AID TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

HL Deb 04 March 1970 vol 308 cc332-472

3.7 p.m.

LORD FULTON rose to call attention to the Pearson Report, Partnership in Development, and to the Jackson Study of the Capacity of the United Nations Development System in relation to the responsibilities of the United Kingdom during the Second Development Decade; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I regard it as a great privilege to have the opportunity of opening this discussion in your Lordships' House on overseas aid. This is so for a number of reasons: first, because the number and the distinction of the Members of your Lordships' House who have put down their names to speak is an indication of the importance which the House attaches to this complex and difficult subject.

I should like to mention in particular my noble friend Lord Blackett. In his maiden speech he will bring to bear his wide experience in India, where he has studied at first hand the potential role of science and technology in advancing the development process, and he will speak with the immense prestige of his own achievements in science and in its application to public administration, as well as from his high office as President of the Royal Society. I am sure we all look forward with keen anticipation to hearing what he has to say in his maiden speech. I also wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Byers, for suggesting the amalgamation of his own Motion on the subject of the Pearson Report with mine. I am most grateful to him and I look forward to what he will say in following me.

My second reason for feeling privileged is that the subject of overseas aid is one for the discussion of which your Lordships' House is, by its nature, extremely well suited. As a still quite new Member of the House I remain deeply impressed by the range and the depth of the general debates which so often take place in the middle of the week. The opportunity which is thereby open to us of identifying and throwing whatever measure of light we can on the great problems which lie ahead for ourselves in this country and the enlarging community of which we are a part, is indeed to be prized. One such problem, a momentous issue for us, for our children and for their children in turn, is the divided world of "haves" and "have nots". I am sure that your Lordships' House will have an important contribution to make to a more general understanding of what is at stake. I have referred in the Motion to the Pearson Report and to the Jackson Study. I have no doubt that many of your Lordships will have seen and read these documents, but it may be worth while to try to say in a couple of sentences what they are about.

Each in its own way is concerned with the two parts into which the world is divided: one, the developed part, continuing to become relatively wealthier. One-eight of the world's population lives in countries where the per capita income is 1,500 dollars or more. The other part, containing two-thirds of the world's population, lives in countries where the per capita income is under 250 dollars Most of these latter people are desperately poor by the standard of their richer neighbours in the other parts of the world, and, as things are. they look likely for a long time ahead to become relatively poorer.

Two things need to be said. First, the condition I have described is a dangerous one, and, secondly, even if it were not so it would still be repugnant to the moral sense. To say this is not to attribute blame. Remarkable efforts have been made over the past twenty years by the developed countries to ameliorate the condition of the poorer nations. Some of the progress that has been made has been lost because increases in gross national product in many countries have had to be shared out among larger numbers, swollen not only by increased birth rates but also by reduced mortality rates among the old and the very young. The facts are what they are and we must take them into our overall reckoning.

The Pearson Report, a work of great distinction and nobility, is the product of an international Commission set up by the World Bank. It was presided over by Mr. Lester Pearson, and one of its members was Sir Edward Boyle, whose appointment to the Vice-Chancellorship of Leeds University will be as great a gain to higher education as it will be a loss to the world of politics. It would be tedious for the House if I tried to give in any detail an account of the contents of these two Reports. They are detailed and wide-ranging documents. The Pearson Report is the more general one and contains a moving appeal to the developed world to shake itself free from the mood of disillusionment which the Commission found among the givers, and to some extent among the receivers, of aid. It goes on to ask for action in accordance with a timetable: first, that donor countries should agree to contribute to developing countries not less than 1 per cent. of their gross national product as rapidly as possible and in no case later than 1975. Secondly, that each developed country should increase its commitments of official development assistance to reach 0.7 per cent. of its G.N.P. by 1975 or shortly thereafter, but in no case later than 1980.

Her Majesty's Government on December 27, 1969, announced their aid programme for the years up to 1973–74, which would increase the value of aid in cash terms by one-third. These programmes were announced as the first step recommended by the Pearson Commission to stem the decline in the proportion of British G.N.P. devoted to official aid. There is, therefore, the question whether as a further step, and in the light of the improving British economic position, the Government are prepared to increase official aid further and to accept the target of 0.7 per cent. for official flows; and, if so, at what dates would these targets be achieved? I hope that through to-day's debate there will be a clear message urging the Government to accept the targets in both respects suggested in the Pearson Report. The example of this country could be of decisive importance. The Jackson Study is less concerned with what policies should be adopted than with the state of international machinery for giving effect to policies adopted by the UNCTAD Conference in Delhi and advocated in the Pearson Report. I hope that my noble friend Lord Balogh will be dealing with this aspect of the subject in his speech later in the debate.

The Pearson Report, as I have said, challenges the developed world to a new commitment of will. They are right to remind us of the long-drawn-out tenacity that the developed world will need to show. It will be within all of our recent memories that the reaction to the suffering of Biafra was sharp indeed, and even if it was, to outward appearance, short-lived in its effect, that experience of seeing emaciated children in one's own living-room may well have enlarged the human sympathies of multitudes of people all over the world. The suffering of those children could be captured in the lens of the television camera. It is far, far harder to put on the screen the loss of human potential buried in the poverty of the developing world as expressed in the statistics of the Pearson Report. Surely this is one of those problems which needs a steady, consistent pressure from the enlightened consciences of men and women of goodwill all over the world to sustain Governments in their good intentions, in bad times as well as in good. Above all, it is a problem of education in the broadest sense, and that is why it is right for us to be considering it to-day, not to make an ordinary political issue of it but to try to see it in its perspective for what it is and what it must mean to generations that will come after us. I believe, too, with Sir Edward Boyle that this is an issue that touches the most generous and deepest emotions of the young. I would go so far as to say that if there is inter-generational conflict, no conciliator could be so powerful or effective as an active concern shared in common by young and old to meet this stupendous challenge.

I promised your Lordships not to discuss matters of detail arising from the Pearson Report. I now turn to four main lessons which reading the results of that Commission's work brought home to me. I shall confine my general comments on them to the minimum, in the hope of illustrating later how much my own experience in a particular field of aid bears out the essence of their analysis. First, the question which they raise in the very beginning, why do we give aid, is a good starting point. The Pearson Commission take as the object of aid the initiation of self-sustaining growth and see the job of the aid programme as doing away with the need for it. At the same time, in the Report's very first sentence, it asserts that: the widening gap between the developed and developing countries has become a central issue of our time. thus implying that the problem is rather to close the gap between rich and poor nations.

I think it may be said—and I look forward to hearing whether the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, confirms this—that the figures in the Pearson Report can be used to show that even granted the success of the Commission's own aid proposals in achieving self-sustaining growth, the gap between the income of the poor and the rich nations will continue to grow. If our only object is to set the developing countries on a course of growth independent of our aid, the targets proposed may, if acted on, be proved adequate for that purpose, though there are some sceptics, I gather. But if reducing the gap over the next 30 to 40 years is the object, it seems certain that other steps will be required.

But the Report goes further than either of these more limited aims. On page 22 it states: The objective to which our conclusions and recommendations are directed is a durable and constructive relationship between developing and developed nations in a new and inter-dependent world community. We believe that international co-operation for development, soundly conceived and wisely executed, can make an essential contribution to the achievement of this objective.

These sentiments seem to imply a number of complementary grounds for giving aid: for example, our involvement as mature citizens of the world in the problems of others; our own interest in reducing the international tensions which spring from gross inequality. It may be thought possible to give aid without involvement, but, as I shall try to show in a moment, that is an attitude which has to be rejected when the real issues are understood and confronted.

The second point that emerges from a study of the complexities of the two Reports is that programmes of aid demand a highly expert "intelligence" service. Whatever the motive of aid, the ability to identify potential aid programmes and to evaluate them is essential. Thus, if aid is going to be effective it needs a presence overseas—preferably a body of people working in the country concerned and involved in its developmental problems. I can illustrate this in a particular field of aid with which I am familiar through the British Council. One of its primary tasks is to help in teaching English as a second language. There, what is needed is not only a high measure of relevant pedagogic and educational skills, but a deep knowledge, gained on the ground, in co-operation with the teachers and others in the country in question, of the political, economic, social and educational environment of those who are to be taught. This involvement needs to be pursued at a number of levels—Governmental, private (in various activities of research and development) and by contacts between institutions: for instance, between the research and training centres in this country and overseas, like the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex of which I was formerly Vice-Chancellor, and Queen Elizabeth House, at Oxford, to name only two.

The third point that emerges from a study of Pearson is the conception of development as the application of science and technology to the situation of the developing country. It is important to recognise the role of science and applied science in stimulating development, especially in the key area of agriculture, though it is important to notice, too, that transplanted technologies do not necessarily solve the problems of developing countries which differ significantly from those of developing countries. Different relative availabilities of capital and labour are bound to exist, different skill and culture patterns of the labour forces, the relative scales of industry, differences in consumer demands.

In agriculture one could point to areas of spectacular success in the application of science and technology, especially with packets of improved seeds, fertilisers, insecticides and water control. It should be remembered, however, that this green revolution, for all its tremendous scientific achievement, has to be qualified by the social and economic realities of farming, even in the well-watered lands to which its benefits have been up to now confined. For its very success will bring new imbalances within countries—new poverty as well as new wealth—besides distortions of trade the consequences of which elsewhere could prove very serious.

The fourth reflection is that the impact of new technologies on employment, on the distribution of income and on social organisation, might be profound. The problems created may indeed be more intractable than that of adapting to change. They may include the aggravation of the poverty that one set out to relieve. Thus, the green revolution is now likely to create excess supply of food grains—in particular, countries that were formerly importers will in the space of a very few years become exporters— and at the same time lead to an increase in the number of people who are unable to earn or directly to produce their own subsistence. Thus, the problem of development is not simply one of the introduction of science and technology to backward societies, but that of doing it in such a way that the increased product achieved can be effectively distributed. In this sense, the problem of development is largely one for study by social scientists. It is an enormous and complex problem, and substantial improvements in our capacity for under-standing the processes of social evolution will require great investments of human and other resources—comparable, some would say, to those necessary for solving the problems of landing on the moon. Yet the seriousness and urgency of these problems quite overshadow in importance those of getting to the moon. In spite of this, we have hardly made a beginning on them. Here is a field in which all the best in the past of this country's achievements as a world Power should point to our involvement, and indeed our assumption of a leading role.

I should like to end what I have to say on these topics raised by the Pearson Report with a number of specific inquiries directed to the Minister who is to speak for the Government. The first is one to which I have already referred, the size of the aid programme proposed by the Government in relation to the targets and the timetable recommended in the Pearson Report. Secondly, is it possible, now that the aid programmes up to 1973/74 have been announced, for the Government to give some indication of how these larger programmes will be spent; what priorities will be assigned, and whether particular attention will be paid to the needs of the poorest countries, such as India and Pakistan, which because of their very size and population often seem to suffer on a per capita basis? India has genuine foreign exchange constraint and could use aid very effectively.

Thirdly, in regard to the tying of aid would it be possible, in view of our improved balance-of-payments position, for the United Kingdom Government to take an initiative towards the collective untying of aid by the donor countries, as recommended by the Pearson Report? Fourthly, in regard to the terms of aid, the volume of British export credits is generally growing, and this presumably means that export credits to developing countries are also growing. Is it, however, the Government's policy to distinguish between export credits and official aid; and, if so, are the Government prepared to continue to soften the terms of aid? The amortisation and interest payments shown due to the British Government in British Aid Statistics suggest that both the loan repayments and the interest payments still constitute a heavy burden of indebtedness on developing countries.

Fifthly, in regard to gross and net official aid is it possible for the Government to announce their aid programmes and deal with them in their Estimates on a not basis; that is, less the repayments due on past aid loans and not on the present gross basis? Thus, while it was no doubt welcome news that the aid programme would be increased in cash terms to £300 million gross in the year 1973/74, the Ministry's Aid Statistics show that so far as the developing countries are concerned there should be set against this about £36 million of amortisation payments and over £26 million of interest payments. Would it not be more realistic to deal in terms of the net figures, and would this not help towards a better public understanding both of the cost and of the nature of the aid programmes?

Next, my Lords, two points on which I expect that no answer can be made available in the course of this debate, but I hope that consideration may be given to them. May I make a plea that we should take over pension payments attributable to the service of former colonial civil servants? From information gained on a visit which I paid to East Africa last summer, I am sure that this would ease tensions which complicate our position as a donor. In particular, it would allow for a continuing aid relationship with Tanzania. Lastly, would it be possible for a White Paper on aid in relation to the Second Development Decade to be published within the next year and to be debated in Parliament? The subject seems to me of such great importance that progress should be periodically reviewed in one or other House of Parliament.

If I may trespass on your Lordships' time a little longer, I should like to turn to a particular field of aid in which I have had some direct experience myself, in order to illustrate more concretely by both its successes and its shortcomings some of the problems that I have been discussing. In 1945, the Government of the day received the Report of the Asquith Commission on Higher Education in the Colonies and, accepting its recommendation, invited the universities of the United Kingdom to set up a representative body to advise both on the establishment and the development of universities and colleges in the colonial territories. This body has now been in existence for close on a quarter of a century. Its membership has included a wide range of men and women distinguished as scholars or university administrators: people such as Dame Margery Perham, Dame Lilian Penson, Sir John Lockwood and Lord Jackson of Burnley, whose grievous loss will continue to be felt almost as much overseas as in this country. Its Chairmen have included Sir James Irvine, Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders, the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Grasmere, whom I had the honour to succeed both as Chairman and subsequently, since my retirement in 1968, as Vice-Chairman.

When the Inter-University Council was set up in 1946, the colonial territories had only two universities, one in Hong Kong, recently relieved from the Japanese occupation, and the other the Royal University of Malta; and also one college, affiliated to the University of Durham, at Fourah Bay, in Sierra Leone. In the 24 years since then, helped by generous grants both capital and recurrent from successive Governments of the United Kingdom, the company of these institutions, spread through Africa, South-East Asia, the Caribbean and the South Pacific, has grown to the number of 29 —more universities than there were in the United Kingdom itself until the recent post-Robbins expansion.

In these years when colonial rule was coming to an end, and throughout the more sensitive period of transition to independence, the Inter-University Council was not only fulfilling its duty of advising the home Governments about university developments overseas; it was also required to advise both Governments and university institutions abroad about the overall planning of higher education: it had to give practical help in the recruitment of staff (it is an impressive fact that the largest single source of staff for these 29 institutions has been the United Kingdom universities), and this in a period when they themselves were undergoing a fourfold expansion; it had also to mobilise the experience of the home universities in order to help shape the curricula, establish academic standards, and to fill the inevitable initial gaps in undergraduate education overseas. In all of this the home universities as a whole played a full part, but a special responsibility was undertaken by the University of London, which received into a special relationship, usually lasting about ten years. most of the new colleges founded in the earlier part of the quarter century with which I am concerned. That relationship not only entitled their students to qualify for degrees of the University of London, but also ensured that there were close contacts, through visits of examiners and others, between the affiliated university colleges overseas and the University of London.

Later on, new foundations started in complete formal academic independence outside the London relationship, and by now the relationship is practically extinct. I think there is great gratitude for the support given by London University, whose prestige in the world of university studies gave assurance to the Governments— and, no less important, to the young people of the countries concerned —that their degrees would be recognised and accepted everywhere. Without that support, it would have been far harder for the new institutions to graduate into the full academic independence which they now enjoy. And still to-day, in matters of staff recruitment, in the task of training post-graduates to fill the posts in teaching and research which have been held in the first generation by expatriates, for membership of academic commissions, for other forms of co-operation such as post-graduate and technician training, the universities of the United Kingdom are still regarded as a trusted, if no longer exclusive, standby.

It says much, my Lords, for the traditional friendship and trust between the worlds of Westminster and of scholarship that successive Governments, which found the money, accepted so fully the home universities as their agents in the educational tasks that I have been describing. On both sides people came to see the importance of letting aid flow along natural lines of communication, and that wherever it was practicable we should reinforce links, already existing, whether professional, commercial or educational, between donor and receiving countries. Foremost among these was that towering figure, Sir Andrew Cohen. His sympathy and insight won the hearts as well as the minds of the universities at home and abroad. He was a high official prepared to put up with informality and even, if need be, with a measure of untidiness if this served to forge creative and enduring links between developing and developed countries, seeing them potentially, in the words of Pearson, as true partners in development.

So far so good. But, as in all such stories, there have to be recorded "downs" as well as "ups", difficulties and shortcomings as well as successes. What could be more in keeping with the generous spirit of those early days before "development" became a term of art or its study as sophisticated as it is to-day. What could be more natural, than for us to offer what we thought the best that we had so far discovered to those at the beginning of their journey? Thus it came about, as it were inevitably, that the earliest products of our advice and co-operation tended to be more adapted for our own situation than for that of the countries to which they were exported. It must with hindsight be admitted that they were in their new setting often too remote in many ways from the needs of the societies around them; and sometimes also from plans for other forms of education—school, technical and teacher-training—with which they should enmesh. Lord Jackson of Burnley, had he lived, would have spoken in this debate, and he would surely have preached again with passionate conviction the sermon he was uniquely qualified, by his own high academic distinction as an applied scientist, to deliver. He would have insisted that the production of scientists and applied scientists is misconceived and wasteful unless there are also produced an appropriate number of technically qualified men—and women—to complement them.

Other voices, too, have come to be heard deploring the heavy emphasis put at the start on studies related to what is called the "modern sector" and the rela tive under-weighting at all levels of education of the rural and agricultural basis of most developing countries. The acceptance in many developing countries, which were formerly the Colonies of Western Powers, of the bias in the educational systems of those Western countries towards the academic virtues has created problems that are proving intractable even to the most skilful political handling. How is the problem of rural education to be solved—rural schooling for a generation needed in the villages—when all the pull for the potential rural teachers is away from the backward countryside into the amenities of the towns and into the jobs associated with the modern sector? Is it national service for two years or so in country schools for all graduates? Is it a drive to train the villagers to teach their own village children?

These are one or two examples which clearly go to show, I believe, that a continuous joint examination of the early developments was inevitably forced on all concerned, as donors or receivers; and this has led to a real partnership in development. In considering aid for education overseas, we have been inexorably driven to re-examine the whole question of the part that education should play in any national development, including our own. The university is now more clearly seen as an instrument of change as well as a means of conserving our intellectual heritage. What sort of society is our aim? And what part in that society do we expect universities—as corporate bodies pursuing distinctive values—to play? This is not a question susceptible to a cost-benefit analysis such as may well be applied to individual academic programmes in this subject or that. A distinguished Indian academic and statesman illustrated this point when he asserted that the best thing that United Kingdom universities had done for the Indian ones was to teach them not to be afraid of Governments. The unsettled questioning state of universities everywhere in the world is, I believe, a measure of the importance of this question. The essential lesson that emerges is that we must be ready to learn as well as to offer advice. It would be unforgivable to persist only in exporting our own problems.

But, my Lords, it is good to place on record that a great deal has been learned. In the beginning we gave the ideas we had to offer. Then came the immersion of both parties in the long task of building, modifying and rebuilding in the face of the unfolding complexities. And it has to be admitted that a great deal had to be, and has been, altered. How much the ideas of all those concerned have changed is brought home by even a brief reference to the contrast between the first of the new foundations established immediately after the war, and the latest foundations—in, for example, Malawi, in Mauritius and, perhaps the most striking, the last of all the universities to be founded in former Colonial territories— the University of the South Pacific. To-morrow the University, at its Council meeting in Fiji, will receive at the hands of Her Majesty the Queen its Royal Charter of Incorporation. It can be best described as a regional and a developmental university: in both its teaching and its research it is expected to nurture, and to be nurtured by, the growth points in the vast region which it will serve.

Its Charter will confer on it responsibility for all forms of post-fifth form education, in an area comprising six territories and Governments and a population of some 3,600,000 people. It has the backing of the Governments of New Zealand (whose former Air Force base is the nucleus of the University), Australia and Great Britain. Its interim Council has been enabled to draw on an extensive range of international experience in planning the University's future. This has included, besides our own and the Australian and New Zealand experience, that of North America, through Canada and the United States of America —the latter in this case, as in other parts of the developing world, is of the highest importance, because of the unique American experience during the past century gained through the work of the land grant colleges; many of them have since become world famous universities. These were set up to help the farmer to apply science to agriculture, and by their success in this helped to promote the conditions of the great American expansion that followed.

By its teaching and research, the University of the South Pacific will help in the development of regional industries— the harvesting of the ocean prominent among them—in the training of teachers for the educational system of a multi-racial, multi-lingual population. It will be the only regional institution, and thus committed to helping to hold together an area in which the coming of independence could only too readily lead to fragmentation of effort in education, and in the training of the skills that will be needed.

The conclusion that I draw from this story is that in all matters of aid we must study and learn and understand— by becoming unreservedly involved—if we are going to be able to help constructively. I hope I have shown that the overseas universities, which owe so much to this country, are in the front line of development. They need more material help in the time ahead, and I am sure they wish for the continuing understanding support of our universities at home. The university system of Great Britain is splendidly rich in its diversity—the Mediæval foundations of Oxford and Cambridge, with a different inspiration from their mediæval neighbours North of the Tweed; the metropolitan University of London; the civic universities, significantly developmental in their earliest form and philosophy; the new generations of universities founded since the last war—all these have surely something of unique value to give to the sister universities in countries with whom we have the strongest links of history and sentiment.

I apologise to your Lordships for the length of this opening speech. I hope that those who follow will make up for its many inadequacies. May I conclude by reminding the House of what seems to me the single most important underlying issue? We are living in a world in which men have come to regard Governments as nearly omnipotent, through their command of the resources of modern science and technology. It would be hard to overemphasise the importance to a vast and growing number of people, old as well as young, of the conquest of space within the timetable set by the Government of the United States of America. The success of an enterprise of such vastness and complexity, technological and managerial, is bound to suggest that nothing that is wanted enough is impossible, though there may be hard choices about priorities; and the quality of our society is under judgment because of what is made to be first or last in the order of choice.

I suspect that there may be some naïveté in such an assessment of the situation. But the Pearson Commission were surely right in believing that failure to tackle world poverty will be regarded as a test of will, rather than of capacity. They are surely also right, and deserve our gratitude for making clear, that the conquest of poverty is not just a matter of technology or of economics; it involves the values, the education, the ingrained aversion to change from traditional ways, the motives and incentives within their diverse social orders of countless human beings. We are far indeed from knowing enough about these aspects of development. They need intensive study through a great programme of rigorous, realistic research.

The problem set out by the authors of Partners in Development is one which will not yield its answer to studies in any one discipline. Its solution will be advanced only by the interplay of the human, social, biological and physical sciences and the unremitting labour on both sides of the poverty line of those who have developed the human insights, the understanding and the skill in human management to apply the results. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.46 p.m.

THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, has by his Motion drawn our attention to two very important documents and we are grateful to him not only for his speech, but for the helpful resume that he gave us of these two documents. We shall shortly be hearing from my noble friend Lord Hawke, who will draw our attention to the call of the Christian Churches for more aid to be given by the rich countries to the poor countries, and I shall listen with great interest to what he has to say.

There will be no doubt in any quarter of the House that the subject which we are considering this afternoon is one of supreme importance, and one which must touch us all. Sir Robert Jackson, in his letter to the President of the U.N.D.P., said: I believe that this work transcends any other human endeavour. Indeed, my Lords, the Prime Minister, in welcoming the publication of the Pearson Report, referred to it as one of the most important documents of the 20th century. I think most of us would probably agree with him. But the importance of the document must ultimately depend upon whether it does, in fact, promote a revival of will, and whether its recommendations are implemented.

The statement by the right honourable lady the Minister for Overseas Development on November 27 was very cautious and, I thought, in a minor key by comparison with the welcome to Pearson from the Prime Minister. We all fully appreciate that implementation of Pearson by the Americans is in fact the key-stone for its success, but—and here I agree so strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Fulton—a firm lead from the United Kingdom, whose aid contribution in terms of percentage of national wealth is no less than that of the United States, with a clear undertaking that we will commit ourselves to the target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national product official development assistance by not later than 1980, provided that the other principal donors do likewise, might well be decisive. I hope that, with the improved trade figures to which Her Majesty's Government quite naturally so often refer, a more encouraging statement will be made than we heard in November—if not to-day, perhaps after an early debate on the whole question of aid.

I must ask the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, who is speaking early in the debate for the Government, to help me to clarify the observations of the right honourable lady on the extent of aid which Her Majesty's Government propose to give, and I hope your Lordships will bear with me while I quote certain passages from Hansard. At column 634 of the OFFICIAL REPORT (Commons) for November 27, the right honourable lady said: Taking a high estimate for private flows, we could expect to reach the 1 per cent. target not much after the date of 1975 recommended by the Pearson Commission". Then she goes on to say: In any case, the Government intend, unless our balance of payments position should preclude it, to reach the target of 1 per cent. total flow not a moment later than the end of the Second Development Decade". Further in the same debate (col. 636) the right honourable lady goes on to say: What I have stated is that we are guaranteeing to reach the total 1 per cent. target, and we shall keep both kinds of flow"— that is, obviously, the official and the private— very much in mind in order to do that". Then, on November 28 the right honourable lady said in column 869 of Hansard: We are in a difficult situation in which we are asked to make an advance commitment of 0.7 per cent. of official flow. But normally in our own terms of planning ahead up to 1973–74, even the last two years of that period remain resolved finally at a later date. This I find not very clear and not entirely encouraging. Of course, we quite appreciate that the right honourable lady has to carry out good housekeeping; but surely, my Lords, in our improved position—and Her Majesty's Government take a great deal of credit for this—we should be able to enter into a firm commitment now that official aid should be 0.7 per cent. of the gross national product. I should have thought it would be possible for us to give such an undertaking, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, may be able to give us rather more encouraging information than we so far have.

I should perhaps point out in this connection that, in the reaching of the 1 per cent.—that is, the UNCTAD figure; the 1 per cent. total—the right honourable lady was relying to a very large extent on private investment. As she rightly says, private investment is not controlled by the Government, but it is very much influenced by Government policy. I am wondering whether the policy of the present Government in fact encourages private investment overseas. I should have thought that this was not the case, and I wonder whether Her Majesty's Government would think again about bringing in some form of guarantee, or some sort of insurance for foreign investments against non-commercial risks. I believe that this would greatly help the flow of private investment overseas, and I commend to Her Majesty's Government that they think again on this point. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, when he comes to reply, will be able to give me some reassurance on the figures of the right honourable lady, and some clarification; and I should be grateful if he would bring to the attention of his right honourable friend my suggestion that there should be some insurance against non-commercial risks.

Now Pearson does not confine itself only to the volume of aid. As the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, has told us, it discusses in considerable detail the quality of aid, and it states categorically: The international aid system today, with its profusion of bilateral and multilateral agencies, lacks coherence and direction". Jackson corroborates this, and both Pearson and Jackson press for the creation of a strong, central, coordinating organisation. Jackson spells it out, insisting that the work of the Specialised Agencies must be coordinated through a restructured United Nations Development Programme. He advises that so soon as the U.N.D.P. has proved that it can deliver the goods, the maximum money provided for development co-operation should be channelled through this new co-ordinating organisation, the head of which would be fully accountable for all funds entrusted to him. My Lords, this seems to me a very sensible proposition. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will pay due heed to it and that, if in agreement, when discussions come to take place internationally the Government's representative will press for this.

