Lords Sitting of 24 November 1970

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

PERSONAL STATEMENT
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, in the economics debate on November 17, as recorded in the OFFICIAL REPORT, Volume 312 (No. 24), at col. 1077, I inadvertently misrepresented the proposals of Mr. St. Clare Grondona made some years back for effecting realistic stability of prices for imported durable basic commodities. I attributed to him the use of certain figures which in fact he had not used. What I inadvertently said was:
"… of Britain's import bill of around £2,000 million or so, something like half goes on raw materials, on commodities of a durable character."
What I had intended to say, attributing the figures to Mr. Grondona, was,
"Of an import bill of around £8,000 million more than £1,000 million goes to pay for basic
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products (namely, foodstuffs and industrial raw materials) that are unquestionably durable."
My Lords, I apologise to the House for this mistake.

HISTORIC TOWNS: CONSERVATION PROPOSALS
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend, as the last Government did, to introduce a new type of general conservation scheme for historic towns and cities, which would attract Exchequer grant at a rate of 50 per cent.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, discussions with the local authorities in the four cities of Chester, York, Bath and Chichester about pilot conservation projects are proceeding. Her Majesty's Government consider that until these particular studies have been carried further, decisions on a new grant specifically for general conservation schemes would be premature.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that that amounts to the tearing up of four years of work on

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the four towns studies by the four consultants and by the Preservation Policy Group, all of which came to the conclusion that such schemes could not be done without an Exchequer grant?
LORD SANDFORD: No, my Lords; I would not accept that. The four studies have been commissioned; several projects in connection with conservation are going on in pursuance of those studies and the work is proceeding quite satisfactorily at the moment. Furthermore, there was the Preservation Policy Group which the, noble Lord himself chaired and whose Report has yet to be published although it has been studied already in the Department. Several of the proposals are under active consideration and are being studied. When I say that this decision is premature, it does not mean to say that it may not be accepted in due course.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Preservation Policy Group Report was accepted by the last Government and that if anything is being studied about it now it is not its proposals but the question of whether or not the acceptance of those proposals by the last Government should be torn up?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, as I recall it, there are eleven separate proposals in that Report. They are all being studied and none is being torn up.
LORD REAY: My Lords, would Her Majesty's Government not agree that since at the moment the Government supply up to half the deficiency cost of redevelopment schemes in central areas, to do the same with conservation schemes would be moving in the direction of integrating a policy towards redevelopment schemes and conservation schemes and would also redress the present policy of a bias against cultural traditions?
LORD SANDFORD: No, My Lords, I do not agree that there is a bias against our cultural heritage or traditions in this matter. There is a whole range of different grants that can be brought to bear on conservation projects. Some of them, in the case of derelict land in development areas, are as high as 85 per cent. and many others are as high as 75
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per cent. All can be brought to bear in various ways on conservation projects.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, will the noble Lord enable me to get this point quite clear? Does he agree that the Preservation Policy Group Report said that there should be a 50 per cent. Exchequer grant for general conservation schemes, that the last Government accepted this proposal and said that they would build up public expenditure in this way to £3 million a year over three years, and that the first Answer he gave is to the effect that this will no longer be done?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the noble Lord has another Question for me later on this week when perhaps we could go further into this matter. When the Report of the Preservation Policy Group has been published (and at the present moment knowledge of its details is available to only a limited number of people) perhaps he will put down a Question and then we can debate that, too. But I do not admit that all the work of the Group has been in any sense torn up.

PRISON TUITION: REQUEST BY WALTER PROBYN
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is a fact that permission has been refused for Walter Probyn, a prisoner in Her Majesty's Prison at Gartree, Market Harborough, to receive tuition with a view to qualifying himself for an eventual degree in sociology, although the appropriate department of the University of Essex was willing to make the services of a lecturer available for this purpose.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD WINDLESHAM): No, my Lords. When this prisoner was at Chelms-for he asked for a prison class to be formed in sociology. As the demand from other prisoners was too limited to justify the cost of such a class he was offered tuition by means of a correspondence course. The prison authorities were aware that his legal advisers were in touch

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with the University of Essex. But no offer of tuition for the prisoner had reached the prison authorities from that quarter. Nor have firm proposals been put to them since. The education service at Gartree prison is helping the prisoner to choose a suitable correspondence course.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his Answer. Would he agree that for an extremely intelligent and articulate man a modicum of personal tuition, if it can be arranged, is much to be preferred to a correspondence course? If a sufficient number of prisoners wish to take this course in Gartree Prison, and a more accessible university than Essex can provide facilities for extra-mural teaching in sociology, will this have favourable consideration?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, the prison education system offers a wide range of classes in conventional subjects, and where there are sufficient numbers arrangements are made to form a class. That answers the second part of the supplementary question. Individual interests and preparation for degree courses are normally met by correspondence courses but supplemented at appropriate stages by face-to-face tuition. In this instance we believe that a correspondence course, aimed initially at G.C.E. O-level, supplemented by personal tuition where possible, is the correct approach.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the prison authorities would allow such a person to register as a student in the Open University?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, the Open University does not in all cases insist on G.C.E. qualifications and an arrangement has been entered into on an experimental basis to allow prisoners from two prisons to participate in the Open University courses when it starts in January of next year. Gartree is not one of those prisons.
BARONESS STOCKS: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord this question? Suppose the University of Leicester, which I gather is in very close proximity to the prison where Walter Probyn now is, expressed a willingness to allow a member of its staff to do some personal coaching, would the case be reconsidered?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, no formal application has yet been received from the University of Leicester or from elsewhere, but any offer of tuition which is made would be carefully considered.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, is it a fact that there is considerable unemployment among graduates in this particular subject? If that is so, could not this talented young man be encouraged to take up some sort of subject in which he is more likely to earn a living after he leaves prison?

BROADCASTING AND TELEVISION POLICY
2.45 p.m.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, especially in view of their decision relating to the Annan Committee of Inquiry, whether they will soon be making a policy statement about broadcasting and television.]
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, as my right honourable friend the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications announced on July 23, he is inviting his Television Advisory Committee to undertake a study designed to identify the main technical questions of relevance to broadcasting. This will provide the basis for a more informed public discussion of the issues. He will then consider whether an inquiry into the structure of broadcasting after 1976 is desirable and, if so, what form it should take. The Government hope to issue a White Paper early in the New Year setting out their proposals for commercial sound radio.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. May we remind him that time marches on; and may we ask whether he is aware that there is a good deal of uncertainty about this matter? In the meantime, can he reassure us, in reference to commercial local radio, that there will be complete equality in the allocation of wavelengths between the B.B.C. and local commercial radio?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, my right honourable friend is very well aware of the urgency of these matters. I am afraid that I cannot commit him on the rather wider point referred to in the second part of the noble Baroness's supplementary question.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that we are very grateful that the new Minister of Posts and Telecommunications is standing by the decision arrived at by the previous Postmaster General regarding the year 1976? Will he give serious consideration to whether commercial radio should in fact be brought into operation?—because the greater part of those people in the other place are against it.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, I think that there is a certain difference of opinion between the two sides on that point in both Houses.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, may I refer again to the noble Lord's prognostication for January and ask whether he is aware that there will be even more anxiety created by his reply? May I ask whether it is possible that the Government are running into difficulties over commercial local radio, because of needle-time and difficulties of that kind; and is he aware that we are very urgently awaiting his reply?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, does the noble Baroness mean a reply on the subject of local radio?
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: Yes, my Lords.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, I will certainly bring that point to the attention of my right honourable friend.

WINES AND SPIRITS DUTY
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stand in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in next year's Budget, they will consider reducing the duties on wines and spirits.]
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, such a possibility will of course be considered in the review of taxation before the Budget. I am afraid that my noble friend will have to wait and see what the Chancellor of the Exchequer then decides.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, I must declare an interest. May I ask the noble Lord whether he will warn the Chancellor that should he raise these duties, or even if he keeps them as they are, there is a real possibility that the law of diminishing returns will lead to the Revenue's getting less money?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, while I appreciate my noble friend's interest, which I reciprocate in a lesser degree, may I remind him that in the last Budget it was estimated that wine consumption—including British wine—in this country will increase by some 8 per cent. this year and spirits consumption by some 5½ per cent. My noble friend is no doubt aware that the wine drinker in Britain, and the drinker of British wine in this country, together with the spirits drinker in this country, is, on the whole, living up to those expectations.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, as the noble Lord is in such an amiable mood, will he make representations to his right honourable friend to reduce the tax on tobacco?
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that a new Member is naturally most anxious not to fill the Order Paper with Questions which the Government do not wish to answer and, therefore, that it would be of enormous help to the whole House if the Government could say which parts of next year's Budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer wishes to divulge and which parts he wishes to hold until the more traditional period?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am not certain that I can necessarily answer the first part of the noble Lord's supplementary question in the affirmative, but I can assure him that this part of my right honourable friend's intentions will not be divulged until Budget day.

BRITISH RAILWAYS BILL
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
WEST END BAPTIST CHURCH, HAMMERSMITH BILL
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
MINES MANAGEMENT BILL [H.L.]
Report of the Amendment received.
CONSUMER PROTECTION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

VISITING FORCES BILL [H.L.]
2.53 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is the first occasion on which I have sought to introduce legislation in your Lordships' House, and I do so with a considerable sense of trepidation, though I am comforted by the knowledge that the Bill before the House has two virtues. First of all, it is small. Its text covers barely a page, and it concerns only a handful of individuals. It concerns the liberty of the person, and as your Lordships, very properly, have often spent many hours discussing the liberty of individual human beings, I make no apology for that.
The second virtue of the Bill is that it is moderate. On occasions I have expressed views which place me in a minority in your Lordships' House, but I would not presume to introduce legislation before your Lordships if I were not convinced that this is a moderate and reasonable measure, which deserves to have the support of all sides of the House. And so I ask your Lordships, as I am sure your Lordships will, to consider the argument with care, even
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though the Bill seeks to give some measure of protection to deserters from Allied Forces and even though many of your Lordships may have views about deserters which may dispose you to oppose the Bill.
The purpose of the Bill can be very shortly stated. It seeks to amend a part of the Visiting Forces Act 1952. Under our present law as contained in that Act, a British police officer has the power to arrest any deserter or absentee without leave from any of the forces of a NATO, Allied or Colonial power. Once arrested, the deserter will be brought before a magistrate and, provided that the court is satisfied that he is a deserter, he will be handed over to the military authorities of his own country. Once handed over, he will normally be flown out to be tried according to the laws of his own country. It is, in effect, a special kind of extradition procedure which we offer.
Under this Bill that power to arrest will be limited to cover only deserters and absentees without leave from Allied or Commonwealth Forces if they have deserted from a base situated in the United Kingdom. Anyone who deserts elsewhere and then comes to Britain would be treated as though an immigrant. The Bill achieves this object I trust, but in a somewhat obscure way—and that is because Section 13 of the Visiting Forces Act applied the existing law relating to British deserters to deserters from Allied and Colonial Forces. My Bill deletes a section of the 1952 Act and substitutes a new section, applying the existing law only to deserters who desert while within the United Kingdom. That explains the reference in the Bill to a number of provisions of the Army Act 1955 which regulate the procedure for deserters from the Royal Forces.
That in brief is what the Bill seeks to do. It may be that the reaction of some noble Lords is to ask: Is it not normal for us to assist our Allies in this way? Would they not do the same service for us? The answer to both questions is, No. So far as I can discover, we are the only country, at least among the NATO Powers, which hands over, or in effect extradites, their deserters in this way. We offer to our Allies a facility which none of them offers to us.

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To explain how this comes about, it is necessary to go back to 1951, when the NATO Powers signed an agreement regarding the status of forces of parties to the North Atlantic Treaty (Cmnd. 8279). That agreement regulates the situation where the forces of one party (called the sending State) are stationed under the North Atlantic Treaty in the territory of another party (called the receiving State). It provides, very reasonably, that certain offences committed by visiting troops should be dealt with by the civil authorities of the receiving State and certain other military offences, including of course desertion and absenteeism without leave, should be dealt with by the military authorities of the sending State.
By Article VII 5 of the Agreement:
"The authorities of the receiving and sending States shall assist each other in the arrest of members of a force or civilian component or their dependents in the territory of the receiving State and in handing them over to the authority which is to exercise jurisdiction in accordance with the above provisions."
By Article 1 of the Treaty the word "force" is defined as follows:
"'force' means the personnel belonging to the land, sea or air armed services of one contracting party when in the territory of another contracting party in the North Atlantic Treaty area in connection with their official duties."
So the agreement quite clearly refers only to what one might call generally visiting forces. That Agreement was a thoroughly
reasonable and sensible provision, and I do not seek in this Bill to detract from it one iota. Our law, if this Bill were passed, would continue to give effect to that Agreement in full.
To give effect to that Agreement it was of course necessary for the British Parliament to pass a law; and that was done in 1952 by the
Visiting Forces Act. As the name suggests, the Act dealt mainly with visiting forces; that is, forces stationed in the United Kingdom. But with regard to deserters and absentees without leave, and with regard to them only, the Act went much wider than the NATO Agreement by authorising the arrest not just of deserters from visiting forces, but all deserters and absentees without leave from any of the forces of any Commonwealth or NATO country, wherever and for whatever reasons they had deserted.
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In the debates on the Visiting Forces Act little reference was made to this particular provision. In your Lordships' House, where the Act was introduced, Sections 13 and 14 were virtually ignored. In another place, the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, in introducing the Bill, explained the meaning of Sections 13 and 14 and added only this:
"These provisions are somewhat wider than is strictly required by the NATO Agreement, but they repeat the arangements which were made in the 1933 Act for the Commonwealth Forces and were extended during the war to Allied Forces. The House, I hope, will agree that such a provision is as much to our advantage as to that of the other Members of NATO."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 17/10/52; col. 568.]
It is true that in the days of Empire and in days of war, in very different circumstances, this kind of power of arrest was in force. But if the then Home Secretary, in the last words of that quotation, was expressing the hope that other countries would reciprocate by granting us similar arrangements, he was to be disappointed. I have made inquiries of the attaches of our NATO Allies and I have so far received replies from eight of them. They are all to the same effect. In the United States, Canada, Italy, West Germany, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxemburg the position is similar. In none of those countries does their law go further than the provisions of the NATO Agreement; in none of those countries is there any provision for the extradition of deserters; and all say that an Allied deserter who absconded within another country and then entered their country would be treated under the normal immigration procedures: that is to say, he might be refused admission; he might be deported; but there would be no power to arrest him and return him specifically to the authorities of his own country. From other sources I am informed that the law of France is the same. So it appears that, so far as our Allies are concerned, in passing this particular provision we are completely out on a limb.
Those are the circumstances in which the Visiting Forces Act, with this anomalous provision, was passed. In the succeeding years the power of arrest given by Section 13 was, I believe, very little used. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, when he replies to give

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the Government's view, will be able to give us some figures of the number of persons, and particularly the number of deserters from abroad, who were arrested under these provisions. But until recently it was perhaps unlikely that many Servicemen from other countries would desert, find their way here and be apprehended, even though the Act in theory applies to a vast number of countries as far removed as Greece and Zanzibar.
The new factor that has caused so many people to question the justice of this clause is the war in Vietnam. Let me say this at once. Whether your Lordships believe that the Americans are right to be fighting in Vietnam, or whether you believe them to be wrong, is not an issue in or relevant to this debate. What is relevant is that this war is one which, as your Lordships well know, has agonised the United States of America. It is a war which has caused tens of thousands of young men to choose exile rather than submit to the draft. It is a war which is bitterly and sincerely opposed by millions of American citizens. It is a war the opposition to which has penetrated inside the heart of the United States forces themselves.
The figures for desertion from the American forces, as distinct from absenteeism without leave, are startling. I quote from the 1969–70 Report of Amnesty International, where it is said:
"United States Defence Department figures on desertion from the American Army indicate that whereas in 1967 there were approximately 43,000 deserters, in 1968 there were over 55,000. In 1969, the figures are estimated to be well over 70,000. Figures on A.W.O.L. ('absent without leave') are roughly treble the numbers for desertion."
The relevance of that feeling in the United States and of those figures to this Bill to-day is that from those many thousands some few have wanted to settle and work or study in this country. For that laudable wish they have been not merely deported, not merely refused admission, but handed over to the very military forces whose policies they have resisted and which they deplore.
Your Lordships may think that these are misguided young men; you may think that their actions are wrong. But that is not the point. The point is that their actions were actions motivated by sincere conscientious belief, which your Lordships
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will, I believe, respect, whether or not you agree with them. I personally have been involved with two such cases. The first will
be remembered by my noble friend Lord Stonham and it concerned a young man called Jeremy Tupper. He has been drafted into the Services in the United States. He was not opposed to war, as such, but he was bitterly opposed, and said so, to the war in Vietnam. When his unit was due to be posted to Vietnam he applied for conscientious objection and that request was refused. As my noble friend Lord Brockway, who can speak with so much more authority on these matters, will bear out, selective conscientious objection is
not granted by the United States law. So this young man had no alternative but to desert. He came here with a young wife; he lived here openly for some six months; he entered this country legally, and he applied for a work permit. Suddenly, without warning, he was arrested, handed over and flown out to the United States, and there he stood his trial. I am not able to finish the story of Jeremy Tupper because I do not know what sentence he received, but I do know that the average sentence imposed upon deserters from the United States Forces is three years and two months, with hard labour, in a military stockade.
The second case occurred only two months ago. It concerned a young man called Richard Lee Haygood who had made Britain his home. He had married an English girl. She was expecting a baby. He had for many months worked, legally and with a work permit, for the North Thames Gas Board, and he had lived here in all for 15 months. Suddenly, in the space of about five days, the happiness of these two young people was shattered. Although he had committed no crime against our law, although he was not in breach of any conditions of entry and although under the normal law he had committed no offence for which he could be extradited from this country (for in none of our extradition provisions is desertion an extraditable offence), yet suddenly, in the middle of the night, he was arrested, handed over and is now awaiting his trial in custody in the United States. All this because, after long and careful and conscientious deliberation, he had decided that he would not return for a second spell as a marine in Vietnam.

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These two cases taken alone are enough to make us pause, to make us question whether our law is decent and proper, and would justify the Second Reading of this Bill. But they are not isolated cases. In an Answer given in another place on November 5, 1970, the Home Secretary said that ten United States deserters had been arrested
under the 1952 Act by the British police in the last three years. There may have been many more, for the Home Secretary continued—I quote from column 1250 of Hansard of November 5:
"… the United States Service police in the United Kingdom may, under the Act to which I have referred, arrest their own deserters."
I do not agree that there is power under the 1952 Act for American military police to arrest deserters in this way; and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, can tell the House whether that statement is correct. As it stands, it is most disturbing.
In the two cases to which I have referred, my noble friend Lord Stonham two years ago, and the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, two months ago, both stated that there was nothing that they could do. Neither the police it seems, nor the courts, nor the Government have any discretion in the matter whatsoever, even in the most deserving of cases. Therefore, I have presumed to take the only possible course to bring this practice to an end; that is, to seek to change the law which makes it possible. I believe that the Bill before your Lordships makes that change in a reasonable and logical way. If the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, can suggest a better way, such as, for example, by the insertion of a conscience clause or a discretionary clause into the 1952 Act, he will no doubt say so, and the matter can be considered carefully in Committee. I hope that I have said enough to persuade your Lordships that at the very least this Bill deserves a Second Reading and a fuller consideration from this House.
Before I close, let me make quite clear what the consequences would be if this Bill eventually became law. Some noble Lords may fear that if the law were changed the country would be invaded by hundreds of deserters making nuisances of themselves, living off the Welfare State
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and claiming sanctuary in this country. That would emphatically not be the case. As I have already said, they would be treated like any other alien. If they could qualify as a visitor, as a bona fide student, or as a worker with a work permit they would be welcome, as all such aliens are. If they had no means, if they had no legal job, they would no doubt be refused admission or deported, or asked to leave, as all such aliens are.
There are at present a number of young Americans—not very many; perhaps 100 or so—in Britain to-day who are draft resisters. They are not subject to being suddenly arrested; they earn an honest living; they create no problems, and should they do so they can be sent away. Our immigration laws, coupled with our extradition laws, render the wide power of arrest which I am seeking to limit totally unnecessary, just as it has been considered to be totally unnecessary by every other country of which I have particulars.
I have tried to explain the meaning of this Bill. I have endeavoured to show that our present law is unnecessary; that it is unique among the laws of all our allies; that it is not forced upon
us by any treaty, and that in individual cases it causes severe hardship. But there is, I believe, a wider principle at issue. It is a principle which was aptly summed up by the Canadian Minister of Manpower and Immigration, Mr. Allan MacEachon. Speaking for the Canadian Government's policy on this very issue on May 22, 1969, he said:
"The question of an individual's membership in the Armed Services of his own country is a matter to be settled between the individual and his Government and is not a matter in which we should become involved."
The United Kingdom, like Canada, is a country which is widely, and rightly, respected among the countries of the world for the decency and the tolerance and the liberty of our way of life. It is not in our national character to ban these young men from our shores, and to persecute them should they dare to arrive, for the sake of a law passed, almost inadvertently, eighteen years ago. It is not worthy of this country and its traditions to continue to persecute young men in this way. The honourable and decent thing is to admit that in passing

