Noordwijk in 1964 is now being transformed into a complex of laboratories and environmental test facilities, which are essential to the aims of the organisation and which is the largest space centre outside America. Other member countries have ESRO establishments in their territories, such as the data centre in Germany, the Research Institute in Italy and the launching range in Sweden, in addition to a number of tracking stations which are located in other host countries.
I think it is perhaps unfortunate that we have no ESRO establishment in England, as the activities of the organisation would then perhaps appear less remote. It would give us a greater sense of belonging to ESRO than if we can only read about such places in other countries. However, it has been agreed otherwise, and whereas our major partners gain by having an establishment, I hope that there are other benefits accruing to this country, such as an increased influence in the technological programme of the organisation and, perhaps, a greater share in the industrial contracts placed by the organisation. So far there are only a few returns to be recorded, but then this is not surprising as the Convention has been in force for only a little over eighteen months, and the ground work is not yet completed.
Apart from the success already achieved in launching the first eight Centaur and Skylark rockets at the ranges in Sardinia and the Ile de Levant, the returns will come, I think, in two ways: first, through the return of technologists from ESRO to this country after completing their terms of service, which vary

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between three and five years, and, secondly—and this is perhaps more important—through the placing of contracts in this country by ESRO, which will strengthen United Kingdom industry in space technology and stimulate advances in related technologies such as telecommunications, vacuum and cryogenics. In the case of contracts, the position at present, I think, shows a disproportionate balance. For example, whereas France has received in terms of money 48 per cent. of the contracts placed compared with an 18 per cent. contribution, the United Kingdom has received only 20 per cent. in relation to a 25 per cent. contribution, and Western Germany 6 per cent. in relation to 21 per cent.
In the long run, these figures may appear more in balance with each other, but with contracts already placed for satellites such as ESRO 1 and ESRO 2 and for rockets, telemetry and environmental test facilities and instrumentation, as well as many other miscellaneous items, the pattern of industrial interests is already beginning to establish itself, and competition for business is hot and strong. I feel, therefore, that it is important that we make every endeavour to see that we continue to obtain our proper share of these technologically important contracts. If the procurement arrangements are not well understood by British industry—and so far very few firms here have actually tasted success—I would ask Her Majesty's Government whether they would consider further ways of bringing more widely to the notice of interested firms the activities of ESRO and the impending requirements.
As a suggestion, this might be done in conjunction with suitable trade interests, such as the Society of British Aerospace Companies, the Electrical Engineering Association and the Confederation of British Industries. ESRO, in fact, keep a register of European firms, based on the results of a questionnaire issued about two years ago, from which they select firms for tendering. I have been told that the response from British industry in some cases of tendering is well below expectation, and ESRO are wondering whether they have British interests adequately represented in their register. As half the £20 million per annum which will be spent by ESRO in the future years will go to ESTEC, and £5 million of the
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ESTEC budget will go into industry, the proper contact with ESRO and ESTEC is therefore vitally important to firms, both large and small, who wish to participate and obtain a share of the business.
Another step achieved by ESRO which I regard as extremely important is the establishment, in conjunction with ELDO and Eurospace, of a comprehensive documentation service, which, of course, is essential to all research and development programmes. This service has been established after agreement with NASA and is performed on a high-speed computer. The service was first operated in America after large capital investment in its development, and index and programme tapes are to be exchanged between ESRO and NASA. The use of high-speed computers for the retrieval and dissemination of information, as well as for theoretical and applied calculation, has been an absolute necessity on the American space programme, and I am sure that the ESRO/NASA exchange will be of extreme value to European scientists.
I recently read Dr. Hookway's article in the journal Nature of July 17 describing the setting up of a new office within the Department of Education and Science known as the Office of Scientific and Technical Information; or OSTI for short. The creation of this office to deal with the problems of information mechanisation is, to my mind, timely, and I read that the office recognises the need for co-operation with the United States Government who themselves regard the problem as an international one. It is said that they are prepared to work with other countries who have something to offer. OSTI has a budget of £180,000 this year, and its main fields of interest are medicine, engineering, chemistry and physics. I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Snow, comes to reply for the Government he will be able to say whether these fields are being extended into space and other advanced technologies, and whether OSTI will be co-operating directly with NASA.
LORD SNOW: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord?
LORD CHAMPION: No: It is not normally done with a maiden speech.
LORD SNOW: I was just going to say, to set the noble Lord's mind at rest, that in fact the answer is "yes".
LORD IRONSIDE: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord. The budget for the office next year will, I imagine, depend primarily upon its manpower resources and the initial success of its work this year, but I, for one, feel that any additional money spent in this direction would be money well spent.
Before concluding I should like to say that I am sure we shall not reap the maximum benefits from our participation in ESRO unless we ourselves are actively engaged with our own national programme for space applications which is directed to our future economic needs and is compatible with our limited resources. In another place on August 4, in answer to a question on whether he was satisfied with the progress of Britain's space programme, the Minister of Aviation stated that a review of United Kingdom interests in space was being undertaken, and I should like to ask Her Majesty's Government when this may be expected. In the European space field we are now not alone, and there are more rapidly developing interests in France, Germany and the other ESRO Treaty countries. I also hear that there is a possibility that Spain may be in a position to have her own satellite launched in America within a number of years. I therefore hope that when the noble Lord comes to reply for the Government he will be able to define more completely the national space interests.
4.45 p.m.
LORD BOWDEN: My Lords, your Lordships are indeed fortunate that whenever a subject of great complexity and importance is raised there are among the Members of this House people who have themselves personal experience of it and who are, in fact, making contributions towards it. It therefore gives me very great pleasure to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ironside, who speaks on this subject on the basis of his own professional interests and concern, and a lifelong experience of the matters which we are discussing this afternoon. I hope that we shall often hear him in this House, discussing matters of great technical importance.
I think we must all be grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, for opening up this most complex and important subject. It is one which has attracted
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the interest and enthusiastic support of many engineers, and it has proved a great headache and great difficulty to a large number of administrators. When he was Prime Minister of France, M. Mendes-France once said, "Gouverner, c' est choisir". Our greatest single problem these days, my Lords, is the extremely vexatious question of how we are to allocate our limited scientific resources in the best possible way. It is all very well to say "Space is wonderful; why are we not in it?" but is it reasonable to consider the priority of, let us say, developing new rockets in order to establish a communications satellite when, as we were told only last night on the television, our own telephone system is less efficient, less effective and more in need of improvement than any other among the great Western Powers?
Over a period of years I have read with interest the statistics on the amounts of money which have been spent on the telephones and telecommunications networks of all the great Western Powers; and, expressed as a figure invested per head of the population, ours has been lower than that of any other country for which statistics are available ever since 1950. At a time when the network inside the country is as bad as it is we must ask ourselves seriously how far and how reasonably we should invest in communications satellites to make it possible to get from London to America at a time when we can scarcely get from London to Manchester. This country has been most successful for many years in developing international communications by cable. One is apt to think of a cable as an old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy thing first put down in 1860 by Lord Kelvin. The facts are that the development of cable repeaters under the Atlantic, pioneered in this country by the Post Office, has been the most remarkable and important development in long-distance communication that this century has seen.
Furthermore, we are only at the beginning of a revolution in the use of cables at least as great as that which has already happened. It may astonish your Lordships to know that it has hitherto not been possible to use anything other than valves in under-water repeaters, because it is not yet thought that transistors are reliable enough. Transistors have to be used in all the satellites because valves are

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too heavy. Transistors will, I am certain, be used in repeaters under the Atlantic in the next few years, and they will transform the nature and economics of trans-Atlantic communication in a manner as significant as anything likely to be achieved by satellites. We are spending vast sums of money on satellites and neglecting almost completely the things we ourselves have done and can do.
I have said that the problem of Government is the problem of choice. Let us ask ourselves briefly why America went into the space race. It is a difficult question to answer. I do not suppose anyone knows precisely, but one can summarise it briefly by saying this. The American economy is, and has been for some time, in a curious position. All the reasonable and ordinary demands of the civilian population—food, housing, clothing, transportation—can be satisfied by the efforts of about one-half of the working population. There are still in America something like eight or nine million unemployed. It is necessary for the American Government to devise, by some means, work for the rest of the population.
Furthermore, it is necessary for the Government to find work for some of the most sophisticated and dedicated engineers the world has seen. For many years these men devoted themselves to the manufacture of weapons of extraordinary potential, and when the time had come when there was ten tons equivalent of dynamite for every human being on the face of the earth, and at a time when rockets had been built so that they could deliver them almost immediately to anywhere in the world, the question arose of what to do next; and for this reason, at least as much as any other, it was decided to keep the men happy by sending a rocket to the moon. It was well said that although the rocket will go to the moon the money will stay in America. This is true, and it is the source, I believe, of the great popularity of the space race in America. It provides the livelihood and the most important single industry of very large parts of America. The men engaged in it are most able and dedicated.
Let us think for a moment of our own problems. We do not have enormous numbers of engineers out of work. We do not find the population can be
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adequately housed or fed or clothed by the united efforts of everybody engaged at the moment. Our problems are quite different. We are by comparison an underdeveloped country. We should remember this; and remember, too, that we cannot responsibly engage in enterprises which take our manpower away from the curent problems of society unless and until we know how to solve them. I said a few moments ago that last night (some of your Lordships may have seen it) on television there was a survey of half a dozen of the ordinary facilities of half a dozen countries. The most important of them were telephones, communications, motor cars, housing, half a dozen others. A perfectly impartial examination of conditions abroad in comparison with conditions in this country showed that in every single case we were easily worst.
We should concern ourselves first with the problems of this small country of ours, and leave other people to spend their resources in space. At a time when we have not a single berth in England capable of handling a very large tanker (there are twice as many deep-water berths in Antwerp as there are in Britain); at a time when we have a shortage of good roads; when there is a wilderness between the bottom of the M1 and the top of the M6 which somebody forgot twenty years ago—at this time we should be concerned with more mundane matters and exert ourselves primarily to study them. These are very serious and immediate problems in which the lives of our people are concerned and in which the best efforts of our most devoted scientists should be spent. I have said that our fundamental need at this moment is a renewal of what I can best describe as the main manufacturing and living plant of the country. We need more hospitals; we need more roads; we need more ports. Before long it will he possible to fly to New York in a shorter time than it takes to get from here to London Airport. These things cannot be tolerated, and if we are to see things in their proper perspective we must look at these things first. The problem of choice and perspective is the most difficult one in the whole field of Government.
I should like for a moment to describe to your Lordships a mechanism we have set up to study relative priorities in the