My Lords, the need for restructuring is no criticism at all when one considers the enormous increase in the scale of development operations to-day over that which the U.N. development system was originally designed to undertake. So it is quite natural that the machinery is beginning to creak and needs restructuring; there is nothing wrong about that. It is going to be very difficult to do it, but surely this is a situation which those concerned should face up to. Jackson, in his refreshingly outspoken (and spoken, thank goodness! in plain English) Study talks of the "non-system". He goes so far as to say: If Governments are willing to provide additional funds for development co-operation, but are not willing to take action to reorganise the present 'non-system' or consider the remedies presented in this report"— that is his Capacity Study— as impossible to apply, then, in the interests of the developing Member States, any further funds should flow through other channels". My Lords, he could not be more plain-spoken than that. The complexities of the U.N.D.P. are not familiar to most of us, but I think few of us would feel that the advice of someone of the calibre of Sir Robert Jackson does not merit the closest consideration.

With Pearson and Jackson we have really reached the crossroads: Pearson telling us that to achieve self-sustained growth the D.A.C. countries, the 16 richer countries, must increase their transfers to 1 per cent. of G.N.P. by 1975 at the latest, and that, within this total, official aid should reach 0.7 per cent. by 1975 or 1980 at the latest; and Jackson saying that unless the development system is drastically restructured the proposed additional aid had better be channelled through some other agency. I can see that Her Majesty's Government are in a difficulty here, and I have sympathy with the right honourable lady the Minister for Overseas Development when, in answer to a Question in another place on January 22, she said, in column 679 of Hansard: It may be that my Ministry and I will want to publish something not just on Pearson but on the whole aid policy that we are implementing and considering in the future. The difficulty about making an immediate statement on the Pearson Report is that it covers the whole subject of international development policy, and, in advance of the international discussions which will be taking place in the next few months, it would not be helpful to those discussions or the objectives of the Pearson Report for there to be ex parte statements by the United Kingdom or any other major donor country. Perhaps I have made Lord Shepherd's speech for him, but I have sympathy for Her Majesty's Government in this respct. I do not for one moment think, however, that it means that this debate is not very valuable, because we are able in the course of our observations to bring to bear on Her Majesty's Government the influences of speeches from well-informed people such as the noble Lord. Lord Fulton, the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, and others from whom we are going to hear speeches. But I can see the difficulty of Her Majesty's Government in, at this moment, expressing firm views on Pearson. But it seems to me that as the national discussions referred to by the right honourable lady have been held Her Majesty's Government should most certainly publish a White Paper on their aid policy and then, fortified by Pearson and Jackson, should again debate that policy in its widest sense. In the mean-time, I would hope that Her Majesty's Government would be able to give a clear statement in principle, as I said at the outset, that the United Kingdom will fulfil the proposed aid target. This is the message which Fulton has given us and this is the message which I hope will go out from your Lordships' House this afternoon.

The noble Lord, Lord Fulton, has called our attention to the "responsibilities"— and I am sure that he took great pains when he worded this Motion—"of the United Kingdom during the Second Development Decade". Perhaps it would not be presumptuous to hope that through our long colonial experience we have acquired some knowledge of the problems of developing countries and an under-standing of their national prides and aspirations. If this is so, it seems to me that we have an advantage, and through this advantage we have an added responsibility. As Pearson tells us in his excellent Report (incidentally it is called Partners in Development: such a good title!), technical assistance has grown at the rate of 10 per cent. per annum since 1960, and over 110,000 advisers, technicians, teachers and volunteers are engaged at the present moment on official aid programmes. I should hope that the United Kingdom will be particularly active in this sphere. I agree that there is a risk of technical assistance developing a life of its own. The noble Lord, Lord Fulton, pointed out to us that aid is not just technology and economics; it is far, far more; it is human. I think there is a risk of this, and Pearson wisely draws our attention to it. Therefore I feel that all technical assistance should be closely integrated with the whole development process.

I particularly favour his recommendation that national and international corps of technical assistance personnel, with adequate career opportunities, should be created and (I attach great importance to this) that the possibilities of an inter-national volunteer corps should be studied. I believe that there is much good will both in this country and in other well-to-do countries among the young, and I believe that if we carefully study the possibilities of an international volunteer corps some of the frustrated youth about whom we hear so much might find an outlet for their good will and their energies.

My Lords, Pearson draws attention to the tendency of aid from abroad to follow traditional methods—and the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, also referred to this—and for teachers, for example, to concentrate on the humanities rather than to adapt educational systems to economic fields and social conditions. I am sure that this is so; and from my own experience in travelling about the world I have, like the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, seen evidefences of this. We are learning all the time, but there is no harm in going on preaching this danger.

The colonial Powers have built up tropical research institutions, abroad and overseas, in medicine and in agriculture, and in other spheres. Pearson points out that between 5 per cent. and 10 per cent. of the technical assistance of France and the United Kingdom goes in supporting such institutions. But he warns us that scientists tend to pursue investigations essentially related to problems of industrialised society. I suspect that there is a serious risk of industrialised countries' attempting to introduce their own institutions into developing countries, just as there is the temptation for developing countries to indulge in prestige projects —projects which in fact are not essential to development. Both these risks are dangerous and both need to be closely watched.

Although it would not be appropriate for donor countries to make their aid conditional upon an effort on the part of the recipients to control their birthrates, it seems to me essential that a wide-ranging programme, as envisaged by Pearson, for the direction, co-ordination and financing of research in the field of human reproduction and fertility control should be embarked upon at once. I do not believe that we can discuss this question to-day—and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, did not do so—without paying careful attention to this point. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will use their influence to set in motion a survey of this type, a world-wide survey.

In discussions on aid, the old caveat that it is no good helping a developing country to produce something which it thinks it ought to produce but which a market survey would reveal it would be quite uneconomic to produce is, nearly always raised. No doubt it will be raised again and again this afternoon, but I make no apology for raising it myself. It seems to me that private investment and official Government aid must go hand in hand, and both must at all stages co-operate very closely indeed with the Government of the country concerned and, if there is one, with the resident United Nations Development Programme representative. But above all it seems to me that pre-investment research and surveys must first be carefully carried out; and I was glad to note that the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, expressed the same views: examination, I think the noble Lord said, by donors and recipients. This seems to me to be absolutely essential. I have on previous occasions reminded your Lordships that although the United Kingdom contribution of official aid in 1968, the year for which I have the figures, ran at £210 million gross, roughly two-thirds of this, £140 million, comes back in payment for goods and services. Do not let us lose sight of this figure. It is all very well talking of aid in these big figures; but it is not all outgoing: quite a large proportion is income.

It has, I think, always been the view expressed from these Benches that trade is the best road to aid, and of course without trade there can be no prospect of the developing countries achieving self-sustaining growth. For this, access to world markets, and increasing trade between the developing nations them-selves, is essential. It seems to me that this aspect of aid should receive more consideration, careful study and appropriate action. It is no use our helping developing countries to produce commodities for world markets if we are going to exclude them from the world markets. This is something we must study closely before it is too late.

The Marshall Plan put us and the other countries of Western Europe on our feet again. Pearson and Jackson, if implemented, could, I believe, by the turn of the century establish the countries of the Third World, as we call it, in a position of self-sustaining development. I feel that we owe much to Mr. McNamara, President of the I.B.R.D. for requesting the Pearson Report, and to the Chairman of the Commission and the other Commissioners; to Mr. Paul G. Hoffman, the administrator of U.N.D.P. who commissioned the Capacity Study, and to Sir Robert Jackson who wrote it. Finally, I offer my thanks to Lord Fulton for his most interesting closely reasoned speech and, by introducing his Motion, for bringing to the attention of us all two such particularly important documents.

4.10 p.m.

LORD BYERS

My Lords, I should like to follow the noble Marquess by echoing his thanks from these Benches to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, for initiating this debate to-day, just as the world ought to be grateful to Lester Pearson and his Commission for the Report they produced in such a relatively short time. Both the debate and the Report are timely because there is a crisis atmosphere about aid which I think it important to diminish. There are frustrations in the recipient countries and in the donor countries. Some of the donor countries, notably the United States, are more than preoccupied with their own social problems and with their balance-of-payments deficits, and one can understand that. I think it important to look at the problem squarely and to recognise that our first task is to restore confidence in the international system by which the richer nations help the poorer ones. That is why I would emphasise to the Government that they should take the initiative in urging the speedy implementation of the Jackson Report.

If we recognise the truth of the need to restore confidence in the machinery, I think we shall be nearer to the solution. The first thing is to get the concept of aid into the right perspective. In my view we should not have "Aid" as the title of the book; it is really only one of the chapter headings. If we define our corporate objective solely in terms of how much aid each developed country can give to the less developed, I think we shall mislead ourselves. The real corporate objective should be much more in terms of finding a means of co-operation between the developed and the developing nations to enable the people of the less developed countries to enjoy an ever-increasing standard of cul- ture, health and prosperity within the political climate of their own choosing.

In this concept aid in its proper sense plays a vital but not a dominating role. In addition, such a concept should take much of the impatience and frustration out of the relationship between the donor and the recipient. The whole question of the rich versus the poor income gap was fully debated in San Francisco in September at a conference organised by the National Conference Board of America, to which a significant contribution was made by the noble Lord, Lord Franks, in the concluding address to that conference. If I were to paraphrase what I think all of us got out of the conference, in which many noble Lords in this House took part, it would be that there is a moral duty for the rich nations to help the poor. That is undeniable. At the other end of the scale it is good politics, in a world still bedevilled by dissension, to reduce tension and help to create a climate of peace wherever we can.

Hunger and poverty have to be eliminated on humane grounds, peaceful progress to higher standards of living must be right, and the richer nations have a duty to go along that path. Stated in those terms, the problem, I think, becomes a co-operative one in which the developed nations have to get together with the developing ones to break down initial suspicion and to draw up a plan for the future. Aid has a vital part to play, but it is one of several tools.

My Lords, I think that much of the frustration on both sides has arisen from a feeling that not enough has been done by the developed countries, and an equal feeling that too little has been achieved by the recipients. To some extent I believe that this may well be due to a misunderstanding of why Marshall Aid, which was mentioned by the noble Marquess, was so successful in Europe. After the war, Europe was completely shattered, but every country still had a strong cadre of highly skilled scientists, engineers, administrators, teachers and so on; and, given the material help, they were more than qualified to put it to immediate good use. Many people expected to get the same result in applying aid elsewhere in the world; but in the countries we are dealing with that sort of human infrastructure either does not exist or is minimal compared with the needs of those countries. One of the most important factors in economic growth, which is seldom properly recognised, the presence of a well-educated labour force and a proper balance of professional and skilled operators. That is one of the first things on which the donors and the recipients could get together, and, indeed, many of them are doing so with success at the present time. Training schemes are improving but it takes a great deal of time to get these things moving, and short cuts in training can mean disaster if one is not very careful. Aid intelligently used in this field must pay dividends.

I think that the next point after the creation of the human infrastructure is the creation of the material one. That is another delicate area where national pride can often lead to avoidable waste. The case of the status symbol industry has been mentioned; the creation of an iron and steel plant because one has to have an iron and steel plant, no matter whether it is economic or not. I think that time will get this right, but it does take time in countries where the administration is only just beginning to learn the job. In more developed countries even sophisticated administrators often allow their better judgment to be under-mined by a feeling of economic nationalism.

Nevertheless, we have to press on. If we really regard this, as I do, as partner-ship in development, with the emphasis on partnership, then a number of other things follow. The question of population policy has been mentioned already by the first two speakers. Of course we cannot dictate to people how many children they should have, or to Governments how they should go about their job, but I think we can help Governments to bring out the crippling effect of a high rate of population increase on the economic growth in any country. Robert McNamara, in his first address to the Board of Governors of the World Bank, put this well when he said: Take two typically developing countries with similar standards of living, each with a birthrate of 40 per thousand (this is the actual rate in India and Mexico) and estimate what would happen if the birthrate in one of those countries in a period of 25 years were to be halved to 20 per thousand, a rate still well above that in most developed countries. The country which lowered its population growth would raise its standards of living 40 per cent. above the other country in a single generation. The other side of this is that as we raise standards of living in the developing countries so we may expect to get a reduction in the rate of births—because I think this happens: so in a way it is a "chicken and egg" problem. But we have to bring to the ordinary people in this country the crippling effect of too high a birthrate.

There are other fields of endeavour in which co-operation is needed. One of them is the nature of the trade policies which the developed nations adopt. The truth is that the major problem of the 'seventies is almost certainly going to be the management of inflation all over the world. It is certainly going to be a major concern of the developed nations. One of the important factors in controlling inflation is, I b2lieve, an increasing flow of imports to help to discipline the complicated cost systems of the developed nations. It will take a lot of courage to admit this and to act on it. Yet the lowering of trade barriers is just what the exporting nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America need if their standards are to rise; and it may well be that this is one of the tools we shall have to use in combating our own inflation in the developed nations of the world.

Conversely, any attempt to curb imports from developing countries could, I believe, constitute a major threat to world peace. This is the delicate road that we have to tread in the 'seventies. We must manage inflation without cur-tailing trade and investment. We must make room for more and more trade with the developing countries. Trade and development are two-sided. The developing nations have a big part to play themselves, and I think the first thing that needs to be realised is that, while patriotism is a virtue, economic nationalism carried to extremes can only retard the growth of new nations. This is a mutual problem. There is a natural suspicion of the foreigner, and quite often because of some past unfortunate experience in that country under colonial or other rule. On the other hand, the foreigner has only limited resources of manpower and finance, and will normally want to operate where the climate of welcome is obvious and most generous.

If the foreigner tries to take more than his fair share, then co-operation is virtually impossible. If the local Government sets up one restriction after another, and increases the riskiness of the venture and reduces the return on a potential investment, money and resources will flow to some other area which is more welcoming. This is a difficult thing to get over. I believe that we are entering not just a Second Development Decade but the decade of social responsibility in industry operating overseas. The days when people go out from this country to exploit the developing countries is over. Apart from anything else, it simply will not work. I should like to see a proper partnership established between the investor and operator here with the people of the operating countries.

One thing that I feel would be fruitful would be to convene a limited number of conferences of businessmen, officials and politicians from countries which are pursuing liberal trade practices, together with the same sets of people from the countries who are still in the throes of economic nationalism. There is a great deal that can be learned by getting these people together, perhaps also with officials and other people from countries like Ireland and Mexico, to show what can be done if we can establish the right balance and give to people overseas a proper welcome, on the understanding that there will be no exploitation. I could develop this point, from my own experience, for a long time; but I will not follow that line. I simply put forward the idea. I do not think that people talk enough together about their mutual experiences, and from this I believe that new formulae could well be forthcoming.

I hope that problems like these will in no way lessen our determination to provide aid for poorer sections of the world. I agree with the Pearson recommendation of 1 per cent. of the G.N.P. It is a very rough and ready rule for, as the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, will tell us, the G.N.P. is almost anything we like to make it. We can change it from time to time by adding or subtracting things—I do not know what the noble Lord did to the G.N.P. when he was advising the Government—but I believe that as an order of magnitude 1 per cent. is about right. I would suggest that in this decade, when the green revolution should be well under way and hunger a thing of the past, we must use aid and all the means at our disposal to build up the education and skills that are essential to a society which has ambitions for higher standards. I should like to echo the questions that have already been put to the Government. Can the Government say what are the latest estimates of what the gross national product in 1975 is likely to be? What is 1 per cent. of that going to be? Have they anything to announce on private overseas investment?—because it is responsible for a contribution of 0.3 per cent. to make up the 1 per cent., and I am sure that British industry will play its part, if it is allowed to do so.

4.22 p.m.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, I approach this debate with mixed feelings. On behalf of Her Majesty's Government, I welcome this opportunity to discuss these two major Reports on an issue that is of vital importance not only to millions of people in the developing world but equally to those who are described as the developed nations. On the other hand, I must frankly admit that I find myself baffled how to deal adequately with these Reports. It is not only their very size but perhaps also the whole nature of the arguments and recommendations of what is in itself a very complex problem that has led me to the view that I should limit my remarks to one or two of the major issues raised, particularly in the Pearson Report.

Her Majesty's Government and Pearson are at one in stating that this is a moral issue. My noble friend Lord Walston, in a recent debate on the place of the immigrant in the United Kingdom, complained that the speech I made was too complacent; and on reflection I think I perhaps erred in setting out in detail what Her Majesty's Government were doing and intended to do, and in not dwelling sufficiently on the size and the nature of the problem under discussion. I think therefore at the very outset I should say that this is an issue about which we are not complaisant. We are deeply conscious of the desperate needs of the underdeveloped world.

The House will know that I have travelled a great deal since I had the privilege of joining the Commonwealth Office and later serving in the merged Foreign and Commonwealth Office. With only one or two exceptions, all my journeys have taken me to the developing world and I have been particularly conscious of how those countries are trying desperately to raise the standards of their people against what to them, and perhaps to others, are overwhelming difficulties. This is a moral issue, but I must say that I have a deep unease in my own mind as I visit colonial territories, for which I have a special responsibility, and I have particularly in mind those distant islands which have been left far behind in economic and social development.

There is much in the Pearson Report with which Her Majesty's Government concur—that aid should be given to areas of greatest need and where aid programmes are efficiently managed and make significant effects. But, My Lords, we have colonial territories which by their locality, distance and climate do not provide good prospects for economic development. Therefore, if social development is largely to depend upon economic growth, these territories have poor prospects. Today the number of territories and people involved is relatively small, and while we provide a special level of assistance to dependent territories, when I see their problems I feel bound to ask myself whether we should not be doing a great deal more for these territories to make them something that we can be proud of, even if we have to recognise that having achieved satisfactory standards in order to maintain them, this will mean for a long period making sizeable funds annually available to them. Poverty anywhere has a heartrending side, but I think it must have some special Significance when it is in one's own backyard, and its existence in itself must surely have some effect on our own international standing.

I listened with great interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, as he introduced his Motion, and to the speeches of the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, of the noble Lord, Lord Byers, who followed him, and I am looking forward, like your Lordships, to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Blackett. The Second United Nations Development Decade begins on January 1 next and will be launched in the United Nations General Assembly in the autumn of this year. It is therefore both timely and appropriate that we should be having this debate. In particular, we must be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, for bringing together for our consideration those aspects which are of particular importance. For it is within the context of the Second Development Decade, the exact nature of which is still under international discussion, that we shall look to see progress on the broad issues which are dealt with in the Pearson Report, as well as the more detailed but nevertheless significant organisational issues which are the subject of the Jackson Report.

The Government have from the beginning recognised and put special emphasis on the need for the effective administration of aid. That is why one of our first acts in 1964 was to establish a Ministry of Overseas Development. This was the first time this had been done by any major donor country. The value of this step was, I think, amply borne out by the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates when the work of the Ministry was scrutinised in 1968–69. I myself particularly welcome the extension of the concept of the Development Division, the model for which is the Middle East Development Division in Beirut, which now has a cousin in Barbados—the British Development Division in the Caribbean. If conditions permit, I should hope that it might prove possible to extend further this valuable form of assistance and administration combined, and perhaps at an earlier date than we have in mind at the moment.

I should like to turn now to the Pearson Report, which presents us with so many formidable challenges. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister immediately welcomed the publication of this Report when it was issued on October 1, 1969, and he described it as an authoritative and penetrating analysis of one of the most challenging issues of our age. That indeed it is. The Report argues that the case for the development effort is based both on morality and on enlightened self-interest. We have always seen it in this light, too. The Report sets out a ten-point strategy for development for the remainder of this century, a strategy about the broad lines of which we agree.

As noble Lords will be aware, the strategy covers a vast deal of ground, including trade, private investment, financial aid resources, the multilateral aid system and technical assistance. There are 68 detailed recommendations in support of the overall strategy, some of these aimed at the developing countries, some at the multilateral organisations, and many of the developed countries who are providing financial resources. Those recommendations are already being taken into account internationally in discussions in a number of bodies, and Her Majesty's Government intend to play a full part in those discussions.

We agree with the Report and with those who say that progress in development shows that it is worth while to go on and to amplify the effort. Averages can, and do, conceal considerable disparities, but it now seems fairly clear that the target of an average growth rale of 5 per cent. per annum was almost, if not quite, achieved by the developing countries by the end of the First Development Decade. Although one must not be too optimistic (and I must avoid fresh accusations of complacency), the so-called green revolution has at least shown that the spectres of famine and hunger can be banished, subject to the necessary effort and resources being put in.

But much remains to be done. Many obstacles to progress still exist. The advances of the recent past represented by the 5 per cent. growth rate I mentioned just now have more or less been halved, as the noble Lord, Lord Byers, said, in terms of income per head, by the high rate of growth of population in the developing countries. International trade has flourished, but more so for the developed than for the developing countries. Our aim must be to do our utmost to help in the development effort. The Pearson Report presents clearly the challenge which faces all concerned as we try to go forward.

I should like to say something about the strategy as laid down in the Pearson Report. The first and, to my mind, one of the most vital of the ten points is the need to create a framework for free and equitable international trade. Here the proposals in the Report closely follow those of the Second United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in many respects. Her Majesty's Government fully accept the importance of creating a framework for an expansion in international trade, and the United Kingdom has always played a very active part in the various international discussions which have taken place in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and other organisations on the special trading problems of developing countries.

The Pearson Report emphasised that "trade is not a substitute for foreign aid," but also made it clear that the developing countries can grow without the help of aid only as a result of the evolution of their trade. Aid without trade makes nonsense of aid. It is therefore of great importance to them that their exports should have to overcome the lowest possible tariff and other trade barriers. I make no bones about saying that in this respect our own performance is perhaps one of the best; certainly it is a very good one. We maintain a virtually open market for most primary commodities of importance to developing countries, and we have for many years given very liberal access—free, for the most part, of all tariff and quota destrictions—to imports of manufactures from Commonwealth countries. These countries, of course, include some of the largest exporters of manufactured goods in the developing world. In 1968, for example, over a quarter of our total imports came from developing countries—some 37 per cent. of our imports of food, raw materials and fuels, and some 14 per cent. of our imports of manufactured and semi-manufactured goods. These are higher figures than for almost all other developed countries, and it is significant that the percentage of manufactures and semi-manufactures in our total imports from developing countries has been steadily rising.

We have taken an active part in international work on commodity problems, and are members of all five international commodity agreements. In addition, as is well-known, the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement is of considerable value to a number of developing Commonwealth countries. There are other arrangements (some of them quite informal, but no less effective for that) for a number of commodities, in which we also participate; and we are taking part in international discussions on possible arrangements for several other commodities. Such duties and restrictions on primary commodities of major interest to developing countries as exist in our markets are generally maintained for the benefit of producers in the Commonwealth, including developing Commonwealth countries. Seeing my noble friend Lord Walston here, I have very much in mind the problem of bananas in Jamaica and the Windwards. We shall have to be very careful in the negotiations—which we fully support in principle—for a generalised tariff preference scheme for the manufactures and semi-manufactures of developing countries that the developing Common-wealth countries concerned obtain sufficient advantages in other markets to compensate them for having to share their present advantages in British markets. One thing we must remember, which has not yet been mentioned in this debate, is the need for the stability of commodity prices.

The Pearson Report also endorses the Second UNCTAD target of 1 per cent. of gross national product for the flow of resources to developing countries, and presses for it to be achieved by 1975. It also suggests that the component of official development assistance should be subject to a target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national product to be attained by 1975, and no later than 1980. These are points to which the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, has drawn particular attention. The noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, asked me some questions on this, and I will seek to answer them by developing my notes. If I do not meet his questions, perhaps he will tell me.

The original UNCTAD target to which Britain agreed in 1964 called for the net transfer of financial resources (official aid, net of capital repayments, net private investment, and guaranteed private export credits) amounting to 1 per cent. of national income. We achieved this target until 1966. However, at the second UNCTAD in 1968 the target was raised, because the basis was changed from national income to gross national product. This had the effect of demanding an increase of 25 per cent. in the United Kingdom performance. The Government undertook in 1968, together with the Governments of other developed countries, to use their best endeavours to reach this higher figure as soon as our economic circumstances permitted. In 1968 we provided 0.75 per cent. of our gross national product in flows to developing countries—0.42 per cent. being official aid, and 0.33 per cent. private flows.

In October last, the Pearson Report added two proposals: first, that each developed country should achieve the UNCTAD 1 per cent. of gross national product target as rapidly as possible, and in no case later than 1975; and, secondly, should increase its commitments of official development assistance to the level necessary for net disbursements to reach 0.70 per cent. of its gross national product by 1975 or shortly thereafter, but in no case later than 1980. We have welcomed the publication of the Pearson Report, but its many detailed recommendations require consideration and discussion, not only in this country but also internationally, and we shall play our full part in these discussions. Nevertheless, the target of 1 per cent. of gross national product set at UNCTAD 11 remains the internationally accepted target at present. As a Party, we on this side of the House, have indicated our support for this 1 per cent. for a long time. Our 1961 Election Manifesto referred to it, and our most recent Party Conference endorsed it. As a Government, we have never lacked the desire or the will to reach this target. We have maintained the flow of aid at a relatively stable level in cash terms during the last few years of great economic difficulty, but because of those difficulties we have not been able to keep our disbursements on aid in line with the rising gross national product.

In the process of overcoming our economic difficulties, we had to take hold of the overall pattern of Government expenditure and progressively change it. It was not possible, at a time when not only was the pattern of public expenditure having to be changed, but significant reductions were having to be made, to switch expenditure from one programme to another overnight. Certainly questions were raised at that time: what other programme would have to be cut if we were to provide more aid? Perhaps I may add this comment: I think it is a vital necessity that any Government, in the grant of overseas aid, should not only have Parliament behind it but should have the nation behind it as well. It has taken time to get our public expenditure more nearly into the pattern which we desire. We are now able to make progress. As was announced on November 27, the gross official programme of economic aid will be increased from £227 million in 1970–71, to £245 million in 1971–72; to £265 million in 1972–73, and to £300 million in 1973–74.

These figures show that we have in effect taken the first step proposed for Britain in the Pearson Report, which was that we should stem the decline of our aid in real terms and set it on the upward path again. Over the period 1971–72 to 1973–74 it will increase by an average of 9 per cent. a year in cash terms, with the rate of increase accelerating to 13 per cent. in 1973–74. The £300 million programme envisaged for 1973–74 will represent an increase of about one third over that for the current year. The UNCTAD target includes net private flows of financial resources to the developing countries, as well as net official flows. The future trend of private flows is difficult to predict, but taking a high estimate of those flows, we expect to reach the 1 per cent. gross national product target not much after the date of 1975 recommended by the Pearson Commission.

The Pearson recommendation that the official development assistance element of total aid flows should reach a specified percentage of G.N.P. was no doubt made because official flows, unlike private flows, are within the direct control ot governments, are on concessionary terms, and continuity can be more assured. If, however, the Pearson recommendation had operated in 1968, it would have required an increase of approximately £120 million over our net official aid disbursements of £178 million for that year. That indicates the magnitude of the step which the Pearson Report asks us to take. But recognising the element of uncertainty which is attached to estimates of future private flows, the Government have said they will keep under review the progress of both official and private flows, and they have announced their intention, unless the balance-of-payments position should preclude it, of reaching the target of 1 per cent. total flow not later than the end of the Second Development Decade.