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this provision of the 1952 Act we made a mistake, and to take the necessary steps to rectify it.
I have received a great number of letters of support for this initiative; but there is one which encapsulates in better words than I can find the message of this Bill. It comes from a Brigadier and his wife, living in retirement in an old vicarage in a Suffolk village. They say this:
"We hope that the House of Lords will show a civilised compassion and humanity to the conscientious deserters from this brutal war in Vietnam, or any other war. We may then not be so deeply ashamed of our recent treatment of them."
It is in this spirit that I commend this Bill to your Lordships. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Gifford.)
3.20 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, first on a very reasonable and closely drawn Bill, and secondly on a most admirable speech, which your Lordships will be reassured to hear will cut down my oration by several minutes. I agree with the noble Lord that the Bill is not about the Vietnamese war at all, however passionately we may feel about it on either side; it is not about the rights and wrongs of conscientious objection and various conscientious-objection laws; it is not about individuals—and I shall not produce any individual cases, although I wish that circumstances were such that we could raise instances that have happened from other countries. The noble Lord mentioned Greece and Zanzibar. Those countries are both covered by this legislation and these provisions. I think your Lordships would find yourselves in a difficult spot if you had to defend the application of the law as it stands at the moment to deserters from Zanzibar. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it is not likely to happen, but I think your Lordships should have it in mind that that is the state of the law at present.
Indeed, it is possible to feel extremely strongly that the Americans are right to be in South-East Asia, and to have a tough view about conscientious objection, and still to support this Bill. I believe that my father, whom a number of noble Lords will have known in another place
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as a rather Right-wing Conservative Member of Parliament, would have taken exactly this attitude to this particular situation. As the noble Lord said, it is not as if we are offering all these people free entry. There are any number of safeguards. Our immigration laws are not wide open; nor are we without powers for dealing with people once they are in this country if they are a
nuisance. Our obligations to our allies will be completely fulfilled, as the rest of our NATO allies fulfil them, when we pass, if we pass, this Bill.
What the Bill is about, and what I hope this debate will be about, is whether we should extend unnecessarily provisions which debar us from giving asylum to people when we want to; whether we should limit our sovereignty unnecessarily—totally unnecessarily—on the whole question of political asylum which has been for so long a great tradition in this country. The reasons for the present laws, as the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, said, are mysterious. I believe that this Bill should be passed. I shall listen with great interest, as always, to what noble Lords have to say, and particularly to what the noble Lord who speaks for the Government will have to say on this matter. After he has spoken, I am glad to say that the noble Lord, Lord Reay, will be speaking from these Benches and can possibly comment on the Government's point of view. But, my Lords, at the moment I feel that this Bill certainly should be passed, and I would urge noble Lords to pass it.
3.24 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, explained the purpose of this Bill with clarity in his speech; and in a speech of quite remarkable brevity from the Liberal Benches we have heard that the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of 'Whitley, agrees with what he has said. It might therefore be helpful to noble Lords who intend to take part in the debate if I were to say with equal clarity early on in the debate that the Government are not able to support this proposal to amend the law relating to deserters from the United States or other visiting forces in this country. We believe that a change on the lines proposed would do more harm than good, and if at the end of the debate the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, decides to put the

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matter to a Vote, I must recommend your Lordships to vote against the Bill's being given a Second Reading.
I shall try to avoid making a long speech, but I want to comment on some of the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, in moving the Second Reading of his Bill. In doing so I shall arrange my remarks under two heads: first, the detailed arguments for and against the Bill, including a summary of current practice in this country and overseas; and secondly, the wider context in which this Bill must be seen. The present practice is that under the provisions of the Visiting Forces Act 1952 a visiting force may itself arrest deserters from units stationed in the United Kingdom, since by virtue of Section 2 of the Act it exercises jurisdiction over members of its own forces here. A serviceman who has deserted from a base in this country, or goes absent without leave, is therefore liable to be arrested by the appropriate branch of his Service. If he gives himself up to our own police he may be handed back to the military authorities without any court proceedings. These powers would not be affected by the Bill.
In addition, however, the 1952 Act provides, as the noble Lord has explained, that on request by the Service authorities the police may arrest a person who is suspected of being a deserter and take him before a magistrates' court. If the court is satisfied as to his identity, and that there is sufficient evidence to justify his being tried for desertion or absence without leave, it will hand him over to the Service authorities. For this purpose it is immaterial whether the desertion occurred within or outside the United Kingdom. The 1952 Act is wide enough to allow deserters or persons absent without leave to be returned to any designated authority in this country, such as a military attaché, even though the country concerned may have no visiting force here.
My right honourable friend the Home Secretary was questioned in another place on November 5 about the current practice as regards deserters from the United States Armed Forces. It was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, in his speech (and he was good enough to give me advance notice that he intended to raise this point) that a misunderstanding
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might have arisen about the powers of the American authorities in this respect. Let me therefore underline once again the distinction I have just made between the powers relating to those who have deserted from a unit in this country and those who have deserted from a unit based outside this country. The power of a visiting force to arrest a deserter itself is limited to persons who desert from units stationed in this country. No inference that the United States authorities go further than this should be drawn from my right honourable friend's remarks. I hope that this statement will amplify the previous replies. The noble Lord can be content that there is no question of a general rounding-up by the American authorities of deserters irrespective of what the Act permits.
However, the Bill in front of us does not deal with the position of deserters from bases within the United Kingdom. What we are considering to-day is the situation concerning persons deserting elsewhere. Much has been made of the argument that in its application to deserters and people who go absent without leave the Visiting Forces Act goes further than is necessary to meet our obligations under the Agreement regarding the Status of Forces of Parties to the North Atlantic Treaty—which, as an historical footnote, I see was signed by the noble Lord, Lord Inchyra, on behalf of the Government, in 1952. When the Bill was introduced it was made clear by the Home Secretary of the day that it was intended to go further than the provisions of the NATO Agreement.
For reasons which I shall explain the noble Lord is in eror in saying that this was inadvertent. What he and other noble Lords must remember is that the Visiting Forces Act is not only confined to the forces of NATO countries: it applies also to the forces of Commonwealth countries, and arrangements of the kind provided in the present Act date back to the Visiting Forces (British Commonwealth) Act 1933. It is just as much in our present interests as it was in 1952 to retain the well-established procedure for the apprehension and return of deserters wherever they desert from, and we see no reason to disturb the situation now. Nor is it only a question of restricting the procedure to those who desert here. One consequence of this Bill would be to remove any

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power to apprehend a deserter who had remained in this country after his unit (which might have come here for a training exercise) had departed. This kind of problem has arisen in relation to our own deserters in at least one NATO country.
My Lords, it has been pointed out—and this is a central part of the noble Lord's argument—that our NATO partners have not assumed obligations beyond those imposed by the Agreement. This is true, but it does not follow that we should not go further. It was never intended that our legislation should rest on the basis of reciprocal arrangements with other NATO countries, since there were already in existence these wider powers which had applied since 1933 to members of Commonwealth forces. The noble Lord who has brought forward this Bill has been assiduous in pursuing his researches about the practice of other countries, but I can supplement the picture he has given.
In six Commonwealth countries there is legislation similar to the Visiting Forces Act 1952, and thus their authorities have power to arrest and hand over deserters not only from visiting forces stationed in their country but also from forces stationed elsewhere in the world. The New Zealand legislation was extended as recently as 1969 to facilitate the apprehension and return of deserters known to be in New Zealand. The NATO Powers, on the other hand, including Canada, have in most instances limited themselves to legislation on the lines required by the Status of Forces of Parties to the North Atlantic Treaty. They therefore have no statutory powers under visiting forces legislation to arrest and hand over deserters other than those members of those forces stationed in their own country. There are, however, some important qualifications.
The Federal Republic of Germany, for example, has a bilateral agreement with the United States under which deserters from United States forces anywhere in Europe, if discovered in Germany, can be returned to United States jurisdiction. The United States places considerable emphasis on visa requirements for entry and powers under the Immigration and Naturalisation Act. I am also informed that, on the rare occasions when a deserter from NATO forces outside the
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United States has been apprehended within the United States and proceedings have been taken under the immigration laws, the Federal authorities have, on the request of the Government concerned, approached the prosecutor with a view to securing his agreement to the surrender of the individual to his own national authorities. Whether or not the prosecutor decides to comply with this request is entirely a matter for his discretion. This is regarded as the normal practice.
I hope that those of your Lordships who are going to speak in this debate and are in support of the Bill will be quite honest and will come out into the open. There is much more at stake here than just an amendment to the Visiting Forces Act. I wonder how many of your Lordships, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, who has exchanged views on this subject with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, on a number of occasions in the past have any deep knowledge of the Visiting Forces Act. What is really at issue here, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, would accept, is whether those who desert from the American Armed Forces because they object to the war in Vietnam should be enabled to eater this country and freely remain here. Estimates of more than 80,000 persons a year have been given as the total numbers of American Servicemen who have deserted. Although this figure is considerably inflated by the fact that anyone who goes absent without leave for 30 days is classified as a deserter, it is still a substantial total. Very few have come to Britain, and we do not want to do anything to encourage a greater flow.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
LORD WINDLESHAM: Since January, 1968, police records indicate that there have been only 10 cases (8 from units outside this country, and 2 from units based here) in which deserters from the United States Armed Forces have been arrested by our own police and, after the appropriate proceedings in a magistrate's court, handed over to the Service authorities. Occasionally there is a case which attracts public comment and sympathy. One recent instance mentioned by the noble Lord was the young American marine, Richard Lee Haywood, who had married an English girl.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, I should like to say something. I think he has made a valid case, but may I ask him this question? In view of the fact that the German authorities have the bilateral agreement with the United States, but only as regards deserters from within Europe, can he give any indication as to the flow of American deserters into Germany? If one had those figures one could weigh them against the point which the noble Lord made: whether, if we met the case put forward by my noble friend Lord Gifford, it would cause a flow of deserters into this country.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I do not have that information available, but—
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, could the noble Lord seek to find out?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I can seek to find out that information, and if it is possible to get an answer before the end of the debate I will give it to the noble Lord.
My Lords, I was about to move on to describe the establishment and the activities of an organisation called "The Union of American Exiles in Britain". This now exists as a pressure group to try to change our laws to enable deserters and draft resisters to be granted political asylum in this country on the grounds of their opposition to the Vietnam war. I will quote the actual words used by the organisation itself to describe its current British campaign:
"There has been no fair play whatsoever shown by the British Government to American citizens who have been made refugees because of their refusal to become complicit with their Government in the continuing crime which has been and is the American devastation of Vietnam. Every British subject can help restore a sense of fair play and of justice, and of adherence to codes of international law and order (not to mention the U.N. Charter) by aiding the British campaign in calling attention to the complicity and silence of the British Government in response to the question of American refugees."
Incidentally, my Lords, this is not the first time that attempts have been made to relax our practice concerning deserters from the United States armed forces, and I shall listen with great interest to what any noble Lord speaking from the Front Bench opposite has to say. When in Government the Labour Party were quite
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explicit in their opposition to any attempt to relax the law concerning American deserters. Perhaps I may refer your Lordships to a Written Answer in another place on July 4, 1968 [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, col. 255]:
"MR. FRANK ALLAUN asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will introduce legislation to amend the Visiting Forces Act to prevent the United States servicemen who have deserted because of conscientious objection to the war in Vietnam from being handed over to the United States military forces.
MR. ELYSTAN MORGAN: No."
My Lords, I do not base my case, in asking your Lordships to reject this Bill, simply on a distaste for the opinion of extremist organisations which aim to bring pressure on Parliament, whatever language they employ. Nor do I propose to be drawn into a discussion on whether the United States is right or wrong in its interpretation of what does or does not amount to justifiable conscientious objection to military service. That, my Lords, is surely a matter for them. Whether or not the United States Government decides on compulsory military service, and the means by which young men are selected for that service, is no business of ours. We would resent it if the United States Congress expressed opinions on our domestic legislation and Americans would be entitled to resent our trying to tell them who should or should not serve in their armed forces.
What is within our control is the grounds on which we grant political asylum, and here there are some well recognised guidelines. I can do no better than quote my predecessor at the Home Office, the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. On March 5, 1968, the noble Lord told the House (OFFICIAL REPORT, col. 1334):
"In considering applications, our practice is to grant asylum if it is reasonable to suppose that the result of refusing admission to a foreign national will be his return to a country in which, on grounds of politics, race or religion, he will face danger to life or liberty, or persecution of such a kind and extent as to render life insupportable. … The fear of persecution must be well founded, and the persecution which is feared must amount to more than a penalty imposed for a breach of the law. In other words, it has to be shown that the penalty imposed on an individual by the legal processes of his country, and which may be awaiting him if he is forced to return, amounts to persecution and not just to punishment. It follows that where, in a democracy, a man seeks to evade the military service to

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which he and his fellow-countrymen are liable, and is thereby vulnerable to criminal proceedings, such a situation cannot be regarded, in itself, as satisfying the criterion for political asylum. A foreign national with conscientious objection to military service should make his case for exemption to the authorities of his own country."
In conclusion, we see it as a sensible part of our relationship with out NATO allies, and with the countries of the Commonwealth, that we should be ready to assist them in the recovery of persons who have deserted from their armed forces. The obligation of a member of a country's armed forces—and it does not matter which—must for obvious reasons be strict, and it is unrealistic to believe that the law can recognise some sort of "justified desertion" which excuses the deserter from the normal consequences of his act. It would be inconsistent for the Government to appear to condone conduct which we should regard as inexcusable in members of our own Armed Forces. Nor do we believe that it would be in our interests, either at home or abroad, to encourage disaffected members of the forces of friendly countries to look for refuge in this country.
Neither the war in Vietnam, nor the activities of the Union of
American Exiles in Britain, nor the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, are grounds for altering our practice. We have a law
which has worked perfectly satisfactorily in practice for 18 years and, like our predecessors, the Government see no reason to change it now. Accordingly, my Lords, I must advise the House to oppose a Second Reading.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, the noble Lord mentioned that there was one instance where the British Government had had difficulty in the case of a deserter—I think he said in another country. I take it that he is not basing his case on the need for any reciprocity; he is just saying that this law suits us. Could he tell us the name of the country in question and the outcome of that particular instance? I do not know whether it is material, but since he mentioned it perhaps we should know.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I am very willing to give the noble Lord the information for which he asks. I may not have been explaining my argument as clearly as I should have been,
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because it is a subsidiary point and not in the main line of the argument. The point I was making was that under the Bill there would be no power to apprehend a deserter who had remained in this country once his unit had departed. It is a half-way house; it is not exactly a unit based in this country, nor is it exactly a unit based overseas. It is one that has come here for training; the chap deserts; the unit goes and he stays. It is a very complicated situation. The country where there have been problems of this sort is Canada.
3.47 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I feel impelled to begin by expressing my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, for introducing this Bill. I am quite sure that I am speaking on behalf of Members of the House on all sides in paying a tribute to the ability with which he introduced it. That has been recognised by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, and also by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, in his tribute to its clarity. May I say this? I find one argument in favour of hereditary Peers in this Chamber is the ability of their young sons to put a case to the House. May I also just say to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that I regret that I am replying to him. I should much have preferred to speak before him, because in all my personal contact on many issues I have found how reasonable and responsive he has been. I hope that, despite the speech which he has just delivered, he will listen to the arguments which will be put forward in this debate and be prepared, in that broadminded way which I know he holds, to consider the case that we are seeking to put forward.
I appreciate that this issue goes beyond the war in Vietnam, but I want to respond to the appeal of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and be quite frank about this matter. It is the war in Vietnam which has made this issue of immediate importance. As he indicated in a rather strange phrase, my attitude on this issue does not date only from the Vietnam war, but in facing this issue one must recognise the climate in the world about the Vietnam war. One must recognise that world opinion generally is probably more critical of this war than of any war since the Boer War at the beginning of this century. It is in that

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atmosphere and climate that we must look at this particular issue this afternoon. I do not know whether there has ever been a situation in which a Government engaged in war has aroused so much opposition within its country, as there is in the United States of America to-day over the war in Vietnam.
The figure which the noble Lord gave, of 80,000 men who in one year are refusing, either by tearing up their draft cards or by deserting, to fight in the Vietnam war is absolutely amazing—
LORD WINDLESHAM: No, my Lords; I qualified that figure. First, it is not my estimate; I merely quoted the estimate that has been made. And I qualified it by saying that the figure is inflated because it includes numbers of people who go absent without leave for a period of just over 30 days. They may have deserted not on grounds of opposition to the Vietnam war, but for some other cause.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, but does it not exclude the men who have deserted but have not yet deserted for 30 days? Would not the numbers of such cases balance the others, and about make up the number?
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I am not going to argue about that because I have never used such a large figure as the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, used today. It is absolutely unique in history that when a Government is engaged in war there should be such opposition from within its country to the war, and so much refusal to serve. I am not arguing that this should be the determining reason for our vote to-day; I am saying that in the climate of world opinion, opinion in this country and opinion in America itself, we have at least to consider whether or not this Bill should be supported.
I want to address this argument to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. It is the general principle that a country does not deport and extradite from its territority anyone who has committed an offence
which is not an offence in that country. Under British law, many of those who are now extradited, or are in danger of being extradited, would not have committed an offence. It is doubtful
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whether they would have been deserters at all. We have a law which is more tolerant to those who feel it wrong to engage in war than the laws of any other country in the world; and to that I pay my tribute. Our laws regarding conscientious objection are extraordinarily broad in their interpretation; they not only apply to a man or woman who is a religious objector, or an absolute pacifist; they apply also to men and women who believe that a particular war is wrong. I have knowledge of this issue because I took a test case to the appeal tribunal, and the tribunal agreed that if any man or woman felt it within themselves to be wrong to fight in a particular war they should be accepted as conscientious objectors.
That law applied not only under conscription; it applies to-day. Any man in the British forces who adopts the attitude of conscientious objection has the right to go to a tribunal and appeal on that ground. Therefore, if this position had arisen in this country, and we were at war—not only when we are at war: it applies in peace time—a man in the forces would have the right, under the broad law in this country, to make an appeal of conscientious objection on political grounds. Therefore I am right in saying that by the practice of extradition we are now denying the basic principle of our law to these men opposed to fighting in Vietnam. In this country they would have the right to appeal to a tribunal and receive its judgment.
The noble Lord has referred to the law in America upon this aspect. He is probably aware that in America the right of conscientious objection to war is limited to those who have religious objections. In some States it is limited only to those who belong to a religious organisation which has that principle, and even only to those who are descendants of families which have that principle. Therefore in this Bill we are extraditing people to America who would not be breaking a law in this country. I urge the noble Lord to look upon that deep-rooted principle and consider whether we are not repudiating it when we, under this Bill, are sending back to America those who would not necessarily be guilty of any offence if they were in this country.
I want to go further than that. There are many precedents in this country when

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extradition laws have applied and when the people concerned have been regarded as political refugees. I can illustrate a case from my own experience of a boy in Spain who refused to fight in the Spanish Navy. He came to this country illegally and, after a debate in another place, was not returned to Spain, where he would have come under prosecution and suffered severe imprisonment for his offence. That is not only a ruling in this country. I take a recent example: Turkey has now refused to extradite hijackers from Soviet Russia on the grounds that it is a political offence. I want to urge upon the Minister that we have to accept the principle that these men are, in spirit and essence, political refugees when they refuse to take part in a war which they regard as wrong, even if only from a political point of view—
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend will allow me to ask him a question for the purpose of clearing my mind, and maybe the minds of others as well. He mentioned the case of the person who was to have been extradited to Spain. I remember the case particularly and, as my noble friend may recall, I spoke on it. But is the noble Lord now saying that there is no difference between the situation in Spain and in the United States; that in the United States they have no more politcal liberty or powers than in Spain? Is he saying that the case is on all fours?
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I would never think of that. I have been to the United States of America and have been tremendously impressed by the tolerance and freedom with which one can express views there. I have been there and denounced the Vietnam war, and been allowed to do so. That would not be permitted in Spain, which has a neo-Fascist régime. All I am saying is that if these men are extradited to the United States of America, at the very minimum they are liable to imprisonment for five years, and they may be liable to imprisonment for 20 years. Therefore the consequence of their extradition is probably as severe as it might have been in Spain if the man had been extradited there.
I have listened with great interest, because my knowledge has been
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increased, to the examination by the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, of the position of other NATO nations upon this issue. So far as I can understand, we are the only country in NATO which goes beyond the NATO Agreement. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, mentioned the Federation of Western Germany. If I was hearing him aright—I may not have been, because I was interrupted—he was saying that Western Germany has an arrangement with the United States of America whereby deserters from other European countries who go into Western Germany may be extradited.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, deserters from the United States forces anywhere in Europe.
LORD BROCKWAY: Anywhere in Europe, which is exactly the point I was making. They must go to Western Germany from another European country before extradition. If they go directly from the United States of America into Western Germany they are not liable to extradition in the same way that they are here. Therefore that instance which the noble Lord gave as supporting the attitudes in this country hardly bears examination.
LORD WINDLESHAM: No, my Lords, I think it is very relevant, because it is an instance of where the practice of a NATO country goes further than is required by the NATO Agreement. Western Germany also has provisions similar to the other NATO countries, but beyond that it has entered into a bilateral arrangement with the United States.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I accept that; but to say that because one other country has some departure is justification for this country going very much further is not an argument that I can accept. I was going to point out that there are two other NATO countries which signed the NATO Agreement and which took a very different line from ours. There is Canada—Canada very near to the United States of America; Canada very much under the influence of the United States of America. In May, 1969, the Canadian Government decided to give de facto immigrant status, with the right to work, to deserters and draft resisters, except those who were in American bases; and that is the argument

