Lords Sitting of 8 March 1967

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Birmingham
The Lord Vestey—Took the Oath.

BOARD OF TRADE'S FUNCTIONS
2.36 p.m.
LORD GLENDEVON: 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 have been the reasons for the successive stripping of important functions of government from the Board of Trade since October, 1964; and whether any further reductions are contemplated in the responsibilities of that Department.]
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE EARL OF LONGFORD): My Lords, the Board of Trade has gained important functions as well as losing others. Since 1964 the Government have re-cast by stages the machinery of Government for dealing with industry and with economic affairs so that we can make a more effective contribution to modernising the economy. The Department of Economic Affairs has been set up with responsibility for framing the strategy of economic policy and regional planning, and for co-ordinating the Government's industrial policies, and is especially concerned with the work of the National Economic Development Council and the "little Neddies". The Ministry of Technology is the Department principally concerned with the engineering industries and with industrial research and development. The Board of Trade has gained responsibilities for shipping and civil aviation which are closely related to its responsibility for commercial policy. It is also responsible for new investment grants scheme. The Board of Trade's responsibilities are now well defined and no further changes are at present envisaged. However, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister
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keeps the machinery of Government under review.
LORD GLENDEVON: My Lords, nevertheless, in view of what is, I thank, to be demoralisation at the Board of Trade over what has happened, would the Government consider it wise to watch it?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: No, my Lords. I gather that the noble Lord is in jocular mood, otherwise I should resent any suggestion that there has been any demoralisation at the Board of Trade.

BRITISH ARMY OF THE RHINE COSTS
2.38 p.m.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will state the reasons why the costs of the British Army of the Rhine have risen from £145·5 million in the financial year 1964–65, to £203 million in the financial year 1966–67.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, the estimated cost of the British Army of the Rhine in 1966–67 is £169 million. This figure appears on page 26 of Part II of the 1966 Statement on the Defence Estimates. The figure of £203 million quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, includes also the cost of the Army in Berlin and of R.A.F. units in Germany. The increase, therefore, of about £24 million in the attributable costs of B.A.O.R. between 1964–65 and 1966–67 is due mainly to higher pay and allowances and to the cost of equipping the Forces with new weapons.
LORD GLADWYN:My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask whether the Government do not think that this rather remarkable rise in one year in the cost of the British Army of the Rhine might have been lessened if greater control had been exercised over the expenditure in foreign exchange by the British Army of the Rhine?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I think the noble Lord is in some slight

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confusion. The period is two years, and not one year. I am not quite sure why he is comparing this figure with the 1966–67 figures, when the 1967–68 figures are available for him to consult. If we look at the figures in terms of constant 1964 prices the increase is a good deal less. For 1966–67 the figure of £169 million, reduced to constant prices, comes down to £154 million. Perhaps, to help the noble Lord, I may tell him that the 1967–68 figure is £180 million, and at constant prices this would he £159 million, but I may have confused the noble Lord.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord knows best, but not entirely.
2.41 p.m.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they can state the comparative cost of each soldier in the British Army of the Rhine and of each American soldier stationed in Germany.]
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, the budgetary cost of the average British other rank in B.A.O.R. is about £1,500, of which about £660 constitutes expenditure in foreign exchange. These figures exclude costs of civilians, unit equipment and Part I works. Part I works are works of over £20,000. We can give no comparable figures for American soldiers.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, has the noble Lord seen the statements in the Press to the effect that the cost of each British soldier is one and a half times the cost of each American soldier?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I have seen the statements in the Press. They are largely unintelligible to me and to the Ministry of Defence.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, could my noble friend give us any report about the efforts to reduce this colossal expenditure, in view of the new situation in Europe?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I must say, with respect to my noble friend, that that really is another question.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, could my noble friend explain to my simple mind why it may not be cheaper to keep these soldiers at home?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am afraid that that, too, is another question.

OVERSEAS INFORMATION SERVICES
2.43 p.m.
LORD ALPORT LORD ALPORT rose to call attention to the increasing importance of the overseas information services available to Great Britain and the desirability, in the national interest, of affording them adequate support for their future operation and development; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper. My purpose is to discover the basis of the Government's policy for the future of the information services, and to put certain considerations to your Lordships and to the Government which I hope may be regarded as relevant. The immediate reason for seeking a debate on this subject was the report that the information services were being cut as part of the Government's policy of reducing certain aspects of State expenditure. I shall come to discuss these in detail in a moment, but I should like to begin by making two general points.
The first point is that the Government do not appear to realise that nothing is more damaging to the effectiveness of an information effort than sudden cuts, followed by over-hasty expansion, probably followed by further cuts at a later stage, particularly where none of these cuts is concerned with any reason of policy in the information field, and has nothing to do with the merits of comparative effectiveness of various aspects of our information effort. By all means let us cut out a service, or part of a service, which has proved to be a waste of time or money, provided that that is the criterion of our judgment. But it is, I suggest, wrong to cut a worthwhile information effort, which has taken probably five to ten years to create, simply to get a short-term saving of a few hundred thousand pounds to the Exchequer. Nothing—and many of your Lordships

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will have had personal experience of this—is more demoralising to the men promoting the information effort overseas, or more wasteful, for it means very often squandering the hard work and success which has taken a long time to achieve.
Secondly, I think that our information services are becoming more important, and in a moment I shall suggest to your Lordships the reasons why I think this is so. Therefore, I believe it is right, in view of the different services which exist at the present time, that there should be a Minister specially responsible for their development, for settling priorities between them and, in the case of the Central Office of Information, for providing that organisation with the support which it undoubtedly needs. I should like to ask the Government how the information services are co-ordinated at the present time, and what arrangements exist under the general supervision of the Government, which we understand from the Leader of the House is the responsibility of the Prime Minister.
Following a recent Question, the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, was good enough to write me a letter which provides me with the details which I now use of the cuts which have taken place in recent months as a result of Government policy. He said:
"In the case of the British Information Services abroad there have been small savings in staff in some 40…countries and reductions in such activities as overseas printing, postage and film van operations."
I should like to ask the Minister who is to reply whether this means that, instead of British-based personnel being used on the staff of British information service posts overseas, we are having resort to using locally based personnel. If we are, then I think anybody who has experience of this aspect of information organisation will agree that no locally based information officer can properly represent British information interests in the country of his origin.
The second of the summaries which the Minister without Portfolio gave me in his letter was this. He said:
"Cuts in the C.O.I.'s supporting services involve reductions in most of their activities such as T.V. and film services, exhibitions, photographs and posters, and the programme of official visitors to this country."
May I ask the Minister what sum of money is involved in the reductions which
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have been applied to the C.O.I.? I agree that to some extent the C.O.I. is the least effective of the various information media, but that does not mean that it is not of extreme importance. Can we afford at the present time, when we are reorganising—if I may put it that way—the whole relations of this country with the world, to cut down on the information services and the resources which are available, and which are needed to ensure the proper portrayal of modern Britain overseas?
The third of the summaries which the Minister gave me was this. He said that, so far as the British Council cuts were concerned, these included:
"the closing of offices in Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados and the South Arabian Federation, Burma and Iceland, as well as reductions in other overseas staff and equivalent reductions in headquarters expenditure and capital expenditure."
It strikes me, and it may strike other Members of your Lordships' House, that this is a strange time for one of our information services to be asked to reduce its effort in the South Arabian Federation. What is the Government's basis for that decision, and why was it arrived at?
Finally, in relation to the B.B.C.'s operations, the noble Lord said that cuts would include:
"savings in expenditure on programmes and operating expenses as well as the reduction in the hours of broadcasting of the Arabic Services—at the time of day when their audience is smallest—and the closing of the Albanian Service."
Again, my Lords, why has it been decided to reduce our effort in the Middle East at a time when the Middle East remains as important to us as at any other time in our history?
It seems to me clear that these economies have been carried out without any regard to principle or to thought-out policy; indeed, they appear to be carried out in a sort of alphabetical order. All the A's get cut, and when you have reached the end of the A's then you turn presumably to the B's, C's and D's. Quite clearly, what has happened has been that, so far as these four services are concerned, the Treasury have had resort to the old, hoary expedient, the last resort of tired and disenchanted minds, known as "a cut right across the board". Indeed, there is further evidence that the Government have not thought out their policy for the

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information services in the appointment of Sir Harold Beeley as what I understand is a one man commissioner to consider the whole effectiveness of our information services and the whole field with which they are concerned. In his letter to me the Minister said this:
"Your other question related to Sir Harold Beeley's review. This is an official review to provide guidance for departments in future policy and it is not anticipated that it will be published."
My Lords, how is it that at this stage in the evolution of the work of the present Government it is necessary for them to appoint a distinguished civil servant in order to advise the Departments—the Foreign Office, Commonwealth Relations Office, the Colonial Office presumably and other Departments of State—on what their information policy should be? I must say in fairness that, however critical one might feel of the Government's present policy and their handling of the information services, I do not think that any Government since 1945 have given to those information services the support and significance which the deserve, except, if I may make one exception to that, during the period when my noble friend Lord Hill of Luton had particular responsibility for them as, I think, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
It used to be said that trade followed the flag, and this we know was true. The political and military presence of Britain all over the world brought immense advantages to our country. It meant that great populations were familiar with British ideas and institutions, with British methods, standards, trade names, with our educational system, our history, culture, and our language. Our political and military presence in the world reached its greatest extent in 1945. Over a space of less than a generation, and largely as an act of policy, it has now been reduced almost to nothing. Whereas in the past we have been able to summon to our aid political influence and military power, we depend to-day upon the less substantial factors of mutual understanding and good will. It is precisely there, in respect of these two factors of mutual understanding and good will, that the British information services can most effectively be used to promote.
To reduce our political and military presence overseas, and at the same time
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to cut our information services, seems to me to be folly. I should have thought that the right policy would be, in principle, that for every pound saved in defence overseas, sixpence or something of the sort should be devoted to maintaining the British presence in the shape of the information services, not only in the countries from which our presence is withdrawn militarily and politically, but in those countries which are of concern to us from trade, from future political associations and so on.
Therefore, I ask the Government this first question. Do they accept the principle that as our political and military effort overseas is reduced, our information effort to achieve better understanding of contemporary Britain should be stepped up? If they do accept that, why are they cutting our information services right across the board? What are the savings they are making by doing so? I realise, my Lords, that it is difficult to gauge the value of any particular information effort. To be effective, there must be a careful assessment of material and targets. But one thing is certain. A realistic information policy must look ten years ahead. Secondly, it must not be diffused over too wide a field.
My second question to the Government therefore is this. What are the targets at which the information policy of the Government aims to-day? To guess these correctly is clearly a major test of statesmanship. I hope that the Minister will not reply that this is being left to Sir Harold Beeley. Such a decision is the responsibility of Ministers; not of civil servants, however wise and experienced they may be.
I suggest, rather for the sake of argument than for other reasons, that if I had to choose the primary target, looking ten years ahead, I would choose China and Latin America: China because nobody can foresee how soon or to what volume we shall require an information service, an information effort, in respect of China, and therefore it is necessary for us to be prepared, because surely that time will come. Indeed, it is significant that within a relatively short time past the Chinese Government have turned from the teaching of Russian as a compulsory subject (so I understand) in their schools to the teaching of English and

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French. This gives us an important entré, an important potential instrument of influence, in relation to whatever sort of China may come out of the present turmoil that exists there. So far as Latin America is concerned I should have thought that it is there that the great economic opportunities of the future lie.
My secondary target would be Western Europe, and also, for obvious reasons, Australasia. So far as media is concerned, we have one asset which, properly used, could offset the loss of our political and military influence abroad. This is our language, English, the lingua-franca of the technological and commercial world.
My third question to the Government, therefore, is this. What is the Government's policy for making the best use of our information services for promoting an understanding of the English language in the world overseas? This is not merely the problem of teaching the English language to people who have never learned English. It is partly a problem of trying to ensure that the standards and intelligibility of English spoken overseas, particularly in Asia and Africa, are maintained. The task is a huge one; the resources required are immense. What is the Government's attitude to this particular problem?
My Lords, I have put to the Minister some questions which I hope he will regard as being relevant to this particular subject which we are discussing. I now turn, if I may, to a different section of what I want to say this afternoon. I believe that no national apparatus of information—even if the B.B.C., for the sake of argument, had twice its present revenue; if the British Council were endowed with ten times its present resources, if the British information services were given every facility its directors could desire, and if the C.O.I. were manned by men of genius—if all this were true, it would still not be possible to sustain the position of Britain in the world unless there existed in Britain itself a feeling of national self-confidence and unity.
Short memoried, casual and good-natured, I think we here tend to forget that in the course of generations of unparalleled power and affluence we have accumulated a grim heritage of jealousy,
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malice and hatred against us. For every Anglophile there are a dozen Anglophobes, eager to believe the worst of the English, to procure their humiliation and to relegate them, by word and deed, to the ranks of the second-rate. Our trade rivals seize on and broadcast every allegation against the quality of our production, the diligence of our work-people and the standards of our industrial management. Our political rivals seek every chance to reduce our influence and frustrate our policies. It may well be that in a century or two those countries which in the past we have ruled will look back on the Imperial era in their history with the same sort of pride as we regard our place in the Roman system; but for the time being let us make no mistake about it—the antipathies against us are deep-rooted and strong.
I do not record this with any sense of grievance or complaint, but I draw from it two conclusions. The first is that we cannot afford to play into the hands of our enemies and distress our friends by the unbridled self-denigration which has become almost a habit of mind here in Britain. We must remember that there are eavesdroppers all over the world who hear what we say about ourselves—half-jokingly; half-meant; half believed, perhaps—and who repeat it to our disadvantage, broadcasting it to the best of their ability. Secondly, I believe—and I hope I am not alone in this—that not only must there be this self-restraint but there must also be a sense of national unity. We cannot afford to tear ourselves to pieces in the sacred name of fashion.
If your Lordships will allow me to add this comment, I have a vivid recollection of trying to sustain, from what I believed to be a sense of duty, the influence and standing of Britain in a part of Africa, Rhodesia, at a time when public opinion there was powerfully against us—hostile to a degree which I would never have believed. I have memories of trying to do this against a background of disunity, apparent demoralisation and failure here in Britain. Although bitter things were said about the British in Rhodesia, as in all parts of the world, it was what was being said here in Britain by the British about themselves which destroyed the credibility of any claims which our I servants overseas might make on our

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behalf and on behalf of our nation. It destroyed the confidence of our friends and of loyal British men and women who lived abroad, and it did untold damage to the position of Britain in the world to-day.
I have no doubt that the tremendous social, technical and psychological changes to which we have been subjected have left us here in a mood of bewilderment and uncertainty. This, I think, is inevitable; and it is difficult to see the events of the last twenty years in their proper proportion. Nevertheless, if any of us were really honest we should never admit for one moment that Britain was falling behind other nations. We should believe, and we do believe in our hearts, that we are already half-way through an era of historic transition, through which the other nations will have to pass, and that in the dimension of time we shall find ourselves far ahead of them.
Let us think about this for one moment. What is the image of the United States abroad to-day? What is the focus of the anxieties and emotions of the American people? It is not an astronaut soaring into space on his way to the moon, or the smooth efficiency of a product of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is, my Lords, a sweat-soaked soldier stumbling through the jungle of South Vietnam in search of an enemy he may never see; a picture of muddle and frustration. We can watch, and do watch, the United States resolving that sort of problem which we have had in history, with the difficulties and frustrations which come to a nation of great power. We see them using methods which we used in the process, and we see them suffering as we suffered in the past. We can say to them, as was said by us, if I may paraphrase:
"Lord God of Hosts, be with them yet
Lest they forget—lest they forget".
My Lords, I have tried, perhaps not very clearly, to put the two sides of this problem of the future of our information services. The one side is the technical problem of ensuring that the resources at their disposal for carrying out the policies they are directed to carry out are sound and proper in the national interest; but the other side I believe to be more important; that is, that the morale of the information services depends directly upon the morale of the
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country which they are representing abroad. Unless we here are able to show the real qualities which are the root and the heart of Britain, no money that we can put into the information services will achieve the results that we want from them. The decision is therefore in our hands, and I only hope that, as a result of this debate, we may do something to help us and the Government to ensure that the decisions they make are the right ones. I beg to move for Papers.
3.7 p.m.
LORD HILL OF LUTON: Your Lordships would wish me, I am sure, to express our gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Alport, for raising this important subject—a subject too rarely debated and one which invites with particular force discussion to-day, following the decisions, yet unannounced, of contraction to take place in the overseas information effort. I will, if I may, concentrate my few remarks on the British Council—and I have a simple reason for this. In the four years or so that I spent, in a previous Administration, in the work of co-ordinating overseas information services I came to regard the British Council as the most important part of our overseas information effort. When I began I knew very little about it—and that was more derisory than informative, for your Lordships will recall that for many years the British Council was the target for some sections of the Press in a campaign which wholly misrepresented its character and its work. But it was when I journeyed overseas and saw at first hand the work of the British Council that my admiration for it began.
As your Lordships know, the British Council, in seeking to promote understanding of this country among those who are or will be leaders of opinion in their own countries, has strategic and not tactical aims. Operating, as it does, apart from Embassies and apart from High Commissions, it is not seen to be, or thought to be, part of the official information services, still less as part of a propaganda effort. Perhaps more important, it can make effective contact with people in countries where contact at the diplomatic level is difficult or impossible. As the noble Lord, Lord Alport, said—indeed, emphasised—in this kind of work stability

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is more important than rapid expansion: sudden contraction can waste the work of years.
The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, in replying to a Question from Lord Alport, stated that no more will be done than to contain next year's expenditure within this year's level. But this of itself involves a very significant cut. I may take the example of the British Council. In recent years the resources of the British Council have been steadily increased by an average of 8 per cent. In addition, the rising cost of existing activities, which has averaged 4 per cent., has been granted. So there has been an annual increase of the order of 12 per cent.—4 per cent. of which was necessary, as it were, simply in order to stand still. That is the measure of the contraction involved.
I know that we are all in favour of economy in general and of economy in expenditure in particular. I know that it cannot possibly be maintained that every piece of overseas information effort should be continued in the same form or in the same place in perpetuity. Of course, there is a case for periodic review, and I am glad that Sir Harold Beeley is to conduct such a review; and I suspect that the outcome of his review will resemble that of the review which I conducted ten years ago. It will result in a basis for new expansion rather than contraction, for to know those services is to realise the need for them. What is now proposed is that the contraction should come first and that the review should come after the damage has been done.
Of course, it is argued, cogently enough, that overseas expenditure must be cut, defence expenditure must be cut; but when defence commitments and expenditure are reduced, the case for information activities is strengthened, not weakened. The less we can afford of the one, the more we need of the other. The total expenditure on all kinds of information services overseas in the present year is nearly £28½ million; the customary rate of increase is less than £2 million a year. That, my Lords, is the size of the problem.
Why is it that information services overseas, under all Governments, are so often the casualty in times of economy? It has happened again and again under
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different Governments of different hues. I suspect that it is because some people, well represented in the Treasury, do not really believe in information services. They think there is something a little immodest, even indecent, in telling the world about British life and British virtues. I suppose they believe that our national virtues should be evident for all to see, without the aid of the arts of presentation. I believe that there is still something of that attitude left today in the case of the British Council. I have no doubt there are those who still believe it is too high-brow, too "longhaired" and precious to be of value. Such people should visit Delhi and Santiago, and see the crowds of young people thronging into the British Council premises to learn English, to borrow books, to learn something of the British culture.
Your Lordships will have gathered that I believe that the work of the British Council should be steadily expanded, and expanded with the prospect of continuity; for without this the Council cannot retain its first-class staff. First among the areas of expansion I would put meeting the world-wide demand for the English language. More and more people in the world are speaking English, and speaking it worse and worse. It requires continuous effort to sustain the standard of English in many countries. This is an activity in which, I am afraid, the demand can be met only if the Americans greatly increase their effort. After all, their language is, I suppose, approximately the same as ours.
But the English language as a second language is the key to the door to the knowledge of our life and culture. We need an expansion of educational material for television overseas—and speedily and urgently. We need more British Council Officers who are trained both in teaching and television. In a country like ours television is no substitute for the teacher, but there are parts of the world in which there are no teachers available, and in such places television is an invaluable substitute. We need expansion under the heading of the printed word—and here I must admit to a personal interest, for this was the side of the Council's work which substantially expanded in my day.
I saw in India, as many other noble Lords will have seen, the efforts the