I have looked at the words of my right honourable friend to which the noble Marquess referred, and I think he read in them more than perhaps he should have done. He should have looked at the earlier passages, where my right honourable friend refers to our method of programming and committing oneself to capital expenditure; for it is clear from that passage that we are committing ourselves only to 1973–74, and that this is the furthest year that we have in mind for public expenditure. It was in the light of that that she used these words at the bottom of column 869: We are in a difficult situation in which we are asked to make an advanced commitment … "—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 28/11/69.] I think that that statement must be related to the earlier parts in the column.

The rate of increase—and this is important—in the aid programme announced by my right honourable friend in another place for the last year of the current expenditure survey—in 1973–74 —would, if maintained by subsequent Government decisions, keep official flows on course for the Pearson recommendation on volume by the end of the decade. If the balance of payments continues to improve, as it is doing at the moment, I should hope that pressure would be placed upon Her Majesty's Government to make further increases. But we must get our own balance of payments right. It would be wrong to take risks at this stage. Once we have got it strung, I am certain that we shall be able to do even more in the future.

THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE

My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord. He said that I could intervene, and his explanations have been most helpful. But I should like to call his attention again to column 634 of Hansard of the other place, for November 27: Taking a high estimate for private flows, we could expect to reach the 1 per cent. target not much after the date of 1975 recommended by the Pearson Commission. I repeat, "taking a high estimate for private flows". Will the noble Lord explain why one should take a high estimate for private flows, in view of the Government's present policy?

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, we are being asked to make various assumptions here. We have taken a view of what we think will be the flows in the private sector into the developing countries. The noble Lord asked me whether we would take steps to remove some of the restrictions on overseas aid. I wish we could do that at this present moment, but I received a nod from the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, that while we have done pretty well in recent months in the field of the balance of payments, this is not the moment to let up. But this will be a field that we shall have to, and will, keep under close attention. And if one can help overseas development by easing some of these restrictions, then I am certain that the Government will do so.

THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE

My Lords, I do not want to interrupt the noble Lord's train of thought, but there was a question of insurance against non-commercial risk. This is very much tied in with the subject and I wonder whether the noble Lord has anything to say about it.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, I have somewhere in my papers a note on this matter, but I am becoming conscious of the time and I think I am going to pass that question to my noble friend Lady Llewelyn-Davies, who is to reply at the end of the debate. I still have piles of paper before me and I have now noted the passage of time.

To move on, therefore, I should like to say just one thing concerning the field of population explosion and its effect upon the economy. We are very conscious of this aspect. We are setting up a Commission on population to study the question, but in the end this is something the developing countries themselves must grasp. Certainly from my experience it would be counter-productive if we were trying to press upon them systems and attitudes which are at this moment contrary to their religious belief. I should like, however, to pay a very special tribute to those who work in the Family Planning Association overseas, who work in very lonely stations and in great difficulty but still press on and, when they can disclose figures, show quite remarkable achievements. I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, on the importance of universities, but I personally feel that we should now be doing a great deal more in the field of technical education, so that when one sees the economic developments of territories one knows that the local people will be able to take over, not only to do the jobs but, in the end, to manage them.

We are increasing aid from the multi-lateral organisations, but for the time being our main emphasis will be through the bilateral agreements. I was asked whether it would be possible to ease what is called the "tying of aid". Of course, aid that we give through the multilateral organisations is not tied—it is the bilateral aid that is tied. But at present, although we ourselves would like to see liberalisation, this could come about only if there were a general agreement by all the donor countries. If it were possible for a conference to be held on this matter, we should be willing to participate in it. But I see that the amount of aid that is tied represents some 58 per cent. of our bilateral financial aid.

I was asked also about pensions. My right honourable friend the Minister of Overseas Development has said that she is currently reviewing the situation in respect of overseas pensions. No doubt she will give weight to the views which have been expressed, and which 1 personally endorse. I was asked also about the possibility of setting up an inter-national volunteer service. I believe it was the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, who asked this question. This matter is under study at the United Nations. We have ourselves put proposals to the United Nations, and it may well be that this is something in which our own V.S.O.s can participate, working alongside others. Again, we would, I am sure, all join in paying our own tribute to the tremendous work of the Voluntary Service Overseas, particularly in the field of teaching English, which is such an important part of their work if graduates are to be able to gain all that can be gained from overseas universities.

My Lords, there is much more I should have liked to say, but I hope the House will accept from me that the Government do not lack the will in the field of over-seas aid; nor I believe does Parliament. I have a question mark about the country as a whole. Much will depend upon the leadership of the political Parties and the Church, to which I refer particularly as the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, will be speaking later. Much will depend upon them to make this a real social issue throughout the country. There is no lack of will by the British Government, and I hope that as our own economic strength increases we shall be able to play an even bigger part than we have played in the past; and I hope that other countries will be able to join us in that work.

4.56 p.m.

LORD HAWKE had given Notice of a Motion, To draw attention to the call of the Christian Churches for more aid to be given by the rich countries to the poor countries; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, very much for allowing my Motion to be debated at the same time as his. The Churches have for so long been connected with this development of the poorer countries that I thought it only right that their interests should be specifically mentioned in clear terms.

May I start by endorsing one proposal put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Fulton: that the Government should take over colonial pensions? That is rather important. Otherwise, I have been disappointed with the debate so far, because I had hoped that somebody was going to produce a magic formula where-by people become rich without working; and unfortunately that has not been the case. It was left to the noble Lord, Lord Byers, to call us to our senses and to say that no improvement in the poorer countries can take place except as a result of human efforts of the people in those countries. For one moment the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, made me nostalgic: on a day like this I feel that some of his backward islands, under a palm tree, would be a much better place than England.

The question of poverty, hunger and disease in many countries has been troubling the conscience of the Churches for a large number of years, and they have been doing as much as they can through their overseas connections. I am sure that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester will say something about this. At home they have passed resolutions at various times, culminating in one in the Church Assembly last November, to the effect that Christians should use every opportunity to impress on Government and political Parties to commit for aid at least 1 per cent. of the gross national product, over and above military aid and private investment, and that as much as possible should be in the form of grants rather than loans. That to all intents and purposes accords with the Pearson Report.

What does it really involve, my Lords? At the moment we are dealing with figures for 1969–70, and we are prognosticating five or six years ahead. Personally, I am not prepared to guess what the gross national product is going to be five or six years ahead. But it may well be that the aid figure will have to be of the order of £400 million. This is a very substantial sum; it is very much more than the money collected by way of surtax, for instance, and it represents roughly the amount collected from beer duty, which, goodness knows!, is high enough. There are however some alleviating items. At the moment the Government are bringing in £50 million or £60 million worth of interest and repayment of loans, so their target is rather lower than they represent. The Churches represent that these receipts should not be reckoned.

On the other hand, we are entitled to take some credit for the immense sums of social capital that we are sinking in this country on the housing of immigrants—the surplus population of these poorer countries—and for the very substantial remittances they are able to make from this country to their home lands, which in many cases must be very important contributions to the economy of those countries overseas. Once upon a time I reckoned that it must cost at least £4,000 to settle a family in this country. I imagine that the figure to-day is probably much higher, but naturally I have no detailed information. Of course we continue to take surplus population. In the case of East Africa, we are taking people from there to enable the Africans to take over their jobs: so that is direct aid to East Africa.

When we start to talk in terms of loans there is a significant sentence in the 24th paragraph of the 17th Report on the Colombo Plan. It says: The rising burden of debt servicing on past loans has severely curtailed the net inflow of external aid.

Experience in South America has always led me to believe that when the Scottish Financial Controller packed his bags and left the colonial territories those territories would cease to be financially viable. This is inevitable when countries with badly unbalanced budgets try to put on a show of grandeur to match their new-found freedom. One must remember that diplomatic missions and delegations to the United Nations are very costly on foreign exchange and represent a far bigger burden than ever was the old panoply of colonial power, with the Governor, and so on, about which so much criticism has sometimes been uttered. For this reason I have absolutely no hesitation in endorsing the Church Assembly resolution that as much as possible of this aid should be in the form of outright grants.

I would go further, my Lords. After all, when we were partners with the United States of America in fighting Hitler we received Lease-Lend and gave reciprocal aid. Are we not all partners in this particular war against poverty? Let us review our past loans and in future stick to lease-lend. And, of course, if we were ever to get into a jam ourselves we should be entitled to ask for reciprocal aid. This would put a substantial extra burden on us over and above the Government target.

Someone may remember that, speaking in the debate on the Address last November, I asked Her Majesty's Government to appoint a committee of experts to see whether, through the International Monetary Fund, any relief of the burden of passing aid across the exchanges could be found. I received no answer at the time, and the other day I was pleasantly surprised to find that in September a body was set up by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development— UNCTAD—to study this question. That body has reported. It recognises the two difficulties that I have mentioned; namely, to raise the money, and then to pass it across the exchanges. It could not do much about the budgetary problem, but it did make suggestions to overcome the foreign exchange difficulty, by using the new Special Drawing Rights in the International Monetary Fund—the "paper gold" that we read about. The subject is rather technical, and I will not go into it, but it was commended by the "Lombard" column in the Financial Times yesterday.

Of course, this particular exercise contains some abstruse questions of public finance. I can see, too, that giving up a portion of our share of the Special Drawing Rights allotted to us would make it more difficult to repay our international debts. But only the Treasury experts can say to what degree adoption of the suggestions of this international committee would relieve our difficulty of foreign exchange and internal finance.

The committee also suggested that when it comes to creating Special Drawing Rights the developing countries should be allotted more than their normal share. One advantage of this particular method of increasing the purchasing power of the poorer countries—and, incidentally, increasing world liquidity —is that it would bring in the richer ones, some of which may not be participating at the moment. After all, if through the Fund the vast majority agree to give up a share of their newly allotted Special Drawing Rights, I do not think anybody else would have the face to stand out and to refuse his share. The committee estimates that over the next three years something like 1,000 million dollars a year could be made available if the proportion given up to these countries were 50 per cent. of the amount allotted to the richer countries. And, of course, there could be even more if the countries that we are discussing were given a special extra allotment of their own.

Some people say that the exchange difficulties of this age are cancelled out by the fact that the aid money comes back to buy goods: I think the Pearson Report takes that line. But this is about the only thing I cannot accept in that otherwise excellent Report. Perhaps there is a special condition which tends to apply to us more than to other countries. Our difficulty in paying our way in the world is so often the fact that we cannot give delivery of the goods which other people want to buy from us, and that so often the goods which are required by the poorer countries by way of aid are precisely the same goods that the richer countries want to buy from us. Thus by filling up our production lines with goods for aid we are, in fact, making an absolute, complete and outright gift of this amount. I do not accept that it flows back in any way.

some of the opinions put forward by churchmen over the past years give the impression that the gap between rich and poor could be solved by a levellingdown process. This may be good Christian ethics but it is very bad economics, because we cannot make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. The richer the rich countries are, the more they can buy for the poorer; and such resolutions are incompatible with other resolutions that we must buy more than the poorer. One cannot buy more than the poorer if one has already divested oneself of one's riches.

To take an instance, let us consider Russia. Russia, with a large population and a Northern climate, could be a huge buyer of products from the tropical and temperate countries. But the Russian people are wallowing in the squalor of State socialism and just have not the purchasing power, and their industry just has not got the ability to produce anything competitive in quality with Japan, Europe or the United States of America. Here in this country, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, pointed out, we are taking goods from the underdeveloped countries at a rate which really hurts some of our industries; and unless one is prepared to see them go right under (and for strategic reasons I should not be prepared to see our textile industry sunk), we really cannot do very much more. On the other hand, if we get more prosperous, we shall be taking more and more goods from Hong Kong, India, Pakistan and from other similar places.

The Churches have also been talking about altering the system of world trade, about commodity price agreements and improving the terms of trade for developing countries. I do not know how we alter the system except to resort to some form of bilateral trade as practised by Hitler and the Russians. On the whole, experience shows that it does not really work: one reduces world trade rather than increases it, and one impoverishes rather than enriches it. Commodity price agreements I have always supported, but they are extremely difficult to work in practice, and I suppose the mountains of butter accumulated through the price support programme of the Common Market is an awful warning on this particular subject. We ought to press the industrial countries not to levy huge taxes on tropical produce like cocoa and coffee, but they could come back at us and talk to us about rum, tobacco and wine. And I wonder what the noble Lord, Lord Soper, would say to them then. The best chance of altering the terms of trade is to bring more and more people in every country up to the level at which they can be competing for the goods of the poorer countries and thus the prices of those goods will improve.

The Church wishes to exclude private investment from the calculations. Private investment forms a very important part of aid, but no one is going to invest his own or other people's money in the poorer countries unless there is some prospect of remitting some of the return. The private concern may in fact want to plough it all back, but the door must exist to bring some back if they want to. It was the virtual impossibility of remittance of profits which dried up foreign investment in South America for so many years. By and large, Government money has to provide the infra-structure, and the hundred-and-one businesses, large and small, can then come in and create employment. One of the most urgent tasks in the development of these poorer countries is to create a system whereby local savings can be mobilised for investment in locally set-up industries.

As regards these targets, on the whole I am pretty satisfied with what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, was saying. All these things are a tremendous shot in the dark, and our circumstances may change one way or the other, but the really important thing is to provide the right sort of aid to the right people at the right time. For instance, a botanist may strike on a new seed at very small cost which can be worth far more to countries than many millions spent in prestigious projects. The provision of technical books at cheap prices, as was advocated by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London in the Church Assembly, I think is vitally important. These people cannot afford to pay full price for books. I believe we could do a lot that way. It is in that sort of way that we can bring cost effectiveness into our aid and see that what we can afford to do has maximum impact.

To sum up, I stand by the Churches, wherever their call for action appears to be practical economics. We are a country which still has to watch its overseas finances very carefully. At the moment things are better, as foreign money is flowing in to take advantage of our high interest rates, but it could just as soon flow out again. We must not forget that many of our people might object to so much aid being given to countries which behave so often so badly to us. Yet we should not visit the sins of the rulers upon their unfortunate peasantry, and we are adjured to return good for evil.

5.15 p.m.

THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER

My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, for introducing this subject with such illumination, and I recall how during his very distinguished leadership as the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex he took the initiative in one of the first institutes for development studies in the country. It is very appropriate that he should be presenting this subject now.

I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, who has called the attention of the House to the requests from the Churches. Though we sit on opposite sides of the Chamber, we sit side by side when he takes the chair in my own diocesan board of finance, for which I am grateful. Although we share the same ethics, I do not think that we always share the same economics, judging from some of his recent remarks. Nevertheless, he has given me, I hope, a further right to speak first to respond to this issue from the Churches. As the noble Lord has said, it is a fact that for years the Churches have in some degree been involved in development. Their whole missionary enterprise has always meant increasingly dealing with the whole man, schools, hospitals and agricultural development, just as much as bringing the Gospel. This has become more true in recent years, as we realise more and more, like other people, the whole integration of man and his needs. It is also true that we are, and have been for some time, specifically concerned with what might be called aid in its immediate need.

I have to hand a letter written recently from a man who spent much of his time ministering in Nigeria. Speaking of the present situation there and the desperate needs which at the end of a war confront people, with fears of disease and hunger and death, he says: Before the civil war a number of voluntary agencies were at work in Nigeria in various development projects in rural and urban areas. It seems to me that if there was a time when the services and aid of such voluntary organisations were more urgently needed it is right now, for in the situation which exists, especially in the Eastern States of Nigeria, the aid which can be given to people through purely governmental agencies alone is bound, naturally, to be limited. It is a situation in which the vast majority of people have lost all their belongings and very few have the legal currency to buy what is available in local food". And here is a place for a call for aid from the whole international community. He adds at the end of his letter: Finally, I would add that the belief of the people of Nigeria in our ability to he p them in time of need is not a misplaced belief. In the past we have given them educational, medical and other aid through Church, government and other agencies, and here is a crucial moment in the history of Nigeria and we must not disappoint them now". He has referred to the particular obstructions in the way of giving voluntary aid in that country at the moment, and this is, if you like, an instance of voluntary Christian aid and other aid apart from Government agencies, sometimes in spite of political situations altogether.

Last year, for instance, Christian Aid, which is a department of the British Council of Churches, reported a total income for that year of £2,600,000 in private giving, a sum which exceeded its previous record by over £700,000. This is an indication of a mounting consciousness of many people in this country of actual need. But side by side with it— and this is the substance of our particular call—there has come a new kind of response from the Churches as they realise the significance not of aid but of development, something which is a long-term demand upon us. Innumerable instances of this are going on, based so often on, as it sometimes seems, that magic figure of 1 per cent. One per cent. is being asked by parishes of individual annual income, or one day's pay or the like, and others are undertaking special long-term projects of agricultural or other aid. I do not want to weary your Lord-ships with any details of what has gradually emerged in Christian opinion through this first decade. But this change of opinion is a recognition that we are dealing with something long-term and that development is an integral part of our situation, in regard to which we must make a regular integral response. There must be over 100 World Poverty Action Groups which have sprung up in the last year which are studying and proclaiming the needs and issues of this subject.

Some of your Lordships will be aware that the voluntary agencies have banded themselves together in what is called an Action for World Development, to keep open the urgency of the issues and to promote action by responsible authorities. Last December, in what was called the National Sign-In on World Poverty, over three-quarters of a million people signed and presented to their Members of Parliament a petition supporting three practical aims which are largely the substance of the Pearson Commission Report: the achievement, by 1972, of a 1 per cent. target; the increase of multilateral aid, and the negotiation of trade agreements favourable to the poorer countries. It may be said that in terms of balancing this petition with one on capital punishment, three-quarters of a million is not all that large a number. But it represented people who in different degrees had really studied and acquainted themselves with this question, and were ready to show themselves as interested in the affairs of other peoples as they are in their own. They recognise that what they are asking they must first ask of themselves.

The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, quoted part of the resolution of the Church Assembly, which asked primarily for a commitment of 1 per cent., largely in terms of aid. It started by saying that Christian men and women, having first demonstrated their own commitment, should use every opportunity to bring this before the authorities. We recognise that voluntary giving on any level—it has a high level at present—is "chicken-feed" in the general problem of development; but it gives those who are involved in it a certain right to approach Governments, and it is based on a realisation that not only is development a new conception, but that the part that individuals should play must be primarily to strengthen their own Governments in measures which only Governments or industrial combines can themselves undertake effectively.

It is in such terms that I must revert, I hope briefly, to two or three of the points in the Pearson Report which have been included in our requests to Governments and peoples. Again I return to this question of aid. We are glad that the Pearson Report underlined, against a good deal of pessimism, the part that aid has already played in achieving so much growth. It is natural for us to fix upon a target—I believe that men, and nations too, need targets—and to fix upon the 1 per cent. We recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has said, that originally this was perhaps only a declaration of intent and even later, perhaps, accepted with a degree of reluctance at its larger figure of gross national product. Nevertheless, the Pearson Commission have made a sober estimate on this. I quote their words: A world-wide campaign to speed developing countries on a path of rapid growth towards economic independence is within our range of accomplishment. Again, that provides that the developing countries attain their level of 1 per cent. aid. So what the Commission has surely done is to give authority at least to this kind of target as a test of commitment.

It is easy to quote the large sums that we shall be giving, as estimated by the Minister, in four years' time. But percentages are a much surer guide. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, quoted some figures of what we have done, and reminded us that, on the whole we have in difficult times, as we recognise, maintained our actual cash figure for aid. But he did not, I think, add what we all recognise, that in 1967–68, according to the Institute figures, the net aid declined and, what is worse, that the net basis of our percentage (which, after all, is the true basis of our capacity to do anything) of the G.N.P. has also considerably declined over the last four years. This is bound to disquiet us, even recognising the difficulties.

The Church Assembly referred their particular motion to the Minister of Overseas Development, who replied in much the same terms, naturally, as the noble Marquess quoted just now. It is true that an advance of one-third in four years sounds very good. But we were also somewhat alarmed by the statement that if private investment in the developing countries reaches a high level this, together with the steady growth in our official aid, may make it possible for the 1 per cent. target to be reached in the mid-1970s or a little later. Surely that is not a satisfactory statement. It does not indicate the real value of our aid after repayments—what have been termed the quids without the quos. It does not relate the size of our grants to our actual gross national product. It does not promise us our target by 1975, or a little later—and even then only if the scale of private investment is sufficient. Yet Pearson was surely right in asking for a larger official share, for it is only public aid, with its absence of strings, which is really within the power of Governments to control. We therefore feel some disappointment about this. I gladly acknowledge that the Government are ready to reconsider, or to review this from year to year. Certainly, we should wish to press for this and support an advance, particularly since, unfortunately, Pearson singled out the United Kingdom as one of the four countries whose percentage of official aid had in fact fallen during the First Development Decade.

The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, referred, I thought somewhat critically, to the statement by Church bodies upon aid. It is quite true, for instance, that in the manifesto of the three-quarters of a million people, to which I have already referred, there was a request that the Government should negotiate trade agreements favourable to poorer countries. In all honesty, I think that this was made, in some fear and trembling by many of us, for the intricacies and technicalities of trade are too deep for us. Nevertheless, without becoming experts, there are-numerous groups of people springing up throughout the country who are studying problems of development, and who are well aware that far more radical steps will be necessary in the whole sphere of trade; and it would be naive to ignore this. It would be impossible to maintain any head of steam for supporting-aid, for instance, or concern for the recipient countries, when we understand that the trading system of the world is diminishing the aid, it may be without any reference to us. It is heartening to be told, as we have been told in one of our debates, that in the fifteen years following 1950, trade in primary commodities has doubled, but that the share of developing countries has declined by some 9 per cent.

It is heartening to hear from the Secretary-General of UNCTAD that through unfavourable shifts of trade, the loss to developing countries in the last two years has amounted to almost 1¼ million dollars. We do not want to paper over cracks. Aid must be real aid, and development must be real development, and we should recognise that while actual aid means a larger share, in some sense, of our budget, and will be costly, there would be more costly readjustments in trade if it is to mean what it is intended to mean. I acknowledge what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said on the subject of trade, on which the Pearson Commission dwelt with such weight, but I would ask him to what extent, in the view of the Government, these elements of aid and trade and other aspects are related together in some overall policy.

The Ministry of Overseas Development, as the former Minister himself said, is in fact a Ministry of Aid; other problems of our relationships with the developing world—trade and investment, et cetera— belong elsewhere. In the light of what the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, said, he might have added more about the tremendous field of education. Whose shoulders will that rest on? It may be said that our own party of overseas students at home is an effective, and should be a more effective, contribution to this. Is there any overall policy or body within the framework of the Government which holds this together? Is it significant that the Minister of Over-seas Development is not specifically now within the Cabinet? Is there some way in which greater co-ordination can be effected?

It was remarked, quite rightly—and I think it may be rightly said by voluntary givers and voluntary protesters in this field—that to some extent the onus is upon us, as well as upon the Government, for creating the head of steam in public support which would enable us to grow. There are real and serious difficulties about its presentation. In this country there is a considerable and a growing body of opinion which is acutely concerned with development and ready to be inspired by some imaginative lead; but at the same time there is a general public which is probably indifferent, and certainly very often irritated by what it hears or reads, by thoughts of waste or of ingratitude, and the like. It is greatly to be hoped that this kind of situation will not ever be aggravated by becoming a Party issue.

There is certainly a strong moral aspect —the sheer fact of human need and inequality. I hope that this will be stated strongly, and as strongly as needed for us to face its consequences. It is a question of will. But it would be unwise to promise too much, either in results or in response to our own results. It is true that neglect, or inadequate response, will lead to a further disparity between nations which will be ultimately disastrous—if not for us, for our successors. It is also true that increased aid will no doubt redound, in a process of exchange, to the prosperity both of donor and of recipient. But it would be unwise to suggest, as some people do, that development will automatically bring peace. It may, in fact, bring a sword, or at least disturbance. The growth to maturity in any nation will be accompanied by some turbulence, and all the more so if that material improvement is not properly passed on or transferred equitably to the mass of people in the country.

Do we not need at this juncture, in the beginning of a new decade, to stress particularly the creative aspect of this subject, as the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, so rightly did at the beginning? What is really meant by development? It implies much more than material advance. It means helping nations to grow up and to become themselves. It requires greater sensitivity to national traditions, to their own particular circumstances, their educational needs, their inter-racial relationships and so on. It means, in fact, a new kind of world in the making. Therefore, the question is whether our individual nations have really begun yet to shape our thinking towards the world which I suppose our sons will have to inherit. This perhaps is one of the most important aspects of both Reports: their common emphasis on the international framework of development. We must take to heart the criticism of the present organisation; its haphazard growth. Perhaps it is good that the Jackson Report should comment so caustically on the cumbersome machine becoming slower and more unwieldy like some prehistoric monster". This raises the critical question: is development genuinely a world concern, genuinely the responsibility of the nations together, rather than a by-product of the raison d'être of the United Nations? If I understand the Jackson Report correctly, it sees the United Nations system itself at the cross-roads. Let it reorganise itself to lead in development strategy, or else it will phase itself out and the World Bank, or something else, will take over. If that is true, then indeed I think it is not the United Nations only at the cross-roads, it is something more: the relationships of nations themselves, the kind of structure which the world is going to have in the future, that, too, is at stake. Ultimately, there would be a danger that we should lose through this an opportunity to unite nations collectively in their own mutual welfare.

This could, as I stressed, be a creative moment—not for the better development of the Third World, but for the future of the United Nations and the nations who are its members. As the Jackson Report says, it will depend upon the determination of heads of Government, with their Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Finance. I hope we may hear more from the Minister who will reply of the response of our Government to this, and how far they are prepared to take initiatives in this second decade to make it a stage of positive fulfilment.

5.37 p.m.

LORD BLACKETT

My Lords, I ought to start by asking the indulgence of your Lordships' House for this my maiden speech. I, like all of your Lordships, am very indebted to my noble friend Lord Fulton for initiating this debate. Among other things, it has given me the chance to make my maiden speech on a subject that is not only of great importance in the world but one which I am sincere and committed about.

Since many noble Lords have spoken and covered many aspects of the various reports— the Pearson Report, the Jackson Report, and the Second Development Decade—it is left to me to make only a few comments on a few subjects that are of special interest to me. May I say that my first contact with the Third World was in 1947 when I went to a scientific conference in India. Since then I have been many times, and to many other developing countries, and this has given me some appreciation of the problems of countries where the personal income per head is only about 90 dollars a year, compared with 1,800 dollars in Great Britain—20 to one. It is difficult to visualise that, but the figures are very important. Moreover, both developed countries and undeveloped countries are increasing fairly fast, about 5 per cent. a year, and this means that the increase of income and wealth of a Briton—any of us here to-day—is more than the actual income per annum of an Indian. Our yearly increase in wealth is as much as their wealth altogether, and this is a devastating fact.

I am completely convinced that this problem of the widening gap—and it is widening—is the second most important problem in the world. The first, of course, is to ensure that the developed industrialised nations do not destroy themselves, and perhaps the rest of the world, by nuclear war. But if, as I believe, it is reasonable to assume that mankind is sensible and sane enough to avoid that catastrophe, then I think the gap between the rich and the poor countries becomes problem number one in the world to-day. Because of this, I welcome very sincerely the Lester Pearson Report. I share the great enthusiasm expressed for it, and I agree that for lucidity, comprehensiveness and moral force it stands very high. Its publication was well-timed and it admirably takes account of political realities at the present time.