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in the Bill which is now before this House. The other case is that of France, which has given de facto asylum both to draft resisters and to deserters entering that country from the United States of America. They must report to police stations, and when they have done that they are given the right not only to stay but to obtain work in France.
I speak deeply on this issue because, though it may not be understood, I have enormous appreciation of the tradition of liberty which is allowed in this country. I have deep appreciation of the law in this country which respects those who believe that war is wrong and that a particular war is wrong. That, with our tradition of tolerance, we should now be extraditing these men back to America for an offence which would not necessarily be an offence in our country, and which, from my contact with many of them, is to them a deep moral issue—believing the Vietnam war is wrong, believing it would be wrong for them to engage in it, believing that they would be destroying the very soul of their own personalities if they continued to fight—that is a thing of shame to me. I hope that the majority in this House will support the Bill which the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, has put forward.
4.5 p.m.
LORD NAPIER AND ETTRICK: My Lords, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, with great interest, I shall be very brief. While I do not for one moment doubt the sincerity of the views which motivate the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, in moving the Second Reading of his Bill—if I may say so, he did it superbly—I am bound to say that I take a completely opposite view to him, and I consider the purpose of the Bill to be indefensible.
What are we being asked to do? Put simply, we are being asked to amend the present law and henceforth permit young men from the United States, and indeed from other allied and Commonwealth countries, who have deserted from the service of their own forces on so-called "grounds of conscience", to remain at liberty in the United Kingdom as deserters. In my view, and I speak now as a former soldier, apart perhaps from cowardice in the face of the enemy there is no more despicable crime that a serviceman
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can commit than to desert. Let us be under no illusions as to what this means; it means deserting his country and his comrades. You cannot class deserters as being similar to political refugees. In my view, they are not one and the same thing. What the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, is really seeking to do is to get Her Majesty's Government to grant political asylum in the United Kingdom to all those who wish to come here, having deserted from the United States forces because they perhaps object to the Vietnam war. As my noble friend Lord Windlesham has already pointed out—
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves his general comments about deserters, may I ask him whether he would apply the term "a despicable crime" to, for instance, a young Russian soldier who deserted from the invading forces in Czechoslovakia, because I would not.
LORD NAPIER AND ETTRICK: Yes, my Lords, I would. As I was saying, my noble friend Lord Windlesham has pointed out that successive Home Secretaries of both political Parties have consistently maintained the view that conscientious objection to military service is not, in itself, a ground for political asylum. My Lords, is it really for us to interfere on whether or not the United States Government should require its own nationals to serve, on a selected basis, in its own armed forces? I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, is not suggesting that the United States Government is not democratically elected. I believe any such interference on our part would be greatly resented. I put it to your Lordships that some noble Lords opposite might perhaps be a little busy in poking their noses into the affairs of other sovereign States. I suggest it is an impertinence.
As the law stands at present, as your Lordships know, it is obligatory that, once arrested, a deserter shall be handed over to the military authorities of his own country. It is automatic. I hope it will remain so. I know of no case where the Act has not worked satisfactorily over the past 18 years, and I can see no justification whatsoever for altering the present situation. I shall oppose the Bill that is before us, and I hope those other noble Lords who, like me, do not

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wish to see our country become a haven for deserters and drop-outs—and it could do so—will do the same.
4.10 p.m.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, I listened fascinated to the noble Lord, Lord Napier and Ettrick. He spoke as a soldier, he spoke as a patriot, and I think the key to his entire philosophy of life was shown when he replied to my noble friend Lord Gifford that he would consider a Russian soldier who deserted at the time of the invasion of Czechoslovakia unworthy of pclitical asylum. I understand that point of view, and the point of view of those who deeply believe, "My country, right or wrong", or "My Party, right or wrong".
I came to the House this afternoon pleased that on these Benches we had a free vote; but I was dismayed to be told that the Government Whips will be on on the other side. The noble Lord opposite indicates that I am wrong. It is only a recommendation. Good! I think one has here the basic distinction between two different philosophies which are not allowed to exist side by side in authoritarian countries whether of the Right or of the Left. It is something which makes us love our country.
It has been a great tradition in this country that when a man or woman had real conscientious objection, we should not confine that objection to a narrow religious base, and if that objection was held on broad terms it would be respected by one's fellows. We are dealing with a profoundly important issue this afternoon. I do not believe it matters whether those involved can be numbered in tens or in hundreds. I believe that the numbers are very small, but that is not the essence of the matter. The essence of it is that we live in a country where, again and again, men have suffered agonies because of a point of view which, at a particular moment, might not be that of their country or of their Party.
When I heard my noble friend Lord Brockway speak, I remembered what it meant as a child of a little over nine years of age to have a father who was opposing his trade union movement; opposing the Labour Party and opposing his Labour Member of Parliament. That was before the 1914–18 war. There can be agonies for those who are out of line. The
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soldier in the front line has to face dangers and take all the risks, but I hope noble Lords will accept from me that there can be real agony not only for the men who stand apart, but also for their wives, their children and their parents. There can be punishments which go far beyond the period of gaol which may have to be served, and people's work may be undermined.
If we look back at the history of our country, can we really say that men and women who have been personally known to many of us in your Lordships' House were cowards and second-rate citizens? I remember that the loneliness of my father's position was changed during the First World War when "Peace by negotiation" came into my home. There was Ponsonby, E. D. Morrell, Charles Trevelyan, Wedgwood Benn and Lord Brockway. Where is Lord Archibald, who ought to be here? There was a whole array of them. They had to face their punishments and their dangers. I remember a meeting about "Peace by negotiation", which Lord Kirkwood held in our area. When the crowd got rough he said, "If there is a better man here, let him come and take my place from me", In other words, he was not my noble friend Lord Soper; he was not a pacifist. But again and again we have added to the status of our country, and to the respect which it has in the world, because we have not been afraid of disagreement. That is the issue which we are considering to-day.
Many of us cannot take the view of, "My country, right or wrong". That does not mean that we disagree on small issues. I have never been able to take the view, "My Party, right or wrong". I was out of it for 13 years, and one does not do that lightly or frivolously. It means breaking with one's closest friends, with one's background and all the rest. But if we have a law in this country which respects the conscientious objector with political or social objections as well as with religious objections, is it right that we should send back to America these young Americans who are going back not to a neo-Fascist Spain, as my noble friend Lord Brockway pointed out, but to a country which does not make provision for a person whose objections are basically social and political?

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I think it is right and wise that we should not dwell too much in this debate on whether or not we think America is justified in its Vietnam policy; I think that that would obscure the issue. But there is a considerable minority opinion in America which believes that America has entered a war which cannot be supported, so it is inevitable that there should be young Americans in this country with that point of view. What are we going to do? Are we going to give them the traditional British right of asylum? Are we going to allow them to remain in a country where there is this right of political and social objection? Or do we really think that it is in the British tradition, that it is worthy of our past and worthy of what we hope our future will be, that we should take such a narrow legalistic view? We shall not be robbing America of one single soldier, because although a brave man fights for what he believes in he cannot be made to fight when he does not believe in something.
Having listened to the compassionate and very moderate case which my noble friend Lord Gifford put, and which has since been supported, I hope that we shall not regard this as a Party issue when we come to vote. This is a great humanist issue and it is a reflection of our total values. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend Lord Gifford will have your Lordships' support.
4.18 p.m.
LORD TWEEDSMUIR: My Lords, I rise to make what will surely be the shortest speech in the debate, which has so far been remarkable for the fact that everybody who has spoken has held the strongest possible convictions, but has expressed them with the greatest possible moderation. I think we received an extremely good lead in that respect from the noble Lord, Lord Gifford.
I wish to make only three points. I came with a speech absolutely peppered with constitutional and legal points, every one of which has been swept up with great ability by my noble friend Lord Windlesham. I am not going to follow the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, into that strange shadowy country which Marshal Saxe, that great European soldier, once described when he said that the science of war was full of shadows
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as to what constituted a respectable war and what constituted the reverse.
In very sincerely praising the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, for its clarity and moderation, I could not escape the feeling that an undertone was there when he spoke of the draft-dodgers, as we call them, and the deserters. He admired them for their act of conscience. When they were called up they either fled the country in the first place, or took the Oath and enlisted and then fled the country afterwards. I think that when he reads his speech in Hansard he will feel it is not unreasonable that many of us are driven to the belief that he sees these men as possessing a much higher quotient of conscience and honour than those who are actually risking their lives in the field of battle. He may or may not have intended that, but when he reads his speech in Hansard I think he will find that that impression is there.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: No!
LORD TWEEDSMUIR: Perhaps when he reads his own speech he will think it over himself.
Now Canada was mentioned, and I should just like to make one very small point on that. I was five years in the Canadian Army during the war and, for 24 years after it, on the Reserve, and I am very interested in two quotations made about Canada, one by Mr. Allan MacEacher, and one about Canada in general by Lord Brockway. It is really very important, to get the true picture, to realise what a massive argument geography provides: 3,000 miles of unpatrolled and unpatrollable country, with a border which, from the point of view of those born in the countries on either side of it, you can pass with as little formality as you pass from England to Scotland or vice versa. That has a very important bearing, I think, on Canada's attitude.
Last of all, in order to be quite sure that my speech is the shortest, I should just like to express this view. We in this country have never been a great land Power, although we were once a very great sea Power. We have always been a genius in alliance. Alliances, like friendships, remain strong so long as you keep them in repair. I believe that if

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we took such a gratuitous action as passing this Bill, though not many people may be involved, it would have a very bad effect on our relations with the Americans. For that reason, and for others that other noble Lords have stated as well, I shall feel impelled to vote against it.
4.22 p.m.
LORD REAY: My Lords, I thought, as did many other noble Lords who followed him, that the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, made an extremely well-argued and well-delivered speech in support of his own Bill. However, I do not accept some of the reasons (even what I suspect to be the main reason, because it is the emotional reason, and the reason mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir) held by most of those who support this Bill and advanced by them as reasons why we should support it. I do not accept that we should be asked to vote for this Bill, which would benefit deserters from the Armed Forces of foreign countries, out of a respect for their integrity of conscience, out of a duty to pay regard to decisions taken on that superior moral level.
It seems to me that liberals feel themselves obliged to give a moral description to the behaviour of anyone whose cause they wish to advance. In this case, of course, I am not using the word "liberal" in order to focus an attack on my colleagues on these Benches. Far from it: I am using it in a much wider sense. I am using it to refer to what is perhaps the idealistic element in all of us. The reason why I do not accept this argument is partly because this is an inadequate description of the person who will benefit by this Bill and partly because, even if it were an adequate description, it would not provide an adequate reason for supporting the Bill. I do not believe that we should change the law in order to accommodate the refinements of conscience of this particular foreign minority.
The sponsors of this Bill, and some of its supporters, are very anxious to engage our respect for those who desert from foreign, and in particular the American, Armed Forces. In a document which I still believe emanated from the authorship of the noble Lord who introduced this Bill rather than from one of the massed lobbies which we were warned he
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had assembled behind him, there is this sentence:
"What was conceived"—
referring to the 1952 Act—
"as a convenient means of dealing with the conventional type of deserter has been used to oppress young men who, whether one believes them to be courageous or misguided, have acted according to their conscience".
The noble Lord, Lord Gifford, expressed similar sentiments in his speech.
A little further on in this document the author goes further. He compares the inequality of treatment accorded in this country to those who have resisted the draft as compared with those who have deserted from foreign forces, and he says:
"Indeed, there is reason to pay greater tribute to those who have been to Vietnam, experienced the reality of the war and have the courage to obey their conscience rather than their superior officers".
I believe that such arguments are nonsense. People who desert from armies do so for a variety of reasons. If you bring morality into it, you must consider that some have base motives if you wish also to believe that some have motives which are sublime. I appreciate the humanity of the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, but on the whole I do not consider it necessary to bring morality into this argument. Personally, I would tend to expect deserters to include a fair number of disturbed or psychotic individuals, of those who are anti-social rather than social; and I do not believe that we can measure the value of this Bill by the contribution that they are likely to make as a group to our society.
However, the fact that the sponsors of this Bill have adduced reasons for supporting it which are invalid, even if they have put great emphasis on those reasons, does not mean that the Bill itself is bad. On the contrary, as I shall argue, there are very good grounds for supporting this Bill. The inequality of treatment given to deserters as opposed to draft resisters, who may legitimise their position in this country by qualifying as visitors, as students or as alien workers, is a good argument.
But I consider there is a better argument. It seems to me that the intention behind international agreements of this sort—and I call the existing law an international agreement, because it has the

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function of an international agreement by being a law in support of other Governments' institutions—must be to support foreign Governments in situations where their interests are common to ours, and such laws as these have in the past grown up in response to the demand of particular situations in which this community of interest was recognised.
Now I should like to repeat some of the words which were used by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (as he then was), in introducing the Visiting Forces Bill in 1952, and which were quoted by Lord Gifford. He said:
"These provisions are somewhat wider than is strictly required by the NATO Agreement, but they repeat the arrangements which were made in the 1933 Act for the Commonwealth forces and were extended during the war to Allied forces".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 17/10/52, col. 568.]
In other words, it was only under the exigencies of war time, when a community of vital interests was undeniable, that provisions such as those now in force were extended to nations other than those of the Commonwealth. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said that it was in our own interests to retain the 1933 provision in relation to the Commonwealth. But, so far as the Commonwealth are concerned, there are surely few who would now dispute that our expectations for common military action in the face of common danger are not the same to-day as they were in 1933. And, of course, in many cases the status of the countries within the Commonwealth has changed from that of Colonies to that of independent countries. So far as the post-war situation is concerned, which the 1952 Act was designed to fit, it was admitted even by the movers of that Bill that it went further than our obligations under the Treaty demanded.
Now it does not seem to me an important matter whether this was intentional or whether this was inadvertent. It seems to me understandable that in the early days of NATO we should have agreed to go beyond our strict requirements in the interests of a new international organisation for mutual defence of which we were then recent members. Such enthusiasm towards co-operation was perhaps our way of expressing that we really wished to be a member of that organisation; for we are aware that we otherwise should
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have some difficulty in persuading foreign countries that we really wish to join associations of foreign Powers for particular purposes, where these are not based on the Commonwealth, even when we do wish to join them.
But even if that is not the explanation, the situation since those days eighteen years ago has changed again. In the last few years the United States has been engaged in a war to which it has committed vast resources, material and emotional, of its own. This war has been a far more important consideration, a far more vital problem, to that country's Government—indeed to its successive Governments—than has NATO defence It has brought down an Administration; it has fragmented a society; and yet in that war we have had no vital interest.
It does not matter whether you approve or disapprove of that war; it does not even matter if you argue that the United States' conduct of that war was important to us because it was, globally speaking, essential to defy Communism at that point and because Communism is our dedicated enemy. Even such an argument is unimportant; and it is unimportant because one single fact proves that the Vietnam war was not vital to us; it was not vital to us because in defence of vital situations we have a tradition of committing troops of our own. It is one of our finest traditions, a tradition to which, perhaps, we owe our survival. Yet to the Vietnam war we never sent a single man.
Throughout such a period, however, this law remained to support an ally in a military capacity in a field in which we were not allied. This seems to me to be a superfluous capacity, one which has not been characteristic of laws such as our present law nor of our present law itself as established in 1952. When the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, gave us his example of the problem of the man who has been left behind following the withdrawal of his unit, I would say that that may be a problem; but in that case let us have a reciprocal agreement. He brought in the question of the United States Agreement with Germany. All right! But that was a bilateral Agreement. A precedent for the general support for foreign Governments' military policies has developed by accident, and I see no argument for

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continuing it. In 1942 or 1952 we extended assistance in return for assistance that was being extended to us. In 1970, there is no longer a reason not to revert to this admirable principle. To pass this Bill, therefore, would be to revert to tradition and not to abandon it.
To those who say that this matter is not important, that it is not worth this debate or these arguments, I would say that it is important because it gives us an opportunity of defining more clearly the manner in which we wish to have relationships with foreign countries. Therefore I feel that we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, for introducing this Bill; and, for the arguments I have given, I believe that it should be given a Second Reading this afternoon.
4.33 p.m.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, we have just listened to a most thoughtful and, in the context of the debate, unusual speech from the noble Lord, Lord Reay. I find myself experiencing a certain pleasure at hearing a speech not wholly in favour of Lord Gifford's Bill coming, if not from the Labour Benches, at least from the other side of the House; for it looked as though there might be a certain polarisation across the Floor; and that would be a pity. I am going to speak against the Bill but I do not identify myself for that reason with my Party. I feel that it would be a pity, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lee, said, if we came out for or against this Bill according to Party lines.
About the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, I wonder whether the noble Lord himself, having made what others rightly described as an admirably restrained speech on the subject, is quite happy at the way the debate has turned out. It may be that he is. But what has happened, it seems to me, is that we have had a debate about the rights and wrongs of conscientious objection. The Bill is not about conscientious objection at all. It is not even about conscientious desertion, so far as I know, although it certainly was on that aspect of desertion that the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, placed his emphasis.
We might do well to consider exactly what is a conscientious deserter. Can any noble Lord tell me how, when a man
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who has deserted, whether it be in Vietnam or in Berlin, arrives in England, it is possible to tell whether he deserted for conscientious reasons? Surely the conscientious factor must be established before he deserts. It is easy for a man to say that he had to desert because he does not believe in what his country is doing, or because he loathed the jobs that he was called upon to do. The story of the American who married the English girl, who came here, was arrested and was sent away, it seems to me (without withholding sympathy for the young man) has nothing to do with any kind of evidence that he was in fact a conscientious deserter.
If a man joins the army, particularly the American Army, and has a conscientious objection, he still is drafted in (as can happen under American law); and he may find himself in action against the enemy in Vietnam and may be appalled by what he finds. There is the story of the man who deserted, having been withdrawn from Vietnam. He was in Europe and he could not face a second term. What upset him in the first place was to find himself in a helicopter ordered to shoot at anything that moved in a village below. He saw his cannon-fire destroying women and children. That is a horrifying experience; but it is not reasonable to say that desertion, even under the strongest compulsion of con-science, is the only course open to him. There is another course open and that is next time to refuse to obey the order. The American forces, like our own and like every other, are subject to the same kind of military law which requires a man in general to obey orders. If a man thinks that those orders are unlawful—and shooting women and children is unlawful—he is not only allowed to disobey them but it is his duty to do so. That defence is open to him at a court martial; and that defence is the same in the American Army, Air Force and Navy as it is in ours.
So I think it goes a little far to suggest that when a man in such a position elects to desert and to run away he is taking the most courageous line. It may be that he is; but I should myself have greater admiration for the man who stays and refuses to obey the orders, even if the orders are lawful, and faces the music, goes to prison and takes it like a man. I have more admiration for him than for

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the man who withdraws himself from the position of ever having received an order that he disliked, and who runs away to escape the consequences of his action. I do not care for that man.
And when he has done it and comes here, how are we to find out whether he has done so conscientiously or not? But suppose we can. Let us suppose that the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, intended that this Bill should be about conscientious objection. We then have the argument which formed the greater part of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, who said that in deporting these men we should be deporting them for something which would not be a crime if committed by members of our own forces. I do not think that that is quite true. What we are deporting them for—if "deporting" is the word—is desertion. It is quite simple. That is what the Bill is about. No man is deported from here and handed over to the American forces, whether he is stationed in Great Britain, Germany or Vietnam, for refusing to obey orders to fight the enemy. He is arrested and handed over for desertion. The two things are not the same. It is possible to refuse to obey orders; to refuse to shoot the enemy; to refuse to serve in Vietnam. Surely, if you do that, you will promptly be arrested and tried by court-martial; but by the time you get here you have done something else as well—that is, deserted—and that is what these men are handed over for.
Now, my Lords, with that in mind I turn to my last point. Suppose the thinking behind the speeches of the noble Lords who have spoken, including the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, be accepted (as your Lordships will see, I do not accept it) and what was desired now was to exempt conscientious deserters from the provisions of the Visiting Forces Act 1952. If that were what was intended, the Bill we are debating would not be the one required for the purpose, because there is nothing whatever in it, by innuendo, implication, print or anything else, to suggest that it has the slightest connection with conscience. It may be a good Bill or it may not be a good Bill; but it certainly does not follow from anything that has been said by the noble Lords who have argued the case on the grounds of conscientious objection or conscientious desertion.
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My Lords, in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, and the noble Lord, Lord Reay, I would simply say, in a word or so, that whether or not we should have reciprocal laws with other countries, whether we should rescind our perfectly good law, as it seems to us, because others do not have it, seems totally irrelevant. We make our own laws, my Lords, and I hope that we shall not make this one.
4.42 p.m.
BARONESS BIRK: My Lords, from time to time I felt that I was in agreement with the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery. Although he said that this Bill was not about conscientious objectors, he seemed to keep coming back to that; and, if I may say so, the noble Earl rather contradicted himself. As I thought my noble friend Lord Gifford made clear in his admirable presentation of his Bill, this is a Bill concerned with desertion. It is not the quality of desertion with which we are concerned; it is the act of desertion. It is desertion by a soldier from a visiting force, but who has not deserted from a base in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, put the case to us of what one does with the deserter who deserts from a visiting force's base and then the visiting force leaves? I am not a lawyer, but it would seem to me that he is a deserter in the terms of the Visiting Forces Act as those of us would like to see it amended by my noble friend Lord Gifford.
I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Reay, kept us rather on a tightrope, because until the end of his speech I did not know whether he was for or against the Bill. He must have raised the Minister's hopes only to let him down at the very end. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said one thing that rather surprised me. I am sure that he did not intend it in that way, but it seemed to me that there was a slight element of smear in his remark that nobody knew about the Visiting Forces Act and that very few people were concerned about it until the Vietnam argument started. I put it to the noble Lord that ignorance should not always be said to be motivated by some sort of sinister attitude; and that the reason why many people did not know about the Act was, presumably, there were not so many deserters, and therefore we did not know about it at