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Russians were making in the English language, in publications of Dickens, Galsworthy and magnificent children's books—clearly paving the way for a propaganda effort taking advantage of the English language in that country. With this in mind, and because of the appalling lack of textbooks, there was recalled, with the co-operation of the publishers in this country, the subsidised books scheme, which has been a great success, mostly, but not exclusively, with textbooks. Since that scheme got under way in 1961 some 327 titles have been published and over three million textbooks have been sold mostly in India, though a beginning has been made also in West Africa. Trade as well as culture follows the textbook. Among the developments of those days, too, was a new scheme, the so-called multiple-copy textbook library scheme, for the lending of books to students, particularly in India and Pakistan—not for a fortnight or a month but for the length of a university course. My Lords, all these things need a shot in the arm, and not a contraction.
We need, too, to do something about the British Council premises overseas. Although I am not one of those who think that the Council needs to have the best premises in the main street, I do not think it necessary that they should be as shabby and unobtrusive as they sometimes are.
Finally, there are, as the noble Lord, Lord Alport, described, some openings now offering themselves for geographical development. At the present time, four-fifths of the work of the British Council, and four-fifths of its resources, are spent on the developing areas. That, I think, has been wise; but we ought now to be starting to think about some other areas: Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union. Exchanges of persons between us and these countries have made some contribution to the gradual thaw: but there is room, I believe, for much more under this heading. Secondly, as Lord Alport urged, a major opportunity could arise in relation to China. It could well be that it will be British help that will be sought, particularly as American help is likely to be unacceptable. Again, there is room for more cultural manifestations in Western Europe.
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I am sorry to weary your Lordships with so long a speech, but I would add one point. The world knows perfectly well, and it would be made plain to your Lordships in travelling round the world, that we no longer have the dominant military strength or economic power that once we had. Yet—and I want if I may to recite this quite calmly—I learnt, as your Lordships will have learnt, that there are few countries in the world in which this country's stock does not stand very high. I do not take the pessimistic view. This is not a case of "beating the drum"; this is recording one's experience.
As the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has said, we do our best to lower our stock overseas by our passion for playing ourselves down at every opportunity. We do not believe what we say, but others perhaps assume that we do. I know of no remedy for the relish with which we indulge in such self-criticism. But, for all that, again and again one finds in countries overseas, as many of your Lordships will have discovered, a profound respect for some British quality which in our diffident way we find difficult to describe—if indeed we are conscious of it. There is the respect for law; the steadfastness, the capacity for making democracy work. There are countries in the world where people would flock to see a film depicting how local government works, the sort of film which would not excite any one of us to go very far to see. Fair-mindedness, toleration, serenity—these are some of the virtues which, believe it or not, others see in us. I venture to suggest to your Lordships—if I may use the hackneyed phrase—that the British way of life will go on being admired only if we keep up a steady stream of information about ourselves, our standards, our attitudes and our life; only if we keep the door open to our life and our culture and, I believe, only if we extend and strengthen the kind of information work which the British Council is doing so magnificently to-day.
3.22 p.m.
LORD GLENDEVON: My Lords, both the noble Lords who have spoken noted that all Governments are apt to "go for" information services when cuts in expenditure have to be faced. As a former Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs I think I can say that I was not

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entirely guiltless. I am not quite certain about it, but I have a strong suspicion. Much as one disliked it, one had to do it. The point is that there can be no smugness on the part of anyone—it cuts right across Party records. I think that everyone, certainly those who have had experience of this side of life and those who think about it, realise that with the best will in the world, unless you are very careful, you can do disproportionate harm by cutting down on information services overseas.
That part of the exercise to which I should like to draw your Lordships' attention for a few minutes concerns the Commonwealth. I have just retired after three years as Chairman of the Royal Commonwealth Society, and it was inevitable when in that office, which I much enjoyed and felt greatly honoured to hold, that I should think of this sort of thing a good deal. As Chairman I visited India and Pakistan at this time last year. The noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, referred to India and I also should like to do so.
It is interesting to try to gather exactly how far and how deeply the British presence in India and Pakistan is still desired. Of course one's experience varies, but what struck me very much was that there is not the slightest doubt that the British presence is still most strongly desired at the top, at the universities. They have had, and are having, considerable experience of Americans. I certainly came across no anti-American feeling, anymore than I have ever indulged in it myself. Nevertheless, it is right to say that one gained an overwhelming impression that in the universities they still much prefer the presence of the British, if they can get it, to that of our friends from the United States of America. Certainly I was left in no doubt at all that if we seriously pare down our efforts to help where we are wanted in the sub-continent, inevitably the Americans, for very good reasons of their own, will take our place entirely. They are reasons which go deep into matters of world policy, and one fully understands that. But the fact remains that the United States is getting more and more strongly entrenched in India; and a 300 million dollar grant in the context of culture is no mean contribution. There is no doubt, so quickly does time go by, that already for
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many Indians—not of course so much the older ones—talking of the West, as they often do, is synonymous with talking about the United States and not Britain at all.
What are we doing, my Lords, at the request of India and Pakistan? I saw little of what is going on in Pakistan, so my remarks really apply to India. As has already been eloquently referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, and my noble friend Lord Alport, the answer lies here in the work of the British Council. I do not think that I have ever been more impressed by people—and I say this quite advisedly—than I was by the representatives of the British Council whom I met in India—and I met a great many of them in Bombay, Delhi and Calcutta. As the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, wisely pointed out, these people are not starry-eyed dreamers; they are sensitive, sensible and highly intelligent men, devoted to their duties. Everywhere the libraries are filled. When you are miles away from your own country it is a very impressive experience to stand and watch people going into a library. You realise what can be done, and there is no doubt that the British Council libraries in India are immensely in demand. If any thing had to be done in terms of a cut in that direction, I think it would be the greatest possible tragedy.
I remember being shown maps which the British Council people kept in their offices. On the maps were pinned flags showing the posts to which teachers of English had been sent. They went to various centres where young Indian teachers were themselves being taught. Just one look at the map of India—and what an enormous sub-continent it is!—and the sight of all these flags everywhere made one realise in a flash what a tremendously important job the British Council are doing. Where I could, I took the trouble to find out from Indians themselves what they thought of it, and the verdict everywhere was in terms of the very highest praise, often, I may say, coupled with earnest requests that we should do nothing to pare down or diminish this contribution.
I have come to the end of what I wanted to say to your Lordships. If I may just add one paragraph, it is this. The Commonwealth is (I

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almost said by definition) indefinable. It must show its worth and appeal to its members by intangible examples as the years go by. I heard a speech made by Mr. Lester Pearson, the Prime Minister of Canada, in Montreal a few weeks ago, in which he forthrightly begged this country not to hide its head over our contribution to the Commonwealth.
"The Commonwealth will be nothing without Great Britain at the center",
the right honourable gentleman said in his speech. This is the kind of thing that Englishmen, probably mistakenly, have tried very hard not to say for the last twenty years, and probably no harm has been done by their failing to say it. That speech made a great impression on the Canadian people.
What we can do in this country lies first and foremost with the machinery, with our information services, the B.B.C. and the British Council. I feel certain that Her Majesty's Government will agree with this and will do nothing to impair our chance of keeping the conception of the Commonwealth on the rails so far as we can in a very difficult time.
3.32 p.m.
VISCOUNT NORWICH: My Lords, I should like to preface my remarks this afternoon with the brief apology. As I have to attend an engagement later on this afternoon which I cannot possibly shirk, I hope that it will not be thought discourteous on my part if I leave your Lordships' House before this debate is over. I shall come back as soon as I can.
I should also like to declare an interest, not a financial interest, but a professional interest, because for two of the 12 years I was a member of the Foreign Service. I was Middle East Regional Adviser of the Information Policy Department of the Foreign Office, which meant effectively that my job was to try to guide and co-ordinate, so far as I could, the total information output to the Middle East—the Arab world, Israel and Iran—from the three principal services of our information effort: the B.B.C. External Service, the British Council and the Governmental Information Services, with their nerve centre at the C.O.I.
I found this job quite enthralling. It meant from the start that I was in day-to-day close contact with those three
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services, and although the results of all information efforts are, like an iceberg, 80 per cent. below the surface, even what I saw was enough to convince me that a work of immense national importance, and one which was, moreover, extremely successful, was being done with immense efficiency. I was enormously impressed by it; and for that reason I am now all the more horrified to learn that all these three services are going once again to feel the cold steel of the Treasury axe.
When we complain we are told, "What can you expect? The country is in a parlous financial state. The time has come to retrench, to restrict and to tighten our belts." But it is exactly at such time that the British information services are required more than at any other. What is the effect of the reminders that we constantly get from the Government? What is the effect of the import surcharges, travelling allowance restrictions and cutbacks in our forces abroad? Both our friends and our enemies lose faith in Britain. They begin to wonder. Is this the time, when we have in our information services the best possible advocates for our cause—willing, highly skilled, ready and able to put the record straight—to tie their hands behind their backs and gag them?
First of all, let me take the External Service of the B.B.C. In the B.B.C. this country has an asset which is unique among all other broadcasting systems. It has won, among the enemies of this country probably even more than among our friends, a reputation for truth. In Eastern Europe, in Egypt and in Cuba, all places where our reputation in many ways is lowest, people continue to listen to the B.B.C. and believe what they hear. This is a tremendous asset, which is of immense use to us. Moreover, this is a time when the whole pattern of listening throughout the world is going through a radical change owing to the introduction of cheap, light, effective transistor radios. Now, as at no other time in the past, is it possible really to penetrate a country, to reach all its people, give them the British point of view, and tell the truth.
Yet what is the story? It is one of steady decline. In 1950, there was no other broadcasting system in the world which broadcast so many hours overseas as did the B.B.C. We have now fallen

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to fifth place. We are behind Russia, China, Western Germany and the Voice of America, and if the graph continues at its present rate, it will not be long before we are also behind a good many Eastern European States, Cairo and Havana, all of who are increasing their hours of broadcasting every year at a tremendous speed. They are also putting up new high-powered relay transmitters across the world so that they may be better heard.
The B.B.C. must do this too, because no one is going to listen to a shaky station with a lot of atmospherics and a weak signal if by simply turning a knob they can get a better station. No one is more aware of this than the B.B.C. They have built a new aerial on Ascension which is already working at half strength and will presumably soon go on to full power. But the Treasury say that the B.B.C. will have to find the money, even for a capital outlay of such vital importance as this, from their annual allowance. I will say nothing more about the British Council. I had meant to, but it has been admirably championed, far better than I could have done, by the noble Lords, Lord Hill of Luton and Lord Glendevon, and I should like only to give my support to everything they say.
Since I do not want to make a long speech, I will go on to the Government information services—the C.O.I. and, most important of all, because they are the spearhead of our entire information effort, the information officers in the field. So far as the C.O.I. are concerned, I can only repeat that every time I come into contact with them—and in my time I have come into contact with them a great deal—I never fail to be impressed by their skill, efficiency and sheer professionalism. Here we have a machine which in a remarkably short time can produce a newspaper article, a complete Press service, a photograph, a recorded radio programme on tape, a first-class colour film for television (several have already won international awards) a complete stand for a trade fair or an exhibition—anything you like. You name it, and the C.O.I. will produce it.
It is a superb instrument: but the best instrument in the world is only as effective as the hands of the craftsmen who wield it; and the craftsmen in this
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case are our information officers in the field. I think they have changed, developed, greatly over the past ten or fifteen years. When I first joined the Foreign Office fifteen years ago they were still in some quarters looked on like the old Press officers, pushing out an enormous quantity of paper which nobody perhaps read very much and which had no very clear object or target. Even ten years ago a great many of our information officers were drawn, not from the senior, but from the junior executive branch of the Foreign Service. This is not to say that many of them did not do their jobs brilliantly; they did. But I think it is indicative of the concept of an information officer as it existed not so long ago. Now I believe that all that has changed, or is changing extremely fast. Nowadays information officers are respected in a way that they were not before. Their duty is seen to be more important. It is seen that an Ambassador himself is really a glorified information officer. He is there to represent his country, in the same way as an information officer represents his country, and I look forward to the day when any British Ambassador will have done his stint as an information officer at some time in his career.
I should like to read to your Lordships a short extract from a careers booklet which was recently published about the work of an information officer to-day:
"The Information Officer has to know the tools of his trade. He must master the techniques of journalism, radio, television and the cinema, and meet the professionals on their own ground. He must be able to write the article that an editor wants to publish, edit a lively periodical or bulletin, talk on radio or television to the masses, or more privately to the Chamber of Commerce or the daughters of the revolution. In an unfriendly ambiance he must deploy the telling arguments that present the British case in the most favourable light…His success or failure depends upon his ability to make the right friends and influence them with his own convictions. In order to do this he must have the latest facts and figures at his command. He must be fully familiar with the Government's views on every major question, able to explain the line being taken by the British delegation at the United Nations, ready to speak on any aspect of British policy or on the social and cultural life of Britain."
That is a tall order, but I think it is one that is being performed now every day of the week; and we should be grateful for it.

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That is basically all I want to say to-day. If perhaps I have been rather lavish with my bouquets, it is not because I merely want to fling them around, but because I believe most sincerely that this country has an information machine which is far more streamlined and effective than most of us believe and than the Treasury is allowing it at present to show. It needs a little more money; not much more. The total of about £30 million, as we have heard this afternoon, is "peanuts" when compared with the possible results that can be gained from it. All the information services need is a little more money and continuity. That has been said already twice this afternoon, but I will say it again, because it is of vital importance. You will never get the C.O.I to start producing a new series of the superb short television films which they are now producing, if halfway through the series they find they have no more money with which to continue. You will never get the British Council to open up a new reading room in a university town, only to discover that two years later it has to close it down again. That is why I should like to see the information budgets worked out for the future, not on an annual, but on a five-year basis, and perhaps even longer—because only in this way can the information officers work as we believe they should and as we know they can. Our problem now is no longer to try to get the information services that we deserve; I suggest that it is to deserve the information services that we have.
3.44 p.m.
LORD GRIDLEY: My Lords, I rise to support the Motion standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Alport. I think it would be a disaster to contemplate any cut in the expenditure on our overseas services. So far, no tribute has been paid in this connection to the great services which have been rendered to this country and to the countries overseas by the B.B.C. External Services. I was for 27 years a member of the Colonial Service overseas, and regularly during that time I listened to the B.B.C. Overseas Service, now known as the External Service. I do not know whether any of your Lordships were in a similar position. I feel, most humbly, that a heavy responsibility lies upon me to try to convey to your Lordships the circumstances and con-
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dition which prevailed in the reception areas to which I wish to refer. I intend, in the course of my speech, to concentrate my remarks mainly on South-East Asia and, in particular, on Malaya where I served.
In present-day circumstances in this country, as we have already heard from speeches of other noble Lords, it is customary to denigrate great traditions and to call into question certain ideals which we have hitherto accepted and endeavoured to live up to. In that connection, having served overseas for the period of time which I have stated, it is a source of distress to me that "colonialism" has become a tarnished word. If this was justified, all I can say to your Lordships is that nobody in South-East Asia, or anywhere abroad, would have listened, in the great numbers they did in those countries, to the Overseas Service broadcasts. Let us examine the facts. When these broadcasts started (and, so far as I can remember, this was in about the year 1932) the impact on these territories, receiving the broadcast from England was tremendous. Malaya is 12,000 miles away from England. In those days it took six weeks to get a letter to Malaya by sea from London. To send a letter from Malaya and to get a reply from England took the best part of three months. In a flash, in an instant, all this was changed, and there was an immediate contact between this country and the country in which we lived.
What were the conditions in Malaya when this was happening? We were at peace. There was no income tax—there was no income tax until after the last war. There was exceptional prosperity. There were roads and hospitals; railways were being modernised and extended. There was tremendous revenue coming in from the export of tin and rubber, and we had the highest standard of living in South-East Asia. So much was this so that it was necessary to bring in a form of immigration control to prevent the large number of Chinese who wanted to come from China to join in the prosperity that was then existing in the tin mines. The native customs and religions were respected. Treaties of the Rulers were honoured. All of us spoke Malay fluently, and many spoke Chinese. These people were our friends, and we were their friends: it was not a one-sided

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association, but entirely two-sided. There was a Malay phrase prevalent at the time which, with your Lordships' permission, I will repeat in Malay. It was "Kerajaan emak bapo," which meant: "The Government is father and mother." That was the situation: a contented country at peace, and adminstered by the British.
What was the effect on these people who were hearing these broadcasts from England? What was the impact made on them? Malays are normally curious people, and interested in what is going on everywhere. The vast majority of them had never seen our country and had never visited London. We governed, and they wanted to know what everything was like. What sort of a place was Britain? It was not long before wireless sets appeared in every village throughout Malaya. It was customary to hear Big Ben strike out in the Malayan jungle: and to think that you, my Lords, were hearing the same chimes here in this country!
Then, in order to increase the strength of these broadcasts, Radio Malaya was established to retransmit the broadcasts received from London. What does this all mean? It means just this, if I may put it in words which I know are completely inadequate. Ties were strengthened, not by force but by the coming together of peoples who, without certain common ideals, were cut off. May I just give, to the best of my ability, an example of what I mean. We had our King, they had their Rulers; each played a part. All this was immeasurably strengthened by the wonderful Christmas broadcast we had—the link with the Empire—and I well remember when Her Majesty's grandfather, the late King George V, received a loyal Address from both Houses of Parliament. I was 12,000 miles away from this country and I was with a Malay at the time. The King's words seemed to fire us. He seemed to be very tired—it was at the end of a long reign—but he seemed to care for us. This was the deep feeling that both of us had. It made us feel—and I am speaking not only for myself but for those people with whom we were associated—that somehow we wanted to do something better with our own lives.
In all this, in all the pageantry and colour which, to the credit of the B.B.C.,
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they so adequately conveyed over these long distances, there was never any boasting from England that we were a great Power and that we were holding anybody down by force. It was all done in good taste and with the greatest humility. The part played by the B.B.C. and their External Services during that time was of incalculable value. What was the result of this? It was inevitable that a great respect grew up for the transmissions of the B.B.C. People wanted to listen to the news bulletins. The news bulletins from London seemed to be objective and they were believed, and everybody respected their great veracity.
Moving on to 1941, it was about Christmas of that year that the Japanese struck and Malaya was overrun. The Colonial Service disappeared, its members being flung into Changi gaol. I was one of these people, with a large number of others. All contact with the outside world was forbidden; wireless sets were confiscated and the penalty for listening-in was death. In spite of all the propaganda which was exhibited by the occupying Power of that country, we who were inside that gaol and the rest of the population who were outside remained the closest of friends.
Of course, it was obvious that during that period—I say this having, I hope, described to your Lordships the great benefits and the wonderful way in which the B.B.C. broadcasts had been received, and in spite of the fact that now everybody had been cut off—there was this great desire to get news from London again. So the population outside that gaol rallied to our assistance. They were able to listen-in to the news bulletins from this country and the news was smuggled into us inside the gaol. I will not go into all the details of this beyond saying that when men were incarcerated, as we were, and in the circumstances under which we were confined, deprived of news and suffering from excessive malnutrition, and so on, it was the news of what was going on here at home and in the war in general that kept alive men who would otherwise have died. So important was this that an organisation was set up within that gaol to see that every single inmate received the news bulletin which was broadcast every day.