There is one aspect of this subject about which I am not going to talk in detail, because several noble Lords have already discussed it, but I would refer to it. That is the controversy over the British contribution to the Lester Pearson target of 1 per cent. of G.N.P. by 1975. I want to add to the views expressed by many others and to say that I regret that Her Majesty's Government have not yet found it possible to commit themselves quite firmly to the Lester Pearson target. However, there is plenty of time for that target to be reached; and if the will of the people and the Government is strong enough, it can be done. I venture to hope that to-day's debate will help to produce—perhaps in a small yet still appreciable way—a climate of opinion which will ease the Government's task of finding the resources to commit themselves fully to the Lester Pearson plan.

Apart from that, I hope, short period issue, I am proud of the British record for aid. Moreover, I believe that the Ministry of Overseas Development—the only one in the world, as we have heard to-day —is a very efficient organisation, and distributes both wisely and efficiently the financial resources that are made available to it. Having said that, I must emphasise that the vital problem of the economic development of the underdeveloped countries can only be solved over decades. As the Report emphasised, there is no such thing as "instant development". In the world of development politics a decade is a short time.

In 1967 there were 15 main donor countries, with a population of 600 million and an average income per head of 2,500 dollars a year. Then there were 28 main recipient countries—these are the D.A.C. specifications—with a population of 1,600 million and an average income per head of 150 dollars a year. The total income of the 15 donor countries was thus six times that of the 28 recipient countries. It follows that the Pearson target, of 1 per cent. of G.N.P. for the total transfer of resources from the 15 donor countries, amounts to 6 per cent. of the G.N.P. of the 28 recipient countries. It is this far greater average income per head of the developed, compared with the developing countries, which makes it possible for the donor countries to aid decisively the economic and social development of the recipient countries at a relatively small real cost to themselves. Two years ago the annual flow of external resources from the donor countries amounted to 12 billion dollars, which gives an average of 7 dollars a head in the recipient countries. So that this wonderful aid programme succeeded in getting only 7 dollars per head to the developing countries.

It is pointed out in the Lester Pearson Report that this flow of resources is very unevenly distributed among the recipient countries, with no coherent pattern. For instance, it points out that the total flow of resources to India is the biggest to any one country, but because of her large population of 500 million the amount of aid per head is among the smallest; in fact, only 4 dollars per year per head. The Report also points out that India would get five times as much aid as she does now, if she received the same amount per head as Chile. It adds that there seems to be some sort of objection to taking fully into account the population of a country in the distribution of aid, and calls this attitude one of the least sensible and defensible aspects of the present aid policy.

The Report contains a valuable section on the prospects of economic growth in India, and ends with the following important paragraph: If, however, India could be assured of a steady flow of resources at twice the present annual net flow (i.e. $2 billion instead of the present $1 billion …) it would mean: (1) an increase in the growth rate of about 1 per cent a year; … If one concedes that development of low-income countries is important and that India is a major test, it is hard to imagine a more important and rewarding investment. For many reasons this seems to me a very important statement. It emphasises that India is in a position to absorb a much larger flow of external resources than she is now getting. Then it implies that an extra investment of 2 per cent. of the G.N.P. of India should produce an extra economic growth rate of about 1 per cent. a year.

The Report does not give any details of how this calculation was made, but if this result—that an extra 2 per cent. of the G.N.P. invested should produce an extra 1 per cent. of growth—is of general application to sophisticated developing countries, then a very important conclusion follows. That is that aid to the amount of 1 per cent. of the G.N.P. of the rich donor countries—that is 6 per cent. of the G.N.P. of the poor countries —should allow an extra 3 per cent. a year growth rate in the recipient countries. This would really begin to touch the problem of the relative wealth gap. If these figures given by the Lester Pearson Report are correct and generally valid, it is clear that additional aid to developing countries with sophisticated administration really pays handsomely in promoting economic growth.

One must not forget that India, together with most other experienced developing countries, finances far the greatest part of its investment out of its own internal sources. At the moment, aid usually does not contribute much more than 10 per cent. of total investment, so they are doing a great deal internally. When one remembers also that India is much the largest country in the world operating a Parliamentary system, and has already made important steps in economic development, then one feels that the main aid-giving nations should give higher priority for aid to India than they have done in the past.

It is clear that economic growth in a less developed country is dependent on investment, just as it is in a developed country. It is very important to remember this when one is concerned with science and technology. For there is always a danger that the enthusiastic scientist or technologist may give the impression that modern science and technology can be waved like a magic wand over a poor country to make it into a rich one. Of course no one believes this, but there are quite a number of people who seem to act as if it were true.

Modern science and technology can add to wealth only when they are incorporated in better or cheaper material goods or services. Merely knowing how to do something does not add to wealth. Only when something useful is done is wealth created, and for this to occur capital must be invested. In fact, in a very direct way the application of modern science and technology to a developing country is limited by the amount of available investment capital, and therefore to a large extent by the amount of aid. Thus scientists and technologists who want to see their wonderful achievements used for the benefit of humanity must concern themselves with social, economic and financial matters, including the problem of investment and the flow of resources from the rich to the poor countries.

To see the intimate connection between economic growth and unemployment on the one hand, and science and technology on the other, consider, my Lords, one of the many countries with an income per head around 100 dollars—Kenya, India and many others. A reasonable maximum amount of investment which could be made available for manufacturing industry in such a country might be 5 per cent. of the income per head; that is, 5 dollars per year per head. One cannot buy a great deal of modern production equipment embodying modern science and technology for an investment of 5 dollars per year per head.

In the industry of an advanced country like our own there will be found a big range in the cost of capital equipment per man employed, from a few dollars for the tools of a jobbing gardener to the 100,000 dollars per man in a modern chemical plant. An average figure might be 5,000 dollars of capital for one work place. The figure is not so very different in the developed or developing countries, because most of the equipment has to come from the developed countries. In-vestment in technologically advanced production goods tends to increase productivity, but it also provides little employment. So, for a given available investment, the need to create adequate employment sets a sharp limit to the use of modern, advanced technology. The Re-port emphasises that what is required is a spectrum of investment projects, ranging from very labour-intensive to very capital-intensive. The more aid that is available, the more use can be made of advanced technology.

I want now to say a word about the "green revolution". The noble Lord, Lord Fulton, has already mentioned it, and, of course, it is at the back of every-body's mind in this context. One of the most striking examples of research and development applied to developing countries is the breeding of new high-yield varieties of wheat and rice. These have been developed mainly in Mexico and the Philippines by the Ford and Rocke-feller Foundations over a decade or so. The resulting big increases of yield, when they are used in large quantities in India, Pakistan, Turkey and other countries, are very striking indeed, and have led to this phrase, the "green revolution".

At first sight, this "green revolution" should allow for a rapid increase in the speed of general economic advance at a very low cost in investment. However, this is only partially true, because of the need for water, fertilisers, pesticides, electric power, transport, storage facilities, education and monetary credit—all of which must be provided. So this agricultural revolution demands an industrial one as well, including profound internal social changes, and so demands a great deal of capital investment. So even the "green revolution" does not provide instant development.

At present, India consumes annually some 2 million tons of nutrient fertilisers, and the eventual need will certainly be much higher—more like 10 million tons. If the fertiliser is imported, then they use a very large amount of foreign exchange. But if it is produced in India, it requires a very heavy expenditure of capital. Both methods are largely dependent on aid, rather than on more research and development. The technological developments have been done in the advanced countries. The fertiliser plants are there to be bought or to be erected. What is wanted is not science and development: what is wanted is capital and investment. This is true of very large fields of modern technology. When one comes down to it, the limitation is the shortage of investment. Even in this country that is true, too.

Returning to the wider aspects of the Report, it seems to me that the real difficulty is that it appears to aim only at the objective of stopping the present widening of the relative gap of 20 to 1, rather than at the objective of starting to reduce the ratio. At present, the economic growth rates of the G.N.P. of both developed and developing countries are nearly the same, at 5 per cent. This is a great achievement of the part of the developing countries, and much credit is due to the developed countries in the aid they have given. So this is a great achievement on the part of both the poor and the rich countries. The population rise of the developing countries is about 1 per cent. higher than that of the developed countries, so making the growth of the income 1 per cent. lower.

The Pearson target envisages an increase in the growth rate of the poor countries of 1 per cent.—that is, from 5 per cent. to 6 per cent.—during the 1970s. This would be just sufficient to bring the rate of increase of the G.N.P., per capita of the less developed countries, into line with that of the developed countries, thus preventing the present 20 to 1 ratio of relative income per head from widening. But the stated target is not enough to start reducing the present ratio.

Looking ahead, it seems desirable that another study should be made in a few years' time, with the explicit object of inquiring into how one can envisage beginning to close the relative income gap. Admittedly, the task will be a formidable one. For instance, to close the relative gap from the present 20 to 1 to 10 to 1 in, say, 40 years, implies that the per capita growth rate of the G.N.P. of the less developed countries must be 2 per cent. higher than that of the developed countries. Unless something like this rate of growth is achieved in the developing countries, the gap will widen and we shall bequeath to future generations a still more divided and still more dangerous world. I thank your Lordships for your attention.

5.55 p.m.

LORD GLADWYN

My Lords, I am indeed happy that it falls to me to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, on an excellent maiden speech which I am sure all your Lordships will agree is worthy of the President of the Royal Society, a Nobel Prize Winner and a holder of the American Medal for Merit, but which also possessed, I feel, a human quality which I know this House will be the first to appreciate. Now that the noble Lord has, as it were, taken the plunge and has, so to speak, joined the club, I hope that we shall increasingly hear from him, and that he will increasingly intervene not only in specialised debates but also in great matters of policy, on which again we shall very much look forward to hearing his opinions.

I propose to intervene for only a very few minutes to call attention to a form of aid which I believe has to some extent been neglected in this country. This is perhaps all the more surprising because it is a form of aid which involves no strain on our balance of payments. I refer to the position of overseas students, on whose behalf, as your Lordships will perhaps recollect, I took up the cudgels over three years ago in this House when, as I thought quite misguidedly, the Government increased the fees which these students pay, which resulted, I fear, in a substantial decrease in the number of unsubsidised students from many of the developing countries and, of course, more especially from countries of the Commonwealth. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, dealt at some length with the general problem of education in its relation to aid, and I know that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester also mentioned one aspect of overseas students' affairs, but I propose, if I may, to dwell on a rather specialised aspect of this great question.

Before I do so, perhaps I might say that, as your Lordships are aware, no-body could be keener on creating some kind of new political entity or community, call it what you will, in Western Europe than I am, but that does not mean that I am concerned solely with the position of European students in the United Kingdom. Of course not. On the contrary, I believe that if we ever succeed in extending the present European Economic Community of the Six so as to include this country and the other candidates, we have an excellent chance, and perhaps the only real chance, of developing a common European policy as regards students from the developing countries, which would be part and parcel of some major and streamlined European form of aid as a whole.

To come, then, to details as regards the present position, as we all know since 1945 there has been a steady flow of young people to this country for the purposes of study. They have come from the developed countries of Europe, chiefly to learn that modern lingua franca, which is the English language; but they have come from the developing world, and chiefly from the Commonwealth countries, to acquire, if they can, our expertise and our techniques in order, as it were, to be able to stand on their own feet and help their own countries to become really independent. It is a remarkable fact, recently revealed by the British Council of Churches Working Party on Overseas Students that no less than one-tenth of the entire overseas student population of the world is now congregated here in Britain. Yet (and this is the point to which I should like to draw your Lordships' attention), in spite of tremendous efforts on the part of the British Council, the Churches, the charities and all the other internationally minded bodies, the British response to this challenge has been sadly inadequate. The students concerned naturally wish to acquire the necessary techniques in order to achieve real independence; but the great majority of them have not yet got anything like the necessary facilities at home for doing this, so those who cannot get enough education there tend, if they can, to come here. The tragedy is that here the facilities are very largely inadequate.

Let us take, in particular, the example of practical training for overseas students in commerce and industry in Britain. It must be obvious that an intelligent student from one of the developing countries, whatever degrees or qualifications he may have obtained as a result of his period of study here, is going to be pretty useless when he gets back to his own country unless he has had some practical training; that is to say, training in the way in which the book knowledge he has obtained at his desk can be put to real practical effect.

I am aware that some of our larger firms are doing a good deal already in this direction, and for that they are to be congratulated. But it is still very difficult, for obvious practical reasons, to persuade the smaller firms to go out of their way to accept one or two overseas trainees. It is here—and this is the positive suggestion that I want to make to the Government—that the Government should come out with a scheme for assisting these smaller firms to make the necessary arrangements. As I said at the outset, it would not be a question of spending any foreign exchange whatsoever.

Then let us take legal education. In spite of the measures started in the Coun cil of Legal Education by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in 1960 I think, the position from the overseas students' point of view is still far from satisfactory. There is still a high failure rate (I think it is a very high failure rate) in their Bar examinations; and conditions for their study are, as everybody will admit, painfully overcrowded.

It is easy, therefore, for critics of our affluent society to draw attention to our comparative failure to satisfy the needs of many overseas students in the developing countries—an example, they would say, of neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism; or to some extent, they might further say, an abuse of our position of trust as head of the Commonwealth. That is the sort of criticism one might hear. It would be a tragedy if a number of these serious Commonwealth students in this country were to go back to their own countries with the vague impression, however wrong it might be, that they had been in some way exploited; that we had got a lot of money out of them for fees, for professors, yet had not really given them what they want—practical experience.

Does our system, in any case, stand up to that adopted by some of our neighbours, some of our prospective partners if we ever join the European community? Publicly financed trainees in Western Germany increased from 6,311 in 1966 to 7,200 in 1967 and to 9,366 in 1968; whereas numbers here have remained roughly constant at about 4,000 a year. In France, the corresponding figures for the same years, I am told (and I think that the figures are correct), were constant at about 7,500 a year. A particularly striking difference between Western Germany and this country is revealed if one takes the detailed figures of industrial trainees. In Western Germany, publicly financed trainees in German industry increased from 2,023 in 1965 to 2,705 in 1967, whereas in this country they actually decreased from 747 to 419. That is to say, in 1965 West Germany had roughly three times as many such trainees, and by 1967 almost seven times as many as we had.

Since the Seventh Report of the Estimates Committee (in October, 1968) concluded that: Technical assistance is comparatively cheap and, if effective, provides the best value for money of any type of aid ", and since the Board of Trade Working Party Report on Exports and the Industrial Training of Overseas Nationals strongly supported this view that industrial training provided in or by a developed country stimulates the growth of exports ", it would seem essential that some Government help should be given to enable industry to cater for more trainees. It caters for some; it could cater for more. Furthermore, the Board of Trade Working Party Report found that about one-third of the firms surveyed would be able, if necessary, to train more overseas nationals than they were training in 1969, which is presumably rather significant. Surely then we should take advantage of this possible situation to increase the number of trainees, not merely from Europe but from all parts of the world.

Naturally, I welcome the Board of Trade recommendation, accepted by the Government, that a central organisation which I think has already been referred to in the debate, the British Office of Trainee Exchange, should be set up to deal with the interchange of trainees with European countries. I accept and welcome that. But the developing countries must not be left out in any increase in training facilities. A measure of this kind would help to make good some of the gaps in what we can offer our Commonwealth friends and associates.

The prospect of a bigger base for operations, of larger European resources, of more multilateral youth exchanges and of more varied educational programmes and training institutions—all this should encourage us to go ahead: not to decrease our help to the students, which is what we seem to be doing now, but rather to extend it. Let us make a fresh effort, let the Government make a fresh effort, to improve the facilities that we can offer to students not only from Europe but from all parts of the world. In this way we can maintain and continue our Commonwealth connection while going ahead with Europe too, and lay the practical experience and expertise that we have gained from it at the service of all.

In conclusion, my Lords, may I say that I shall do my best to come back to hear the winding-up speech of the noble Baroness; but it is just conceivable that I may not be able to do so. If I cannot, I offer my apologies in advance.

6.9 p.m.

LORD WALSTON

My Lords, I believe I am to be the first from these Benches to congratulate my noble friend Lord Blackett on the magnificent maiden speech to which we have had the privilege to listen. He combined factual knowledge, understanding and, above ail, humanity—which must be the envy of very many of us. We are lucky that he has joined us here, and we shall be luckier still when we are able to listen to him frequently.

Naturally, I have listened to all the speeches with great interest. I do not want to single out any, because that would be invidious; but even in his absence I should like to say to my noble friend Lord Shepherd how very happy I was to find not a single trace of complacency in his speech on this occasion, and to be so very conscious of the real feeling of involvement which I know he has in this matter, of his understanding of it and of his desire to do what he can and to urge the Government to do what they can to improve our record—and, above all, to improve it in order to help those countries which so much need it. He was so right to say that this is a moral question. It must primarily be a moral question and those who have spoken, as I am sure will those who are to speak, approached it from that point of view.

Ideally, assuming that this could be regarded solely as a moral question, there are a good many changes in our aid policy that most of us would like to see. First, there is the change in actual quantity. From the moral point of view, it is inexcusable that a country as wealthy as we are should be devoting less than 1 per cent. of the gross national product to helping those who are so poor. It is not only on that score that I should like to see changes if, as I say, this were being approached purely from the moral point of view. Ideally, I should like to see all aid channelled in a multilateral manner, so that there was no bilateral commitment, no quid pro quo, no desire for more trade. The aid should be given to international agencies to distribute as they thought best, where the results would be greatest, and there should be no question of strings attached, political or economic.

I should also like to see aid distributed from central giving agencies to regional receiving agencies, rather than country by country, so that the countries of Africa or South-East Asia could move towards the breaking down of their national barriers, and the nationalism which we have seen in the history of Europe, which has given rise to so much trouble and hard-ship, and develop a far wider community. I should like to see much of the aid being genuinely given and not lent. I refer to the aid for infrastructure, for roads, hospitals, ports and schools.

Just think for a moment, my Lords, what a burden there would be on the people in this country if at some time we had had to borrow money for schools, hospitals and for roads, and merely had to repay the interest to another country, even at 2½ per cent., on all that vast investment. A rough calculation which I did some time ago suggested that we might have to pay something of the order of £12 to £15 per head of the population in interest alone. I know that at this stage we have a far more complex infrastructure than it is reasonable to expect in any of the developing countries; but how could they expect to pay even one-tenth or one-hundredth of that amount when, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, their income is less than one-twentieth of our own?

That is the ideal and what I should like to see happen. But we have to be realists in this matter and, as my noble friend Lord Shepherd so rightly said, although the leaders of the Government and the Opposition, and Members of Parliament on both sides—all of us—wish for more aid and believe that aid is a moral question, there are a very large number of people throughout the country who do not feel in that way, who are not aware of this problem, and because, thank God, we still live in a democracy, we have to take account of that. Therefore, we have to present the question of aid not solely as a moral question—though the more that can be done the better—but also as a matter of self-interest, indicating that it is to our advantage that this devastating and growing gap between the rich and the poor should be reduced.

I am not so worried about this as I might be, because the objective of such a self-interested policy and the objective of a moral policy are not really so very different, and the achievements of either, if they succeeded, would be similar one to the other. In other words, we must look on aid from a realistic, self-interest point of view as one of the main arms of our foreign policy, to bring about in the countries beyond our own borders a state of affairs that we wish to see.

Those of your Lordships who were privileged, as I was, to listen yesterday to the West German Federal Chancellor, will remember that he defined the objectives of foreign policy as the achievement of peace, freedom and international understanding, and I think that we may go along with that.

If we set out to achieve peace, freedom and international understanding throughout the world, we would do so by the expenditure of very large amounts of money, thought and effort, and the de- ployment of large numbers of people. Are we satisfied that our present "mix" is correct in order to achieve the things we want? Are we really satisfied that we are most likely to achieve peace, freedom and international understanding throughout the world by spending ten times as much money on armaments as we spend on aid? I am not putting this question in a moral sense at all, but purely from the practical point of view. Where is the long-term threat to peace in this world? I suggest that it arises in the main, but not entirely, from the tensions which exist between different blocs in the world; and those tensions, international just as much as national, come to a very large extent from gross divergencies in standards of living, wealth and prospects.

Let us look back to Russia in the days of the Czars. There were tensions and gross inequalities of wealth. Although palliative measures were applied at the end of the 18th century, throughout the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, in order to preserve peace (they were not so much interested in freedom) the Czarist régime relied on the force of arms, on the police and on the army. This succeeded for a good many years, but eventually those tensions became too strong; there was an explosion and we know what happened. That is something which we must avoid in the world and we still have the chance of doing so.

I suggest most urgently to your Lordships that, if the matter is looked at in that way, we should have a complete alteration in the balance of the money we spend on our overseas policy. Obviously we must still have armaments, and an Army, aircraft carriers, aeroplanes, a Navy and the rest, but the present proportions of expenditure are entirely wrong. We must move as rapidly as possible towards a foreign policy which recognises the threat that comes from the divergencies in standards of living, and which sets out deliberately, actively, and urgently to redress that imbalance.

The problem is enormously complex. It is an entirely different problem, in quality as well as quantity, from the problem that existed in the old days of the Colonial Welfare Fund, when something like £1 million a year was being distributed. Now we are dealing with something on an entirely different scale. It is no longer a question of doling out a little bit of money to one backward area for a hospital, or doling out a little more here and there for a bridge or a harbour.

It is an enormously complex operation in two ways: first, because we do not have enough money, no matter how much we make available, to help all the countries we wish to help. We have to decide the priorities of countries, a harsh thing to do. But it is far better to give substantial aid which really brings about results to a limited number of countries, and to very nearly ignore some countries, than to spread the whole of the butter so thin that these countries do not know they have it on their bread at all. I am not suggesting that this is a new problem or that the Government are not well aware of it and taking it into account at the present time, but that is our first problem.

The second problem is one to which the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, and other noble Lords have referred. It is the complexity of the actual expenditure of money in the countries of our choice. There is no point, for instance, in training engineers unless there are machines for them to work. There is no point in putting up factories to construct those machines unless there are going to be operators to produce them; and there is no point in having machines at all unless there is going to be a market, and a profitable market, for the products of those machines of those operators and those engineers. All these things have to be geared into each other and it is a far from easy operation.

I should like to spend a little time on the question of the market for the products of the machines and the fields of the green revolution to which noble Lords have referred. The noble Lord, Lord Blackett, referred to the amazing advances that had been made in breeding seeds and livestock. But is there much point in producing more food, even though there are millions of starving people, if that food cannot be sold or if the only result is a lower price to the primary producers?

I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the interesting table on page 365 of the Pearson Report. There we see the changes in the prices of certain primary commodities between 1953–54 and 1965–66. We see that for all agricultural, fishery and forestry products in the developing countries the unit value of all those commodities put together in 1965–66 was only 90 per cent. of the 1953–54 prices. In other words, for each bushel of production the farmers received 10 per cent. less than they did 12 years previously. If we look at the more important commodities, we see that the figure for coffee was 60 per cent.; for cocoa, 49 per cent.; for cotton, 76 per cent., and for sugar, thanks largely to the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and other similar agreements, the figure remained about level at 102 per cent. This is a table which is worth studying, because my noble friend Lord Shepherd was so right when he said that aid without trade makes nonsense of aid. Unless we have long-term security for primary products, a large part, if not all, of our aid will go for nothing.

As my noble friend was good enough to mention it and it is a somewhat topical problem, I will briefly refer to the Caribbean area and the Bahamas, which have been the subject of recent talks between the Ministers here and the Ministers from those countries. At the outset, I want to make clear that not only do I have a great interest in that area but I have agricultural interests there myself. Over the years, the Ministry of Overseas Development has been of considerable help to those areas on technical questions of agricultural production, in particular in banana-growing, and production and prosperity have gone ahead, thanks not only to that help but also to the relative security of markets and of prices.

There is now a threat to that security. I do not know what will be the out-come of this, but the point which must be made here is that this is a matter of trade, in which various Government Departments, including the Board of Trade, come into the picture. It would make nonsense of our whole aid programme if, because the Board of Trade took one view in isolation, the whole prosperity of this area was put in jeopardy while on the other hand the Ministry of Overseas Development continued with its separate policy of assisting the production of these products, which possibly in future may largely be unwanted.

The essential thing is the co-ordination of Government policy to bring not only the Overseas Departments, the Foreign and Colonial Office and the Ministry of Defence into consultation with the Ministry of Overseas Development, but to bring the Board of Trade into it also; and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and any other Department which is concerned. To make our aid effective as it must be, whatever the size of the aid, there must be this co-ordination between all sections of the Government which have any interest.

To sum up, I would say that more money is needed for aid, on the grounds of morals, expediency and self-interest. But even at the present level I believe that we can get more cost effectiveness for our aid by a closer study of some of the problems which have been spoken about to-day. I do not want in any way to detract from the activities of the Ministry of Overseas Development. They are doing a first-class job and have made enormous progress. We are indeed lucky to have such a Ministry and to have my right honourable friend the present Minister in charge of it. But the emphasis must increasingly be on strategic rather than tactical thinking; on looking ahead not only to the end of this decade but to the end of the next decade, and shaping our plans in consultation with all Government Departments concerned and internationally, too, with that view in mind.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, I forgot to mention in the course of my speech that I will not be moving my Motion.

6.29 p.m.

LORD FERRIER

My Lords, I understand the position of my noble friend Lord Hawke on this matter, but I would say that it was the wording of his Motion, his reference to the call of the Christian Churches for more aid, which brought me here to-day to take part in this debate. I felt that the debate would not be complete without some information about what has been going on in the Church of Scotland on the subject. Although I am no longer closely connected with the Church and Nation Committee, whose remit covers this subject, it will interest your Lordships to know that at the request of the General Assembly the noble Earl, Lord Wemyss, led a deputation to the Ministry for Overseas Development on this matter. He is out of the country to-day, otherwise I am sure that he would be speaking in this debate. My noble friend Lord MacLeod of Fuinary is another who no doubt would have been taking part if he had not an engagement in Glasgow, as Rector of the University.

The deputation to which I refer arose from a rather dramatic incident at the General Assembly in May of last year. A petition by three young people on the subject of world poverty was accepted by the General Assembly with acclamation. As well as asking for the appointment of this deputation, the petition contained the following points: … and because the present methods of educating our members in the facts and reasons of World Poverty and also in the relevance between Christianity and politics have to a large extent failed, that a small committee be set up to investigate and experiment with new ideas and new ways of teaching; and that as an act of sacrificial giving, members of the Church be asked to donate one day's pay for the work of Christian Aid, on St. Andrew's Day, Sunday 30th November, 1969. In the final Deliverance or resolution of the General Assembly on the Church and Nation Committee's Report these items are scheduled under paragraph 3(d), which says: The General Assembly recognising that the problem of race is closely associated with that of world poverty, call on Her Majesty's Government to increase as a priority the amount of aid given to developing countries and greater thought to be given to the catastrophic implications of the present failure to grapple with the inefficient means of food production in the world in face of the population explosion. Then under paragraph 3(e) it says: The General Assembly convinced of the need for the Church to review her own budgetary priorities in the light of the challenge of world poverty, instruct the Advisory Board in consultation with other relevant committees to investigate the possibility of a reorganisation of the order of priorities of the finances of the Church with a view to committing more than its present contribution to Overseas Aid, and to report to next General Assembly. As for the St. Andrew's Day appeal, although not everybody agreed that this was the best way to attract sacrificial giving without at the same time impairing the overall Christian liberality of the Church, the fact remains that £122,000-odd was raised on that day; and with further deliberation in the pipeline for the General Assembly next year we can look forward with considerable interest to the reports on those proceedings.