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all. Regarding my own very minor Act of Parliament, which I got through at the end of the last Parliament—the Indecent Advertisements Act—I would not have known anything about the old law which I was amending unless the matter had arisen because of some action we were taking. I think that perhaps the noble Lord—as I am sure he intended to be—might have been a little more generous about the motives of some of us, and certainly of those of us who support this Bill.
The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that this applies also to the Commonwealth, is rather a boomerang because the Commonwealth, certainly as it was in 1933, was really the Empire; and even to-day one may argue that the Commonwealth is a family affair and, therefore, there should be a family relationship between members of the Commonwealth. But one cannot call NATO a family affair—perhaps not even an extramarital affair. It is a group of allies, and often we find ourselves with some very strange bedfellows. I should like to ask the Minister—I will certainly give way to him if he wishes to comment on it—whether the way the Act operates at the moment is that if a Greek soldier deserted from the Greek Army, and the present Greek Government or the Greek Army asked us to arrest the man and send him back, we would then, would we not, be forced to do so? I take it that the answer is, "Yes".
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, that sort of question is not best put quickly across the Floor of the House in the course of an exchange of this sort. It is a detailed one. If the noble Baroness wants to give advance warning, or would like a reply afterwards, I should be happy to give it.
BARONESS BIRK: My Lords, I must say to the noble Lord that if I were going to put something about which I felt that he should have had advance warning, I should certainly have given it. But, in the context of this debate on the Bill, Greece is a member of NATO and, therefore, if the noble Lord is hesitating about that, what is the whole thing about? Either it is legal and it is an Act of Parliament, in which case it must be followed for all contracting parties, which I think was his own phrase; or, if we are
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going to differentiate, then we are getting involved in the very sort of thing that those of us who are supporting Lord Gifford's Bill are very worried about getting involved in; and this goes far beyond the question of Vietnam. I think I have proved that quite clearly. This is why, apart from the morality—about which my noble friends Lord Brockway and Lady Lee of Asheridge spoke most movingly—there is a lack of common sense. There is an unreasonableness about it and it is getting us into the sort of situation (it may do so even more in the future) which creates tremendous complications for us because of an involvement that we should not have.
The noble Lord, Lord Napier and Ettrick, said that we should not be poking our noses into the affairs of other sovereign States. With great respect, my Lords, that is exactly what we are doing at the moment; and it is exactly what my noble friend wants us to stop doing. It is not a question of deciding whether somebody is a conscientious objector, whether they are a draftee, or whether they should have political asylum. These things are quite irrelevant to this Bill. All the Bill says is that we should not accept the request of another Power to arrest a deserter, unless that deserter has deserted from a base in this country; in other words, it applies to visiting forces. As the Minister pointed out in the first part of his speech, which he headed "Detailed arrangements", the situation at the present time is that the person is brought before a magistrates' court and the magistrates have no choice, once the identity of the person has been established and they are satisfied he is a deserter, but to hand him over to the authorities of the country from the army of which he has deserted.
If we did not keep on saying "America", but related this matter to the whole of NATO, and even the Commonwealth if you like, we should perhaps get it in a better perspective. I am a magistrate, and up to now I have been fortunate in not having had a case of this sort before me. I should have to interpret the law—I should have no alternative. It is no use the Minister shaking his head: that is so. I should be extremely unhappy about it, because although it may be the law to my mind it certainly would not be justice. I find it uncivilised because we are put in the

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position of indulging in a manhunt which really should not concern us.
Finally, my Lords, the fact that the last Government did not change the law does not mean that it is necessarily right and I should have thought that this was an opportunity for this Government to put it right. I firmly believe that if the Visiting Forces Act in its original form had been before Parliament to-day it would not have got through in that form. From both sides of the House and from all political Parties, Members would have pointed out the defects and the Bill would have been amended. We should not have had the present Act of 1952, but an Act much more along the lines of the Bill proposed by my noble friend Lord Gifford.
4.50 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, we have had a most interesting debate this afternoon, and the views which have been expressed from all parts of the House have gone from one extreme to another. At the outset I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, on introducing what is in essence a controversial Bill with, if I may say so, moderation, great care, great clarity and with much persuasion. He certainly made out his case as well as it could be done. I commend his Bill for one good reason—that it is brief; but I regret that that is as far as my commendation of it can go.
The noble Lord has explained the main purpose of the Bill, which is to alter the existing law in order to allow young men who have deserted or gone absent without leave in other countries, and subsequently come here, to remain in this country and to prevent their being returned by the British authorities to the appropriate authority of their country. What the noble Lord is trying to do is perfectly simple. He took much care to explain this and to leave us in no doubt whatsoever. He is trying to alter the law in such a way that when an American Serviceman deserts or goes absent without leave from the United States Forces, because, for instance, he is opposed to the policy of the war in Vietnam and dislikes taking part in it (and I readily accept that there are those who have a genuine disapproval for the
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policy which results in that war as distinct from disapproval and dislike of the fact of war, which must be common to all), he may have the right (0 come to this country and be given asylum here, and may be allowed to live and work here. The British authorities, says the noble Lord, should not have the opportunity of returning such a man to the United States authorities, and the United States authorities should not have the right to request the British authorities to help in his return.
I appreciate the sincerity with which the noble Lord holds these views, but I must say that I cannot agree with them. My disapproval of this Bill is twofold. I believe that we should be putting ourselves in an intolerable position, if we were to interfere with the relationship which exists between the United States military authorities and their own personnel. Legal responsibilities and obligations must be to the United States authorities as a whole and cannot be to the individual and varying whims, however sincerely held they may be, of its personnel. We should be affronting an ally and, I suggest, doing a most unfriendly act to an ally if we were not only to refuse to return to that ally a member of their forces who had elected to desert but were prepared also to help him and give him asylum.
It is up to the United States military authorities to conduct their own affairs and the relations between themselves and their personnel in the best possible manner. They must make their own decisions about the right course to be taken with those who object on grounds of conscience and it would be wholly improper for this country, I suggest, to encourage, acquiesce in or condone, or to be thought to encourage, acquiesce in or condone, desertion from the forces of an ally.
The noble Lord, Lord Gifford, said that whether we feel that the war in Vietnam is right or wrong is not an issue here. I am not so sure. The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, based the whole of his argument in support of this Bill on his strong objection to the war in Vietnam. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, at the end of his speech, fell into the trap, having discounted one particular argument as not being an issue here, of quoting extensively from a letter upon which

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he obviously placed much reliance, because, as he said, it put it better than ever he could, but the author of which was clearly motivated in his writing by none other than the argument which the noble Lord previously discounted—namely, the war in Vietnam.
As I understand it, and as my noble friend Lord Windlesham said, the Bill stems from the activities of an organisation called the Union of American Exiles in Britain.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, if I may correct the noble Earl, the Bill stems from my own views on this matter and not from any other source.
EARL FERRERS: I entirely accept that the Bill was introduced by the noble Lord, but I think it would also be fair to say, as I am sure the noble Lord will agree, that it goes very much with the views of the Union to which I have referred. I believe that it would be much resented if, in response to pressure from a body which is openly opposed to the policy of the United States Government, we in this country were to alter the arrangements which have existed for some eighteen years.
Secondly, I think it most undesirable that we should put ourselves in the position of being prepared to encourage the settlement here of people who have seen fit to desert from the forces of their own country, however genuine in their own conscience they may be. While I acknowledge that the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, has deeply and sincerely held views on this subject—and I respect those views—I believe that we should be wrong if we were to pass this Bill, because it would be seen, even if it was not so intended, as a direct encouragement by this country to the harbouring of those who have deserted from the forces of an ally; and that would be quite justly bitterly resented. Therefore, I hope that your Lordships will see fit not to give this Bill a Second Reading this afternoon.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, I wonder whether he would clarify a part of his argument. Did I understand him to say that this Bill gives a deserter a right to come to this country and gain asylum? If he did say that, I would reply that it does nothing of the
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sort. The ordinary laws of immigration still apply. Anybody can be kept out or refused admission as an alien.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that if a person, having come to this country, were not handed back to the authorities, he would enjoy the right of asylum?
5.0 p.m.
LORD STRANGE: My Lords, I apologise for my name not being on the list of speakers, but I have been a deserter in the Isle of Man and did not know that this Bill was on the Order Paper. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for allowing me to speak before him and the summing-up of the debate. Before I say a few words on the Bill—and they will honestly be a few—I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, on his excellent and compassionate speech. I do not often use the word "brilliant", but I really thought he had surpassed himself and pleased the whole House by making a first-class speech.
I joined this debate actually in November when I took my daughter out to dinner one night to a little restaurant. An American was standing up, shouting so loud that we could not hear the music and we could not dance. I listened to what he was shouting. It was that he objected to going back to America to be put in jail: it seemed a reasonable enough argument. But I really thought that he had shouted for long enough, and so I joined in. I shouted back at him: "You would be much better busting rocks in America, and much safer, than fighting in Vietnam". Whereupon he replied to me, quite justifiably: "I will not take that from a dirty, lecherous, middle-aged slob taking a pretty girl out to dinner". My daughter, who has always been so loyal to me, jumped to her feet and shouted back at him: "My father is not a dirty, lecherous, middle-aged slob; he is a dirty, lecherous, old slob".
Of course we all feel deeply in our hearts about this rather terrifying thing that has happened to these young Americans, who infest all the countries. We all know that they have run away from the war and do not want to fight, although we do not know the reason. One could go on for a long time about

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that, but I do not wish to. I just want to say that I think what I call the ordinary, respectable, democratic Americans do not know what they are fighting for, but they do know what they are fighting against.
I was privileged to hear a man for whom I have a great respect, the noble Lord, Lord Stonham (Lord Windlesham has read what he said earlier, and I need not repeat it), state his views in your Lordships' House as the most compassionate Minister of State, Home Office, that it would be possible to get. I thought then, and I think now, that it would be a great mistake to let a Bill of this kind go further.
5.2 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Strange, who was expecting a brilliant summing up from my noble friend Lord Beswick, but unfortunately my noble friend has had to attend some urgent meetings and has missed some of the speeches. Therefore it seemed more correct, out of courtesy to your Lordships, that I should speak from the Opposition Front Bench. Let me first, in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, state the position of the Labour Party in the House on this subject. It is entirely up to my noble friends who sit in the House, in the light of the discussion, to make up their minds as to how they intend to vote, whether for or against the Bill, or whether they abstain.
I think I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, although it is a fair argument, that the previous Government on a matter of this kind, when pressed in the House, took a particular point of view, and this was not significantly challenged. I am bound to say that the matter has been revealed in a much more detailed light following the really outstanding speech of my noble friend Lord Gifford. I am happy to say that it is quite obvious that your Lordships were deeply impressed by his exposition and moderation. Though I think the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, was fair in his reference to the quotation from the brigadier, of course my noble friend had to quote the whole of the letter. I hope that we shall never refrain from doing what we may conceive to be right purely on the
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grounds that such action is capable of being misinterpreted by other people.
I confess, my Lords (and here I speak for myself, because, as I have said, it will be for my noble friends who sit on these Benches to make up their own minds; and I know that some certainly will vote for the Bill), that it was my intention when I came in to listen to the debate, either to vote against the Bill or to abstain. However, I must say that at the moment I have not made up my mind, because certain matters have been revealed in the course of the discussion. I think it might be as well if the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, were to exercise the privilege, which the House always gives to the Minister, to speak again to see whether he can deal with some of the powerful points that have been made. The answers to some of the questions will certainly influence me. In my experience, the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham argues with great fairness and consistency, but I must say that I found some inconsistencies in his speech today.
As I understand it—this is a technical question, and it is difficult to come to a view—he was arguing that the Act which my noble friend seeks to amend derives from an earlier Act concerned with Commonwealth forces. I think we shall all agree that the environment in which that previous Act was passed was of a very different kind, and that the Commonwealth was of a different kind. The first question that I should like to ask the noble Lord is this. If the 1952 Act does arise from the Commonwealth Visiting Forces Act, is it a fact that in Canada there are not reciprocal arrangements so far as this country is concerned? I see the difficulty, and presumably the case which the noble Lord had in
mind was that of a soldier, it might well be, whose unit was on a training exercise in Canada and who just stayed behind. I do not know whether it was that sort of case. But what I should like to know is whether Canada has reciprocity with this country. It may be, of course, that my noble friend Lord Gifford will be able to answer some of these questions.
Secondly, there is the position of the other NATO countries. My noble friend Lady Birk referred to a Greek soldier, though I do not wish to pursue that.

53
However, as I understand it, the purpose of the original Act was to make provision in relation to the NATO Alliance for the purposes of NATO. I do not think that anyone, even my noble friend Lord Gifford, objects to it in that context. I am not seeking to make embarrassing remarks from a foreign affairs point of view, but let us take an example of one of our NATO Allies which has colonial possessions in which a civil war is going on. If a deserter from those forces were to find his way to this country, having perhaps conscientious objection, and possibly being a native inhabitant of the territory in question, would he be capable of being arrested by the civil police and brought before a magistrate, such as my noble friend Lady Birk; and would there then be no option but to hand him back?
I am not taking the Vietnam argument, because it is rightly said that to-day we are not debating the Vietnam issue. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, shakes his head, but I can assure him that I am not debating the Vietnam argument. I have listened to the arguments, and I want to make it clear that none of my remarks relates to Vietnam or anywhere else: but it does happen that that is a valid example. I should like to ask the noble Lord if he will answer the second question that I have asked him on this aspect.
The noble Lord, Lord Reay, made the point (I hope I interpret him correctly) that it is perhaps better to look at this matter in terms of a properly negotiated reciprocal arrangement, specifying more clearly the circumstances. It may well be that this Bill does not achieve fully the purposes that my noble friend Lord Gifford has in mind. The question that I, speaking for myself, have to make up my mind on is whether I should support the Second Reading of a Bill which may not be satisfactory. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, whether he can provide any relief in regard to the anxieties which have been aroused in my mind and, I believe, in the minds of quite a number of noble Lords.
I share the view of noble Lords who adopt an argument about the position of a deserter. I fully accept that a deserter may appear to be somebody to whom no privileges are given. But the important thing about the effect of passing this Bill
54
would be that, while anybody who entered this country illegally could be removed it would be under different processes and not simply as a result of arrest by the military police. It may well be that this Bill will make little difference in principle, but it raises issues of profound importance in terms of liberal human rights. The noble Lord opposite has really argued defending the position of his Government—and, indeed, that of my Government previously—that this is a convenient and workable measure. But, my Lords, it is clear now that anxieties exist, and that there are human rights issues on which the House is bothered. I am surprised to have come to the position that my own personal view is that, unless the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, can give a little more explanation, I am inclined to support the Second Reading of this Bill.
5.12 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, if it is the wish of the House, and if I am granted permission to speak a second time, I should be happy to take up a few moments. It would not be right for me to try to reply to the debate and deal with all the points that have been raised. This is a Private Members' Bill; it is not a piece of legislation introduced by the Government. It is for the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, to say what he thinks of the arguments that have been raised in support of and against his own Bill.
I can comment on one or two points that have been raised. The most important point is the question which still seems to be in the minds of noble Lords: it is that our law is unique; that we have an outdated law which applies to servicemen who have deserted on grounds of conscience. That is not true; we are not unique. It may be that our practice is a good or a bad one, but it is not a unique practice. It is shared by six other Commonwealth countries. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, said that in 1933 the concept of the Commonwealth was rather different from what it is to-day. But as I explained earlier, the Government of New Zealand, for instance, extended the application of their legislation in 1969 to enable them to apprehend deserters particularly in South-East Asia, Singapore and Malaysia, whether they have deserted from units based in New Zealand or outside New Zealand. So

55
it is not as though this is an outdated anachronism: it is a procedure which the Governments of six other countries have found it desirable to adopt for their own purposes.
I was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Birk—and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, followed this up—about the position of a deserter, let us say, from Greece or from any other NATO country. The position is that the Visiting Forces Act would apply to a member of the Greek armed forces or to the armed forces of any country to which the Visiting Forces Act 1952 applies.
The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, took me to task when I shook my head during his speech—I hope he was not disturbed by that—when he said that we should not conduct this debate as if it were about American Army deserters. But this is what we are talking about. So far as I know, and so far as anyone who has listened to this debate knows, the other cases are hypothetical. We have not had any instances of deserters from Greece or any other NATO country; but we have had quite proper examples from the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, and others, of deserters from the United States armed forces. That is what we are talking about.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I think the noble Lord may have misunderstood me. What I said was that we are not debating the rights and wrongs of Vietnam.
LORD WINDLESHAM: Well, I hope that the noble Lord feels pleased with that interjection. We know what we are talking about. There is a serious issue, which was raised in a calm and rational way by the noble Lord, Lord Gifford. What this Bill aims to do is to alter our law so that young men who have deserted from the American armed forces, based outside and not just inside this country, should be enabled to enter this country, and to remain here within the limitations of the normal immigration control—as the noble Lord said, as visitors, students or in order to work.
I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, about the bilateral agreement between Germany and the United States, and whether it would be possible in the
56
course of the debate to provide any information as to the number of deserters who had been arrested in Germany and the rate of desertion from the United States forces in Germany and in Europe as a whole. I can assure him that we have made efforts in the course of the debate to obtain this information. Unfortunately, it is not readily available. If I can get further information later, I shall be happy to send it to him.
Finally, I should like to say, after hearing what the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, had to say, that the Government believe that a change in the law on these grounds is not in the interests of this country. I therefore recommended to the House at the beginning of the debate, so that our position was quite clear, the rejection of this Bill. I hope that we shall have the support of noble Lords in different parts of the House. The noble Lord speaking from the Opposition Front Bench can make what play he likes, but as the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, will know better than I, this has been a consistent point of view, and a consistent argument by himself and his friends for some years now. The previous Government when in power had responsibility, as we have responsibility now, to do what they thought was right in the interests of this country, and I hope that some Members of this House on those Benches will remember and will act, and perhaps will vote with us on that basis.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I would say that he is doing his best to irritate me into voting against the Government. But will he answer one of my questions; namely, that in regard to the position in Canada?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I do not think the position with regard to Canada is relevant. The Canadian practice is different from that of this country. Along with some other NATO Powers it limits its practices in a way that we do not. I do not see to what extent the noble Lord is going to be tipped over to vote one way or another on an issue of this sort according to what the practice is in Canada.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, the noble Lord is doing his best!
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, will vote as he wishes, and I hope that he will look back on it with credit.
5.14 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, at the end of this most stimulating debate, I find myself somewhat taken aback in perhaps having such a distinguished vote as that of my noble friend Lord Shackleton depending on what I may say. But may I do better than the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and tell my noble friend Lord Shackleton exactly what the position is in Canada, as I have it from the Department of National Defence in London, from the Commander of the Canadian Defence Liaison Staff. He says:
"With reference to your letter, I am pleased to be able to assist you in your inquiry into Canadian law as is relates to the Status of Forces Agreement. The only authority for arrest of members of foreign Forces personnel by members of the Canadian Forces in Canada for the offence of desertion is to be found in Section 10 of the Visiting Forces Act, which section applies only to members of a visiting Force A member of a foreign Force who came to Canada otherwise than in the course of duty—as, for instance, your suggested example of entry as a visitor or a student other than a military or U.S. Government sponsored student—would not be considered as being a member of a visiting Force and, consequently, no legislative authority exists for his arrest as a deserter by members of the Canadian Forces."
I think the question of my noble friend Lord Shackleton about members of other countries which are involved in wars, apart from their NATO responsibilities, was answered. They would of course be able to benefit by the Visiting Forces Act as it now stands.
My Lords, I do not propose, and your Lordships would not want me, to go over the questions that have been raised in this debate or to comment in detail
about the speeches which have been made. Many noble Lords have been kind and used the word "compassionate" about the attitude which I bring to this question, and I believe that that is a proper attitude to bring to any consideration of the liberty of the individual. In weighing up the arguments on either side, I would ask your Lordships to consider this. The present law allows the arrest of individuals within our shores. And in any question where an individual is arrested and loses his liberty it is necessary to ask: is that justified? Is that justified by the principles of our criminal law? It is not. Is it justified by any treaty? It is not. Is it justified by the principles and the law of extradition? It is not. Is it something done by our allies for us? So far as NATO is concerned, it is not. There may be six other Commonwealth countries which have the same bad law as we do, but in my view that is no argument against this Bill.
I would ask Members of the House to consider this matter compassionately and to recognise, as perhaps some noble Lords who have expressed views against this Bill have not sufficiently recognised, the hardship which in a very few cases the present law brings to the individual. Is there any proper justification for it? I ask your Lordships to say, No, and to give a Second Reading to this Bill, which I believe technically does what it should do: it brings these deserters into the general law of aliens. I ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading to this Bill.
5.24 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Bill shall be now read 2a?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 54; Not-Contents, 95.

CONTENTS

Amherst, E.

Cowley, E.

Hilton of Upton, L.

Avebury, L.

Crook, L.

Hughes, L.

Balogh, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

Jacques, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Diamond, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Bernstein, L.

Faringdon, L.

Lee of Asheridge, Bs. [Teller.]

Birk, Bs.

Fiske, L.

Lindgren, L.

Bowles, L.

Gardiner, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, Bs.

Brockway, L.

Garnsworthy, L.

Maelor, L.

Brown, L.

Gifford, L. [Teller.]

Milford, L.

Buckinghamshire, E.

Gladwyn, L.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Burntwood, L.

Gowrie, E.

Nunburnholme, L.

Byers, L.

Granville of Eye, L.

Phillips, Bs.

Chalfont, L.

Henley, L.

Plummer, Bs.

Constantine, L.

Heycock, L.

Popplewell, L.

Rea, L.

Shacklelon, L.

Summerskill, Bs.

Reay, L.

Shepherd, L.

Taylor of. Mansfield, L.

St. Davids, V.

Silkin, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Segal, L.

Stocks, Bs.

Wynne-Jones, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Dundonald, E.

McCorquodale of Newton, L.

Adrian, L.

Eccles, V.

Macpherson of Drumochter, L.

Ailwyn, L.

Effingham, E.

Mar, E.

Albemarle, E.

Emmet of Amberley, Bs.

Merrivale, L.

Allerton, L.

Ferrers, E. [Teller.]

Mersey, V.

Alport, L.

Ferrier, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Ampthill, L.

Fortescue, E.

Milverton, L.

Auckland, L.

Geddes of Epsom, L.

Monson, L.

Audley, Bs.

Gisborough, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Baldwin of Bewdley, E.

Glasgow, E.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Balerno, L.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Belstead, L.

Gray, L.

Oakshott, L.

Berkeley, Bs.

Greenway, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Bourne, L.