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It was inevitable that after a certain time the people who were in this organisation would be discovered. Some of our friends outside died, being executed for the work they did for us, and certain of our own people died as well. I never thought that to-day I should be in this House and sitting on the Bishops' Benches would be the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham. I can only pay, humbly and in my own words, my great tribute to him for all he did for us and for the inspiration he was to us during that period. It is said that when we came home at the end of it he told our story to Her Majesty's father, the late King George VI, and the Queen Mother, and I like to think (although I do not know) that every year when the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham takes the Armistice Day Service at the Albert Hall—I like to think, with some emotion, that it has something to do with the affairs that went on in those days when we were incarcerated in Changi.
To-day we are not at war, but it seems to me that, with our decolonised territories, and with all the good will that has been built up, and all the admiration for our way of life, there never was a time when it was more important that we should keep our way of life before those people who have come to expect it and to whom, if it were denied to them through any cut in our services, it would be a real tragedy. In this vast area of South-East Asia and beyond these people travel from one country to another; they carry our ideas with them and they remember us as their friends. But, apart from that, I am not one of those who are despondent about the fact that we are having trouble with certain of our former territories to-day. This might well be considered inevitable. What is important is to keep these ideas of ours alive and see that it is possible for people underneath, the indigenous population of the countries concerned, to have that news before them. We hope that in due course they will achieve wise and able leaders, and it seems to me that through the medium of our broadcasting services we shall help them.
May I just read a letter which was given to me by Sir James Robertson from a Sudanese who wrote to him on March 2 this year. Sir James Robertson was the former Governor of Nigeria. This is what was said:
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"I am not in a position to criticise British policy, but it appears to me the more active the Communists the less active the Western Powers. The recent economic measures in Great Britain, which might be justified by the financial difficulties, open the doors very widely for the Communists…Take, for example…the cutting in the excellent and valuable B.B.C. Arabic service."
The letter finishes:
"The ordinary citizen in the Middle East listens to the B.B.C. when it is transmitting, but turns to Sawt Al Arab (Cairo) at other times. I found the B.B.C. Arabic service in Arab countries I visited much respected for its high standard and fair impartial viewpoint. I hope the difficulties which required drastic measures will soon be overcome."
As I say, that is a letter from a Sudanese written on March 2 this year.
In conclusion, I am sure that the letter I have just read is representative of thousands of our friends, not by compulsion but by conviction that we stand for the proper ideals and the truth. This is a natural asset exported abroad by the B.B.C. External Services. If we fail to foster this or cut down these services we do so, I think, at our peril.
4.4 p.m.
LORD NATHAN: My Lords, may I first adopt what the noble Lord, Lord Alport, said with regard to this habit, which has crept upon us recently, of self-denigration? If we ceased to do this, I believe that it would be the best bonus that any information officer could have. The noble Lord, Lord Alport, and the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, covered a wide canvas which I have no equipment to cover. I have some slight experience of the United States but little elsewhere, so I should like to confine my remarks to that country. I suppose there is no country where it is easier to convey information, because of the language; nor is there any country where it is more important that people should be well informed about ourselves, and our special services there relate to this. It is a vast and varied country and there is greater interest in some areas than in others.
The Consulates General in the cities throughout the United States are in the front line. The public relations requirement vary from State to State. They are excellently served by the British Information Services, with their office in New York. The daily British Information Services news bulletin and the extracts

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from the British Press are accurate, unbiased and well condensed. There is no doubt that they fulfil the criteria set out in the White Paper of 1959 (Cmnd. 685), at page 6, that overseas information services should be:
"respected for their accuracy, efficiency and reliability—in that way alone can they achieve full effectiveness."
I believe that these bulletins are widely distributed to the Press and others, but my experience is that they are not read and absorbed unless particular matter of current interest has already caught the attention of the recipient; in that event he may well refer to the bulletin for accurate information. In short, these bulletins are used as a source of accurate information but not of news items.
Let me give your Lordships two or three instances which came to my notice over the last year or two across the United States. First, there is our remarkable success in the Indonesian confrontation. There was no general knowledge that at one time we had far more forces committed than the United States had in Vietnam. At the time, I believe that we had 50,000 and they had 25,000. No doubt this was known at the top, but among lawyers, bankers, university teachers and students, and businessmen, as well as editors of newspapers and news programmes on radio and television, this was not known. When they heard of it they were interested, and they appreciated the significance of this commitment in relation to their own anxieties in South-East Asia. It would have been most valuable had this fact been generally known in our relations with the United States.
Secondly, there was the remarkable speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer last autumn to American businessmen in which he referred to the nature of our balance-of-payments problems, a substantial increase in our exports to the United States and the nature of so much of them, sophisticated industrial products. To my knowledge, the content of the speech was unknown to the overseas Vice-President of one of the more important American banks, to the editor of an influential and well-disposed newspaper, and generally to the groups to whom I have referred.
Thirdly, and by contrast, I found among those groups considerable know-
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ledge and great interest in our incomes policy and the problems relating to it. I appreciate that my contact has been with a narrow range of people, but I think the experiences I have had are significant, for they indicate that where we have problems similar to those in the United States there is interest and publicity, and therefore knowledge. The question of how to deal with inflation, wages and incomes is debated currently in the United States, and our own endeavours are looked upon as experiments from which they themselves can draw experience. But our exports and our balance-of-payments problems are not of immediate concern to them in their own lives; they are not, therefore, newsworthy. The Americans' problems in this field are of great concern to them, but they are different in kind and in degree.
The Report of the Committee of Representational Services Overseas (Cmnd. 2276, 1964) stated:
"The Information Services must not come to regard themselves as purveyors of information as an end in itself. The essential requirement…is to present the facts and the British point of view on issues where some definite and specific interest is at stake."
This involves, first, selecting the items we want to publicise and, secondly, seeing that they are publicised notwithstanding that on first impression they may not be newsworthy. This is a highly professional job. There is an excellent team at the British Information Services office in New York, and extremely expert too; but it can operate only to a limited degree in public relations (as opposed to the dissemination of information) outside New York. As I have said, the Consuls General are in the front line elsewhere. They do, as I have seen, an enormous amount of work in the field of public relations, but they have a wide range of duties and the burdens relating to the export drive which in recent years have been increasingly imposed upon them must take more and more of their time.
Support could be provided for them possibly by the appointment of specialist information officers, either for their own area or for a wider area; or possibly even by the appointment of public relations firms, private firms who would act under their directions, or a combination of these ideas. Some support is surely necessary to get what we want

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publicised in the right way, not only among small groups, but also in the Press, on radio, television, and other publicity media. Above all, however, the objectives of the publicity must be clearly defined, and this definition must come from the top. That, I think, is a Government and not a Civil Service responsibility. Once defined, these objectives must be pursued over the years with a stable, effective and powerful organisation. I do not want to labour the point; it has already been made this afternoon. In difficult times such as we have been experiencing we must make the most of our successes. It is true that success breeds success, but only if our successes are known.
There is one additional point to which I should like to refer; that is, the unification of policy in this field. I was at one of the American universities where I found that they had numbers of students from India to learn the drafting of Statutes. In view of history it struck me as odd that they should be there, and not here. Perhaps it is rather disappointing. Is this not a matter closely related to overseas information? The recent debate on the overseas students' problems is also closely related. I found that the students in American universities whom I met had considerable knowledge of this country because they had colleagues who had come over here and studied. No expenditure on overseas information was required; they knew because they had come here.
I would urge that we should not segregate matters because they happen to come under separate budgetary control. Surely it must be right to put all the subjects and matters which relate to the projection of this country in a proper light overseas, in perspective and together; and that we should not, as some people seem to feel, be frightened that if visitors come here they will be disillusioned. I have never met one visitor from the United States, student or otherwise, who having been here has not been our supporter thereafter.
4.14 p.m.
LORD RHODES: My Lords, I rise to make a few remarks on this subject, and to ask your Lordships if you ever stood in front of a building which was once occupied by the British Consul in a country which has been suffering turmoil,
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massacre and murder during these last few years, and to see written on its walls "Britain come back". This was doubly important because we had never been there in occupation. In terms of commerce and plantations and industry, yes. I refer to the area which the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, mentioned, namely, Indonesia, and I was provoked to rise to my feet.
There have been some nice things said about the information services, and sometimes we get the bit between our teeth and we run away in praise of something that is good and desire to do all we can to support it. This cause deserves our support. It is not ideology that we are putting over. That was done by the people who normally sat on the Benches opposite in the last century. They were experts in knowing how to do it. In this century it has been the Communist countries who have pushed their ideologies as hard as they know how—and my word! how good they have been at it! The world is sick of this sort of ideological propaganda. What it is waiting for is something solid and good and decent—in fact news, and a portrayal of what ordinary folk do in a struggling society.
That is one side of it. Another side of it is this. We spend millions and millions of money in propaganda about our exports. There are missions overseas, missions coming back, to and fro; and people are sent to the ends of the world. This costs millions of money, and yet our information services, where it is possible to get people to be receptive at the other end, are regarded as something about which we can be cheeseparing. It really does us discredit. To think that we are cheeseparing about an item of this sort when we waste so much money in other directions! There is no question that the benefit which has accrued through the years because of this kind of information is immense, and I think it would be a great mistake if it were withdrawn.
The noble Lord, Lord Alport, mentioned how our enemies were trying to do this, that and the other to us. I do not like to put it in those terms: that we have enemies who are actively engaged in denigrating us as a people. I do not think we should attach too much

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importance to this. There always were these people. When I was a lad the Americans were good at it, because they were rivals with us for the leadership of the world. It was never more potent than it was then. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, that this country has on enormous amount to offer. The projection of this country abroad is received well. I have been in a number of countries in these last eighteen months, and I have never been in one where they were not pleased to see us, and where the qualities of the British people—and this without "sobstuff"—were not appreciated. They have got over the awkward stage of wanting to be independent, and there is a resurgence of recognising the qualities enumerated by the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton.
Finally, I plead with the Minister on this subject not to let us have the sort of departmental reply explaining the need for economy, and all that kind of thing, which will not be sufficient to satisfy those who believe in the projection of Britain abroad.
4.20 p.m.
LORD BOURNE: My Lords, I had not intended to take part in this debate, but having listened to what has been said I should like to put on record my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Alport, for putting down his Motion. I should like to contribute one extra point to the debate to support the various remarks which have been made. As a serving soldier one used to employ information services a good deal and, without boring your Lordships with a list of the occasions, I must say that I found information services extremely useful in a place like Burma when the British Army left, and when our Embassy was being set up for the first time. Without the services of the British Council and the information officers, I doubt whether the Embassy could have done its work.
Again during the emergency in Malaya, we had very large information services set up by General Briggs and General Templer, which we used a great deal for propaganda and (shall we say?) warlike purposes. Now that the troops have left that part of the world and these countries are independent, there are the Ambassadors or High Commissioners and their staffs. I agreed with every word uttered
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by the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, who was himself a member of the information services in the Middle East and who was associated with the various functions performed by various parts of the information services.
Since I retired I have travelled in areas which the British Services have left or areas where they are thinning out on the ground, or even in places where they have never been. Whether I have been in the Persian Gulf, in North Africa, in the Far East, or in South America, I have never found an Ambassador who did not rely on his information officer and his information staff—and the British Council, if there was a British Council in that area—as his right hand man who was just as important as his other counsellors on the staff. We are now withdrawing our Armed Forces from very many places overseas, and we have said publicly that we will never stay in an area where we are not friends with the people. We have bases in various places, such as Singapore and Aden, and we should not dream of staying and forcing our attentions on people if they did not reciprocate and remain our friends. It is at this time, when British Forces are being withdrawn, that I believe the overseas information services are performing such a service, a service which has been well described this afternoon. Therefore, I hope that they will not be severely reduced.
One must remember that we are talking about £28 million—about the cost of the Territorial Army which last year we very nearly destroyed, though not quite. At any rate, that is the scale of effort we are talking about. I regard Britain's friendships overseas as extremely important at present, especially when we are withdrawing our Forces. Therefore, I sincerely hope that we shall not reduce our information services, which are professionally experienced as the noble Lord, Lord Norwich, has described. I would heartily support the Motion.
4.25 p.m.
LORD ERROLL OF HALE: My Lords, I should like to intervene briefly in order to put to your Lordships another aspect of the value of the British information services overseas; namely, in the commercial field. The British information services do a great deal to publicise

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British products and British technical development in those countries where we may be able to sell either the products or the techniques, or both. Furthermore, they are able, if they are given the chance, to carry out a great deal of promotional work in respect of visits overseas by representatives of British firms so that they can be well written up in the local Press, and so on, in advance of their arrival.
I should like to take this opportunity to relate a personal experience which occurred last November when I had the honour to lead a mission of the London and Birmingham Chambers of Commerce to Malaysia and South-East Asia. Because we were able to plan it a little in advance, the Central Office of Information got in touch with us beforehand and arranged for the preparation of television scripts and taped material, as well as broadcasting material. This was all prepared in their studio in London and was sent out in advance to the territories concerned, for release a few days before our arrival. The result was that this mission, which was the first British mission to that area for five years, received excellent advance publicity, and we were all well known by the time we got there.
But that was not all. We found on our arrival that, unknown to us, they had used the photographs and biographical material which we had supplied to prepare an on-the-spot booklet for wide distribution giving full details of all members of the mission, so that everybody knew what each man was capable of doing and what his interests were. We had a great deal of coverage in the local newspapers, not only at the time we arrived, but throughout the whole of our visit. This contributed substantially to the success of the mission. I happened to be leading it, but the success of the mission was due to the team spirit of the members and also, in large measure, to the excellent work done by the Central Office of Information here in London and by the information officers in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and in Bangkok. This was all done "for free", so to speak: it was all part of the effort of the information services to help sell British goods abroad. This is an aspect of the British information services which is not well enough known, because they could take on more, and when given a chance, as
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I found from my own experience, they do a first-class job. I am very glad to have this opportunity to place on record their excellent work.
4.28 p.m.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, I should like to say one or two words without prolonging the debate unduly in support of what the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale, and others have been saying. Until recently I was an Ambassador for a good many years abroad, and I must say that without the raw material which was supplied by the British information services and the British Council we should not be nearly so much use. It is essential to provide this material and these staffs in order that we can get the most out of the expenditure which we have already undertaken. Without it, there is no doubt that the existing expenditure would be partly wasted. I should like to support what was said by the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, about the essential need for continuity. You can turn your public off like the electric light, but you cannot turn them on again. It is impossible to "turn on" a public in a hurry.
I should like to tell your Lordships a sad story about my experiences in a foreign country not so very far from here. It was decided round about 1950 to give extra weight to the British Council and to abolish the information office there. So the information office was abolished, an extremely busy First Secretary was told to do its work, many of the contacts which the information office had were lost, that side of the work of the Mission obviously began to suffer, and before I arrived my predecessor had arranged that another information officer would be sent. He arrived during my first year. He was not much use for a year because the contacts were not there. He did not know enough people. He did not know where to go, who to see, and nobody did. In addition, the administration in London was unable to provide him with an office desk for about six months, and we had to find some sort of table for the poor fellow to work at. This is the sort of nonsense which occurs when there is not continuity.
That office was built up again, I am glad to say, and is now an essential part of that Embassy. But notwithstanding this sad experience, they decided to reduce the British Council office instead. The

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people of that country were very alarmed when they heard that the British Institute might close, and it was taken over, I am glad to say, by the local university who have run it with superb efficiency ever since. The Treasury would undoubtedly say, "What a sensible decision it was to cut down the British Council office". But that could not happen everywhere. In this particular friendly country—as a matter of fact, it was Sweden—the Institute has been kept going as a great success. But I think that the example which I have quoted shows the very real dangers of discontinuity.
I should also like to say a word about the overseas services of the B.B.C. I am also one of those people who carry a modern short-wave transistor around, and it was very striking when I was in the Middle East recently how relatively weak the B.B.C.'s services have become in signal strength and in time of transmission, compared to what they were at the end of the war, when also I was in the Middle East; and also, even more so, compared to other countries.
I entirely support the diagnosis which the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, gave to your Lordships. I think it is a pity that we do not use this great invention to even better purpose, especially in view of the transcendent reputation for objectivity and truth telling which the B.B.C. has built up. A lot of nations spend their time broadcasting lies to each other, but you cannot "fool all the public all the time". After a time they discover this, and I am sure it is counter-productive. By contrast, we should do very well to have maintained, and would still do well to maintain, the foreign services and the foreign language services of the B.B.C. I can give many examples of very prominent people in those countries who really listen every day to the B.B.C. and on whom it undoubtedly has quite an influence.
I should like to make one final point. We are living in a time of great change. There are going to be great changes in British policy. It is quite possible that we shall enter Europe. We are withdrawing our troops from many places overseas. There is a tremendous industrial revolution going on. We shall have to have changes at home if we are going to make use of it. I believe that this is
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no time—but, really, no time at all—to reduce the information services, which enable us to explain abroad what we are doing and why we are doing it. I believe that, if there has ever been a time when these services should be maintained and when continuity should be preserved, it is now.
4.34 p.m.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, gratitude has already been expressed by a number of noble Lords to my noble friend Lord Alport, and I join in those expressions. I congratulate him on setting in motion a wide and well-informed debate, in which the Government have received a lot of chastisement—merited chastisement. I think that every speaker has been critical, and it may be that the noble Lord who is to reply will be fairly numb by this time. I hope for his sake that he is, because I fear that he will have little comfort from me.
There are some issues in which little more than common sense, a touch of imagination and a human feeling for unfortunate fellow men are required of a British Government. This is such an issue; and so, on the face of it, persuasion would seem more appropriate an approach than censure. The House will know how much my colleagues and myself prefer that sort of approach. But since the present Government have totally rejected every effort at persuasion in this context, it seems plain that stronger medicine is called for to-day. A recent reply in another place by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs told us pretty finally that light could no longer break through to the closed minds of Ministers. If the Government continue to ignore the facts and evade the questions put to them, they are bound to draw censure; and if they ignore that censure it will, by a natural process, transform itself into condemnation—a condemnation more lasting and wider than can be voiced by a Parliamentary Opposition.
The Government, through the instrument of the Foreign Office, have decided to cut down the Overseas Information Services of the B.B.C., and their decision was announced regretfully and philosophically by the B.B.C. on January 6, two months ago. The B.B.C. were not philosophical, nor in any way convinced, as to the need for one particular element