So much, my Lords, for what the Church has been doing in Scotland, which is over and above what has been distributed in the ordinary way from the general funds. The total collection, for instance, for Christian Aid Week, as we have it in the Church of Scotland (it is a world-wide affair), was £135,000 in 1968—a 48 per cent. increase on the previous year. It is perhaps fair to add a word from the Report of the Overseas Council of the Church, which says: These sums of money mean not just that more money has been collected and given but that more people in the Church and throughout Scotland have shown a greater concern. I should like to turn now to the general tenor of the debate and to some of the threads that I have picked up in the interesting speeches that have already been made; and I have one or two points to make which are my own personal opinion. I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said in the course of his speech about the problem of the distribution of aid. One thing that I, as a giver, feel it is fair to say—and I am sure all other givers feel the same way—is that as little as possible of the aid given should stick to fingers for which it was not intended. I was also struck by Lord Shepherd's comment, to which the noble Lord, Lord Walston, referred, on the importance of trade going in association with aid. I should like to express the hope that we are growing out of the stage where it has been fashionable to sneer at the colonial era and to overlook, or indeed disparage, the vast contribution which colonial administrators, traders and industrialists have made towards improving the conditions of backward people in terms of their work, their service, their efficiency and their thrift, and the investment which they have been able to attract from (shall I say?) the City of London.

Having had some experience in this field, and burning with compassion, as I was, and am, for the really backward, your Lordships will forgive me if I classify what I believe to be the early needs of really backward people. The first is all-weather roads. Other means of transport can follow. The most perfect airfield in the middle of the jungle is no good if there is no road to it. My next point may surprise your Lordships, but it is the cheap supply of Portland cement—which probably postulates that it should be manufactured locally, because it is strange that in the case of Portland cement, due to its weight, the cost of its transport is so high in comparison with its actual cost. But it is a miraculous substance. We here take it for granted, but if your Lordships could have been with me when I was selling it in the jungle you would realise that it is a miracle which contributes to the health and wellbeing of people in a way out of all proportion to what we in more advanced countries can believe. The other thing needed is electricity supply, which brings light. I put light before power, because light means so much in terms of study and understanding. All these things that we talk about demand, as so many noble Lords have said, that there should be rapid advance in education.

Education, too, is one of the factors that can bear on the problem of the population explosion to which so many speakers have referred. I should like to make only one passing reference to that matter. I would go further than the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and urge that the grant of aid should be subject to some sort of undertaking or declaration of intent regarding family planning. One could go on with this subject, but I will not do so other than to say (and I have some experience of this) that in putting forward any sort of demand of that nature one is liable to receive the riposte: "What are you doing about it in your country?" For a number of other reasons it is a thousand pities that the United Kingdom branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation is in a measure moribund—or, if not moribund, at least hibernating. I look forward with great interest to further speeches, because I feel certain that the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, and perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, will make contributions on this matter in the course of the debate.

BARONESS GAITSKELL

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I comment on the last sentence of his speech about the International Planned Parenthood Federation? When I was in the U.N., one of the planks on which I could speak, when we talked about the population explosion, was that I could say frankly what I felt about it, because we in this country are doing so much about it ourselves.

LORD FERRIER

My Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness and I could have a talk about that afterwards, because I have just had the melancholy task of winding up the Scottish branch of the United Kingdom undertaking. The International Planned Parenthood Federation is doing wonderful work, and I believe that more can be done in this country if only—as I pointed out—in setting an example to backward peoples; and I am sure this will be so if the United Kingdom branch of the I.P.P.F. is reactivated.

6.42 p.m.

LORD SNOW

My Lords, we have been debating to-day what is probably the most important question before our world, as the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, reminded us. The only possible alternative question would be the avoidance of war, but that, in most of our judgments, we could regard as being at least partially solved. Therefore, I am sure that all of us are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, for introducing this afternoon's discussion, and we are all delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, chose this occasion to make his maiden speech. His scientific achievements are common knowledge to all of us, and many of us know how much direct part he has played in applying his mind to the most imperative questions in war and peace. In the war his contribution was immense, both in the 'thirties, preparing for it, and in the War itself in fighting it. Since then he has quite deliberately spent much of his time, application and insight on this very question that we have been talking about to-night. He has had a profound influence on a lot of us in both those directions, and it is a personal pleasure for me to be able to pay this tribute.

Having said that, I have not very much to add, and what I can add can be said shortly and harshly—harshly because the facts themselves are harsh. We tend to deceive ourselves with bland words: "aid", "development", and the general idea that transferring a certain amount of money is going to solve an exceptionally complex situation. We are really talking about life, death, starvation, hunger, and the probability of a world by the year 2,000 which is, to put it mildly, far from pretty to contemplate.

Underneath this bland surface of aid, the rich and the poor, the contrast between our fate and the fate of most of our fellow human beings on this globe, there is an awful and extremely inextricable problem of the balance between food and population. I was relieved that the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, spent a part of his speech talking about the green revolution. It has now become fashionable to think that if you call something a revolution you have solved almost everything. This success of applied agriculture is something which is a great achievement. It is admirable that American money and scientists, and Mexican, Indian and Filipino scientists. have all found methods of increasing the yield of wheat, rice and maize by a large factor. The idea that that in itself, even though its success in action has been proved, is going to mean that we can double the food supply of the world by the year 2000, I take grave leave to doubt. That will depend upon solving all the other related problems, reducing the population, and so on, building up whole sets of conditions which at present are not in sight.

Food cannot be made indefinitely. Your Lordships must not be deceived by romantic stories about farming the sea and so on. The idea that the food production of the world can be multiplied by factors of ten, 20, and 40 are dreams —at least within two or three generations. The production of food is rising relatively slowly. We have a population growing at a horrifying rate. At the moment the world population is 3.5 billion. Within ten years it will be—and there is nothing to stop it—one billion more, 4.5 billion. Of that extra billion, three-quarters will be in the developing countries—nothing can stop that. Those facts are now strictly predictable. The probability is that by the end of the century the population will be 7,000 million, that is double what it is now, and unless the human intelligence gets to work fairly rapidly, and, more important, unless we can contrive to bring the poorer countries somewhere nearer our own stale of living, the population in say, 2025, will be double that again, to 14,000 million, which is a thought that it is impossible to cope with.

No country yet has easily and drastically reduced its rate of increase, except Japan, which is a country that is free from sexual guilt, is highly disciplined, and which within ten years kept the population relatively stable. That is something which it is extremely difficult to do. It can only be done if we spend much more effort than I have heard contemplated in reducing this gap between us, the rich, and our unfortunate fellow human beings who have not had our luck. I cannot see any easy outcome to this.

Our forefathers in the 17th and 18th centuries used to have a skull on their desks: momento mori—one ought to remember that one, too, will die. I feel that every politician and administrator in the entire advanced world ought to go around with a curve of the rising population—remember that they, too, will be born. Unless we can get this balance right, and produce a relative increase in the poorer countries much greater than I have heard mentioned this afternoon, I cannot see that we are not leaving our successors an intolerable fate by the year 2000.

It seems to me that there are three possibilities that we are walking into. The first is that we do very little, less than the present Pearson Report. In that case, though I think by the so-called green revolution we shall probably avoid global famine, by the year 2000 we shall certainly be walking into partial famine in various parts of the world. If we adopt the Pearson Report—and I hope and pray that we shall—act upon it and mean it, it is possible we shall have a semi-equilibrium in which we shall not avoid some famine—that hangs in front of us like a threat—but we might prevent this becoming a major world horror. The third possibility is that if we could make this part of the general conscience and climate of opinion of advanced man-kind, then perhaps by the year 2000 the world would be worth living in.

I have only one message of hope to give your Lordships before I sit down: although I know it is very difficult to convince persons living moderately comfortably here in Europe and in the United States of the necessity for these steps, we should have support from many of the young. I rather differ from some of your Lordships in my opinion of the young, as expressed in a recent debate. I believe that many of the educated young, at least, are far more internationally-minded, far more genuinely free from racial feeling, and far more genuinely devoted to the concept of mankind. I think that with many of us it has always been rather theoretical; with them it is real. I believe, my Lords, that possibly their force—after all, it is going to be their problem—will give us a tiny ray of hope.

6.51 p.m.

LORD TODD

My Lords, may I first of all add to those of other noble Lords my own congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, on his maiden speech, which I think displayed the wisdom and experience which we know he possesses and which, as with the noble Lord, Lord Snow, have been of very great value, not only to all of us in science but to the country at large.

I am sure that all of us are most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, for introducing this debate. This is not the first time that we have debated aid to developing countries; nor, I imagine, will it be the last. It is a subject which deserves continuing scrutiny because, as several noble Lords have already said to-day, it is perhaps the subject which should give us most concern in the world. Undoubtedly future peace in the world will depend on the elimination of the yawning gulf that exists between the developed and the developing countries, and the elimination, too, of the appalling poverty and hunger which is the lot of so many of our fellow men and women.

We have before us to-day the admirable Report, Partners in Development, issued by Mr. Lester Pearson and his colleagues. There is little in this Report with which I would disagree, although I might here and there alter the emphasis a little. Much to be found in this Report has already been said or written, not once but many times. I remember that in our last major debate in this House on this subject, in 1966, we discussed, among other things, the Second Report of the United Nations Advisory Committee on the Application of Science and Technology in underdeveloped countries. Quite a number of the diagnoses and the proposals in that Report turned up again in the Pearson Report. At that time I said that I was not too optimistic that the Advisory Committee's proposals would be speedily implemented; and when I look at the situation to-day I feel that my fears were perhaps in many cases justified. I can only hope that the proposals of the Pearson Report will be taken up by Governments with a little more urgency than were the very similar proposals made in earlier reports, because these problems which we are dealing with really are urgent.

The noble Lord, Lord Blackett, raised some major points on the importance of capital investment in connection with the development of the so-called developing countries. I accept what he said; it is very important to bear it in mind. But I should like to touch on one or two other points which from my point of view at any rate are accepted. I have long held that the primary needs of developing countries are, first, a rapid increase in food production from major improvements in agriculture; secondly, control of population growth, and thirdly, education properly oriented to the production of the trained manpower, particularly technically trained manpower, without which, even given the first two, one will never achieve a stable society with a high, or even an adequate, standard of living.

When we debated the needs of developing countries on an earlier occasion, I remember saying that I was depressed by the fact that in so many areas food production, far from increasing, was actually showing signs of decline. But in the few years since then there has been a quite astonishing change, due essentially to the introduction of new high-yielding forms of wheat and rice—the items, indeed, which are responsible for the so-called "green revolution", to which several noble Lords have referred this afternoon —a green revolution which is particularly evident in Asia and Latin-America.

The food problem, as the noble Lord, Lord Snow, has pointed out, has not been solved by this green revolution, but I believe that, with the developments following on that, it is in a fair way to being solved, provided—but only provided—that we can master the problem of population control. In a sense the green revolution makes population control even more urgent, because as a species man is just like any other animal, and when an increase in food appears he will increase his reproduction rate until he gets to the point where there are so many people that they can just about all manage at the minimum tolerable subsistence level; and we know to-day from the state of the population in many parts of the world that the minimum tolerable subsistence level for most people is far too low. So this green revolution will in fact emphasise the need for further effort in the direction of population control.

With the introduction of these new varieties of grain there has developed what one might have expected: an increase in fertiliser usage. It is a very large increase in some areas, and will be larger yet. Following on this the demands not only for better communications and machinery but for a growing range of consumer goods are increasing, and will increase still further. Of course, there are many different developing countries and they are all at different stages of development. It is difficult to generalise, but in some of them this effect, following on the so-called green revolution, is more obvious than in others. It is more obvious in a country such as India than in some of the African countries at the moment. But there is a path which they are all going to follow. The need is for a general industry development to follow on, and this of course brings one back to education, particularly technical education.

I am a not infrequent visitor to several developing countries, and over and over again when I go to those countries I am struck by two things: first, the appalling lack of trained technicians, without whom modern technological industry simply cannot function. It is common to see in these countries equipment and machinery of all sizes not being used, or lying idle, because it has under-gone a minor breakdown and people competent to repair it are not available. The other thing I notice again and again is the totally unrealistic attitude towards scientific and technological research which is common in universities and in Government institutions in many of the developing countries. For this I am afraid that we, the donor countries, cannot escape all the blame. In my view, we have promoted a kind of classical academic pattern of education to the relative exclusion of vocational education, and we have encouraged a curious belief that if a country has a lot of universities on the Western pattern—and, incidentally, we cannot even make up our minds and stick to one Western pattern; we shove them all in willynilly—this will somehow solve its problems at the same time as it will increase its prestige in the eyes of other nations.

My Lords, I do not wish to be misunderstood: I am not against universities in developing countries. I even approve of the production of lawyers, economists and politicians—in moderation—but I believe that the real need for the educational system of these countries is to produce large numbers of technicians, smaller numbers of technologists, and also to provide a training which will produce a reasonable supply of what I would call "technologically minded entrepreneurs", because without them industry will not really get off the ground.

While universities are important in developing countries, I believe that there should not be too many of them, because in some cases that I have seen it appears that the traditional type of university is being greatly encouraged at the expense, in effect, of technical colleges, which the countries really need. If a country like, say, India, is going to achieve its goal it must be prepared to import the most advanced and most modern technological lore. But it is no use doing that unless it has available proper numbers not just of technologists but of technicians who can use that technology and seek to improve on it, because only then, at a later stage, will the country perhaps become an innovator itself and move into the world markets. Until it does that I do not think it will ever qualify to be what is called a developed country. This is why I would endorse the plea of the Pearson Report for a very serious attack on the educational problem, though I would still place agriculture at the top of the list with it.

I would repeat a plea which I made in your Lordships' House a few years ago and which I do not think has been followed up. One very valuable kind of aid which we could give to the developing countries would be to provide enough money slightly to over-staff our technical colleges and institutions, to see that all these institutions have a sufficient number of staff to make it quite certain that they would always have one or more of their staff doing a tour of duty of a couple of years or so in one of the developing countries. In my opinion, this would be extremely valuable. It would be a useful form of aid; but, of course, it would work only if it were done in that way, if there were supernumerary staff, because the people who go out to work in developing countries would need to feel assured that when they returned to their home base they would not have lost any seniority or promotion prospects but would still be like any other employee in the college concerned. That is extremely important, because we must face up to the fact that in the past the technical experts who have gone to the developing countries to give assistance have not always been the best technical experts. Unless we provide a real career structure for people we shall not get the best to go to the developing countries; and the problems of the developing countries are such that anything less than the best is largely a waste of time.

Much is said in the Pearson Report about an increase in the amount of aid which the Government provide for developing countries, and this point has been emphasised by a number of noble Lords this afternoon. As a general proposition I would support this request for more money, but I should like to make one or two points. The first and most obvious one is that how money is spent is at least as important as how much money is made available. After all, the greatest results do not always follow from the greatest expenditure. I have not the exact figures with me, but I would be prepared to take a substantial bet that the cost of research which led directly to the so-called "green revolution" is but a tiny fraction of that which has been spent on a number of grandiose projects which have had much less effect on the countries concerned.

LORD SNOW

My Lords, it is something really small—about 2 million dollars, I think.

LORD TODD

Yes, my Lords, it is obviously very small. Secondly, I think that in many countries—and particularly in those some way up the scale, like India —some greater amount of flexibility in aid is called for. I believe that this general aid is likely to be far more important than project aid in the kind of development which has to take place. I know that project aid is much easier for a donor country, but I do not think it is as valuable to a developing country as more general aid.

My Lords, it is getting late and I do not wish to detain your Lordships longer. I would just emphasise that in my view what we have to get across to the countries is that they should re-think their educational policies, and particularly try to get vocational education that is appropriate to the national needs. I believe that this should be the prime objective in any educational developments which this country, or indeed any other country, supports.

7.7 p.m.

LORD RITCHIE-CALDER

My Lords, like everyone else who has spoken I want to thank the noble Lord. Lord Fulton, for giving us this opportunity to discuss this subject; and I want also to say most earnestly what a tremendous privilege it is to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blackett. Indeed, I have followed him for so long that I have practically trodden on the back of his heels. I think that we all recognise that this is an occasion—an occasion which I personally have been waiting for, because now we shall have the opportunity of hearing the noble Lord on so many other subjects.

Following what the noble Lord, Lord Todd, has been saying (and the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, in substance made the same points) I would recall some words that were used in 1963: When the developing countries go shopping in the supermarket of science they had better buy wisely, otherwise they will be without bread and butter. I think that is the lesson we have to learn, and it is the lesson the noble Lord, Lord Todd, has been emphasising this evening.

I want now to return shortly to the subject of the Pearson and Jackson Reports. I feel that it is important. I have had something like twenty years' experience in the field of actual technical assistance—of providing technical assistance through the U.N.—actually looking at projects in the field; and in the course of that I have travelled something like 2½ million miles. So I have covered quite a lot of territory, looking at the subjects with which the Pearson and Jackson Reports deal. I want to say that, with the Prime Minister, I agree that the Pearson Report is one of the most important documents of the twentieth century. It is important in what it has to say, but it is even more important in relation to the time at which it is said. It really means that we are now crossing the great divide: we have arrived at a certain point, and we have to go forward or we are lost.

The Jackson Report, too, is one with which I substantially agree. It is a swashbuckling Report or a quarterstaff Report: it bashes people about, and I certainly should be the last to complain that it indulges in journalistic language. But what it is talking about is true and important. It may have hurt many people; the trouble with this Report is that I always put names and faces to the people who are being criticised, even anonymously. Therefore I can appreciate the sensitivity.

In regard to what has been said about the U.N. Fund, I want to pay my own sincere personal tribute to the managing director of the U.N. Development Programme, and of course to our own Sir David Owen, who was the Director of Technical Assistance. I can say from my experience of the last twenty years that what we are talking about, even to the point of things we are privileged to criticise, would not have existed without David Owen; and I think this is a fact to which we have to pay tribute at all stages. What we are criticising is not something which was schemed-up to be criticised. I agree with what Sir Robert Jackson said in criticism of the present set-up. I have used a scanning camera to look at the problems that he has looked at with a microscope. Looking at all the questions at all levels, national and regional and local, and at all the Specialised Agencies, my observations, and indeed my strictures, accord with his.

But the weaknesses which we are criticising, and the weaknesses which should be repaired—and I ask your Lordships please to hold on to this—are the reminders of the virtues of what has happened. The world became increasingly aware that governments had a responsibility not only for their own nationals, but for the under-privileged peoples of other countries; and that came from Arnold Toynbee, who said that the 20th century will be remembered not as the century of the atom bomb, but as the century when governments became aware of their responsibilities not only to their own people, but to peoples of other countries.

This is an awareness which we have recognised and strived to institutionalise. Institutions had to be improvised. Metaphorically, it was a case of building Nissen huts on to the United Nations and its Specialised Agencies; adding development, adding expanded technical assistance in the shape of money, adding operations to institutions which had had clearing house functions and were never conceived as having operational functions. We went on adding Nissen huts as new demands and opportunities presented themselves, and giving them all these alphabetical names like D.A.B. and I.D.A and so on, until if you look at the Report the U.N. chart looks like a Scrabble board. Everyone knows that when you put up prefabs they tend to persist; all universities which put up Nissen huts realise it is very difficult to get rid of them. This has been throughout the last 21 years a period of improvisation.

Ecosoc, in the Charter of the United Nations, was a declaration of enlightenment. Nothing like it had ever existed before, at least in terms of practising politics. We saw economic and social development as an essential function to-wards the peace and stability of the world, but we treated it in the foundation of the United Nations as a function of finance. It was very soon clear that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, then working on strict banking principles which were laid down for it, were not adequate instruments for promoting economic and social benefit for the under-privileged; not just because the under-privileged could not afford to borrow the money, but because they did not have the insight nor the expertise to put money to work even if they could get it.

Then in 1949 we had something which has been called the Truman Doctrine. Without any reflection on President Truman, I want to put the record straight. The Truman Doctrine—that is to say, point 4, because the Truman Doctrine assumed many other meanings—said: We must embark on a bold new programme for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the growth and improvement of the underdeveloped countries. I want to point out that this had already been a resolution approved by Ecosoc four months before, which the President added as an afterthought as point 4. That is not a reflection on the intention, but it was originally part of United Nations' thinking.

Then, as a result of that we set up the Technical Assistance Board under David Owen, making money available to the specialised agencies, because the United Nations had no experts to send out; they had to use the specialised agencies to recruit and send out their experts. Very quickly, technical assistance became what I call "window-shopping". We were going out and showing countries what wonderful things they could have if they had the experts and the money to do it. It was like looking through a window and seeing all the things we were told on the radio the night before are absolutely indispensable, but there is a plate glass window between you and the goods and you do not have the money to buy them. That was the window-shopping, the tantalising stage of technical assistance.

Then we had the Special Fund. Paul Hoffman was the man who administered the Marshall Plan, which was always pointed out as exemplifying the greatest achievement of development. But, as has been pointed out, it was in fact putting money and resources behind a going concern which happened to be in being at that moment, and which had all the facilities and the people. This accepted the fact that you had to have the setting up of the pre-investment aid and the infra-structure necessary for development. Then on top of all this you had to invent and improvise and all the way through there has been this kind of system.

We had to improvise I.D.A., the International Development Agency, which I have always described as the soft-hearted side of the World Bank which administers it, and we had to set up the International Finance Corporation to enable funds to be found for private development. We had to extend and consolidate UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, as a practical agency concerned not only with immediate relief for children, which it does so magnificently, but also with ensuring that the children of the future would be secured by the development of those things relevant to them.

Then we had, all the way through, competition between bilateral and multilateral aid, and competition between the agencies. Do not minimise that, my Lords. I have lived in a cut-throat situation with the agencies competing with each other, and that is why I agree there has to be consolidation. All the way through there was this element of Old Curiosity Shop—"Codlin's your friend, not Short". Everybody was trying to prove the friend of the countries concerned. In the confusion of all this— and it is a very meritorious and virtuous confusion—came through something loud and clear, something which we have never heard before, something which is now completely and absolutely accepted; namely, the principle of investment in human resources. We are no longer thinking of development merely as the exploitation of hardware or hard metals or of anything else. We are now beginning to realise that human beings are the essentials from which development will be derived.

In all this we have been hanging on, and are still hanging on, to the fact that this has something to do with money. I say that sarcastically, because the history of the last twenty years, and indeed the most pathetic history of the failure of the First Development Decade, was the fact that we were feeding a tape worm. A situation arose in the developing countries whereby they were borrowing money to pay the debt charges on the money they had already borrowed. Two years ago, according to the latest figures which I have, the world is supposed to have invested 9,000 million dollars in the developing countries of which 5,000 million dollars has been borrowed to pay the debt charges on the money already borrowed. That is what I mean by feeding a tape worm.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, would the noble Lord then agree with me that, on the call of the Churches, we should wash it all out?

LORD RITCHIE-CALDER

Yes, my Lords, I would agree. I thank the noble Lord, because that is what I am coming to in quite realistic terms. This is feeding a tape worm. If you feed the tape worm it grows; if you do not feed it not only does it die, but you die, too. This is what happens. Nowadays, the fantastic situation about the credit policy is that you are credit-worthy if you do not borrow money to get the credit. It is meritorious not to borrow money. You can get it if you do not want it. This is absurd. The whole thing is absurd.

This is a situation which I think we here have to get through. I pay tribute to my own Government because we have done so. We were told this afternoon that we are still hanging on, that we are still getting 53 per cent. back in the shape of amortisation and interest and so forth. But at least we have laid down the principle that from now on we are giving grants and aid and interest-free loans, because there is no point in giving money if you are simply using it to destroy the development you have promoted.

Unfortunately, we are still stuck with this word "aid". I did not realise until about ten years ago how much I hated the word "aid". I loathe the word "aid", because now we are getting to the situation where we are regarding it as an act of great generosity. It is the penny in the blind man's tin, and we cannot get away from it. We still think that we are giving something called "aid", that we are acquiring great merit and that we ought to have great gratitude. The beggar's thanks is always the beggar's curse because nations, like people, do not like being dependent on charity. They have to accept it. It is amazing how much gratitude you get if you do not expect it; but if you expect gratitude for what you are doing then you will get ingratitude and, what is more, the Congress of America will cut aid to the underdeveloped people.

I want now to deal briefly with what I regard as an unreality. I know that no-body will agree with me. I do not expect my Front Bench to agree with me. I think that this 1 per cent., or whatever it is, is nonsense. One can set a figure. One can take the number one first thought of, which was 1 per cent., and I would have said, "double it," but no-body did. But this is not realistic. I do not care whether it is 1 per cent. of the gross national income; I do not care whether it is 1 per cent. of the gross national product. What it is doing is to transfer this to a book-keeping definition, which is not true in the practices of the world to-day. It is not significant of what we are trying to do. We are not in fact giving charity or allocating X amount from our great prosperity. What we are doing (and the sooner we recognise it the better) is, in strict terms of absolute self interest, investing in our own future, and unless we get that right we are never going to get anywhere. This is a fallacy of bookkeeping.

I agree with by right honourable friend, Reginald Prentice, who said in another place on November 29 that if we commit ourselves to this bookkeeping figure we shall not, even by 1975, get the 1 per cent. which Lester Pearson is talking about, because the money is changing its character all the time. If we treat it purely as a matter of juggling with figures we shall not get the result we desire.

What we need to-day (this is not an evangelical challenge) is a completely different attitude from that which we are talking about. We have to realise that we are over the Great Divide; that we are no longer thinking in the old-fashioned term of what we can or cannot do. We are now thinking of a completely new attitude, generated not only in our own thinking but, above all, generated in the minds of the younger generation who accept this world as a neighbourhood and who accept the people. One does not always get on with one's neighbours, but one has to recognise them, and to recognise that they exist.

In this situation we have no choice but to accept the fact that from now on the whole of our thinking in terms of our own self-interest, of our own industrial future in this country, of our own well-being and our own standard of living, rests absolutely indispensably and inescapably on the development of the resources of the underdeveloped countries. Our marks are going to be there; our raw materials are going to come from there. We have to accept this not as a great act of benevolence, but as an investment in our own future. This is going to be absolutely indispensable to all our thinking.

I think it true to say that the essence of this is not the question of money value. Here you have a book-keeping expression. Somebody has to pay the fares to go here and there, and to pay the salaries. But the fact is that essentially this is not a book-keeping problem; it is a problem of where we are going to find the people, how we are going to get the people really equipped to do it, and how we are going to secure the co-operation of the people we are trying to help. This is most important. Half of our trouble, certainly in regard to bilateral aid, has been that we have always gone in with the answers, and the answers have never fitted. We always went in with a blueprint and said, "This is what you need". We have never stopped to say, "What do you want?" Over the last twenty years this has led to the most incredible and unsatisfactory situation. The failures of technical assistance have not been because some-body has put his hand in the till or because of the accusations that aid has been wasted or stolen, but because we have gone in with the wrong ideas and they did not fit.

We have learned over the last twenty years, and this knowledge is what we have to apply. This is where the Jackson Report and the Pearson Report become absolutely essential. We are now looking at a pattern which is a result of the experience of twenty years, and are asking people to take a look, not at the philosophy or the politics of aid, as the Pearson Report doss, but at the actual machinery of aid. Those of us who have been inside the machine know it must be improved. What is more, it must be improved not only in order to remove the blemishes which at present exist, but to gear it to a situation in which we can meet the accelerating change of the next twenty-five years. We have to build on what the U.N. has improvised, and we have to build on the real, genuine achievements of the United Nations and of multilateral aid.

