CONFERENCES ON ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

HL Deb 22 January 1975 vol 356 cc117-210

3.6 p.m.

Lord BROCKWAY rose to move, That this House takes note of the proceedings of the World Conferences on Environment, Population, the Law of the Seabed and Food, and urges the establishment of a World Authority to deal with these and related problems. The noble Lord said: My Lords, each of the World Conferences to which this Motion refers deserves a debate in itself. Therefore, I shall have to be very brief and incomplete in my reference to them, particularly because I wish to emphasise a new, and I hope constructive, proposal which I will make in my conclusions. I hope that the speakers who follow me will fill the gaps.

Each of these conferences has emphasised the necessity for an international agency to deal with these problems. The first was the Environmental Conference. It was attended by nearly all the nations of the world, except, unfortunately, those from the Soviet bloc, although Rumania showed sufficient independence to be present. The Conference reached 100 decisions, mainly detailed and practical, which were referred to the General Assembly of the United Nations. At this Conference there was a beginning of differences between the richer and the poorer nations of the world which became intensified as the succeeding conferences took place. It was recognised that environmental deterioration and pollution came mainly from the industrialised nations; but the representatives of the Third World urged that even greater pollution of life took place from the poverty of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Southern America. This was expressed by Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, who said: How can we speak to those who live in our villages and slums about keeping the oceans, the rivers, and the air clean, when their own lives are contaminated at the source?

Thus, at the first of these conferences it was recognised that environment could not be separated from basic social and economic conditions. It was agreed that, "a permanent institutional arrangement within the United Nations" was necessary to consider the subject in its entirety, and it was decided to recommend to the General Assembly of the United Nations, "to establish a Governing Council for Environmental Programmes". In December 1972, the General Assembly agreed to these proposals. This was the first contribution of this series of conferences towards a World Authority.

The second conference was on world population and 140 nations were represented. The problem which the conference faced can be expressed in a few sentences. The present population of the world is 3,700,000,000; it is estimated that that population will double by the end of the century. The growth of population is disproportionately great in the Third World—Asia, Africa and Southern America. By the year 2000, three-quarters of the population of the world will be in Asia and Africa. Of 224 babies born each minute, 202 are in the developing countries. My Lords, there was a similar difference at this conference between the developed and the developing countries, as at the environmental conference. Was a solution to the population problem to be by family planning, or by economic and social planning? Lyndon Johnson had expressed from the United States of America the view that, "Five dollars spent on family planning is worth a hundred spent on economic development", but a Third World delegate at the conference said, "Development is the best contraceptive".

During the discussions at the conference, it was demonstrated that, even if two children per family became the rule, it would take 20 years to stabilise world population. The experiences of India and China were contrasted. India has its family planning propaganda and administration, which I have seen; its population has decreased only slightly. In China, the population increase has fallen dramatically because of social and economic development. The elimination of destitution, the creation of health services, women who work, the discouragement of early marriages have all helped and, if we need any evidence of the influence of development, it is to be found in Europe and North America where social and economic advances have meant that the population is becoming stabilised.

My Lords, it was finally agreed at this conference—and I pay tribute to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd—that family planning and social and economic development must go hand in hand, with priority placed on development. A United Nations fund was advocated for family planning projects in 90 countries, accompanied by greater assistance from the industrialised nations to the Third World. Such projects and assistance would be given through the international agencies of the United Nations. This was a second contribution to the necessity for a World Authority.

The third conference was on the law of the sea. One hundred and fifty countries were represented by nearly 3,000 delegates. Mr. David Ennals, the Minister of State at the Foreign Office who was present as the British representative, was encouraged by the proceedings. He is naturally optimistic; so am I, but personally I was discouraged. There were three subjects. The first was the establishment of an international seabed authority to control the exploitation of resources; the second was the jurisdiction of coastal States over nearby waters; and the third was the protection of the marine agreement.

There were no agreements. There was very little progress at that conference. The oceans have been described as the heritage of mankind, but at that conference the delegations clung to their national interests rather than try to serve world interests. The discussions intensified the disagreements between the developed and the developing countries. I can only take one instance. Who is to exploit the rich minerals under the sea? The representatives of the Third World advocated that the proposed international authority should participate directly in all projects, and so prevent resources passing to the rich nations through multi-national companies. They demanded that the poorer nations should have a fair share of the wealth extracted from under the seas.

The United States of America and, I regret, the United Kingdom, as well as the nations of Western Europe, proposed to restrict the functions of the international authority merely to issuing licences to the private companies which would share out between themselves the ocean seabeds. The United Kingdom sought a compromise that contracts should be limited to 60,000 square kilometres, that one applicant should be restricted to six contracts, the period of a contract to be 30 years negotiable after each ten years. That would have meant that one private company could exploit 138,000 square miles of the ocean into the 21st century. Is it surprising that the Third World nations rejected this compromise?

My Lords, other issues of acute controversy—the extent of fishing rights, the economic spheres of control, free passage of international straits—arose. It was accepted that an international seabed authority was necessary to deal with all these problems, and a further conference is to be held at Geneva in March. It is to be hoped that the British delegates at that conference will approach these problems in the interests of all the peoples of the world, and that the principle that the resources of the seas should be the possession of all mankind will be accepted.

My Lords, the third conference was on world food and, again, was very representative. The problem before it is indicated in these sentences. The United Nations experts estimate that by 1985 800 million people in 34 countries will be short of food. So far as we can see, in the future 400 million people, half of these children, will die prematurely from hunger. In the past two years, a number of people equal to more than half the population of Britain have been starved to death on the borders of the Sahara. This winter 100,000 have died in Bangladesh.

The conference began with high hopes. There was the speech by Dr. Kissinger, but the debates were discouraging. There was a deplorable expression of national interests rather than world interests. There was little sense of the urgency of the problem, though at least 20,000 people died from hunger during the 11 days of the conference. There were extended conflicts between the rich and the poor nations of the world. There were two main issues. First, should the necessary food to deal with world hunger be supplied from the grain growing countries, mainly the United States of America, or by the development of the Third World? The United States delegate supported the former. What could be better for the farmers of America than the purchase of their grain from an internationally contributed fund? I am glad to say that the British representative supported the Third World countries, in urging that an international fund should be devoted to their agricultural advance.

Lord ROBBINS

Might I ask the noble Lord to elucidate a matter of terminology? He is continually referring to the Third World. Of what does the Third World consist nowadays? Does it, for instance, include the OPEC countries?

Lord BROCKWAY

I should think that the Third World largely consists of the countries of Africa, Asia and South America. The OPEC countries have become rich by their oil supplies and to that I will be referring later in my speech.

My Lords, the second main issue was: is a world food authority necessary? Here the conflict between rich and poor nations became most acute and I regret that Britain was on the wrong side, the Minister of Agriculture urging that existing agencies are adequate. Happily, despite the differences the decisions of the conference were good: first, the necessity to establish a world food council; secondly, an international fund for agricultural development in the Third World; thirdly, the mobilisation internationally of stocks of food to meet natural crises; and, fourthly, repeated three-year plannings of aid. These were recommended to the General Assembly.

My Lords, I pass from those brief reviews of the conferences to my conclusions. All four subjects at these conferences require international agencies to deal with their problems. The task is immense, as we have seen. These international agencies would be in addition to the 13 international agencies which already exist. They are all different aspects of one overriding subject—the need in the world for social and economic development. They overlap in their functions and in their staffs. They are starved of funds. They compete for what is available. They have separate establishments. Waste and incompetence are inevitable from these separate agencies.

I submit that we need the co-ordination of these services under one World Authority on a scale we have not yet appreciated. We need an economic arm of the United Nations equal in status to its political arm. Economic issues are now dominant in the world. May I illustrate this particularly from the issues of population and food? One could use many illustrations; for instance, the oil crisis which has now occurred, and which will only precede other united demands from those who control the raw materials and foodstuffs from the Third World.

But I suggest that the problems of population and food—subjects at these conferences—are the most important of all. There is, first, the famine and disease caused by natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and droughts of which recently we have had such terrible examples. The United Nations should have a permanent service for these emergencies: stocks of food, stocks of medicines, prefabricated accommodation and aeroplanes for their transport. It would be a good service for the Concorde.

However, my Lords, more than provision for emergencies is required. We must meet the demands of the exploding population by the production of more food. There are two untapped sources. The first are the seas. By the end of this century the seas will be farmed as land is now farmed. There is need not merely for a seabed authority but for a sea surface authority. One-seventh of the world's surface is desert; but it has now been proved that by water treatment the deserts can be made fertile. There is the example of Israel; there is the extra-ordinary occurrence in Australia where unexpected rain caused a great desert to flower with shrubs and fruit. I have seen this seeming miracle. I went to Bou Saada on the edge of the Sahara desert where Miss Campbell-Purdie, a woman pioneer, worked on the theory that on the edge of the deserts, between the fertile land and the desert, trees could be grown which could become a forest of protection against the advance of the desert; for the Sahara develops one mile every year. Between 1965 and 1970 some 260 acres of the desert at Bou Saada were reclaimed by the planting of 130,000 acres of forest trees, beneath which grew grass and every vegetable and there were 10,000 hens laying eggs.

The success of this experiment has led to its adoption by the Algerian Government which is planting a "green wall" from Morocco to Tunisia right across the frontier of the Sahara. If this had been done around the Sahara, the recent appalling death toll on its borders need not have occurred. But it is not only a matter of preventing the desert advancing; beneath the deserts themselves are rivers and oceans. There is water everywhere. French scientists say that in the Sahara they are walking on water. If that water were brought to the surface, the deserts of the world could be made fertile.

My Lords, no one Government can accomplish this task. It must be accomplished by the co-operation of all Governments in a World Authority. What form should this United Nations' economic arm take? It should be under a general secretary; but there should be two equal departments of the United Nations—one, economic; the other political. The economic arm would be responsible for the co-ordination of all the agencies dealing with its problems, while both departments of the United Nations should be responsible to the General Assembly and the Security Council. What of the cost? I cannot see the costs of these great constructive proposals being met without the progressive diversion of military expenditure to constructive achievement. I am convinced that a significant reduction of the colossal costs of nuclear weapons and of armaments will be made not in disarmament conferences but in the coming together of all nations to direct their minds to co-operation and to saving the world from economic disasters and the accompanying hunger of millions; to constructing a world freed from poverty so as to give the opportunity of human fulfilment to all peoples. This can be done only by a World Authority of the United Nations. My Lords, I beg to move.

Moved, That this House takes note of the proceedings of the World Conferences on Environment, Population, the Law of the Seabed and Food, and urges the establishment of a World Authority to deal with these and related problems.—(Lord Brockway.)

3.37 p.m.

Lord CAMPBELL of CROY

My Lords, I ask your Lordships' indulgence on this, my first occasion to address the House. It is with considerable diffidence that I find myself speaking from this place, and as early as this, but I do so in response to an invitation from my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition. Happily, the subject does not raise issues between the two Front Benches.

I am sure that we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, who, by moving this Motion, has given us the opportunity to discuss a whole range of subjects. It has enabled me to speak on those in which I have taken a special interest. The noble Lord has directed our attention to four recent world conferences which have covered many subjects; and, as he said, we should need several debates in order to deal with all the matters which they have discussed. The conferences on food and population are clearly closely related, as the noble Lord pointed out in his speech, and I think there is a great deal in what he recommended: that the secretariats for these conferences might well have got together and arranged common services because, to a considerable extent, their efforts were duplicated. The conference on the environment in Stockholm enabled countries to compare remedies for the problems facing us in this modern age, and to discuss ways of improving the quality of life. These three conferences have stimulated continuing work and progress and they have promoted the necessary co-operation between the nations. I shall address myself to the other conference in the Motion, the conference on the law of the sea. It is difficult enough in the short speech which I intend this to be to do justice even to everything raised at that one conference. As the noble Lord said, it met in Caracus last summer and is due to resume in Geneva in a few weeks' time. Virtually all the countries in the world (about 150) are members of the conference, including the landlocked nations. I suggest that it is of special importance to Britain as we are a maritime and trading nation and also a fishing nation, with distant water vessels fishing off other people's shores and also around our own coasts; and since gas in the 'sixties and oil in the 'seventies were found in the North Sea the seabed has also had a new significance for us in Britain.

Together with other countries we have a great interest in establishing effective régimes in the world for both the sea and the seabed. The immediate task at Caracas was clearly to rationalise the three separate coastal systems which have evolved over the years—these being territorial waters, fishing limits and rights in the Continental Shelf. There has been confusion about these and some individual nations have been adopting different measurements for them. For example, where territorial waters are concerned, Britain and the United States have for many years recognised the 3-mile limit, originally the range of a cannon. Some have extended this to 12 miles unilaterally and others to much greater distances. I feel sure that the agreement which is appearing by consensus now at Caracas for a 12-mile limit, which would alter our previously traditionally accepted one, should be acceptable to the Government provided there are satisfactory rights of innocent passage. To get a uniform distance universally agreed would be a worthwhile achievement. But Britain has been foremost among the trading nations in upholding the freedom of navigation on the high seas, and this is still of paramount interest to us. A 12-mile territorial sea would place about 100 straits in the world, which are now recognised as international sea routes, within the jurisdiction of coastal nations.

The interests of the coastal nations are also important, and I submit that they need more protection now than ever before because of the dangers of accidents not only with congestion in the straits but also with the new structures of rigs and stationary platforms used in drilling and extracting minerals. There are also the dangers of pollution. An example of this occurred only a few days ago in the Malacca Straits when the oil tanker "Showa Maru" spilled large quantities of oil, and we ourselves had our warning with the incident involving the "Torrey Canyon". Besides prevention of pollution questions of liability and compensation arise—for example, for wrecking the beaches of an area where hundreds of millions of pounds worth of tourist trade could be affected.

As regards fishing limits, for the last dozen years the fishing limit of 12 miles has been generally accepted, although countries have attempted unilaterally to extend it. I believe that in future it will be more important for us that there should be conservation agreements in different regions. Stocks of fish are being over-fished well out to sea now, and coastal strips alone are not the answer. The Atlantic Fisheries Commission, which includes the Soviet Union, have already agreed on such things as close seasons for certain types of fish in designated areas of the high seas; quantity limitations and regulations on the kind of fishing methods and mesh sizes. For Britain it is vital that there be agreement among fishing nations on this matter and also that the conditions should be reciprocal since by volume we catch over three-quarters of our fish away from our own shores. Britain's concern must therefore be to get the best results both for our distant water fleets and for our inshore vessels. It would, for example, be disastrous for our inshore boats if our large trawlers, deprived of all or most of their usual distant fishing grounds, were forced back to fish around our own shores and with their massive gear then over-whelmed the smaller boats of our inshore fleet.

The third coastal zone, and one that has been much more recently in the news, is the Continental Shelf. Following the Convention in 1958 it was possible in 1964 to divide up the bed of the North Sea, by agreement among the coastal States concerned, for the purpose of minerals and on the principle of a median line running equidistant between the coasts. This dealt with the right to minerals but did not extend to sovereignty over the sea nor over the seabed. As a result of these separate arrangements which have evolved many strange situations may arise at present. Gas and oil, for example, 100 miles from shore, can belong to Britain and the oil very often is two miles below the seabed. The rigs and platforms which are operating drilling above are standing in the high seas. The life of those working on the rigs and platforms is governed by the laws and regulations of the flag State, on the lines of the ships which are sailing past them and which are also on the high seas. The fish swimming round them, beyond the 12-mile fishing limit in the 100 miles of sea, do not belong to anybody until they are caught. So there is this anomaly of the oil below the seabed belonging to a State and the fish swimming above it belonging to no one. This is the kind of reason for the rationalisation now being sought at the World Conference.

Here also I welcome the consensus which is emerging on a new concept of an economic contiguous zone, with 200 miles as the suggestion—and of course where there is less than 400 miles between the coastal States then there is a median line between. I am glad that the British Government appear to be supporting this idea, subject of course to definite and agreed conditions. An economic zone postulates certain duties as well as rights. It is not simply a matter of, for example, extending fishing limits for 200 miles, Where fishing is concerned the intention should not be to prohibit fishing by other countries' boats. Rather should it be to place responsibility for regulating fisheries within the zone to ensure proper harvesting of fishing stocks by other countries' vessels as well if necessary, besides conservation, in co-operation with an international agency. This is needed urgently by the herring fishermen of this country, particularly the large majority based in Scotland. They are worried now by the massive catching power which has grown from foreign fleets, and after several barren months they fear that herring stocks in the North Sea and the Western Approaches may be decimated in 1975. I believe that a temporary conservation measure ought to be considered. I hope that the Government will seriously consider such a measure if the new concept of an economic zone cannot be brought in in time after agreement. I emphasise that this is for herring only, not for other fish, because reciprocal action or apparent reprisals by other countries concerning cod and other fish would be to the overall disadvantage of our fleets.

So the rationalisation of these three coastal zone systems is likely to be a framework of territorial waters at 12 miles and an economic zone, with conditions, up to 200, provided that there are rules of innocent passage and also overflight by aircraft. But one of the main tasks of the world conference is to agree on arrangements for a system to apply to the deep seabed, including the floors of the ocean, where valuable natural resources such as copper, nickel and cobalt are waiting to be harvested. This is beyond the Continental Shelf and the proposed economic zone. It is agreed that this deep sea bed is international in status, but no arrangements have yet been made for a system to govern exploring, mining, investment and ownership, the payment of money into a central fund or the international use of such money for world causes.

These matters should be settled without undue delay. This is an international venture in which British industry should take a leading part. On this planet, there is still an unexplored world where precious metals are waiting to be won: the noble Lord referred to this. At present we are serving an apprenticeship in the North Sea. Soon we should ourselves be experts in the new advancing technology of deepwater exploration and mining. Neptune, it seems, has an attractive treasure chest and it is to be found in the depths of Davy Jones' locker. Five years ago the North Sea oilfields had not been discovered. Now they are a major factor in our economy. Five years hence Britain should be engaged in plans for the deep seabed. British firms have traditionally provided expertise and plant in many lands overseas. Now they have a new prospective outlet for their enterprise. We should then be serving a world interest, which was commended by the noble Lord, and at the same time we should be earning welcome rewards and benefits. In our present economic situation, should we not all the more set our sights on this new field of maritime and industrial activity?