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in these cuts, and to this I shall address myself more specifically a little later. The cause and purpose of these reductions, as no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, will tell us again, is the need for the Government to contain expenditure.
I shall not be referring to the savings made by deferring or eliminating plans for expansion and development as they stood until the beginning of this year, though censure of such misguided emasculation will, I hope, be inferred from what I have to say about the purpose and potential, built upon achievements of the external services of the B.B.C. But beyond the general frustrating of the services as a whole, the Government have chosen to reduce, quite arbitrarily, one very valuable foreign language service and to abolish another. There is a hideous suspicion that this may be the thin end of a damaging wedge.
It has been providential, and still is, that some of the most brilliant and imaginative men to serve British broadcasting have been engaged over the years in the External Services. Their triumphs and the standards they set are a byword throughout the transmitting world and the listening world.
I recall vividly that in a debate almost exactly six years ago, on March 1, 1961, when I wound up from the Government Dispatch Box, the then Administration was condemned for reducing one or two of the services to Western Europe. I did not resent that criticism, but at least I was able to say that those reductions were compensated by an increase in other services. That was dismissed very roughly, I remember, by the noble Lord, Lord Strang, as "robbing Peter to pay Paul". But what we are attacking to-day is the act of robbing Paul to pocket the proceeds. There is, so far as I know, nothing whatever, no single item to be found, on the credit side of these new changes. There have been ministerial references in both Houses to extending the most important services—indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, referred to it in answer to a Question of mine quite recently. But my information is that nothing is being expanded, and I shall be interested and encouraged to know whether the Minister can contradict this.
It is painful, and even tedious, to parade the obvious, but the present Government evidently need to be brought
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face to face, eyeball to eyeball, with the obvious. At a time when we are reducing our physical means of influencing world affairs there is an argument, and indeed a very strong argument, for increasing the subtler mediums for affecting the affairs of humanity. The noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, spoke most eloquently of what we have always had to offer. It seems to me that only a Government which felt it had nothing worth saying to the world at large, or to particular nations in the world of men, would actually reduce its own ability to explain itself and speak for its country. It may be that such is the gloomy conclusion of the men in power in Britain to-day; and perhaps the noble Lord will say this. It might be the nearest to an explanation available from him and his colleagues. But if only they could realise that even this conclusion need not inhibit them as it appears to do!
It is not propaganda or political philosophy or heroic exhortation which overseas listeners have come to expect and to esteem from the B.B.C. It is news—unbiased, factual, economically stated news. Hard it may be for us in these islands, with freedom of Press and broadcasting, to imagine how precious can be each item of dependable news to those who are starved of such nourishment within their own frontiers. I recall that a few years ago a member of the B.B.C. overseas staff told me, with becoming modesty, that what that service tried to provide (for those behind the Iron Curtain, for instance) was the sort of information which they would read in the news columns of their own papers if those were free to publish the simple truth.
I wish that words of mine could be sufficiently descriptive to convince the noble Lord and his colleagues of the way in which men and women in undeserved adversity and political bondage have come to depend upon the B.B.C.; at least to the same extent as conquered Europe and we ourselves depended upon it during the war years. I have myself been to a country behind the Iron Curtain where the punishment for listening to the B.B.C. was 25 years imprisonment—and still they listened. They could not be stopped, even by sentences of such a savage nature. My noble friend Lord Gridley has recalled war-time conditions, when the penalty was death: and even that was not

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an effective sanction. It is notable and material, as well as a matter of pride, that the B.B.C. has always been outstanding in its appeal and in its value for those in need of contact with free men. This is not, as I have said, because it has been forged as a conscious weapon of propaganda. It is, in fact, for the opposite reason.
Where my words may easily fail, the words spoken over the Hungarian radio on November 3, 1956, during those few brave days of Hungarian freedom, stand unanswerable. I will quote them as they were monitored in London at the time:
"We express our appreciation of London's great radio station, the British Broadcasting Corporation, for the objective information given to the world about the struggle of our people. We were particularly gratified to note that there was no incitement to extremism and that the tone of the broadcasts expressed solidarity in our joy over our victories, and sympathy in our sorrow in weeping for our dead".
My Lords, those calm though poignant words were spoken while the battle for freedom still continued in the same city, and before the brute weight of the Soviet tanks once again crushed all resistance and liberty and the ability of the Hungarians to speak and hear the truth among themselves, openly and without fear. Thereafter, the voice of the B.B.C. continued to reach them, as it does to-day.
My reason for recounting these tragic events is to remind the noble Lord who is to reply that a week or two before those words were uttered by the announcer in Budapest nobody in London could have assessed the effect of the B.B.C. broadcasts within Communist Hungary. We knew no more and no less than we know to-day of the effect of B.B.C. broadcasts to Albania, from which the people of Albania were cruelly cut off on January 20, after 26 years. My noble friend Lord Alport spoke of the difficulty of building up a service over five or ten years. This was a service which had flourished for 26 years. The Government saw fit to abolish that service because, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, three days later,
"…there is no real reason to believe that the Albanian Service of the B.B.C. has any significant…effect in Albania."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23/1/67, col. 324.]
In the hope that "frivolous" is not an unparliamentary word, I must say that
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such an unsubstantiated, insupportable statement was frivolous to an almost shameful degree.
I must remind the noble Lord and the House of the exchange which took place between us on that occasion. In response to four distinct and completely apposite supplementary questions, he charged me at the time, I remember, with making a speech, and by inference discharged himself from making a serious reply to any of them. To-day I am entitled to make a speech. I hope the noble Lord will not object that I am asking too many questions. The fabric of the noble Lord's argument on that occasion was indeed so threadbare that there was, forsooth! more hole than whole cloth, but it is possible, in columns 323 to 326 of Hansard, to identify three of the larger holes.
The noble Lord, in the course of his defence on January 23, maintained, in extenuation, that the B.B.C.'s English Language Service would of course continue to be received and to be audible in Albania. When asked by my noble friend Lord Merrivale what percentage of the population of Albania understood English and listened to the B.B.C. broadcasts in English, the noble Lord said that that was "hardly relevant". He had made a great point of the economic reasons for this abolition, but when I asked whether the B.B.C. had not offered—indeed pleaded to be allowed—to make compensating economies in other services rather than abolish the Albanian Service completely, he said that was "not really relevant". When I reminded him that this voice of Britain was being cut off precisely at a time when the Chinese-Soviet rift was threatening the ideological structure of Communism in Albania, giving greater importance than ever to the B.B.C.'s service, then again all the events in China were irrelevant to the noble Lord by his own witness.
Really, my Lords, this degree of diplomatic sang-froid and utter indifference to world events must be something of which even the Foreign Office, with its symbolic and neatly-rolled umbrella, would hardly approve. Lord Chalfont, as he strolls nonchalantly behind world events, reminds me, and perhaps others, of that speech by the right honourable

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Walter Long made 50 years ago, when he declared,
"I was never standing by when a revolution was going on."
It is plain that the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, fastidiously turns his back on similar painful occasions; and since the utterance of Mr. Walter Long provoked G. K. Chesterton into writing that splendid poem which began,
"When death was on thy drums, Democracy—And in a rush of slaves the world was freed",
I shall have the temerity somewhat to bowdlerize one verse of the poem which followed, seeing the noble Lord mirrored so fetchingly in its lines:
"From his first hours in his protected cot, He never saw a deviationist shot.
In deference to his thoughtful parents' whim, The wildest massacres were kept from him."
My Lords, I gather they still are.
Let me say, in fairness, that the noble Lord made one observation of far greater significance than those ministerial flippances which I have quoted—one which I think reveals the deep-running misconception or even suspicion which bedevils autocratic government, be it Socialist or Fascist. On the point I have already mentioned—the claim that the B.B.C. had no significant political effect in Albania—the noble Lord said further:
"It seems unlikely that in the context of what is going on in China the Albanian Service of the B.B.C. will have much influence on the policies, foreign or otherwise, of the Albania Government."
There we have it. To those engaged in an autocratic form of government only governments are important, not the governed. The Prime Minister, who regards even his own supporters in Parliament as "dogs", is not likely to pay much attention to the individual voters of his own country—at least in between Elections—still less to those who have no vote whatever in other countries.
I wonder whether the noble Lord has had the opportunity of hearing or reading the remarkable lecture given by Mr. Tangye Lean to the Royal Commonwealth Society on February 9 last, just after his retirement from the directorship of the External Services? It set out most brilliantly the philosophy of broadcasting from Britain to other countries. This philosophy could scarcely be in greater contrast to that of the Government today. It would be unjust for me to
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attempt to paraphrase that exposition of Mr. Tangye Lean's but the essence of his argument was that nations possessing the technical means of transmitting had a chance of addressing themselves to the "inner circle", the ruling group, or to the "outer circle", those who were ruled. He defined the latter as "broadcasting" and the former as "narrow-casting". It is clear that the Government of our country are "narrow-casters" when it comes to sending this country's views to other peoples. Politically, philosophically and humanly I deplore that this should be so.
In meeting this particular charge the noble Lord may fall back on the defeatist argument that there is no evidence of how many people listened to the Albanian service when it existed. That is a backs-to-the-wall argument—but then the noble Lord's back is against the wall. I do not know what comfort he may take from the knowledge that, by the facts of life in Albania, it is not possible for Albanians to write letters of appreciation to the B.B.C., as do listeners from other countries. It is possible for returning travellers and for escaping Albanians to bring evidence; and this they have done. That which has reached my hands since the first announcement of the closing of the service is pretty conclusive, and there is undoubtedly a great deal more that I have not seen.
There are also some telling comparisons to be made. During the years 1950 to 1955, when we were broadcasting to Soviet Russia, the B.B.C.'s Russian service received only one listener's letter. Interviews with refugees and other sources revealed listening in only half a dozen places; yet we know, from thousands of letters and interviews since 1960 that there was also widespread listening in the earlier period at the height of the cold war. This we know to-day.
Although the Albanian people are now as cut off as were the Soviet people during the Stalin era, there has been more evidence of listening in Albania during the past five years than we had from the Soviet Union during the Stalinist years. There has been evidence, factual evidence, of listening to the Albanian service from a dozen places in Albania. Listeners have included factory workers, university students, broadcasting officials, an hotel manager, an interpreter,

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restaurant employees, lorry drivers, teachers, a civil servant, an army sergeant, an electrician and a collective farm manager. I am not suggesting that in all these walks of life everybody listens to the B.B.C., but am simply showing that a wide range of people, including those holding official positions, listened while they could to the B.B.C. service.
Unless the Government as an act of policy alone were determined to close down the service because they did not wish it to continue, we have a right to put certain straight questions to them. Did anyone in the Foreign Office sit down and try to assess what would happen if Albania, forced by geography to part company with her only ally, China, estranged already from the enveloping power of Russia, were forced to look Westward? Albania is already slowly opening towards the West in terms of trade and tourism; and politically, however belatedly, she may have to follow other nations. The quiet objective encouragement to do so which she has been receiving from the B.B.C. during 26 years has been silenced exactly when it might have been most crucial. Do the Government argue that Britain will have no possible interest in affecting such a development?
Are the Government perfectly content that, whereas we were first in the league table of overseas broadcasters, to-day we are sixth, having just been passed by West Germany? It is true that others were passing us before the present Government assumed power, but at least we were maintaining or slowly increasing our output. We were losing ground relatively, not absolutely. To-day we are reducing, and this must look to the listening world like the first signs of abdication.
My Lords, I make no apology for dwelling at such length on the tiny, isolated country of Albania, because this is the only case of total closure of a service and the dismembering, dismantling, dispersing of a team which was the envy and admiration of other broadcasting nations. Perhaps I should have declared an interest, although certainly not a commercial interest, in that I am Chairman of the Anglo-Albanian Society and
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survived some of the most uncomfortable weeks of my life there in the course of the war. But I have one more question to ask the Government on Albania. Have they completely ignored the fact that a large proportion of Albanians are illiterate and that therefore the value of sound radio is multiplied? This is the age of the transistor radio. The noble Lord, Lord Hankey, referred to the transistor radio. It has reached Albania in large numbers. It is therefore more important than before that we have a "hot line" to individuals in an isolated country, albeit a one-way hot line. It is valuable to them and should be valuable to us.
My Lords, before closing I shall say a word or two about the Arabic broadcasts which have been, by a sweep of the same axe, reduced from 12 hours to 10 hours a day. Again, the timing of this seems to me completely incomprehensible. Here it has been possible to carry out audience surveys. These have borne out the fact that our Arabic broadcasts are able to compete successfully in the medium-wave area with their only serious rival, the "Voice of the Arabs"; that is to say, the voice of Colonel Nasser. Also, where short-wave reception is good, in Morocco for instance, the audience has grown. Symptomatically, there has been a mounting demand for Huna London, the fortnightly radio magazine of the Arabic services, which began in 1960 with a circulation of 10,000 and which has now had, so far, to be held down to a ceiling of 50,000 despite requests well above that figure. The cuts that I have referred to are made, bewilderingly, at a time when competition from local Arab stations is intensifying as they improve their technical facilities. We may soon be left behind by them as well, providing yet another laurel crown for Colonel Nasser.
I think it fair, in fact I think it imperative, to couple this with the decision to withdraw from Aden precisely when the Egyptians were preparing to pull out their troops from the Yemen—preparations sharply and understandably reversed at the direct cost of Britain's interests and the direct cost of those we were protecting. Taking all this into account, it would not astonish me to learn that Mr. Harold Wilson and President Nasser exchanged Valentines three weeks ago.

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My Lords, what worries me, and certainly not me alone, is the apparent lack of grasp by those most closely concerned in Government, as to the nature and importance of broadcasting as a cost effective influence. This is something which can be built up only gradually, though it can be destroyed very suddenly. It cannot be turned on and off like a searchlight. Other noble Lords have drawn attention to this, but I do not believe that it can be said too often. Even in times of economic stringency there is one way for Britain to invest with the minimum of outlay, and that is by investing in the strength and credibility of the B.B.C.'s broadcasting. It is an asset which no other country can rival. To strike at its roots is an act of policy designed to bring despair to many millions of people in other lands, and one which should bring shame on the Government which bears the blame.
5.1 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD CHALFONT): My Lords, I should like first to join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Alport, for introducing this interesting debate to-day. I had been about to open my remarks by saying that it was a debate of great seriousness and of much intellectual depth, but the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, in a characteristically pugnacious speech, carried us swiftly from the realms of intellectual analysis into the familiar realms of polemics. I can assure the noble Lord that I was not numbed by what happened in your Lordships' House this afternoon, as he suggested—indeed, I was stimulated by much of what was said before the noble Lord contributed to our debate.
The noble Lord suggested that the Government had been chastised. I saw no chastisement, until he rose. Concern was expressed—and even, on some occasions, congratulations—at the quality of the country's information services. But I beg the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, not to be concerned at his failure to comfort me. If ever the noble Lord set out to comfort me in this House, I should really begin to believe that I was in serious trouble; and I am not in serious trouble. My back is not against the wall. I have no need, nor do I propose, to enter into any apologia this
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afternoon, or make a backs-to-the-wall explanation. What I have to say will, I think, convince your Lordships that we have no intention of abdicating from our duty to make the British voice clearly heard overseas by all the means at our disposal.
As the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, has attacked with such vigour—more vigour, perhaps, than accuracy—on the subject of the Albanian Service, perhaps I might deal with that first. Let me deal with his suggestion that no improvements or increases have been made in our information services which could possibly be said to compensate for the cuts that have been, and are being, made. In this, as in many other respects, the information of the noble Lord is notably unreliable.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, may I get this straight? The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, started off by talking about Albania. Is he now saying, as he appears to be, that the Albanian Service is being expanded? Because he said that he was going to talk about Albania, and he now seems to have passed to something completely different.
LORD CHALFONT: Perhaps if the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, would allow me to finish just one tiny little sentence, I could explain to him what I was about to say. I was about to say that although there have been cuts in services, including the Albanian Service, the noble Lord seemed to suggest in his speech that there had not been compensating increases elsewhere. I am about to point out, if the noble Lord will bear with me, that we have in fact increased broadcasting. And we plan to increase by about 30 hours a week the B.B.C. broadcasts throughout the world—in the World Service, the African Service and the Latin American Services. As the noble Lord will know, this increase will more than outweigh the reductions due to the closing of the Albanian Service, which represented 2½ hours a week, and the reduction in the Arabic Service of 14 hours a week.
Having made that point, I should like to make a point which I consider of even greater importance. This talk of a "league" of broadcasting, and the number of hours of broadcasting, is really a ludicrous over-simplification of the

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whole of this complicated problem. To talk about broadcasting hours as though they were some sort of grocer's commodity is a totally false way to approach this great problem. We have to take other factors into account as well. Not only the broader factor of the revolution in the whole business of communications (and at the moment none of us can see how it will develop) but also matters like audibility. As other noble Lords have said, it is no good broadcasting for hours if the people on the receiving end cannot hear you.
In all this there is a need for careful examination and planning. We have, of course, to plan for the use of our resources right across the field of policy and all round the world. This has to be done, as I have said, by long and careful examination and by serious and imaginative planning. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, who is so ready to accuse people of frivolity, will not be so frivolous as to suggest that Her Majesty's Government have carried out these measures, or will carry out any decisions in the future, without the long and careful consideration that they demand.
May I now pass from exchanging un-pleasantries to a more serious consideration of some of the factors which have been brought up in the debate this afternoon. As the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, pointed out, it is a long time—it is almost four years—since your Lordships last debated the overseas information services, and of course a great deal has happened since then. It has happened in the field of technical capability; in our picture of this country's place in the world and in the impressions of this country that we want to stress abroad. These things have changed, and consequently there is a need to change the shape and balance of the information services themselves. I therefore welcome this opportunity to reaffirm the importance which the Government attach to the information services; and I was pleased to notice the close interest shown by noble Lords, and in many cases the appreciation which was expressed of our efforts.
In recent months public discussion of the information services—somewhat inevitably, I suppose—has been centred
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largely on the issue of cuts and reductions. The noble Lord, Lord Alport, and other noble Lords referred to this. I hope that I can do something, in the brief time which I shall allow myself, to correct this picture, to put it into a better context, and I hope that I can satisfy your Lordships that we believe in the projection overseas of an intelligent and imaginative British voice and image just as deeply and profoundly as any Member of your Lordships' House. It was inevitable, I think, that in the last two years some restriction had to be placed on these services, along with public expenditure as a whole; and the House will be aware that these restrictions have necessarily borne very heavily on expenditure overseas, for reasons I need not go into again in this debate.
Just as important, and just as unfortunate, if we look at this thing from the ideal point of view, has been the necessary slowing down of some developments that were already planned. But I should like to emphasise that none of this has prevented change and improvement. In the last two years new programmes have been introduced and old ones have been developed. Above all, we have tried to switch the emphasis to those activities which seemed likely to make the greatest contribution to the country's present needs; which means, first and foremost, the export drive. We have tried to give a harder and a sharper cutting edge to our services, at the expense of what one of your Lordships referred to in the debate four years ago as the, "thatched cottage" image of Britain. Perhaps I might first explain what I believe should be our general objective.
I said—and other noble Lords have made it abundantly clear—that the development of modern communication systems makes our overseas information effort more important every day. That much is obvious and common ground. But I would go further and say that it may well be that we can exert our influence abroad as well—perhaps even better—by the imaginative and dynamic use of communications and information as by the infinitely more expensive method of maintaining defence forces scattered thinly at a few points around the world. This is not a plea for any precipitate withdrawal from our overseas bases or