819
field of science. Hitherto, as your Lordships know, there have been several independent Research Councils, each of which, having framed its estimates, went independently to the Treasury asking for their support. It has never been possible to compare, let us say, the relative claims of funds to be spent on cancer research, funds to be spent on nuclear physics or to be spent on space. This is an extraordinarily difficult choice to make, but it has to be made, because funds must be allocated and different amounts of money spent.
How, therefore, is the comparison to be made? Nobody in the whole of the world has found a really satisfactory answer. Nevertheless, we have in the last year established a committee, the so-called Council on Science Policy, which acts as a forum where the claims of these various Councils can be ventilated, can be compared, and each Council can be called upon to justify to a committee of sceptical scientists the claims made on the Treasury. It may well be that the sole result will be to arrive openly at open disagreement. If so, at least this is a step forward from the rather subterranean and incomprehensible system in which individually Councils approached the Treasury in years gone by. The task is difficult and complex, and we do not know how to solve it; but we have begun, and the problem I have described to your Lordships is an extension of the sort of thing with which the Council, under Sir Harrie Massey, has been struggling for the past year.
One of the points made by several noble Lords this afternoon has been the great importance and significance of computers in the space race. I should like to make a case for the priority of these immensely important tools of modern civilisation. Computers are transforming our society. The demands made upon them cover everything, from an analysis of the economy to the dynamics of the Mars probe. This reliance is now almost complete. Furthermore, these remarkable instruments are comparable in cost to any of the airliners and to many of the rockets that we have been discussing this afternoon. A good modern computer can cost £3 million or £4 million. It costs, furthermore, a sum to develop comparable to the cost of developing airliners. Yet the Government have been prepared consistently
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over many years to spend vast sums on the aircraft industry and on the aerospace industry and have almost totally neglected the computer industry.
Fifteen years ago America and ourselves were alike innocent of the techniques and ignorant of the potential of these machines. Last year the profits of the International Business Machines Corporation, which is the largest single manufacturer of computers in the world, were twice as great as those of I.C.I. and the British Motor Corporation put together. In other words, this is a vast industry; an industry, furthermore, which has ramifications extending widely beyond those of the scientific interest of space exploration. Five years ago I was Chairman of the Electronics Research Council, and in that capacity I prepared for the then Minister of Aviation a report enumerating the shortcomings of British policy for computers and urging the Government to do something about it. We pointed out how much the U.S. Government had done to help I.B.M. but our Government took the view that computers were not their concern, and nothing was done.
The consequence was easily foreseeable. Last year we were pressed by the universities to do something to help them, as they, as well as the users and manufacturers of computers, were suffering greatly from a shortage of computing facilities. Professor Flowers did a survey of the requirements of the universities for computers, and found, as might have been expected, that they are in short supply; that some eminent scholars in this country have habitually to fly to Canada in order to do calculations which ought to be done in London; that much urgent research work in aerospace and civil engineering, and many other subjects, has been delayed, and that the need for more computers is almost desperate. Professor Flowers' report has now been presented, and I would ask the Government whether they are going to publish it and what they propose to do with it, because I believe that it is one of the most important documents that has emanated from the Advisory Councils in my lifetime.
It is not enough, at a time when we are concerned with the problems of the space age, to restrict ourselves to the rockets themselves, or to the possibilities that are opened up to other countries.

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We must fit ourselves, our industry, our universities and our entire educational system, to the problems of the space age, the problems of the second half of the twentieth century. In this country, almost all of our primary facilities need urgent repair and renewal. We still have industries in which techniques are as primitive as were those of James Watt. Far more than we need rockets we need an injection of the kind of mystique, the kind of enterprise, the kind of initiative and skill which is transforming rocketry into our ordinary basic simple industries. It is only by doing this that we can live; it is only by doing this that we can even contemplate the kind of expense which is likely to be incurred in the space age; and it is only by doing this that we can hold ourselves and our heads up in the twentieth century at all.
Your Lordships may think that I have wandered rather far from the main theme of our debate. I do not feel that I have, however, because I believe that the problems of the space age are effectively the problems of modernisation of industry, the problems of decent living and the problems of fitting people to avail themselves of the techniques and resources now available to them. Only in this way shall we have the resources that we need to live. Only in this way shall we ever obtain the resources to develop such expensive, amusing, but hardly useful, toys as the rockets which Lord Bessborough described.
I feel very strongly indeed that we are in great danger of getting our priorities wrong. I believe, furthermore, that it is only too easy to be bemused and dazzled by the achievements of some of these immense machines. It is fascinating to believe that someone is erecting a building which is several times larger than the Great Pyramid in order to house a rocket to send a man to Mars. There is an enormous thrill about this: it appeals to the small boy in all of us. What we need is men, not to build mountainous buildings like that, but to make better mousetraps to export to Hong Kong. There is a great difference, but the type of skill we need is the same.
I felt that, in a way, I might disappoint your Lordships because I did not express an enthusiasm for the space age. It is the space age that I welcome. What I question is the extent to which this country
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can afford to divert its most precious raw material, its most precious resource, the skill of its engineers, into an enterprise which I do not believe at this moment we can really afford.
5.2 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, I should like at the outset of my remarks to associate myself with the congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Ironside, on his delightful and knowledgeable maiden speech. I am sure it is the wish of your Lordships on all sides of the House that the noble Lord will join in many debates on future occasions.
I am quite unqualified technically to speak in this debate, particularly after the most technical and knowledgeable speeches to which we have listened this afternoon. I agreed with a great deal of what was said by the last noble Lord who spoke. If we have but limited resources in money and in manpower, scientific knowledge and plant, for myself I would far prefer to see a concentration of those limited resources—a higher priority in those limited resources, one might say—used for converting sea water into fresh water and making the deserts of the world more green rather than putting a man upon the moon. One will be an immediate social benefit, and the other may be a distant pleasure.
The problems of the space age and technology dealt with in this Motion, so ably moved by my noble friend Lord Bessborough, are, I believe, social as well as technical and, within the wide terms of the Motion, as did the last noble Lord who spoke, I, too, should like to look for a few moments at another aspect, the social aspect. I believe the debate to-day in your Lordships' House would be incomplete if we did not take note of that particular aspect. Up till now it has been generally accepted that technological advances married to capital investment create employment. I think that may be true in the short term, but one could question whether, in the long term, it is really so. One can describe automation as the expression in industry of technology; and the standard remedy for unemployment caused by automation has been considered as more technical training. But let us think for a moment on where that leads us. More technical training and greater skills demand higher

823
wage levels. Higher wage levels increase the cost level, at which point still further automation becomes economic.
We are beginning to see examples of this in Canada and the United States. In those two countries I believe we can see the tendencies starting which we may have to face in this country. In Canada, it is becoming difficult for any young person to find skilled work if his education is less than grade 12. In Canada grade 12 corresponds to our "O" level grade. At the same time, the rate of unemployment in the labouring category in those under 24 is double the rate for all other occupations, and it is steadily increasing in proportion to the total unemployed. Let us turn to the United States for a moment. On the labour front the electricians have just obtained a 25 hour working week. The unions, in return for an agreement on automation, demand guarantees of permanent employment for themselves, and in some cases for their sons, regardless of whether the work is there or not. But, at the same time, in the United States the unemployment rate for labourers is double the average rate for all other occupations.
From what I have told your Lordships I think it is reasonable to ask this question. If the North American qualification for skilled work now stands at grade 12, can we foresee a time when work will be hard to get for those without a university degree or something equivalent thereto? In Canada there is an Economic Council of Canada, the terms of reference of which are almost the objective of the Government, and indeed of all political Parties, in this country. I should like to read a particular extract in regard to the Economic Council's duties. Their principal duty is
"To advise and recommend to the Minister how Canada can achieve the highest possible levels of employment and efficient production in order that the country may enjoy a high and consistent rate of economic growth and that all Canadians may share in rising living standards."
They are admirable objectives. But what if the two objectives turn out to be incompatible? The highest possible level of efficient production may result in something less than the highest possible level of employment. If this incompatibility exists, it must have one of two results.
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At the worst, the result will be an unacceptable level of permanent unemployment. At the best, it means that everyone will progressively have more time on his hands.
There is an interesting historical parallel in the late Roman Empire, where all work was done to an increasing extent by slave labour controlled by a small number of the very rich. The result was that, though the gross national product was steadily increasing, there were ever larger numbers of free Romans who found themselves with nothing to do. That was when the Roman Government started bread and circuses.
If automation is to develop an affluent citizenry with leisure time to consume, we ought now to be preparing how the affluent citizen will occupy himself in the future. For our material prosperity we have the Prices and Incomes Board, the Restrictive Practices Court, and finally we have Mr. Brown's grand Plan for industry, finance, commerce, employment and management. Ought we not at the same time to be preparing a parallel grand Plan for leisure usage in the years to come? At present we have sports grants, we have the arts, drama and music here and there. It is all rather hotch-potch and patchy and is unrelated in its content and application. I suggest we need to set up a body for strategic planning for the humanities, and for recreation parallel to Mr. Brown's National Plan, for, if we do not, I believe we are in danger of drifting into a mentally lopsided, discontented people of the future, with money and with leisure but with no real contentment because they do not know how to use that leisure for true human happiness. I believe that is an aspect of the technological age which it is just as important to think about as how we are to put man into space.
5.11 p.m.
LORD SHERFIELD: My Lords, this is a vast subject, and I will try to limit myself to a relatively few remarks about the principles which I think should be followed in our national policy on these space age—not just space—problems and then consider whether our organisation is best fitted to carry them out. As the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, indicated, we as a country, with our existing resources

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in men, materials and finance, obviously cannot make a really good contribution in every major field of scientific advance. In some cases our resources are patently inadequate, or other countries have already established a commanding lead, or both. I would give manned space research as an example of something in which we cannot compete.
In other cases, either for lack of resources or changes in defence policy, or just failure of will, we have lost our position and have allowed other countries to make off with the ball. I suggest that there are a number of examples of this in the field of aviation, though not, I hope, in the whole of it. We have tried, consciously or unconsciously, to mitigate this situation in two ways: by selection of the sectors of scientific research and development on which to concentrate our resources, thus bringing about a rough and ready division of labour between our own and other scientifically advanced countries; or, secondly, by organising such division of labour by collaboration with single countries, for example with France in the Concord project, or with groups of countries in CERN, ESRO and ELDO.
In reviewing the position, I venture to suggest certain principles which should guide our policy. The first is that we should build on success and give priority in resources to advanced fields in which we are still either in the lead or among the leaders. I suppose an outstanding example is nuclear research and technology—in thermal and fast reactors, in fusion research and in radio chemistry. Another example is radio astronomy, and a third is represented by important areas of the biological sciences. I should hope, too, that in aviation there are still sectors in which we can keep or reassert a leading position. I would not presume to he exhaustive or dogmatic about the selection—this is clearly the province of the Ministers' Advisory Bodies—but since the nuclear field is one in which I have some direct experience, I would express the hope not only that we should continue, as we have done, to back up our research and development effort in this field, but also that we should complete the equipment necessary for further advance, notably by bringing our diffusion technology up to date and by starting the construction
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of a prototype fast reactor at the earliest possible moment. I am not so sure about the nuclear engines for space to which the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, referred, because that depends on the scope for the use of these very complicated mechanisms.
There is a peculiar difficulty in judging the amount of resources which should be put into basic research, since by its nature the scale of effort in basic research projects is the most difficult to decide, and, incidentally, the most difficult to cut down once started. Here an immediate practical question is the appropriate scale of our effort in high energy physics, which is at the same time pure research and the devourer of vast and ever increasing resources. I fear that in this field we may, in an American phrase, have got a bear by the tail.
In the second place, I suggest that we should take a hard look at the international projects in which we are or may be involved. It seems sometimes to have been considered that because a project is international it is for that reason valuable, but in scientific research and development this is not necessarily the case. International projects often mean large administrative costs, inflated staffs, difficulties about sharing out and placing contracts, with long delays due to these and other causes. A typical difficulty was mentioned in the most interesting maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ironside. Too often resources are wasted in these ways, and so international projects tend to be slower, more expensive and less efficient than others.
These difficulties increase the further one gets away from basic research into the development field and from a different angle, and, obviously, the more countries that are involved in a particular project the more the difficulties are aggravated. There are some red lights showing already around the world which should give us anxiety and food for thought. One of the most serious problems is the tendency of certain countries to have a strong national programme as well as a share in an international programme, and to prefer the former to the latter to the great disadvantage of other members who may be putting their all into the international effort. This tendency seems to appear in French policy vis-à-vis EURATOM and