It is already known that valuable manganese nodules exist in the deep seabed which will provide metals needed by our industrial society. The United Nations Resolution of 1970, passed unanimously, declared that such resources are the heritage of all nations and should be used for their benefit. That was declaratory: the arrangements have still to be made. Unfortunately there is this difference in approach, to which the noble Lord referred, between the industrial counttries, on the one hand, who are keen to proceed with operations to tap these new sources of minerals, and the developing countries, on the other hand, who are apprehensive about the effect on world prices and their economies. For example, Zaire—or the Congo, as it was formerly known—is at present the only major producer of cobalt, and they are worried about the effect new supplies might have on the world market. A régime or a new authority to deal with the deep seabed would have to cater for this and would need to allay such fears by providing arrangements to enable prices to be stabilised as well as may be. It should after all be easier, with more sources of a scarce mineral, to do this than with only one or two. My noble friend Lord Cowley intends, I understand, to expand on this when he speaks later in the debate. It would be the greatest pity, and a misfortune for this country, if the new enterprise of winning valuable minerals from the deep seabed, which are needed by the world as a whole, were to be unnecessarily delayed by failure to agree on the ground rules.

The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, suggested an international body—I believe he actually mentioned bodies in the plural, if I heard him correctly. As regards the deep seabed, the question is whether any such body should be one which carries out the licensing and regulation of operations, or whether it should be of a kind which would carry out the operations itself. This is the bone of contention to be considered at the world conference. I believe that a World Authority is necessary but I also think that it might hold up the extraction of these minerals. It might cause delay and also might not make use of all the available technology if the authority tried to do all the operations itself.

I should like to pay tribute to the work done over the last two years or so by Sir Roger Jackling and his team in working at the sessions of this world conference and in their work which continues between the sessions. I hope these observations on a dauntingly wide range of subjects will give some encouragement to the British delegation at the Law of the Sea Conference and to the Minister leading it—because, as your Lordships will realise, they are playing a considerable part in the quest for agreement in some matters of great concern to Britain.

3.56 p.m.

BARONESS WHITE

My Lords, I must admit that at the moment I would welcome, more than any world conference or World Authority, something which has so far eluded mankind—that is, an instant cure for the common cold. I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Brockway for giving us an opportunity to discuss this extremely important international conference. He will forgive me if I cavil slightly at the wording of his Motion, because he referred to the "Law of the Seabed". Of course it should be the Law of the Sea, which is considerably wider than the Law of the Seabed. Before dealing with this important subject, I should like to express, I am sure on behalf of the whole House, the warmest congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy. He started his innings with a really notable rapidity. I am sure we very much welcome someone of his great experience in Government, and particularly his great experience in Scottish affairs—more especially as he has indicated today his very detailed knowledge of these spheres of maritime affairs and fisheries. So we are delighted to welcome him to this House and to his position on the Opposition Front Bench. I am sure that we shall have many opportunities of listening to him in the future.

It is perhaps indicative of the importance felt in all parts of the House of the law of the sea conference that I, too, wish more particularly to speak on that subject. This does not in any way indicate lack of interest in the other conferences. We all recognise the importance and the very great influence of the conference on the environment in Stockholm, which concentrated attention—and particularly, I think, among the younger generation—not only on the problems of the environment, but also on ways of dealing with them. The food and population conferences obviously go together—one can hardly think of one without the other—and it is indeed depressing that with all our scientific achievement we still have a situation in which we seem to be incapable, as a human race, of balancing our population and our resources.

One of the difficulties of such a wide-ranging Motion as that placed before us by my noble friend today is that one cannot do justice to all aspects of it. I must say that I doubt whether a World Authority is a cure for the various ills which beset us. Someone has said that the only trouble with the United Nations is the nations which compose it. I am sorry to suggest that if we were to organise it differently we should not alter the character of the nations composing any new World Authority. So I would prefer to be a little more prosaic perhaps, and try to see ways in which one may deal with more circumscribed problems; in particular, those connected with the conference on the law of the sea, to be resumed shortly. I do this because within the last few months I have had the honour of succeeding my noble friend Lord Kennet as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea.

It is just some eighteen months ago since my noble friend Lord Kennet initiated a debate in July 1973 in your Lordships' House on the law of the sea. I would commend that debate to any of your Lordships who are interested in the subject not only for the speech which was made by my noble friend, but also for the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, which was of the high quality we expect of him. It also contained a most helpful contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie. Since then, the initial meeting has been held at Caracas and is to resume shortly in Geneva.

The main lines of discussion, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, has already indicated, have become clear. We, as a maritime nation and a fishing State, are very much concerned with the various issues that have arisen. If one is pessimistic about progress in international affairs, it is encouraging to realise how far we have moved in the past few years. Even a decade ago, who would have sup-posed that the United Kingdom Government would contemplate with equanimity an extension of territorial waters to 12 miles and also, subject to reservations, a recognition of 200 miles as an exclusive economic zone? To those of us who are concerned with the international regulations of our affairs, this is an extraordinarily encouraging step.

I should like to join in the congratulations expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, to my right honourable friend Mr. David Ennals, as the Minister of State who has been leading the United Kingdom delegation, and to Sir Roger Jacklin, who has been carrying the main burden of the detailed work. This will be a most significant change in the whole regimen of the control of the oceans; but, welcome as it is, it will also lead to problems. It is only right that one should touch on these.

If one takes first the general extention of territorial waters to 12 miles instead of only three miles which, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, indicated, we have so far observed, this will lead to considerable problems in the narrower passages of the world. The Straits of Dover themselves are already fairly well regulated with sea lanes; but we would have to be very clear what the jurisdiction there would be. As the noble Lord said, more than 100 straits in the world would have their international status changed because of this change in the territorial waters. The attitude of the United Kingdom Government has been that, while fully prepared to recognise the territorial waters, the concept of free passage—or innocent passage as it is sometimes called—must be maintained.

This sounds admirable at first sight, but—and I speak now on behalf of the Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea—with the increase in the size of tankers, one must ask oneself whether there are certain areas of the world where one can no longer speak of innocent passage with these enormous tankers going through narrow straits. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, has referred to the recent grounding of a Japanese tanker in the vicinity of Singapore, with the most appalling oil spillage; a two-mile oil slick very close to populous tourist beaches. I am not convinced from the evidence I have received that this was necessarily due to the fact that the tanker was in the straits; I think it was due to an error of navigation, as the "Torrey Canyon" disaster was due to an error of navigation. One cannot provide in any régime for every type of human error.

Nevertheless, this concept of innocent passage in all circumstances is one which we feel should at least be questioned. Some countries in the world are suggesting that warships, naval ships, are not innocent and that there should be restrictions on their passage through these narrow straits. This is not a Defence debate, and I do not wish to pursue this subject too far. It is at least conceivable in present circumstances that it would be in the interests of the United Kingdom to accept the suggestion that certain ships should not be entitled to have completely unrestricted passage.

In addition to the problems which may well arise in the extension of territorial waters to the twelve-mile limit, the 200-mile exclusive economic zone poses many interesting questions. On behalf of the British delegation, Sir Roger Jacklin suggested that the interpretation of "economic zone" should be the exploitation of the seabed for minerals, oil, metals or gas, though there one has the some-what conflicting concept of the Continental Shelf. He would also include jurisdiction over the fish life in that area, though not necessarily exclusively; there would have to be some arrangements for that to be shared. He suggested that other matters, not only sea passage but also control of pollution and control of research, should not be within the exclusive jurisdiction of the coastal State.

These matters certainly raise difficult problems. Freedom of research is something to which I would suppose most of us in your Lordships' House attach considerable importance. Although I agreed largely with the speech at Caracas of Mr. Maurice Strong, the Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, I felt he was going too far when he suggested that there should be some absolute obligation to share the results of research, for example, with the coastal State. Freedom of research is something about which most of us would feel pretty strongly. Control of pollution within a 200-mile zone can of course be a pretty formidable task.

The Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea had the pleasure of being received last week by Mr. Ennals, and we suggested that the current state of international law, which is that it is the responsibility of the flag State to discipline ships guilty of pollution on the high seas, should be amended so as to put the port State in a position where it could take action. The question of identification of a polluting ship is in itself difficult enough. But, very often, if the ship comes into port one can reach a reasonably sound conclusion that it must have discharged oily wastes before coming into port. In that case it is very much easier for the port State to take action than simply to report to the flag State, which may be many thousands of miles away and not in a position to obtain any direct evidence on the matter. More particularly, as we know, there are certain States which employ flags of convenience and which take no great interest in seeing to the proper behaviour on the high seas of their ships. We hope very much that Her Majesty's Government may be prepared, as I think they have indicated, to move to a port State jurisdiction in these matters of pollution, rather than maintain the present situation of flag State responsibility.

We also hope that Her Majesty's Government will support the need for much greater research into this whole question of avoidance of pollution, more particularly from oil. Such pollution can arise from our own inland waters and estuaries, which I hope will be dealt with under the legislation which we have recently passed. I have before me a recent publication by the Oil Companies' International Marine Forum, in which they urge the necessity for further research into monitors for oil tankers of various forms. They say that provision of new technology is required, possibly more than any other single matter, in order to implement in its fullest form the Convention of 1973 on the avoidance of pollution. So I hope we may be told that Her Majesty's Government will play a full part in that matter, as also in another matter of research which was referred to recently in the correspondence in The Times initiated by Admiral Sir Edmund Irving, who is my vice-chairman on the Committee dealing with oil pollution of the sea.

He pointed out the hazards to navigation, with the very considerable extension of the size and draught of ships, if one does not have adequate charts for the new circumstances which have arisen. The British Admiralty charts have now been the guide for mariners for generations, but they are sometimes sadly out of date. Unless we are again prepared as a leading maritime country to put more resources into this enterprise, or to find some co-operative method of dealing with it with other countries, then we are likely to have more serious accidents with these very large ships, with which if one does have an accident, the consequences can be disastrous. So I hope that my noble friend who is to reply to the debate will be able to say something encouraging in that direction.

As the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, said so much about fisheries, I hesitate to add to that subject because he is extremely knowledgeable. But this is, again, an area in which matters have moved with extraordinary rapidity in the last few years. The whole situation has changed, and changed for the worse in many respects. I am quite horrified at the way in which the Russian and the Japanese fishing fleets, in particular, are going around the world literally sucking up fish with these vacuum methods whereby fish of every shape and size are taken in, and one does not discriminate in favour of the small fish which would escape in properly regulated net fishing. Fishing in this way is bound to deplete the resources of the world. One is also shocked at the way in which fish which can be first-class protein for human beings is used as fertiliser in the most extravagant manner. If I believed that the situation could be cured by a World Authority, I would support my noble friend's Motion, but I do not think so. However, I do believe that the countries of the world must find methods of dealing with the depletion of the world's fishery stocks.

On the positive side—and, again, I hope that Her Majesty's Government will do more about this matter than they have done hitherto—productive methods are needed for increased fish farming. I do not refer to sporting fish, to trout in lochs, but to the high quality sea fish which could, I believe, be produced in much greater quantities if we set our minds to it: if we used the warm water from our power stations; if we altered the law, because legislation is needed for safeguarding fish farming. Here, again, we have a wide area of activity which we must look at with completely fresh eyes, because, I repeat, the situation has changed with such rapidity in the past few years.

There is the matter of the seabed in the strict sense of the word. I was interested to hear that the noble Earl, Lord Cowley, was proposing to deal with this matter. I will therefore not read out all the notes I have on nickel, copper, manganese and so forth and the problems which can arise from the exploitation thereof. This is one the trickiest matters of all. I have read the UNCTAD Report et cetera, and I must say that I believe it will be quite some time before we sort out the international relationships in this sphere.

One greatly hopes that the resumed conference will lead to more positive results than have emerged hitherto. I do not share the pessimism of my noble friend Lord Brockway, who said that virtually nothing happened at Caracas. Nothing definitive was expected to happen at that first session, and therefore I do not feel we should be too much disappointed about that. But on the assumption that a convention, or perhaps several conventions, might be agreed upon at the resumed conference I am concerned about, and would be interested to hear, whether Her Majesty's Government have any fresh thoughts as to the procedure for ratification. This is one of the most disheartening aspects. When some agreement is reached, the time lag before it is effective in international law is quite daunting.

I have here a note on the Convention on Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil 1954, amended in 1962. The 1954 Convention and the 1962 amendments are in force; but the 1969 amendments, although ratified by 21 nations owning between them over 80 per cent. of the world's tanker tonnage, are still not in force, because they require ratification by a further 12 nations to make them legally effective. The 1971 amendments, which relate to limitations upon the size of tanks within tankers (not to the tanker itself) have received only seven ratifications out of the 32 which are required. And, of course, the 1973 Convention has hardly yet got going.

It appears to me that we need somehow to modify this procedure. We cannot wait so long. Instead of contracting in, maybe there should be some method of contracting out. There are various legal propositions, I know, including tacit amendment procedures, provisional entry into force procedures and so on, the merits of which I am not competent to judge. However, what we are all competent to judge is that a procedure whereby one may wait for many years before a convention can come into force is not satisfactory. Even when it does come into force, however well thought out, there are bound to be occasions when there will be quite genuine differences of interest, and disputes. Therefore, one must be certain that one has proper arrangements for arbitration and for the resolution of disputes so that they do not drag on, poisoning international relations and failing to implement the aims of the conventions.

My Lords, I have perhaps taken up too much time, but I hope that from what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, and I have said Her Majesty's Government will realise that there is a great interest in this conference on the law of the sea, and that we look forward with the keenest interest to the further contributions to be made by our delegation there. We hope they will continue to be progressive and forward-looking. We are no longer in the position which we occupied even 30 years ago as a maritime country. But we have taken steps in the right direction, and I hope very much that we shall be able to help to guide this conference to a successful conclusion.

4.20 p.m.

Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD

My Lords, we are all very much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for putting down this matter for debate because it is obviously of the greatest possible importance and, with the four conferences, covers a most tremendous area of interest for everybody in this House. Before I make the few remarks I wish to make about the Rome food conference, may I congratulate my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy on his admirable maiden speech which was full of great erudition and knowledge. I worked very closely with him when he was Secretary of State for Scotland. We are very lucky indeed to have him in our House since he will be able to talk on subjects which affect Scotland, although they will not necessarily be subjects which affect only Scotland. Therefore I wish to congratulate him upon his maiden speech.

My Lords, my interest in this debate today centres entirely on the question of food production, on what happened in Rome and what I hope the United Nations Conference in Rome may lead to. I have always been deeply interested in the problem of the world food position. I was deeply interested in the problem even before the war when John Boyd-Orr was beginning his great work at the Rowett Research Institute and when my husband was Secretary of State for Agriculture. They worked together on the question of how to get the world to grow enough food and how to persuade people all over the world that this was something of vital importance to all the populations of the world. After the war when the United Nations began its work and when Lord Boyd-Orr, as he had then become, was Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, my interest remained very close. It is a disaster that 28 years after the setting up of the FAO and the many attempts to provide food which have been made in underdeveloped areas—in Africa, India, and elsewhere—because of increasing populations and failure to teach underdeveloped areas how to provide food we are in a worse situation today than we have ever been in before. This is tragic and desperate. I think that the world is beginning to be conscious of this fact, and it is high time that it was, because it is a most desperate situation. One cannot distribute food that has not been grown and one cannot grow enough food in the highly developed areas of the world and in the great agricultural areas of Europe and elsewhere to feed the underdeveloped areas of the world. Therefore the first and most important thing is to obtain a big increase in production in the areas of greatest need.

Before establishing more governing bodies, more councils, more committees or even a world authority at the top, let us get down to the grass roots and teach the farmers in the underdeveloped countries how to grow more food. Those of us who are engaged in agriculture know how difficult this is. We know how much depends upon the climate, upon the soil, upon the weather, upon droughts and rains, apart from the fact that an area may be an area of great heat or, as often as not, an area of great lack of heat. Therefore the first priority is to get as many teams of experts into the developing world as is possible and for them to recruit from among the local inhabitants as many people as they can to become potential farmers and teach them how to grow their own food. As I have said already, it is an exceedingly difficult thing to do. It is difficult enough in areas where food is easy to grow but it is very difficult in areas where food is difficult to grow. The nation which has shown the world more than any other nation how to make the desert blossom, how to use poor soil and difficult conditions of all kinds and turn the desert into a fruitful area is Israel. I have seen this myself. I have been to Israel once or twice and have seen what can be done in the case of what appears to be absolutely impossible ground. In five years' time you see orchards, citrus fruits and so on growing there. I would take the experts from Israel into the FAO teams and get them to teach in the African and Asian countries the technology which has made them so wonderfully clever at making the desert bloom in the Middle East.

My Lords, in Africa with its huge populations and enormous areas of under-developed land, expert advice is vital. It is also vital to obtain the co-operation of the local inhabitants. No doubt the local inhabitants will be highly suspicious of strangers coming along and teaching them. Therefore enormous tact and patience are vital if their efforts are to bear any fruit. I am sure that these efforts must be under the auspices of the United Nations which is the one forum where no national rivalries can show. It is the only supra-national body which can undertake this job. It is free of the suspicion of colonialism appearing among those very people who have graduated from colonial status. Equally, as climate and soil determine greatly the form of any agricultural development, there must be overall direction to see that the best use of the country's food production is catered for. It is no good trying to grow rice in an area where rice cannot be grown. Equally, it is no good trying to grow cocoa in an area where cocoa can not be grown. We must have experts with an overall view of where the vital needs of the world can best be grown, and in my opinion the FAO experts can well organise that type of development, particularly if they have, as I hope they will have, teams all over the world which will teach people how to grow food.

The conference in Rome suggested the setting up of an additional Food Council, but I believe that the organisations which already exist, particularly the Economic and Social Council, which has a wider remit than FAO, the World Bank for the great needs of financing all those efforts and the FAO for the direction and the know-how could manage the programme. To set up more councils at the top instead of concentrating upon what can be done at the grass roots first is, I believe, putting the cart before the horse.