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any suggestion that this is what will win. It is simply a suggestion that, for example, a broadcasting service that can reach a dozen countries may, in the coming years of this country's development, be worth a lot more to us than a battalion of troops pent up in a not particularly friendly society, and certainly would be an infinitely cheaper way of going about the job.
It is from this general point of view that I approach the present criticism of our effort. It is for this reason, among others, that the Government have recently set in hand an overall review of the information services under Sir Harold Beeley. But, first of all, let me set out the facts of the information services as they are now and how we plan them to be. What the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has said about the importance of China and of Latin America in the power structure of the world in future is common ground between us. I believe, as he obviously does, that these may be the key to the whole international structure over the next fifteen or twenty years or perhaps for the rest of this century. Of course, in saying that I appreciate that we shall have to ensure that there will be long-term plans for information services over the whole field of foreign policy to take this into account.
Perhaps, before I outline some of the facts and give a few figures about our information services, I may say that I think there is a great deal of force in what a number of noble Lords have said about the appalling effect on our reputation overseas of this habit—I might almost say, programme—of self-denigration that is going on in our society at the moment. We deplore this as much as any noble Lord in the House. This is not to say that there is no room for healthy self-criticism. Indeed, a society that ceases to criticise itself becomes unhealthy and very dangerous. But where much of this self-criticism loses its sense of proportion is in this attitude, this reaction, to the way in which the Government, this Government or any other, decide to allocate their resources.
The resources of this country are limited, as everyone realises, and there has to be a system of priorities for allocating them. Only this afternoon we heard the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, comparing
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in a not too specific way the cost of the overseas information services and the cost of the Territorial Army. I am not in any way agreeing with the noble Lord in his suggestion that we ruined or tried to ruin, or nearly ruined, the Territorial Army. My point is simply that it may be true that the Territorial Army costs only £28 million and the overseas information services cost only £28 million, but all these "onlies" add up to the fact that we have to cut our coat according to the cloth we have available. If every time the Government propose to bring their effort within our resources by some form of economy someone is going to complain, then of course the attitudes of criticism are bound to overspill into attitudes of self-denigration.
May I deal with the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Alport, that it would be wise to have a Minister responsible for co-ordinating our overseas information services? We have not, of course, any such Minister; nor are there any plans to appoint one. But I would point out that Ministers of Departments are charged in the normal course of their departmental duties with the co-ordination of their own information services.
LORD GLENDEVON: My Lords, when the Minister says that Ministers in Departments are charged with coordination, this begs the whole question. Co-ordinate where, if the Minister co-ordinates inside his own Department?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, each Minister in his Department has the responsibility for co-ordinating the information activities of that Department. In addition, there is the normal process of co-ordination that goes on inside Government through the Cabinet and the Committees of the Cabinet. I would point out that at the present time the Government see no reason for superimposing any further co-ordinating process upon that.
While the information services overseas are part of our general representational services, as your Lordships will know, information officers attached to our diplomatic posts abroad are normally members of the Diplomatic Service. All the members of the Diplomatic Service are trained to realise that information work is part of their responsibilities and

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even in small diplomatic posts abroad, where there is no special information officer, one of the staff will usually be assigned to deal with information work as part of his duties, making use of the supporting material supplied by the C.O.I.
Reference has been made to the Report on the representational services prepared in 1964 by the Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, and endorsed by the previous Administration. This Report stressed that information work is essentially an activity designed to further policies. Perhaps I may here say that the reductions so far made and planned in the United Kingdom based staff of the information services overseas are fully in accordance with the recommendations of the Plowden Committee. This Committee commended the principle of using Diplomatic Service officers for information work, after they had been suitably trained in it, with the addition of some specialist staff with special training and knowledge of film work or journalism.
The Committee stressed—and this is a point already made by the noble Lord, Lord Nathan—that information services must not come to regard themselves as purveyors of information as an end in itself. The essential requirement is to present the British point of view on issues where British interests are at stake. This is the crux of the whole problem. The Committee went on to underline this point, if it needed underlining, by saying that our information effort should concentrate on projects which really matter to us. I think that in some of the comments and criticisms made this afternoon the question of British interests and the projects which really matter to us has sometimes been overlooked. The Committee—and this is relevant to the criticisms by the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, of the B.B.C.'s action in the case of the Albanian Service—
LORD ST. OSWALD: It was not the B.B.C.'s action.
LORD CHALFONT: On the contrary, it was the B.B.C.'s action. The Government informed the B.B.C. that after the end of the present financial year they could not subscribe any further to the Albanian Service. It was the B.B.C.'s decision to end the Albanian Service when
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they did. The Report went on, as I have said, to endorse the recommendation of the Drogheda Report that the Overseas Information Services should aim at reaching "the influential few", the people who moulded public opinion in most countries. It went on to argue that:
"Our information effort should be as discriminating in its choice of targets as in its choice of themes."
They said—and I am sure the noble Lord will agree with this stricture—that they were:
"sceptical of the value of information work of a generalised character, such as the 'Projection of Britain' ".
Information work is of great importance in connection with our general policy objectives. As I have said, it is the duty of every British diplomat abroad to be fully acquainted with the Government's policies in his particular field, and also to have a wide knowledge of British affairs generally, in order to be able to intervene effectively in discussions or conversations or when he is questioned or challenged about these policies and matters. But it is the particular task of the information officer and his staff not only to be able to present our policies in every field realistically and convincingly to his contacts, but to seek positively for useful outlets for the dissemination of British views through all the media of communication in the country where he is stationed, selecting whichever method seems to him most appropriate in the circumstances. It is his special job to keep the news "professionals", such as the editors of political, social and economic and other journals, and television and radio editors, fully informed of developments and official thinking in this country. There are many cases where the most careful, detailed and painstaking explanation of our policies is required if they are not to be oversimplified or, indeed, distorted.
All this presupposes a very high degree of intelligence, ability and personality in our information officers; and it presupposes, also, a high-powered, selective and imaginative co-ordination at home of these services as a whole. The Government attach great importance to getting the very best men and women into their information work, as indeed they do into all sectors of diplomatic activity. I think

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it is often forgotten, and sometimes ignored, that our information officers in the field, in particular, are in a very exposed, responsible and often vulnerable position. I suggest that, in the circumstances, they do an extremely good job. Our Diplomatic Service is generally recognised throughout the world to be one of the best, if not the best, informed in the whole of the diplomatic community of any country—certainly any country that I have visited. And I say again that I am most grateful for, and appreciative of, the remarks made by the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, who has himself a deep and first-hand knowledge of these matters.
I mentioned earlier the question of export promotion. I think it true to say that recently the first priority of our information effort has been assistance to the export drive. Trade promotion and publicity for our industrial effort, designed to help British exporters, now accounts for more than half of C.O.I's. total output. The objective is to create a climate of favourable opinion and respect for British products overseas. We have carried out special campaigns on such issues as Britain's achievement in subjects like scientific techniques of desalination and British developments in atomic energy.
As I said earlier, it is easy to give these examples, but one cannot easily quantify information work. Any statistics of material placed, or hours broadcast, or cuttings removed from the local Press, can be very misleading. I think it is obvious that an article on Britain published prominently in a major newspaper, or a T.V. programme shown at a peak time on a major network, is much more valuable to our work than any number of similar "placings", as they are called, of a less influential character. A good information officer always has to weigh his effort in terms of the real effect he has achieved, and not in terms of the amount of paper he has distributed or the amount of hours of broadcasting he has originated. I should have liked to give some examples of the measures our information services have put in hand, but time does not allow.
I think it is worth mentioning the special participation in the events concerned with the Canadian Centennial celebrations this year. Here, the British Information Service, the C.O.I. and the British Council have co-operated in
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arranging this at a cost of about £3 million. The main item is, of course, our pavilion at the Montreal Exhibition, which portrays British history, British genius, British industry and, indeed, the whole context of Britain's role in the modern world.
In addition to supporting and giving impetus to our export drive, the information services have also given support for British policies on specific issues, especially in foreign, Commonwealth and Defence questions. One of the specific measures which we have taken recently in this connection has been the development of what we call the 'hot line" radio tape operation. Everything these days seems to be called a "hot line"—I am not sure why. By this means we have arranged for important ministerial statements made by a Minister to be relayed direct to radio stations in the English-speaking world overseas, and especially the United States and Commonwealth countries.
Another development has been the making of special arrangements to ensure that our diplomatic posts overseas get the full text not only of major Government statements but also of important exchanges in Parliament with the least possible delay. As the Hansard reporters type out their Record of any debate a photographic copy of this can be transmitted direct from a machine in the Palace of Westminster to the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Office and to C.O.I. headquarters, from which it can be transmitted promptly by radio, Telex and cable services to our diplomatic posts throughout the world. I mention these facts simply to indicate that we have tried to make the British Information Service overseas a more efficient, refined, and elegant instrument of support for British policies on specific issues. At the same time, and in line, as I have said before, with the arguments supported in the Plowden Report, we have cut back, to some extent, on the more general and "soft" publicity of the "Projection of Britain Type".
Alongside this concentration of effort on what we think are the fields of maximum priority, we have been redeploying our resources to take account of the development of new communications media. Perhaps the most striking example of this has been the development of the C.O.I.'s work on material for

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television and newsreels, which has more than doubled in the last five years, even when allowance is made for increased costs. Money has been found for this development by cutting back somewhat on other activities, such as photographs and magazines. In addition to the material which it gets from the B.B.C. and I.T.V., the Central Office of Information itself now produces 26 weekly 10–15 minute newsreels, news magazines and T.V. programmes, many produced especially for specific audiences. The C.O.I. also produces a service of television news items for 75 countries. The task of the C.O.I. is to make these programmes attractive to station programmers and their audiences, while at the same time getting across the British policies and the trade and industrial factors that lie behind them. The development of colour television has presented the overseas information services with a great challenge and a great opportunity.
LORD RHODES: My Lords, I feel I must interrupt at this juncture. Last year there was an immense interest in World Cup football, and in South-East Asia the people were desperate to see some of the films which had been made. Sixteen millimetre films were what they wanted, but when I returned home and inquired about them I found that the 16 millimetre film rights had been sold to the Swiss. I do urge that this question of keeping abreast with what is interesting in places like that should be kept in the forefront of our minds.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, so far as World Cup Football is concerned, of course this was a matter of enormous pervasive interest throughout the world, but although my noble friend has pointed out that there were gaps in the means of making this world-shaking event easily available throughout the world, I should like to point out that I myself was abroad, a long way from London, at the time of the World Cup but I saw the Cup Final live on television, as indeed did one of my colleagues who was even further away than I was. He was in San Francisco but, in the middle of an extremely heavy programme of diplomatic activities, he also managed to see the final of the World Cup. I do not deny
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that my noble friend has a point when he says that matters of this sort must be kept in the forefront of our minds when we are thinking of the ways in which to plan and produce our information services. I can assure him that they are always kept well in mind.
I should like to mention one other point which has to do with the British Council and English language teaching. This has been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, the noble Lord, Lord Alport, and other noble Lords. It is true that, in the case of the British Council, probably its most important activity has remained that of English language teaching. In the early days this was done in British Institutes run by the Council, but the worldwide demand for knowledge of the English language, mentioned earlier in the debate, has now reached such a proportion that new methods have had to be devised. To-day the Council's general policy is to co-operate with Ministries of Education overseas in the training of local teachers of English, and the organisation of training courses for teachers of English in many countries overseas has become one of the Council's main activities.
The Council now has more than sixty English language teaching experts serving in Commonwealth countries alone. During 1965 about 250 British teachers ran training courses and summer schools in countries throughout the world, which were attended by some 4,000 teachers and prospective teachers of English. All these courses are supplemented by further training in the United Kingdom by overseas experts and by advice from the Council on syllabuses, textbooks and so on.
I fully agree that the demand for English language teaching is so great that it is clear we cannot meet it by ourselves. But, as the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, so often stresses, special efforts must be made if the English spoken in different parts of the world is to remain mutually comprehensible. Therefore, we have taken special steps to promote Anglo-American co-operation in this field. Indeed, since the last Anglo-American Conference on this subject, which was held at Ditchley Park in 1965, there have been some promising developments in such co-operation, such as the inclusion of American teachers alongside Indian

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and British teaching staff at summer schools for the English language in India.
I should like briefly, in passing, to mention another activity in which the British Council plays a major part. I should have liked to go into it in more depth and detail, but I will mention in passing that a great deal of the activities of the British Council now take account of, and concentrate on, the need for better relations for cultural and other communications with the countries of Eastern Europe as well as the countries with which we are more habitually in contact.
Perhaps I might say a brief word about the field of overseas broadcasting.
LORD HILL OF LUTON: My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me, before he departs from the subject of the British Council, to ask him one question? Is he not going to seek to justify what is in fact an absolute cut in the real resources to be made available to the British Council, which in fact end all development and deny them resources to the tune of 4 per cent.? Is he not going to justify that step?
LORD CHALFONT:My Lords, with regard to this question of financing the overseas information services generally, and the activities of the British Council in particular, I think I really must refer again to my remark that the cuts in these services, and the proposed cuts, do not go beyond any of the recommendations made in the last full and comprehensive review of information services that we had by the Plowden Committee. I think that the cuts that have been made were made in consultation with the British Council and with their advice, and perhaps it may be better to concentrate on the future plans for our information services in the round rather than to concentrate too much on single aspects of them.
LORD GLENDEVON: My Lords, did the Minister say "with their advice", or did I mishear him?
LORD CHALFONT: I said "in consultation with the British Council".
LORD GLENDEVON: I think the noble Lord added "and with their advice".
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, with their advice. I imagine that consulting with anybody of the status of the British Council would involve listening to their advice.
I do not want to detain your Lordships too long, but I should like to say a few words about overseas broadcasting, which is such an important subject and, as I hinted before, one of the most important developments during the last few years has been the steps taken to improve the strength of the B.B.C.'s overseas transmissions, to try to ensure that they can be heard properly by the audiences to which they are directed. It is no good putting out the best programmes in the world if nobody can hear them. This, the modernisation of radio transmitters and the construction of new relay stations, is the most expensive part of our overseas information programme, and the need to find money to press on with this programme at a time when overall expenditure had to be contained was a major factor in the recent cuts in other plans for overseas information work, to which reference has been made.
During 1964, as many of your Lordships will recall, Sir Thomas Rapp was asked to review the work of the B.B.C. External Services, and in August, 1965, the Government welcomed his Report, the most important part of which was concerned with recommendations for capital expenditure on transmitters to improve the audibility of B.B.C. programmes. The most important new relay station to be constructed for many years, that on Ascension Island, has now virtually been completed, and despite particular local difficulties arising from the nature of the soil and the situation, which made the construction of this station unexpectedly expensive, short-wave transmissions from Ascension to West and Central Africa and to Latin America have begun. And new programmes are planned, as I said earlier in reply to Lord St. Oswald's point about robbing Peter to pay Paul.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I think I am right in saying that this station is going to work on a lower capacity than was originally intended.
LORD CHALFONT: Even within the present Planned capacity of the programme we shall be putting out 30 hours

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a week more broadcasting in these African and Latin American services. This more than compensates for the cuts and proposed cuts in the Albanian and Arabian services. We confidently expect that the new relay station will make a great difference to the ease with which the B.B.C. can be heard. I ask the noble Lord to accept this point: that the audibility of broadcasts is as important a factor in overseas broadcasting as the number of hours broadcast.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I am sorry to be obtuse, but is the noble Lord telling me, if my mathematics are correct, that there are 30 hours or more broadcasting a week going out than there were before, less the two hours reduction in the Arabian broadcasts and the cancellation of the Albanian broadcasts? What he is saying, I understand, is that there are 27½ hours more broadcasting going out than before. Unless he is saying that, I have not followed.
LORD CHALFONT: In attempting to clarify the point the noble Lord has notably confused it. What I was saying was this—let me try to explain it again as simply as I can. We plan certain cuts in the Albanian service, something of the order of 2½ hours a week, and in the Arabian service of something of the order of 14 hours a week. That is on the debit side. The noble Lord suggested there was nothing on the credit side. There is something on the credit side. There will be 30 hours more broadcasting a week from Ascension to Latin America and Africa.
Before leaving this matter of the B.B.C.'s External Services, perhaps I might make mention of one other point. This is the action that has been taken to alter the shape and expand the extent of the B.B.C.'s broadcasts to Central and Eastern Europe following the cessation of jamming in 1963 and 1964. As a result, it was possible to abandon the previous concentration on getting the news through and to provide a more elaborate coverage of life in Britain to help meet what has been referred to as the insatiable curiosity of the populations in some of the Communist countries about life in the outside world.
In conclusion, I should like to mention in more detail the review of the overseas
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information services which Sir Harold Beeley is at present undertaking. It is now nearly five years since the last full-scale review of these services was undertaken. At the present time we are facing a particularly difficult task in reconciling the general need to contain public expenditure with the importance to the national interest of providing adequate support for these information services, which noble Lords have so correctly underlined. The Government, therefore, decided to ask Sir Harold Beeley to carry out a review of the overseas information services, with particular reference to the need to reconcile their effectiveness with the need to contain public expenditure. This is not, as one noble Lord suggested, a derogation of the responsibilities in the policy-making field from the Government to an official. This is a normal exercise in the modern idiom of cost-effectiveness to ensure that we make the best use of our resources in this field. Perhaps I might mention, in a parochial vein, how hard I find it to spare Sir Harold Beeley from our disarmament interests in Geneva. I think the fact that a high-ranking official with an important post can be spared for this examination shows the importance we attach to having a thorough and first-class survey made.
Sir Harold Beeley was not asked to make any assumptions, one way or the other, about our expenditure on the services. The suggestion, made by one noble Lord, that we are proposing cuts first and asking questions after, reminded me (I think it occurs in one of the "Alice" books), of the expression "sentence first and verdict after". This is not the case. Sir Harold Beeley has not been asked to make any assumptions about the size of the service, but has been asked to report on the way our resources can best be deployed.
In view of the need for speed—it will be a departmental review, carried out within the diplomatic departments—Sir Harold has been asked to report by May. He has already held consultations with the B.B.C., the British Council and the Central Office of Information, and he is at present in the middle of a heavy programme of visits to some of our most important diplomatic posts in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. During these visits he will be meeting leading Press people, and anyone else he can find