What we are talking about in the whole of these discussions of the Pearson Report or the Jackson Report, or of the whole philosophy of aid, has nothing to do with lack of knowledge. I am sure that the noble Lords, Lord Blackett, Lord Todd and Lord Snow, would certainly agree that, technologically, and in every other way, we can provide the answers with regard to this matter. This has nothing to do with lack of knowledge; what it has to do with is a lack of intention.

What I want my own Government and every other Government to accept is this intention to make it work; not standing back and criticising, not holding back and saying, "Wait until you have put your house in order", but going in and putting the house in order. Essentially, what we have done in these fields has failed. My country has failed, my Government and other Governments have failed, to provide the people we should have been giving to make this project work properly. This calls for the best people that we can give. As I said, the world has become a neighbourhood—the younger generation knows this—and in this neighbourhod there is a slum of misery and hunger at the bottom of the garden. What is more, there is going to be trouble at the bottom of the garden.

7.33 p.m.

Lord GRIDLEY

My Lords, I have listened with the greatest interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, but I do not know that I can go along to the full extent with some of his reasons as to why we should give aid without any strings attached. If there is one aspect of our debate this evening which has filled me with some perplexity it is the fact that this is a British Parliament, sustained by the British people; and on the question of aid, what we can do depends entirely on our prosperity, and whether we are able to disburse for overseas aid what we collect in taxation. May I illustrate the reasons for that statement? We have any number of people in high places in Britain, wielding quite an amount of influence, who bare their breasts and wring their hands because people in far-away lands appear to be existing on a lower standard of living than we do in this country. In a temperate climate one needs a great deal more of the necessities of life to keep oneself alive; and 1 am drawing your Lordships' attention in that respect to the question of housing, clothing, food and so on. It is much more expensive to live under those conditions of a temperate climate than it is to live in the Tropics.

In regard to the degree of happiness that people may enjoy in various parts of the world, I submit that this is entirely a matter of degree. One can be quite happy in a tropical country with warmth and heat, and in conditions like that one might exist on considerably less than what would be required in this country. May I give but one example of this from my own practical experience? Under the Japanese occupation I existed with no shoes, one pair of shorts, and very little food, and at the end of that period of four years my weight was 7 stone 5 lb. There is no doubt that had I been existing in those conditions of shortage of food and clothing in a temperate climate, I should not have been alive here to-day to deliver this speech in your Lordships' House.

With regard to this requirement of giving aid, I should like to refer to the proceedings of the Church Assembly which were held on November 6, 1969. It seemed to me that opinion there was obsessed with the idea that we had a moral obligation, with no strings attached, to pass on aid to developing countries without any question of convincing our own people. The Churches' attitude in that respect seemed to me to be that the commitment must be total. Here again is an illustration of the effect of influence in high places, without regard to the need to convince those people to whom this message is being sent.

In that Assembly there was under consideration a report submitted by the Missionary and Ecumenical Council and the Board of Social Responsibility, and with regard to foreign investment in overseas aid they considered that a form of development which existed solely for the benefit of a foreign investor was to be discouraged. To me this is a monstrous statement of the conditions attaching. In Malaysia, in 1930, a company was formed known as the Perak River Hydro-electric Power Company, and it was established for the purpose of supplying electricity to the tin mines of the Perak Valley. Before that project could be started, however, the company employed the services of Sir Malcolm Watson, who eradicated from the area malaria which was then claiming the lives of hundreds of Chinese and Malays. That is but an example of the value of foreign investment, and of the benefit that it brought to countless inhabitants of that country. Therefore I feel that the Churches' view on this matter of foreign investment is entirely wrong.

May I take another example of foreign investment which has brought benefit, perhaps in circumstances more within our knowledge at the present time? One has the Shell refinery at Port Harcourt, in Nigeria, which, with its installations and the people it employs, has brought benefit to many Africans who live in that territory. My Lords, that is all I have to say. But if it is correct that this country is at the present moment giving £205 million in overseas aid, and our population is approximately 65 million (which is my estimate of the population today), it means that £3-plus per head of the population is being paid by the people of this country for overseas aid at the present time. This is on top of, or included in, the taxes which they pay. What I feel has been lacking in this debate—and I say it with respect to noble Lords—is consideration of how we are to get over to the people of this country the desirability of increasing our aid in such circumstances as would command their support of the Government's policy.

7.40 p.m.

BARONESS GAITSKELL

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Gridley, I am struck by something particular about this noble House; that is, that one can like people with whom one could not disagree more—and the noble Lord, Lord Gridley, falls into that category. I should like to add my gratitude to the noble Lords, Lord Fulton and Lord Hawke, for this very timely debate. I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, on his high-powered maiden speech. We waited too long for it, and I hope we shall not have to wait so long for the next one. I shall keep his speech for reference.

My Lords, I welcome both the Pearson and the Jackson Reports—fairly un-critically, I must confess, because they require, for full understanding, a trained economist or someone familiar with the present United Nations Development System. I think that both Reports are excellent. I wish I could feel qualified to judge them. In fact, after reading a short Fabian article on them by my noble friend Lord Balogh, who is both a distinguished economist and an expert in foreign aid, I felt like taking a vow of silence instead of indulging in my usual ten-minute intervention.

I became increasingly interested in the problem of development aid when I was with the Human Rights Committee and when it took an occasional nibble at this subject. Most of the delegates from the developing countries, though not all, demanded aid as a right and as an indemnity for past colonial exploitation. Many of us regard aid to the two-thirds poorer countries of the world as a moral issue, not to be halted or reduced because inefficiency, or even corruption, in the receiving countries spoils or reduces its effectiveness. Both the Pearson and Jackson Reports accept this.

I am not going to pretend to your Lordships that I could follow the workings of all the financial institutions and instruments in the United Nations mentioned in the Reports, but I found little difficulty in sympathising with the aim of both of them, and that was to increase and make more effective international aid. I was quickly won over by Sir Robert Jackson when he informed us on page 2, in paragraph 4, that his Report was not going to adhere to what he called the "normal U.N. forms of language". Sir Robert Jackson's limpid prose and short, clear arguments were a pleasure to follow, and 1 look back with no nostalgia to the United Nations language, which I listened to for so long and which I once dubbed "Aspiranto".

In both Reports, my Lords, the core of the problem starts as a moral one, and so the Motion by the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, is particularly relevant. I myself had always assumed that the magic phrase, "Let the richer countries give I per cent, of the gross national product to the poorer countries", originated in the Labour Party, but apparently it came from a conference of the World Council of Churches—and all honour to them. The Pearson Report exhorts the countries to raise their national and international contributions, tempting them with the hope that, by so doing, the developing nations will be able to support themselves by the year 2000. My noble friend Lord Balogh, again in his article, was pessimistic about this. I myself cannot properly judge, but from what I have heard and learned about aid I think this is too rosy a prospect. However, in the field of aid and development optimism is an encouragement to generosity and a spur to greater efforts, and altogether serves a good political purpose. The Pearson Report has been welcomed in many countries, and also by the World Bank. Mr. Robert McNamara, in a speech at the World Bank, has warned that if the richer countries do not pull together the gap between the rich and the poor countries will become a chasm.

The Jackson Report, my Lords, is concerned only with the capacity of the existing United Nations Development System to make aid as effective as it could and should be. Sir Robert Jackson acknowledges that the United Nations is uniquely equipped for this, and up to date has done a tolerably good job; but the rapid advances in technological development have outstripped the capability of the present complex bureaucratic machine to give the developing countries the aid they are entitled to from the finance provided by the richer countries. The Jackson Report says that a great change is imperative and urgent for progress to be made, and what has over the last decade become a sluggish machine must be transformed into an international co-ordinating organisation so as to carry out development operations on the scale which is necessary to-day. Sir Robert Jackson tells us how we can do this, and he sets out his proposals to fit the present demands of developing countries—and there is no doubt that technical advances make these demands inexhaustible. In fact, what is stressed again and again in both Reports is that assistance to the poorer countries of the world must be by a genuinely international effort. Here again, Mr. Robert McNamara has commented that requirements for aid have never been higher, and the will to provide aid has never been lower.

The figures that one sees in the Press are not really very consistent. For instance, I read in one article that while our aid contributions have fallen, our gross national product has risen by 5 per cent., from 61 per cent, to 68 per cent. This percentage was meaningless to me until I found it in round figures as £14,000 million. I cannot help feeling that the burden of aid can easily be exaggerated. The Government have welcomed the Pearson Report, though present plans will not reach the Pearson target figure for 1975 until about 1980. The strategy set out in the Jackson Report seems to me to make good sense, and it is summed up by its pivotal proposals for the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank to centralise all policy decisions while decentralising all operational activity at the field level. I see that my noble friend Lord Balogh, has reservations on the particular schemes for decentralisation, but here I do not think I agree with him, for in the Jackson Report there is a scheme for training personnel and also a suggestion that there should be a stable of advisers to be called upon.

My noble friend Lord Balogh—and I keep on quoting him because he is a great expert on this subject—has questioned the magic of the phrase, "1 per cent, of the gross national product", and has pointed to the. fact that it is an inequitable target as between different developed countries. I see that my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder has also questioned this target. I should be very grateful if my noble friend Lord Balogh would explain his criticisms of the 1 per cent, target.

Finally, as an unrepentant non-expert —I am afraid it is too late for me to repent and to "mug up" all those statistics that ore has to—I have no doubt that the Pearson and Jackson Reports will give rise to many discussions and even disagreements among the experts. We who are lesser mortals must stick to the moral issue, which is a very simple one: it is the stark fact that in two-thirds of the world there are still many people who suffer hunger, illiteracy, and unemployment; and even when they make enormous efforts to advance, these advances are literally eaten away by the increase in population.

The Pearson and Jackson Reports are a challenge to the rich countries of the world and to the Governments in the developed countries. We have to meet this challenge with a renewed purpose. I agree with my noble friend Lord Shepherd when he says that the Government have to carry the country along with them. However, several noble Lords have pointed out that we get back in trade more than we give away in aid. I think we should try to get this fact publicised and realised by the public, perhaps by slogans such as, "It pays to give" and, "We stand to gain financially by giving development aid."

7.51 p.m.

LORD GARNER

My Lords, it is a highly agreeable coincidence for me that 1 happen to know personally the authors of both of these Reports. I have had a great affection and high regard for both of them for a long time, which has only been increased by reading their Reports. I should particularly like to pay tribute to Mr. L. P. Pearson, with whom I worked during a number of critical stages over nearly 40 years. I like to think that this Report is not the least of his many services to international co-operation. The Pearson Report puts cogently the case for aid, and I think the debate has shown that it is broadly acceptable. Perhaps it might help the noble Lord, Lord Gridley, in carrying conviction to sceptical members of the public, to be reminded of one of the points that I thought the Pearson Report made effectively, when it told us that the developed countries as a whole spend nearly ten times as much on alcohol and tobacco as they do in aid to the developing countries, which is a striking comparison.

Of course, as many noble Lords have pointed out in the debate, the Pearson Report was so right in drawing attention to the relevance of international trade and the population explosion. Indeed, unless the developing countries are given a fair chance to expand their share in world trade—and 1 sometimes think that some of the industrial countries are a little hypocritical in these matters—and unless they can cope with the overpopulation problem, it can rapidly make a nonsense of any aid, however generous. But on the main point, I hope the Government will be able to accept the targets suggested in the Pearson Report; and I felt that we had reasonably reassuring indications from the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, earlier.

Our record in recent years has not been good. When you consider that this country was longest in the colonial game, perhaps with the exception of Portugal in Africa; that we administered territories far greater in population and in area than any other country; that we have always taken pride alike in our world role and in our role as trustee for subject people; and that, above all, nearly all these lands on being given independence voluntarily joined with us in the association of the Commonwealth, it is rather depressing to learn that in 1968 (according to the figures in the Pearson Report) France, the Netherlands and Australia all devoted a higher percentage of their G.N.P. to official development programmes. Furthermore, Germany and Belgium equalled our figure; and not only the U.S. but also France and Germany had a higher rate of flow, while Japan was only a little way behind the United Kingdom. I wondered when reading these figures how many taxpayers realise that those are the facts. I hope that now, with defence reductions and improved balance of payments, we shall be able to achieve a position a little higher in the league.

I do not want to go into details of how the money should be dispersed: project or programme, bilateral or multilateral, capital aid or technical assistance; for it seems to me that that is for the Government to determine in the light of the extraordinary range of different circumstances that apply to different territories. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Todd, suggested earlier, it should be decided on the merits of individual cases. There is a case for multilateral aid, and perhaps for some increase in that aid, but I do not go all the way with the noble Lord, Lord Walston, who said that he would like to see all our aid multilateral.

The Pearson Report only asked for an increase from 10 per cent, to 20 per cent., and recognised that many countries which had close associations with developing territories might well feel—and rightly, feel, as it said—that they had a better appreciation of the situation in their country than any multilateral organisation could hope to have. It is clear from the Pearson Report and the Jackson Report that the United Nations and its agencies will not be able to handle effectively substantially increased amounts until they have put their house in order and have come to grips with organisation. I do not think that this applies to the International Bank or to I.D.A.

I should like for a moment to underline some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, made in his introduction, and to say how important is the quality of aid. It is not only the quantity of aid that matters; the quality, as I said earlier, also matters. Personally, I do not wholly subscribe to the definition given in the Pearson Report, that the purpose of international aid is to help the poorer countries to move forward, in their own way, into the industrial and technological age. But provided that "in their own way" is regarded as the governing phrase, then perhaps I would accept the definition. But, at least in the normal sense, that is not the whole story; for, surely, we do not want to bring the Industrial Revolution to developing countries with all the injustices and miseries that we have known in the industrialised lands.

I sometimes wonder whether there is not a risk that the industrial nations may be a little arrogant in their conviction that the developing countries must necessarily follow the same pattern that they themselves have followed, rather in the same way as perhaps we were all misguided in thinking that, in a democracy, the inevitable pattern for every developing country was precisely the pattern worked out here in Westminster. It is clearly true that man does not live by bread alone; nor, indeed, by machines or "dark Satanic mills" alone, important though they may be. Surely the way our civilisation is going in some respects shows the importance of this, and brings home the fact that it is really no service to the people of Africa and Asia to develop the sort of chaotic conurbations that one is beginning to see in many Western countries. Personally, I should like to see in our attitude to these problems a little more of the spirit of dedicated service which was so obvious, perhaps, in the last century when people were genuinely concerned for the souls of human beings (not that there are not many in that frame to-day) and a little less of the statistical analysis of the cost efficiency expert and the hard eye of the banker.

I am very tempted to steal a phrase introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, in a totally different context when we were discussing broadcasting. He said, if I remember rightly, that what was wanted was not cost/efficiency but culture/efficiency, and that, it seems to me, is precisely the attitude required towards development in developing countries—always provided that the culture is understood to be a natural growth and not something alien imposed from outside. I should not wish to press this argument too far. Of course the standard of living is one of the most important conditions for human progress and happiness. It must be raised in the developing countries, and this means the infrastructure which has been talked about: communications, power and the rest of it.

The point I am concerned to emphasise is that it is the human touch, too, that can so often be rewarding. In this context one thinks of the thousands of British teachers spread throughout the world, very large numbers of them in Africa; one thinks of something like 1,500 young people engaged in Voluntary Service Overseas, and giving the enthusiasm and energy of youth in some 70 countries throughout the world. One thinks of the 30,000-plus students, of all categories, from the various developing countries who are in the United Kingdom; and one thinks, too, of the close business contacts and professional links that exist around the world, all the individuals aiding in a very real way the development of new countries.

As has been said, education is one of the most vital aspects of the development we have been discussing, and it seems to me that two things are necessary there at the different levels. First, there is the crash programme going on in Africa and Asia at primary and secondary levels. I strongly agree with the Pearson Report, and with what has been said in this House to-day: that this programme of education must be geared to local needs, and should have a high technical content. In the past, too often in the African bush we have allowed ourselves to be carried away by the model of the English public school. Secondly, of course, graduate training is eagerly sought for and must be provided both at home, where feasible, and abroad. Here, as the noble Lord. Lord Fulton, showed, there is a record of which we may justly be proud, particularly the remarkable programme of expansion in African universities since the war.

My Lords, I think there is one blot on the British record with regard to overseas students, and here I wish strongly to support what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn. It has been brought home to me that the increased fees for overseas students, which I think were introduced in 1967, still give rise to-day, in spite of many helpful palliative measures which have been taken (and I fully recognise the help that the Government have tried to give) to feelings, however misguided, of bitterness and misunderstanding. I cannot help feeling that the cost to us in good will has been totally disproportionate to what I imagine are the relatively small savings that have been achieved. I hope the Government will take note that the Pearson Report condemns discriminatory fees for foreign students.

The Pearson Report recommends that scholarships should be given primarily for attendance at local institutions. That may be right, but I think it equally important that scholars of the highest calibre should be able to take advanced studies at the best universities in the world. I was present at the conference in Montreal in 1958 when the delegates agreed on the great importance of education and training as an indispensable condition of development. And they went on: it is our hope that the Commonwealth will increasingly furnish new opportunities for its young people and enrichment for the national life of all its members. Subsequently, the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, with which I am now associated, came into being, and to-day there are well over 500 hand-picked scholars in Britain from a whole variety of Commonwealth countries. From the reports that I see and the scholars that 1 meet, I know how the vast majority are benefiting from their course of studies and how much they are going to take back to their own countries in due course.

My Lords, there are two questions which I should like to put to the Government about our own housekeeping arrangements. I do this in no spirit of dogmatism. 1 do not ask for any answers this evening; indeed, I do not expect them. They concern our own machinery in Whitehall. The first question covers particularly the Ministry of Overseas Development which the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, mentioned and took credit to the Government for setting up as an independent Ministry. I fully accept that. I think we all recognise that it has an outstanding record for compassion, competence and achievement. But it should perhaps be remem- bered that the Department of Technical Co-operation, its predecessor, and the Ministry of Overseas Development itself were set up when there were three separate political Departments dealing with overseas countries—the Foreign Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office. Now there is only one, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

These changes must, to some extent at least, have affected the role of the Ministry of Overseas Development from being what it was in the past—which was, in effect, an adjudicator between the claims of three rival Departments—into becoming itself the spokesman for the development of all new countries. It is in juxtaposition with a single merged Department responsible for British interests throughout the world and concerned also (this is really my point) with all those other matters which the Pearson Report regarded as so highly relevant to development, particularly the expansion of trade and private finance. The question I put to the Government is: Are they satisfied that the present arrangements are the most suitable to ensute that in allocating aid full attention is paid to these other factors and to ensure that account is taken of the overall considerations of British policy affecting any given country?

The Pearson Report really puts the question on page 228, where it states: These shortcomings "— namely, the lack of central organisation and the failure to capture public imagination— lead us to the conclusion that improved co-ordination machinery is needed … First "— and this is the one— it should relate aid and development policies to those concerned with trade, monetary policy, and private capital movements to avoid possible nullifying of the beneficial effects of aid by unfavourable trends in these other fields. My second housekeeping detail concerns the British Council. I certainly have nothing critical to say about the Council. I would not dare to do so with the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, by my side— and I should like to take this belated opportunity to thank him for introducing this Motion. Quite apart from that, I would not be critical of the Council because I have had long experience of it and dealings with it, and I can assure the House that I have the highest regard for it. I have always considered it a most lively, active and extremely useful organisation. I was about to say that I have the impression that in the field of aid, and perhaps notably of education, the lines between the Ministry of Overseas Development and other Government Departments, on the one hand, and the British Council on the other, tend to become rather blurred. I also have the impression that the British Council is increasingly asked by the Government to take on new duties which make it, in effect, the agent of the Government. My question is whether there is not a risk that both these things may prejudice the Council's reputation for independence from the Government, which it is so important to preserve.

I have only these three further things to say. I hope that the Government will give a generous response to the target suggested in the Pearson Report. I hope that they will not be unmindful of the three special ways in which we have been able to conduct our affairs in the past and hope to continue to do so in future. And I would suggest to them that they might look at our own machinery to satisfy themselves that it is meeting all the requirements that we have in mind. Finally, I find another sentence in the Pearson Report which puts the question dramatically. It says: A growth rate of 6 per cent, per year would transform the economic outlook in a developing country. So far so good. It goes on: At that rate, even assuming rapid population growth, it would multiply its income per person by four in half a century, and many could bring themselves up to or beyond the present living standards of Western Europe within a century. Within a century they can hope to be where we are now. That seems to me a striking example of the dimension and urgency of the problem.

8.12 p.m.

LORD SOPER

My Lords, we are thankful to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, that he has invited us to consider a vital matter against the background of those two most voluminous and informative documents which I suppose must be almost unique. The amount of detail is most forbidding to those like myself who are not expert in the many matters therein discussed. I find, for instance, at the end of Part 2 of the Jackson Report a list of no fewer than 47 initials describing various organisations. Even then they left one out. D.A.C. is not to be found in that long list; but it is a formidable list. I suppose that we owe a particular debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, for the way in which he pursued his way through the under-growth of this forest and discovered for us the main trees to which we ought to attach our attention, and delineated for us many of the precise and overall principles which are the subject of these two Reports. At the risk of repetition, which I shall try to avoid, it seems to me that there is great value in understanding what congruence there is between the Pearson and the Jackson Reports and thereafter apply that adcongruence of ideas and discovery to our own responsibility in these Islands.

I am sure that they are right in saying that principally this is a matter that affects the moral conscience of the world. I find it a little difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Gridley (I wish he were here now) who seemed to imply that there was not more than a degree of difference between the impoverished and the affluent. I would beg to remind him that the difference between Heaven and Hell is ultimately a matter of degree. In fact, the synthetic indignation, I thought perhaps for a time, of none other than my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder was in quite inverse proportion to his own nature, which is most altruistic and kind. There is a world of sentimentality which we ought vigorously to avoid, but Godliness with contentment is great gain and there is no objection in the theology of the Christian faith to the idea that if you do what is right that on the whole it will turn out to your good. It would be quite wrong to see the expunged verse of the hymn from our Methodist Hymn Book: Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee, Repaid a thousandfold will be, Then gladly will we lend to Thee, Who givest all. But when you set out a programme which you believe to be morally right there is nothing wrong in the expectation that it will work out to the ultimate good. I would put in that "plug" professionally, but also because it is the outcome of a reading of the background of the two Reports. Here is a matter of obligation. I agree with my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder that it is a matter not of aid but of co-operation, of development, or partnership: it is an obligatory measure, and in a Kantian sense we ought to do much more about it than we have done.

The second of the congruent ideas in both Reports is the way in which we have grown weary in well doing. The initial effort was not big enough, but there has been even a declension from that modest beginning. With this it is impossible to disagree. The facts declare themselves. We are confronted with a decline in a very meagre attempt to do something of the most imperative importance. This is the crossroad, and this is the matter of crisis. Who can disagree, on looking at the evidence, that this is so and not an exaggeration?

The third and, to me, the most contentious and perhaps most difficult and embarrassing of problems is that which is raised as between the country project and the individual project, between bilateral and multilateral aid, raising as these issues do the fundamental question as to whether bilateral aid is likely to be more infected by national and not necessarily good ideas, whereas multilateral aid is not likely to be so directed towards the overall needs of the particular recipient country. On the whole, it seems to me that both Reports come down heavily on the side of multilateral aid as being in the last analysis preferable to bilateral aid.

If these are some of the deliverances of these Reports then in what degree and manner will they affect us, and what ought to be our reaction to them? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, in a field which I shall not attempt to plough thoroughly; indeed, I shall get out by the quickest gate after I say what I have to say about it. There seems to be general agreement in the Reports that one of the crippling effects of the World Bank loans to international development has been, as my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder pointed out, that the payment of interest on the loans has corrupted the possible effect for good of the loans themselves. It was with great pleasure that I listened to my noble friend Lord Shepherd saying that this Government would be committed more to the provision of grants than to the maintenance of loans.

It is upon the private sector that I would offer some other comments, briefly at this time of night. It is easy enough to deride the 1 per cent., but some kind of target, however imprecise, is better than a general injunction to be good, and for that reason I would not deride the 1 per cent., though I would recognise that the 0.7 per cent, of it is much more attainable and predictable as a target than the 03 per cent. It is upon the 0 0.3 per cent, contribution of the private sector that I would offer these comments. I agree heartily with my noble friend Lord Shepherd in his confidence that one of the effective results of such a debate as this will be to mobilise, stimulate, energise and inform public opinion, so that in those fields where Government action is impossible, that 0 0.3 of 1 per cent, might indeed be realised. I was interested to hear how they got on in Scotland with the one day's pay appeal. We in the Methodist Church did not do quite so well. We had a dedication of one day's pay last Good Friday and it turned out, on the figures, that the average income of the Methodist in this country was apparently £3 7s. 6d. a week. We felt that there was something wrong either in the calculation or in the altruism of the Methodist Church.

But, looking back upon it, one of the reasons for this failure to reach even that target was the imprecision of the idea of what this particular aid was going to do; how this particular co-operation was going to affect the lives of individual people in far away countries. I wonder whether the Government would be prepared to offer, in some kind of document or publication, a wider range of specific objectives to which the Methodists, Anglicans and the Church as a whole could be invited to subscribe their efforts and dedicate their energies.

LORD HAWKE

May 1 offer the noble Lord a suggestion? Our diocesan scheme in Kenya is running a bit low of funds. Perhaps the Methodist Church in Sussex would help there.

Lord SOPER

My Lords, we should be glad to do so, and it would be some recompense for the failure to come together with us last July. One of the areas in which there has been reiterated comment to-day is the area of the mass explosion of population. I wish to say this grudgingly and as a pis aller. Christian Churches have been prepared to offer some consolation to those who practise birth control and in some degree now regard it as a rather necessary kind of expedient in a world which they wish quickly to change. I believe that the opposite is true. I believe that the Christian Churches should advocate family planning as a piece of moral obligation of the true spirit of Christianity, and not as something as quickly as possible to be avoided. I do not share the almost complete gloom of my noble friend Lord Snow. I wonder whether he has ever seen any Japanese films? If he has, would he not agree that there is a good deal of sexual guilt at least displayed on their screens. However, whether they are more or less emancipated than we are, the truth remains that there is a possibility of removing from the whole area of birth control some of the contumely which now rests upon it because of the rigid opposition of so many Church people—and if any members of the Roman Catholic Church should be hearing my voice, 1 hope that they will employ in the field of family planning the same kind of new spirit that they have expressed in collegiality.

Before sitting down, there is one other thing I should like to say—and I hope that your Lordships will not regard it as the King Charles's head of the various utterances I make. There is a kind of negative aid to which we should invite people to contribute here and now. One of the curses of our effect on the underdeveloped countries is the way in which we push some of our less desirable objects on them—our alcohol, our pornography, our lesser films—and the natural way in which they respond: and because these are the habit forming commodities, it is not surprising that we debauch as much by these commodities as we ever intend or are able to support and develop by others. This is again a field which is within the general area of the individual and the non-governmental action. Therefore, though I do not believe that this Government or any other Government have done enough, I believe that the Government are inspired by a sense of moral obligation—and I hope that they will not think me truculent to say so—and I welcome the evidence that they would desire to reach the targets which have been advocated.