There are other matters which are involved in this programme. We must try to halt the increase in population in the underdeveloped countries. So far it has practically been only the horrors of starvation, or floods, or earthquakes, or wars which have decimated the world' s population. This is a terrible method of achieving what can be done by far more civilised methods. Therefore I make a plea for the policy to be part of ECOSOC and part of FAO rather than setting up separate machinery. I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady White, has said—machinery gets you nowhere. You will not achieve any more co-operation from a new council than you will from an old council unless you can make the old council work, and it is up to us to make the existing organisations work. Just as the suspicions of local people will have to be overcome in the process of teaching new methods, so the need to explain to people that food is very good for them and that some food is much better than other food should be explained and demonstrated. Both ECOSOC and FAO could do this.

There are many ways in underdeveloped countries by which one can carry out simple propaganda along those lines—through the women's organisations, through the schools, through the groups of people who are training in their different ways in Africa and in Asia. It is those organisations which I should like to see used to propagate and teach the skills which are necessary, because this is the only way in which you will ever obtain any increase in food for the starving nations of the world. It is difficult in rural areas—and that is where you have to tackle it first; but it is not easy in the urban areas, either, because there are still prejudices to be overcome. It will be as hard, if not harder, in urban areas to overcome, for instance, very heavy propaganda and advertising of people who want to sell their goods irrespective of whether or not what they are trying to sell will be of advantage to the developing population; whether or not in fact they are trying to sell the right food. These are problems which can be tackled only by experts.

But the economics of all this are not easy. While it will not pay to give food away—that is another reason for trying to get people to grow it—at least for two or three years in the beginning the countries of the Western World will have to give away a lot of food and will have to pay for it. This might well provide the great oil producing nations with an object for their money, and through Agencies of the United Nations, through ECOSOC, through FAO, their political anxieties need not be aroused since it could all be done through the existing United Nations organisations.

The United States of America and the Soviet Union are of course the two greatest food growing countries, but there are also the Commonwealth countries, some of which are great food producing countries. We must increase the food production in those areas, at any rate in the short term, since we want to try to help the starving populations of the world and it is from those countries that one can get production faster than trying to teach the peoples of the countries which are not yet developed.

There is no doubt that here in the United Kingdom we could also produce more food. The amount of food that we produce today is far greater, on a smaller area, than it was 10, 15 or 20 years ago. We could do more still and thus save our imports, some of which could go to the countries where food is so desperately needed. At the end of the Rome Conference an appeal was made to the developed nations to provide 10 million tons of cereals each year for three years, together with other commodities, and also to produce seven or eight tons of additional foods necessary for the population. This is admirable, and I only hope and pray that the great nations of the world will respond to this call from those who were at the Rome Conference. But in my opinion the most important object of all is to teach the new agricultural technology in the developing centres to the developing countries in the developing world. In the long run really effective grass roots progress is the only way to circumvent the world food shortages, and I hope that Her Majesty's Government will do everything they can to try to bring this about.

4.34 p.m.

Lord TAYLOR of GRYFE

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure for me to pay a compliment to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy on his distinguished maiden speech. I was delighted when I learned that the nation was not to be denied the experience and knowledge of the noble Lord and this has been avoided by his elevation to this House. I hope that not only on Scottish affairs but on international affairs, as he has shown his concern in these matters today, we will hear a great deal from him in the future.

It is an additional pleasure for me to be associated with the Motion standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Brockway. It is over 40 years since I, as a young man, joined the Independent Labour Party, largely persuaded by the enthusiasm of Lord Brockway, and I am delighted to feel that his commitment to internationalism has been a consistent one. While I am sure he has had many disappointments in his career, many of the changes which have taken place in this world are the result of the determination, the enthusiasm and the idealism of men like Lord Brockway.

Today I subscribe to his plea for a world authority. Your Lordships will observe in the Motion before the House that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, does not talk about a new World Authority; he talks about a World Authority. Those of us who have been associated with international organisations will agree that the multiplication of international organisations is in itself a danger to the cause of world authority. There is nothing more depressing and frustrating in international organisation than the great burden of bureaucracy that tends to grow with each new world organisation that is established. I feel therefore that what we are talking about today is world authority as such and not necessarily new institutions. Emphasis has rightly been placed on the fact that world authority grows, not by the increase of conferences or the addition of new institutions but largely by the work in the field of international organisations.

I had a period as an official of the International Civil Service in the United Nations and I was always happy to escape from the dreary debates in which points were scored and propaganda speeches made by delegations for the people back home. It was a great encouragement to go into the field and to see the kind of work that was done in rehabilitation and in reconstruction in the work of the FAO and other agencies. Therefore I think that what we are speaking about is the practical work out of which world authority will grow.

I recall towards the end of the war listening to H. G. Wells, who at the time was somewhat depressed since he was living in Regent's Park and bombs had been shattering all the properties nearby. He sat back quietly and stoically and said that in the light of his long experience in biology and looking at the progress of mankind, he had found that any species which had not adapted itself to its environment had perished. He said that mankind was living in an era in which we had abolished distance, in which there was established interdependence of all peoples, and unless we created the political institutions to match that environment so also mankind would perish. I think that is the essential message that Lord Brockway has been trying to establish in this Motion.

What we are talking about is peace, harmony and stability in the world. Again, if I may turn back the pages of my own personal history, I recall as a young man standing for election to the City Council of Glasgow. At that time the infant mortality rate in the East end of Glasgow was around 105 per thousand live births and in the West-end of Glasgow it was around 30 to 32 per thousand live births. It became apparent to the people that one could not establish harmony in a community where East and West were so sharply divided. There was no basis for stability and harmony and peace in that situation. So now we look at this problem on a world scale and find that there is neither peace nor stability nor harmony in a world situation where we are so closely knit and so interdependent on one another and where there is affluence on one side and mass starvation on the other side.

So what we are talking about today is not simply helping to feed people but establishing some basis for international peace. Robert Heilbronner, who wrote the Inquiry into the Human Condition, set out the four main problems confronting mankind at the moment, the first being the fact that population growth has reached unmanageable proportions. The present 3.12 billion population could easily become 7 billion in the short space of one generation. At the same time as this tremendous population growth confronts us, the outlook for an expanded food production is limited. I agree very much with the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, who said that we have an important job to do in creating in the developing countries the ability to feed themselves. This is not only economically sound, but is sound from the point of view of their own self respect.

My Lords, I recall that at the end of the war we had two problems. One was the immediate problem of the rehabilitation of communities that had been devastated by the war; the main thing was to get these people to help themselves. The problem of meeting the immediate food shortage is a pressing one, but just as pressing, perhaps, is the creation of conditions in these countries that will enable the people to feed themselves, thereby gaining their own self respect because they are less dependent on the charity from the prosperous countries. This is a real problem. It revolves not only round the techniques; of modern agriculture being taught in these countries, but also around the question of fertilisers. The increase in the price of oil has created a situation in which fertiliser prices have multiplied four or five times. Some countries in the greatest need have not the resources of foreign currency which enable them to buy the necessary materials to set going a major food programme.

My Lords, the other factor in the world situation which compels us to think in terms of international institutions and international authorities is surely the fact that the ability to wage nuclear war has now passed beyond the big Powers and into the hands of some of the countries in the Third World. India is now able to explode a nuclear device. This has created a new relationship in the world. In the last few years our peace has depended on the establishment of reasonable relations between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. But the fact is that some of the Third World countries (countries like Brazil, Egypt and Iran) possibly in the next few years may easily come into ownership of a nuclear device, and in that situation the stability of the world depending on the two big Powers is changed. This compels us to work for the establishment of a World Authority. Another factor is recognition, that the progress of industrial growth is difficult to sustain. Some of the expectations on which we have based our progress can no longer be maintained because of resource limitation.

My Lords, if all these factors force us to think in terms of establishing a World Authority, it is a dreadful and dreary thought that the last session of the Assembly of the United Nations was probably one of the poorest sessions in terms of achieving desirable objectives. Summing up on the Assembly just concluded, the Economist said that there was a growing tendency to adopt one-sided and unreal resolutions, to flout the United Nations rules, and to override minority views. This was seen particularly in the lack of respect for the sensitivity and views of Israel in some international organisations. If a World Authority is to grow, minorities must feel that they have some protection in that World Authority, and that the Authority is not simply an instrument of the people who can secure the maximum number of votes. It is an interesting comment on the balance of power in the United Nations that of the 138 members today, the Africans, the Arabs and the Asians now command 75 votes. It is to be hoped that this new power in the hands of the Africans, the Arabs and the Asians will not be used so as to diminish the authority of the United Nations.

It is easy in the present world situation for one nation to blame another. It was done at the World Food Conference. The United States of America is inclined to blame OPEC for many of the problems in the world today. The Russians and the Chinese made little contribution to the practical work of the World Food Conference. Those two countries are inclined to say, "If you just do as we have done, you will solve all your world food problems." They tend to use these occasions as an international propaganda platform. But it is easy to be cynical and critical about other nations, of what they have done and what they have failed to do. In fairness to the United States of America, if any organisation has played its part in sustaining international organisations over the years, it has been the United States. So despite the disappointment, if you like, in the World Food Conference there are certain things for which we have a personal responsibility, and for which we have a deep responsibility as a nation.

My Lords, it is true that we are no longer the great influential Power we once were. It is true that our economic situation in Britain at present will compel us to face a probable reduction in the standard of living of the people of this country. Perhaps that situation is not the easiest environment in which to make a plea for international aid. Once again I recall that at the end of the war this country, which had been devastated by enemy bombing, took its full part in the United Nation's relief administration. At that time, and in those conditions, this country allocated 1 per cent. of its GNP to assisting nations that were less fortunate than we ourselves even after six years of warfare. We have to look back at some of the things we did during that time, because I believe we were a better, nobler and less selfish people then. I like to recall some of the things we did during the war in terms of distribution of supplies. In Washington, I used to sit at the combined boards. I sat there with representatives of all the allied nations. We did not ask, "Can you afford to pay for this?" We asked what were the needs of the various constituent nations among the Allies, and we decided according to need on the allocation of food and raw materials. We did that consciously, because at that time we had a sense of crisis; we had a sense that we were all in this together, and that we had to help.

My Lords, I think we must achieve a similar sense of need and of crisis in the present situation, and adapt our policies and our thinking accordingly. As I have said already, this country is no longer a great and influential Power in economic or military terms in the world today. But the witness of this country means a great deal. We can influence events and can demonstrate our concern, despite our apparent weakness. What do I suggest should be done? I am encouraged by a manifesto from an organisation called Food Share, which is a combination of religious and non-governmental organisations who have been reviewing the results of the World Food Conference in Rome. They suggest, first of all, that the EEC should double its present food aid commitment from 1.3 million tons to 2.6 million tons of grain. This is to meet immediate and short term needs. And they suggest that there should be funds established to help finance the purchase of this grain. The purchase and movement of grain is a complicated matter because it affects world trade patterns and must be related to the arrangements of GATT and the world price situation. But in the immediate situation we could do something along these lines. It is suggested that we double Britain's existing commitment of 25,000 tons of fertiliser to the FAO fertiliser supply scheme, and the United Kingdom fertiliser industry has indicated that it is able to meet that commitment.

This group has also suggested that we should initiate a high level study, to report within three months, in order to see what economies could be made in our food patterns to release grain for the hungry. Just as we are being compelled at the moment to look at our use of energy in this country and reduce consumption because of the high price of oil and the high price of energy as a consequence, so also we should do well if we were to examine our own consumption of food in the light of the terrifying demands of people who are starving at the moment, so that we may be a moral influence in world affairs and in this way increase our influence by witnessing for that which is good.

4.52 p.m.

The Lord Bishop of LEICESTER

My Lords, I add my very brief word of welcome and congratulation to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, on his maiden speech. He has certainly been thrown in at the deep end, but he has proved himself more than able to swim and, rather symbolically perhaps, chose the deep sea as the principal subject of his words to us this afternoon. I should also like to pay a heartfelt tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for his patience and perseverance in keeping before us, certainly week by week if not day by day, the great subjects of human concern that lie so very near to his heart. If I may say so, it took him a little while to get into our rather curious ways, but once he had learned them he proved him-self more than able to exploit them to the full; and this afternoon he has given us yet one more sign that "age does not weary him nor the years condemn", if he does not mind having a quotation that is usually attached to the military section of the community. But he has certainly given us today a most ambitious Motion, in the sense that it calls upon us to discuss in a relatively short time subjects which of course take months even to understand, let alone to clarify.

My first instinct was, and I think my opinion still is, that the solution suggested by the noble Lord, of a World Authority to deal with these problems, is not one that I should be ready immediately to support, particularly as he goes on to say that it should "deal with these and related problems", just as though it would not have an enormous agenda to deal with in any case. But during the debate the words of the Motion have been slightly expanded and varied in two different directions; first of all, by the noble Lord himself who explained that what he really meant by a World Authority was a new dimension to the work of the United Nations. Whether or not that is practicable or desirable I hesitate to state in a moment, but it is something rather different from a new combined authority which I felt he was suggesting in place of the various agencies set up by several of the conferences of which he has reminded us this afternoon.

Then the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, in what I thought was a most elevated and inspiring speech, moved into a rather different plane by omitting the little word "a" before "a World Authority", turning our discussion into a debate on world authority. That obviously opens up other possibilities. I was reminded of many contributions by the late Earl Attlee, who was always bringing before us the thought of world government. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, was leading us a little in that direction but, however desirable such an object might be, we cannot help knowing that we are yet a very long way away from a world in which that would seem to be possible.

I noticed very clearly, and I already had this subject in my notes, that in many of the conferences there was a rather sharp division between the attitudes of the developing and developed countries. I shall mention one or two of these as I go along. It occurs to me that what is happening in the world today is something like what happened in our own country in the 19th century, when we suddenly became aware, largely through the writings of people like Charles Kingsley and Charles Dickens, of the existence of another England that was largely hidden from the eyes of the more articulate and governing sections of the community. We all know that it was a long and laborious process, not yet completed, whereby the two nations grew towards becoming one nation.

Through a number of circumstances of which television is perhaps the most obvious, the Western World has become aware in a totally new and vivid way of the existence of what we call the Third World, with the enormous gap which exists between it and the developed world, particularly in matters of food and resources of every kind for human life. This arose very clearly in the conference at Stockholm, when there came to be a kind of division between those who felt that pollution was the great enemy and those who felt that poverty was the great enemy. Roughly speaking, the developed countries had been through their industrial revolution, and having reaped some of the benefits from it were now beginning to see the cost of it. Whereas those who had not been through it naturally saw the desirable fruits of industrial development, which were such a driving force in the Western world particularly in the last century. We have to keep before the world and before ourselves the thought that the environment is not only a matter of pollution, but a matter that concerns the whole quality of life.

I was recently interested to see a most interesting preview of the pollution problem in a paragraph by Charles Kingsley, the centenary of whose death we are keeping tomorrow. He was a tremendous enthusiast for scientific and industrial development, but he foresaw the evil results of it as well as the good results. He said, in a letter in the middle of the last century, words like these: I can conceive a time when the black and poisonous vapours that emerge from the chimneys of every manufactory shall, by new chemical process, be seized and utilised and turned into a useful substance so that they will no longer pollute"— he actually used the word "pollute"— the air, destroy the vegetation, and in this time the Black Country will no longer be black, the rivers will once again run crystal clear, the trees become once more luxuriant, and the desert, which man has created"— and these are significant words— by his haste and greed, shall once more literally blossom as the rose. Those words are so extraordinarily prescient that they are perhaps worth recalling during this week when we are remembering the work and life of that very far-seeing, if rather puzzling, person.

I was pleased to see that Her Majesty's Government have been elected to the governing council for the United Nations environmental programme. That council is to take a general suzerainty over two of the bodies that were set up as a result of the Stockholm conference, the Global and Environmental Monitoring System and the International Referral System. We must hope that in small ways those two bodies will begin to create an atmosphere in which nations can work together for the care of this planet, and combine in an effort to make it a worthy home for mankind.

I have only a few words about population. This is an extremely difficult subject, particularly because of the sensitivity of the developing nations to any attempt by the developed nations to keep their populations down. The question of the relation between the strength of a country and its population has often been a very sensitive one. King David, I remember, was rebuked for trying to number the people. He lived in an age when the numbers on the roll, as it were, indicated the military strength and resources of the country, and there are plenty of countries living in that period of development today. But we can point out to our-selves and others that if the world goes on increasing its population at the rate of 70 million every year further problems are inevitable.

At one time I was very attracted by the words of His Holiness the Pope when he addressed the United Nations on this question. He said that when a family gets larger the table has to be increased in size. I have certainly come to feel that there are limits to how quickly and how greatly the table of the food resources of mankind can be enlarged. I think the only consequence is that equilibrium can be achieved only if there is some reduction in the birthrate, including those nations where it is increasing so very rapidly. In any educational efforts that we make in that direction we have to be very sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of countries at a very different stage of development from our own.

I shall not say very much about the seabed. I wish I could speak to your Lordships with the authority that one of my episcopal predecessors here, Bishop Fleming, used to command in this field. I can only hope that the compromise solution which appears to be holding the field at present—namely, the 200-mile exclusive economic zone with complete freedom of movement on the top of the sea in that zone—will provide a sufficient basis for some peaceful development. But there are very great problems connected with this, because there are many places where you cannot go 200 miles from a coast without running into somebody else's 200 miles. The idea that if we had an authority of real power it would be able to go to the International Court at The Hague and carry authority does not hold out very much hope because we saw in the case of the Icelandic dispute how very little weight can be attached to the decisions of the International Court, however much we may regret that.

I should like to end with a few words about what I feel to be the most important and immediate subject of all these four; that is, the question of food. I think that most intelligent and thoughtful people in our own country are vaguely aware of the food problem as it is impinging on the Third World, but it is necessary to popularise this fact in ways that will register with ordinary people, and that is not easy, so I mention only one or two facts which have registered in my own mind.