Grenfell, L.

Reigate, L.

Brecon, L.

Gridley, L.

Rhyl, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Rochdale, V.

Caccia, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L. (Lord Chancellor.)

St. Aldwyn, E.

Champion, L.

St. Helens, L.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Hankey, L.

St. Just, L.

Clwyd, L.

Hatherton, L.

Sandys, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Hawke, L.

Selkirk, E.

Conesford, L.

Howard of Glossop, L.

Strange, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Hylton-Foster, Bs.

Strange of Knokin, Bs.

Cottesloe, L.

Ilford, L.

Terrington, L.

Craigavon, V.

Inglewood, L.

Teviot, L.

Cromartie, E.

Ironside, L.

Thorneycroft, L.

Daventry, V.

Jellicoe, E. (L. Privy Seal.)

Thurlow, L.

De Clifford, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Denham, L.

Leathers, V.

Vivian, L.

Derwent, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Digby, L.

Luke, L.

Williamson, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

MacAndrew, L.

Windlesham, L.

Resolved in the negative, and Motion disagreed to accordingly.

INDO-CHINA WAR: BRITISH POLICY
5.34 p.m.
LORD BOURNE LORD BOURNE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government: Whether, in view of the widening of the war in Cambodia, of the steady withdrawals of United States forces, and of the fact that, after several years of fighting, official figures estimate the number of armed Communists in South Vietnam at over 200,000, they will make a statement of British policy regarding the war in Indo-China. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the reason I put down this Question is twofold. First, we have a new Government, and although the previous Government made a Statement earlier about policy in South-East Asia, the new Government have not yet had the opportunity of doing so.
My second reason is a more personal one. As President of the Military Commentators'
Circle I was invited by the South Vietnamese Government, and made a trip to Saigon and South Vietnam in company with Air Vice-Marshal Menaul, whom your Lordships may otherwise know as the Director-General of the Royal United Service Institution. We did a full trip lasting ten days, helicoptering all over the place. In the South we went to the Delta, and to Cambodia; in Central South Vietnam to the Australians—and it was a pleasure to meet them, because they were so very professional in the way they did things. Lastly, we went to Hué, the destroyed city, and the North, including the Demilitarised Zone again by helicopter.
I should explain that as guests of the South Vietnamese Government we were in their hands (and very good hands they were, too), but as a result the only Americans that I met in South Vietnam officially were in fact advisers to the province chiefs. And a more dedicated group of people I have yet to meet: they were quite splendid.
In the interests of brevity I shall say a few things about what I found in South Vietnam, and then give some conclusions on them; and, finally, make one or two remarks about the outside situation. First of all, it may not be generally realised that inside South Vietnam itself there are still 200,000 armed Communists in the country. Observing that we never fought more than 10,000 (and usually 5,000) in Malaysia, that is an enormous figure; and of that total of 200,000 well over 100,000 are Viet Cong infrastructure. In other words, they are the cousins, uncles and fathers who live round the edges of the villages and on those villages.
To show the impact of the war on the people of South Vietnam I will just quote the figures of kidnappings and assassinations that are taking place every week. The average for the first half of this year was 330—an awful number of murders and kidnappings. That is just to show that the people are still conducting a terrific war. The South Vietnamese Army is 450,000 strong—ten or eleven divisions; and although I did not see the other ranks actually fighting, I saw the staff a good deal and I certainly gained an impression from all around me. One cannot be in an area like that without feeling the atmosphere, and I thought they were not only quite efficient in themselves but also very well turned out (which is only a small point), and had recently gained very greatly in confidence. That, I think, was perhaps because they took part with the Americans in the offensive against the sanctuaries in Cambodia.
The conclusion I came to, and the Air Marshal with me, is that the South Vietnamese Army will be quite capable of taking over the complete ground role at the end of 1971, provided that they are given heavy air support and technical support. In other words, that if a tank or a jeep is driven into a ditch another is provided—and, of course, they are not made in South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese must have logistic support. I even see advantages in South Vietnam fighting its own war. I believe that there is a great deal in the argument that the Americans are there as the intruders on the scene, and I am not at all sure that the South Vietnamese would not do better alone, provided, as I say, they were given the air and technical support necessary.
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Certainly they would do at least as well in the matter of intelligence, because, for a start, they do not have the language difficulty. To show that they are in fact fighting this war very much at the moment I will quote the casualty figures for 1969, which were: for the South Vietnamese Army, nearly 19,000; for the United States Army, 9,000. That has now dropped to a trickle, quite a small figure. So the South Vietnamese are in fact already carrying the load.
On the question of Cambodia, of course I saw only one little section of that country. But I heard a good deal, and my impression is that the Communists are feeling the loss of Port Sianoukville and the truck route from there to the sanctuaries—probably using Chinese trucks. That route was 80 per cont. of their lines of communication; only 20 per cent. at the very most came down the Ho Chi Minh trail. The Communists have now invaded Cambodia, and we had a debate on it in May. To my mind the real reason why they are occupying Cambodia is in order to replace that line of communication, because without the safe bases they cannot threaten South Vietnam and Saigon. I personally think that the campaign in Cambodia is a negative one, and I even think that the Cambodians, when they are fully equipped—and, incidentally, they were quite sore because Britain had not offered them any arms—and when they are trained, as they are now being trained by the South Vietnamese, will be very good fighters and capable of holding their own country. Twenty years ago the French relied a good deal on the Cambodians.
The South Vietnamese Air Force has at present 21 squadrons. This is being expanded to 40 by the end of next year, and later on to 50. It will continue to be a tactical air force. At the moment they have 250 helicopters, which is a lot of helicopters, but they do not have heavy air support. They want Phantoms and B.52s, but they are not going to get them—not at present, anyway. The South Vietnamese Navy similarly is expanding to 1,100 ships and 40,000 men; a terrific expansion. Both the South Vietnam Air Force and the Navy are expanding methodically and are very capable of doing so. Incidentally, I visited a South Vietnamese Air Force workshop, and you

63
could eat your dinner off the floor, which is more than could be said of some places.
I was asked questions about reorganisation. I did not suggest it, but I was asked by the Prime Minister and the Minister of
Foreign Affairs whether I had any comments on reorganisation. I explained that I was not going to offer any suggestions, but as they had asked I would make one suggestion. It is perfectly possible, of course, to argue that the United States and South Vietnamese between them have suffered from, first of all, unclear war aims; secondly, that they are fighting two separate wars and they have never had a single director of operations, never had unity of command; the intelligence is distinctly questionable, the jungle tactics are doubtful. The tactics in the open are absolutely splen-did and so modern that they are bound to win, but, unfortunately, you cannot always arrange your battles in the open. My chief criticism was the lack of a strong police. Previously, we had always had a director of intelligence who was a policeman and the intelligence was run by the police. In South Vietnam it is not
run by the police. They are nominally in control, as a lot of co-ordination goes on in Saigon, but in fact they are looked down on. That is the main suggestion I made. At the end of the war police intelligence wants to be absolutely close alongside the Government and they want to know who is the chief Communist living in a flat in Saigon.
The next thing I learned in South Vietnam was that the Government is gaining ground in the villages—by the way, there are usually six or seven hamlets to every village; a village is quite a big affair—with roads, bridges, aluminium roofs, tractors, schools, and, above all, with land reform. The farmer previously had a job to get any land. Now if he is an approved farmer he is given title to three hectares, which is seven and a half acres, and if it is good rice land and he gets two or three crops he is a prosperous farmer and interested in the prosperity of the community. The big landowners are limited now by a law, which started to be implemented in July, to 15 hectares, which is 45 acres. They cannot sit in Saigon and have hundreds of acres any more. This is very much better than the Communists have been offering to the
64
peasants for many years. They have offered them land, but they have then collectivised the land, as in North Vietnam; in other words, they work for the State for ever after.
On top of that there is a programme called the Chien Hoi programme, which is aimed at rallying the V.C.I. particularly back to village life, back from the V.C.I. back to village life. So far they have rallied 162,000, which is a lot of people. They are doing it at the rate of between 30,000 and 40,000 a year. If you do a little arithmetic and find that there are 100,000 V.C.I., it will not be more than a couple of years before there are practically none left. The great advantage of this programme, if it works, and it is working at the moment, is that it isolates the V.C.I. from its supply line, observing that the Americans knocked the sanctuaries to bits, destroyed them completely. The Communists in the southern half of South Vietnam are very short of ammunition; they have guns and no ammunition. In other words, they are in a very bad position.
Lastly, one thing which you could not help noticing if you were in Saigon for ten days was the economic crisis. It was mentioned by
every Minister I met. They are maintaining 1,100,000 men in the armed forces. It is a U.S. induced inflation; the dollar has been revalued from 118 to 275 and that has made a terrific difference. When I was there the poor people, and they were really poor, could not afford to buy their own oranges because of inflation, and it is the poor people in the towns who always suffer first. The conclusion I came to, as did the Air Marshal with me, was this: admittedly we cannot go to war with them, but we ought to give them priority in any practical aid we can, and I suggest that at the moment we ought to give them agricultural aid.
The conclusions I came to as a result of my visit—and I hope I went with an open mind—were, first of all, that these people are really fighting a heavy war against the Communists. They have had Communism once. It is a thing people are inclined to forget. They had it for several months between the Japanese surrender and the arrival of General Gracie, the Indian Commander, and his troops. It was a very painful business.

65
They never want it again. The word "coalition" is a dirty word in Saigon, and I do not blame them. Give—shall we say?—a 10 per cent. share in a coalition to the Communists, a share which happens to include the Minister of the Interior and therefore the police, and we all know what happens. We all know what happened in Czechoslovakia, which is a salutary recent reminder. It has happened many times before, but the case of Czechoslovakia is the last. The people who protest about Vietnam and how the people there ought to patch up their quarrel and come to a solution have never lived under a Communist régime. The people in the American universities and in Grosvenor Square have never lived under Communism; they have never tried it. I do not recommend it.
Another matter which perhaps has been forgotten is that the United States, when they turned from being military advisers to providing armed forces, staved off obvious defeat in a matter of weeks; they went in and did a magnificent job. Unfortunately the Communists do not include the word "defeat" in their vocabulary, so they do not know when they are beaten. I believe that there are great difficulties in Hanoi and North Vietnam. The fact that the North Vietnamese Regular army contains boys of 15 and 16 years of age in quite a high proportion is a sign that they are up against it. On top of that, when they are rather short of ammunition it must be frightful. They do not know when they are beaten, but the conclusion that I came to was that the Viet Cong Infrastructure (the "V.C.I." as they are commonly known) are the key to the situation. Therefore the steady American withdrawal and pacification programme—"Vietnamisation" as I believe they call it—plus the Chien Hoi programme, are absolutely on the right lines, and if they are only given time to work they will show results. Land reform will be better than bullets, and it is much more likely that we shall persuade the V.C.I. to live in the villages than to live outside them.
In contrast to what I found in South Vietnam, I went afterwards to Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore and Bangkok, and I asked businessmen the same questions wherever I went. The businessmen
66
are all terribly busy making money in their own little booms; they are primarily interested in their own little booms. I asked the question: What would you do about it here "—and this was in Bangkok particularly, which is only 400 or 500 miles away from Saigon, "if the war went wrong and the Communists took over South Vietnam?". They invariably changed the subject; they always put up their coat collars and hoped that the storm would blow over. In other words, they are doing nothing about it. I ought not to include the Singapore Government in that because I never met the people at the top of the Government, for they were elsewhere.
Now I should like to come to the conclusions about British policy. We often hear about a political solution, and that it is the only way out. The word "coalition" is often used. I found out—and I entirely agree with the South Vietnamese—that the word "coalition" cannot be included. I have a deep sympathy with the Government and the people who are fighting against Communism. I do not believe that coalition is either desirable or possible in South Vietnam, and I think we ought to stop talking about it. I do not believe that it is any more possible between North and South Vietnam than it has been between East and West Germany for the past 25 years. Trade, culture and sport, yes, but politics, no. Political régime, no. Anybody who has had dealings with the Russians or Communists knows that democracy can meant two entirely different things, and we ought to remember that.
As to the outcome, nobody would be so foolish as to predict it. The South Vietnamese are on the crest of a wave at the moment. And, by the way, going back to the villages, I may say that 63 per cent. turned out to elect half the Senate. Could you imagine 63 per cent. turning out in the middle of a war to vote for half your Lordships' House, if it were on a voting system? I do not think the comparison would be a very good or optimistic one. I thought they were marvellous to turn out in such numbers. Incidentally, the Australians were proud of the fact that they were in the worst province, and the turn out there was 73 per cent. The Government is gaining ground in the villages and it should be helped as much as possible to gain ground.
I therefore think that practical British aid, short of war, is what we ought to offer. It may be possible to rid the country completely of Communists. We may not reach a political solution; we may not reach complete military victory. It will be like other places and rather like a disease of the human body; you fight it because you have better corpuscles in your body. It is distinctly possible that the South Vietnamese will get rid of most of the Communism in their country if we support them and give them the chance to do so. I hope for a strong Government Statement on this part of the world. We cannot do better than remember the original United States aid, which was to ensure for the people of South Vietnam a free choice as to whether or not they wanted to be reunited with the North. That was put very well by my noble friend Lord Shepherd—I think he was quoting from another place—in the debate on May 14, when he said, speaking of withdrawals of foreign forces:
"… as soon as we have secured the elements of a lasting and honourable settlement which assures to the people of Vietnam their own inalienable right to decide for themselves their own future."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14/5/70; col. 762.]
The year 1971, to my mind, will be the crucial year.
5.57 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am sure that the House will be very interested in the report that my noble friend Lord Bourne has given of his visit to South Vietnam. It is natural that the noble Lord, as a distinguished General, should devote much of his visit and, therefore, his speech here to-night on the military aspects in South Vietnam and Cambodia, although I was pleased that he touched upon the question of land settlement and other political matters which, in my view, are of considerable importance in a settlement. I well remember the words that the noble Lord quoted. They were the words of my right honourable friend who was then Prime Minister, setting out the Labour Government's view for a settlement in Vietnam. I certainly have not changed my views since May 14 when we had that debate. I am more and more convinced that there will not be, and cannot
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be, a military settlement in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos, and for the long-term peace and settlement of that area a solution at the conference table is a vital necessity.
Before saying a few further words on this matter, I should say to the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, that some of us in the debate which preceded this Unstarred Question found ourselves increasingly in difficulties. Certainly my noble friend Lord Shackleton and myself have always taken a very consistent view on Vietnam and on our attitude to the United States. Certainly I came here this afternoon either with the intention of abstaining or of voting against the Bill. In the course of the debate, serious matters of concern were raised, and the more and more the debate went on the greater became my disquiet. In those circumstances I voted for the Bill, so that we should at least have an opportunity to explore the position more thoroughly than we have been able to this afternoon.
Having said that, I wish to state again that my feelings on Vietnam are that the United States went in there on very honourable grounds, and they became increasingly sucked into a conflict which was, I am certain, even to their own military commanders, a situation which would not, and could not, be solved by a military solution. Therefore we applauded the United States, the South Vietnamese Government, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, the N.L.F., when they agreed to go to Paris for talks. Throughout the months we, who were then in Government, did what we could to encourage both sides to talk and to reach a settlement, and certainly we shared everyone's disappointment—particularly that of the United States Government—that progress could not be made. We have applauded every initiative that the United States Government have made in an effort to de-escalate the conflict. We certainly applauded President Nixon's declaration, and in fact implementation, of the withdrawal of United States forces from South Vietnam. We believe that Cambodia and Laos are entitled to a neutrality respected by all countries within the region. We believe that the people of Vietnam, whether North or South, should have ways and means of having a Government of their choice, whether it be Communist or otherwise.

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We felt, and still feel, that there is unlikely to be a permanent solution in that part of the world until China has been admitted to the United Nations. I must express, as I am certain the Government will, deep regret that the United Nations have once again barred China from the comity of nations. I was not going to speak this afternoon, as I felt that what. I said on May 14 was sufficient, since circumstances had little changed; but I must say—and I wish to ask a series of questions of Her Majesty's Government—that the recent bombings of North Vietnam by the United States Air Force in retaliation, as I understand it, for the shooting down of a reconnaissance aircraft, must be deeply disturbing. Much as one may sympathise with the search and rescue mission, this also must be regarded in the general situation as a matter for deep concern. At this moment of time anything that can increase tension, or that creates a situation where the other side may decide to escalate the conflict, will not only make it more difficult for the United States Government to withdraw its forces but will clearly reduce any possibility of early progress at the Paris Conference table.
Having said that, and expressed concern, I hope that it will not be construed as criticism, because certainly at this moment of time very little information is available to us other than what has been reported in the newspapers. I wonder whether the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, when he replies, could give us any information as to what the United States authorities had in mind when they undertook those two particular operations. I should also like to ask the noble Earl whether the United States Government consulted, or informed, Her Majesty's Government of their intention to carry out those operations. I shall leave it there for the time being. As I understand it, the bombing operation of North Vietnam has been concluded and I hope it will not be resumed. Here again, perhaps the noble Earl can give us some information.
I conclude by hoping that we shall have some information from the noble Earl and by impressing upon him and his colleagues the need for consistent pressure on all sides in this conflict. In the light of that, I wonder whether the noble Earl can say anything about the conversations
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that his right honourable friend, the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, will have had with Mr. Gromyko, who, of course, is co-chairman, with him, of the Geneva Conference of 1954.
6.6 p.m.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, it is with some trepidation, and certainty with humility, that I take it upon myself, at this late hour for your Lordsips, to address this House. I hope, therefore, that I shall be brief. May I say that I know of the wonderful work of the noble Lord who asked the Question. I was swanning around what was then known as Batavia (and I have been there a number of times since), and also Djakarta, when he too was doing a job of work there.
The question I want to address myself to in the ten minutes I intend to take—and at the moment I find this a difficult question as I am writing about this very part of the world—is the pertinent one which has been asked: what is the Government's policy? I sincerely hope that, in the blinding light of the nuclear age, that policy will be adjusted and considered in the light of the experience of one of our own great leaders. I remember the 1954 Geneva Conference, and there are now in this House noble Lords who were then in the other place. I stood up and paid a tribute at that time to the then Foreign Secretary, Sir Anthony Eden, now the noble Earl, Lord Avon. I would call noble Lords' attention to his book, Full Circle, which contains guide-lines for this Government. I shall try not to be controversial, but I hope that our foreign policy will be less abrasive than the Government's home policy at the present moment, if I may be allowed that remark, en passant.
If noble Lords will turn to page 108 of Full Circle, they will see these words:
"The Americans continued to believe that some action must be taken outside the conference."
That was the Geneva Conference. Some of us were in Geneva listening at the time.
"They wished to encourage the French to keep fighting and prevent a steady Communist advance in South-East Asia."
The then Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, was asked what his policy was,

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and he replied in these words—and they appear on page 111 of the same book:
"Her Majesty's Government are not prepared to give any undertakings about United Kingdom military action in Indo-China in advance of results of Geneva. We have not entered into any new political or military commitments."
Foster Dulles had asked the then Sir Anthony Eden if we would back him in his occupation of Indo-China, and he was asked what kind of action they were going to take. The story is told in the book, on page 111. Foster Dulles said—and it was like the South Sea Bubble:
"We do not know yet, but we want your backing."
Certainly the Churchill Government had more sense than to follow him in that kind of agreement.
The then Sir Anthony Eden went on to say:
"Meanwhile Mr. Robertson (U.S. Assistant Secretary of State) whose approach to these questions is so emotional as to be impervious to argument or indeed facts, was keeping up a sort of theme song' to the effect that there were in Indo-China some three hundred thousand men who were anxious to fight against Vietminh and were looking to us for support and encouragement. I said that if they were so anxious to fight I could not understand why they did not do so. The Americans had put in nine times more supplies of material than the Chinese and plenty must be available for their use. I had no faith in this eagerness for the Vietnamese to fight for Bao Dai."
Lord Reading then indicated to Foster Dulles that his policy would mean that war in Indo-China would be on the boil for years and years—and that is to be found at page 113 of Full Circle. Mr. Dulles replied that this would be a good thing. My Lords, I leave it at that. I do not want to bore you with masses of pregnant phrases from that constructive job of work which was done by the then Foreign Secretary.
Some time later I spent a long time in Peking with Chou En-lai. For hours we discussed the work of the then Conservative Foreign Secretary, and he praised him for having achieved neutrality in Laos and Cambodia and for the pacification which hitherto had been unknown for some 20-odd years. We must remember that there has been almost perpetual war for 30 years in that country, to say nothing of revolutionary activity against the French, which some of us knew about
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long before World War II. In other words, the constructive work of Lord Avon at the Geneva Conference was being destroyed by the emotional stress of the then Secretary of State, Foster Dulles. That is not casting aspersions on the Americans at all; it is simply pointing out that at this juncture in the blinding nuclear age in which we live we want no more geological politics.
The geology of politics is strewn with fossilised ideas about defence, fossilised ideas about the world in which we live to-day. The first axiom is that one half of the world is Communist; the second is that the dropping of the atom bomb in 1945 has changed the history of the world. We are at a watershed of man's destiny. I hope that I am not being didactic or pontifical. I shall finish in about three more minutes, but this is a very difficult subject to pack pregnantly into a constructive, coherent statement in a brief time. But I sincerely believe that, whatever policy the Government initiate, it must be shot through with this fact: that the logistics of World War II are as dead as the dodo. Liddell Hart himself said:
"You must never get your opponent into a corner. Give your opponent an opportunity to save face."
With all due respect, this is what the Americans are failing to do. They have piled Pelion upon Ossa by their increase in bombing, in their effort to reach the Kingdom of Heaven and peace. But the more they have piled this mountain upon mountain, the further away they are from peace.
So I come to my last two minutes, having swept aside quite a number of arguments which I should have liked to deploy. I look to the roof of this marvellous building, and I see some of the coats of arms of the barons who made King John sign the Magna Carta in 1215. But in 1215 the Khmer civilisation, right from the borders of Pakistan to the arc of Indonesia, was dominant. There are about 600 temples at Angkor Wat, which were occupied by some 80.000 priests, and Pnom Penh had a million population. They believed in something, but we are living in the 20th century with the apotheosis of growth. I am a Celt myself, and my nation lived in guerrilla war against the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons for about a thousand years. The art of guerrilla warfare was picked up