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who is relevant and interested to observe the impact of our information services, as well as to confer with our own representatives and officials and the representatives and officials of other Governments; and he will doubtless read with very much interest the Record of your Lordships' comments to-day.
Reference has been made to the transistor revolution and to the fact that we are moving into a new era in communications technology, as, of course, we are. Of this there can be no doubt. It is almost impossible now to go to any country in Africa, Asia or Latin America without being impressed by the enormous pervasiveness of this transistor revolution. One sees peasants with very little of the other material comforts of life, operating very often crude agricultural implements, but always with their little transistor set by their side. This, of course, is an important development, but there is an even more important development looming on the horizon. It is the possibility, which I think will become a fact before too long, that the transistorised television set will be almost as familiar an instrument of communications as the transistor radio set is to-day.
We are moving into an era in which television transmission from and through satellites will enable us to make direct broadcasts from our television transmission stations to domestic sets all over the world. Very soon we shall have removed the need for expensive central relay stations of the Goonhilly Down type, and countries with the technical ability to do so will be able to transmit television programmes direct from their own stations to the domestic television sets of countries all over the world.
Apart from its immense implications for the conduct of political affairs around the world, this is going to need, and in fact is already needing, an entirely new approach to the concept of overseas information. The whole business of communications technology is moving into a new dimension. To those of your Lordships who are familiar with the works and thinking of Marshall MacLuhan and his concept of the global village all this will be familiar: the idea that people's thinking is going to be conditioned in the future not only by the message that we convey but by the medium that we use to convey it.
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We are beginning the process of an immense and comprehensive revolution in education and communication, and we are going to face the need for an internationalist view rather than a parochially nationalist view of matters like education. We have to begin to understand how we can break down the more restrictive boundaries of nation States and national sovereignty. This is an enormous challenge. As the noble Lord, Lord Bourne said, there is a military analogy that could be used here. As the strength of your forces diminishes, so the need for your intelligence and information becomes the greater.
As our physical and our military presence around the world diminishes, there will of course be a need for sophisticated, refined and well-found information services. But we must not fall into the fallacy of thinking that it is simply a matter of increasing or keeping at the present level the existing facilities and the existing techniques. Nor is this technically a case of more or less money. This is a matter of active planning, of new ideas and new concepts. This country has been in the forefront of this exciting area of human endeavour and international relations in the past, and we intend to be in the forefront in the future.
5.51 p.m.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I am sure that your Lordships would wish me to thank those noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. The first of your Lordships to do so was the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton. I am sure that it would be the wish of the House that I should say that we hope that this, I think only the second of his speeches in this House in a period of years, may be the forerunner of many more, and that he will be able to give more time to our deliberations than has been possible in the past.
I think your Lordships will agree that we had a most touching speech from Lord Gridley, full of grim memories, and we are grateful to him. Also, we had from a number of your Lordships—Lord Glendevon, Lord Norwich, Lord Hankey and Lord Erroll of Hale—speeches relating to their own personal experiences of the activities and success of the British information services overseas. From Lord Rhodes, Lord Bourne and Lord Nathan we had speeches on

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the same lines covering other parts of the world and other parts of British information services activities.
This has not really been a debate at all. It has been a one-sided argument, put forward for the benefit of the Government, all of which leads to one conclusion only; namely, that so far as your Lordships are concerned, the importance of the British information services is increasing and they deserve all the support which the country, Government and people alike, can give to them; that they are the instrument for the future, taking the place of other more traditional forms of the exercise of influence and power overseas; that they are of advantage to our economic and political efforts, and to the cultural contribution that we can make to the world.
I must declare quite frankly to the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont—I am sure he will not be angry with me—that his reply did not do justice to the subject which we are discussing. At one point early in his speech the noble Lord said that there was to be an imaginative and dynamic development in the information services. To be quite honest, he then proceeded to outline that the policy of the Government at the present time seemed to be based upon Drogheda and Plowden. He also gave us some information of a new "hot line" which appears to be a method by which ministerial statements are conveyed in the minimum time to foreign broadcasting stations. I must say—and I am sure that mine is not the only cynical mind in your Lordships'House—that I felt that the liability in which that would involve us was so great that, so far from it being a development to be applauded, and upon which the Government should be congratulated, it was one which we should feel greatly alarmed about in regard to the possible effects upon the reputation of this country overseas.
I do not say that entirely in order to try to be lighthearted in this serious subject. The whole of this section of the noble Lord's speech showed, I thought, how little the Government understand the subject of information. People do not want to hear ministerial statements. They do not really want to hear the details of British Government policy. The noble
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Lord, Lord Rhodes, was absolutely right when he said that what they wanted to hear was the tremendous success of the British football team in the World Cup. They want to hear the achievements of the British people, not what political leaders are saying about what they are going to do or what they are not going to do, or how they are going to handle internal or external affairs in Britain.
This really applies to all Governments. Let us be fair: we all fall into the same trap when the responsibilities of office come to us. We think that all that matters is what we say and what our Government does. You have only to be out of politics, out of Parliament and out of the Government long enough to realise that the majority of people in this country, and the majority of people abroad, are not in the slightest bit interested in the sort of subjects that politicians regard as being the meat and drink of the economic and cultural life of the country. I say this seriously. I believe strongly that if in fact the speech of the noble Lord reflects the attitude of the Government to the information services, then this debate and all that we have said in it about the importance of the information services is fully justified, because they do not understand it.
There is nothing that we in this House can do about it at the present time. I only hope that what has been said here will sink into the minds of the Government's advisers and Ministers, and that they will apply themselves to proper planning, using a dynamic imagination, or whatever it may be, to ensure that the information services are properly used in the interests, not of the Government, but of the people of this country, the people of Britain. As I say, there remains nothing for me to do except to express that hope.
I suppose that one could refuse to withdraw this Motion by way of some empty protest. But I am told, rightly or wrongly, that if I did so, then in due course a pantechnicon would arrive from the Stationery Office containing all the documents that are relevant to the subject of British information services. My family are allergic to official papers of all sorts. In order to avoid that, yet hoping that we can leave in the minds of the Minister and his colleagues the feeling that we are most dissatisfied with

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what he has said and with the way in which he has approached this particular problem, I will not press the Motion. But I trust that that will be borne in mind. If I have made my point I am satisfied, and I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

DISARMAMENT
5.58 p.m.
LORD HENDERSON LORD HENDERSON rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has made made since the recent convening of the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to ask the Unstarred Question which stands on the Order Paper in my name. I believe there will be a general desire in all parts of the House to hear from the Minister of State with special responsibility for disarmament matters what progress has been made in disarmament discussions and negotiations, both before and since the resumption of the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. My own remarks will therefore be reasonably brief.
In earlier disarmament debates we have sought to emphasise the importance we all attach to progress in the negotiations which have been going on for a very long time. We all recognise that there is no aspect of international affairs in which it is more urgent that the nations of the world should move towards understanding and agreement. The penalties for failing to do so, as we are all aware, are too awesome to contemplate. But, by contrast, the rewards that would follow from success would be felt and welcomed over the whole field of world affairs. There can be no surer way of reducing international tension and contributing to the new spirit of détente between East and West than by movement towards agreement on questions of arms control and disarmament. We know that Her Majesty's Government share these views and hopes, I believe that they have been working as vigorously as circumstances permit for progress in the disarmament field.
In particular, I would mention especially the valuable work of my noble friend Lord Chalfont, the Minister of
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State. During the weeks and months that the Geneva Conference was in recess he seemed to be in almost continuous discussion and negotiation, either at home or abroad, seeking to develop an increasing understanding of and support for the projected non-proliferation treaty. I think it is only right to recognise that he has worked hard, and I am sure that noble Lords in all parts of the House applaud his efforts. I do not doubt that during the same period he did not lose sight of the need for other arms control measures which we are all anxious to see the Geneva Conference bring to the stage of agreement. I will mention only one: the scheme for European arms control and balanced arms reduction which has been urged over a long period of time. I have no doubt that these were matters which came up for attention during the recent visit to London of the Polish Foreign Minister, Mr. Rapacki.
It would seem that we are now approaching a crucial stage in disarmament negotiations. For many months our hopes have been directed towards the possibility of an agreement to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons. My noble friend Lord Chalfont has told your Lordships on other occasions of the steps he has taken to pursue this vital agreement. I say "vital" because I think we shall all agree that there is no more important task in disarmament than to agree on provisions which would prevent the proliferation of these terrible weapons. Even now, when only five Powers possess nuclear weapons, the fear of nuclear war must always be present in our calculations. How much greater would be the danger if nuclear weapons spread still more widely!
If one can judge by reports, the prospects for progress to a non-proliferation agreement are now brighter than they have ever been. We know that there have been certain contacts between the United States and the Soviet Government; that they have been in continuing discussion of the terms of the proposed draft treaty; and that, while general agreement has been reached, the joint efforts to have a draft treaty on the table at Geneva continue. To get a draft treaty tabled is the important next step. It is, however, only right to recognise that there are misgivings and doubts on the part of non-nuclear States. These reactions have

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been well summarised by The Times, which has set out three areas of doubt in relation to the treaty. The first is how to guarantee the non-nuclear Powers against nuclear attack and blackmail. The second is how to enforce the provisions of the treaty. And the third is how to avoid cramping the industrial development of nuclear power.
If there is to be a non-proliferation treaty, these fears and doubts clearly cannot be ignored. They represent difficulty that must be resolved. It is my belief that, in the absence of such a treaty, little if any headway will be made in other spheres of arms control and disarmament. It is an urgent demand on the part of the non-nuclear States that there should be further measures of arms control and disarmament soon after agreement on the non-proliferation treaty, and that these should be measures which affect the nuclear powers as well as themselves. This, in effect, is a demand for some measure of balance of obligation. An example of such a further measure would be a comprehensive test ban treaty, which is something all in this House wish to see achieved. It is clearly necessary to achieve further steps towards disarmament of this nature if the non-proliferation treaty is to be fully acceptable to the non-nuclear States and is to endure. It would in my opinion be a real tragedy if the nuclear Powers were to fail to give these assurances which would enable the non-nuclear Powers to sign.
The Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee, as noble Lords know, has been charged by the international community with responsibility for conducting international negotiations on disarmament. It has now started its meeting once again in Geneva. I understand that its attention is particularly directed towards the non-proliferation question. What are the chances of success? We know that the first abortive proposal to avoid a nuclear arms race was made twenty years ago by the United States Government. We know how very long disarmament negotiations have been going on, and with what disappointing results. We know how long it took to get even a partial test ban treaty. Speaking for myself, I should be content if the one concrete result of the present session of the Geneva Conference was
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a non-proliferation agreement that would put an effective stop to the spread of nuclear weapons, for I believe that every new agreement is a stepping-stone on the way to the goal of general and controlled disarmament.
I realise that my observations have been largely directed to the question of getting a treaty to ban the further spread of nuclear weapons. That is because this particular issue is at the forefront of the Geneva Conference at present. I am, of course, only too well aware that there are other aspects of the problem of disarmament which we all want to see dealt with and in which we want to see progress made towards agreement. But it is not always easy to discover to what stage negotiations have been carried. That is, however, a disadvantage which can be overcome here, for we are fortunate to have as a Member of this House my noble friend the Minister of State who has special responsibility for disarmament matters, and to whose wide-ranging activities in this field I have already made reference. He is, as we know, very much in the current of disarmament affairs at the moment, because he has just come back from the Geneva Conference, and I understand that he will be leaving for Brussels to-morrow where he is to discuss with Euratom the complicated question of safeguards.
My noble friend has on earlier occasions given us detailed and informative accounts of how matters stand in the disarmament field. My Question is intended to serve the same purpose: to enable the Minister to give the House an up-to-date survey. It is my hope that he will to-day take us as far as he can into his confidence and tell us something about the present prospects for progress in disarmament negotiations, now that the Geneva Conference is again in session.
6.12 p.m.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, indicated, this is not really the occasion for a full dress debate on disarmament. But I am sure we are most grateful to him for giving us this opportunity of asking Her Majesty's Government some questions about their disarmament policy and the prospects for negotiations at Geneva. As the noble Lord said in his very informative speech, the non-proliferation agreement seems to have been holding the

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centre of the stage in recent months. But while no one would wish to deny, I least of all, the importance of calling a halt to the growth in the number of nations equipped with nuclear weapons, I think we need to aim for other objectives besides the non-proliferation agreement and want to keep within our vision rather wider horizons with regard to disarmament.
To my mind, the nations of the world, particularly the industrially-advanced nations, still continue to spend a shockingly large proportion of their wealth on armaments which they hope they will never have to use. Indeed, I believe the figures show that we are nowadays spending on armaments far more than was being spent by the rather belligerent nations which were around in the world just before the outbreak of the 1939 war, although we like to think that we are now living under rather more peaceful conditions. As the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, said, our final goal must still be major reductions in these armaments, under proper supervision and control, together with improvements in the peacekeeping capability of the United Nations because we shall never get one without the other.
Of course, I think we all realise that the achievement of this objective means travelling down a very long road, and we are well aware that disarmament is not just a technical matter which can be dealt with in isolation. There are a great many political problems which have to be overcome. By this I do not mean that the solution of certain political problems has to be a precondition for disarmament, but they must go hand in hand. All our experience has shown that we do not make progress on one unless we are making progress on the other. That is the reason why the disarmament policy of this country must be an integral part of the foreign policy and the defence policy of this country.
Having made those preliminary remarks, I should like to start by asking some questions about the non-proliferation treaty. I think it is perfectly obvious why the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom would favour the signing of a non-proliferation treaty, and I personally believe that it would be in the general interests of all the nations of the world. But I should like to know
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what inducements are going to be held out to those non-nuclear Powers which have a capability of becoming nuclear Powers, and may be threatened by an existing nuclear Power in the world. I have particularly in mind countries such as Sweden, Israel, Japan and, perhaps above all, India.
In the light of her recent history, India may well be threatened by a China armed with nuclear weapons, and China has given not the slightest indication that she would wish to sign a non-proliferation treaty or a test ban treaty. Indeed, she has made it perfectly clear that she means to build up her nuclear armaments. Under these circumstances, can we really expect India to renounce nuclear weapons for all time unless we can give her some very firm guarantees? But if we are going to give guarantees, there must be two partners, and I quite recognise some of the difficulties in which the Government find themselves in this respect. If the Government of India do not wish for a specific guarantee it is rather difficult to see how we are going to give one. But, nevertheless, this seems to me to be at the root of the problem with regard to the non-proliferation treaty. How do we give assurances and guarantees to those present non-nuclear Powers which may in the future be threatened by a nuclear Power?
Another problem which seems to have arisen over the non-proliferation treaty relates to the situation in Western Europe, and particularly the situation which might arise in Western Europe if at some time in the future it becomes a single political unit, at least to the extent of having a common foreign and defence policy. Would such a united Europe, of which Germany must inevitably be an integral part, be entitled to own and control nuclear weapons in common? If such a Europe were denied that possibility, I think I can quite well understand some of the misgivings which we hear about on the Continent at the present time.
Here the present British Government have in some ways a unique responsibility, as up till the time of the 1964 Election, and indeed during the 1964 Election, they proclaimed to the world that they would not wish to continue with an independent nuclear capability. As I understand it, there is really no

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longer any hope of progress towards an Atlantic nuclear force, and therefore presumably at some moment in the future they envisage the merging of the British nuclear capability into some larger unit. I hope that, when the noble Lord comes to reply, he can give us some reassurances on these matters in connection with the non-proliferation treaty, because I am sure we all agree that a non-proliferation treaty is a goal which seems to be most nearly within our grasp.
I should like to turn now for just one or two moments to other matters in the disarmament field. As indeed the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, did, I want to say a word about the extension of the test ban treaty, which as he said, is a related matter. Some of the non-nuclear Powers want to see whether the nuclear Powers mean to take any further steps to restrict the expansion and the improvement and the increased expenditure in which they indulge in the field of nuclear weapons.
I quite accept that the possibilities of extending the nuclear test-ban treaty to cover underground tests very largely depend upon the state of the art with regard to the detection and identification of underground explosions. Could we now be given some indication of the latest progress in the science of seismology? For instance, how many events below, say, a figure of 4·5 magnitude would remain unidentified by external control methods? Clearly, if a significant number of such events still remain unidentified by such control methods then we should be right to continue to ask for a very limited number of inspections.
I hope that we will stick to that position if the scientific arguments are there to support it, because if the Soviet Union really wish to extend this treaty I do not see why they should not concede a few inspections. After all, they have conceded this at various times in the past. It is true that they have then withdrawn their offers, but at certain moments in their history when they have wished to make progress in this matter they have not found it impossible to agree to a limited number of inspections. They did this throughout the period from 1959 until, I think it was, May, 1960, when they withdrew their agreement. Then, of course, Mr. Khrushchev again offered
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three inspections to President Kennedy in the latter part of 1962, and that offer remained open for a large part of early 1963. So if they really want the treaty, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Soviet Union might agree to a small number of inspections. Quite honestly, my Lords, if the Soviet Union cannot accept this very minimum amount of control, this least vexatious sort of control—a visit very occasionally by a small group of people under very strict supervision—then I fear that the chance of progress on major disarmament measures becomes increasingly slight.
On yet another matter, I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, whether we are still actively pursuing the idea of an exchange of observers in Europe. It always seemed to me that these would have some value in themselves, in that they would reduce the suspicion on either side with regard to the possibility of a surprise attack; and I think for fairly obvious reasons they could lead to an almost automatic reduction in forces on either side of what used to be called the Iron Curtain. If you know that the movements of all your forces are being very closely watched, it must in time occur to you that you are not offering a very serious threat to the other side. This becomes common knowledge on both sides, and then people begin to wonder whether it is really necessary to spend quite so much money on keeping very large forces formed up against each other in the centre of Europe.
I therefore think that simply having observers could lead to a certain amount of reduction in forces. I realise that in the past the Soviet Union have always demanded that a proposal of this kind should be linked with some reduction in forces, or at least in armaments, but it occurs to me that in the new climate of opinion in Europe, and particularly the new climate of opinion in Bonn, this might be a matter which is worth exploring again. As the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, said in his speech, there is an atmosphere of dtente about in Europe now so that these ideas which have been floated in the past and have failed to make progress are, I think, worth reviving at the present time.
Finally, I should like to ask the Minister about the latest "state of play" in regard to anti-ballistic missiles. I do not

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wish to prolong my speech by repeating what I have said in your Lordships' House in the past, about what I felt would be the disastrous consequences, both political and economic in nature, of a military escalation in this particular field. But could the Minister tell us in what direction the Soviet Union have agreed to a discussion of this matter with the United States? Have other countries any part to play? And is the conference at Geneva being kept informed about the progress of these talks? I am sorry to have asked the noble Lord so many questions, and I hope that I shall not provoke him into quite so long a reply as he made to the previous debate. Before I sit down, however, I would assure him that he has the good wishes and support of all of us from these Benches in his efforts at Geneva to create for us all a less dangerous and a more peaceful world.
6.27 p.m.
LORD SNOW: My Lords, I wish to speak for only a very few minutes, and I have to begin with an apology because, owing to the somewhat protracted nature of the last debate, I must I am afraid leave very shortly after I have sat down. I much regret this. It seems to me sheer bad manners, and a practice which is increasing in this House whereas it ought to be diminishing. All I can say is that I have an engagement which has been fixed for several months past and which has some remote connection with the subject under discussion.
I am going to confine what I say entirely to the nuclear situation. I think it is impossible to be too grave about this. I have heard it discussed since the atomic bomb first seemed a possibility, and every relevant discussion I have had since then—which would be 1940–41—has been less pessimistic than the events have justified. The whole process of nuclear armament has had what Einstein called "a weird inevitability" about it, and it has always been a weird inevitability pointing to disaster. There has been one slow slide in the direction which everyone in this House would most wish to avoid, with one tiny piece of hope—and that was the partial nuclear test-ban treaty in 1963. That was the one occasion when the situation seemed to be slightly reversed, when the slide was stopped.
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There are two parts of the nuclear situation. One is that at the moment we live in an equilibrium which appears moderately stable between the United States and the Soviet Union. As the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, has just said, there are technical innovations which might make this equilibrium much more unstable. In that case, our chances are worse. My own feeling, however, is that probably this large-scale equilibrium is likely to remain in being within the foreseeable future—at least, the future so long as politicians can begin to legislate for it. So I think that we can rest, not assured, because no one can rest assured in the circumstances in which we have to live our lives, but at least with the feeling that imminent disaster is somewhat unlikely.
Whether the effect of the minor nuclear Powers upon this major equilibrium has ever been serious, I confess I do not know. I suspect that we made a wrong calculation in ever investing in nuclear arms at all. I think we have got extremely little out of it for an enormous expenditure, and I would think that a good deal of this proliferation problem might have been more easily solved, not in the case of China but in the case of all other countries, if in fact we had not been in the business. However, that is arguable. I think it is quite possible to form a substantial argument, though in my view not a convincing one, on the other side. In any case, we are here now. I do not think that if we abandoned our own small nuclear arms to-morrow it would make any difference whatever to the present political and technical problems so that, I think, we can put on one side. What has worried me deeply for many years is what I must call the nth-power problem, the spread of these weapons to a number of countries. I made a speech seven years ago in New York and like almost all the speeches I make, it got me into a great deal of trouble. I said two extremely simple things. At that time there were three nuclear Powers in the world—or, rather, there were two and ourselves in our small way. I said that within ten years there would be six more nations possessing nuclear weapons and that, unless this process was stopped, within the same period some of those nuclear weapons