I read, for instance, that the total harvest last year over the world's surface was 2 per cent. less than the year before, although there were, as usual, 70 million more mouths to feed. That itself highlights the increasing gap. I read that the Western World, with one-third of the world's population, eats more than half of the world's food supply. I read that the average person needs 2,350 calories in order to maintain a healthy life, but that in America the figure is 3,000 calories and in India 1,600 calories. This is a very simple way of expressing the gap that exists in food resources and the way in which they are used. The Churches are playing a part in trying to highlight these problems. Many will have noticed that the new Archbishop of Canterbury, who is to be enthroned on Friday, chose the question of food supplies for the Third World as the subject of his Christmas broadcast.

Shortly before Christmas, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry asked some pertinent questions on this matter in this House. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, has already referred to the scheme known as Food Share. I was going to list, as he did, the items which that particular campaign, which is launched by the World Development Movement and the Churches together, have in mind. But his points will be noted in Hansard and I will not weary the House by going over them again. I should, however, refer to one or two other facts which I believe are worth mentioning. We have heard already of the importance of encouraging nations in the Third World to grow more food for them-selves. Here I would stress the importance of what is called "intermediate technology". It has been found that the results of this through smallish farm units are extraordinarily good, contrary to what we all thought in this country and the West that the only hope lay in large agricultural units. They have found in Taiwan, for instance, where they have developed this system on a large scale, that they are actually raising more food per acre than the United States of America is managing to raise with all the resources at its disposal. I think that may be rather significant.

We know that we have to find more fertiliser for the developing nations. I do not mention this in any criticism of the United States because probably we may be in much the same position ourselves, but it did strike me as a surprising fact to read that the United States uses more fertiliser on its golf-courses, its gardens and its cemeteries than the whole of India uses in the production of its food. I believe very much in what the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, said about the importance of producing more food ourselves. I regretted very much to hear mentioned on the radio recently that at a meeting of the National Farmers' Union a motion was proposed by one farmer that no longer should farmers seek expansion in their industry. No doubt that is because of a lack of confidence in the total situation with which farmers are confronted, but it is a sad development and one that I hope can be reversed.

In the matter of oil we have had a very plain lesson of the very great dangers of being dependent upon other countries for essential imports. I think that we might be asking for trouble if we allowed our dependence on food from outside to continue at the present level. I want to say just a word about what I consider to be a very wasteful aspect of our British life, an accusation which I am afraid I must lay at the door of the catering industry. I am sorry that our British catering industry has emulated America in providing, almost without regard to the wishes of their customers, meals of gargantuan size. I believe this to be quite unnecessary. I have often been in the States and been offered a steak that obviously contained enough meat for at least four people, a large part of which is left on the plate. Now in England I find much of this waste is being repeated.

When I am travelling I sometimes want a light meal. On one occasion I went into a fairly well-known restaurant between Oxford and Banbury and asked for an omelette, which was on the menu, only to be told courteously by the waiter that I could not have it just like that because the minimum charge for a meal was between £2 or £3, plus VAT and the service charge. On that occasion I felt justified in saying that we would seek a more hospitable hostelry. This is a serious matter. The habits of affluence have continued into an era of austerity. I think that somehow or other we must get it across to our people that this practice is an unnecessary waste; it is uneconomic from our own point of view, but this food—I do not mean the particular food that is offered but that which goes to make up these enormous meals—could be used so much more fruitfully in other places.

Recently I have found a series of small restaurants on the lesser motorways—I will not mention the actual names, although many of your Lordships will know what I am referring to—where it is possible to go in and, should you want it, obtain two poached eggs on toast and go on your way rejoicing. I think that this is something we should encourage. We shall all go on watching Her Majesty's Government and their attitude in all of these very difficult matters. I conclude by assuring the Government that any steps they lake, based on a broad and worldwide understanding of human need, will certainly command the understanding support of the churches and religious communities of this land.

5.16 p.m.

Lord VERNON

My Lords, in this wide-ranging debate I propose to confine my remarks to the food and population issues. Before doing so I should like to add my congratulations to those that have already been offered to my old friend and one-time colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy. I am sure that we are all delighted to see him here. I know that he will prove a great asset to your Lordships' House.

I should also like to take the opportunity of congratulating the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal on his appointment as Minister for population affairs. I know that it is a little late in the day to do this, but I have not previously had an opportunity. It is very satisfactory that both the main political Parties are agreed that a Minister to overlook population affairs in this country is necessary; and it is a great improvement on attitudes which have prevailed in the past. I should also like to say to the noble Lord how much all those voluntary organisations concerned in these matters have appreciated the trouble he has taken to keep in touch with them and to hear their point of view. We may not always agree with him, particularly as regards the United Kingdom, but at least there is a willingness to listen and that can only be good.

My Lords, I turn now to the Bucharest and Rome Conferences. It was hardly to be expected that nations representing so many diverse interests would agree on the action necessary to meet the world population explosion. But what could not be disputed at the conference was the facts and the facts have been stated fully by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, this afternoon. The fact that world population will double in 30 years and the shortfall in food supplies have been brought out, so I do not want to expand on this theme. I do not think anybody can dispute the seriousness of the problem and I believe that we are all very much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for raising the matter this afternoon. Indeed, I would go further and say that in the next three decades this will be the predominant international political issue, so we could not be discussing a more important subject.

The Rome Conference agreed that various steps should be taken by the Western and OPEC countries with a view to making available more food to those in need. However, in view of international power politics, one cannot help being sceptical about what steps will be taken in practical terms. It was significant that the Soviet Union and China went a considerable way towards sabotaging the global information and early warning system on food production and supply by insisting on a let-out clause effectively allowing nations to withhold information for reasons of national sovereignty. I think that this is indicative of the immense difficulties which lie ahead.

My Lords, given more modern methods, more food can undoubtedly be grown in many of the undeveloped countries than is being grown today. This should go some way towards alleviating the problem in the short term, but agricultural experts seem to be agreed that it will not be possible to increase the food supply to meet population demands in the time span available. The green revolution has not reached the expectations once held out for it and we shall not have a green revolution every ten years. So what are we to do about it?

One school of thought—and reference has been made to this this afternoon—is that all that is required is to increase the living standards of people in those countries where the problem is greatest and automatically, as has happened in the West, birth rates will decline. Of course, the aim must be to increase the living standards in those countries and to emancipate the women from the perpetual drudgery of child bearing, but the defect of the argument lies in the fact that there is not enough time because the population in those countries is so often growing faster than economic development. Noble Lords will recollect that, when the Red Queen and Alice moved with such terrific speed across the chess board, at the end they were where they had started. Despite economic progress in many undeveloped countries, living standards are not even standing still—many of them are going backwards, unemployment is becoming worse, housing conditions are deteriorating and, as we all know, more people are starving. If disaster is to be averted, it seems clear that population growth has to be curbed drastically, especially in those countries with birth rates in the 30 to 40 per thousand bracket.

My Lords, consider the extreme case of Bangladesh. This is a country which in 1971 had 70 million people, living at more than twice the density of any other country in the world excluding city states, which will have 90 million people by 1980, and 146 million by the year 2000. Already poor beyond the comprehension of most people in this country, with corruption rife and—as I think the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, said—with 100,000 people having died of starvation, what hope can there be unless population growth is halted? Of course the West can go on pouring in more aid on a temporary basis but what good will that do? In the end the ultimate calamity would merely be intensified. Every nation has to decide its own population policy and I am sure that the Chinese and other nations at Bucharest were entirely right when they said this. But some of the countries whose numbers are increasing so fast cannot have it both ways. If they fail to take adequate measures to limit their population growth, they cannot expect to be bailed out endlessly by the richer countries. By all means, let us give aid to them, but only if it is achieving results.

My Lords, nearly two years ago, I was fortunate enough to make a tour of India and South-East Asia and to see for myself something of what has been done in some of these countries to encourage family planning and to curb population growth. There were depressing features in what I saw, but also some encouraging ones. In particular, I was tremendously impressed by what was being done in Singapore. A Government Family Planning and Population Board has been set up and, as a result of a massive educational campaign, the encouragement of family planning, sterilisation and substantial disincentives to the production of large families, fertility rates have dropped dramatically. If people want large families, they can have them, but they are regarded as a luxury and the families themselves and not the State have to foot the bill.

My Lords, I have mentioned Singapore specifically because I believe that we in this country have many lessons to learn from them. Then again, there is Communist China, to which the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, referred in his opening speech. The Chinese are probably doing more than any other nation in the world to lower their population growth. In parts of Shanghai, it is said that they have reduced the birth rate to as low a figure as nine per thousand, which is much lower than anywhere in the Western world that I know of. Even in the Chinese countryside, where it is much more difficult to get the message across, with the aid of free services and the barefoot doctors who have done so much, rapid advances are being made. Realistic and efficient people that they are, the Chinese understand only too well that economic progress is nullified by a rapidly expanding population.

That brings me, finally, to what we in the United Kingdom can do to help, and I believe that we can do three things. First, we can ensure that a higher proportion of our overseas aid is earmarked for family planning. In 1974, the United Kingdom allocated a mere 0.5 per cent., or £1.7 million out of a total foreign assistance budget of £340 million, to family planning. This compares with 9.14 per cent. by Norway, 5.78 per cent. by Sweden and 2.88 per cent. by the United States of America. If we are to take this matter seriously, surely our contribution could be stepped up?

Secondly, my Lords, I believe we should eat less in this country. The right reverend Prelate who preceded me said much the same thing. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, suggested it at Question Time before Christmas and he got rather short shrift from the Government. In a recent speech outside your Lordships' House, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London suggested that food rationing should be introduced. I agree with him. I believe that both food and oil products should be rationed. Instead of some of the half measures that have been taken by the Government, such rationing would bring home to the people of this country the extreme seriousness of the economic position which we are facing and the food saved could go towards helping those really in need. It is perhaps worth remembering that whereas the output of British agriculture has doubled in the last 20 years, the volume of food imports has risen by 20 per cent., which must mean that, notwithstanding our population increase, which I think is about 8 per cent., we are, as a nation, eating much more food than we were a short time ago. We can all tighten our belts.

Lastly, there is the question of our own population level in these islands in relation to the homegrown food supply. This aspect seems to me so important that I hope that before long it will be possible to devote a special debate to it. At the moment I only wish to remind your Lordships that we produce in this country one-half of what we consume in food and feedingstuffs, and the balance, to the value of £2,714 million in 1973, has to be imported at costs which we already find difficult to meet and which, in the future, we may be unable to afford, even if the food is there to be imported.

The noble Lord, the Lord Privy Seal, said in his speech at Bucharest that, in so far as our falling birth rate represented an approach towards a stable population, the Government welcomed it. My Lords, I am glad the noble Lord said that, because I think it is further than any Minister has previously gone on this subject. But I regard it as only a start. If this Government, or indeed any successor Government, are not to shed crocodile tears over the world's starving millions, and are, at the same time, to safeguard our own future, they must seek not merely to stabilise our population but to reduce it to numbers which we can feed from within our own resources. This cannot be done overnight, but it can be done gradually if a start is made now. That is the best contribution which we, as a country, can make to help alleviate the appalling suffering in the world to which the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has drawn attention.

5.35 p.m.

Lord HALE

My Lords, I must at once, in case I forget, pay tribute to the last speaker for what he said. I enjoyed every word of the noble Lord's speech and I particularly relished his reference to China. I had been wondering whether to say something myself of the same sort. If we can throw off our prejudices, if we can really look the thing in the face, we might find that this immense people, with their immense problems, with a vast area of population and so on—and always a highly civilised and kindly people—now have perhaps the most successful government in the world, and let us realise that we can learn from what they do.

We had a very interesting speech from the right reverend Prelate who mentioned fertilisers, but this fact has not been mentioned. China is, I think, one of the biggest producers and one of the biggest importers of nitrogenous fertilisers in the world. I may be wrong but it is my recollection. I am often wrong. If there are any useful facts and phrases in this speech of mine, they come mostly from people like the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, and the errors are from my own personal recollection and pronunciation.

It is very happy for me, after a quarter of a century of close political association and deep personal friendship with my noble friend Lord Brockway, to speak with him again on subjects dear to our hearts. We used to see visions and dream dreams. I was associated with Richard Acland and notably with Harold Wilson, who worked with great knowledge and sincerity. He published his own book and in the production of the War on Want booklet he played a great part. My noble friend Lord Brockway talked about the Gezira scheme. I think we were going to make the Kalahari desert flower at one stage. Now, alas, the Sahara is moving South.

But mistakes were made. Some were quite inexcusable—on our part. There were cattle ranching in Bechuanaland. I heard Tshekedi Khama say they never realised the effects of drought. There were constant warnings by scientists. Professor Haldane said to me of ground nuts: Now they are going to grow sun flowers and they have already killed with DDT all the pollen carrying insects in the vast area. Professor Bernal was constantly coming to give us long, detailed pleas to use natural gas, which was literally wasting its fragrance on the desert air. He produced economic and viable schemes for the import of natural gas which could have produced much needed energy, and energy is still the major problem.

I wish to add a footnote to one figure quoted by my noble friend Lord Brockway, who has worked so well on this. It was wonderful to hear him today making one of his best speeches. Indeed, perhaps it has some reference to the right reverend Prelate's reference to the Papal table, because that table is really the land area of the world which is roughly 36,586 million acres. On the standard computation, 20 per cent. is covered with ice or snow and 20 per cent. is high mountainous, rugged country, while 20 per cent. has a hopelessly inadequate rainfall—the population of Western Australia is only one per square mile—and another 10 per cent. has insufficient soil, some of it destroyed by human means in dust bowls. So if you reduce the figure by 70 per cent., you get a figure of 11,000 million acres for nearly 4,000 million people now—three acres per head. A lot of that is still beyond the reaches of cultivation.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, in saying that I enjoyed his speech. For the first time in this House, I was able to listen to two long speeches without a hearing aid. I hope that this will continue, because I am told that my hearing is incurable and it was for that reason that I missed an intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Robbins. I am not quite sure what he said, but I think he referred to changes in the Third World. The Third World is sometimes moving up, as in the Foot-ball League. We have been moving down. The wind of change that blew in Africa produced some surprising results. There are now nearly 60 independent nations and at least 50 of them have in theory, absolutely full self-government.

They are pretty big countries, with every variety of condition and with populations ranging from over 1,000 per square mile in Mauritius to two per square mile in Libya. The country of Zambia is governed well by a personal and intimate friend of the noble Lord. It is now exporting something in the region of £800 million a year of copper. Next door is Tanzania, where the tiny island of Zanzibar has managed to achieve some economic independence of its own by devious means and is prosperous in cloves. The rest of that vast area, under President Nyerere presents almost insoluble problems of area and population.

I should like to say one or two words on this subject. I do not want to criticise anybody, but I get glossy pamphlets saying that we are building hotels in Tanzania through what was, and perhaps still is, the British Colonial Development Corporation. On the old theory, we built one in Uganda which is now being used by General Amin for other purposes. We built several in Kenya where they have developed very considerably, showing import surpluses in the use of game parks and showing and sometimes shooting the game.

But what the tropical countries need is energy. The United Nations is, of course, quite right in concentrating largely on great schemes like the Volta dam, but a lot of scientists of the world have been devoting their energies to solar energy, producing schemes so that the people in Britain can have constant hot baths at rather less cost. Immense claims have been made for the progress in solar energy. What you can use in the tropics is surely solar energy. One scientist in New Jersey claims that a one square mile plant can produce the whole of the needs of 250,000 people. Japan claims to be producing an almost incredibly large proportion of oil from the treatment of garbage. It is liquefied, then gasified and—the figure is incredible—something like one-third of the total weight ultimately results in a kerosene type oil. These things have to be used.

Perhaps I should devote a moment or two to a country that I have never visited, so perhaps it is something of an impertinence to do so. I refer to Chad, which seems at the moment to represent precisely all the problems which confront the United Nations and the voluntary agencies. Chad stretches over 15 to 16 degrees of latitude from North to South. It is ten times as big as England, with a population of 4 million. It is largely desert. It was occupied by the French, almost casually and by chance, around 1911, and they were there for 50 years before granting it full independence. The French developed a cotton industry there which is now their principal export; but, according to the Sunday Times, they did not lay a single mile of tarmacadam road and did not build a single bridge over the main river.

Chad has about 100 dialects. The Encyclopoedia Britannica says that the boundaries follow no ethnological lines. Of course, it has no sea coast. Actually, it is so placed that 500 miles of Libyan desert separates its northernmost point on the Tropic of Cancer from the Mediterranean. There are about 750 miles of deserted land largely across the Arabian desert to the Red Sea in the East; there is a little over 1,000 miles over the Sahara desert towards the mid-Atlantic to the West and 450 to 500 miles to the nearest water in the Gulf of Guinea in the Cameroons. The River Chari needed Commodore Vandervilt at his most efficient to navigate it. The story that the Sunday Times told recently in tragic detail is almost the story of the transport problem which affected Captain Scott on his last expedition; but it was sand, mud and stupidity which were in the way.

Britain made no special contribution to Chad until last year and then the Under-Secretary of State for Overseas Trade visited the Kamen area and was so appalled by what he saw that he took, to his eternal credit, really prompt action, as effective as one could humanly have made it. He sent much needed medicines and supplies, for Chad has every variety of disease: leprosy, the nutritional diseases like kwashiorkor, symptomised by the pot-bellied child and marasmus, more serious with its obvious matchstick bones. All are there. There is also trachoma and gastroenteritis and sleeping sickness. One could extend the list almost indefinitely. The World Health Organisation has mounted some special schemes. The very inaccessability of Chad with its lack of transport makes its problems almost insoluble. What has happened since is that in the area of Kamen which used to accommodate half the population there has been practically no rain since 1966.

Chad has almost every religion. It is mainly Muslim and the people of Kamen have been praying to their respective gods for rain for eight years. As I said, the Minister for Overseas Development sent substantial contributions of food and of medicine. The transport failed, because there is no transport. The Sunday Times team wrote a brilliant and very graphic article, describing all the difficulties A Norwegian team of helpers took twelve months even to get permission to get inside Chad. The doctors in hospital had no medicine in the cupboard. There was food distribution in which the food went only to the able-bodied, because the system was to chuck it out in little bits by lorry. Starving women and children did not even try to get it; they knew they were not included. This was the general picture, perhaps a picture which did not completely allow for the problems of government of a very large area.