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from Llewellyn the Great. Most Celts believe in something, thank God! and it seems to me that the more we worship economic growth and power, then so, in inverse ratio does man's spiritual content seem to shrink, and we are losing a lot which Oriental man could teach us.
Another night I may be a little more controversial, but to-night I would say to the Minister who is going to reply: if a policy is being struck, then for heaven's sake! do not let us have the platitudes about having to protect the Indian Ocean from the Russian ships; having to protect Indonesia; having to protect Indo-China. We can no longer do it. If you take the mighty arc of the Indian Ocean from Latitude 40 South, Longitude 30 East, which passes roughly through Cairo, and go up to about the Tropic of Capricorn further North to the Sunda Trench or the Java Trench, you will see how foolish it is to believe that with a few ships you will solve the problems of man's peace.
I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, say from this side that we must get China into the United Nations. Our fundamental policy should be, out of friendship and understanding with the Americans, to show them that there is a new China emerging. I was in Canada talking to Trudeau and to U Thant only a few months ago, and inside Washington there are men who know that they must get a modus vivendi with the Chinese; they must be brought into the comity of nations. If we want to do a job of work, let us get on with the Mekong project. Finally, I wonder whether noble Lords will agree with me about a first-class job of work which was mooted 70 years ago. I should like to see the modern United Nations at work cutting a canal 10 degrees North of the Equator at the Kra Isthmus. I believe that it would make such a difference to the economy of that area.
Whatever answer we receive from the Front Bench to-night, I hope that it will be qualified with the fact that, as much as anything, we will help to encourage the United States, in its mighty strength, to remember the formula of Liddell Hart, "Give your opponent a chance to save his face, and do not push him into a corner"—though that is what the
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Americans, by increasing the bombing, seem to be doing.
6.18 p.m.
LORD GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, the noble Lord who has just spoken started with an expression of humility. I should like to echo that expression in my capacity as a former public servant by welcoming to one part of the Legislature a new noble Lord who has done a quarter of a century's service in another. We have already heard something of his great knowledge in the field of history and we welcome to this House something of a rarity—someone who has an expert knowledge of the Far East and South-East Asia. From the way he spoke I think we may say that if at any time we feel dispirited he as a Celtic Member of our House can "call spirits from the vasty deep".
Before the events of this weekend, I had hoped that we might be discussing in an atmosphere of comparative tranquility the situation in Vietnam, and with reference to possible long-term progress towards a solution. With that in mind, I would express great gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for having initiated this debate and given us a feel of South Vietnam which one does not often get, either from reading or from people one meets. This has been most valuable. Of course, during the weekend we have had a bit of a jolt. Vietnam has become for a moment topical again; and I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, that we should be careful how we comment. I hope that the noble Earl who winds up the debate will be able to tell us a little, if he has been told, of what went on to bring about these rather melodramatic events. Of the rescue act, I think perhaps we should be wise to judge it in this way: to say that this is one of those things which, if it had succeeded, would have been hailed as a piece of resourceful heroism. As it did not succeed, everybody is bound to ask why it was attempted at all. I think that we can view it in those proportions, and not let it disturb our consideration of the longer-term objectives.
Now, if I may, I should like very briefly to allude to the current situation in the three countries of Indo-China; to say a word, if I may, and ask a question, on possible steps towards peace; and,

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finally, say a word on what Britain can and should do. On the present state of affairs in Vietnam, it is really very difficult to give a summing-up of how things really are. You can take the version of an Australian General whom I heard on the radio and who said, in a clipped voice, "The war's over"; or you can read articles in American newspapers which say that the North Vietnamese have regrouped with fantastic efficiency. I should think, from what the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, told us, that the true situation is somewhere between the two.
In Cambodia, one is bound first to think back six or seven months in a wry kind of way at the hysteria which greeted President Nixon's moves to mop up the sanctuaries in the salient near Saigon. It was an hysteria which, I regret to say, made it, in another place, very difficult for the then Foreign Secretary to be heard and, in Oxford University, impossible for him to be heard at all. But now I think we have recovered from this emotional reaction. We have seen that the Americans did an economical operation of considerable service to the South Vietnamese, and retired 24 hours before the deadline which they had announced. So I think we can consider all these things with a certain calm which was absent at
that moment except in your Lordships' House. In Laos, all one need say is that we have the continued deadlock of Princes.
The question is whether, in this situation, with, as I say, comparative calm and with, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, said, almost a cessation of casualties, anyway of American casualties, one can once again look forward to some effective search for peace. The obvious way to do this, if it can be done at all—and it is a very real "if"—is through the framework which already exists: the framework of a Geneva Conference, or a variant upon it. On this score, both Her Majesty's previous Government and Her Majesty's present Government have an excellent record. In other words, our half of the co-chairman-ship has been ready to go, and has been ready to go for years. The other half, the Soviet Government, has always refused. The argument has always been that the time was not ripe. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to give us a little encouragement out of the visit of
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Mr. Gromyko, although I am not over-hopeful myself. I hope that, if the argument still is that the time is not ripe, the Government will continue to question the validity in this context of the principle of perpetual unripe time, and I will quote to the noble Earl, although he probably knows it already, that excellent little phrase:
"Remember, Sir, that time is like the fruit of a medlar—rotten before it is ripe".
That may well be the case in this part of the world.
However, if we are blocked, is it worth considering, in the context of this debate and in ruminating about longer-term prospects of peace, whether there are any possibilities that the fighting in all these three countries might somehow grind to a stop; that the whole weariness of war might cause fighting to die out? I think that in Laos this might be the case. It would, of course, leave these three countries divided; it would make a mess of the map; it would leave a lot of Cambodia in somebody else's hands—in the hands, in fact, of the invaders, if people would be courageous enough to say so; it would leave Vietnam divided, as we have it now. But it is just conceivable that the weary people of that part of the world could arrive at a settlement on that basis. I mention it only as something which would perhaps be more tolerable than going on simply because we cannot at this stage have a formal negotiation. It is not an easy thing to work for, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, said, the hard-core Communists are not likely to agree to give up. But, still, it is a possible dimension in which we can think if, as I say, the formal approaches to peace are blocked.
In this connection, I thought that one or two noble Lords—if I may very mildly criticise the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek—were a little unfair. During this period the Americans have indeed made—perhaps, wisely, not proclaimedx2014;very conscientious efforts precisely to enable the other side to save face, and I do not think it is on that point that negotiations have failed. I should also like to say something which I had hoped to say at one time in this House: that another evidence of the earnestness of the Americans in trying to bring this situation to a close is the fact that their frontline negotiators, Mr. David Bruce, in Paris,

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and Mr. Ellsworth Bunker, in Saigon, are two diplomats whose capabilities would put them at the top of any Diplomatic Service anywhere at any time—and if that is not an earnest of good faith, I do not know what is.
There is one snag about this idea of the war petering out. I think it would mean that at some moment there would be a crunch in the process, because there would certainly be some among the Communist leadership who would think of this situation in the terms, "The Americans go: we do not shoot at them while they are going, but the moment they are gone, in we go". It may be that in course of time the South Vietnamese may be able to cope with this situation, but it might mean—and I think it is as well that we should have this in the back of our minds—a very difficult dilemma for the United States Administration, who in those circumstances might have to retain some small stiffening in Vietnam to make sure that the war really did grind to a close and was not simply reopened the moment their last transport ship and aircraft had left.
Finally, my Lords, the British role. There has been considerable controversy about whether the dispositions made by the present Government for retaining a modest presence in South-East Asia are the right ones. Militarily, this is disputable: diplomatically, it is not, in this sense. We are bound to have a little more credibility in our advice, which we give so freely, if we are modestly on the spot and say that we propose to remain there, than if we are in full flight shouting advice over our shoulders. It may not make a great difference, but it makes a little difference—and our credibility as advisers is just that much greater. And this may, in the end, help the situation. What we can do, however, is not very great. We can go on urging a conference; we can go on urging restraint. But, equally, in this urging we must always be careful not to be naive and not, as one noble Lord said, just produce clichés because they are virtuous ones.
There is one other thing that we can do, and I hope that we shall do it. It has also been urged that we should continue in a small way—and it will have to be a small way—to show our interest in the furnishing of aid; and that in the
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furnishing of aid we should continue any programmes in Vietnam and in Laos and not neglect to furnish some aid in Cambodia. That little country has shown extraordinary bravery and an unexpected access of national feeling in this situation, and deserves a little friendliness and support. So, my Lords, while one cannot foresee early developments in the direction of peace, we can keep our eye on both the possibility, which always exists, of getting the existing framework working again and also on the possibility that the hostilities may somehow eventually die of their own inanition. In the meantime, by giving a little understanding aid we can show that we have not lost interest in the suffering people of that area.
6.31 p.m.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I had not intended to participate in this debate, but before the noble Earl rises to reply I should like to ask one or two questions. Can be tell us what is the position of the British medical mission now working in Saigon? When we were there two years ago they were working under appalling difficulties; they were a small group of British volunteer workers, deprived of a great deal of assistance that they badly needed. May I ask him whether the Government are now willing to look favourably on their humanitarian efforts, and, if at all possible, enable their activities to be extended?
On the wider issue around which this debate has ranged, my own lasting impression was of the terrible complexity of the situation in Vietnam. We were out there two years ago, and nothing that has happened since has tended to simplify the situation. Quite the contrary: everything that has happened during the last two years has only increased the complexity of the whole position in that unfortunate country. Whatever may have been the motives that first brought America into the war, the position to-day is that it is virtually impossible for America suddenly to extricate herself from Vietnam.
I believe that the problem of Vietnam could be settled to-day if it were not bedevilled by outside intervention by Russia and China on the one hand, and America, on the other. If only the Vietnamese were deprived of all forms of outside activity on behalf of either North

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Vietnam or South Vietnam, I believe that, inevitably, they would have to learn to live with one another and to reach some solution. I am still under the impression that the South Vietnamese would be willing to accept partition at the level of the 17th Parallel—just as in Korea the final solution was reached only on the basis of partition, and just as, nearer to us here in this country, Germany has been prepared to accept partition for the sake of peace, partition on the Oder-Neisse line, to enable its two halves to continue existing together somehow on the basis of some sort of a peace.
I can only pray that the United States, on the one hand, and Russia and China, on the other, may get together, whether through the admission of China to the United Nations, or even if China remains outside the United Nations, to bring pressure on the Vietnamese to force a settlement of this dreadful, horrifying, destructive war. Many of the people we met in Vietnam two years ago were youngsters of 20 and under who had never known any condition other than war, who had never known what it is to be given a chance to live together in peace. To me this is not at all an issue of Communism versus capitalism or free enterprise, or call it what you will. It is not even an issue of politics. It is simply an issue of millions of fine people, decent, simple, humble people, longing for peace and begging the whole world just to give them the chance to live together in peace.
6.34 p.m.
THE EARL OF GLASGOW: My Lords, before the noble Earl rises to reply, and with the approval of the House, may I ask a very brief question? I am not sure that he will be able to answer it. Can the noble Earl tell us what is the American commitment militarily to Thailand? My thought is that should the war flare up again and go wrong, and should Communist troops advance into Thailand, our small force in Singapore will find themselves on the flank of this operation and, I should think, in a very awkward military position.
6.36 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bourne, for asking this question in the House this evening, not least
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because I think he has given us the opportunity of a very interesting short debate. It was particularly useful for all of us to see through the informed eyes of a very experienced observer something of the scene in Vietnam, speaking as he was from a background of fresh firsthand experience. This came through very much in the speech of the noble and gallant Lord. We have heard from a senior colleague of mine—if I may say so in, I hope, not too patronising a way—a very thoughtful speech from the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth. We have had the usual moderate and sensible speech from the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, who gave his explication de vote which he dragged in somehow (I do not know with what precise relevance), and, to use a phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, en passant, but much more than en passant, I should like not only to welcome Lord Davies to your Lordships' House but to congratulate him on a charming speech and to assure him that we were far from bored by it. He speaks with real knowledge of this whole area, and we look forward, again to use his own words, to many more of his "pregnant phrases".
I am also grateful to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bourne, because his Question gave me a peg on which to hang an explanation of Her Majesty's Government's policy and attitude towards these appallingly complicated problems of Indo-China and of the area. Let me say, by way of background—and I am not mincing words, and this may not be very acceptable to all noble Lords—that I think we must remember that wherever the historic causes in history may lie, the prime cause of the fighting in Indo-China lies in the efforts of North Vietnam to take over South Vietnam by force. Those efforts, which have continued for many years, include the invasion of South Vietnam territory by North Vietnamese Regular troops and the active encouragement of insurgency and insurrection in South Vietnam. Those efforts have also involved the illegal use of Laotian and Cambodian territory by the North Vietnamese to provide base areas and supply routes.
This has resulted in the spread of hostilities to those two countries. Restoration of peace and stability to Laos and

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Cambodia must, in Her Majesty's Government's view, ultimately depend on a settlement of the war in Indo-China as a whole. Although the fighting flares and dies away and flares again in intensity from time to time, we can find some comfort in the fact that the general level of hostilities in South Vietnam has been declining steadily during the past year. The fighting in Laos and Cambodia is also at a relatively low level at the present time (I will come later to the question of the bombing); this we must all be thankful for. Nevertheless, my Lords, the killing will not stop entirely until there is a comprehensive and negotiated settlement covering the whole of Indo-China; and I think that on one matter we are all agreed: this slaughter just has to stop. Save for brief intervals Indo-China has been the centre of armed conflict for almost thirty years. Most of us who read our history know of the state of Europe after the Thirty Years War and it would not be too difficult for us to imagine, even those of us who do not have first-hand experience of the area, what this endemic struggle has meant to the gifted people who inhabit this very large area of South-East Asia.
My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have always believed in the desirability of a negotiated settlement of this war. That continues to be our belief, and I do not think that in this we part company in any way from the attitude taken by the previous Administration. For this reason Her Majesty's Government welcome, and have welcomed, President Nixon's latest proposals for such a settlement. In our view these represent a reasonable basis for negotiation. For that reason we are, naturally, disappointed that the other side has rejected them so quickly and so categorically, without any apparent attempt—I use the words "apparent attempt" advisedly—to explore their possibilities. This example of North Vietnamese intransigence means that although the talks in Paris have been going on for nearly two years, a peace is still no nearer.
In Paris the Communists continue to make two unrealistic demands as preconditions for the discussion of other issues. These are the unilateral and unconditional withdrawal of all American troops from Soul h Vietnam and the setting up in Saigon, in advance of fresh elections, of a coalition Government from which the
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leaders of the present elected Government in Saigon would be excluded, and which the Communists obviously would hope to control. The first of these preconditions amounts to a call for American surrender and the second (here I agree entirely with the noble and gallant Lord) amounts to a call for a South Vietnamese surrender.
At this point I should like to dwell for a moment on President Nixon's five-point packet of proposals. First, I would remind your Lordships that he called for the immediate negotiation of a cease-fire in places throughout Indo China. Accepted by the other side, this would put a rapid stop to the killing and destruction. Secondly, the President proposed a peace conference covering the whole of Indo-China, because he recognises that any future settlement will have to include not only Vietnam but also Laos and Cambodia. Until such a conference can be got going he will continue, as I understand it, to work for a Vietnam settlement at the Paris talks. Third, President Nixon has offered to negotiate a complete withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam as part of an overall settlement. My Lords, we hold this to be a fair proposal which could lead to the end of the American presence if only the other side would agree to negotiate seriously.
Fourth, the President has invited the Communists to join in the search for a political settlement in South Vietnam which would reflect the will of the South Vietnamese people and also the existing relationship of political forces there. Perhaps I should remind your Lordships that in the same context President Thieu of South Vietnam has committed himself to abide by the result of internationally supervised elections in which the Communists would take part and which they could help to organise. This again, in our view, is a very fair offer to which, surely, the other side might be expected to respond if they were as confident of their popular support in South Vietnam as they sometimes suggest.
Lastly, President Nixon has proposed the immediate exchange of all prisoners of war held by both sides. This is a gesture of humanity which, if agreed to by the North Vietnamese, would certainly help, in our view, to lighten the atmosphere for negotiation on other issues. I

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should like to make clear that this Government, again like their predecessors, have very real sympathy for the tragic plight of those American servicemen captured or missing in Indo-China; and not least for that of their relatives. Because of the continuing North Vietnamese refusal to divulge complete information about the prisoners they hold, many of these men's relatives do not even know, after years of waiting, whether their kinfolk are alive or dead.
My Lords, perhaps it is not for us, who are not so directly involved in all this issue as are others, to pass judgment on these matters, save as human beings. However, as human beings, I think that all of us must feel that the refusal of the North Vietnamese authorities even to say when they are holding a prisoner is a form of mental cruelty practised on the innocent and unhappy relatives of those who are missing which all of us would condemn. It is against that background that I think it would not be unreasonable to consider the recent abortive attempt to liberate American prisoners from a supposed camp near Hanoi. In any event, like our predecessors, we have kept in close touch with the American Government on this particular issue and we are ready to seize whatever opportunity presents itself to assist them in their efforts to get the North Vietnamese to accord at least the minimum standards of the Geneva Convention in the treatment of their prisoners. Unfortunately, of course, our opportunities for influencing the North Vietnamese are very limited.
President Nixon's proposals, which have been supported by the Governments of Laos and Cambodia and South Vietnam, reaffirm his desire for a negotiated settlement which would restore peace and security in Indo-China. If accepted as a basis for negotiation by the other side, they would also ensure that the peoples of the area would be able to decide their own future, free from all outside interference whatsoever. This we believe to be absolutely right, and that is why the efforts of the American Administration to achieve a settlement on this basis will continue to have Her Majesty's Government's wholehearted support.
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I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd—in very moderate terms, for which I am grateful—whether I could accord himself and your Lordships any further information about the recent bombing attacks carried out South of the Nineteenth Parallel by the United States Air Force. I am afraid that so far as the background and the actual operational context is concerned I cannot add any more to what the noble Lord will have seen reported by the United States Secretary of State, Mr. Laird. The noble Lord asked me whether Her Majesty's Government had been informed, and I can tell the noble Lord in return that we were not told in advance by
the Americans about these air strikes. The noble Lord would not expect me at this stage to elaborate very much on this operation, which, so far as I know, is now concluded. All I would say is that operations of this limited kind have taken place before; and I am not saying whether I feel this is right or wrong.
Secondly, I would urge that prime responsibility for the continuation of the war and all that it entails must rest primarily with the North Vietnamese because they have not responded to the many offers made to them to bring about a peaceful settlement, the most recent being the offer made by President Nixon on October 7. That, I feel, and I have summarised the proposals briefly to your Lordships, was an offer which, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, provided a way out for both sides. As I see it, there is no great loss of face for either side in the acceptance of the broad line of President Nixon's proposals. But so long as the other side continue to frustrate a settlement, it is my understanding that the Americans will continue with their policy of Vietnamisation.
This involves, as the noble and gallant Lord reminded the House, turning over to the South Vietnamese responsibility for their own defence on a phased and progressive basis. I was interested to hear the noble and gallant Lord say that, save for logistic backing, it was his feeling that the South Vietnamese land forces would be able to cope with the position by themselves by the end of 1971. I would merely remind your Lordships that this policy has enabled the Americans to withdraw a very large number of their

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men from South Vietnam. By the spring of 1971, the total of United States forces in Vietnam will have been reduced by nearly half, compared with the position when President Nixon took office. From a maximum of just over half a million troops at its highest point, the United States forces will be reduced, according to present plans, to just over a quarter of a million by the middle of next year.
Unfortunately, we must recognise that for their part the North Vietnamese have as yet made no really constructive proposals for a just and peaceful settlement. Madam Binh's recent amplification of the National Liberation Front's position amounted to no more than a restatement of their unrealistic preconditions. I find it sad that for a long time the negotiators in Paris have been saying that the fact that Mr. Lodge has not been replaced shows that the Americans are not in earnest. Now they have in the person of Mr. Bruce a diplomat of whose quality we are all well aware. It is sad that that particular argument has been so transparently punctured. In any event, it is our earnest hope that the Communists will reconsider their position and respond to the American desire for meaningful negotiations. If only for humanitarian reasons, we urge them to do so. Whatever else we feel about this, we must all feel that the people of Vietnam have suffered quite enough. I would just remind your Lordships of the casualties, although you are probably well aware of them. Dealing only with war casualties and not with the countless civilian casualties, on the American side there have been nearly 44,000 killed, more than in the whole Korean campaign. On the South Vietnamese side, there have been 117,000 killed. This is from January 1, 1961, to November 7 of this yeas. On the Communist side, it is estimated that no fewer than 682,000 have been killed.
After this general sketch, I turn to our specific concern with the problems of Indo-China in our capacity as cochairman of the Geneva Conferences. On a number of occasions, like our predecessors, we have already urged the Soviet co-chairman to join with us in convening an international conference on Indo-China. The noble Lords, Lord Gore-Booth and Lord Shepherd, who have asked me about this, do not feel, I expect, that I shall be able to give a
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very optimistic reply and I am afraid that I am not able to do so. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs raised the matter again with Mr. Gromyko, when he was in London recently, but Mr. Gromyko, I am sorry to say, again declined to co-operate, maintaining, as the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, anticipated, that the time is not ripe for such a conference.
While, therefore, we are frustrated for the present from fulfilling our role as Geneva co-chairman, nevertheless we are ready to assist in the search for peace in any other way which would be acceptable to the parties directly concerned. Here I should like to repeat again our conviction that a peaceful solution which would take just account of the interests of all parties concerned in Indo-China is perfectly feasible, perfectly on the cards, but it will not be achieved until both sides, not merely one, realise that their own interests, as well as those of others, will be best served by serious negotiations instead of continued bloodletting.
In any event, we are encouraged in certain other, perhaps peripheral, respects, not on central issues—for example, by the contacts which have been taking place between the opposing parties in Laos. This is a country which I have had the pleasure of visiting, and I feel that your Lordships will agree with me that Prince Souvanna Phouma, the Prime Minister of Laos, deserves our praise and support for his skilful and sustained efforts to preserve the neutrality and integrity of his country. We very much hope that the present contacts between the Royal Laotian Government and the Pathet Lao will develop into meaningful talks and that these will lead to an improvement in the situation in Laos. We had discussions with Prince Souvanna Phouma when he was in London in the autumn, and as Geneva co-chairman I should like to make it quite clear that Her Majesty's Government are ready to play their full part in helping to make these talks, if they come about, a success. But there is, of course, an obvious limit to what they may achieve, because the situation in Indo-China is to a large extent indivisible. A final, comprehensive settlement will only be made possible by the ending of the war in Vietnam.