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perhaps ELDO. It has so far been less true of CERN, which is basic research, and of the Dragon reactor project at Winfrith Heath, which was restricted to a single experimental project. But even here the future is clouded by the uncertain position in EURATOM, which contributes a considerable proportion of the cost of the Dragon project. Nuclear development is a long-range business, and the attitude of the French Government has put EURATOM'S research and development programme—of which Dragon is an element—in jeopardy.
But it is a problem for each country to judge what degree of effort is needed, in order to enable it to play its proper part in international projects and, still more, to avoid the risk that the combined demands in the national and in the international fields will exceed the resources which should properly be made available for a particular project. For us there has been the example in the high energy physics field of the right balance between our investment in the Rutherford Laboratory and our investment in CERN. Indeed, the extent to which we ought to participate internationally in the next stage of high energy physics is really a most perplexing problem. I suspect that there may be a similar dilemma in the space field in the case of Black Arrow and ELDO.
Once one of these international organisations is set up, the finance committed, and the project started, it becomes very difficult to draw back even when costs begin to mount astronomically. It is painful enough to stop a large development project on a national basis, as we have recently seen in the case of the TSR 2. It seems to be almost impossible to stop or to limit a project which has been entered into collectively. It may be desirable, though I think not often, to accept some of these drawbacks for political reasons. It may indeed, more compellingly, be the only way in which we can enter a particular field in a worthwhile manner, and space research may well be one of these. But we should do so, I suggest, with our eyes open and in the realisation that we may be unable to mount a substantial national effort later. From what I myself have seen, my own bias is for a national effort whenever it is viable.
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I have one other thought to offer, that we should avoid as far as possible setting up permanent international bodies for research and development which acquire a life and momentum—I will not say a vested interest—of their own. The International Geophysical Year was, I believe, an example of successful international scientific collaboration which did not involve a permanent organisation. These matters call for a most difficult exercise in judgment. Are we properly organised to take the necessary decisions in the best possible conditions? I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Snow, who was reported as saying some weeks ago that it was becoming a national sport to throw brickbats at him and his right honourable friend. I have no desire to join in this pastime, but this does not mean to say that the noble Lord and his right honourable friend have, in fact, been given the best organisation in which to work.
On the research side, I believe that in principle the organisation of the Scientific Research Council and its subordinate and associated bodies is soundly based, and the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, has told us some interesting things about this this afternoon. But I am much less happy on the development side. I agreed strongly with the committee of inquiry into the organisation of civil science, when they said that the techniques required in this field—that is, of industrial research—are more likely to be operated freely and without inhibition by an independent organisation than by a Government Department. I regret—and here I agree with what was said by the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough—that the recommendation of the Report in favour of an industrial research and development authority was not adopted.
My belief is that this type of organisation, in which a board or authority with mixed membership—scientific, industrial, professional—is given discretion, within broad policy directives and financial limits, to deal with research organisations and with industry, with or without responsibility for the development of prototypes, is the best and most efficient pattern of organisation in a difficult area. I think, further, that it would have served us well in the field of defence research and development as well as in industrial research. If any noble Lord suspects

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that I am "plugging" the type of organisation represented by the Atomic Energy Authority he will be perfectly correct, because I believe that this has proved a successful example of the type of organisation which I am advocating.
I myself formed the view that the establishment of a Ministry of Technology was a wrong turning, and I do not think that events have yet shown that it was not. The field of scientific research arid development is so large that it is inevitable that there should be subdivisions such as exist on the research side under the research councils, and that some similar division is needed as between research and development and within the development field itself. But, however large the territory, each part is interconnected and there ought not to be a frontier; therefore I think it is unfortunate that there are two Ministers dealing with research and development, one directly and one at one remove, and that each Minister should be separately advised. With the best will in the world, the existence of two Ministers in two Departments must lead to some polarisation of effort and policy. However, I do not know how the new organisation of research councils and advisory councils is settling down. Perhaps the noble Lord who replies will be able to enlighten us, and to assure us that the liaison is adequate. It is very difficult for anyone outside the network to form a fair judgment.
I have spoken in no spirit of controversy. This is an extraordinarily difficult subject. The decisions which have to be taken are of great complexity, and my sole anxiety is that they should be reached on valid principles and in the best possible conditions.
5.28 p.m.
LORD TODD: My Lords, I should first like to add my congratulations to those offered by earlier speakers to the noble Lord, Lord Ironside, on his most interesting and informative maiden speech this afternoon. Secondly, I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, for the opportunity which he has given us to discuss a great many important matters which could be comprised under the rather generally worded Motion which he has put down. We have, of course, discussed some of these
830
matters on various occasions in the last year or two but, as the noble Earl himself has reminded us, it is now almost exactly four years since space research was the subject of a debate in your Lordships' House, and a great deal has happened since then.
Both the United States and Russia have entered the field of manned space flight, and probes have been sent to the moon and, at any rate, some of the nearer planets. All this has been done at enormous cost, and the rate of spending on space in these countries is still rising rapidly. But I would remind your Lordships that a very large part of these costs concern the development of the launching vehicles and their instrumentation, and a very much smaller part is attributable to the instruments which carry out the actual scientific research once the satellites, or what-have-you, are in space.
In so far as scientific research into the problems of extra-terrestrial space is concerned, we in this country have continued to make not inconsiderable contributions through sounding rockets and satellites, and optical and radio-astonomy. If I may refer to one remark of the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, I think that optical and radio-astonomy have made more contributions to space, than space has made to optical and radio-astronomy. In these fields, in the development of astrophysics and in theoretical astronomy, as well as in the development of items of equipment which have been used by our American friends, we have done a very great deal.
I mention this point, not in any self-satisfied manner, but just to emphasise that there is a great deal more in space research than putting men into orbit or sending them to the moon. Indeed, there is a vast amount of excellent scientific work that can be done without ever getting into extra-terrestrial space at all. In these fields that I have mentioned, we have some of the leading figures in the world—men like Lovell, Ryle, Massey and Hoyle—and I think we ought to back these men fully, perhaps even more fully than we do now. It is the work of men like these that brings prestige to the country, not an attempt to copy on an insignificant scale (because that is about

831
all we can do) the massive space programmes of the United States and Russia.
My Lords, some years ago, in my then capacity as Chairman of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy, I urged the abandonment of the proposed development of the Blue Streak rocket as a launcher vehicle. I am afraid that I am still unrepentant: I still hold by that view. To-day, there has been quite a bit of talk about the effective development by ELDO, the international organisation, of a launcher vehicle based on Blue Streak and two upper stages. As the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, told us, we began ELDO with a cost of £70 million in front of us, and, I think, about a five-year programme. We seem to be paying an inordinate proportion of the total costs; but, what is worse. I believe that the completion of the first part of ELDO has now been postponed from 1966 to 1970; the cost is now more than double what was originally estimated, and it is costing us something over £13 million per annum to keep it going.
My Lords, I believe that the money we have spent, and are still spending, on ELDO will yield us nothing of any significance. It is aimed to produce a rocket system which in 1970 will be obsolete. We may use it for an ESRO satellite, but I am quite sure that ESRO could launch its satellites at an enormously less cost by buying American rockets. I believe that far more return would have been obtained if the money we have spent in this way had been applied, in part, to scientific research in the physical sciences and biology, and to research in other applied fields which are more likely to yield results of direct value to the economy of this country.
We have been hearing about technological fall-out or spin-off, and we often hear about it in connection with space programmes. For myself, I believe that this technological fall-out is very much exaggerated. The development of launchers is essentially a matter of technology, and if you begin to look at things closely you will soon find that it is scientific research that yields fall-out or spin-off in the form of new technology. What we obtain as spin-off from technological projects is usually something which we could have got in quite different ways if we had been prepared to
832
spend the money and make the effort. Just to illustrate this point, nuclear power, nuclear technology, is the spin-off from the scientific research that was done by Rutherford, Hahn and their collaborators before the war; and, if you suggest that nuclear power development is the spin-off from atomic bomb development, then all I can say is that since nuclear power was evident from the moment Rutherford made his first atomic fission if we had put our backs into it, it is rather a reflection on humanity that we had first of all to make an atomic bomb before we got on to nuclear power.
If I may take another very crude example, we are frequently told that miniaturisation of instruments is part of the great fall-out you get from space work, and in particular launcher development. I think there are other things which could have yielded the same kind of results. A certain kind of miniaturisation would have been achieved in putting more effort into producing an invisible hearing aid for the deaf. Now let me be clear. I admit that the making of invisible hearing aids has not got quite the glamour of sending rockets into space, but this, of course, is one of our problems. I think we have to find out how we are to put the glamour into somewhat more earthbound projects.
My general thesis, my Lords, is simply this: that if what we are interested in is technological fall-out or spin-off, it is primarily scientific research that we must support rather than technology. This does not mean that we should not back technology, but it does mean that we should back technology for its own sake with a conscious aim at some economic end, and not spend millions on something with no future, like Blue Streak, and hope vaguely that some side issue will arise in the course of it by which we can attempt to justify our expenditure. In the position this country is in, I do not think we can afford that kind of gamble, especially when there are other and larger people doing the same kind of thing on a vastly greater scale and with considerably more than a head start on us.
The American and Russian space programmes derive ultimately from their military and defence programmes. The enormous expenditure on space in America is already having a marked effect on their industrial pattern, and it