The main thing Chad lacks is water. There is some in Lake Chad which is shared with three other nations. But there are only two substantial rivers and no other large lake. The moment the French left the people received a new constitution and a coloured national flag and proceeded to elect a president with 88 per cent. male illiteracy and 98 per cent. adult female illiteracy. The President has since been re-elected which is either a tribute to his popularity, or to the fact that he promptly eliminated all other political parties in Chad. But, of course, the President's writ does not run very far in this vast area.

Kamen has a Sultan. He is a significant religious figure, too, and appears to exercise such effective rule as there is. Last April, he married his fourth wife who came from Maigury in Nigeria, a nice young girl. He did not attend his wedding, like the old French Kings. There are rules of procedure for Sultans which have to be observed. Five hundred guests were transported from Nigeria to the Sultan's nuptial celebrations; 1,500 cattle and 1,500 sheep were slaughtered to provide an adequate ceremonial to keep up the essential standard which is necessary for potentates. We must not presume to criticise, although the voluntary helpers declined the invitation to attend. My Lords, I have already been talking too long and I am sorry. I am not sure whether it is 13 or 18 minutes.

Several Noble Lords

It is 18.

Lord HALE

It is very sad, but may I say a brief word about one of these diseases of which I know a little which raises almost theological implications, for it seems to me to go far to establish one of the gnostic heresies which postulate a continuing conflict between a nearly omnipotent God and an extremely powerful Devil, which I find more attractive every day. I suggested to the right reverend Prelate that it does have uses if you can give the fine weather to God and the typhoons to the Devil. This disease is onchoceriasis. I apologise for my pronunciation. I am told that it can produce total blindness, and the World Health Organisation, in a recent magazine largely devoted to it, gave a cover picture of a Chad village which used to accommodate 400 people and now has only nine. They have been left behind; they are all totally blind. We have to consider one fantastic contradiction of the population figures.

The trouble now is not so much the birth rate but the death rate. People like me go on living long beyond their span. I am a sample of uneconomic man, 72, and the only part of my body functioning adequately is an artificial aluminium ankle. The onchocerca volvulus is a worm which lives in the human system subcutaneously. It lives about 15 years in the human body and the females produce about one million microfilariae a year. Providence has fortunately prescribed that the microfilariae have a life of only about 2½ years, and although they are unpleasant things to have in millions in your body, and are to some extent deleterious, they cannot be called a grave scourge.

At this point the Devil comes in. He produces a vector fly which will provide the necessary incubation to prolong their life. The simulium, which must live on rivers and spends its pupal years in running oxygenated water, is a bloodsucking fly, an extreme nuisance to workers on the river. It bites constantly but not always dangerously. But the day comes when it sucks a spot bung full of microfilariae. Several hundreds can be accommodated in a milligram of flesh. They pass through the stomach wall of the fly which is about a quarter of an inch in magnitude, and find a home in the thoracic muscles of the fly's stomach. There they pass through three larval stages and the next time the simulium fly has a human bite at the right moment they pass back through the blood into the human body—a degree of planning on behalf of these organisms, of less than a hundred thousandth part of an inch, of a rather remarkable kind. After that—and I will finish my story—they can produce total blindness. They emerge with new strength and power and pass to the extremities of the body, often destroying the pupil of the eye.

Chad is not too heavily infected, because it has so little water, but areas like the Volta dam, which comprises 700,000 square kilometres, are completely infested. Then there is the usual dilemma. The rivers not only produce the only protein food but on their banks is the only fertile land. To flood them with DDT and wipe out the simulium fly may destroy it, wipe out the fish and the fertile land with it. We forget that running water is the only source of any drinkable commodity. That is the dilemma. In Kenya, DDT has been used effectively, because the fly has a long life and a short flight. In the Volta region the other kind of flies, the simulium damnosum can fly quite a long way. They are now trying to deal with it by spraying less strong insecticides.

My Lords, I have done and I apologise. I have said nothing about commodities, because I hope to say something on Tuesday and I hope that some of your Lordships will assist me in dealing with that subject. Finally, I want to pay tribute to John Boyd-Orr, the greatest of them all. I remember saying to him "What can we give them now?" He said, "You can give them hope". There is not much hope in Chad.

6.0 p.m.

Lord ARWYN

My Lords, may I join with other speakers in congratulating my noble friend Lord Brockway on having initiated this debate and in congratulating also the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, on his courage on diving into it. My contribution will be to emphasise the need for strenuous action to implement a Law of the Sea in the earliest possible time, particularly in regard to polymetallic nodules. If the 1975 Geneva Conference is enabled to draft adequate legislation for a fair régime and final investment decisions are concluded in 1977, the first polymetallic nodule recovery operation could start in 1980. This would have a beneficial effect on world metal prices.

Therefore, as a mining engineer, I shall confine my speech to the problems of safeguarding our metal reserves. May I remind your Lordships that in Britain all our metal reserves are becoming exhausted. We have to import practically all that we use. This common heritage of mankind will lie sterile unless action is taken very soon. The technically undeveloped countries who lack their own land-based metal resources will suffer the greatest, and 1980 should therefore be set as the limit by which time ocean mining should be started. Comparatively few people know anything about the minerals contained in the ocean. Without going into any highly technical details, we are beginning to realise the extent of this huge accumulation on the ocean bed. It would take years to make an approximate assessment for the whole work. While the existence of these polymetallic nodules has been known for many years, it was not until we were in great danger of a metal famine that the first attempt was made to retrieve what are more commonly known as manganese nodules. Though the manganese content is high compared with other metals contained in the nodules, it is the nickel and copper contents which have a top priority—a long way behind in present demand are cobalt and manganese. The other ingredients, for the time being, can be regarded as impurities: these are iron, aluminium, silica, et cetera. The ocean resources in total already assessed are as great as the original land resources when serious extraction methods were first used. I should like to emphasise that point, because we are beginning to realise to what extent we have to deal with them. The rate of production will not for several years approach that of land production, but it will not be inconsiderable and it will increase progressively as new techniques develop, as happened in connection with land production. In the meantime it will make an enormous difference as an incremental supply.

Briefly, that is the background of the subject. Let us examine what has been done and what more should be done, bearing in mind that the oceans cover seven-tenths of the earth's surface. The first point to establish is that these ocean deposits are to be recognised as the common heritage of all mankind and that their exploitation must be rigidly controlled. Therefore, it is fundamental that the rules written for any international legal régime should be acceptable to all mankind. This implies access to all without discrimination; but at present access has little significance unless it is accompanied by technology. The produce of the initial recovery of the nodules could, for instance, be fairly distributed in fair quotas for each nation, but without the advanced technology required to extract metals most of the technically undeveloped nations would be no better off by just accumulating dumps of nodules. So what we are faced with is not only the retrieval of the nodules but also the extraction of the metals from the nodules.

At present the technically developed industrial countries possess an exclusive prerogative for the utilisation of the necessary technology. Even access to the beds is not open to all nations to exploit profitably, so we are left with the problem of dividing the "spoils" in a "fair" manner. We have to consider how to divide the revenue and the extracted metals in such a way as will not only provide supplies of important metals at realistic prices but will allow technically underdeveloped nations to acquire their own capability. Licences, therefore, at this stage must perforce be awarded to those who possess the technical ability not only for retrieving the nodules from the ocean beds but also for the extraction of the metals themselves.

There is an urgent need to establish a means of registering applications under international control as soon as possible and certainly before the final Law of the Sea treaty is finally signed and ratified, whenever that might be. The Secretary of State of the United States has already had applications lodged by the Deepsea Ventures Company to have certain areas of the Pacific recognised under claimed title. This is perhaps conforming with the old adage: Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just, but ten times he who gets his fist in first. There is a danger in that successive Governments in our country seem to be hesitant about really involving themselves in what they might still consider to be an embryonic industry. British companies are therefore being forced to test the temperature of Government support while American companies are diving in.

May I remind your Lordships that the British Commercial Ocean Study Group was set up ten years ago. Six companies took part, each with their own specialised expertise in oceanography. More recently the Association of British Oceanological Industries (ABOI) has been formed, but these efforts are in danger of being fragmented without Government encouragement. There are references to the situation in Hansard on 29th January 1974 and 20th May 1974. Questions were asked in another place which referred to an application for Government help towards participation in an international consortium, which would provide a means for the United Kingdom companies to break into a new technology and to give this country access to a new source of metals.

This was last year. May I ask whether there is any prospect in 1975 for this appeal to succeed, or are the terms too onerous? Where do our priorities lie? Is it once more a case of "too little and too late"? We are facing an inevitable shortage of key metals. Is that fact being adequately recognised? If so, what action is contemplated and what programme has been established? We who are engaged in the extractive industries have to work in accordance with very long-term plans and until these are settled all effort is sterilised.

If peace and progressive harmony are a reasonable backcloth to man's endeavour, the previous attempts to carve up the world's surface have been a good example of the worst aspects of trial and error. If we are to follow the old pattern, the fact that there is a demand will be the reason for us all going for the supply as fast as our many legs can carry us, all the technical, adequate nations competing as never before. We may even have to develop means of military protection for our respective interests. I earnestly hope that this House, with its very considerable voice and influence, will be instrumental in helping in the forming of rules for this race before it becomes un-controllable. It has been suggested, I understand, that an international authority should control the access and the development of seabed deposits. This may be an easy way to pass the buck and turn out to be as ineffective as that other idealistic dream, the League of Nations, where even the ghosts are fading. But sooner or later idealism and international control must prevail to preserve human rights. It is in Geneva that the next Seabed Conference is to be held this year. Let us hope it will produce more practical results.

It would be appropriate to mention here that large sums of money are still being spent on improving geological knowledge of the already well-prospected land areas of the world. Still larger sums are needed to explore and develop the mineral potential of the seas. The American Deepsea Ventures Company is reported to have spent an average of 2 million dollars a year for the past ten years in examining the best way to raise the nodules and extracting the metals. International consortia, with British members, are also spending money and are ready to act as soon as the necessary legislation is complete. Nearer home, the British Institute of Geological Sciences is engaged on creating a comprehensive picture of the Continental Shelf around Great Britain. If international political advances were to match the technical progress so far achieved, there might be ocean production under way by 1978, and not just a hope for the 1980s, as at present.

One of the hardest problems to be settled on an international basis is the rate of taxation of profits by the pioneers of ocean metal recovery. This should not exceed 50 per cent. if the operators are seriously to be encouraged to go ahead. By 50 per cent. I mean the whole taxation whether paid in this country or not. It is worth considering a distribution of this taxation among the technically underdeveloped countries, either as a whole or in part, as a form of early participation in the venture. Let us not forget that the remaining 50 per cent. left to the operators must cover risk capital invested and continuous research, and provide reserves for financing further fields of operation before the shareholders are able to participate in a distribution of profits.

Is it not logical for one country to collect such taxes and distribute them to the less developed countries rather than have complicated double taxation provisions? In all events, if the exploiting companies have to pay every eligible authority their 50 per cent. I am sure that the ocean nodules will not be mined in our lifetime, or certainly not in sufficient time to meet the increasing world demand, because the expertise is under the control of industrial companies not nationalised or international industry. They have a right to benefit from the exclusive knowledge they have gained from entrepreneurial initiative. It is a cold hard fact. Changes will be gradual, but they will come.

In the meantime, time is running out. We have the enormous growth of populations to consider. The present criteria of demand will be inoperative in the next few years. As I see it, to start production we must use the technical knowledge possessed by the various companies specialising in mining problems and then, as the expertise grows, greater control can be exerted by an international organisation which has gathered experience from the beginning. The important thing is to get ocean mining established in the very near future and in time before disaster happens. I hope that this debate will encourage action by the Government and accelerate decisions at the next Geneva conference. We just cannot afford to dither any more. Years have already been wasted, and soon it will be a matter of great urgency which could lead to panic measures contrary to the ideals in which we believe.

6.17 p.m.

Lord INGLEWOOD

My Lords, the pattern of this debate seems to be that a speech about the sea is followed by a speech about the land and vice-versa. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Arwyn, will forgive me if I do not follow him because I know nothing whatever about the subject he spoke about. But I listened with great interest and learned a lot, as I am sure other noble Lords did, too.

My reason for intervening in this debate is a personal one: I went as the leader of the British delegation to the World Food Congress held in Washington in 1963. That was the time of the Freedom from Hunger campaigns, and we were all full of hope—not only those who went to the conference, but all the people in this country—that a great deal was being done, and more was about to be done. In the intervening 11 years not much progress has been made and there has not been much change. When one reads the papers from the World Food Conference that met recently, one sees the same spirit behind their resolutions; and the same facts and arguments marshalled as we marshalled them 11 years ago. Today—and it is no good pretending it is not so—we face the same problem, except that while food production in the world has increased by something like 30 per cent. in the intervening period, the population has risen fast, too, and there is now rather than fewer people are short of actually less food per head for mankind today than there was 11 years ago. More rather than fewer people are short of food.

There is however one advance which one cannot pass over; everyone now can be more open about family planning and birth control. One of the tragedies of the 1963 Conference was that birth control was a subject that could be mentioned only in whispers in corridors. Many people coming from what the noble Lord described as the Third World would talk to you about it in the corridor, but were not prepared to talk about it openly in the main conference.

We are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for giving us the opportunity of discussing the four conferences this afternoon; and I was interested in his arguments for a new co-ordinating authority, but I am afraid he did not convince me. I am not convinced that a new co-ordinating international agency, making the existing 13 into 14, is really going to be much of an advance. The FAO has done much good and could do more if there were a new determination among the Governments—even if not all Governments—who are prepared to face this task. And a massive task it is. We must also be sure that we start at the right place, which is at the grass roots, and I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, is not in her place because she made the point so; definitely: that we must start at the very grass roots. I should like to say, too, that we must be clear as between the short and the longer-term problems. The short term is really food aid in one form or another, but the purpose and design of food aid must go further than just meeting an immediate need, and it must not be wholly governed by any thought of disposing of an awkward surplus. The design and purpose is to help people to help themselves in the longer term by growing more. There will be no real stability and prosperity in many of the poorer countries, until they can trade in the world with others on fair terms, and before they can do that they must conquer this problem of hunger. This means laying the foundations of an efficient agriculture, without which there can be no worthwhile industrial prosperity.

The people concerned here are living in the main on very small holdings and their technical knowledge is often about the same as the average husband man in Tudor England. More good can be done in many areas, maybe by introducing simple modifications of the existing traditional plough or mattock, than by a lot of high-level planning involving costly mechanised equipment. One must think about the longer term, too. Here I think we should pay a tribute to the agricultural officers in our own Colonial Service who, living in these areas, devoted their lives to improving agriculture in many parts of what was once the British Colonial Empire. They won the confidence and trust of the people they lived among, and they appreciated that improvement had to start at the bottom.

Some of the countries we are concerned with do not see it all in this way. They think that the first priority must be to disturb the existing system of land tenure. I believe that the Algerians, to whom the noble Lord opposite paid certain tribute for their attempts to arrest the spread of the desert at the edge of the Sahara, were in fact thinking on those lines. Others feel—and one must not mock at this but it is a fact that one must record—that a respected place in the world depends more on a State supported system of jet airlines flying over long distances than in facing hunger in their own country. And it is our problem too. We must realise that this is not only a question of hunger in the less fortunate parts of the world now, but the threat of a catastrophic famine facing us all. My Lords, this is not just a problem for Governments and governmental agencies and voluntary organisations; it is a human problem in which we are all concerned— But who so hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

6.23 p.m.

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble kinsman who was kind enough to look after my own agricultural affairs at one time and rescued them from the disaster that would have overtaken them if they had been left entirely to myself. Of course it is a privilege to take part in a debate initiated in such distinguished fashion by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, and contributed to by so many who have shown such tremendous concern for the poorer countries for so long. I have already apologised to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, but I must apologise to the House for having to leave fairly soon after I sit down in order to make a speech elsewhere. I am particularly sorry to do this tonight—I have hardly ever done it before—because I shall speak, although I hope still along Christian lines, rather more sharply than previous orators. Of course, it will be up to the noble Lord to ignore me or to tear me to pieces in my absence, but I cannot complain either way.

However, I am afraid that I tried to make my own assessment, coming, if you like, rather late in the day to this particular area of discussion. I tried to make my own assessment about the British contribution whichever Party was in power, and Party politics do not come into it very much—and of what our effort has amounted to since the war. I recall during the war I was acting as a "bottle-washer" to Lord Beveridge, as he became. I went with him to see the Secretary of State for War at a time when Lord Beveridge was examining the use of skilled manpower in the Services. The Secretary of State for War, flanked with a number of Generals, described the arangements briefly and then turned triumphantly to Lord Beveridge and said: "Well, Sir William"—as Lord Beveridge then was—"what do you make of that?" Beveridge paused for some time and then said: "A miserable show." And in case he had not made himself quite plain enough, he said: "A mis-er-able show!" That was Beveridge's account of the use of skilled manpower at that time, and I am bound to say it was put right soon afterwards. I shall not use that language about the efforts of individuals. The noble Lord who preceded me and others have paid well justified tribute to those who have given up their lives to serving the starving or the very poor and undernourished. To them goes all honour. But if we take the actual performance—take it statistically, or measure it any way you like—without wishing to go through the language of Lord Beveridge, we can call it a profoundly disappointing outcome.

When I criticise our country, I am not suggesting that other countries are doing better. Some may have done a little better, and some a great deal worse, but we are responsible for our own country and therefore we are entitled to praise them or blame it in a way we can hardly apply to the nations generally. One reads statements by Ministers, speeches and memoranda, documents and so on, and one keeps saying to oneself, if one is in a good mood: "How splendid! How well put!" I think our friend esteemed Mr. Peart, Minister of Agriculture. I do not know that his name has come up today, but his name has been taken quite often in vain since the Food Conference. He said many things which were very sound and I am sure that what he said expressed his view. Speaking personally, he said: I think I may say that throughout my political career I have taken a close interest in the problems of agriculture in the developing countries. I do not doubt that for a moment and I agree absolutely that that in one sense is the heart of the problem, which has been stressed by the noble Lord just now and by other noble Lords and Baronesses earlier. But whatever may be said on that point by Mr. Peart, one has to face the fact that the British contribution received biting criticism both here and abroad. That is a fact no one has stated, for reasons of charity, perhaps, today.