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Coming to the wider regional and economic contexts, may I just say this? We have welcomed action by the countries of South-East Asia to get together to tackle their own regional problems. The initiative earlier this year by the group of Asian countries which
met in Djakarta to discuss the situation in Cambodia was an important instance of this. But in the economic field the South-East Asian countries are likely to continue for some time to need assistance from more developed countries outside the region. We fully recognise this and are doing what we can within our limited resources to help in Indo-China, as in the rest of South-East Asia. I should like to instance, as an illustration of our support of regional economic development, the support (of which I have some personal knowledge) which Her Majesty's Government have been extending and are still extending towards the Asian Development Bank.
Finally, may I turn to some other matters which I know are close to your Lordships' hearts and which have been mentioned in this short debate? Our civil aid to South Vietnam over the last five years has been considerable, covering the provision of a pædiatric medical team in Saigon, the building of primary schools, the provision of a substantial amount of road-building equipment and aid over civil police training. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Segal, that so far as the pædiatric team are concerned we are now considering, in consultation with our South Vietnam friends, what further contribution might usefully be made in this important field.
While we are on this subject, I should like to pay tribute to what the British voluntary agencies have been doing in South Vietnam. They have been working there in extraordinarily difficult circumstances for a long time. I should like to mention what the Save the Children Fund have been doing in running a clinic for the post-operative care of children near Hanoi. In this and in other ways we can bring some assistance, within our limited resources, to the people of South Vietnam; and it is certainly our intension to continue these efforts.
Now that the security situation in South Vietnam is better, we are considering what other help we can give, particularly
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to promote South Vietnam's economic development, not least in the field of agriculture, to which the noble and gallant Lord referred. My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Mr. Royle, has reaffirmed in another place our support and sympathy for Cambodia. We are also considering ways in which we might help the Cambodians, including, in response to a request from the Cambodian Government, the setting up of an English language teaching centre in Phnom Penh.
I should like to remind your Lordships that we contribute to the extent of something over £710,000 a year to the Foreign Exchange Operations Fund for the stabilisation of the Laotian currency. This is an important contribution to the economy of Laos. We have also assisted the Laotians, and will continue to do so in other ways.
LORD BESWICK: I was interested when the noble Earl spoke of the postoperative clinic. Near to Hanoi? Did he mean that?
EARL JELLICOE: No; I did not mean that. Near to Saigon. It is at Qui Nhon to be precise.
To sum up, Her Majesty's Government believe that the conditions for a peaceful settlement in Indo China exist. We believe that President Nixon has put forward proposals which, if taken up by the other side as a basis for serious negotiations, could bring the fighting rapidly to an end. The South Vietnamese Government has offered the Communists the opportunity of taking part in free and fair internationally supervised elections, and has committed itself to abiding by the outcome. North Vietnam, which has itself suffered grievously as a result of this war, has as much to gain by responding positively to these offers as any of the other parties involved. We must hope that the North Vietnamese will soon come to realise, as the Americans have already come to realise, that a military solution of this war is not possible, and that they will then indicate their willingness to join in serious negotiation to try to reach a settlement acceptable to all the parties concerned. For our part, I can assure your Lordships of one thing: that we will do anything within our power to promote that process.

FOWL PEST
7.3 p.m.
EARL FERRERS EARL FERRERS rose to ask Her Majesty's Government: What further action they propose to take in order to ensure the more effective control of the disease fowl pest? The noble Earl said: My Lords, we have discussed this afternoon a whole host of far-ranging subjects, from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to defectors from the United States Forces. I would ask your Lordships to take off your long-distance glasses for a moment, and to try to focus your minds on something a little nearer home. It may not be of quite such world-shaking impact as the other subjects that we have been discussing, but it is nevertheless of great importance to that section of the community which is affected by the subject matter of the Question that I have put down on the Order Paper.
It would be no exaggeration to say that the disease of fowl pest has gone through the poultry industry, especially in East Anglia, like a scythe. The disease is still spreading, and it is spreading outside East Anglia into other parts of the country: It has spread to such an extent that it has been identified in 35 counties. Indeed, so great has been the spread of this disease that even the Irish Republic are requesting people who enter their country and who have been on poultry farms in Great Britain to report to the veterinary officer at their ports of disembarkation on arrival. The object of my Question is to draw to the attention of your Lordships the devastating effect which this disease has had upon the whole of the poultry industry—and by "poultry industry" I do not mean just the producers and the keepers of poultry; I refer also to the packing stations, the hatcheries, the retailers, and all those who are affected by it. My object is to see whether there is any way in which this disease can be more effectively controlled in the future.
I would say here that my Question is not intended at all to imply any criticism of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, or of their veterinary officers, who have done, and indeed are doing, a magnificent job in trying to tight this disease. There are those who offer criticism: of course there always will be. It is only human nature to try to find a peg on which to hang your hat, and in
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this matter the Ministry are an obvious choice. But I believe that the veterinary officers of the Ministry have done an extremely conscientious job in the most trying circumstances, and often at great personal inconvenience to themselves.
At the outset, I should tell your Lordships that I myself keep poultry. My poultry, like so many other poultry in East Anglia, have been affected by the disease—although I am bound to say that I have come off lightly. But I hope that the generosity of your Lordships will enable you to refrain from concluding that the fact that my poultry have been affected is the reason why I am raising this matter to-day. It is not for that reason, but simply because this disease has given the whole of the poultry industry, of which I happen to form a very small part, an almighty blow.
When one talks of fowl pest, one is apt to think of a farmer whose birds are struck with a disease from which they will either get better or die. But the repercussions from this disease go far deeper than that. As regards table poultry or broilers, the whole operation, from before the egg which produces the chick, right through to the packing station and the retailer, has to be coordinated. The packing station is the centre around which all the operations function, and it is essential that the packing stations should have a continuous throughput. Accordingly, the birds which
are being produced for a packing station have all to be at a certain age at the time of slaughter. Therefore, in order to fit into the cycle of the packing station the grower must have his chicks on a certain day. In order for the grower to receive his birds on an appointed day, the hatchery has to set the eggs which produce these birds on an appointed day. In order for the hatchery to have the eggs to produce, it must ensure that there are supplies of eggs from the breeding farms. And in order for the breeding farms to be able to supply the eggs, they have to have assured quantities of mature laying birds.
When a site of broilers, which may be anything from 4,000 to 150,000 birds, is smitten by this disease, then this quantity of birds is plucked out of the cycle of the packing station. Your Lordships will see that the effect of this disease,

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therefore, goes much deeper than the financial and the physical loss which may be sustained by the grower of the birds. For, like a goods train shunting, it bumps all the way down the line. When one realises that farms containing more than 12 million birds have been affected by fowl pest since September, and that 7 million birds have died from the disease, one begins to get an idea of the hideous enormity of the problem. Most of these outbreaks have been in East Anglia. In my own county of Norfolk alone, 3½ million birds have died, while birds which are usually not the subject of this disease have also been dying from it. There have been reports of pheasants contracting the disease, as well as pigeons and sparrows; and there have even been cases of owls and rare buzzards being affected.
I am bound to say, in passing, that I had hoped on this occasion to have the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill (who is not here this evening), who has always shown such an interest in the control of brucellosis in cattle because of its effect on humans. She may not know that fowl pest is also transmissible to man. Some years ago, when the slaughter and compensation policy was in operation, my farm manager happened to contract fowl pest, and I was sufficiently injudicious to suggest to him that he also ought to be slaughtered and I be duly compensated. I am bound to say that on that occasion I found that my sense of humour was in marked contrast to his.
The way in which this disease strikes is one of extreme savagery, and it differs from the way it has struck in the past. Since the slaughter and compensation policy was replaced in 1964 by a policy of voluntary vaccination with a dead vaccine, there have been outbreaks of fowl pest in vaccinated stock attributed to the mesogenic or mild strain of the virus, and losses in these cases have been up to about 20 per cent.
But the picture in the present outbreak is very different. It has struck far more sharply and far more speedily, and the losses have been immense. One packing station has had losses on its sites of up to 95 per cent. of birds in 24 hours. Another has recorded losses of 98 per
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cent. and the remaining 2 per cent. of birds were so useless and so distorted that they had to be killed. On 22 sites supplying one packing station, 20 have been affected by the disease, one of them
twice. One firm has already lost three quarters of a million birds, and is still losing 90,000 to 100,000 per week. Another firm has already lost over 14 million birds. The point is that these birds have all been vaccinated with a Ministry approved vaccine.
This gives rise to a whole host of questions. Has the broiler industry been wasting its time over the last six years in vaccinating its birds if, when there is a field challenge, the birds succumb? I think it probably has not, but it makes one wonder. It costs about ¾d. per "shot" to vaccinate a bird, and since 1964 one company has spent £300,000 in vaccinating its stock in order to protect them from fowl pest. Yet, when there is a challenge, not only have they succumbed to the disease, but the company has sustained losses from fowl pest of 150,000.
The Ministry of Agriculture have always stated that there must be 80 per cent. of the national flock vaccinated to ensure total security; and because of the initial scare of fowl pest in 1964 and the subsequent effectiveness of the vaccination policy, producers have become slack, and the percentage of vaccinations of total stock has dropped. In Essex, where this current outbreak started,
under 50 per cent. of the poultry had been vaccinated, and the poultry industry may well stand, therefore, to share a large proportion of the blame for this current out break.
I am bound to say that I have never quite understood the logic of the 80 per cent. requirement, though I appreciate its objective. If I wish to be vaccinated against measles I go down to the doctor and get a jab; but I do not expect that the whole of Chelsea and Kensington and South Ealing should be similarly treated. Of course it is desirable to have 80 per cent. of flocks vaccinated, but a policy of protection leaves much to be desired if the effectiveness of it to an individual depends not on his participation, but in the active and voluntary participation in it of everyone else over whom he has no control.
If the vaccination policy has been worth while, has the virus mutated and changed, as viruses sometimes do, so that the vaccine which was effective against the virus as it was originally constructed is now not effective against the virus as at present constructed? It is a normal practice to test the efficiency of the methods of vaccination by subjecting a sample of vaccinated birds to a laboratory test. In samples of about 20, three or four birds would normally die; and in the past those who have vaccinated the birds—frequently they are contractors—were blamed for these deaths because of poor vaccination. But recently a sample of vaccinated birds was subjected to a laboratory challenge and all of them died. Is that the fault of the vaccinators, or is the vaccine not proof against the virus? Are the Ministry sure that the present outbreak is wholly and totally of the Newcastle disease—the name commonly attributed to fowl pest? Are they quite certain that there is no evidence of the Peracute form of fowl pest which is still subject to the slaughter and compensation policy? When one used to inquire what the difference was between fowl pest and the Peracute form one was always told, in a rather sinisterly succinct fashion, that with the Peracute form the birds just die en masse, and very quickly too.
I suggest that this is exactly what has been happening, and if no blood samples are taken by the Ministry at every outbreak, how do the Ministry know with any degree of conviction that this is not Peracute fowl pest? There have been reports of lesions being found on dead birds examined by independent veterinary surgeons which are indicative of the presence of Peracute fowl pest. The Ministry have always been adamant that this is not the Peracute fowl pest, but I am bound to make it clear that, over this, they are not carrying the industry with them. The opinion that many of these outbreaks are of Peracute fowl pest is one held by a great number of respected people in the poultry industry, and I hope that my noble friend, if he contends that they are not of this type of disease, will make out a better and more convincing case than has been made out by the Ministry up to now.
If we are to have an effective vaccination policy, with a dead vaccine, we come
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up against the problem of how to vaccinate effectively. Here one has a distinct difference between broiler birds and laying birds. If chicks are to be grown for laying stock it is recommended that they are vaccinated at 18 days, 10 weeks and at point-of-lay. Then, if there is a further outbreak, they can be re-vaccinated. This has proved, on the whole, to give a fairly effective, albeit not a total, immunity from fowl pest.
But broilers present a very different problem. Their life is only eight weeks and they can be vaccinated only once or possibly twice. But it is now considered that they will never have a full immunity from the disease for, by the time the immunity has been built up in the birds, they will have been slaughtered. The result is that in the case of broilers a large part of their life is spent unprotected, and yet they live in conditions most likely to incubate the disease and, by the nature of the powerful fans which are used to ventilate, they are perfect disseminators of the virus. This type of bird, therefore, is the largest section of the poultry industry in numbers, the least protected by the vaccine, the most susceptible to the disease and the best spreader of it.
The fact that we must fully appreciate is that the present system of protection against the disease has broken down and we might as well recognise the fact openly. Confidence in the dead vaccine has also been shaken very badly indeed. Fowl pest is still a notifiable disease and when it is found on the premises the owner is by law bound to inform the Ministry of the presence of this disease. The Ministry will then prevent the removal of the infected birds from the house until the disease has passed. But birds in other houses on the same site may be removed as quickly as possible to avoid their contracting the disease.
Therefore, birds are going out into the packing stations at present at all ages and sizes wherever they can be processed, which leaves the packing stations empty at the time when the birds would normally have been processed. This, combined with the fact that many sites are not being restocked for fear of reinfection, has thrown the packing stations into complete jeopardy, and many are in real threat of closure. My information

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is that there is not a packing station in East Anglia (of which there are some 15) which is not on short time or which has not closed down. Equally, because in many instances houses are not being restocked, hatcheries have in turn a much reduced call for chicks and shortly they will be running on part time. Meanwhile, the birds in the infected houses on the site continue discharging the virus through the fans and reinfecting the other birds. The one great advantage of the slaughter and compensation policy was that, if there was an outbreak, the source of infection was destroyed immediately. Now the source of infection continues to thrive and to threaten others.
The outbreaks are so numerous that the Ministry cannot physically deal with the number of reported incidents quickly enough. In one case the Ministry were informed on a Friday of an outbreak of fowl pest in 25,000 birds, and they said that they would come and inspect the site the following Wednesday. When they appeared on the following Wednesday, out of the original 25,000 birds only 150 were left on the site alive.
The dilemma was graphically put to me by a member of one company the other day, who said that they are restocking their houses but they know that within a fortnight the chances are very high that these birds will all get the disease. When I asked why such a risk was taken he replied that, as a packing station costs between £1,000 and £2,000 per day to run, the risk of having a packing station with no birds to process was even greater. If no birds are being reared or processed, then the business folds up—it is just as simple as that. The losses which people are sustaining as a result of this disease are absolutely crippling, and they cannot continue to stand these losses.
This situation is having two major effects. First people are now just not notifying the Ministry when they have the disease. As soon as growers realise that this disease is on their premises, in many cases the birds are sent immediately for slaughter and the Ministry is not told about it. However wrong this may be, one can understand any person not being prepared to suffer the huge financial loss of informing the Ministry and then waiting
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and watching the birds die. Secondly any method of protection for the birds is bound to be used, and this includes the illegal use of live vaccine. This is being brought in from the Continent at the moment. Live vaccine used to be manufactured in England and exported for use by the Continent. It is now manufactured, as I understand it, on the Continent by a similar company or the parent company of the firm which manufactured it in England, and it is now being brought back into this country, which is legal, but is being used in poultry, which of course is illegal. The live vaccine is a very different creature from what it was in 1964, and there are many eminent veterinary officers outside the Ministry who feel that, if strains such as the Hitchener B.1 vaccine were used, because of their nature and easy application the disease would soon be brought under control.
It is true that the Ministry are doing tests with live vaccine at the moment, and I believe that they have now completed vaccinating all the birds which they intend to put on trial. But they will now have to sit back and wait for some 12 to 15 weeks to assess the results. Their caution is understandable, and they may well be considered by many to be right. I felt that the Ministry were wrong to try such an experiment at the time of a virulent outbreak. Why, if the live vaccine was so good, was it not tried before? Are we sure that it will not transmit many sub-clinical diseases such as leukæmia, which was transmitted by the use of live vaccine in America? What will happen to the Cordon Sanitaire which this island enjoys, and the protection from cheap imported poultry which is one of the results—although not one of the objectives—of a dead vaccine policy? These are all very pertinent views and ones which I hold strongly.
However, I suggest that we are living in critical times, and I am going to suggest to your Lordships what I never thought I would suggest—and, indeed, what I did not intend to suggest when I first put down this Question. But my researches have subsequently assured me that what my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture ought to do now is to authorise the use, under his control, of live vaccine. This is a real and virulent epidemic, as I have tried to explain to

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your Lordships, and the disease is speading like a forest fire. I do not believe that in these circumstances the Ministry of Agriculture can, or should, move with the caution which in normal circumstances would rightly be expected of them. In my judgment (and I repeat that I have altered entirely the view which I originally held over this matter; and in this I do not think I am alone) live fowl pest vaccine should be used in the badly affected areas, under Ministry supervision, forthwith and without delay, in order to bring this disease under control. Unlike the dead vaccine, it can be administered even to day-old chicks and gives a greatly increased resistance over the dead vaccine when it is met by a challenge.
I would put forward as one of the most important factors in this argument—and I realise that in the poultry industry this is a controversial argument—that in this outbreak the dead vaccine can no longer be expected to control the spread of the disease. The earliest at which one can reasonably vaccinate a chick is at 12 days. This does not give an immunity, but it sensitises the bird so that it is more responsive to the second vaccination, which cannot be done for a further fortnight, bringing the bird to 26 days of age. By the time an immunity has been built up in this bird it is another 10 days older. So with a dead vaccine the bird is 36 days old before there is any reasonable chance of immunity. Yet birds are getting fowl pest at 14 days, and at 8 days, of age. Therefore, if we keep the dead vaccine policy this disease must continue and birds must continue to die. And, at the present rate of progress, each day the Minister delays the decision to use live vaccine, 60,000 birds will die.
I do not believe that the Government can, or should, stand by and watch this disease rampage through the industry and through the country, crippling good and efficient firms in its wake, and ruining hardworking people who are doing the best that they can, without taking drastic action when they have a possible remedy in their hands. I am not one of those who believe—
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Earl will tell us whether the live vaccine has an immediate effect so that at the first vaccination it will get immunity. Is that what he is telling us?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, this is a complicated subject and involves also the immunity which the chick receives from its parents. But one can vaccinate at a day old, and my understanding is that one obtains a very much quicker immunity having vaccinated the bird with a live vaccine, because a live vaccine gives to the bird, by way of an eye, or through the drinking water, the actual virus, and so it stimulates the antibodies in the bird very much more quickly than does a dead vaccine.
I am not one of those who believe that the live vaccine is the panacea for all our troubles, but I do believe that at the present moment the advantages of its use far outweigh the disadvantages. It may be that the use of live vaccine permanently would not be necessary, and that it could be kept for use in an emergency and in case of an outbreak, when its use would enable the outbreak to be contained within an area. But if that is to be so, and if the dead vaccine policy is to be continued, I should wish to be far more convinced than I am at the moment that the dead vaccine really works, and especially in broilers. If, after due research, the Ministry continue to believe that an 80 per cent. vaccination of all the stock will protect the industry from fowl pest, then vaccination should be made compulsory, with very heavy penalties on those who fail to do so and, by so failing, put the livelihood of others at risk.
I do not accept the argument that just because checking on vaccination would be difficult to police, therefore it should not be made compulsory. Of course there will be people who will try to get round it—there always are. But they will be in the minority and will be exposing themselves, if caught, to very heavy penalties. After all, we have a speed limit on the roads which is fairly, if not totally, effective, and nobody would seriously advocate its abolition just because it cannot be enforced in every single instance. The penalties for infringement are pretty severe.
My Lords, the Ministry have the power to enable the industry to extricate itself from this dreadful mess, but I respectfully suggest that they need to change their tactics. I believe that, in the interests of the individuals and of the industry—and of the disease itself—these tactics should be changed. Most organisations will be