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is an effect which I believe may in due course have undesirable consequences for the economy of that country. Of course, there are a variety of reasons, in addition to the purely military position, which have perhaps supervened, and the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, has already referred to some of these. But, in a way, this development of the space programme is only a rather obvious example of what happens in most countries. It is an example of the way in which defence programmes, even here, tend to determine, or in some cases to distort, the general industrial pattern. They do this because of the very large sums of money they inject into certain industries, coupled with the specification, of course, of an objective—usually one defined by the military authorities. Part of the trouble is that patterns of this kind tend to persist: the other part, of course, is that so far we do not seem to have been very good at finding something other than the military authorities to set down a specific objective on which the country is prepared to spend a lot of money.
I think our real problem to-day, as the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, has already hinted, is to find how to stimulate, in a way analogous to the stimulation of these industries concerned in space in America and here, the technological progress of those civil industries which can be of real value to the economy of the country. Especially if Defence spending is to be reduced at all, we must be bold and have got to redeploy our resources in civil industry. I am sure—I know—the Government realise this position, and I hope that they are going to do something about it. As to the mechanism of doing it, that is perhaps a subject I had better not discuss. My noble friend Lord Sherfield has already mentioned it; and, as one of the co-authors of the organisation report which he mentioned, it might be considered that I would be a little bit prejudiced if I said how I felt one should do it.
Finally, the noble Earl, in introducing his Motion, wished to draw attention to "problems of space-age science and technology." The problems, as some earlier speakers have said, are many and various, and they do not concern only, or even mainly, the exploration of space. In this space age (if that is how the noble Earl wishes to describe the present times),
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we are faced with an almost explosive growth of both science and technology the end of which is not yet in sight. One of the consequences of that growth is a staggering increase both in the cost of research and in the demand it makes on our trained manpower. Both of these present us with pretty serious problems, because just as we cannot expect to continue indefinitely to double our expenditure on research every five years, equally we cannot view with equanimity a situation which would soon arise in such circumstances in which we were concentrating so large a proportion of our manpower in scientific research that the development of our industries suffered very severely.
We cannot get along by putting too much manpower into scientific research and devoting too little of it to the pursuit of technological ends. This point has been stressed very forcibly by the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, in his speech this afternoon and he has stressed it also in some of his recent writings. I am, I confess, very largely in agreement with the general thesis that he advances and if, as he and others of us have maintained, we are coming towards a plateau in permissible expenditure on scientific research in the not too distant future, then we must devise some method of getting our priorities straight and formulating a workable scientific policy. And in doing this we must not allow ourselves to be led away either by false ideas of prestige or by scientific chauvinism.
In the field of research there is one point that I should like to make before I sit down. Just a year ago, in its last Annual Report, the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy pointed out that to carry through the really worthwhile research projects in the physical and biological sciences that are clearly before us now (the carrying-out of which would probably deploy the abilities and activities of scientists in this country to-day) it is fairly clear that during the next five years we should have to double our present expenditure on scientific research; that is to say, it would need to grow at about 15 per cent. per annum during that five years. I understand that it is now considered in official quarters that such a rate is too high and will have to be cut down.

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Reduction in the rate of development in a field of scientific research is by no means a simple matter. In fact, in the world to-day, if you are going to reduce the rate of development in a particular field then you might as well stop it. So, what one faces, if one cuts back at this stage, is a situation in which we may have virtually to opt out of certain fields of science. If at this stage we cannot really face a doubling of our expenditure in five years, if we cannot afford that amount of money for scientific research, then we must face up to it and we must begin to take some hard choices which will almost certainly involve opting out of certain fields of science; and we must do that now if we arc not going to get the money for the next five years.
Problems of choice, such as the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, mentioned will come up; but I would make this point. If we have to opt out of fields of science, then we shall be doing something which may, so far as the long-term future of this country is concerned, be vastly more dangerous than would be, despite the political problems, the seeking of some kind of re-negotiation or reconsideration of our expenditure on what I am afraid I must regard as dubious technological projects like ELDO.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I say that it is interesting to note that ELDO does, in fact, represent the great majority of the expenditure on what might be called space research. The real research content is fairly small. This is a purely neutral statement which I think parallels what the noble Lord has just said.
LORD TODD: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord. I hope that I have not misled the House. I was specifically talking about ELDO and I was not discussing ESRO or matters like that. I sought to distinguish particularly between scientific research in space and the technological development of launchers.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I also sought, perhaps unsuccessfully, to re-emphasise what the noble Lord had said.
5.46 p.m.
VISCOUNT BARRINGTON: My Lords, I hope that what I am going to
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say will relieve your Lordships' minds. I had intended, when I came here, to address a certain, or uncertain, number of remarks to your Lordships on the only problem concerned with science and technology in the space age which I feel in the least qualified or inclined to discuss. This is the problem of how far, if at all, mankind can use science and technology instead of being used by them, or, reduced to words of one syllable, how man can best use the facts he knows and the tools he has on the earth or off it. At this stage in the space-time age, and in this House, where there is less time than space, I do not propose to make those remarks, because I think that to do so would be, to parody the words spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, "dangerous, inflexible, controversial, probably inaudible and harmful to the launcher as well as to the recipient."
I shall confine myself, (again to quote the noble Lord) for "a different form of thrust is required", to doing two things. One is to join in the congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Ironside, on what seemed to me to be an admirable maiden speech. The second is to say that on the last occasion when I had some remarks to make in this House and did not make them, I remember preparing at short notice what I calculated would be a one-minute speech. In this I wished to draw your attention to a cartoon by Mr. Osbert Lancaster which appeared on that day (which was the day of the War Damage Bill debate) in which were represented two ladies outside a church. One was saying to the other: "Canon O'Bubblegum thinks that the artificial insemination of a jellyfish in outer space is the thin end of the wedge". I was going to say at the time that that was what I thought about the War Damage Bill; but it seemed to me rather a thick thin end.
I feel that this remark is equally applicable to some of the prospects confronting us in the space age. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, mentioned the alarming pace with which fact is catching up with science fiction. I remember about eight years ago a letter in The Times from the Astronomer Royal in which he said, with authority, that although he had nothing to say against science fiction as

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fiction, anybody who seriously thought that a projectile of any sort within foreseeable time could be sent outside what I think he called "the atmosphere" ought to have his head examined. That was a very short time before the Sputnik went up.
Since then, many of us are feeling that we ought to have our heads examined at intervals because we do not quite know where we are. I merely mention one of the technological projects which give me this feeling. It is, as your Lordships will have read in the papers—and those who are not scientists ought to know about—the discovery that apparently memory is a chemical which can be injected and has been injected with success into thousands of flatworms. My memory has never been good. It is so bad that I cannot remember ever being introduced to a flatworm. But I can remember a friend of mine who was interested in Japanese poetry giving me a translation of two of what are, apparently, the most famous short Japanese poems of fourteen syllables to each. They may well lose something in the translation, but certainly not conciseness. One was:
"Night is cold. A rat has fallen into the waterjug."
The other one was:
"Come to my dismal dwelling and listen to the bagworm."
Up to date, I had always thought that represented what I might call the nadir of conviviality, but to be asked to spend an evening listening to the bagworm would be jollity compared to being asked to spend one listening to a flatworm injected with the memory of a bagworm, injected, for all one knows, with the memory of a Liberal Peer.
I know that this may be a frivolous way to put it, and it may be put more seriously, but I say this only to show that there may be dangers as well as advantages in the prospect before us, which I think ought to be viewed with cautious optimism. I feel that I must stress the caution as well as the optimism by sitting down now.
5.53 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, two thoughts have been running through my mind as I have listened to the extremely interesting debate. The first, as the noble Lord, Lord Todd, has reminded us, is
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that if ever there was a reflection of the contemporary phenomenon called, I think, the acceleration of history, this debate is it. I well recall trespassing into space some six years ago in a debate on the Air Estimates and my accomplices in that endearing little sortie were my noble friend Lord St. Oswald and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. I think that most of the occupants of your Lordships' House then thought we were fairly "bonkers". Some two years later, in a deeply informed speech, my noble friend Lord Bessborough initiated a full-dress and very informative debate on the subject. By then, I feel, those of us who were raising this issue were regarded as being only mildly mad. Now I flatter myself that we are regarded as more or less sane though possibly somewhat misguided.
I think our rapid promotion to relative sanity has been matched by, and is to some extent a reflection of, the progress and pace set by the pacesetters of this planet. That progress has been so rapid that it is easily measured. I remember that in the debate four years ago my noble friend Lord Hailsham (as he then was) discussed the theoretical possibilities of a system of communication satellites. He was discussing them, admittedly, in fairly positive terms. That was only four years ago. Now when we telephone to our friends in New York we do not really know whether our voices are carried to them by the 4,000 miles or so of Atlantic cable or over the 45,000 miles to and from Early Bird. That is the measure of the speed of this progress.
My second reflection on listening to this discussion has been to rejoice that once again this noble and rejuvenated House has been showing a fairly clean pair of heels to another place. We are, of course, well known now for our liberal views on aspects of society and sex and related matters. I feel that it is good that we should show ourselves equally forward-looking, if at times equally realistic, on these matters of science and of space, and indeed the wider subjects to which the noble Lord, Lord Todd, my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye and the noble Lord, Lord Sheffield, and others have introduced us this evening. I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Bessborough on once again

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initiating so fully and so well a debate on this vast subject. I would also thank the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton for having expanded, if not our knowledge of space, at least our knowledge of the Government's intentions, honourable though modest, in this sphere. Not least I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Ironside on a very thoughtful and extremely well informed speech.
In summing up this discussion from this side of the House, I propose to operate on a pretty narrow front. In trying to bring together some of the main threads of the debate as it has struck me I will confine myself, if only for the purposes of compression, almost entirely to the question of space and space research. In doing so I do not propose to re-argue the case for Britain's taking space seriously and spending money seriously upon it. My noble friend Lord Bessborough has already done so, and others have supported him. Yet others have taken a contrary view.
As I see it, my Lords, we have here a fairly stark, but not at all simple, choice. We can opt out in greater or in lesser degree as the noble Lord, Lord Bowden has suggested. I did not take what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, said, in answer to my noble friend, as indicating that this was the intention of the Government, although clearly what he has said would enable this country to select the spheres in space on which it was going to concentrate; and I certainly would not quarrel with that. We could "go it alone", but "going it alone" would be a pretty poor "alone", and I certainly should not recommend this as being our entire effort. We could ride "piggyback" on the Americans and the Russians. To some extent this is what we are doing, and to some extent it is what we should continue to do—and by using that jargon I am not belittling the validity of the scientific experiments which have been carried on American launchers.
Or, of course, we could make a real effort of making a real go of this with our neighbours and natural partners in Europe. I, for one, have no doubt that this is the right decision for us to take in space, or in selected areas of space, as in other fields which call for a very high investment in skills or in resources, provided that in this vast sphere, which so
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dwarfs our petty national differences on earth, we in Europe lose no suitable opportunity of sensible association as partners with the real pace setters.
In urging this I am not discarding what may well be the need for being strictly selective in our European endeavours, but in considering what Europe can do, I do not think that we should underestimate the capacity of Europe. After all, the gross national product of Europe is not less than half of that of the United States and space will be there for a very long time to come. In pleading for a genuine European effort, I do not suggest for one moment that we should not make a reasonable, yet realistic national effort as well. Indeed, I should have thought that the two must go together. Therefore in this national context I would revert to one or two questions which have already been touched on earlier in the debate.
First there is our military capability in space. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, for what he has told us—and he told us quite a lot—about the Government's thinking on the military uses of space and the sort of capability which this country might require in this military sphere. I am also grateful for what he told us about the state of our negotiations with the United States in this respect. I do not wish to comment further on that. This was an important statement by the noble Lord and I, for one, should like time to consider it carefully.
Secondly, there is the question of Black Arrow. Here, again, I am glad to hear that work on Black Arrow is proceeding, pending a final decision one way or the other. I must confess that I am somewhat disappointed that a final and positive decision has not yet been taken. We were told in that admirable Central Office of Information paperback, which came out earlier in the summer, that on this subject the policy of the Government elected in October, 1964, had yet to be announced. I should merely like, rather playfully, to express the hope that the policy of this Government on this important matter, not only in the national context but also possibly in the European context, will be announced before this Government is "unelected".
Thirdly, there is the question of money. I realise that when the Government are