However, it is fact that that contribution ran into very severe criticism. Whether the part we played would be popular with the electorate here is perhaps beyond my judgment. But let us take the World Development Movement, for example. They are perhaps as expert as any other unofficial group. They had this to say, based on a first-hand report from the Conference: The United Kingdom contribution to the plenary session"— that is, Mr. Peart's speech— was about as dismal as its contribution to this Conference as a whole". That is the view of the World Development Movement and I think there is a great deal to be said for it.

The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord SHEPHERD)

My Lords, my noble friend said that he would speak sharply but also as a Christian. He has reported these allegations. Has he any fact to substantiate the criticisms that were made of my right honourable friend?

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, the noble Lord has become much less subtle since he acted as my Chief Whip, much less subtle nowadays. He has given me simply the opportunity of going on to say what I was going to say.

Lord SHEPHERD

Good.

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, of course I have studied Mr. Peart's speech and read it carefully. In fact, I was not going to quote him at length.

Lord SHEPHERD

Please do so.

The Earl of LONGFORD

No, my Lords, the words would not do him justice. I will deal only with the result—with what was actually promised at the Conference. All that was promised at the Conference was a commitment that we would raise the donation to the fertiliser fund from 5,000 tons to 25,000 tons. Rumour has reached me, not from the Government but from another source, that there may be some slight increase on that figure, and I hope the increase will be announced today. If it is, one will be very pleased. But we must be aware that this sum would come out of the allotment to overseas aid; it is not a sum which is in addition to the overseas aid allotment. Perhaps the noble Lord will put me right if I am incorrect on that point. It is a paltry quantity in comparison with the 4 million tons which are used in Britain each year. Therefore let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that anything generous or forthcoming was indicated by our spokesman at the World Conference.

Lord SHEPHERD

My Lords, will my noble friend please understand, as I am sure he will, that fertilisers are a product which this country has to import from overseas countries. Therefore it is a particular, special burden. It is not a product which we find from within our own resources.

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, I understand that the noble Lord is to speak later. Perhaps he wishes to make his points while I am still here. I presume that is the reason for his intervention. But he is adopting the tone of a tutor towards a pupil, and I am afraid that I find his tone rather inappropriate because there is no reason whatever to assume that he knows much more about this subject than I do.

I hope that both of us have taken reasonable trouble to equip ourselves for this debate. I have to admit that I shall not be here when the noble Lord replies. Therefore I cannot expect him to keep silent altogether, but I hope he will do the best he can!

Lord WALSTON

Before the noble Earl leaves the question of fertilisers, I understand that it is true that we in this country use 100,000 tons of fertiliser every year on amenity grounds—playing fields, golf courses, and amenities of that kind. Would not the noble Earl agree that if that is a fact, it would cost this country nothing in terms of finance—and it would be a magnificent gesture—if the use of that amount of fertiliser purely for pleasure uses were prohibited and was devoted instead to overseas food production?

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, that seems to be an excellent suggestion and I agree with it entirely. I hope that the noble Lord will find the time, before night falls, to develop these arguments himself because he would put them far better than me, and the noble Lord would not then feel he was in quite such a strong position to read this little lecture. Therefore I hope that the noble Lord will stress some of those points himself. May we now proceed?

Several Noble Lords

Hear, hear!

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, it is not my fault that I have not proceeded! Let me try to say something nice about our revered Ministers. Undoubtedly the Minister of Overseas Development made a very different impression from the impression made by Mr. Peart. Everyone realised that her heart was in the right place. She announced—perhaps all the Ministers should share the credit for it—the Conference of Agricultural Ministers to discuss rural development problems; so let us give credit, at any rate, to our Government in that respect.

May I deal with the total help that this country is prepared to give. The particular proposals were explained first in the fine speech of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, and touched on—I do not wish to repeat them—by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester who has [...] his heart into this subject for so [...] I will not go into the details of th[...] proposals because they have been set out by the noble Lord and I support them entirely. I support entirely the campaign for Food Share in which the Churches, including my own denomination, are playing an active part, as are the development organisations. Therefore I will not detain the House on that subject, except to say that I am heart and soul with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, and with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester.

My Lords, in these few moments I want to take a broad view. What I wish to say could be applied equally to the long-term crisis or to the short-term crisis; at least, it has an application to each. The Minister of Overseas Development, Mrs. Hart, had this to say at the Conference, and I am sure that she spoke from her strong personal convictions which on this subject are well-known. She said: I hope that this conference will produce a new political will in both rich and poor countries. There must be a political will to produce more food in both rich and poor countries, and through direct food aid or, as in our case, cash aid to buy food. She said that there must be political will to produce more food or to give more money to the poor countries to buy food. Therefore the crucial question is whether we are going to do that or whether we are satisfied with our own performance. Are we broadly satisfied with what we are doing? I well remember the enthusiasm with which the Labour Party, when the husband of the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, was leading us, announced the 1 per cent. commitment in 1959. One per cent. of our national income was going to be given to the poorer countries. It was given various names at different times. They are the countries which we are talking about now, and they were called the "underdeveloped countries" or the "developing areas". As I have mentioned, they have been given various names, but we know what we are talking about. In the 1959 Election campaign when Hugh Gaitskell was our Leader, the Labour Party pledged itself, and it met with a great deal of approval outside the Labour Party, to give 1 per cent. Everybody then understood that to mean 1 per cent. without private investment; but that was certainly not in the minds of the people who made that pledge. As time went on that pledge began to be whittled down. We were told that if you left out private investment it was only 0.7 per cent. That became the target of the industrial countries, including our own. At the moment the situation is that we are giving less than 0.4 per cent. In 1973, the last year for which figures are available, I think that the figure was about 0.35 per cent. In other words, it is one-half of the target which we adopted a few years ago, and it is not much more than one-third of the figure to which we committed ourselves in 1959. That is why one is entitled to talk about a fairly dismal performance during these years.

My Lords, I will not dwell on the question, which has not come up today, of whether we could expect the oil-producing countries to do more than they are doing. However, it is worth noticing that the oil-producing countries are apparently giving about 3 per cent. of their GNP at the present time to the developing countries, and that is about 10 per cent. of our own proportion. However, let us focus on this question. I do not think that the House, whichever Party happens to be in power, ought to move too far away from the question of whether it is satisfied with our broad performance. When I was in the Cabinet I well remember thinking that the Minister of Overseas Development—who, in the beginning, was the very effective Minister of Overseas Development, the wife of the noble Lord, Lord Castle—had the hardest task of anybody in the Cabinet. The Defence Minister always has a difficult time, but in the case of defence one can at least appeal to a selfish national interest. However, the Minister of Overseas Development will always have to appeal for national sacrifice. It is no good trying to persuade ourselves that we shall get our money back by a circuitous route. This must be seen as a sacrifice. That is how it was first presented when the 1 per cent. was put forward. It has to be seen in terms of Christian or some other form of ethical duty. Either we try to perform that sacrifice and try to carry through such a sacrifice, or we do not. I am afraid I must submit very strongly that up to now we have failed even to make any very serious effort to render the sacrifice in question.

There are many aspects of this tremendous question with which I cannot deal today. There will be some who will tell us that trade is better than aid, and there may be force in that argument. It can well be argued—and it has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, and others—that the best service of all to render to the starving millions is to grow more food ourselves. There are many important points here, but I must touch on one aspect of this problem in just a few sentences. Here I am certainly not being dogmatic because I do not know exactly how it ought to be done. We may be clear in our minds that the inquiry which is suggested by the Food Share campaign has done its work if the Government have set up that inquiry or it is carried out privately, but the question we must ask ourselves is whether we are prepared for some cut in our own consumption. One cannot avoid the question. If one says that one is going to give up this or that it is possible for people to make fun about it. They can ask in the first place what difference it makes if Lord X or Mr. Y gives up something. Let us pass beyond that and assume that large numbers of people can be persuaded to give up something. The question still arises, what do we give up? In my eyes that is still a difficult question, and I am dogmatic, if I may say so respectfully, about our failure to do anything like enough overall. On this point of what form our sacrifice may be I wait for more enlightenment today and on other occasions.

I am sorry if I have spoken sharply. It is certainly not in any sense from personal disrespect, although I think we must keep asking ourselves whether we are broadly satisfied, or whether we are—and this is my own situation—pro-foundly dissatisfied with our performance so far.

Lord DULVERTON

My Lords, like the last two speakers I intend to say a word on that aspect of the Motion which deals with food, or rather the lack of it, in the poor parts of the world, and particularly the Third World. Following the last two speakers, who have also dealt with that aspect of the case, I have broken the pattern mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, but having been deeply interested in the problems of food and agriculture—or rather the lack of food and the improvement in agriculture and techniques in the poorer parts of the world, and particularly in Africa and the Middle East—I will try to make one point to your Lordships. I hope I shall succeed in doing so, even if I do not make a speech.

The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, referred to the environmental factors in our total problem, but he had a very big subject to deal with and could only touch on the pollution aspects of the environmental problem. I should like to turn to another, and I think directly important, point connected with the environment and food production which, particularly in the climate and circumstances of the Third World, greatly affects agriculture and food production. There has been a tremendous amount of maltreatment of the land in Africa and elsewhere. We have even done it in our own country, particularly in the hills of Scotland. I do not know about Wales, but certainly in Scotland we have mistreated the land, and I can point to a number of other examples. In Kenya, for instance, the soil erosion which is now proceeding apace is absolutely appalling. On what used to be beautifully farmed white farms, the contour ridges laid out in order to stop erosion during the tropical rains which they experience there are being allowed to fall in or are even being ploughed out of existence by the African farmers today. Flying over the land today one can see great gullies reaching down to the nearest riverbed and the red soil of Africa pouring away, silting up the rivers and, I suppose, eventually ending up in the Indian Ocean. It has happened very quickly.

Another point which other noble Lords have referred to and which is well known is the spread of the desert, and particularly the Sahara Desert in Africa. If I heard him aright, the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, referred to the pace of the advance of the desert as having now reached one mile per annum, but I am told that this last year in one particular zone it has advanced 30 kilometres. This is largely connected with the pastoral habits of the African tribes who allow their cattle to graze there. Pastoralism is one of the biggest problems in much of the undeveloped world, particularly in the arid areas.

Again the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, referred to watering the desert and making it blossom, using underground and fossil water. That is splendid so far as it goes, but I am sure he would agree that it is not the whole answer to the problem. Fossil water, even in very large quantities as it exists in some parts, is expendable and will take hundreds or thousands of years to replace at the rate at which man is capable of extracting it. So that form of exploitation of the desert, laudable as it is in many ways, holds dangers. It does not solve the problem of the spread of the desert; that must be arrested in other ways if there is any hope not only of arresting the spread but of reclaiming part of the land that has been lost in recent years.

This is leading up to the single point that I really wanted to make, because this is where the rather new science and discipline of the ecologist comes into the picture. It is a discipline which in the last 20 years has grown very fast indeed, and I should like to quote a brief sentence written by my old friend Desmond Vesey-Fitzgerald, who was probably very little known in this country. It was a great sadness to his friends that he died unexpectedly last year. In Africa, and particularly in Tanzania, he was well-known as a naturalist and an ecologist, and what he says here is so pertinent to what I have been trying to say that, with your Lordships' permission, I will quote it. He says: There is no lessening today of the total energy intake from the sun in natural areas. It is just that nature's storehouse has been plundered; too much has been wasted and polluted and too little has been put back. Too many habitats have been exploited and practically none has been rehabilitated. Having drawn attention to and underlined, so far as I am able, that part of the problems which we are facing, I wonder whether our own Ministry of Overseas Development, who guide and to some extent direct our efforts in the direction of helping in the general world problem, are equipped with a technological branch which can talk the ecologist's language. I know that they have expert agriculturalists, and all the rest of it. I notice the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, nodding his head. If he would care to talk over that point afterwards I should be very glad.

6.49 p.m.

Baroness GAITSKELL

My Lords, I must start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, on his maiden speech. These "old hands" from the other place really have an advantage and I hope we shall hear him often.

A Japanese friend of mine who regularly sends me a Christmas card and who knows that I have a passion for owls, about two years ago apologised for not sending me a picture of one because in Japan it was the Year of the Rat. The year 1974 has certainly been the Year of the Conference. No one can quarrel with the Motion of my noble friend Lord Brockway, which is to take note of the proceedings of the World Conferences on Environment, Population, the Law of the Seabed and Food …". But when it comes to the request of my noble friend for a World Authority to deal with these and related problems, sadly I part company with him absolutely. Of course, these are the most universal and urgent concerns for us from 1980 onwards.

My Lords, I am aware that words like "World Authority" and "World Government" are music to the ears of people like my noble friend. But such a World Authority would have to be set up under the auspices of the United Nations. It needs more than a touching faith in the United Nations today to entrust more responsibility to it than it has already. I am sad to say this, because I have a great affection for my noble friend. The words "World Authority" make some people reach for their guns. Speaking personally, in recent years those words have generated a debilitating scepticism. I hope that we shall have a serious debate on the United Nations in the near future, perhaps with some such title as, "Whither the UN?"—the pun is not intended; the Word is spelt with an "h".

The United Nations has changed in the last 10 years, in some ways for the better. In some ways welcome changes have taken place. But the United Nations has changed also in ways which are not so attractive. I returned to the General; Assembly for the Human Rights Committee after six years' absence. I always wanted passionately to go back and have another go at communicating with the fascinating people who take part in that Committee. Ten years ago, it was an education for me. I wish I could give it, from my personal experience, a good progress report today. Of course, there has been a revolutionary shift in the balance of power between the nations throughout the world. This is very welcome. There has been a shift towards more international equality. This balance is reflected at the United Nations. The more the Western countries accept and examine this shift towards international equality, the better it will be for all of us, because it is both inevitable and desirable.

From this premise, I would have expected the UN Organisation to discuss overall world problems in attitudes and words that ordinary people could understand. But returning to the Human Rights Committee after an absence of six years, I found the words used in the debates, phrased in a language which I affectionately described as "Aspiranto", had become completely esoteric. The Oxford Dictionary definition of "esoteric" expresses perfectly what I mean: Communicated to, or intelligible by, the initiated only". That is how they behaved. As for the arguments on any subject, be it the status of women, freedom of information, or anything else that anyone can think of, these have been reduced to a formula of six words—the denunciation of colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, apartheid and Zionism, thus, not only freezing the votes of the Afro-Asian and Soviet blocs, but casting them in concrete. At times I felt that I was an intruder in a confessional box where the particular delegate was confessing other delegates' sins without disclosing his own.

My Lords, here I must comment on the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Longford. I think he can know very little about the "goings-on" in the United Nations, when he expresses himself so sensitive to criticism of either this country or the Minister concerned about development aid. Of course they are always asking for more, and probably we should always give them more. But to say so and then to just leave it at that seemed to me too simplistic for words.

My Lords, I would be very reluctant to delegate authority or responsibility to a World Authority situated in the United Nations as it is behaving at present. I would much rather depend on the existing Specialised Agencies. In 1974, I attended two conferences, as well as the General Assembly. One of these was a seminar in Yugoslavia on human rights and national minorities. This was a small conference, with about 36 countries attending. But it was a remarkable seminar—plainspeaking, hard-hitting, and devoid of all that United Nations jargon. The intellectual quality was outstanding, particularly of the African, Asian and Middle East participants. A degree of honest speaking was achieved although, as with all these deeply-felt and conflicting human problems, easy solutions were not forthcoming in the Report of that conference.

I also attended the gigantic population conference in Bucharest, attended by over 4,000 delegates. Anyone descending from Mars onto Bucharest at that time would not have guessed that this was a population conference. Anyone who knows anything about development aid knows that for the poorer countries of the world, development aid is fundamental to questions of environment, food, the seabed and population. But the clamorous demand to ignore the population explosion, and to switch 90 per cent. of the arguments on to aid, does not help and will not advance their cause, particularly for the poorer Third World.

At the population conference I felt that many delegates had not benefitted from the oratory of the United Nations. Politics alone cannot solve the population problem. It is very sad that at the present time, when the affluent countries are having to face the economic facts of life, which they must face with repentance, understanding and certainly with austerity—and I really mean that—that we cannot feel confident (at least, I cannot) about a World Authority. Let us have many more conferences, great and small. Let us muster all the knowledge that science and technology can give us to spread more compassion throughout the world. Let us use every bit of freedom of information to spread knowledge to the countries that most need it.

6.59 p.m.

Lord WALSTON

My Lords, I apologise for coming in at this late stage. I had hoped to take part in this debate, but then found I could not be here for the earlier speeches. However, I will not detain your Lordships for long. There are a few very brief points which I should like to make. My first point is that there has been a shortage of food throughout the world, one could almost say from the time when Adam and Eve were turned out of the Garden of Eden. There is nothing new about food shortage. There is nothing new about millions of people dying of starvation and still more millions of people, particularly children, being brought up without enough food and therefore failing to develop physically and mentally in the way they have every right to expect. So do not let us think of this as a food crisis, something which has suddenly burst upon us because we happen to have heard about the disasters in Bangladesh, the Sahelian famine and all the rest. It is something we have lived with and something we have ignored for generations.

My second point is that voices were raised many years ago warning us of what was coming. Some of your Lordships will have listened to a Member of your Lordships' House, John Boyd-Orr, speaking about this. Because he and others spoke about this, FAO was started and it has done good. Of course it has not done as much good as we would like, but I believe the world is a better place today because we have a Food and Agriculture Organisation and I also believe that more food is being grown. But nothing like enough food is being grown, and nothing like enough food will be grown, no matter what we say today, no matter even what we do today, for very many years ahead, because food production is a long-term process and takes many years to bring to full fruition.

The third point which we must realise, if there is to be any effective action whatsoever as opposed to words, is that there will be more food grown only if those who produce the food and who will have to produce the food in the future have a higher standard of living than they have at the present time, and only if money is invested in the whole of the infrastructure which is essential for modern food production, even in the completely underdeveloped countries.