The noble Lord, Lord Blackett, in his maiden speech, which we so much enjoyed, suggested that the question of world development, particularly among the underdeveloped countries, was perhaps the second issue. I am not sure that it is not the first. I am no friend of the present defence policy of Her Majesty's Government. I derive no comfort from the prospect of a 36-hour lapse between the inception of some kind of attack from the Warsaw Pact Powers and our use of tactical nuclear weapons. I find that horrible to contemplate. But I am also aware that there seems to be no practical way within the defence area of moving towards a better situation. I wonder whether we ought to attack the whole matter from an entirely different standpoint. Were we to dedicate a great deal more of our cash and treasure to the feeding of people at present under-nourished, and to the prosecution of the kinds of programmes to which noble Lords have addressed their remarks to-day, I wonder whether, by some kind of flanking movement, this would not produce a more creditable and satisfactory way of meeting the supreme challenge of the way we live, which is simply whether we live or die. I hope that in this debate we may have contributed something to that altogether imperative decision.

8.25 p.m.

LORD HINTON OF BANKSIDE

My Lords, I should like first of all to do as other Lords have done and thank the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, for introducing this debate, and to congratulate the noble Lord. Lord Blackett, on his maiden speech: it was exactly what those of us who know him would have expected from him. I suppose that when any man reads a Report and finds that it says almost all the things he would have liked to say, and makes almost all the recommendations he would have wished to make, he is disposed to think that it is a good Report. That is what I thought about the Pearson Report and. late as it is, that is all I have to say about that Report. The Pearson Report and the Jackson Report have been discussed in your Lordships' House to-day at the high, almost esoteric, levels of morals, economics, finance, education and science, and I am afraid that I am going to drag the debate down nearer to ground level.

It is easy to get people to agree that the prosperity of the developing countries depends on their agriculture and on their industry; but not many of the people who agree with that proposition realise that in these days both agriculture and industry depend very largely on engineering. After all, to-day engineering provides a great deal of the infrastructure of agriculture, the transport systems and irrigation systems, as well as the agricultural machinery; and in industry engineering does much more than provide the infra-structure. It is no use pouring money into developing countries unless their engineers are good enough to use the capital equipment which is supplied— because they want it to be used by their engineers. It is true that where large capital projects are concerned they are wise enough to employ off-shore consultants and off-shore contracts, but for smaller engineering works, and certainly for the operation and maintenance of all their engineering works, they wish to use their own native-born engineers.

In many of the developing countries to-day there are in the universities schools of engineering that can provide theoretical training, at any rate up to first degree level, and often beyond; and the developing countries are also able to provide the practical training which is needed by many of their engineers. But engineers in the developing countries who are going to be employed on specialist jobs, or engineers who are destined for higher management, still need to get practical experience in the industrialised countries. I think that we in this country do too little, and in fact less than we used to do, to provide this help.

The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, gave us some statistics on this problem, but I should prefer to give one or two examples which lie within my personal experience. I was in Pakistan a few months ago and I found there that almost all the senior engineers in the power wing of the water and power authority had had some part of their practical training in the United Kingdom. I asked them whether they had engineers here for training now, and they said that they had not, and that they found it very difficult to arrange training for engineers in this country.

About a year ago I was in one of the East African countries, and there the chairman of the Electricity Commission told me that he had just sent 30 engineers to Germany for training. When I asked him why he had sent them to Germany, where they had to learn a new language before they could start, he replied that he had tried to get training places for them in the United Kingdom but had completely failed to do so. Not only Germany is doing this. As the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, said, it is being done by France, Japan and other industrialised countries, who are eagerly taking on men.

I believe that industrialists in this country find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. If they take trainees on to their staffs they have to pay them the rate for the job, which the men are probably not worth at that stage of their training; and, in addition, they have to pay S.E.T. and social benefit charges. If, on the other hand, the industrialists take on trainees as supernumary trainees, they get no grants under the Industrial Training Act. I believe that, under Section 14 of the Act, provision is made to enable Her Majesty's Government to give a direct subvention to firms who accept trainees from these overseas countries, but as yet it has not been found convenient to invoke those powers.

In this country we need a scheme which enables us to use those powers; a scheme which makes training for engineers in the industrialised countries much more readily accessible; a scheme which is co-ordinated, and a scheme which gives quick results. At present not merely are we failing to give to the developing countries a service which we might well give; we are also doing a disservice to industry in this country. In the old days, the new countries of the Commonwealth, as Colonies, were virtually part of our domestic market. Their services and utilities were largely run by British expatriates, and their purchasing was carried out by the Crown Agents for the Colonies. Those days have gone, and to-day the Commonwealth countries, as do all the other developing countries, buy in the best markets where they can get the best prices and financial terms. But in marginal cases sentiment still enters into purchasing policy, and I think that those 30 engineers from East Africa who have gone to Germany for training may have a pro-German bias in their purchasing for the next 30 years, when that bias might quite well have been pro-British.

8.35 p.m.

VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD

My Lords, I should like to start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, for initiating this debate. I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, on his very interesting address. My reason for speaking in these overseas debates—as I sometimes do—is that at one time I farmed in a sub-tropical area. Like everybody else who has taken part in the debate, I agree that it is very necessary to give aid to underdeveloped countries; it is only an extension of the policy carried on in our former Empire.

If I understood the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, aright, I was rather annoyed to hear her say that the British Empire had been a record of exploitation. I see that the noble Baroness is not in her place at the moment. I really must object to those remarks. The Colonial servants in our Empire have been the most selfless men, with the highest devotion to duty, and, but for the British Empire, many of the hundreds of millions of people throughout the world would be in a vastly more precarious position Than they are in to-day. We cured disease, irrigated vast areas, and brought law and administration to these areas. The only mistake we made—which we could not foresee—was that owing to our policies we vastly increased the populations, but we could not help that.

What we must try to explain to the public is why aid is necessary, because at the moment the public are extremely anti-aid. They have the impression— and you cannot blame them—that some of these governments are corrupt, and that the aid does not always get to the people that it should get to. Apart from India, we are the highest taxed country in the world, and we have to try to explain to the public why aid is necessary. The noble Lord, Lord Hawke said that for practical purposes we do not get back a lot of aid. But we do not expect to get it back; I, for one, am quite happy that we do not get it back. I should like to get back some good will, but I doubt whether we really get back a lot of that from the rulers. As the public see, a lot of the rulers of these countries abuse us, but that is no reason for taking it out on their people. Therefore, I am all for as much aid as our economy can stand.

There is something which has always puzzled me about aid. Government Departments have in their files, I presume, every detail of these countries that are going to receive aid; all the details of rainfull, vegetation, geology, soil, et cetera. They also have their population figures. But do the Departments study the characteristics of these various peoples? These peoples in the underdeveloped countries vary a great deal, and of course they are very different from us. They have different standards and often may even have a better view of life than us. The point I am trying to make comes from my experience in fanning in the West Indies, and if we want to aid these people we must discover their characteristics.

The great drawback I found was apathy. Among these people there is a great deal of apathy. I acquired a run-down estate and am pleased to say that I improved its productivity by at least four times. Anyone in this country could have done that. But there is this great drawback of apathy among the local people. I believe that to a certain extent it results from their diet. Perhaps the heat has something to do with it, too, but I personally think the chief cause is the diet. It is true enough to say that in some of these countries there is a lack of food, but there are other countries that have enough food but their people still have a wrong diet. The reasons may be many. One of the reasons is that the people do not know the right things to eat. It is extremely necessary to find out why these people are poor, because hundreds of millions of these people live in areas when; the soil is very rich, far richer than the soil in this country. Some areas, I agree, have poor soil, but on the whole the soil is extremely rich. So why are these people poor? Some of these areas are not over-populated.

The point I want to make is that it is useless to pour in aid and to bring in food artificially—of course if there is a famine then food must be brought in— over the years, because by doing so one is accentuating the problem. There is a greater birth rate and there are more and more mouths to feed. I have seen instances where technical assistance or technical aid has been brought to a country when the country was not ready to receive it; it had no adequate Administration to make use of the technical aid. The first need must surely be education. I agree that a lot is done now, but I should like to see even more aid given in the form of education, and we should have a great drive to send out thousands of teachers and thousands of technical experts, in order that the countries concerned may have some form of basic Administration which will ensure that aid is used to the best advantage.

May I tell your Lordships of an instance I heard of in the West Indies, which illustrates this point? The Government took over two or three large estates which were producing a big revenue and divided them up into smallholdings. What happened was that the people—and one cannot blame them—just sat in the sun and waited for coconuts to fall off the tree, so that the estates deteriorated to a great degree and the revenue of the country was made that much the poorer. It was a well-meaning effort, but it was badly advised.

As I have said, the crux of this problem—and it also applies to Africa; I have been in Africa, but I have not as much experience of Africa as I have of the Caribbean—is the need to increase the agricultural production of these countries and for dietician experts to ensure by education (I know it is a very difficult problem, and perhaps religion comes into it) that the people eat proper food and take the right diet. They will then have more energy and their brains will work better. I do not mean to be insulting, but if there is malnutrition among people you cannot expect them to be 100 per cent. fit. Malnutrition is in some ways worse than hunger.

When it comes to education, our aid helps a great many students to come here. A great many of them learn law. The point has already been made, but of course what these countries need is technical education. If one teacher is sent out to a country he can teach perhaps thirty or forty students, whereas if a student comes here then only one person is taught. So here again I should like a great drive to be made to send out as many teachers as we can—thousands and thousands—to give the benefits of education to the underdeveloped countries. I quite agree that it is necessary for some students to come here, because it is difficult to explain to Africans, West Indians or Asians matters concerning the West if they have never been here. I remember trying to explain to some primitive Africans what ice and snow were like. Naturally, they saw it as a huge joke and thought I was trying to be funny. That is understandable. If such a person is told that someone can walk on the water he finds it difficult to understand if he has never seen ice.

I am all against attaching any political strings to aid. It is very tempting to do so, but it never pays and so I am all against it. I am not saying that one would give preference to a country that appeared to be one's enemy, rather than to a country that appeared to be one's friend. But where famine or hunger is concerned, politics should not come into it at all: aid should flow to cure the disaster, irrespective of any political bias. Countries can abuse one as much as they like, but where human suffering is concerned—I appreciate that this is easy to say—politics should take a back seat.

One point I must add concerns countries which have, apparently deliberately, ruined their economies by nationalisation. For instance, I remember that a few years ago Ceylon was in a very bad way as a result of nationalisation. Again I make an exception of hunger, but I feel it is a bit hard to expect the capitalist West to bail out countries that have ruined their own economy by nationalisation. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, will not agree with me here. Before I conclude, my Lords, I would add that it is a pity that our young people apparently are not taught the great benefits which in the past this country has given to these undeveloped countries through our district commissioners and colonial administrators. If I were one of them, I should feel very bloody-minded that one has this abuse which is completely un-warranted. But if we had in these countries the same administrative ability that we had in the days of the British Empire, I am sure a lot of these problems would not be so acute.

Before I conclude my remarks, I should like to make one point. If aid to underdeveloped countries is to have the support of the public, one point should be borne in mind. I am thinking that at the moment there might be a man waiting in a bus queue in London when some representative of an underdeveloped country drives past in a most ostentatious car. The man in the bus queue has a pretty shrewd idea that that car has been bought out of our aid, and I wish some of these Governments and the representatives of the underdeveloped countries would endeavour not to be so ostentatious. A few years ago we had the cases of the gold bedstead and the strings of Rolls-Royces for rulers of underdeveloped countries, and those presumably came out of our aid. I hope they have grown up a little now, and have seen the absurdity of such ostentation.

Finally, my Lords, I should like to echo the words of my noble friend Lord Hawke, who said that the real crux of the matter is that, unless the people of these countries have the will to use our aid and expertise, there is not much we can do. That also applies to the expertise of the international organisations. I hope that eventually all aid will come through international organisations, be-cause politics can then be taken out of it. If these countries do not use that expertise, the aid could end up merely by bankrupting the West, because it will go on pouring into a bottomless pit. They must have the will and expertise to use it, and it is up to us to give them that will.

8.54 p.m.

LORD BALOGH

My Lords, before I make my remarks I should like to declare an interest. I have been a consultant to the United Nations and I am about to be one again, in Latin America. Like all Parties, and even the nonparti-sans, favour aid, I think I shall allow my-self the luxury of putting in a few caveats which otherwise I would not have done. In these matters I fear that common sense is often nonsense, and if sentimentality is joined to it, then, as the reverend and noble Lord. Lord Soper, said, the result will be deplorable.

I agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend Lady Gaitskell in thinking that this question of aid is really a moral issue. It is for us, the contributing countries, a question of unilateral giving—not a question of giving "in order to". On the other hand (and I need not go into this because my noble friend has done it so much better than I could have done it), I would put in a caveat, not because I am indifferent or morally irresponsible but because I am trying to combine idealism with some sort of realism: we cannot be indifferent to the way in which aid is used. We cannot be indifferent if aid results in an increase in inequality in the recipient countries. We cannot be indifferent if aid is used in order to establish a society to which we in this country—perhaps not some of the noble Lords on the other side of the House, but certainly on this side—are opposed. Therefore we must watch out. In a way, I am thankful that voluntary organisations have been working so hard to make aid a reality to the public, to sell it to the public, because I think they have done something which the Government cannot possibly do. But (and this is the only thing on which I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard) if we are not careful how this aid is used, we shall exhaust this fund of good will, and that would be a great pity.

Having said that, I should like to put in a word in praise of Britain. We have heard so much about our failures, our shortcomings, and our shortfalls that I think we should remind ourselves about a few things. First, let us remind our-selves that aid is something completely new. Of course we have had aid in war time. The Seven Years War was fought by England mainly by aiding Prussia. We had an example of aid in the Napoleonic Wars: aid to the Austrian Empire, to Prussia and to Russia, in order to fight the battles on the mainland of Europe on behalf of the seafaring nations. But what has been quite exceptional, and quite new, is aid in peace time without any sort of immediate impulse from a common enemy. I agree that there has been some of this impulse in the cold war, but in a way the cold war deflected the aid from its proper course; and now that the cold war has abated a little we can be thankful that the aid has continued as high as it has been.

I would also put in a plea for British aid because in quality it has increased enormously, first because we have a unified control of aid under one Ministry. I should like to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Garner, when he says that the Government may want to reconsider the shifting of the aid into the Foreign Office. I think that would be a great pity, because the aid department must be a vested interest in favour of aid—of aid per se, aid without strings, aid without ulterior motives. So long as we have the Ministry of Overseas Development this gives us a moral status among the nations which is quite unique and which is going to be needed, I am sure. I would implore the Government not to listen to the siren voices which wish to have aid used as a by-product or an adjunct of foreign policy. Secondly, I say that the quality of British aid has enormously improved because we have a planning staff. This is, practically speaking, the only country which has a specialised planning staff in the Ministry responsible for aid giving, and this has made an enormous difference.

I would also say that I was extremely pleased that we could put through interest-free loans. I think that the remark about "common-sense nonsense" applies here. Those who think that grants are better than loan are very much mistaken. They are mistaken for two reasons. First of all, a loan provides discipline, which you would not get in grant, and I am hard-headed enough to want discipline for the use of the loan. Secondly, I believe that a loan is very much better than a mere grant because it has to be repaid at a certain moment. It does not have to be repaid tomorrow, and those noble Lords who argue as if we do insist on repayment like Shylock wanting his pound of flesh are absolutely mistaken. These loans are being rolled forward, and they will be rolled for-ward; but as these countries increase in prosperity we do want repayment. When Ghana reaches 500 dollars per annum per head she should repay, because this would then be added into our revolving fund of aid to the countries which are even poorer than Ghana. In my view, noble Lords ought to consider these problems very carefully, and should eschew easy solutions—they are usually wrong.

Nor should we attach exclusive importance to the quantity of aid. I fear that an unavoidable engagement prevented me from listening to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, and I apologise to him for that; but he had given me the great privilege of looking at an earlier draft. I feel that on the whole he neglected the quality of aid. It is very interesting if we look for instance at Latin America. A pound of aid in Latin America has caused either two or three or six or eight pounds-worth of growth. The capital output ratios in developing countries startlingly differ. For instance, the Argentinian case is very interesting. It took £11 in the last decade in Argentina to achieve £1 increase in income, whereas it took only about £2½ in Chile. I do not wish to go into the various possible explanations for this.

Let me come to the question which my noble friend, Lady Gaitskell, asked about 1 per cent. and 0.7 per cent. Of course I am not against the 1 per cent. and 0.7 per cent. as targets. I absolutely agree with the reverend and noble Lord, Lord Soper, that one has to have an aim, because politically an aim at which to strive is a good thing. Nothing that I say about this particular target should be interpreted as meaning that I do not think now that this target should hold; but my noble friend should begin to refine it. In the old days the income tax was proportional in many countries, and it was found that this was not a very good arrangement because, of course, a rich man can pay more proportionately to his income with-out suffering the same hardship as the poorer man. This, after all, is why we went from indirect taxation to direct taxation and in indirect taxation from the salt tax, the Gabelle, which the poorer man felt much more, to the purchase tax, which the richer man feels much more. We have in all civilised countries adopted a progressive system of taxation. Some noble Lords may feel that we have gone too far in this, but I am quite sure that even the noble Lord who has just spoken would not advocate proportional tax at this moment—perhaps less progressivity, but not proportional.

We want to mobilise the power of the growingly affluent part of the Third World, and Japan is a very good example of this. They started on 300 dollars per annum; they are now well over 1,000 and are going very strong. Obviously, as they increase they ought to come in at a certain point, but ought they to come in with the whole 1 per cent. of gross national product? The Pearson Report has a pretty silly table in it, which says that the Germans should pay less than the Japanese. The Germans have a national income per head which is about 1½ times, and will remain almost 1½ times, that of the Japanese. This is a target which is obviously felt to be un-fair, and anything which is felt to be unfair cannot endure.

With regard to the increase in population, that is a problem of prosperity, not of depression. These people live longer because they are more prosperous, so it is a good sign. I do not mean that we ought to diminish the gravity of the population problem, but I am quite certain that we ought to keep it in balance. Some of the problems that have arisen, and which have been treated by both Pearson and Jackson, have arisen be-cause the past is obviously still with us. In the past we did not have sufficient experience of these very grave and complicated problems. For instance, we regarded African popular habits as a sort of exercise in social anthropology. We wanted to keep them like that, because they were so interesting. Of course, we never thought of these problems as conscious problems for development.

I agreed with my noble friend Lady Gaitskell, when she said that the Empire really did exploit, but I also agree with the noble Viscount opposite that this exploitation was not willed or conscious. On the contrary, those brave outdoor characters, who probably read History in Balliol, were obviously not wanting to exploit these people. They wanted to protect and lead them. But at the same time they were preserving something which was anti-development. Of all the colonial empires in all parts of the world, the British Colonial Empire was much the most prosperous. The British Empire in Africa increased in population while those of the Belgians and French decreased. That, after all, is the ultimate touchstone of policy.

Neither the national Governments nor the international agencies were organised in order to promote development. They were organised to prevent war between developed countries. UNESCO was not organised in order to teach peasants how to till; nor was F.A.O. organised mainly in order to transform the shifting agriculture of African populations. F.A.O. was organised in order to deal with the terrible problem of agricultural surpluses of the 1930s. The whole impulse came from old Frank MacDougal and Mr. Cairns from Australia. They were organised in order to deal with the problems of the developed and not of the underdeveloped countries.

Obviously, had there been development consciousness in those days, there would have been only one development agency, not five, six or seven, or 22 or 24—I do not know how many there are. Development is an organically unitary process which has to be applied with a definite pattern. You must have the impulses on education, on industrialisation and on the transformation of the primitive agriculture, closely followed with planned patterns and priorities. This we have not got.

LORD RFTCHIE-CALDER

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend, but I wish he would read my speech in Hansard tomorrow. He seems to be giving a rather queer version of what I said. I said that the thing grew organically.

LORD BALOGH

My Lords, it did not grow organically; it grew like Topsy. Organic growth is well organised, I think. But I would not claim that my command of the English language is very high. Therefore, I think that we have to see these problems in a social setting, in the social setting of these countries. I do not wish to occupy the time of the House any longer, but I should like to put in two or three caveats. The first caveat concerns the green revolution. I think this is the weakest part of the Pearson Report, which assumes that the green revolution—by which is meant the introduction of new seeds, new fertilisers, new insecticides and pesticides into the underdeveloped area and the consequential trebling, quadrupling or quintupling of crops—will solve the problem. It will not solve the problem. Indeed, it can create secondary problems of exceptional difficulty, because if the inequality which is now obvious between urban and rural areas is imparted into the rural areas, if the Kulak and the poor peasant "get across" each other, and if the Kulak begins to mechanise, and this mechanisation decreases rather than increases employment in the rural areas, a revolutionary situation of the utmost gravity will be created. I should like to make that point with all the force at my command. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, in thinking that trade really is an adequate substitute.

LORD BYERS

My Lords, I did not say that trade was an adequate substitute for aid. I said exactly the opposite. I said that both had to be present.

LORD BALOGH

My Lords, I should have thought that, on the whole, apart from export of industrialised products, trade, and, especially, subsidised trade of primary products from those areas will increase rather than decrease the internal difficulties in those areas, because the growers of export crops are already privileged people in these areas. The cocoa peasant in Ghana is obviously a very privileged person who has a very much higher income, so that if you substitute trade for aid and are not very careful in so adjusting your trade demand as to increase the industrialisation and the diversification in these areas, then I think you will be doing a great disservice. Therefore, the Jackson Report is extremely important and I very much hope that the British Government will take a leading part in supporting it.

I should like to end by appealing to the Government to do their utmost to ensure that British influence is exerted, not only by increasing contributions—and I think they should be increased, and the multilateral part should be increased within the aid—but by using the influence which that increase gives us to insist on reforms. We shall then really have dis-charged our duty to the less developed, less privileged, misery-torn areas of the world.

BARONESS GAITSKELL

My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, may I clear up a misconception that has arisen from my speech? It was not I who criticised our colonial civil servants, particularly in the last, say, 50 years. I was simply describing the reaction of delegates in the Human Rights Committee when they talked about aid. They never blamed themselves, but nearly always demanded it as of right or as an indemnity.

9.17 p.m.

LORD MERRIVALE

My Lords, like other speakers, I should like to express my appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, for initiating this debate. I do not propose to follow the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, in his economic analysis of the subject, for I propose to confine my remarks to one particular area where more could be done towards the application of existing knowledge on the subject. It is an area which, in my humble opinion, needs upgrading as to its priority. It is an area, too, where voluntary bodies gave the impetus but where the United Nations Specialised Agencies should play a more active part by more funds being made available to them. If I may, I should like to call in aid a passage in the Jackson Report on page 55, which reads as follows: It is sobering to think, in these times of rapid change and new discoveries, how little changed are the everyday miseries of much of mankind in the world today from those of the 16th century. There is one significant difference, however. Cervantes could not change his world. We can. While the Pearson Commission Report says on page 40: There is probably no other area where social improvement has been realised which is of such direct benefit to individuals in developing countries as that of public health. It goes on to say that malaria has been virtually eliminated by a world-wide campaign under the leadership of the World Health Organisation (although there is some resurgence of D.D.T. resistant strains), and that the number of deaths attributed to plague, cholera or small-pox has also declined sharply in the developing world. On the other hand Dr. Candau, the Director General, on presenting his Report last year on the work of the World Health Organisation in 1968, said: Malaria is still the world's greatest single cause of disablement and it has never been possible to compute fully the toll it takes, both economically and socially. It is without doubt one of mankind's most costly diseases. The public health area in which I should like to see a greater effort being made, an upgrading in priority and more assistance provided for prevention, control, cure and rehabilitation, and for combating the social stigma attached to it, is in effect the world's most crippling disease, leprosy. While this disease is now largely restricted to the tropics and sub-tropics to the 15 to 20 million people so afflicted, it is not a mediæval curiosity nor a biblical scourge but a very present form of physical and social suffering that leaves them at best with half a life. But the persistence of a mediaeval outlook on leprosy by so many still must be ascribed in the first instance to a failure in health education.

My Lords, to take the case of one country which I visited last September, the Malagasy Republic, the present aim of the leprosy control programme appears to be the segregation of the majority of the patients with contagious leprosy in villages, leprosaria, or in general hospitals. The doctors in charge of the hospitals generally agree to the admission of leprosy patients, perhaps in the special annexes; but there is still considerable opposition and resistance to this innovation on the part of the public at large. There are areas, too, my Lords, where the majority of leprosy sufferers are still undiagnosed and untreated. Considerable ignorance about leprosy and prejudice against leprosy patients still exists—and that is unfortunately the case in many countries. The social stigma so often associated with leprosy has also caused victims to hide the fact that they have the disease, and they are often disfigured before they come forward for treatment, having already passed on the disease to other people.

I should like, however, to pay a tribute to the Christian Missions and other voluntary bodies, such as the British Leprosy Relief Association, the Fonda-lion Follereau, the Order of Malta and so forth, for their considerable efforts, as well as to the United Nations specialised Agencies, the W.H.O. and UNICEF. We are also fortunate that a number of trusts in this country regularly subscribe amounts towards leprosy control. But, my Lords, the work being done must be extended, and must be extended in an effective and efficient way. While it is one of the aims of the W.H.O. to co-ordinate and channel the varied assistance provided into technically-sound projects (working in accordance with modern knowledge and based on a non-institutional approach), I think it is true to say that it has not yet been possible to achieve that goal. Page 216 of Partners in Development says—and I quote: The proliferation of U.N. agencies has often resulted in dispersed and unrelated efforts at the level of the recipient countries where there is an urgent need for co-ordination. The main responsibility for this must rest with recipient governments, but their task is impossible if donors cannot ensure greater co-ordination among their own agencies. This applies to bilateral aid-givers as well as the United Nations, but the latter seems in particular need of better co-ordination, continuity, and concentration in priority areas. My Lords, in so far as the W.H.O. and UNICEF are concerned, I believe there is a fair degree of co-ordination through (he Joint Action Group, but their priority of leprosy may not be right, owing to what I believe is, in effect, a lack of funds. At the present time, with only one in five leprosy sufferers being treated. I should have thought there was a strong case for upgrading its priority and for allocating more funds. But so much more needs to be done in the field of diagnosis and rural domiciliary treatment of the disease. For example, the Malagasy Republic, with a population of around 6 million, has about 30,000 known cases of leprosy; but if the estimated number is included the total figure reaches 72,000—that is, about one in 84 persons India, with a population of around 530 million has approximately 710.000 registered cases of leprosy, but the total estimated number is two-and-a-half million. I can refer to Burma and to other countries.

My excuse for raising the question of. leprosy in this debate may be found in the words of Dr. Happi, the chief dele-gate from the Cameroons, when he said at the 21st World Health Assembly in 1968: Special mention should however be made of the diseases of poverty in these countries "— he was referring to the developing countries— the so-called social diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy, in the first place, essentially linked as they are to the social and economic under development of the countries in question. The presence of these infections and their constant progression continues to cause anxiety. From this point of view, there is no doubt that it has been proved that action by the W.H.O. and the various States for the promotion of the health of mankind will not succeed until such activities come within the general framework of social and economic development. A further excuse may be that having visited a leprosarium and a leper village, and having talked to leprosy sufferers, some with stumps for feet or hands and some with disfigurements of the face, and having admired their morale, as well as the devotion of those who look after them, I feel that we owe it to them and that they deserve it. To give two examples, voluntary bodies such as the Leprosy Mission and the British Leprosy Relief Association are donating annually around £650,000 and £150,000 respectively. But I would ask the noble Baroness, when she replies, whether she would not agree that Her Majesty's Government also have a responsibility in this matter. The role of Governments vis-à-vis the United Nations Development Programme has been defined on page 305 of the Jackson Study. It is: to enunciate policies and objectives, approve the apportionment and use of resources, and oversee the effectiveness of their application. Might one hope, therefore, in the future for a higher priority for leprosy control and research? Surely, too, if one believes that such diseases should be tackled with-in the framework of social and economic development, a greater financial effort is required on the part of member-donor Governments, including Her Majesty's Government.