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giving serious consideration to the whole range of policies in space it is unreasonable to ask what their target ceiling is here. Meanwhile, I was interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, said about the actual "spend" this year. He gave a figure in the neighbourhood of £20 million. I was surprised to hear that figure, because, in information which has recently been submitted to the Western European Union, culled, I thought, from Government figures, a "spend" in 1964 of some 42·8 million dollars, or £15 million, was indicated. Am I right in thinking that this indicates that there has been a fairly sharp rise in our expenditure in this connection?
LORD SHACKLETON: Yes, my Lords. There has indeed been a sharp rise, and a large part of it has come from ELDO.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. He also suggested that on the assumption that our expenditure was likely to be £20 million, presumably including our military expenditure, such as it is, it would be at the same level as French expenditure, which is running at the rate of some £24 million, excluding the military sphere. I find it a little difficult to relate these two figures.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am afraid that I find it exceedingly difficult. Having had great difficulty in getting reliable figures and proper comparisons, I really have to use that easy phrase, "They are in the same order of magnitude".
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I still find it a little difficult to see how they can be in the same order of magnitude. But perhaps we can pursue this mathematical problem at a later date.
Fourthly, while dealing with the purely national sphere, I should like to ask (and here I am echoing a thought which the noble Lord, Lord Todd, expressed) whether the noble Lord, Lord Snow, when he replies, could tell us if the Government have yet considered the recommendations of the Committee on Radio-Astronomy over which the noble Lord, Lord Fleck, presided; and, if so, what is their decision. I should be grateful for some indication of their intention in this field, and also of what they are proposing to do to maintain Britain's fine and proud
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position in the field of radio-astronomical research.
Before I leave purely national matters, I would come back to two questions of organisation, which were touched on earlier this afternoon. In the first place, there is a need to define and draw up a national programme. That informative and pleasing paperback which the Central Office of Information have produced makes interesting reading. But its contents do not really amount to a national space programme. Nothing concentrates the mind and effort better than the discipline of having to produce a proper plan. And it was, I think, the definite assignment of specific objects in space by the late President Kennedy which, rightly or wrongly, did so much to bring the American space effort into focus. And I believe that it is the possession by France of a definite plan and definite objectives (I am not here arguing whether these objectives are right or wrong) which has given so much momentum to the French space effort. I hope that the Government will now produce and let us see a properly co-ordinated national plan in this field. Here again, I am not arguing for this or that "spend"; what I am saying is that all this should be brought together to enable the question of priorities, both within the plan itself and outside it, as between what we spend on space and on many other desirable objectives, to be rationally decided.
In my view, much the same applies to this question of national organisation. As my noble friend Lord Bessborough mentioned, our national space effort is fragmented between at least five Ministries. We certainly have no equivalent to the National Council in the Executive Office of the American President, or, so far as I know, to M. Bourges, the French Minister of State for Nuclear and Space Affairs. I know that it is natural for the Establishment to favour the established set-up and I do not wish at this stage to probe too far into this. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, indicated that he had an open mind on the question of organisation. All I would suggest is that there is a strong case for looking afresh at our national organisation, from the ministerial level downwards, in this field. I myself am inclined to think, though this is a difficult and complicated question,

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that a greater focusing of authority would strengthen our national effort in this field.
From this, I come straight to the international and, above all, the European effort in space. In the main, it has been channelled through three organizations—ESRO, ELDO and CETS, the European Conference on Satellite Communications. I want to touch briefly on each of these three organisations. ESRO, about which my noble friend Lord Ironside spoke so authoritatively, is functioning quite well, albeit at present on a fairly restricted scale. It has one important advantage, that it can plan on an eight-year budgetary basis. But I should like particularly to revert to a matter on which my noble friend touched. It is admittedly a rather parochial aspect of ESRO, but it worries me, as it does my noble friend. Apart from its headquarters in Paris, it has established, or is establishing, important stations in the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Italy. But, as my noble friend mentioned, none of its activities is concentrated in this country. Can the noble Lord tell us why this is so? Is there not possibly a case (I throw this out just as a suggestion) for locating that very large radio-telescope, or possibly the International Radio Astronomy Institute, to which the noble Lord, Lord Fleck, alludes in his Report, in this country, possibly under ESRO's wing?
As for ELDO, I listened with close attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, had to say. I am not surprised to hear that our stake in ELDO is under review. Here, again, because this review is going on, because it touches on delicate matters affecting our relations with other European countries, I do not wish to press the Government too hard at this stage. I only hope that the difficulties which are affecting ELDO at present can be surmounted. If, as I hope, they are surmounted, and if we decide to go ahead with a serious launcher development programme, I feel that one of the results of that decision should be to give that organisation not less authority, but rather more authority, more confidence and more autonomy. I am not suggesting what the decision on this should be; but if we do go ahead, I am suggesting that ELDO needs an injection of more financial flexibility, and possibly more authority for letting its own contracts and so on.
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I am not at this stage arguing for or against a particular ELDO programme. All I would argue—and this I would argue with as much force as I can command—is that ELDO needs to know, and needs to know very soon, for what purpose its launchers are intended. So far as I can understand it, we have been developing launchers without knowing precisely what they are intended to launch. It is not, to put it mildly, the normal way of proceeding. It may have been necessary in the circumstances. But when Mr. Issigonis was designing the Mini Minor, he knew that he was designing it for four people—or, at least, for three Jellicoes or three Snows. But, as yet, ELDO has never really known for what or whom its launchers were intended. That is a situation which I believe the European Governments, and not least our own, should correct, and correct speedily. If this is one of the matters under review, I can appreciate why this question is being reviewed.
This leads me to put a heavy emphasis on the third of the three European space organisations, CETS, the Cinderella of the three. Telecommunication satellites are already playing some part in our affairs. Pace the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, I believe that they are destined to play a far larger part in a very short time. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that we are right to aim at a global and fully international system; and I think we were right to have joined, in July last year, in signing the two agreements which are leading to the development of such a system. But the present arrangements, which I understand are purely interim, and which will need renewal by January, 1970, contain two very unsatisfactory features. In the first place, they enshrine, as I understand it, a built-in American voting majority over all the other participants of 50·6 per cent., a figure which cannot be decreased. Secondly, they reflect, with the exception of the important ground stations, our present almost total dependence in Europe on American science and technology in this field. As long as that dependence is so total, I very much doubt whether we shall get what we should like to consider to be our fair share of the contracts flowing from Article 10 of the Agreement.
I do not believe this is a situation that we should allow to continue for any

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longer than we need. We should, if possible, aim to put our negotiators in a far stronger position by the end of the decade when these agreements have to be renegotiated. I understand that this process of renegotiation is due to start by late 1968. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has mentioned some plans which CETS have in preparation to meet this situation. I myself was glad to learn when I was in Paris recently that their technical planning staff had worked out a programme which would permit European countries at least to demonstrate their ability to produce such a communications satellite by the time these negotiations are due to start, and which should also enable us, if need be, to have a European satellite in orbit not later than 1972 or 1973. I think that some such development is vitally necessary if we ourselves, and our other European partners, are to have the sort of position we should have in whatever more permanent global arrangements are worked out in the later period.
I do not for one moment underestimate the difficulties which confront our Government or the other European Governments in this particular matter or in other aspects of space research. It will certainly be no easy matter to get things moving in time in this costly and very complex field. But if we are to achieve a really worthwile result three things are probably required. First, as with our national space activities, so with European space activities, we need to draw up a coherent and co-ordinated programme with defined objectives. At the moment there is no such programme. There is an ESRO programme. There is a sort of ELDO programme. There are proposals now coming forward from CETS. There are the views of the national Governments, and particularly the national industries on the sidelines. But there is at present precious little real co-ordination. This does not permit either the priorities within the programme to be determined or the priority to be given to such a European programme to be properly considered in relation to the other ways in which such sums could be spent.
Secondly, in order to achieve this co-ordinated programme, we require, in Europe as in the United Kingdom, a better organisation. The present organisation would be, I suspect, described by one
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of my noble and gallant friends as "a bit of a dog's breakfast". Again, given the different membership of the different European organisations, I do not for one moment underestimate the difficulty of obtaining a more united organisation. Ideally, I am inclined to agree with my noble friend, Lord Bessborough, that what we really require is a European Space Authority. But it will be very hard to get. As a second best, we could try to secure some overall committee to co-ordinate the activities of the various European organisations. But I am a little chary of piling yet another Pelion of a committee on all the existing Ossas.
A third possibility might be to confer on ELDO the responsibility not only for the launchers but also for driving forward all the immediate and practical applications of space research in Europe which we decide jointly to develop, whatever they may be. In any event, I am quite certain that, however it is done, if we do decide to continue in Europe with a co-ordinated and important space effort, as for one, hope we shall, this question of organisation must be squarely faced. Then, I personally think the time is probably coming when, if all these various strands are to be tied together, all this will need scrutiny at a high level within Europe. I would suggest that this probably requires a fairly early Ministerial conference.
I think it was Pascal who wrote:
"The silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me."
think most of us who have gazed at the night sky—and most of us have—have felt some such sense of intellectual terror and of deep awe. To-day, we have touched on many facets of research into those infinite spaces, some of them practical, some of them mundane, some of them, I fear, military. However, in a deeper sense space research, certainly if we include radio-astronomy within its orbit, is but to-day's expression of that old desire of man to answer some of the questions which the night skies pose. I feel myself that it is right that this country should continue to play a prominent part with our partners in attempting to answer some of those questions. But opinions on this may differ. In any event, I am quite certain that it is right for your Lordships' House to discuss, and to continue to discuss, these great issues. That is why I am so glad that my noble