In a country like Brazil there are areas of vast richness, deep soil, plenty of sun, plenty of heat, plenty of water, but they produce nothing or only an insignificant proportion of that of which they are capable. The reason is that the water is not controlled, there is no provision for drainage, for irrigation, and no provision for bringing into that area the fertilisers, the machinery, the fuel which is necessary for proper food production, and there is no provision for bringing out of that area the food they may grow. The reason why there has been no provision made for that is simply that it has not paid, because the return that would have come to the people who could invest money in that sort of thing was not sufficient to tempt them, or Governments, to do so. They put money into what, from their own point of view of profits, was more satisfactory. Unless we change our attitudes towards the profitability of food production, money will not flow from other sources into it.

Your Lordships should not think it is merely a matter of roads, irrigation, drainage and fertilisers. All these things are essential. But even more esential, to make proper use of them, are people; and the more sophisticated, the more technically advanced, your agriculture is, the better must be the people who are to make use of those techniques. You are not going to get good people moving into those areas, you are not going to get good people remaining in those areas even if they were born there, unless you offer them a good life for themselves and their families.

There has always been in this country and, no doubt, even more so in developing countries, a drift from the land, a creaming-off of the most intelligent, the most ambitious, the most go-ahead people from the country areas into the cities. You have only to look at a city like Nairobi to see how it has filled up with those with the greatest "go", the greatest ambition. All over the world you see that. Those people are essential in the countryside if you are to get any significant increase in food production. They will stay only if they are given an opportunity for a good life and the type of amenities which they think they can get in the cities.

I am not referring merely to electricity, running water, good houses, cinemas and things of that kind. I am referring to even more important matters than those, particularly good education for their children and good medical services for their wives and families. They will not remain there if their children cannot have good teaching; they will not remain there if they cannot have good doctors to look after them when they are sick. You will not voluntarily get good teachers or good doctors to go to those areas, unless you provide the amenities for them also. In other words, there has to be a vast investment in all the potential food producing areas of the world if we are to get any significant increase in food production.

What that boils down to is not a question of charity. Well, my Lords, it may be a question of charity; I will not argue with my noble friend Lord Long ford about that. I should like it to be done by charity, though there are strong arguments of purely enlightened self-interest which support the charitable argument also. But you will not get this investment unless there is an acceptance on the part of ourselves, the rich countries and the rich peoples of the world, of the fact that there is to be a genuine transfer of wealth from us to them. If we are not prepared to see a larger part of the wealth produced in the world going from the manufacturing industries, from commerce, from banking and all the other things which today are at the top of the tree as regards financial rewards, to the primary producers, whether they be in Europe, in South America, in Africa or in Asia, and to implement it ourselves, we can go on talking till the cows come home but no more food will be produced in the world.

It is money, long-term investment, that is required; and long-term security, long-term contracts for the products which we hope will be produced. That is something that can be done only on an international scale. Whether or not it should be a world food authority, I do not know. I think that is somewhat too ambitious. I have always believed that we in this country, as the biggest importers of food, should many years ago have taken the lead in long-term contracts. With the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement we did, and then we stopped. We ought to have gone on and done far more.

Now as members, at the present time at any rate, of the European Economic Community, we have a wider base from which to operate. I believe it is there that we should make our firmest efforts and it is there where we are most likely to succeed. If we can persuade our partners in the Community—and many of them do not need a great deal of persuasion—that new investment in the food producing developing parts of the world is required, and that a long-term food plan is also required, so that it is laid down what should be produced and where, and how much we are prepared to buy from these different countries when the eventual food production comes on stream, then we shall have achieved something. But unless we are prepared to do that, we are wasting our time and showing ourselves as being hypocrites.

7.9 p.m.

Lord GEORGE-BROWN

My Lords, like so many in this House I have been in and out of this Chamber, so I did not put my name down to speak. Therefore, I beg your indulgence for speaking now very shortly. As I listened to my noble friend just now—he is more than a noble friend; he is a very close friend—I felt like I have always felt when I have read or seen Shaw. I remember Mr. Doolittle—they are so good, those who have so much; if they did all they said, we would not remain quite so poor. If my noble friend will forgive me for being a little critical, if we are not going to do much in these horribly poor parts of the world until we can do it all, we are not going to do anything. I really think that this is a problem for those of us who profess to be Anglo-Catholic. It is a problem in this country, it is even more a problem when you go to Brazil, India, or anywhere you like.

If my noble friend believed what he has just said, he means that there will not be much more or indeed any more food produced until we do these wonderful things. I am just a fellow who came up from what I think the Americans call "the sticks", and what we here call "Peabody Buildings". Every bit is a bit on the way. So maybe by my noble friend's test we would not produce all that much food, but perhaps all these fellows and girls in Brazil, or anywhere that I have seen them, would just do a little bit more if we fed them a little more, helped them a little more.

The reason I stood up was to support my noble friend Lady Gaitskell—which I think I would do even if she were wrong. This evening I am doing it because I am quite sure that she is right. My dear friend Fenner Brockway tends to get carried away, and has done all his life. I have not known him all his life, I am not that old, but I have known him all my life and he tends to get carried away with organisations, as my noble friend Lady Gaitskell said, with inventing new things to deal with problems. In a sense my noble friend Lord Walston and he match: invent a new organisation, create a new Prayer Book—whatever it is, my dear Bishop, and we are home again. But we are not.

For people like the noble Baroness and me every little bit on the way is a little nearer Heaven, a little nearer what the good Lord asked us to have. Like the noble Baroness, I do not go for the Motion because I do not think that another World Authority helps. It sounds nice, but it does not help very much. I very much agree with the noble Baroness about one's impression when one meets the Afro-Asian group in the UN. I will not bore the House now—actually it might entertain the House—with the story of my first meeting with the Afro-Asian Group in the UN, or in the Commonwealth. It is worth telling, but I shall not do it this evening. Therefore, I go along with my noble friend Lady Gaitskell in saying that that will not help very much.

I do not go along with my noble friend Lord Walston, because he is applying to a primitive agriculture the kind of standards he would wish us to apply to making grants in Cambridgeshire, for his 3,500 acres in Cambridgeshire. Yes, of course we should do it very selectively and carefully, very sophisticatedly, but if you try to get some fellows in Brazil, or India, or wherever, just to produce a little more food, you do not want to get all that sophisticated, or all that clever; just a little more water here, and a little bit more of this and that, and they will do it. You do not want to take the ladies off the farms either. I have always been in favour myself as a Christian of that part of the Moslem doctrine which says that you can have four ladies walking behind you carrying the burden. It seems to me that; there is something missing there, my dear Bishop, in the Christian faith. The point is that they do it their way, and all we in the Western world are asked to do is to bring them a little help to enable them to do it their way a little better than they are doing it now.

I said that I was not going to speak for very long and your Lordships are beginning to think that I might, but I shall not. I got up only to say to my dear friend Fenner Brockway that I cannot support his Motion. I find myself very much in tune with my noble friend Lady Gaitskell, not for the first time, and I wish that my noble friend Lord Walston—who has happily now returned to us—will read what I have said during his absence.

7.16 p.m.

Earl COWLEY

My Lords, I should first like to add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy on his excellent maiden speech, and, if it is not too presumptive of me, to welcome him to our Front Bench. The whole House has shown its gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for initiating this important debate. Such a wide-ranging Motion provides a much needed opportunity not only to comment on the changing relationship between the rich and the poor countries of the world, as highlighted during the four UN conferences over the last two and a half years, but also to question some of the existing ideas and beliefs as to the kind of development that should be taking place in Third World countries. For the sake of the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, I mean by the Third World those countries that are members of the Group of 77, and also those that have a per capita GNP of less than 1,000 dollars.

At the Stockholm Conference two and a half years ago, the developing countries put forward the view that it was poverty and its resultant human pollution and not industrial pollution that were their greatest problems, although I recognise the fact, as put forward by my noble friend Lord Dulverton, that there are considerations other than pollution in the environmental field. The developing countries argued that it was unrealistic to expect them to spend a large proportion of their limited natural resources on antipollution equipment for their industries, when they did not even possess enough resources for their own economic development. However, it was only Brazil that went so far as to welcome openly cheap polluting industries to push forward the country's industrial development, because, according to the Brazilian Government, Brazil had no pollution problem, and when it did have one the industrialised countries would have found a solution to it which could then be imported.

The Stockholm Conference agreed that any burdens falling on the developed countries as a result of their concern for the environment, and any policies that they might pursue in this context, should not be allowed to affect adversely their efforts on behalf of the developing world. However, this commitment to the Third World, and the international community's concern for the environment, have been tempered by the growing world economic crisis and the mounting apprehension of a possible world recession.

Although two and a half years have passed since the Stockholm Conference took place, the Global and Environmental Monitoring System and the International Referral System for sources of environmental information are still not in full operation. At the law of the sea conference, it became plain that economic factors were more important than environmental considerations, which took second place to the desire to exploit "the common inheritance of mankind".

Today, the hitherto unprecedented prosperity of the industrialised countries, with their advanced technology triggering off high rates of growth which have been accepted and strived for for so long, is being seriously undermined. The Bretton Woods system has broken down. There is continuing instability in the trade and monetary field. The rate of inflation, which is being accentuated by the sharp rise in the price of raw materials, is rapidly increasing, and both developed and developing countries are facing serious balance of payments problems. These factors have had several consequences for the relationship between developed and developing countries. First, there is a growing realisation on the part of the industrialised countries of the reality of interdependence and the unity of the global system, but as yet this realisation has not led to a new deal for the developing world. Secondly, the fear of new protectionist measures being introduced by the industrialised countries is growing. The terms of the new United States Trade Act, in so far as they affect certain developing countries, especially the OPEC member States, could be a sign of things to come.

At the United Nations Special Session on Raw Materials last spring—and I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, did not include this subject in his Motion, because I think it is of major importance and has a major bearing on the other conferences—Dr. Kissinger said: The great issue of development can no longer be realistically perceived in terms of confrontation between the 'haves' and 'have nots' or as a struggle over the distribution of static wealth If the strong attempt to impose their views, they will do so at the cost of justice and thus provoke upheaval; if the weak resort to pressure, they will do so at the risk of world prosperity and thus provoke despair. It is only to be regretted that these sentiments tended to be forgotten at the three UN Conferences that followed.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady White, on her conclusions on the Law of the Sea Conference. I do not think that the results should be treated in a pessimistic way, as the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, seems to feel. I think it would have been extremely strange, to say the least, if solutions had been found for all the problems that the noble Baroness described so eloquently.

At the Caracas Conference last summer, the discussions on the extent of the powers and functions of the proposed international authority, and the amount of ocean space it would administer, reflected the economic interests of the countries represented and a division between the developed and underdeveloped States. The developing countries opted for an operational régime with wider powers and authority, including the power to undertake marine exploration and exploitation. Since nearly all the Third World countries do not possess the technology to undertake their own undersea operations, or the naval forces to guarantee their interests, these countries advocated that the proposed authority be given inspectorial and enforcement powers.

On the other hand, the industrialised countries took the opposite line and proposed that any international authority that was set up should be purely an administrative body with the main controls remaining in the hands of individual nations. This would of course be fine for countries like the United States, but would pose serious problems for countries like Afghanistan. I can certainly understand why the major multi-national companies prefer the laissez-faire approach. The noble Lord, Lord Arwyn, said that he was in favour of exploitation of the mineral nodules of the seabed, because of their resultant beneficial effect on a declining metal market. I think this matter ought to be considered in the light of the effect of such exploitation upon those developing countries which are dependent on one mineral for their national income.

It is likely that when the Law of the Sea Conference resumes in Geneva, a compromise between developed and developing countries will be reached. In exchange for the general acceptance of the 200-mile exclusive economic zone for coastal States, the developing countries will agree to the international seabed régime being afforded a minimal rôle, relying exclusively on nation States to control and police internationally licensed areas. Such a compromise would give little conservation or environmental protection and would also drastically reduce the area of the seabed that the régime would cover. Perhaps when he comes to speak the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal could tell the House what is the Government's present attitude to this problem and how, in the light of the present defence cuts, this country would supervise its licence areas with a régime with only minimal powers in existence.

In spite of the obvious divergent interests between the coastal and landlocked States of the Third World over the proposed development of the sea and the seabed, there has been a remarkable amount of unity among the Third World countries in opposition to the traditional maritime Powers. At the population conference in Bucharest this hitherto united front put up by the developing countries showed certain signs of cracking. It is interesting to note that it was those developing countries which are underpopulated, particularly Argentina, that advocated the old concept of "Population means power"—and several noble Lords mentioned this point—while, on the other hand, those Third World countries with chronic over-population, like India, Bangladesh and the Philippines, supported the line taken by the developed countries that there must be population control.

It is now becoming increasingly accepted, as was generally mentioned during this debate, that the overcrowding facing many underdeveloped countries can really be solved only by linking economic development policies to population planning. On this point I certainly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brockway. This raises, of course, the whole question of whether development policies which tended to concentrate on industrial and urban development were really what the poor countries needed. Existing ideas on this point are more and more being questioned. It has for decades been accepted that wealth from the rich countries' continually growing resources would trickle down and so trigger off a series of "take-offs" among developing countries. Also, within developing countries themselves it was believed that the wealth created at the top would trickle down to the lower rungs of society. The validity of these concepts is no longer being accepted as gospel.

It can of course be argued that a large proportion of the blame for the present world food crisis rests upon the development policies of the industrialised countries. The developing countries Were encouraged to buy second-hand technology, to concentrate on urban and industrial developments, rather than to carry out land reform programmes, importing intermediate technology and improving the agricultural sector of their economies. To a certain extent, I accept the qualifications voiced by the noble Lord, Lord Walston, in this area. The result of this has been dependence for many countries upon the grain reserves of the United States and other grain exporting nations. Now these reserves are depleted and the crisis is upon us. While it is very easy to be wise after the event, and to say that the long-term issues should have been discussed years ago, it can only be regretted, to say the least, that they were discussed at the Rome Food Conference to the exclusion of the immediate crisis that is facing so many developing countries. The argument that the conference was not called to discuss the immediate crisis is not supported by the conference organisers.

The current escalation in the price of raw materials has definitely resulted in a hardening of the line taken by many of the traditional donor countries, especially towards the OPEC member States. While, on the one hand, the developed countries argue that the OPEC States should play a larger part in solving the current food crisis, on the other hand they were unwilling to support the setting up of the agricultural development fund to which the OPEC countries were willing to contribute, but over which the traditional donor countries would not have absolute control. It is regrettable that even food has political overtones.

My Lords, the Motion also calls for the establishment of a World Authority to deal with the problems arising from the four UN conferences. I listened with interest and a certain amount of sympathy to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, but I felt that his arguments lacked a certain amount of realism. I do not feel that the noble Lord has really explained how he sees the authority fitting in with existing international and semi-international organisations—for example, IMCO—or with the various bodies discussed, if not completely set up, at the Stockholm, Caracas and Rome conferences.

I should have thought there was every likelihood that a World Authority would have a great deal of similarity to the United Nations and would suffer from the same drawbacks. The Third World countries would certainly press for such an organisation to be closely linked to the United Nations General Assembly, in which of course they are in a majority. The Third World bloc has been able to push through what it likes without recognising the need for compromise, much to the partly justified annoyance of the Western Powers. The noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, has told the House of her personal experience of this. A British delegate to the United Nations has said: The UN is much more important to the Third World than to the large countries. This is the only international forum the small countries have. Therefore what they are doing here, to the extent that it weakens the UN, is ultimately against their own interests. Because of the growing mistrust on the part of many of the developed countries for the UN General Assembly, I think it very unlikely that the industrialised Powers would support the setting up of a World Authority that bore any similarity to, or was linked with, that Assembly in any substantial way.

Furthermore, there is the problem that such a World Authority would have only as little or as much power as the industrialised countries would allow. I suspect that it would be the former rather than the latter, since nations tend to object to giving up part of their sovereignty. Thus, I cannot see the reason for establishing a World Authority as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, which in the long run would probably be powerless. Also, one should be very careful not to make the mistake of opting for a World Authority as an easy way out of many of the problems which individual countries could solve with enough will power.

7.35 p.m.

Lord SHEPHERD

My Lords, Turn back, oh man, forswear thy foolish ways, Old now is earth and none may count her days, Would man but wake from out his haunted sleep Earth might be fair and all man glad and wise. Those words are by Clifford Bax. They were part of a hymn that we sang last night at the memorial service to that great world servant, U Thant. They are words which are very appropriate to the debate we have had this afternoon. The debate confirms my view that my noble friend reflects the interest of the House as a whole in matters which concern particularly those who are less fortunate in this world. I will seek to deal with the points that have been raised and also to put the position of Her Majesty's Government before the House. Before doing that, however, I would most sincerely congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, on his maiden speech this afternoon. I hope he will find a genuine sense of happiness and opportunity for achievement in your Lordships' House that will in some way compensate him for having been translated to this House from another place. I think he will find that, if he so wishes, the opportunities in your Lordships' House for influencing events can—whether it be from that Bench or this Bench—perhaps be greater than in another place. We enjoyed the noble Lord's speech this afternoon and I shall seek to deal with a number of the points raised in a few moments.

My Lords, may I at the outset express a personal view. Today's debate has been about how we can improve the lot of people throughout the world and how we can develop the dignity of man in the interests of the world as a whole. I share the views of noble Lords who have spoken in this debate that these questions are urgent and important and I would at the moment say to my noble friend Lord Longford that the Government, we on this side of the House and, I suspect, those on all sides of the House, cannot and should not be satisfied with what this country and all other countries which have been in a privileged position have been able to contribute over the years to the improvement of the world position as a whole. But this does not say that we have not sought, so far as we could, to do what I think most of us would wish to see done.

I think we must recognise, too, that the hardship and misery of millions and the suffering and starvation will inevitably increase in the short term, whatever Governments or people may decide to do, for there is no quick or immediate answer to the problem. For example, the level of world population to which the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, referred will inevitably continue to rise at least till the end of the century and nothing short of a major war or famine on an unprecedented scale can prevent that. It is true that we can quickly rise to crises resulting from floods, earthquakes and drought, but what we are considering today is, first, how to avoid a major catastrophe and, secondly, how to begin to improve the situation in the mid and long-term future.