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would go off. I think I slightly underestimated the actual time, and ten years or perhaps fifteen years ago would have been a better bet.
On the second point I do not think I over-stated my case at all. I believe that if a number of small Powers possess these weapons, the chance, not of a major nuclear war but of these bombs being dropped, perhaps by accident but more likely in anger, becomes greater in direct proportion to the number of countries possessing them. I think there can be no doubt about that. We can all think of situations in the world where countries have obvious reasons for hostiliity. These bombs are very easily made—anyone can make a nuclear bomb—and in the circumstances to which I am referring you do not have to have any complicated method of delivery. Let us remember that the only two that were ever dropped were dropped by Western men without any complicated method of delivery at all.
This could be done easily by others. They could be made in circumstances which I do not want to specify—we do not want to create unnecessary alarms. I believe we can all think of circumstances in the present world where possession by one, two or three countries of the simple atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki would inevitably mean that one of these things would be dropped. If a nuclear bomb is dropped it may not mean a major nuclear war, but I should not like to bet too much money that we should not all ultimately be involved.
So, my Lords, the situation is grave and the time is short. If matters go along drifting, with this "wierd inevitability" it is extremely hard even for a stoical man to see any good fortune for the rest of human kind. Therefore, I attach great importance to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty at Geneva. If that can be signed—I agree it is not the only thing we want to have signed—this is one more tiny reversal of this dreadful process; and we shall all have something at least to console ourselves with, even if it is the grim, stoical reflection that the worst does not always happen.
We are in my view fortunate to have my noble friend Lord Chalfont negotiating for us in this matter. He has been exposed
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to a ridiculous amount of criticism which is so far from the truth that I do not know how it ever arose. This happens to be a particular concern of mine, so I am more familiar than most with some of the details of these things. To have anyone like my noble friend, with his military insight, his technical knowledge (picked up in some ways we do not know) and also—I think I must say this in the light of the end of the last debate—with his human concern, we are extremely fortunate. I do not believe that either side of the House could have picked a better qualified person to cope with this hideous situation. Therefore I should like to finish by wishing him, from myself and from my noble friends, all the luck in the world. If he has no luck, then I am afraid that a great many of us will not have any luck in the future.
6.35 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF BIRMINGHAM: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, for introducing the subject and for the statesmanlike speeches that we have listened to so far. Mine, I am afraid, cannot be in the same realm, and I shall confine it to the question of nuclear warfare and nuclear disarmament. I was very hesitant to speak in the debate knowing that I was to be followed by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, but my attention was drawn to a remark by a Minister of the Crown who is alleged to have said at the launching of the Polaris submarine that questions of decisions about deterrents were merely political and not moral questions, and that Bishops did not come into it at all. If he were reported aright, that is a situation with which I cannot hold in the least. I do not want to go back to the stage where the State was subservient to the Church as at Canossa, or as in some Eastern countries where the Church is entirely subservient; nor do I think it is quite clear that Cavour's idea of a free Church within a free State is really of much use. It sounded good at the time, rather like rendering unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's and unto God the things that are God's; but it has been to the detriment both of God and of Cæsar.
We need a State sensitive to and ready to understand some of the moral insights

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of a commanding and morally commanding Church. Whether we have a morally commanding Church or not is another matter. But we have the right to speak both as churchmen and also, I claim, as individuals. The fact that I happen to be a Bishop does not mean that I can know nothing whatever about cricket or the World Cup. Of course, I can. The only thing necessary is to make oneself as knowledgeable as one can.
On this question of nuclear warfare, we have a situation where we think it is morally wrong to initiate an attack by these ghastly weapons. Many of us would go further and say that to retaliate with them would be a morally wrong thing to do. The third idea is that it is morally right that we should take some pains to find out what defence we could make against others. There is very little we can make in the way of defence. So we are left with the question of whether it is a deterrent or not, and as to whether it plays its part in helping to stop the proliferation that is going on among nations. It is a moral question as well as a political question.
To what purpose is this waste?—because an enormous amount of money is wasted on this which might be used to a much greater effect for some of the purposes that we were discussing earlier in the day. I know some of the arguments. One is that we cannot go into a conference hall naked. No, not literally; but, metaphorically, why not? Has it not come to be a certain number of tokens or tablets with which we go into a conference and say: "We have another one up our sleeves here. We are willing to give up this one if you will give up that one"? Would it not be nobler and greater for us to say to the nations who have not got it: "We have not got it either"? I know that that will bring in all sorts of questions: whether America would not then look towards France or some other nation to try to help her with the military side of nuclear developments. So what, if they did?
We have been talking about the greatness of Britain. Is the greatness in our nuclear warheads? Is the greatness in the amount of our trade? Surely a great part of our greatness is in our moral willingness to take risks; and to take risks in such a way as to say: "We
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think it is morally wrong to have these weapons. We want the other nations to give them up. We will begin." Somebody must begin. I see no reason why we should not go down to history as one of the nations who began this great disarmament for which we are all longing.
6.40 p.m.
LORD SOPER: My Lords, we are grateful to my noble friend Lord Henderson for asking this Unstarred Question. We shall be more grateful for such capricious answers as may be elicited from my noble friend the Minister when he comes to reply. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, that this is not the occasion for a full-dress debate on this matter. At the same time I am going to presume to enlarge the area somewhat and to make a certain number of comments which spring from two sources. First of all, from the sense almost of gloom represented by my noble friend Lord Snow—and why not? He seemed to me to reiterate the cynicism of the American who said, "Nuclear energy is here to stay; the important question is, are we?" That is still the important question, and I still think that, apart from certain slight indications of improvement, the peril is probably as large as, or greater than, it was.
But I do not stand upon that circumstantial platform. I make no bones about it: I believe that in any debate on the question of disarmament it is right and proper that the pacifist position should be set forth. There may be in your Lordships' House those who regard the pacifist position as disagreeable, even repugnant. I would plead with them that it is possible from the pacifist position to exhibit like qualities of loyalty and true patriotism as those expressed in more martial forms. However, it is for a more important reason that I bring it to light and testify to it. A great predecessor in the office of Archbishop in the Church of England, Dr. Temple, to whom I owe so much, laid it down that it is a reputable and tenable position in the light of Christian theology to profess the Christian pacifist position. He did not—I do. I profess it, and I believe in total disarmament as being right and proper. Nevertheless, I do not want to delay your Lordships with an exposition, however theologically impeccable; I want

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merely to draw one or two conclusions in a more practical sphere which I believe, humbly, may be of some assistance to those who have so long and ardently pursued programmes of possible disarmament which are still unfruitful.
The first lies in the field of the sheer possession of arms. A man has a gun in his pocket; his mind is occupied by that gun, and ultimately his mind is perverted by that gun. I have come reluctantly but clearly to the conclusion that until we get rid of the gun it is impossible for us to think clearly. May I give one or two brief illustrations of this?
I found that a great many people were throwing their hats in the air and cheering lustily over the avoidance of war in the Cuban crisis by President Kennedy, and also, by inference, by President Khrushchev for his preparedness to climb down. I do not find any cause for comfort there. I believe that the Cuban crisis, for those who have the ability to think outside the periphery of weapons, demonstrated the utter falsity, the utter stupidity, of the argument of the deterrent. For if it be true that Khrushchev was not prepared to go to war, it is equally true that Kennedy was. That is the grim and terrible fact which I can never keep far from my own mind. The deterrent, in fact, did not work, in the sense that it did not deter Kennedy from going to within perhaps half-an-hour of the prosecution, not necessarily of a war that was atomic or nuclear in its inception, but a war which had all the capacity for such escalation.
My Lords, I have just come back from Malta. I went there on purely spiritual business. I did not occupy myself inquisitively in some other matters—I had neither the time nor the opportunity so to do; but I met a great number of Maltese people. There is no credit attached to us in the field of what they interpret to be the disarmament programme for withdrawing our troops because, as they firmly believe, we have done it for the wrong motives. Therefore it seems to me that in this matter, as in the matter of Aden, we are prepared in some circumstances to undertake programmes which are at least interpretable as disarmament programmes for reasons which are purely circumstan-
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tial and have nothing to do with morals. They are, in fact, reasons thrust upon us by economic necessity.
In this field, to begin to argue the case for disarmament, and to argue that case only on the ground that it may be necessary, in this particular circumstance or that, to proceed with a certain programme, without stating outside the category of violence that this is a morally right thing to do, is reminiscent of the kind of situation created by those people who, remembering a certain text in the New Testament about taking care and that "if you are going to lose your soul you might as well gain the world in the process", are prepared to barter the world as well as their souls.
This dereliction of intellectual and, I believe, truly sensible argument is one of the things which inevitably accompanies the possession of arms; and until a man is prepared to put away the gun, he will be occluded in his thought from any firm and final determination to secure other methods for his own defence, or the well being of his friends, or indeed his enemies. I say this, not because I do not believe it is necessary and desirable that we should pursue what multilateral programmes are possible, but because I am convinced (and I do not stand alone in this: there are many pacifists who agree with me; or rather I agree with them) that in the last analysis it is impossible to expect to have a right-thinking community until that community has endeavoured, by quite radical means, to discharge itself of the responsibilities of the thinking which comes with the gun, and is thinking independently of the weapon.
This leads me to the other point which I am quite sure, as a pacifist, needs to be reiterated. It is that, generally speaking, disarmament will come only when one particular party to the various deliberations is prepared unilaterally to take the risk and unilaterally to disarm itself. I hope that I am wrong, but my noble friend Lord Snow has given me no occasion for confidence that I am wrong—in fact, every continuing evidence seems to point to the fact that this is a right calculation, and that disarmament will not come until some country (and let it be ours, because it seems to me unreasonable at this moment to expect that either

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the United States or Russia would be prepared to do it) makes a unilateral decision to disarm and to disarm thoroughly. For it seems to me that to disarm only in a nuclear fashion may well encourage warfare rather than prevent it.
The total disarmament of these Islands does not seem to me to be something which ought to be avoided as a sentimental operation, but something which, in the light of the circumstances which I have briefly adumbrated, is at the centre of the whole matter. Therefore I testify to my own pacifist faith. I testify also to the considerations which seem to me to belong to the nature of this Disarmament Conference; and only in the light of a total disarmament programme, and a unilateral one at that, does it appear to me that there is a real prospect of a final solution.
My Lords, I want to add one further thing before I sit down. I have a sore throat, because I have just come from a larger and a louder place. I have been yelling my head off on Tower Hill, as I do every week. It is not easy to defend the Government at the moment, although I intend to go on doing so. It is not easy (and this is a wider concern at the moment) to persuade those to whom you seek to speak of the virtues and the ultimate necessity of Socialism, in which I firmly believe. If—and I would offer this again humbly to my noble friends and to anybody who may care to pick it up—there is any prospect of a truly Socialist programme being undertaken in this country in the near future, I want to suggest that one of the ways which will fertilise and fecundate that programme is a process of unilateral disarmament. If we were to disarm at this moment, as is apparent in the way in which the Government are prepared to withdraw forces from Malta—I will say no more than that—we should create automatically a condition of economic crisis.
When I was in California I was told (I cannot vouch for it, but it seemed to me reasonable to suppose that it was true) that of all the jobs going in California, more than half were in the armaments industry or the industries allied to it; and it would appear as a matter almost of logistics and coercive force that if, under a capitalist or the present system, you make a wholesale
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effort to disarm, you create an economic condition which may well approach chaos. And if we are talking about a planned society (and I hope we are), one of the ways which will make it preemptory is to practise a unilateral disarmament programme which will, by its very inception and prosecution, require a far more ordered and planned society than the one in which we live now.
I offer this, not because I think it will be a fortuitous success and because it will be required as a matter of political necessity, but because I believe that disarmament and socialism go together, and once again I must testify to these two propositions. I presume to speak in this debate because I share so completely with my noble friend Lord Snow the grim feeling that, though we may have occasional opportunities of taking our breath and looking more carefully at the future, unless there is a reduction in the proliferation of these weapons, unless somebody breaks into the vicious circle, I cannot reasonably expect that my grandchildren will have a prospect of peace. I hope that this is not a sentimental attachment to my grandchildren, which ought not in any way to occlude the process of clear thought. But it seems to me a recognition shared by many other people.
Nothing Her Majesty's Government can do to reduce this sense of tension, and enable people once again to lift up their heads with confidence and look the world in the face with a reasonable expectation of happiness, would be more worth while than such an initiation in the process of disarmament as would do two things—as would certainly put in train new thoughts, new opportunities, new processes, and would offer to this country—
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, the noble Lord has spoken a good deal about unilateral disarmament and I agree that, from a moral point of view, that would be the ideal. Probably I am as old as the noble Lord, and he will remember both major wars and the situation in which we were at the beginning of both of them—namely, with a far too small armed force. I wonder what he thinks would have been the result if, shortly before each of those wars, we had conducted a campaign for unilateral disarmament.
LORD SOPER: My Lords, it is a fascinating inquiry, and I must be brief in answer. There is one interesting comment on both world wars. Those who were fully armed to prosecute them, lost them both. But I suppose the more important comment is that we cannot cut up history into kaleidoscopic slides and say what would have happened. By 1949 we had fallen off the cliff, and once you have fallen off the cliff and are half way down there is not much point in saying, "What do you do now?". History is a continuum and we have a chance now of preventing a third world war. The nearer we get to it and the greater the proliferation of arms, the less will our freedom be engaged until, finally, I think, it will be completely overtaken.
Though I am sure that we were in a great condition of peril before the last war, I would go back as far as the Treaty of Versailles and point out that the way Hitler was able to come to power was precisely because he was able to point to what he regarded as our perfidy. Secondly, in 1935 we were so far unfaithful to our own principles to sign a Naval Treaty with Hitler himself. It is all part of the proliferation race, the arms race and the arms conduct, with which we are threatened again. I would draw the opposite inference to that referred to by the noble Lord. I regard it as a reasonable prospect that if we were now to disarm it would create a new train of events which might reduce the possibility of war and reverse the process. I cannot argue this case as if it were something that could be politically set forth in inexorable terms, but I speak for many people, in the Christian Church and outside, who would welcome such a programme of unilateral risk and believe that such a risk is infinitely to be preferred to the prospects of a future world war.
I listened to Mr. McNamara, and I wished I had not, because I heard him purport to say that the situation now is that if Russia were prepared to go in for a more defensive programme of anti-missiles, the United States would be compelled to take on a more offensive role in order to recover the balance of deterrence. This is an insane world, in which armaments like that are proliferated by people who claim intelligence. I
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would rather take the risk of believing that what is morally right is in the long run politically right, rather than continue in this insane round of what after all fulfils the old saying:
"Those whom the gods destroy, they first make mad."
6.57 p.m.
LORD RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, as a unilateralist, I will not engage in the argument between my noble friend Lord Soper and the noble Lord, Lord Somers. As one who has lived with, and been as intimately concerned with, the problem of nuclear bombs as my noble friend Lord Snow, I should like to say that we owe a great debt to my noble friend Lord Henderson and also to my noble friend Lord Chalfont, for his conduct of the negotiations at Geneva. With the right reverend Prelate and my noble friend Lord Soper I am prepared to believe, for reasons which are rational as well as moral, that we could banish war if we believed forcibly enough that it could go. But that is not likely. We are living in the world of my noble friend Lord Snow, in which we are spending up to £45,000 million a year on something which is called the defence of peace, and neglecting the substance of the peace we are supposed to be defending.
What does it mean, this peace, when we have people hungry and desperate all over the world? We are living in a world—I do not know whether my noble friend Lord Chalfont will accept my figures—in which something like 320,000 million tons of T.N.T. equivalent are in the stock-piles of the nuclear Powers—100 tons of destructive power for every man, woman and child on earth, which I think is slightly excessive, and 14 tons to every acre of land surface. One thing that makes nuclear weapons completely distinct from general disarmament is that we must get the confounded things out of the way before we can even start discussing rationally any other kind of disarmament. I feel that this is manifest now in the disarmament discussions at Geneva. To me this is absolute.
We have heard to-day a lot about the "hot line". Obviously the main "hot line" runs between the Kremlin and Washington. Even if the great nuclear Powers decide, as I believe they did after Cuba, that politically nuclear war was not

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possible, that in the end there was no dividend, we are still faced with the continuing threat of war by accident and, above all, of war through the proliferation of weapons in the hands of people who may be even less responsible than the great Powers. I should like to hear from my noble friend Lord Chalfont the staging which is before us now. The non-proliferation pact will be one thing. I hope to hear from him what can be achieved in a nuclear free zone in Europe, as in Latin America. There is the Rapacki Plan—the Rapacki-Gaitskell Plan, in a sense, because it was so completely accepted by the Labour Party at the time. What is going to happen to the comprehensive test ban?
I shuddered to see in the main story in The Times this morning a suggestion that somehow or other we are going to test underground. I do not want to anticipate my noble friend's reply to the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, but I am prepared to say—and I think I would have the hacking of the noble Lord, Lord Snow—that it is possible and always will be possible to check on any underground tests. I should like to have an answer from my noble friend Lord Chalfont on this. In any event, I may say that anything below a certain degree will not be worth worrying about. This, I believe, has been our position, and certainly I know it is the position of British scientists; and I believe that the systems of detection will be sufficient to find out a "sneak" test.
What really worries me about The Times article—and I hope that without any disloyalty to his old newspaper my noble friend Lord Chalfont will answer this—is the implication that not only are we to indulge in underground testing but that we are testing for the purposes of discovering what I gather to be an antimissile missile missile. This is complete and utter absurdity. We now have at least some check on anti-missile missiles, because that is what we were talking about in the terms of Mr. McNamara's threat to escalate. But are we going to test for the purpose of discovering antimissile missile missiles? This can go on to the ultimate degree of absurdity.
I should like to know whether there are any prospects at this time of stopping the production of fissionable deter-
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rents? Can we conceive of any possibility that the great Powers will stop producing fissionable materials for weapons? Is there any prospect of seeing some check on the delivery system for weapons? I believe this is possible, certainly between the great Powers. Is there not merely the possibility of a check, but the prospect of seeing reduction of the delivery system? These things are the progression which, I regret to tell my noble friend Lord Soper, I, as a complete disarmer, like himself, feel are the necessary steps before we can get anywhere in a breakthrough in the problems of general disarmament. On that note I want to say that I hope my noble friend Lord Chalfont will again go back to Geneva, where I personally from my own knowledge of what he has been doing, can certify that his influence has been enormous; and I believe that any positive results achieved there will be largely due to him.
7.3 p.m.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I accept the gentle rebuke from the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, and I shall try to keep my reply to this debate shorter. I can only say that I have had a great deal of work to do recently, and perhaps I might borrow an apology from another context and say that I am sorry I wrote such a long speech; I did not have time to write a shorter one.
I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, for giving me the opportunity to say a few words to your Lordships about where we now stand in the disarmament negotiations in Geneva. Before I do that, may I first of all say how encouraged and indeed moved I have been by the very kind remarks that have been made by several noble Lords, and especially by the noble Lords, Lord Snow and Lord Ritchie-Calder. This business of labouring in the dusty vineyards of disarmament, as the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, will know, is sometimes frustrating and dispiriting, but what has been said in your Lordships' House to-day, and the reaction of your Lordships to it, will send me back to the vineyards determined and refreshed.
I should like to mention quite briefly (briefly for no other reason than that I want to keep the proceedings as short as possible), the contributions of the right