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friend Lord Bessborough has once again induced your Lordships to trespass where only angels and a few others have so far dared to tread.
6.23 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TECHNOLOGY (LORD SNOW): My Lords, this has been a most valuable debate, and one which will be of great help to the Government. Anyone who has ever thought about these problems knows that they are some of the most difficult which can possibly face any Government. You need to have a curious mixture of realism and a dash of imagination. Even if you have those, no man but a fool would think that he was likely to be right. Therefore, like the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, for introducing this subject this afternoon. I am so grateful, in fact, that I can forget those political gesticulations which he can never avoid making amidst his good-natured and fascinating speech. But I do not believe that he, or your Lordships, would want me to reply in kind, because I am much less of a nice man than the noble Earl, and I should go in for heavier and harsher badinage if I did. Instead, I think it might be acceptable to your Lordships if I began by trying to indicate the Government's attitude of mind to this whole set of complex problems, which the Americans call "Big Science." That is really what we have been discussing this afternoon. After that, I will try to reply piecemeal to individual points which have been raised by noble Lords.
There has been one curiosity and one which encourages me. Thinking over my speech before this debate, I had made at least five points which have been made in turn by the noble Lords, Lord Sherfield and Lord Todd, now the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, and two other speakers in the debate. I shall have to mention them, but I shall give due acknowledgement to the people who have made the remarks already.
I want to begin by drawing a line between science and technology. In some ways, these activities come close together, and I shall say in a minute that we are approaching them in the same spirit. But they are different activities:
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their practitioners often require quite different ranges of ability. They have different purposes, and at the frontiers of new science and new technology there is another important difference for any Government—technology costs a lot more money. The greater part of what we have been discussing this afternoon, and the greater part of what is usually called, rather misleadingly, "space science" is, of course, technology, that is, the use of scientific knowledge for a practical purpose. As some of the American space technologists used to complain rather bitterly: "If a satellite goes into orbit that is a scientific triumph. If it falls into the sea, that is an engineering failure."
At science, as scientists understand it—that is, the search for new knowledge about the natural world—this country has been doing very well. We have got into the habit of national self-depreciation. In some places that is salutary, but it would do us no harm at all if we patted ourselves on the back just a little when we deserve it. So I will say, without qualification, that our science is, and remains, one of our chief glories. We are doing out of comparison better than any country of our own size. In many branches of science we can more than hold our own with the Soviet Union. In some, we can compete on equal terms with the United States who, since the war, have taken on the world leadership in science. There was a remarkable ceremony two weeks ago, I think, when fellow Nobel Prize winners gathered together to honour that great and good man Sir Lawrence Bragg. Any country ought to be proud of having that amount of talent assembled in one room. I wish we had made more of a public thanksgiving on that occasion.
We are not, of course, going to let this scientific excellence of ours wither away. We are spending a fair amount of money on scientific research, but appreciably less than the Americans, measured either per head or as a fraction of the gross national product, or by whatever other scale of comparison one likes to use. We shall have to go on spending money. Here I might at least partially reassure the noble Lord, Lord Todd, that no decision whatever has been reached about the reductions in the rate of growth in any sphere. This is being considered at this moment by the Council for

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Scientific Policy. I should like that to be taken, not as a hedging statement, but as a real statement.
We shall have to go on spending money. We have all read my noble friend Lord Bowden's typical and stimulating remarks in the New Scientist, which the noble Lord, Lord Todd, echoed this afternoon. I should like at this moment to say how much the colleagues of the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, will miss his generous and sparkling presence in Whitehall. I am not so much worried by his curves, except just one of them, that is. Of course, neither this, nor any other country, can go on spending money on science until its entire wealth is devoted to no other purpose. But that will not happen. Sigmoid curves are tricky things to play with. No man can predict discontinuities in development. In the year 4,000 B.C. a cheerful but slightly alarmed Lord Bowden, making his fellow pastoralists' flesh creep, could have proved that every man, woman and child on the planet would, within a foreseeable time, be devoting themselves to agriculture.
Meanwhile, the Council for Scientific Policy has to suggest how to allocate money for science—science in the strict sense that I have been using. I need not tell your Lordships that this is an extremely hard job. How is anyone to decide what proportion of our available funds should be spent, say, on radio-astronomy, molecular biology, experimental psychology, high-energy physics? These things are strictly incommensurable. I notice, by the by, that high energy physics got its usual "bad press" this afternoon. That has become a matter of form; yet if one moves among the particle physicists themselves, one finds the atmosphere is charged with excitement in the same way that one found among the very early quantum theorists of forty years ago.
The decisions about which subjects to support are, as I have said, never going to be neat and tidy. I have talked to Americans and Russians who have the same responsibility on a larger scale: their comments are unrepeatable, certainly in this debate, though perhaps more suitable to one of your Lordships' more recent debates. But fortunately, in our Council for Scientific Policy we have collected a store of scientific and administrative wisdom.
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A new generation of scientific administrators is growing up in this country and they will be one of our great sources of strength. They are being pragmatic about their policies, as they have to be. We cannot do everything, we have to invest in strength—and here I am at one with the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield—and we have to invest in scientific fields which our creative scientists want to work in, which is almost as important as investing in strength and is usually the same thing. I have no doubt at all that the Council for Scientific Policy is the right body for this purpose and that it will do much good for scientific research in this country.
Curiously enough, decisions about advanced technology are at least as difficult, and probably more so. It is not simply that the sums involved will be larger by order of magnitude, and I would remind your Lordships that the Americans are spending on space technology more than our total expenditure on Defence of all kinds, taken in the widest sense. One might expect that technological projects, since they may be assumed to have a practical purpose, would be easier to evaluate economically. That is, one might think it would not be a matter of comparing molecular biology and radio-astronomy, which have no reference to economic terms. It ought to mean that a technological project which is not going to make money in a rather short time can be dismissed without any further meditation. Unfortunately, that is not true. It is true for working technology, but it is not true at the frontiers of advanced technology. Advanced technology turns out to be as difficult to quantify as advanced science. In some of its spirit, technology is even more of an art.
Have your Lordships ever asked yourselves the question asked once to-day by the noble Lord, Lord Todd: why the Russians and Americans are investing these enormous sums of money, and great talent, in their space activities? We have all heard a great many rationalisations about this. There is a military rationalisation which began, I think, by being a serious one; but once the big missiles were built and known to work it ceased to be convincing. There is a scientific rationalisation. There have been some increase in real scientific knowledge

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through the space programmes, and there will be more; but nothing like so much as we should all like to believe. I was going to use exactly the same example as that used by the noble Lord, Lord Todd, and say nothing like so much as has been achieved for a relatively tiny expenditure by the combination of radio-astronomy and optical astronomy, which is one of the most dramatic things in the last ten years.
Then there is a rationalisation of "spin-off" or "fall-out", or whatever barbarous phrase happens at this moment to be in fashion; and again I was going to say something very close to what the noble Lord, Lord Todd, has said. To begin with, there is something in this concept. A great deal has been found out about metallurgy through the space programmes: how to work beryllium and titanium in curious conditions; and of course, because one has to economise in weight and size, a great deal has been learned about how to make tiny electronic components. And there is certain to be a large-scale increase in our knowledge of the usefulness of computers.
But I suggest to your Lordships that if one spends £2,000 million a year one can hardly avoid getting something out of it. It is a very big sum. It is nice to get some unexpected things out of it, but that anyone should be surprised that there are certain practical results I find baffling. I further suggest that one-fiftieth of this sum spent directly on esoteric metallurgy or microelectronics, or on computers, would put this or any other country right in the front of any of these particular technical arts. In fact, you have to go only about thirty miles from London to get the most sophisticated micro-electronics done—where there has never been any "spin-off" or "fall-out" at all; so I am afraid that this argument is not at all convincing.
However, there is something truer than rationalisations, and that is the desire to explore space just because it is there. This is much more like mountaineering than science. It is precisely the same motive which drove Mallory to try to climb Everest or my noble friend's father to spend a lot of his life in the insalubrious neighbourhood of the South Pole. This motive I deeply respect. I am sure that man will one day get to the moon, though perhaps not so soon as we now tend to
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think. They will be either Americans or Russians. If it happens in my lifetime, I shall drink that night to the courage and energy of the human spirit, but I am afraid that I shall have a slightly envious regret that they are not Englishmen.
But I do not believe that space exploration is going to be passionately interesting for very long. We may get to Mars: then what? By sheer chance the solar system happens to be rather a dull place. It is not the silence of the infinite spaces which frightens me, as it frightens the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe; it is the distance and sheer size of the spaces which, it seems to me, frustrate us; and despite the warnings of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, I fear that they will frustrate us for ever.
I suspect that at some time we may get signals from living intelligences elsewhere in the universe. But they will be signals from many light years away. You send it off now and you get back the reply, if you are lucky, and their intelligence is fairly good, in about thirty years' time. You cannot carry on much of an intellectual conversation in those circumstances. To be talking for the benefit of one's children in rather simple phrases does not seem to me a very good bet. It will be fine if we get these signals. We shall know we are not alone and there, I am afraid I should bet, that will probably be all, and for ever.
But I do not even believe that this adventurous athletic aspect of space activities is the real reason why they have been conducted. I believe it is simply because it is technologically possible to send lumps of material into space, and because it is technologically possible, then people want to do it—no more, no less. Advanced technology is like that. It is not closely linked to economic welfare, and here I am absolutely at one with the noble Lord, Lord Bowden and the noble Lord, Lord Todd; we have got to get it linked to economic welfare. I depart from them, however, in one respect. The people who can perform these technological feats want to perform them, "come Hell, come high water." I do not know your Lordships' reactions when the first Sputnik went up. My own was quite simple; it was simply joy that man could do such things.
This simple desire to take technology to its limits is true of a great deal of the

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advanced manifestations of this art. It is a driving motive behind some of the most gifted people in this country and in all countries. That is why I believe that it is dangerous, and probably wrong, to try to cut out advanced technologies from our national scheme of things. The people who can do them want to do them. In a profound sense they may know better than we do. Just as in advanced science we cannot do everything, we cannot do everything obviously in technology. But we must think twice, and then think three times, before we say what we cannot do. There is one unbreakable rule: if we decide to make a "go" of space technology, or any other advanced technology, then we must do it well; we must not play at it. To decide to go ahead and then do it half-heartedly is the worst of all worlds. In nuclear energy we made an all-out effort, as the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, knows, going for it as far and fast as anyone in the world; and there, at least, we can hold our own with anyone in the world.
It may seem hard-headed to rule out every project which has not a certain financial return. But I think here it is the kind of hard-headedness which does not see much before its nose. It is probable—I do not conceal it from your Lordships—that some of these advanced technological projects will neither now nor at any time in the future earn their keep in money. But they will earn their keep in a different way; or, alternatively, if we do not undertake some of them, we shall suffer a different kind of loss. The loss is men. The leaders at the frontiers of science or of technology attract to themselves people like themselves. For ten years we could get on without any of this frontier technological work. In twenty years, or a generation, they are the people who directly and indirectly are going to help to make our wealth. If we do not keep them and encourage them, then the end will be death.
This is part, in fact, of the entire educational process. The Department of Education and Science and my Ministry are trying to make sure that technology as well as science gets some of our brightest minds. We are trying to show that technology can be part of a humane education, and I am delighted to tell your Lordships that there are signs of hope. Do not be put off by
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reports of empty places at universities. Do not be put off by stories, often untrue, about switches in the sixth forms of schools; on the whole the straws in the wind are blowing in the right direction. We must have absolutely first-class minds in technology. Like attracts like; bright men attract bright men.
That is what might be called a sort of body of opinion about these problems. Now I should like to race rapidly through points made by your Lordships. First of all, I will deal, if I may, with the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough. The possibility of a United Kingdom space authority is one we are not especially favourably disposed to, but our minds are by no means closed; we are perfectly willing to think about this, and indeed about everything said in this debate, because everything, apart from a certain amount of persiflage, has been trying to push us in the directions in which we want to go or have good reasons for not going. "Spin-off" and education I think I have dealt with. I do not agree with the noble Earl on the question of "spin-off", but I do agree very strongly about educative value.
Then he asked about that ever-interesting subject the Ministry of Technology. Neither he nor the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, must think I worry in the least about brickbats of that kind. If you live in public you deserve brickbats. But perhaps, since I am rather closely involved, your Lordships will allow me to say rather formally what we think of the present set-up; then I confess I hope your Lordships will get this particular obsessive idea out of your heads, for it is only obstructing the things we are trying to do. It is not going to be altered. It wastes some of your temper and makes me keep mine. In reply to the noble Earl, I would say that Her Majesty's Government are convinced that the decision a year ago to set up the new Ministry with a special responsibility for encouraging innovation and the introduction of modern technologies and processes was right. We knew at the time, which no one else seems to have known, that this was a very long-distance effort. I have always been astonished that people expected it to perform miracles in one week. If that had been so, it would not have been necessary to set up the