9.29 p.m.

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

My Lords, this has been an especially in-teresting if fairly long debate by your Lordships' standards. Most things have been said a good many times. Indeed, we have had quite a teach-in under the auspices of the noble Lords, Lord Fulton and Lord Hawke, to whom we are most grateful for having given us this oppor-tunity of discussing this very important subject. They both have our greatest respect and I should immediately like to join them and others in congratulating Mr. Pearson, the Chairman of the Com-mission on International Development, as well as his colleague, Sir Edward Boyle, for a remarkable Report which is, I believe, a real spur to action. I have known Mr. Pearson for nearly 40 years, ever since he was a fairly junior member of a small External Affairs Department in Ottawa, and I have always thought of him as one of the greatest inter-nationalists. There is no doubt that Canadians such as Mr. Pearson have played outstanding roles in international co-operation in this shrinking world. He is a statesman of the highest calibre, as indeed is my friend, Sir Edward Boyle, whose remarkable speech in another place in November last I think impressed your Lordships, as it did the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and myself.

Sir Robert Jackson has established him-self as a world-wide authority on these matters, and the world, and particularly the developing countries, must be greatly indebted to him. I with other noble Lords on the Cross-Benches, greatly miss the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Burnley, who is unfortunately no longer with us. He was a friend who I know would have made a great contribution to this debate. I should like to pay my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, for what I believe to be an historic maiden speech on the widening gap between the nations of the world. There are terrible inequalities in wealth—there can be no doubt about that—but my noble friend Lord Gridley put some of these qualities into perspective in a very interesting way from his personal experience. None the less, I hope we shall hear much more from the noble Lord, Lord Blackett. My noble friend, Lord Jellicoe, told me before leaving this afternoon that the noble Lord was a midshipman at Jutland. Well, my Lords, I thought that he went into action again very well to-day and we thank him for what he said.

The noble Lord, Lord Blackett, and the late Sir John Cockcroft made a very important study of this subject. I have listened to them on more than one occasion. In all the lectures which I attended, they laid special stress, as the noble Lord has done this afternoon, on the impor-tance of developing basic industries such as agriculture, but continuing with indus-try, fertiliser plants and the rest. I have always thought that these countries should be encouraged first to produce, say, the right kind of ploughs or bicycles, rather than to indulge in prestige projects such as nuclear power stations, atomic energy establishments or other highly sophisticated installations. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, and Sir John Cockcroft were right in encouraging these countries to develop on those lines.

My noble friend Lord Lansdowne, who asked me to apologise for his not being able to be with us at the end of this debate, and other speakers, have covered most of the problems raised in the Jackson study and the Pearson Report and there is little more to be said from these Benches. I think that on the whole we can afford to be non-Party political, but, like my noble friend Lord Lansdowne, I do not think we can be totally so. As I think my noble friend said, the Prime Minister praised the Pearson Report to the skies and drew attention to what has happened under the present Government. But the fact remains that in cash terms our contributions have decreased. The noble Lord, Lord Walston, said this was inexcusable, and the noble Lord, Lord Garner, said our recent record had not been good. The increases have been swallowed up in increasing costs and the devaluation of the pound sterling has not helped.

I am not now going to discuss further the 1 per cent., this magic number, which has perhaps been at the heart of your Lordships' discussion. Clearly, it is striking that our Defence budget amounts to ten times our overseas aid budget, but with due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, and the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, I think there must be some kind of target. How far have the Government encouraged private investment? That is the point my noble friend made, and I am afraid that here again I feel perhaps that we have not made as much progress as we should have done. But overall I hope that the Government will decide to go for the full aid targets. Here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Soper.

I think that most noble Lords have agreed with Sir Robert Jackson that there must be far better control of the United Nations Development Programme. Again I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, that there is a need for reorganising the system. The noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, made some good points here from her exclusive experience. With other noble Lords I would certainly praise the United Nations and the Special Agencies for the work which they have done. They are rightly proud of it. But I think that there is a good case for more effective co-ordination and, I might add, regional representation, which is a point that has not been raised this afternoon.

I was interested to note the concern of an honourable Member on the Government Benches in another place in the debate on January 27 about the short-comings of the multilateral agencies. I agree that it is hardly surprising that these agencies meet with little undiluted enthusiasm if there is indeed this petty jealousy and empire-building going on at the centre. Much as we admire and support the Pearson recommendations and the worthy motives of the "Sign-In" mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hawke, it is definitely Jackson's reasoned arguments which should in my view be dealt with first and foremost. We should act upon Jackson, as the noble Lord, Lord Snow, emphasised effectively, and also the noble Lord, Lord Todd. U.N.D.P. should be strengthened so that it may play its full role.

I would agree with other noble Lords that the more channelling of aid that can be done through the U.N.D.P. rather than through the World Bank, the better. I know that Mr. McNamara himself is only too conscious of the fact that the World Bank Group must be suspect to a certain extent in the countries of the Eastern bloc and even in some developing coun-tries themselves. Such suspicions as there may be about their activities do not apply to the U.N.D.P. And I would agree with Sir Robert that there are advantages in seeing the U.N.D.P. and the United Nations development system as a whole operating with efficiency and interlocking their operations in the field of pre-investment with the World Bank Group. That is why I am certain that we should continue to provide U.N.D.P. with the necessary financial resources while it is being restructured. This was a point strongly emphasised by Sir Robert Jack-son when I spoke to him on the telephone in Geneva on Monday. I hope very much that the Government will agree that this is the course which we should pursue.

I hope that the noble Baroness who is to reply to this debate will give us an assurance that the Government will back the Jackson recommendations as given in Sir Robert's attractive Foreword. Above all, I agree with Sir Robert that we must be certain that the new organisation has the necessary manpower to surmount its present limitations and that managerial talent equivalent to that found in the greatest institutions and commercial enterprises is essential. In my own travels in developing countries, this need is certainly what has struck me most, even more than the lack of trained technicians, which has been mentioned. In one country I noticed that while there exist scientists of high calibre as well as an almost unlimited work force, what was lacking was qualified middle management and competent foremen on the shop floor. This is certainly going to be very difficult to achieve, and in some cases undoubtedly management must continue to be provided by the developed countries themselves.

Another subject that has given me cause for deep concern is the problem of the brain-drain from these developing countries. This is so much more serious and damaging than it is from our own country. Quite apart from the problem over doctors, about which we all know, I found when visiting a well-known university in South-East Asia only a couple of years ago that the engineering department (this may interest the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside) had recently lost all the best members of its staff to the West. Their future employers were only too willing to pay the £4,000 premium to their Government in order to secure the services of these well qualified engineers. I may say that in this same university the vice chancellor had the misfortune to have all his furniture burnt on his lawn— but not, I think, because his best engineer's—his Q.E.'s—had left.

However, there are some encouraging aspects to these problems. A significant factor is the strong support for overseas aid which has come from the private sector. This was made very clear when the United Nations panel on foreign in-vestment met a year ago in Amsterdam. Interest in this country is also encouraging. The United Nations office here tell me that they have been inundated with pledges—students even pledging part of their grants to assist developing countries. I think it is true to say that the only countries operating fully in this respect are Scandinavia and ourselves; and the United States, for example, may be get-ting more insular and inward-looking, which would be unfortunate. Despite the fact that in cash terms our aid has been getting lower, I think that we still pro-vide an example of how a developed nation, even with its own problems, can help its poorer brethren. The Germans, too, are doing good work.

The whole question of tied or untied aid is one that is undoubtedly more controversial, but I agree with other noble Lords that we should aim at untying aid as much as possible; and I know that British industry has benefited consider-ably from American untied aid to these countries. But there must, I think, be a mixture of the two, and there is no reason why a developed nation such as Britain should not gain just as much as she puts into this effort. In so far as I.D.A. loans are concerned, I am sure that we are amply rewarded, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said; and in the case of exports financed by other countries, we are also benefiting greatly. At all events, I agree with my noble friend Lord Lansdowne that we should support multilateral aid, as opposed to bilateral aid, and that this aid should be as far as possible untied. But I recognise that on this matter there must be agreement among donor countries.

My noble friend asked me to say some-thing about Regional Banks, and in view of the late hour I will do so quite briefly. We know from the Pearson Report that the three Regional Development Banks differ greatly in structure and experience, but that they do express a spirit of co-operation which is one of the most helpful aspects of the current aid situation. I know that these youthful institutions re-presented only 11 per cent. of the gross disbursements of multilateral aid in 1967, but they have achieved high levels of competence in several areas. I was going to ask the noble Baroness a question on the newly-formed Caribbean Bank, but I will spare her, and your Lordships, the question, as she has already undertaken to write to me about it. I wanted to know whether a decision had been taken about the new President, and also about the Bank's location, which, so far as I know, has not yet been decided. That Bank has an important part to play in the Caribbean area.

I should also like to pay a tribute to the Commonwealth Development Corporation, which has not been mentioned very much this afternoon. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Howick of Glendale, has not been with us in this debate. All those who have had any-thing to do with the Corporation recently will say that it is doing a first-class job. Most of us would agree that any objective view of the C.D.C. shows that it is the very best aid instrument, and I see other noble Lords nodding their heads on this. I think it is the best aid instrument, especially in agriculture. We all know that the late Andrew Cohen regarded the C.D.C. to be as efficient a form of aid as exists in this country, or anywhere in the world, and I believe the World Bank holds this view.

I am glad to see from a recent United Nations progress report that public sup-port widens and grows at an astonishing rate. The Press has been most helpful in this respect. The Times gave the Jackson Report a four column feature, the Economist gave it a two-page article, and most national dailies wrote detailed stories. Periodicals devoted as much as four or five pages to it. All this is very encouraging. Periodicals such as the New Scientist have, naturally enough, been writing about the United Nations in the technological and scientific fields, which we covered in a debate with the noble Lord, Lord Todd, some time ago. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, referred to these problems, and also stressed the importance of the social sciences.

It is quite remarkable to read in the U.N. progress report that, apart from the passive researchers and inquirers who contact their library at the rate of a thousand a month, there are more demanding contacts being activated by the second development decade. All this is very encouraging, and in a purely non-Party political sense we should congratulate people in Britain for taking such a deep interest in these matters. I hope that the Government will give full backing to the recommendations of the Jackson study. I am afraid that this may be too great a hope, from what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said, but I still have this hope.

The U.N. has remarkable pioneering work to its credit, and being apolitical and, therefore, acceptable to developing countries themselves, as well as to those donor nations in the Eastern bloc, it has a great deal more to do. We must all appreciate the tremendous efforts by the Churches in sponsoring their national "Sign-In". No one could dissent from the text of their December declaration, and I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, drew attention to it. We in this country must make our contribution and achieve the target of 1 per cent. There must still be a target; it may not be a very accurate target, but there must be one. I recognise the difference between the national income, and the gross national product, but I still think we should aim at that 1 per cent. of the G.N.P.

Looking at the text of the Churches' declaration, we on these Benches can certainly show sympathy for the first part of it. Under the last Conservative Government, the aim of contributing 1 per cent. was achieved. The proportion has declined since 1966 and there has also been a decline under the present Government. As your Lordships know, Mr. Heath showed at the UNCTAD conference in 1964, that Conservatives sup-ported the idea of bringing about a fairer system of world trade in order to help the developing countries. It is conceivable that, in the more favourable economic circumstances which a new Government will strive to bring about, it should be possible to increase both official aid and private investment. But the proportion of each should depend on the particular needs of the recipient.

My Lords, whatever our balance-of-payments problems in the countries of the West, there is no doubt that we are greatly better off than many of our brother and sister nations in Africa and Asia, and in humane terms it is our un-doubted duty—and I do not want to be emotive about this—and indeed in our own enlightened self-interest, as the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, said, to assist these countries to the greatest possible extent. In this small world the richer and the poorer must work together. We are one world—and do not let us forget it. We, the richer nations, must respond honourably and worthily to one of the most basic challenges which face mankind to-day.

9.51 p.m.

BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE

My Lords, at such a very late hour, and particularly in view of the rather appalling weather, I know that all your Lordships will be very glad if our loyal and hard-working and devoted staff can get to their homes before they are frozen up here. So I shall not be able to reply in quite such detail as I should have liked. If any noble Lords feel neglected I hope they will write to me or talk to me, because it is important that they should be answered. Speaking personally, as well as officially, I am delighted that the House has taken these complicated Reports so seriously. I know that the whole House feels great gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, for tabling his Motion. I myself was particularly glad that on so important an occasion he made a reference to the rather splendid preoccupation of the young people with this whole problem and their determination that they will solve it whatever we, their parents, may do.

Before I go any further, I think the whole House will wish me to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, on his extremely moving maiden speech. It is clear that the House immediately recognised his authority and experience, and his truly moral approach to these problems. If I may say so, I have metaphorically sat at his feet ever since I was at the university, and one of the best things that can happen to one in life is to find that one's earlier mentors never develop feet of clay. This is so abundantly true of the noble Lord. We shall look forward to having his great mind and his ability put to our problems, and to hearing him again in the future.

My noble friend Lord Shepherd mainly dealt with the Pearson Report, and I think the House would wish me, what-ever the hour, to give the Government's reaction to the Jackson Report. As my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder said, it is a swashbuckling Report. Those of us who knew Commander Jackson (as he was) in the war will know that this Report is typical of the man. It is of course a long, complicated and exhaustive examination of the problems; but the importance of the subject is shown by the intensity of the reactions to it. My noble friend Lord Balogh, not in his speech this evening but in a magazine, said that the recommendations of this Report are bound to arouse the rage of the great feudal chieftains of the United Nations bureaucracy. Indeed, one of those whom the noble Lord will regard as a feudal chieftain las castigated the Report as recommending integration … through authoritarian diktats by economists and technocrats "— I hope that my noble friend Lord Balogh does not consider himself one of those.

May I remind the House what really is at issue here? In 1968 the United Nations system spent some 230 million dollars on technical assistance and pre-investment work. The system for disbursing these funds has grown up piece-meal over the years since the war. The Specialised Agencies, which are, of course, the channels which actually disburse the aid, were not originally conceived of in this kind of role at all with, of course, the exception of the World Health Organisation. Therefore it is scarcely surprising that there should have developed strains and shortcomings in such an enormous system. Nevertheless— and I should like to stress this—the Jackson Report clearly states its belief: that multilateral development co-operation through the United Nations system can be improved to work effectively on behalf of its developing member states. The very consider-able achievements of the U.N.D.P. and the Specialised Agencies (despite the structural obstacles which they inherited) prove this to be so. I think it is important to remember that Jackson himself states that, and the British Government believe that this contention is fully supported by the rest of the Report.

I rather liked the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Byers, particularly about the lack of contact, or rather communication, between the sophisticated and unsophisticated nations. I think this is largely at the back of all this extremely complicated machinery and the application of aid. But the paramount consideration of the Government is to make sure that every penny of the money provided through the development system should be used to the maximum advantage of the developing countries themselves. This means that the projects on which the money is spent must be realistically conceived, properly prepared and efficiently and economically executed and, most important of all, that the benefit to the country concerned is proportionate to the cost of the operation. There is plenty of evidence to show that in fact this has not always happened. We are all aware of this, but in some quarters it has been exaggerated, and it is important, in the light of the whole spirit of the debate in your Lordships' House to-night, that we ourselves should not exaggerate this. I should like to stress that Sir Robert himself found that the present system was 80 per cent. efficient, though of course it is clear that it must be improved.

My Lords, there is one slightly inhibiting factor in replying to this debate on this particular Report, which is that the discussions of the problem started in a special meeting of the Governing Council in New York this month. Her Majesty's Government will of course play their full part in these discussions with other Governments, both donor and reci-pient—and that is important—to make sure that recommendations based on the ideas in the Jackson Report are carried through to improve the capacity and the efficiency of the system.

May I say that my favourite bit of the Jackson Report is at the very end of the Acknowledgments, where he says: … my gratitude is expressed to a feline friend, Thomas, who arrived unannounced from the Jura, settled down happily amongst the papers, and did his best to prevent this Report from being written by firmly sitting on it. I can only hope that this is not a precedent. My Lords, we all know the fate of learned Reports, but the whole House will fervently echo that last sentence. This Report will not be sat upon.

I ought to refer, much more briefly than I had intended to, to the Government's approach to the United Nations Second Development Decade, because it is mentioned in the Motion. The House will be glad to know that preparations for the Second Decade will be very much more elaborate than those for the First Decade. The General Assembly of the United Nations has set up a special committee to deal with the preparatory part of it, and that committee is trying to agree—and this will not be wholly easy —on an appropriate average growth tar-get for developing countries in the Second Decade. It is also trying to deduce, with the help of the Specialised Agencies, objectives in the various spheres of social and economic policy. All members of the United Nations will be expected to participate in their implementation. Discus- sions are still proceeding and it is difficult exactly to forecast their outcome, because many Governments, as the House will appreciate, have very different views about how best to do it. The British Government sees the Decade as a means of mobilising and maintaining public support in developing and developed countries for the whole development effort. I should like to make it clear at this point how much the Government wel-come the effort made by the Churches to keep public opinion informed and enthusiastic about this. However, it is rather early to pre-judge the outcome of the discussions, so with that I hope I make clear what the Government's approach is.

As the House knows, there are an enormous number of individual replies which I ought to give. I cannot quite manage it. But I should like to turn especially to the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, having said how much the House appreciated his speech. We all know his special leanings towards India. My right honourable friend the Minister has just returned from India and she herself will I know feel great sympathy with his point of view. But I should like to remind him that in 1968 India's share of the total growth disbursements of £210 million was £40 million, which I know is a drop in the ocean compared with India's size, but it is quite a large amount when you consider the actual donors. Again, I am sure that the noble Lord's speech will do a great deal to create a climate of opinion which will make the Government's task of providing aid much easier.

I think we have to bear in mind, par-ticularly in reference to the noble Lord's speech, the sad and, in a sense, contradictory fact that very poor countries have very severe limitations in relation to their absorptive capacity. Of course, noble Lords will know that I mean that their ability is limited in such things as skilled manpower, as so many noble Lords have said, and that it is difficult therefore to make productive use of capital aid and investment. These are things which will take a great deal of time to build up; as the noble Lord said, a decade is nothing in such a programme. As always—and this is the difficult part—we shall be faced by the agonising problem of how much of our increased aid we should devote to those countries which might make the most economic use of it, and how much to those countries which might make less use of it but need it more desperately. It is a very real problem, and I doubt whether it will ever be resolved completely satisfactorily.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, moved his Motion, I should like to say to him how deeply grateful we are for what he said about the Churches and how much we welcome their active pronouncements on this problem. And I associate with him the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and of course the right reverend Prelate. They will not, I know, expect the Government to agree with all the details of the Sign-In document, but nevertheless the Government—and I say this especially on behalf of my right honourable friend the Minister—welcome it, because it represents clear support for our aim in assisting developing countries.

The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, raised the very sympathetic point about giving aid as grant, and not as loans. I would remind him that in fact nearly half of our gross official aid flows are in grant-like form; in other words, in technical assistance and contributions to multi-lateral organisations. We have provided interest-free aid loans to the needier developing countries since 1965. In fact, 90 per cent. of our aid is in aid loans which are interest-free and contain a grant element of over 70 per cent. He also raised the point about the Special Drawing Rights, and on that I will write to him, because it is a complicated matter and to explain it would take some time. I am afraid that I cannot agree with him in his remarks about the expenses incurred by immigrants settling in this country. I think it would be absolutely wrong to include the aid that these people receive through social services: it should not be included at all in our statistics of aid to the developing countries. It is not development assistance; nor is it intended to be.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness whether she includes in that same category remittances home from this country by immigrants? I should have thought that was in rather a different category. At the same time I should like to apologise to her for the fact that I have to leave in about five minutes to catch my last train.

BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord catches it. I will communicate with him if I may. I do not want to follow him about Christian charity being bad economics; I think I will leave him to my noble friend Lord Soper on that point. There have been quite a number of private fights this evening. The noble Lord, Lord Balogh, seemed to provoke fights with two or three noble Lords, including one of his main sup-porters, Lady Gaitskell. There have also been others, but I think we can leave them to resolve themselves.

May I refer to the notable speech of the noble Lord, Lord Snow, and that of Lord Todd, who explained to me that he had an engagement. I was glad that they and Lord Blackett said what they did about the green revolution. It is a marvellous thing, but we must not get it out of proportion. If your Lordships had been on the spot, as I have been, and seen what these new seeds can do, you would realise that it is wonderful to contemplate. But effort does not solve all the problems; they still need the necessary technical skills and man-power and so on. So that although we are slightly less pessimistic than we were about food, nevertheless we must not think that the problems are solved.

Education is a subject that concerns everybody, but particularly the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, to whom my noble friend Lord Shepherd replied, and also Lord Snow and Lord Todd. I should like to stress that the Government are particularly concerned with the reorientation of education from purely academic skills to the more technical and practical form of education. Indeed, it is true to say that skilled graduates simply cannot use their training and skill because of the lack of trained management, manpower— even simple labour and matters of that kind. The Government are fully alive to this problem.

One other noble Lord, I think, referred to the population problem. On that I should like to say one word extra on what my noble friend Lord Shepherd said. Apart from the problem of religious difficulties with this kind of situation, there is another point that has not been men-tioned—namely, actual suspicion on the part of developing countries of the real motives of people proposing remedies for very large populations. If outside agencies, and indeed the leaders of developing countries, recommend popula-tion control they can be suspected of trying for political reasons to keep down numbers. Noble Lords will be able to think for themselves of countries where this could easily be the case; and it is by no means rare. This is yet another problem that we have to consider in relation to the control of population. The Government will continue to play their part and, I hope, increase their share in helping on this matter. Noble Lords will be glad to know that the head of the Population Committee which has been set up by the United Nations will be in this country next week and will be talking to my right honourable friend the Minister. So we take these matters seriously.

The noble Lord, Lord Soper, rightly spoke, as I believe he always does, about the moral content of this programme. He went on to criticise the fragmentation of the aid, about which we largely agree with him. He asked, as did the noble Lord, Lord Walston, that more of if— indeed, I think all of it—should be through multilateral channels. This is not so easy as it looks, as noble Lords will know, because I suspect that the developing countries would not welcome arrangements which might be thought to deprive them of their bilateral arrangements. Equally, we have quite serious commitments, especially to the poorer Commonwealth countries, for bilateral aid, and we must fulfil our obligations there. Nevertheless, it is the Government's intention to increase the proportion of multilateral aid, and I hope the noble Lord will take it from me from there. I had a rather marvellous quotation from another hymn, but there is not time for it so I cannot cap his quotation.

Briefly, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn—and I think we can associate the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, with this—the question of industrial trainees is very serious indeed, and the problem is wider than that of developing countries. One of the troubles is that firms most welcome trainees when the training is associated with early advantage to them. That is only human, but it makes difficulties in selecting trainees. Government aid in these cir-cumstances is not always appropriate or, indeed, effective, but nevertheless it is a problem which my right honourable friend has very much in the forefront of her mind.

I could even again, in a private flight, suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, that he could discuss with the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, the fact that something like one in five of over-seas students are in the United Kingdom. We must, therefore, still be taking in a good many—even if not the ones mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside. The whole question of overseas students, which was also raised by my noble friend Lord Garner, is one of intense complication, and for me it is an extremely distressing problem. No-body knows quite how to solve it.

As for my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder—again leaving him to his private flights—it is the first time any of us have heard of his tape worm. I do not think any of us will ever forget his description of these complicated matters, because we can always think about his tape worm. His was a fascinating speech, as always, and one could spend half an hour replying to it.

If I may turn to my noble friend Lord Balogh, I must say I much enjoyed his speech. I thought it was extremely wise and witty, and I enjoyed it for one special reason, because praise from the noble Lord is praise indeed, and he did praise the Government's efforts and the general approach to over-seas aid. I could say a little more, but I think the main point is that he was right in reminding us that the machinery for the planning and allocation of aid needs to be looked at constantly. I am sure he will realise that the Government are deeply concerned not merely with the quantity of aid. but with the quality as well. I must admit to him that I do not wholly agree with him about the discipline of learning, but that is a personal view, I must add, and not necessarily a Government one. My noble friend Lady Gaitskell, as my noble friend Lord Balogh said, made a fascinating and correct and, as always, com-passionate speech, and I agreed with almost every word of it.

We all know and greatly appreciate how much the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale does for these developing countries, and I knew beforehand of his interest in the leprosy question. Of course, it is always a question of priorities. Many noble Lords may think that preventive medicine for children, for things like measles vaccinations, T.B. vaccinations, and so on, ought to have a higher priority. But although the noble Lord is quite correct in saying that the Governing Councils do have responsibility, and the Government through them, it has been decided that the receiving countries themselves should be able to ask for the kind of health programme that they want; and I believe that this is the right way to go about it. However, he may be comforted by the knowledge that the W.H.O. will provide 520,000 dollars on operational activities specifically related to leprosy in 1971. I should like to say a word in acknowledgment of the tremendous efforts that the voluntary societies have made in this regard.

Turning to the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, I am glad he did not talk about amortisation because, when we discuss this, he and I always seem to be discussing something different. So a word of thanks to him for that. I think that, in fact, we really had an un-usual degree of broad agreement. I cannot quite give the noble Earl the full assurances for which he asked about the Jackson Report, but as he will see we go almost all the way. I do not think anyone can say that the manpower will be adequate for its implementation, but Her Majesty's Government have every intention of implementing it so far as we possibly can. I could talk a bit about the brain drain, but, as with the Caribbean Bank, I hope he will let me off this, and that we can talk about it later.

What has really been encouraging about today is that all noble Lords have asked the Government to press on, and have expressed their support for what we are doing already—and this is the important point. It is especially nice for me, because the major parts of my life have been spent in developing countries or with some of their nationals here, and I know at first-hand exactly what these apparently dry statistics look like when you are on the receiving end. The amount of work which has been done has been a tremendous tribute to those giving aid, to those receiving it and, above all, to those devoted men and women from both sides who actually make it work. My right honourable friend the Minister will, I know, welcome very strongly the spirit of this whole debate. She welcomes the aid lobby, even if it sometimes "clobbers" her slightly, because she feels this lends support to our whole policy of giving as much aid as we possibly can. I know that many of your Lordships may feel that our country could and should be doing even more, but I hope that our debate today will show how much we are doing and how much more we hope to do.

10.18 p.m.

LORD FULTON

My Lords, I have already had so much more than my fair share of the time so generously given by the House to this Motion, that I have no intention of saying anything further now. However, I should like to express a very warm word of thanks to all those who have taken part in the debate and, if I may, a special word of thanks to the two Government spokesmen, who have been so forthcoming and so frank in speaking to us in reply to this debate. I cannot conceal my pleasure that the noble Lord, Lord Blackett, chose this occasion on which to make his maiden speech. He could with some justification have chosen to address your Lordships' House on a purely scientific subject. The fact that he chose this one gave us an opportunity to see a rare but very moving phenomenon; a scientific mind of the highest quality at work in the service of a merciful heart. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.