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reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Soper. Speaking for myself, I welcome the injection of moral principles and moral imperatives into a disarmament debate. I should find it intolerable if political and military expediency were the only factors which guided our policies in this matter. I am not a pacifist, but I respect the pacifist position; I am not a unilateralist, but I respect the unilateralist position. Perhaps I might say in passing—although I do not want to be led into a debate on this aspect of the matter—that I cannot entirely accept the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Soper, on the matter of the Cuba missile crisis, or indeed of the confrontation in the field of ballistic missile defence. This whole business of the philosophy of deterrence has elements of irrationality, and I should welcome an opportunity at any other time to debate this subject with the noble Lord, although perhaps not on Tower Hill.
The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, asked some specific questions which, before making the formal part of my progress report, I should like to answer. The first was: What inducements are we going to offer to the non-nuclear powers—and he mentioned India, in particular—to engage them in the process of entering a self-denying ordinance of the sort reflected in a non-proliferation treaty? He is quite right of course. This is a part of the whole integral business of policy making, and especially foreign policy making, and we have to work out some way of guaranteeing that the security of countries like India, and some of the others that he mentioned—although they all have their separate problems—is not put at risk by the fact that they are prepared to sign a non-proliferation treaty. Whether this can be done by some system of security guarantee and if so how, is, as he will know, an immensely complicated matter. There are those who suggest that a country like India, with a tradition and a positive policy of neutrality and non-alignment, cannot in logic accept a security guarantee, because this, if made by one side or the other, would mean that they were aligned.
The possibility of getting a collective agreement in which Communist countries and countries of the West took part together, in the present political climate, seems to be a limited possibility. But I do not think it is an impossibility. The
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climate is changing, and I think it is not impossible now that we shall be able to work out some way of giving assurances to India against the possibility of nuclear attack or nuclear blackmail. I think I should say that this is more likely to come in the more general context of some United Nations action than in the specific context of a non-proliferation treaty. I believe that if we try to work into a non-proliferation treaty a specific clause so far-reaching as a military commitment, which is in effect what a guarantee is, we shall find ourselves negotiating this over many years, until it is too late to do anything about it.
The noble Lord asked a question about what is sometimes called the European option; that is to say, would a United States of Europe in effect be debarred by the provisions of a non-proliferation treaty from having and deploying a nuclear weapons capability of its own? I can only say (I do not want to go into the deep arguments about the European option) that there is nothing in a non-proliferation treaty—at least, in no draft of a non-proliferation treaty that I have seen—that would, or could, affect the status of a truly federal United States of Europe. A United States of Europe of this sort—although I believe it to be a remote political contingency—would inherit by the normal processes of international law all the resources of the countries that went to make it up, and it would be irrelevant, to my mind, to attempt to inhibit those processes in a non-proliferation treaty of this sort, which is basically directed towards preventing the spread of nuclear activities.
Perhaps I might now, as briefly as I can, do what the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, asked me to do, which is to report on the progress that we have made since I last had an opportunity to speak about this matter in your Lordships' House. We had hopes that when the Committee reassembled in Geneva on February 21 we should have a draft treaty on the spread of nuclear weapons—the non-proliferation treaty—put on the table for the Conference to work on. Since the Conference adjourned last August there has been an exchange of views between the Americans and the Russians on the draft, of which we have been kept closely informed, and it is evident that a large measure of agreement

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has been reached. Indeed, I think it is possible to say that, apart from the question of safeguard (that is to say, the way in which the operation of the treaty is controlled), there is little that now separates the positions of the Soviet Union and the West on the subject of non-proliferation.
Why was it not possible to table the text as we had expected? Some points, and particularly, as I have mentioned, the question of safeguards—the way in which the treaty is policed or controlled—have not yet been fully resolved and I think it would be wrong and, as they say, counter-productive to put a treaty on the table before an important issue of that sort had been fully agreed between the Soviet Union and the West, and indeed within the Western Alliance itself.
I think it was inevitable that when the language of the draft treaty began to be known among the Governments of the world there would be some criticism of it, but I find it interesting that the preoccupation with the effect of the treaty on a State's military security, which was once the most prominent reaction in the whole non-proliferation debate, has now been replaced. One does not hear so much about the effect that a treaty will have on their military security; the preoccupation is now with the effect of a treaty on the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and this is where the problem of safeguards of control and inspection of the treaty becomes extremely relevant and important.
There are three aspects of the problem on which attention has been focused. The first is one which I think in the end will prove one of the most difficult technical and political hurdles to surmount. It concerns what are called "peaceful nuclear explosions"; that is to say, a programme of using nuclear explosives for engineering purposes, such as digging canals or creating oil deposits—what is called by the United States' engineers, who are doing most of the work on these ideas, the "Plowshare Project". Some of the non-nuclear weapon States are expressing serious anxiety that if a nonproliferation treaty bans these uses of nuclear explosions, they would be cut off from an important branch of civil nuclear technology and engineering.
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Our view of this is based on the fact, which I take to be indisputable, that in the present state of technological development peaceful and military nuclear explosive devices are totally indistinguishable. An explosion, by definition, means the uncontrolled use of nuclear energy, either by fission or fusion, or a combination of both. As I have pointed out to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva, not once but many times, a nuclear device which can be used to move a million tons of earth for engineering purposes can also, given an effective means of delivery, be used to annihilate a city of a million people.
To my mind, therefore, such devices as this must come within the ambit of any effective non-proliferation treaty. But, in any case, this technique has not yet been developed to the point of being an economic proposition, or even safe. Therefore I think it should be possible for us to devise, within the framework of the treaty some workable arrangements with some sort of international supervision, to make the benefits of these techniques available, when they are developed, to the states that require them. Indeed, it is essential (and I think this is an important point to make when meeting the concern and the demands of non-nuclear weapons) that if there should be some substantial advance in this new technology of engineering by nuclear explosives, we must devise some watertight means which will enable the technology and its benefits to be available to all the countries that want it, on a fair economic basis and without political or other strings. I hope very much that, when we are trying to negotiate this treaty, which is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and not nuclear technology, we shall take this point seriously. I know that Her Majesty's Government certainly do.
The second criticism which has been made concerns something which has another new and splendid name—"spin-off". This is the word used for the technological advance which is gained in the civil field of nuclear energy from having a military programme. It is being argued by some countries that those countries which develop nuclear weapons have an enormous advantage in the field of nuclear technology. I am convinced that this is a false argument and if our experience is

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any guide there is very little, if any, "spin-off". The mainstream of civil nuclear development is controlled fission, and perhaps one day will be even controlled fusion. The whole basis of weapons development is, as I have said, uncontrolled fission and fusion. These two techniques are fundamentally different, and I believe the "spin-off" argument to be overplayed and exaggerated.
Finally, it is argued that the exchange of scientific information will be restricted by a non-proliferation treaty. Countries fear that the exchange of information with regard to the use of nuclear energy in other, peaceful ways would be stopped. I must confess that I fail also to see the validity of this argument. It is our view that if we had such a treaty and everybody had confidence in it, it would certainly not inhibit the flow of information, because under such a treaty as we contemplate, even if the information had military value, there would be safeguards and assurances to ensure that it was used for only peaceful purposes. I believe, therefore, that a non-proliferation treaty would make the exchange of this type of information easier and not harder.
However, this is not to say that we do not take these criticisms seriously, and generally speaking this is the crux of the reason why the treaty has not yet been put on the table. But I think we can answer these criticisms. The States that make them are genuinely worried about them. I do not believe this is any sinister conspiracy against the non-proliferation treaty, and it is up to us, the nuclear Powers, to calm the fears of the non-nuclear nations and to make it clear to them that they will not be subject to any discrimination at all in their peaceful nuclear activities as a result of signing a non-proliferation treaty.
I mentioned the question of safeguards. If this is unfamiliar jargon to your Lordships, I apologise. "Safeguards" is simply a system devised to ensure that nuclear fissile and other nuclear material designed for peaceful purposes is not diverted, in some clandestine way, to military purposes. This system of safeguards has given rise to a problem, in Europe particularly. The European Atomic Energy Community, EURATOM, which of course is one of the important organisations of the Common
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Market of the Six, feels that its existence might be threatened by the imposition of the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency to the treaty, and this is one proposal that has been made.
As the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, mentioned, I am going to Brussels tomorrow to meet the European Atomic Energy Commission to discuss some of these problems. Of course, as I said, EURATOM is one of the European Communities that we are exploring the possibility of joining, and I think we should be able to contribute very substantially to that organisation in the technological field. So far as safeguards are concerned, EURATOM already operates a very effective system, and we certainly should not wish to see the EURATOM system disrupted. Nor could we support any international agreement that disrupted European co-operation in the peaceful development of nuclear energy. Indeed, as potential members of the European Economic Community it would scarcely be in our interests to do so, even if we were only looking at this problem in the context of narrow self-interest.
I think it is possible, given good will and adequate time and patience, to reach an agreement which would enable the two systems—the I.A.E.A. and the EURATOM systems—to work harmoniously together side by side. I think we can devise a solution which would draw on the best of both systems and provide the sort of assurance, the sort of control system, that I believe is necessary in a world-wide treaty of this importance.
A matter that has been brought up in this debate, and will obviously be discussed very comprehensively at Geneva, is the question of what is called balance in the treaty. The non-nuclear States feel that the treaty discriminates between them in a way, and they want the nuclear countries to take balancing obligations. A number of these have been mentioned in this debate and I shall not, again for reasons of time only, follow each one of these down its separate path. I simply mention them again by way of confirming that, so far as Her Majesty's Government are concerned, we believe that the non-proliferation treaty is only a single step in a much wider disarmament and non-proliferation strategy. We think that we should go on

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to such measures as a comprehensive test ban treaty, the banning of all tests including underground tests.
I should have liked to go into some detail about the system of seismic detection to which the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, and the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, made reference, but I can only say at this stage that it is a very complicated subject and it is dangerous even to mention this unless one is going to talk about it at length. But I will say that our best scientific advice is that it is not yet possible to be certain that underground events can be detected and identified positively by remote seismic techniques. I have chosen my words with great care, and I simply say that the Government are not satisfied that at the moment we can rely entirely upon scientific methods of detection, although of course we hope it is in this field, in the area of seismic detection and improvements in the techniques of seismic detection, that the effective verification of a test ban treaty will lie in the future.
We believe (these are points that were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder) that we must go on to stop the production of fissile material for weapons purposes; to cut it off and use our fissile material only for peaceful purposes. We believe that there should be, as soon as possible, a freeze on the production of what are called nuclear delivery vehicles, that is to say vehicles designed entirely for the carriage of nuclear warheads, and that eventually we should move towards a positive reduction in the actual number of these missiles that exist at the moment.
I should perhaps mention in this context, since the point was especially raised, the report that has appeared about the future of our nuclear policy. I do not want to follow the whole of this argument in this debate, but so far as any suggestion is made that the Government are contemplating further underground tests, I can perhaps answer it best by saying that, although The Times now has a very distinguished defence correspondent, it is no longer possible to believe everything we read in that paper about defence. However, I am sure that all these measures I have mentioned will be exhaustively discussed in the present session at Geneva. I would repeat that a nonproliferation treaty makes sense only if
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it is one step in the whole disarmament process.
In this connection, it would perhaps be appropriate to say how much we welcome the news that the United States and the Soviet Governments are to begin talks on possible ways of limiting the arms race. The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, mentioned the question of ballistic missile defences, and the answer to his specific question is that the Soviet Government has agreed to enter into talks, provided that the talks cover both offensive and defensive missiles. So far as the question about the role of other countries is concerned, certainly the Geneva Conference is kept in touch with these developments, and I believe that when the talks are a little further advanced there will certainly be a role for other countries to play in this matter. We have been in touch with the United States and Soviet Governments in this matter and they are fully aware of our misgivings and of the fact that we subscribe to the belief that the deployment of ballistic missile defences would be the beginning of a dangerous new dimension in the arms race.
I should like, finally, to make a short comment on the possibility of what are sometimes called regional arms control measures. The noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, and the noble Lord, Lord Henderson. mentioned for example the Rapacki Plan, the plan put forward by the distinguished Polish statesman who has been visiting this country, proposing a freeze and eventual removal of nuclear weapons from a specific zone in central Europe. We have recently had an important advance in regional arms control, and this is, of course, the Latin-American nuclear-free zone. A number of countries in Latin America have just reached agreement on this matter in a treaty, and this represents the first occasion on which nations have agreed on detailed treaty language, the aim of which, when it comes into force, will be to keep free of nuclear weapons a major population centre of the world.
We have supported the efforts of the Latin American countries throughout the negotiations. I very much hope that we shall in due course be able to associate ourselves with the treaty, now that it has been concluded, both in respect of our dependent territories in the area and as a nuclear Power ourselves. I think this

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makes it necessary that we should look at the possibility of this type of arms control in other areas, and it seems to me that some of these possibilities have been overshadowed by the great concentration we have made, I think rightly, on attempting to achieve a treaty to control the spread of nuclear weapons. But I see no reason why we should not examine these other possibilities actively and closely, because this type of regional arms control agreement can, I am sure, make a contribution of its own.
In my view, it is time now to take another look at these proposals for arms control measures in Europe and to see what constructive ideas they may offer for forwarding the process of détente between East and West and for creating the more secure Europe which is the goal of every one of us. I might mention, in passing, that the proposal for the exchange of observers—the British proposal, as the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, will know—still remains on the table; it is still a valid, live proposal. But so far the Soviet Government have shown no real interest in it, except as he suggested, as part of a larger disarmament package.
If we are to take a new and more hopeful look at the possibilities of arms control in Europe we must start by recognising the way in which the military situation in Europe has changed in the period since NATO was first established. There is now, I believe, a general recognition that tension between East and West has relaxed, and there is little, if any, danger of aggression at present in Europe. This welcome change, for which NATO itself is in no small measure responsible, has been noted already by the member Governments of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. They declared their intention, in the communiqué issued after the December meeting of the North Atlantic Council, to secure:
"better relations with the Soviet Union and the States of Eastern Europe in the political, economic, social, scientific and cultural fields."
I believe that this is a most important and significant development in the life of an organisation like NATO. There is a close connection between the political problems which are posed by this division in Europe and the search for ways to make the Continent more secure. The
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forces and armaments deployed on either side of the dividing line in Europe are there mainly because of the underlying political problems. I suppose this means that we must try to make progress simultaneously on arms control measures and on the solution of the political problems. But I suggest that we must at the same time recognise that arms control measures themselves have a viable and worthwhile contribution to make in reducing tension and building up confidence.
One possibility I have in mind at this moment is that of a balanced reduction by both sides of the armed forces at present maintained in Central Europe by the two Alliances, the Warsaw Pact and NATO. It is of course essential that we should do nothing in this process to upset the military balance, because this would create rather than relax tension. But I believe that we should seriously consider whether peace and security in Europe, and the balance of deterrence in the area, could not be maintained at a much lower level than it is now. This, I think, is a sphere in which our aim should probably be to make a start by setting one another a good example.
I believe that a balanced reduction of forces by both sides would do much to create a new atmosphere of confidence between Eastern and Western Europe, the beneficial effects of which would be widely felt, not least in regard to European problems themselves. On all this we should naturally have to proceed in concert with our allies, taking into account all the realities of the situation, and if we are to reach anything like a disarmament agreement, as opposed to what I would call arms control by mutual example, then we shall have to look effectively at the means of verification, because this is where the major trouble always comes in disarmament negotiations.
In conclusion, my Lords, I should like to take up Lord Henderson's remarks about the importance of making further progress in disarmament as a whole. Our ultimate objective, as I have said before, is nothing less than an agreement for general and complete disarmament which should banish for all time the danger of war. But in the meantime we believe that there is much that can be done while maintaining this as a long-term aim. I believe that the especial urgency, as other

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noble Lords have said, is the case of nuclear weapons. We must bring them under control, and we must eventually begin to eliminate them. It is to this end that the whole of our non-proliferation strategy is designed.
It has become fashionable recently to criticise the non-proliferation policy. Some people criticise it because it does not go far enough; because it is not, they say, a measure of disarmament but only a preservation of the existing monopoly. Others say that it goes too far; that it will reduce and tie down non-nuclear countries to an inferior status. Yet others say, in our own domestic field, that Britain's advocacy of a non-proliferation treaty is at odds in some way with our desire to enter the European Economic Community. I believe that none of these criticisms is really substantial. In our view, the non-proliferation treaty is only a step—a quite small step—towards other measures of arms control and towards actual nuclear disarmament. From that point of view, it is less important that the Treaty should be signed immediately and perhaps too precipitately than that the international community should continue to engage itself in a dynamic strategy of non-proliferation.
In any event, as I have suggested before, the treaty must be carefully framed so that no country is deprived of the enormous benefits that the peaceful uses of nuclear energy can bring. And anyone who says that our European policy and our disarmament policies are in con-
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flict must be thinking of a quite different Europe from the one that I have in mind. Let us not forget that Europe does not stop at the River Elbe. I believe most passionately that a successful non-proliferation strategy of the sort that I have outlined would go far to building up international confidence, with all that this would mean for further progress in disarmament and in the settling of political differences that divide nation from nation.
My Lords, I have tried to show, as briefly as I have been able, because this is a wide and complicated problem, the stage that we have reached in these negotiations. We find ourselves now, I think, on the last few steps towards what I believe will be one of the most important arms control disarmament developments since the invention of the nuclear weapon. But if we can begin to bring this terrible weapon under control, if we can stop it spreading not only horizontally around the world, but vertically into new and terrifying spirals of the arms race, then we must have some hope that the sombre world of Lord Snow will not come to pass, and that instead, as the noble Lord, Lord Soper, has said, we shall be able to give our grandchildren at least some prospect of happiness and prosperity. It is this hope, and this belief, that inspires the Government's disarmament policies and all of my activities.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes before eight o'clock.