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Ministry. We believe its responsibility is one which any Government in this day cannot fail to provide if it is to match the national needs.
Of course, the organisation will develop. One of t he strong points of our British system of administration is its adaptability. The Ministry can develop as circumstances require, to discharge its existing responsibilities more effectively and to meet new needs. The noble Earl also asked me about the cost of the Ministry of Technology. Here, as he had not given me warning, I could not for sure get a considered reply, but such reply as I have got is very surprising. He asked me the difference between the cost of the D.S.I.R. and the cost of the Ministry of Technology.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I make it absolutely clear? It was the cost of those parts of the D.S.I.R. which have now been absorbed into the new Ministry of Technology before they were absorbed, so as to get the balance to see what the overheads of the new Ministry come to.
LORD SNOW: This is the thing I think will surprise the noble Earl as much as it surprised me. The cost of the D.S.I.R. last year was £10 million, and the cost of the Ministry of Technology was £6 million. Why we have saved £4 million I find baffling. I am sure that none of us would regard this as a likely answer. I am sure that a more accurate answer is that the present additional cost of the Ministry of Technology is quite small, and that it should be greater as soon as we get into real operation.
I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ironside, on a most interesting and authoritative maiden speech. He was too modest to say that he is associated with a firm which has got a contract from ESRO and so his remarks on the subject were entirely benevolent. We want to make the possibilities of contracts with ESRO more public to British firms. I am sorry that I interrupted him in the middle of his maiden speech, but I wanted to say that OSTI is in close touch with NASA in exactly the same way as ESRO is, and this, I think, is satisfactory.
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I should like to say to my noble friend, Lord Bowden, that I will draw the attention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science to all he says about the Flowers Report. We all agree that this is one of the most important papers on scientific matters that has been written for ten years. My right honourable friend will have to decide whether it should be published, but I will make a point of drawing his attention to it.
I should like to speak at length, but the time is getting on, about the fascinating contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, for he was somewhat off the guidelines within which most of us have been working. It was both fascinating and most important. It is quite clear that we must have all the problems and the human consequences of what we are doing well in mind long before anything happens. We have a fair amount of time. It is possible to have a certain degree of foresight. I think we should be held guilty by another generation if we were to make the kind of mess that our ancestors made of the Industrial Revolution. There is no excuse for it whatsoever. But the problem is curiously tricky and difficult. How you provide people with enough to fill their time if they are not working is a subject to which I should like the noble Lord to devote his powerful mind. Oddly enough, leisure, however admirably provided for, is, for a lot of people, not a solution which they want. For some it is, and for people of rich interior natures all kinds of leisure life are possible. For a number, it does not appear to be so. We shall have to bring every bit of human science, psychological and physiological, to bear on this question.
I have mentioned the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield. I entirely agree with him in regard to building on success—in fact, that is part of our tendency. I do not think he need worry at all about either the diffusion plant or the P.F.R. He will see a good deal of that in a short time. I understand his doubts about some international projects. I think we have to choose them most carefully, and keep a good organisation if we are to make them viable. Whether we are properly organised is a matter of difference between us and one upon which Her Majesty's Government have a strong

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view. Whatever the difficulties about the Ministry of Technology and the Ministry for which I speak in this House, the Department of Education and Science, this is not a bipartisan technological decision. There are at least six Ministries concerned and the matter is not made easy for them.
To turn to the noble Lord, Lord Todd, I can only say that I and my colleagues hold his contribution to be a source of support and wisdom. I am sorry that it looks as though I have actually stolen his notes, but in fact I have not. Finally, the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, asked me about the Fleck Committee in relation to radio-astronomy. That is being considered at the moment by the Science Research Council. We should get an answer quite soon, but I do not believe that anybody could possibly think that we do not realise what a major contribution and British triumph radio-astronomy has been since the last war. There I think we must leave it. Everything that has been said except persiflage will be reported on and considered. I hope, therefore, that the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw his Motion.
6.55 p.m.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am immensely indebted to both Ministers for the answers which they have given to-day. They have obviously put in an immense amount of work, as I did myself in preparing my original Motion. I do not think I have ever done as much hard work as I did then, and I am quite certain from the replies that their Ministries have been most active. Indeed, I saw more people in the Officials' Box than I have ever seen there before. I am immensely indebted to the noble Lords, Lord Shackleton and Lord Snow. I hope that Lord Snow did not take any of my earlier remarks to heart; I certainly did not mean anything personal to him. But I am afraid that my conclusion is that I cannot be happy about the new Ministry; otherwise I recognise only too well, although I may be less experienced than almost any other speaker in the debate to-day on this subject, that it is impossible to achieve an ideal balance in research expenditure. I have spoken to some of the same people as the noble Lord, Lord Snow, about this and, as I
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say, their remarks are unquotable. I had one in my original draft.
I know that, after all, people will only do what they are willing to do and capable of doing; and if people prefer to work on rockets rather than on the miniaturisation of hearing aids, or whatever it is, you cannot persuade more people necessarily to work in the sort of fields that the noble Lord, Lord Todd, has suggested. But I thought he made an important contribution, as also did my noble friend, Lord Sherfield, who I am glad took part in this debate. All in all, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Todd, that we must do what we can do best. I think we all are agreed about that. I also think that we must develop new techniques of international co-operation. I agree that many of these new organisations are not happy, but if we could develop these new techniques, I think we could then work more happily together, and could afford to do the sort of things that we have been talking about to-day; otherwise we cannot afford to do them. That is absolutely clear.
All I have been asking for is a quite modest increase in space research and technological expenditure. It appears that it is only an increase from, say, £20 million to £25 million. I do ask that we go ahead with Black Arrow. I thank your Lordships, and beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

HONOURABLE LADY HYLTON- FOSTER'S ANNUITY BILL
6.59 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD HOBSON: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. We in your Lordships' House have already referred to the grievous loss sustained by Parliament in the death of the late Sir Harry Hylton-Foster. Tribute has been paid in both Houses to the many qualifications that made Sir Harry such a distinguished and admirable Speaker, and the conscientious manner in which he discharged the manifold duties of his high office. This Money Bill seeks to

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provide a pension for his widow of £1,677 per annum from September 3, 1965, the day after his death.
I now wish to state how the amount is arrived at. Your Lordships may remember that, on the occasion of Mr. Speaker Morrison's retirement, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1957 following the normal practice in the public service of making a widow's pension a third of her husband's. This practice was followed in Parliament in making provision for widows of Prime Ministers in 1965 under the Ministerial Salaries and Members Pensions Act, and there is also similar provision for the widows of Lords Chancellor in the Administration of Justice (Pensions) Act 1950. The Bill therefore proposes to follow these precedents to award Lady Hylton-Foster one-third of the sum which it is thought the House would have wished to offer, in happier circumstances, to Sir Harry Hylton-Foster himself.
Following the Lawrence Committee Report, Parliament decided to abate by one half the recommended increases in the salaries of Ministers and of the Speaker, and equally to abate by one half the increase in pensions recommended by the Lawrence Committee for both the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor. The question of the Speaker's pension was left over in accordance with tradition to be dealt with by an individual Act of Parliament at the time of his retirement. If we had now been making provision for a pension for the late Speaker, there is little doubt that in those circumstances Parliament would have provided a pension of £5,000 per annum, an increase of £1,000 over the previous pension of £4,000, rather than the £2,000 increase recommended by the Lawrence Committee. Accordingly, the Bill now proposes a pension of one-third of £5,000, namely £1,667.
Subsection (2) deals with the situation on remarriage and contains similar provisions to those affecting widows of Members of Parliament under the Members' pension scheme. Provisions have already been made for widows of Prime Ministers. Here again precedent has been followed. I think that these explanations are all that is required, and I end by saying that we shall all look forward to having Lady
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Hylton-Foster among us to play her part in our deliberations.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(Lord Hobson.)
7.6 p.m.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his explanation of the Bill. I should also like to associate my noble friends and myself both with what he said about the late Speaker and with what he has just said about Lady Hylton-Foster. We certainly give a very warm welcome to the Bill. I wonder whether I might just ask him—and perhaps I should have given him notice of this—why in subsection 2 of Clause 1, dealing with the events on remarriage, the reference is to what the Treasury may do instead of to what the Minister or Secretary of State may do?
LORD HOBSON: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot give an immediate explanation, but in my Parliamentary experience I cannot conceive of a situation whereby the Treasury officials would take action in a matter such as this without consultation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I just cannot conceive of that happening administratively. After all, the Chancellor is the head of the Treasury, and the Prime Minister is its First Lord. Therefore, it is absolutely inconceivable that a number of officials—and this is really the assumption of the noble Lord's question—are going to make the decision. In fact, government just does not work like that.
On Question, Bill read 2a: Committee negatived.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been dispensed with (pursuant to Resolution), Bill read 3a, and passed.

SUPERANNUATION BILL [H.L.]
7.6 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the Consideration of Commons Amendments.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, what is raised by each of these four Amendments is exactly the same point, and I think that it would be for the convenience of the House if the Amendments were taken together. I beg to move that the Commons Amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Amendments be now considered.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
[The references are to Bill 205 as first printed for the House of Commons]
Clause 50, page 43, line 24, leave out ("69(4)") and insert ("110(1)").
Clause 50, page 43, line 25, leave out ("1946") and insert ("1965").
Clause 63, page 52, line 34, leave out ("69(4)") and insert ("110(1)").
Clause 63, page 52, line 35, leave out ("1946") and insert ("1965").
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, in another place four purely technical Government Amendments were made to Clauses 50 and 63 of this Bill. They are designed to substitute for references to Section 69(4) of the National Insurance Act 1946 references to the corresponding provision of the National Insurance Act 1965, which was itself a consolidation measure, the relevant provisions of the 1946 Act being now repealed by the Statute Law Revision (Consequential Repeals) Act 1965. These two Acts—that is to say, the two 1965 Acts—were not passed in time for these Amendments to be made in your Lordships' House, because they did not receive the Royal Assent until August 5, whereas this Consolidation Bill was taken to another place from this House and ordered to be printed by another place on August 2. Therefore, the two clauses had to be amended in another place. They are now correct, however, and the Bill is in proper form. I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

RENT BILL
7.8 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the Consideration of the Commons Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments.
Moved, That the Commons Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments be now considered.—(Lord Mitchison.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS REASONS FOR DISAGREEING TO CERTAIN OF THE LORDS AMENDMENTS
[The references are to Bill 173 as first printed for the House of Lords]

LORDS AMENDMENT
Clause 1, page 1, line 11, leave out from "London" to end of line and insert "£350, in the Special Review Areas in England and Wales (as defined by section 17(1)(a) and (2), section 25 and the Third Schedule to the Local Government Act 1958) £200, and elsewhere in Great Britain £150;"
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:
Because the Amendment would deny to certain tenants the protection of the Rent Acts.