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able to overcome the losses which they have suffered to date, but what will ruin them is when they cannot re-stock their houses because of fear of re-infection. This will render the houses empty, the packing stations empty, the hatcheries empty; and the eggs which are produced specially for hatching will have to go, at financial loss, for consumption.
I apologise for having kept your Lordships so long in describing what is a sad and sorry tale, but I very much hope that my right honourable friend the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will be able, through my noble friend this evening, to make a statement on the use of live vaccine and so help the poultry industry to get back once again on its feet and out of the real trouble in which, at the moment, this disease has placed it.
7.34 p.m.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Ferrers has certainly done the poultry industry a great service in bringing this acute problem to the notice of your Lordships and the Government, for it is indeed a very serious one, and I should like to congratulate him on the clarity with which he has presented a very involved and difficult case. It is difficult to understand and to follow, but he has made it very much clearer.
Until August of this year the dead vaccination programme had contained this disease in England and Wales. As the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers said, it is necessary that 75 per cent. to 80 per cent. of the birds in the country must be vaccinated in order to give control. It is rather a long and involved story to explain how the Ministry get that figure of 80 per cent., but it is quite a sound figure scientifically for them to reach. In midsummer, however, this figure of vaccinated birds had fallen to as little as 53 per cent. There is the immediate root of the troubles with which we are faced now; but the long-distance reason why we are in trouble in the poultry industry now is that we have brought it on our own heads.
The Departmental Committee on fowl pest policy sat from 1960 to 1962 under the chairmanship of Sir Arnold Plant, and perhaps there is no more expert committee
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chairman than he, in many spheres of economics and commerce and industry. On this complicated subject this Committee produced a unanimous Report, and that is very significant. The Committee was not a large one, but it was composed of quite diverse persons. The main recommendation, and the one to which most space is devoted in the Report, is to this effect:
"We recommended that in the future the cost of compensation should be met by the poultry industry. We consider that the most satisfactory method of securing a contribution from the whole industry would be a levy on production of day-old chicks, turkey poults, ducklings and game chicks. We recommend a levy on hatchery turnover and, for this purpose, the registration of hatcheries."
The Report also recommends the possibility that by this means there might be the financing of the vaccine and, in addition, a contribution made towards the cost of research.
Despite this clear and absolute recommendation, the principal recommendation indubitably of this Report, the Government of the day did not take it up. Whether they yielded to pressure from the industry or from the Farmers' Unions, or something like that I am afraid I do not know, but there must have been some reason why they did not take up such a strong recommendation. If the recommendation had been adopted, the proportion of unvaccinated birds would never have risen to the high point which it did last summer and which made this present outbreak virtually inevitable.
My noble friend was quite right when he described the nature of the present virus with which we are faced as being extremely virulent. It has changed from the one that was troubling us at the time the Committee was investigating the matter. It is not only a very virulent type but it is one which spreads easily. Formerly the more virulent types were not so infective. Now we have a combination of a virulent and infective type of virus, and we are facing a more lethal one than we have had in the past. That might in part account for the failure of the dead vaccine to which the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, referred.
The situation about our vaccines as a result of the research work
which has been done in the Ministry's laboratories by the veterinary researchers has also

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changed. As the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, noted, the vaccines have spread other diseases through the egg. We have had fowl paralysis spread through the live vaccine, infectious bronchitis and respiratory diseases. But now the live vaccines, thanks to the work of the veterinary investigators, are, so I understand, much safer to use. There is a method of using them which is perhaps in danger of catching the imagination of the industry: that is, spraying the birds with this live vaccine, or putting it into their drinking water. There are dangers if this policy is adopted, because one cannot ensure that every bird is immunised by such cheap means of administering the live vaccine. Too big a proportion of the birds are not immunised.
I would ask the Government whether it is not a possible solution to allow the use of the live vaccine in certain counties only for a limited period, say twelve months, and after that try again to contain the disease by the dead vaccine only. The noble Earl, Lord
Ferrers, referred to the importation of broilers and other birds from other parts. At the present moment because the disease is not endemic in this country the health regulations do prohibit the importation of the carcases from countries in which the disease is endemic; that is to say, the United States of America and most European countries. If a live vaccine policy becomes general in England, there will be no argument for keeping out the carcases from other countries that are carrying the disease. That is the dilemma: either to have the additional cost to contain the disease in this country, or be prepared to face the hard truth that if frozen poultry are allowed to come in, both from America and elsewhere, the broiler industry will not merely be badly hit, it will be in grave danger of collapsing altogether.
It would not do if I were to get up and speak in your Lordships' House without mentioning the peculiar situation in Scotland. It is in this case the same with Northern Ireland. There we have a slaughter policy which has been left from previous times, as we were rather less open to infection than those counties of England which are open to the infection from the Continent. So long as Scotland buys dead birds from England, so long are we somewhat at risk, and
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indeed we have some outbreaks at the present moment. But the surprising thing is that during the last eight years Scotland has been relatively free of fowl pest, and it looks as though to a certain extent, with some exceptions, the present outbreaks in Scotland are the result of the dead birds which have been imported from England, or which turn up as swill. In these circumstances there is, therefore, I think, reason to continue in Scotland and Northern Ireland the present policy of slaughter and compensation; and consideration might perhaps be given to the extension of that policy to Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland and perhaps sonic other counties in the North of England.
The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, has said that this is indeed a most serious situation, and the whole of this important industry, an industry that is essential to the welfare and the health of nearly everybody living on these islands, is in jeopardy. I should like to pay tribute to the work both of the veterinary surgeons who are working in the field and of those who are working in the laboratories. They have been doing a fine job. Great strides have been made since the Report came out in 1962. More knowledge has been discovered about the disease, and we are better able to combat it from the scientific angle. But I think veterinary surgeons would welcome a lead from the Government, to know fairly soon what policy it is proposed to adopt, because the present outbreak has brought us up against problems and we just cannot let them ride out—they will not. The whole industry is in jeopardy, and I hope it will not be long before a new and a positive policy can be handed down to the industry.
7.47 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am sure that we all thank the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, for raising this matter, even though by our standards it is getting a little late. It seems to be a fact that this outbreak of fowl pest has not attracted the interest of the general public as did the plague of foot-and-mouth disease in 1967–68. Yet to those concerned it is clearly equally serious. The personal loss involved is just as great, and to see this disease spread constitutes an appalling tragedy. I am sure that what has been said both by the noble Earl, Lord

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Ferrers, and by the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, about the veterinary services of the Ministry is absolutely justified, but what we want from the Minister who is to reply is an assurance that the whole resources of the Department are being mobilised in order to contain this outbreak.
I am not in a position to comment at all upon the merits of the dead or live vaccine, but the noble Earl has posed a number of very relevant questions which I hope are going to be answered this evening. I want simply to add this. The first step must be to contain this outbreak, but I think we are aware that this is an industry which has seen an enormous growth in a comparatively short space of time, and I am not at all certain that the conditions under which it has grown or the policy that has been directed towards the containment of disease is based on sufficient knowledge. I want to ask the Minister what steps are being taken to ensure, not simply that this outbreak is contained, but that we try to prevent another one in the future. Is there going to be a thorough-going inquiry into this? Shall we see some report afterwards which tries to find out how it all happened and whether any change of policy is required? I feel that this matter is so serious that some special steps ought to be taken.
7.50 p.m.
LORD HOY: My Lords, I apologise for detaining your Lordships at this late hour, but I should like to add a word or two to this debate. First of all, I should like to express my thanks to the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, for raising this debate and for his tribute to the veterinary service. I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, because in my experience at the Ministry, which extended over a fair period, I can testify to the efficiency with which the veterinary service works. I remember the tremendous tributes paid to the veterinary service at the time of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in this country. At that time the Ministry called in the advice, work and labour of many vets. outside the Ministry altogether. They called for their support to help stem the tide of the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.
As my noble friend on the Front Bench said, the same thing is happening with
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fowl pest as was happening with the brucellosis outbreak. I should like to know what other assistance has been called in, because the Department and its veterinary service must be strained to the very utmost. I should also like to ask what estimate the Ministry have made of the number of poultry that have had to be destroyed as the result of these outbreaks. The noble Earl who opened the debate mentioned figures of 7 to 8 million infected birds, and quoted cases where hundreds of thousands were dying even on particular farms or packaging stations. As I understand it, since August the number of outbreaks notified is nearing 2,000—about 1,950. If that is so, quite obviously outside assistance must be required to deal with the problem.
So far as Scotland is concerned, the policy is different because there you have the policy of slaughter and compensation. I understand—and the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—that only five cases have been notified in Scotland in that period, as against 1,950 in the rest of the country. The number of birds that had to be slaughtered is about 5,340 and compensation of something under £4,000 had to be paid to meet that situation. One has to consider what is the correct policy for meeting this problem. We had this policy of dead vaccine, and it was interesting to hear the noble Earl say that even when birds had been vaccinated death was taking place. Apparently even vaccination has not given us the results that we had hoped for. If it is true that only 53 per cent. of the birds have been vaccinated, then obviously the field is wide open for a spread of the disease. That is one other problem that has to be tackled.
I understand that the Ministry have been carrying out tests on birds, inoculating them with live vaccines. If I remember correctly, there were three or four places designated in which this vaccination was taking place. I am certain that your Lordships will be interested to hear what the results are so far from these experiments. I know it is very tempting, and I can understand, when the disease reaches the dimensions that this one has, the noble Earl saying that perhaps we have or might have a probable cure for the disease with live vaccine, and that the Ministry should not take quite so long as they normally take to

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carry out this policy. It is not for me to defend the Ministry—they are well able to do that themselves—but they have to consider that if they pushed ahead with this new treatment by live vaccine and we then had repercussions that might be even greater than the disease, we should come along to your Lordships' House to tell the Ministry that they had no right to take action for which they did not have proof.
I should like to know, and I am certain that your Lordships would like to know, what estimate the Ministry have made of the number of birds that have died as the result of this disease. Also, what are the results from the tests that they are making? Further, we should like to know whether the Ministry can hold out any hope of these efforts meeting the situation. Lastly, we should like to know what policy the Government propose to pursue in future as a result of their investigations so far.
7.55 p.m.
LORD WISE: My Lords, I also apologise for keeping your Lordships at this late hour, but before the Minister replies I have a few questions that I should like to ask. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, told us of the uncertainty regarding the efficiency of the dead vaccine system aid the possible breakdown of this system. I understand that there is widespread satisfaction within the industry over the decision to introduce field trials with the live vaccine. I understand also that it is felt that these trials are moving too slowly to combat the present particularly virulent type of outbreak.
The noble Lord, Lord Balerno, asked whether it would be possible for live vaccine to be made more readily available. I wonder if it could be made more readily available to reputable breeders within certain areas, and possibly for a limited period of time. They could then administer and experiment with other methods of inoculation under the direct supervision of the Ministry veterinary supervisors. But, according to my information, the present methods
of administering this vaccine to the young chicks is not giving them the immediate and complete protection that is necessary. Other methods must be found, for, as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said, there is a tremendously high mortality rate in the very young chicks, those up to
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two, or three or four weeks old. This is causing immense problems both to broiler producers and to the whole cycle of industry.
The ban on movement from infected areas has now been in operation for some two months or so. This is causing considerable hardship to all poultry keepers, especially to breeders and rearers of pullet replacements. I should like to ask the Minister whether it would be possible, if not to remove the ban on all properly vaccinated pullets, to extend the areas in order that the pullets may be more easily sold and disposed of. I know of breeders who have large numbers of these birds, reared under contract, and who now suddenly find that they have them all on their hands: they cannot move them. It is causing considerable financial loss, and also enormous management problems.
If it is impossible to extend the areas, could not a total ban be placed on the movement of birds, both in and out of the infected areas? It would appear that these breeders and rearers are labouring under the most unfair competition if birds are let in from free areas, thereby greatly accentuating their own difficulties. These producers are unable to move birds outside and can move them, under licence, only within the area. Surely it would work on a reciprocal basis, that the people who have contracted to sell birds into the area could take over the contracts of the people within the area. That is a little involved, but something like that could be worked out.
8.0 p.m.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, quite a number of noble Lords have spoken on this important subject from their great experience. If what I have to say does not entirely satisfy them, I should like to assure all noble Lords that my right honourable friend and his advisers will consider very carefully everything that has been said in the debate to-night. My noble friend Lord Ferrers covered a wide field in his speech and gave us all a very full account of the effects of the fowl pest epidemic on the poultry industry. I accept a great deal of what he has said about the serious nature of this epidemic. He has mentioned some of the difficulties of taking further action, and I shall be mentioning some more. But it may help

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if I start by outlining the basis of our present policy to control the disease.
The policy stems from the Report of the Committee, chaired by Professor Sir Arnold Plant, which reviewed our measures for control of fowl pest and reported in 1962. This Committee concluded that the policy of compulsory slaughter and compensation which was then in operation had failed to control the spread of the disease and was subject to other important objections. In particular it had entailed the unnecessary destruction of birds, many of which would otherwise have recovered from the disease, and this had caused disruption of the industry. Its cost has been extremely high, and it had placed an intolerable load on the Ministry's veterinary service. The Committee concluded that we should adopt a policy of control rather than eradication. The Government of the day accepted this recommendation and introduced a policy of voluntary vaccination by the industry in England and Wales, using an inactivated vaccine. Compulsory slaughter was retained only for the peracute form of the disease and fowl plague in England and Wales, and for all forms of fowl pest in Scotland, where the incidence of the disease was very low.
There can be no doubt, my Lords, that until last August this policy was an unqualified success. It had been estimated, as my noble friend has said, that to achieve satisfactory control of the disease not less than 75 per cent. of the national flock should be fully vaccinated. In the early days of the vaccination policy a large proportion of producers followed the Ministry's advice and vaccinated their flocks, and by 1965 it was estimated that about 80 per cent. of the national flock was then being regularly vaccinated.
This high level of vaccination continued until last year, and the effect on the number of outbreaks of the disease was impressive. From the 2,000 or more outbreaks commonly experienced in the years 1960 to 1964 the number of outbreaks fell to 495 in 1965, and gradually reduced still further, until in 1969 only 36 cases of the disease were notified in England and Wales. I believe that these figures speak for themselves. They convincingly justify the change of policy made in 1963, and they show the effectiveness
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of the inactivated vaccine when used properly and sufficiently widely.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend for a moment to ask whether he would say that the vaccine has been immensely successful when in fact there have been 495 outbreaks, albeit the number fell to 35 or 36 a year?
LORD DENHAM: Yes, my Lords, I should say that if, over a period of years, the number of outbreaks reduces every time, this shows that the policy was successful. I think it is a fairly impressive drop from over 2,000 outbreaks to 36 in a matter of six or seven years.
Unfortunately, as my noble friend Lord Ferrers said, the success of this policy may have contributed to its undoing. In 1968 and 1969, producers began to ease up on their vaccination programmes. Some have said that this was due to complacency bred from the success of the policy. Others claim that producers took this means to make a saving on costs necessary because of tight margins. Whatever the reasons may have been, the fact was that by mid-1970 only half the national flock was vaccinated, and this was far below the level necessary for protection against the disease. There can be little doubt that the extent of the present epidemic can be attributed to this cause, and many expert veterinary surgeons consider that the epidemic would not have taken serious hold at all if the vaccination level had been higher.
The Ministry issued a number of warnings of the danger of failure to vaccinate, and an outbreak of the disease occurred in Kent in 1969, with a similar degree of virulence to the disease experienced in the current epidemic. In spite of these warnings, there was no significant rise in the level of vaccination. The incident in Kent was quickly brought under control, since it was in an area with a lower poultry population and the proportion of vaccinated birds was then much higher than it was in Essex when the disease struck again in August of this year.
The noble Earl made a comparison with vaccination against measles, but the situations are not analogous. No fowl pest vaccine is 100 per cent. effective, and the efficacy of the vaccine is bound to be reduced if there are numbers of unvaccinated flocks becoming infected and

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producing a high output or the virus. The sort of challenge which
is consequently produced would be difficult for any vaccine fully to resist. As the noble Earl said, young birds are capable of only a limited response to vaccine, and broilers are, consequently, vulnerable. It is they, in particular, that need a high general level of protection in surrounding flocks. It has been fully demonstrated in this epidemic that the effect of the virus in most properly vaccinated adult and growing birds has been minimal. The vaccine, when given a proper chance, has effectively resisted the challenge.
I should emphasise that the disease being caused by the present virus is not the peracute, Asiatic, type. Repeated clinical inspections, postmortems and other tests have been and are being carried out by the Ministry, and it is quite clear that the virus—although it is virulent—is not the Asiatic type for which the Plant Committee recommended (and the Government of the day accepted) a slaughter policy.
The present epidemic began in Essex on August 25, and since then there have been 1,943 outbreaks of the disease. We have no evidence to suggest that producers are not informing the Ministry of outbreaks. The main areas in which the disease has been concentrated since then have been in Essex and the Eastern Counties, but it has spread to many other parts of the country and now involves 33 counties outside the present infected areas. I should like to express my sympathy to the many farmers whose flocks have been affected. This is a very serious matter for them, as I fully recognise.
Since the epidemic began, the Ministry have imposed infected area restrictions in the whole of East Anglia, including Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, and have applied appropriate restrictions to the affected premises. Every opportunity has been taken to urge producers to vaccinate their flocks. Arrangements have been made with the vaccine manufacturers for supplies of inactivated vaccine to be greatly increased. The manufacturers have assured the Ministry that they are producing vaccine to their maximum capacity and are distributing it as speedily as possible. We understand that supplies of vaccine were greatly increased during
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October and are continuing at a much higher level than usual.
The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, asked me to assure him that all the Ministry's resources were being put into stopping this disease. The noble Lord, Lord Hoy, asked what other resources were being called in. Additional Ministry veterinary manpower has been allocated to areas affected by fowl pest, and special centres have been set up to assist producers in diagnosing and dealing with the disease. We have made full use of all the Ministry's resources, not just veterinary, and we are now making use of the private veterinary profession to augment our own service. Detailed advice is being given on methods of prevention and control, on the treatment of waste food, which can be an important agent in spreading the disease, and on safety precautions in poultry slaughterhouses and egg-packing stations. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have given most generous tribute to the Ministry's veterinary service, which I am sure has been very well earned.
On October 29 my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture announced that he was initiating a field trial of live Newcastle disease vaccine. This is being carried out under close Ministry control on selected farms in the infected areas of East Anglia. The purpose of the trial is to assess the efficacy of live vaccine in the present severe disease situation and in the conditions prevailing in the poultry industry in this country. One of the principal reasons for carrying out this trial is that in recent years there have been scientific and technical advances in the production of live vaccine which have eliminated some of the undesirable side effects formerly associated with it. It is now possible to produce live vaccine of a higher standard of purity than was the case a few years ago, and in consequence it is less likely to introduce other infections.
Nevertheless, the efficacy and side effects of the vaccine in our conditions are not known and need to be assessed in the field before any conclusions on it can be properly drawn. The trial is being carried out under the close control of the Ministry's veterinary officers, and the flocks which are being treated with the

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vaccine have been scientifically selected to ensure that the vaccine is given a rigorous test in a variety of conditions, including flocks of different sizes and types. The necessary supplies of vaccine have been obtained and the trial is now well under way, but it will be some weeks—we hope not as many as 12 weeks—before the results can be evaluated. Several noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Wise, said that there should be no delay in bringing in this live vaccine. There are these other considerations, and although the Ministry will do as much as it can to bring the tests to a satisfactory point as quickly as possible, to go quicker than that would be to risk more serious trouble than before.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I apologise for interrupting again. Is my noble friend saying that it will take less than 12 weeks to evaluate the results of the tests? And by that, does he mean that it will take less than 12 weeks for the Minister to make up his mind and to state what the future policy will be?
LORD DENHAM: Yes, my Lords, that is what I meant. My noble friend wondered why this trial was being undertaken at this time. He will know that the industry is divided on the question of whether or not the general use of live vaccine should be approved. This reflects the fact that there are arguments for and against the live vaccine. It would be cheaper and easier to make and administer. Moreover, it might have advantages in giving somewhat quicker protection to very young birds than is achieved by the inactivated vaccine. But we do not know whether it would be any more effective in British conditions. It could well have adverse side effects, particularly in exacerbating latent infections, and it would reduce the effectiveness of our diagnostic and control measures. There is much, therefore, to be said on both sides. The field trials should permit the force of some of these arguments to be assessed more clearly and should consequently help to point the way to future action. We are testing it now because only now is it possible to give it a really rigorous trial in a disease situation in the field. There is little value in a field trial when there is no fowl pest about.
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My right honourable friend has made it quite clear that he will not re-introduce compulsory slaughter with payment of compensation. I am afraid that I cannot even make an exception in the case of my noble friend's farm manager. This would provide no solution to the present problem, since it has been demonstrated in the past that compulsory slaughter has failed to control the spread of the disease. Moreover it would conflict with the present policy of protection by vaccination, since the compensation would diminish the incentive to many producers to vaccinate.
My noble friend Lord Balerno suggested that the industry should pay a levy on day-old chicks to finance the cost of vaccine. This was not the chief recommendation of the Plant Report. The chief recommendation was that the policy of voluntary vaccination should replace that of slaughter and compensation. My noble friend also suggested that the Government should distribute the vaccine free of charge and the industry would have to finance only the process of vaccination. I can see the purpose of my noble friend's suggestion, but I am bound to say that it has its drawbacks. It is very difficult to see how this could be administered, especially in view of the large number of flocks in this country and the need for repetition of doses. But probably the main objection is that it would not achieve the purpose intended. The principal disincentive to vaccination is not the cost of the vaccine but the cost of the labour needed to administer it and the inconvenience and upheaval caused by having vaccine administered to a large number of birds. The scheme envisaged by my noble friend would do nothing to reduce this.
The noble Lord, Lord Hoy, asked what were the results so far of the field trials of live vaccine. We are pressing on with these trials as quickly as we possibly can, but I am afraid that at the moment it is too early to give any results. He also asked for the number of birds slaughtered as a result of this disease, but I am afraid I do not have information on the number of deaths. The number of birds in infected flocks is about 12 million and the number of deaths is undoubtedly considerably smaller than that. The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, asked whether there would be an inquiry into this epidemic.

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I am afraid that I cannot answer him about that, but I can assure him that we will look into this epidemic very carefully indeed and make sure that we learn all we can from it for the future.
The best hope of bringing the present epidemic to an end and getting the disease under control once more is for producers to vaccinate their flocks quickly and properly. As I have said, no vaccine can give full protection to young birds, but in properly vaccinated adult and growing birds the record of the inactivated vaccine is excellent. Less than 10 per cent. of the flocks affected in the current epidemic have been properly vaccinated. The output of virus in unvaccinated and poorly vaccinated infected flocks is very high, and we must increase vaccination and dowse infection at its source if we are to get the epidemic under control. This is the further action that is necessary. The Government will do all they can to encourage the industry to take that action.