LORDS AMENDMENT
Clause 14, page 10, line 10, leave out from "or" to end of line 13 and insert "his wife or widow or his child (or, if more than one, such of them as may in default of agreement be decided by the court);"
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:
Because the Amendment might deprive a person of his home in favour of another person who has never lived there.

LORDS AMENDMENT
After Clause 14, insert new Clause "A"—
Recovery of possession of dwelling-house for residence by owner or his widow.
"A.—(1) Where a person has purchased or become the owner of a dwelling-house with vacant possession and intends to occupy it within five years from the date of obtaining vacant possession and has let the dwelling-house on a regulated tenancy and the conditions mentioned in subsection (2) of this section are satisfied, then if—

(a) apart from the Rent Acts the landlord would be entitled to recover possession of the dwelling-house; and

(b) the court is satisfied that the dwelling-house is required as a residence for that person or his widow, and the said five years have not elapsed;

the court shall make an order for the possession of the dwelling-house, whether or not it would have power to do so under section 3 of the Act of 1933, and section 5(2) of the Act of 1920 shall not apply in relation to the order.
(2) The said conditions are—

(a) that not later than the commencement of the tenancy (or if the tenancy was created before the commencement of this Act, not later than six months after the commencement of this Act) the landlord has given notice in writing to the tenant that possession may be recovered under this section; and

(b) that the dwelling-house has not since the commencement of this Act been let by the said person on a regulated tenancy with respect to which the condition mentioned in paragraph (a) of this subsection was not satisfied."

The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:
Because the Amendment, being expressed in terms which make no reference to retirement, would make an unduly wide breach in the principle of security of tenure which the Bill is intended to restore.

LORDS AMENDMENT
Clause 31, page 19, line 45, at end insert—
"() whether the occupier has found employment other than as an agricultural worker,"
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:
Because the Amendment is unnecessary.

LORDS AMENDMENT
Clause 37, page 22, line 33, leave out from "London" to end of line 34, and insert "£350, in the Special Review Areas in England and Wales (as defined by section 17(1)(a) and (2), section 25 and the Third Schedule to the Local Government Act 1958) £200, and elsewhere in Great Britain £150;"
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:
Because the Amendment would deny to certain lessees the protection of the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act 1946.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, if the House is so minded, I suggest that it will be convenient to take all these Amendments together. Therefore, I should like to move that the House do not insist on their Amendments Nos. 1 to 5, to which the Commons have disagreed.
These Amendments have been fully argued. In many cases the questions in the Amendments have been argued from the beginning of the Bill in another place until its very last stages here. I think I should be trespassing on the time of the House if I were to repeat those arguments in any detail. There are, however, one or two broad considerations. We have been advised by the felicitious combination of St. Paul and the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, that we should differ from the Commons only when a trumpet calls. There is no great trumpet about these Amendments, and there is unlikely to be. They all raise points which, although of importance, and although a fit and proper subject for discussion, do not by themselves involve any deep questions of principle.
The fact of the matter is that this Bill endeavours to strike a balance between the owner of property and the occupier of property. That is, perhaps, essential in any Rent Bill. It is quite natural that there should be different views on where the balance should be struck.
864
These are, as I said the other day on the Motion "That the Bill do now pass", constructive Amendments, in the sense that they put forward views from the other side of the House which were by a majority the views of the House, but a view with which the Commons have now disagreed. The Amendments were all, to put the matter very shortly, more in favour of the owners of the property than of the occupiers.
This is a difficult question. There are many ways of holding houses, and there are many cases to be provided for in a Bill of this sort. There is room not only for the benefit of experience but for a genuine difference of opinion. That is what these Amendments represented, and I suggest to your Lordships that on a Rent Bill involving human relations, as Rent Bills are bound to do, involving difficult and sometimes rather technical questions, we should be slow to attempt to carry too far our differences with another place. After all, there is room for an elected assembly to represent views, which may often be local views, which may sometimes be individual views, but which certainly have behind them at least as great a wealth of experience as we can muster in this House.
I should like to take the occasion, without going into any of the Amendments in detail at this hour, to repeat the thanks I gave to those noble Lords who offered the benefit of their advice and experience during the progress of the Bill. I assure them that I do not agree with them a bit over these Amendments. I never have; I have said so several times. But I do understand what they mean. They are perfectly clear, they are thoroughly arguable, and they represent at the end of it all a real difference of opinion about balance—balance between these two people: the owner of a property and the occupier of it—in a Bill which, by and large, I think the House has accepted as a good Bill.
Not only have noble Lords opposite accepted it as a good Bill, but they were very insistent at an early stage that this Bill should be put into operation as soon as possible. I entirely agree. I tried to give the House some information the other day as to the preparatory steps which have already been taken. Whatever one's opinion on questions such as are raised in these Amendments, I think

865
we can all agree that a long delay at this stage would indeed do a very great deal of harm. Therefore, since the effect of not agreeing might be to lead to a delay of that kind, I urge your Lordships to accept the Commons' rejection of these Amendments; that is to say, not to insist on the five Amendments which we arc now considering.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on the Amendments to which the Commons have disagreed.—(Lord Mitchison.)
7.15 p.m.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I should be the first to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, that these five Amendments which the other place has rejected have no great trumpet about them. Nevertheless, I do not think the noble Lord will be surprised when I say that I am disappointed that the Commons thought it appropriate to reject our Amendments. Therefore, I suppose what I have to do now is to give my advice, for what it is worth, as to what this House should do, and that advice is of course that your Lordships should not insist upon these Amendments.
I still consider, as I have all along, that they were improvements to the Bill, although they were not of the first importance. If we were to insist upon them now, of course the Bill would be lost in this Session, which I do not think anybody wants, and certainly I do not want that myself. I think, all the same, that this House was right to discharge one of its constitutional functions of acting as a revising Chamber, which is what we did during the earlier proceedings on this Bill, thereby giving the other place a chance to have second thoughts about matters upon which we, in the Opposition, at any rate, thought differently from them. I think that anyone who has read the proceedings on our Amendments in the other place, as I have, would probably agree that the other place welcomed this opportunity. I noted, for instance, with considerable interest, that the other place spent an hour and a half on debating Amendment No. 3, which is the one dealing with recovery of possession of a dwelling-house for residence by the owner or his widow.
866
I rather took exception to a statement made in another place by Mr. Eric Lubbock, the Liberal Member, that we, the Opposition in this House, had displayed what he called "pigheaded obstinacy" by insisting on Amendment No. 1 when the other place had had quite enough discussion already about the rateable value limits. Surely, it is not for us to make up our minds as to whether the other place has sufficiently discussed any subject. I thought that that observation coming from Mr. Lubbock was all the more remarkable when one remembered that the noble Lord in this House who was strongest in his criticism of the Bill was the Liberal Peer, the noble Lord, Lord Meston, The noble Lord, Lord Meston, said on Second Reading—and he followed immediately after me—that the Bill was a mistake, and that there should be no further extension of rent restriction. Nobody else was anything like so scathing in his criticism of the Bill as the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and after his speech I rather hoped that we were going to have the assistance of the Liberal Party in this House in trying to improve the Bill. That was, of course, a vain hope, because apart from one exception when the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, supported us in one Division, the noble Lords of the Liberal Party voted solidly against us. I suppose that to say one thing and to do another is as good a way as any of having the best of all possible worlds.
I think I should also repudiate the suggestion that was made in another place that we wasted time on the Bill in this House with a view to delaying its passage. All I would say about that is that it really was not our fault that the Report stage was taken on the last sitting day before the Summer Recess, which made it quite impossible for your Lordships' House to complete proceedings on the Bill before the Recess. The real trouble, of course, was that the Bill arrived at your Lordships' House so very late in this Session.
I am not going to rehash the arguments again, any more than the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, did, but I would make just two points. I do not want to disturb the very harmonious relationship which appears to be prevailing in your Lordships' Chamber at the moment, but I really do not think that the Government

867
have come out of their activities on the matter with which Amendment No. 3 deals with great credit to them. That is the Amendment which was designed to try to give special protection to the man who buys a house against his retirement. They said, time and time again, that they accepted in principle that it was a desirable thing to do if a suitable formula could be found but they could not find one. That is really something which I find it very hard to believe: that Her Majesty's Government, with all the resources they have behind them, really could not find a way acceptable to them of doing something of which they approved in principle. I do not want to offend the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, by making any observations about his views on this particular clause, but I noticed with great pleasure that the Parliamentary Secretary, Mr. MacColl, said in the other place of my new clause that this
"represents the best attempt that could be made to deal with an admittedly difficult problem".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 718 (No. 174), col. 730; November 1, 1965.]
That gladdened my heart.
The only other point I want to make is this. The Reason given by the other place for Mr. Crossman's advising that other place to reject Amendment No. 4, which is the Amendment to require the court to consider whether the occupier, if he was an agricultural worker, has found employment other than as an agricultural worker, is that the Amendment is unnecessary. My Lords, if you read what Mr. Crossman said you will see that the word "unnecessary" did not cross his lips at all. In fact, what he argued was that he had thought a good deal about this particular Amendment but the trouble about it was that it would create grave suspicion in the trade unions. That, no doubt, is a valid reason from the point of view of his rejecting it, but
868
I should have thought it a very different reason from saying that the Amendment is not necessary. My Lords, that is all I want to say. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, for his kindly references at the end of his speech. I think we should now leave the Bill where it is, and wish it success.
7.21 p.m.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I do not know whether it would be kinder to the House to reply very shortly or not to reply at all, but perhaps the more courteous course is just to say, as regards the two Amendments mentioned by the noble Lord, that, on the first one, I think the Commons Reason is itself a sufficient answer. The Amendment goes much too far and does not really cover retirement specifically, although it may include it. On the second one, the words to which the noble Lord objected are, of course, related to the language of the clause itself, which enjoins the court to consider all the circumstances and then merely particularises two. In this respect, and in others, there are questions of balance between the two parties in the Bill, on which one side of the House here and the other side in another place have, not unnaturally, differed—and those differences are represented by these Amendments. I think we are right, if I may say so, to let the Commons have their way on this matter and not to insist; and it is not for me to reconcile the Conservative and the Liberal Parties in this matter.
Perhaps I might be allowed to express some doubt about a single phrase used by a Conservative when discussing this Bill. A leading member of that Party referred to the "young and sprightly Parliamentary Secretary in the Lords". He cannot have meant "young", and that makes me wonder whether he meant sprightly.
On Question, Motion agreed to.