We are confronted by a complex of interrelated problems embracing population, food resources, development, also the aspirations of individual men and women throughout the world for a better, a more secure and a more satisfying way of life for themselves and future generations. This demands international co-operation and, as a consequence, a political will. The changes in world society, its attitudes and its ability to decide and to administrate, will be immense, and I do not myself believe that the creation of new organisations will in themselves alter the situation. But, my Lords, we must not be daunted or dismayed by the sheer magnitude and complexity of the problems, especially at this time when the world is moving into an economic recession and the ability of wealthier nations to give aid and assistance is likely to become more limited. I agree with my noble friend Lord George-Brown that small steps, even if they are only slightly forward, at least represent some progress. Despite that limitation, there is much that we can do in preparing and planning our international efforts to cope with the problems which have been discussed this afternoon.

I should like to deal with the four conferences that my noble friend referred to, and very briefly that of environment at Stockholm, only because it was held some years ago and we have had at least one major debate upon it. I should like to inform the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester that as a consequence of the setting up of the governing council of the United Nations environment programme, an environmental secretariat has now been established under the able leadership of Mr. Maurice Strong, and has now gone into its headquarters in Nairobi. I believe that it is now ready to serve a role as being a focal point for environmental action and for co-ordination within the United Nations system.

My noble friend Lord Brockway, the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, and others, referred to the World Population Conference. I had the honour to lead the British delegation. It was an historic opportunity for member countries of the United Nations to discuss population problems at a political, rather than a technical, level. In other words, it was not aimed at adding to our stock of technical knowledge. Rather, it was aimed at focusing the attention of Governments on the importance of being fully aware of problems in the population field in the hope that this awareness would be reflected in decisions in individual countries and in support for, and use of, international agencies. I was particularly impressed by the large attendance and high level of participation which the Conference attracted. It successfully drew attention to the problems of population and indicated ways in which they might be tackled.

The outcome was a World Population Plan of Action, which the United Kingdom Government fully support. The World Plan states important principles. It recognises national sovereignty in the formulation of population programmes. It recognises another key principle—and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester referred to it—which we fully endorse: the right of couples freely and responsibly to determine the number and spacing of their children, and to have the information, education and means to do so. In other words, my Lords, that every child should be a wanted child. The World Plan also explicitly recognises the diversity of conditions within and among different countries. It was accepted at the Conference that there were areas of the world where population growth presented a threat to development.

In my view, no essential features of the plan were lost in the course of the Conference and I agree with my noble friend Baroness Gaitskell that international politics did rear its head unnecessarily. Those countries who look towards it for support in the pursuance of policies aimed at reducing their rates of population growth will find that support. This is as good an outcome, I suggest, as we could have hoped for, and a much better one than seemed likely midway through the Conference. Domestically, we are concerned that these rights are a reality; towards this end we shall be introducing legislation to remove the last vestiges of discrimination against women, and are concerned to improve family planning services.

When we came into Office we decided that it would be wrong to impose prescription charges for family planning sup-plies obtained from National Health Service hospitals and clinics, and one of our first acts was to make sure that such charges do not have to be paid. We look forward to the extension of the family planning service in due course with the participation of the general practitioners. The World Plan proposes support for those Governments who seek a better understanding of their population problems and who pursue policies to reduce their rate of growth. We shall do all we can to assist in the practical programmes of action as indicated by the World Plan.

In 1974, World Population Year, the Government made a special effort to increase the proportion of aid to activities directed specifically to help Governments with their population problems. The noble Lord, Lord Vernon, spoke of what has been done in Singapore and suggested there was a lesson for ourselves. The position in the United Kingdom is that the birth rate has been slowing down appreciably over the last 10 years and is now at about replacement level. We welcome this, but we think it important to try to discover more about the reasons for population change before we consider whether it is possible, or indeed necessary, to influence future trends. As I announced on 22nd July, the Government are therefore giving higher priority to survey and research work which we hope will illuminate the complex factors concerning fertility, mortality and migration, that have caused the recent decline.

My Lords, I now come to the question of food. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, spoke of his experiences at the World Food Congress in 1963 and of his subsequent disappointment. I am sure that the noble Lord will be one of the first to acknowledge that this is a very difficult and complex problem. The World Food Conference was neither the beginning nor was it really the end of this matter. Much greater co-operation, international co-operation, will be required. World co-operation over food supply is even more obviously necessary with such evident excess in one place against equally evident need elsewhere. Yet however useful a World Food Conference may be in the long run, it is the present that appears tragically before our eyes.

Although the Conference was not designed or intended to deal with the pressing current problems of hunger in the world, the discussions in Rome have brought home the magnitude of the problems now facing a number of countries—if this was not clear already—and will help to secure speedy offers of aid and assistance. The Conference was called essentially to deal with long-term problems. A number of important measures were agreed, designed to increase food production in developing countries themselves, to improve food distribution and standards of nutrition, to increase world food security and to promote trade.

My Lords, my right honourable friend the Minister of Overseas Development has stated that it is the British Government's intention in their aid programmes to give priority to rural development. The level of aid depends on the policies formed by the developing countries, the requests received from them and also on our own ability to meet them. But we need co-operation from the developing countries. We also support the proposal for an agricultural development fund which will finance operations carried out through existing institutions for food production and agricultural development. We look forward with interest to the proposals now being worked out in detail to establish the fund and we shall be willing to contribute to it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, rightly stressed the importance of Britain's contribution in providing experts in the field of agriculture. So, too, did the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, when he referred to the great contribution made by the Colonial Office to our colonies, most of which have now become independent countries. We attach great importance to this and we should do what we can. I think also that the noble Baroness was right to stress the importance of women; and the British delegation to the Rome Conference was the prime sponsor of a resolution calling for acceptance by Governments of a policy to increase that particular role.

The noble Lord, Lord Dulverton, referred to ecology, and to whether there were any experts in the Department. I understand there is no ecologist as such, but that there are a number of experienced and highly-trained scientists well equipped to understand these problems. The noble Lord shakes his head. He offered to have a conversation with me. I will take him up on that. I can only say that this is the advice that I have. I am not prepared to challenge it or to accept criticism of it. I shall be happy to discuss this later with the noble Lord and to convey his views to my right honourable friend.

My Lords, comment was also made on fertilisers. This is of very considerable importance. Twenty-five thousand tons represented no small effort on the part of Her Majesty's Government last year in meeting the requests for fertilisers. I hope that my noble friend Lord Longford, who was particularly critical, will recognise that this is a commodity that we ourselves import. It is not a natural resource and therefore what contribution we made was purchased from outside for shipment to other countries. Apart from that, we provided some 10,000 tons to Bangladesh. I understand that commercial exports to the developing countries have been much greater than in previous years and also that since 1970 Britain has committed herself to over £25 million in capital aid to India for the construction of a series of fertiliser plants. There are a number of other matters in the food field in which we have played our part. If there are questions in that connection that I have been unable to deal with I shall write to the noble Lords concerned.

My Lords, I turn now to the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, the third session of which will be held in Geneva in the spring. In my view this is the most important international conference ever held; for unless it succeeds and produces a new convention which is generally acceptable, the sea could become such an area of conflict as has been the land in the past. Unless we can secure an effective international régime we face open confrontation at sea. The Government are determined to avoid this prospect. The Conference covered some 90 items, including matters dealing with an international régime to exploit the mineral resources of the deep sea beyond the national limits, régimes for territorial seas, straits, archipelagoes and the high seas, the nature and extent of a coastal State's jurisdiction over the economic resources off its coast; and many others including the question of fish. Up to now there has been no final agreement on the text of a new convention. This is disappointing but perhaps not surprising; for we are at the very beginning of an important negotiation. Many countries have, as we ourselves have, special interests at stake. Therefore I think it would be wrong to regard Caracas as a failure. Most States accept that agreement on a new convention can be reached only through a package deal under which States must be prepared to give up some of their objectives in return for general agreement on a new convention. The political will which emerged at Caracas in favour of this and the progress made in the technical preparations make us hopeful that at least heads of agreement can be achieved this year.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, spoke about fishing, which is very natural when one considers the part of the country from which he comes. He spoke about the prospects of a conservation agreement. The Government have been concerned at the dangers for the herring stocks around British coasts and we have pressed in the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission—an organisation to which all States interested in these fisheries belong—for effective conservation agreements for these stocks. These have ben agreed and are in force, and I hope that they will alleviate some of the alarm felt that over the possibility of the stocks being decimated in 1975. However, the mere conclusion of a quota agreement is not enough. The Government will continue to keep a very close watch on the situation; but I stress that we must act in accordance with international law.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, spoke very much in support, I thought, of the British position at the Law of the Sea Conference. He stressed, rightly I thought, as did my noble friend Lady White, the question of marine pollution. My noble friend Lady White specifically referred to port State jurisdiction for pollution. We have considered the proposals for port State jurisdiction; that is to say, the enforcement of certain internationally agreed regulations on marine pollution by the State in whose port a vessel is at the time. At the moment, it seems uncertain whether this concept will attract sufficient support among other States to be generally accepted at the conference. However, we are currently pursuing inquiries to assess how many States might be prepared to support it. If a sufficient majority of States were in favour of port State jurisdiction, we should wish to examine most carefully how this would affect United Kingdom interests.

My Lords, apart from the subject of fishing limits, we have also heard from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, about the question of the 200-mile economic zone. We attach great importance to this. We should like to see progress made there but we have made it clear that we should not accept a régime which made the zone virtually indistinguishable from the territorial limits. The position on the Continental Shelf is well known and I do not think there is anything between us there. I think we are in close accord, too, on the limits of the territorial sea and on the question of channels and the possibility of their affecting the free movement of shipping. My noble friend Lady White spoke, rightly I thought, about the danger of large ships. I think she had very much in mind, as did the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, the Japanese tanker in the Straits of Malacca.

My Lords, there is of course a problem of charts. We recognise the danger. We are now working through the international governmental marine consultative organisation, the United Nations Agency in London. Its maritime safety committee is considering what should be done here. Voluntary sea lanes are operating in the Channel and their success and improvement are being watched by Her Majesty's Government. In regard to out-dated charts, the Hydrographic Department in the Ministry of Defence continues to revise its own world-famous charts. This is an area of international co-operation and Her Majesty's Government will continue to work and to press upon the international hydrographic organisation for development here.

My noble friend also spoke about ratification. This is always a problem. She has my entire sympathy. One of the great difficulties is in getting countries to go to a conference. They are fearful of being committed to any agreement reached and therefore they have always reserved to themselves a right of ratification even though their representative may have initialled the agreement or treaty. This is something which we ought perhaps to consider taking up through the United Nations. It makes rather a mockery of international co-operation if, after a long period of discussion and negotiation, you can reach agreement but the agreement is then frustrated by countries unwilling to ratify. Here I think we must be careful. I have seen occasions when Her Majesty's Government, whether Labour or Conservative, have been guilty in this matter, so before we point our fingers perhaps we need to have care. However, I take the point which the noble Baroness made.

My Lords, we are preparing for the next session of this conference by reviewing British policies. We are examining ways in which to promote agreement and consulting widely with other Governments. The Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will be holding a seminar in London later this month and interested parties in this country can speak. My noble friend asked whether Her Majesty's Government were going to be progressive and forward-looking. I hope she will accept my assurance that that is the Government's intention. Our objective is to ensure agreement on a generally accepted law of the sea convention. We are determined to proceed by agreement and we oppose unilaterally any extension of jurisdiction over the sea beyond what is permitted by existing international law.

My Lords, I must say something about the United Kingdom and its overseas development aid. The British Government are most anxious to do everything possible to help developing countries to increase their own production of food for themselves and to distribute it in such a way that the poorest people are able to eat. I said earlier that this can only happen gradually as the general standard of living rises in the rural areas. The results will depend on the active participation of the developing countries them-selves and particularly their choice of development of priorities and hence priorities for aid request. We have not yet reached the target set of 0.7 GNP for official development assistance. In the current financial year the amount of aid will be of the order of £350 million against some £293 million which was spent in 1973–74, an advance that I am sure is not one that will satisfy all.

In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, who spoke about British aid—

A NOBLE LORD

Could the noble Lord confirm that the figures quoted include loans as well as aid and are to be repaid?

Lord SHEPHERD

Yes, this is official. It involves both loans and grants and, as my noble friend knows, loans are all of a very long-term nature. Certainly present interest rates are very soft indeed, and there are occasions when we have made accommodations to the countries concerned.

The noble Lord, Lord Vernon, spoke of what the United Kingdom Government have done to assist in population activities. In 1972–73 we made a contribution of £1½ million. I am pleased to inform him that for 1974–75 the sum will rise to £2¼ million, again an advance. I know it will not satisfy the noble Lord, but at least he will recognise that it is an advance. It is our firm intention that an increasing proportion of the programme should be devoted to the countries most seriously affected and we wish to see particularly the development of the rural sector in these developing countries.

My noble friend Lord Hale spoke about the solar energy possibilities in the tropics and also to the hardships of Chad since 1966. I am afraid I have not been able to find anything about solar energy for the tropics, but I will look into it and communicate with him. My noble friend Lord Arwyn also spoke about the question of minerals. This is a real problem and no doubt the country has to find ways in which we can conserve these precious materials.

My Lords, I now come to the last part of my noble friend's Motion. He proposes that there should be a world authority to co-ordinate action on the subject we have been discussing this afternoon. Each in itself is a difficult and complex problem and it has therefore been right in the Government's view that they should first be appraised by those who are expert in the field in order that informed decisions can be taken on the best possible way of dealing with them.

There is, nevertheless, a clear need for a co-ordinating effort. In the Government's view the right and proper body for this is the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. This body has the right to call international conferences and prepare draft conventions on matters within its competence for sub-mission to the General Assembly. It is also the body within the United Nations which has the specific responsibility for liaison with the specialised agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation and other United Nations bodies such as have been set up by the conference we have been debating. We regret the decline of support and the creation of new bodies within the United Nations family when a perfectly good body already exists to carry out a specific function. The United Nations is currently making an internal study of the role and structure of the Economic and Social Council. Our hope is that this study will increase its effectiveness and Her Majesty's Government, as well as playing a full part in the study, will hope to play a constructive role in the Economic and Social Council itself, of which it is a member.

My Lords, I do not know what my noble friend intends to do with his Motion before your Lordships' House. In the light of the debate, the motive that was behind my noble friend's speech and the recognition that some co-ordinating body is needed and that perhaps steps ought to be taken to improve the role and structure of the Economic and Social Council, I would hesitate to suggest to the House that we should object to the Motion that is before the House. I could not advise the House to accept the suggestion of a new body, but the Government in no way dissent from the spirit and intention that lies behind the Motion. If my noble friend wishes it to be passed, then I would suggest to your Lordships' House that we should let it go through.

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I should particularly like to apologise to the noble Earl, Lord Cowley, because I have not been able to reply to his points. I took a note of what he said and had intended to reply, and I had notes given to me. But, unfortunately—whether this was due to my glasses, to the light or to the writing—I could not understand them. Therefore I will communicate with the noble Earl and I apologise to him for not specifically replying tonight to his points. I am very grateful, as I have said, to all noble Lords who have participated in the debate. I congratulate again the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, and I hope that my noble friend is well satisfied with the debate that we have had today.

8.12 p.m.

Lord BROCKWAY

My Lords, I shall be very brief. May I just, with others, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, on his maiden speech. It showed very clearly that he is authoritative on the subject of the seabed with which he dealt. I am bound to say that I felt it to be an honour that he should have chosen this occasion to make his maiden speech, and I thank him for it.

Inevitably, in a debate dealing with four world conferences, many of the speeches have been directed to the subject of one or other of them, and I recognise the importance of those contributions. I also appreciate the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, should, in his concluding speech, have dealt in detail with the decisions of those conferences and with the comments made during the debate, and should have indicated the Government's view. Nevertheless, my main concern in initiating this debate was no only to consider the contributions made by these four world conferences to their different subjects, but to look to the future. I must acknowledge that, probably because of the wide nature of the debate, I have been a little disappointed that there has not been a concentration of attention upon that future.

I want to express particular gratitude to my noble friend Lord Taylor of Gryfe, to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester and to the noble Earl, Lord Cowley, for having given so much attention to the deeper and continuing proposals which I tried to make in my opening speech. I recognise that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, referred to them in his concluding remarks. There seems to have been some misunderstanding. What I suggested was this. There are now about 140 different international agencies dealing with the problems of social and economic development. They overlap appallingly. No one who has any knowledge of them fails to come across instances where two agencies are both dealing with one problem—their functions and their staffs overlapping. They are all appallingly starved of the necessary financial support.

Those who are familiar with the United Nations and the secretariat know how these different agencies compete for the money which is available for them to carry out their work. It is a picture of wasted effort and inefficiency, which is a disgrace to the way we face these world problems. And what have I suggested? I have suggested that there should be a co-ordinating authority at the United Nations which could bring these various agencies together and prevent the over-lapping and waste which occurs.

I also suggested that there should be this arm of the United Nations which should not merely co-ordinate the agencies in that way, but should be working positively for the future in dealing with the problems of world population and food. These problems cannot be dealt with except by means of some international organisation. The problem of the expanding populations and of the necessity for new food supplies—the contribution which the oceans and the deserts might make—cannot be dealt with by one Government or by private industry; it can be solved only under a World Authority. The proposal which I have made is that there should be an arm of the United Nations dealing with social and economic affairs, which is just as important as the arm which is dealing with political and military affairs. This new idea, which I hope is constructive, may not be considered acceptable tonight in this House, but I am sure that in the future the economic functions of the United Nations, in a world where economic issues are becoming dominant, will be seen to be just as important for the salvation of the world as its political and military functions.

The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has said that if I propose to maintain this Motion the Government will not oppose it. I do not want this Motion to be accepted unless there is real support for it in all sections of the House; otherwise, I would regard it just as a mere farce. I appreciate tonight that on all sides of the House there is not an acceptance of an idea which I am positive will become the idea of the future, because this House is not right for that at this moment. Therefore, it would not be honest and sincere to ask the House to adopt this Motion, and I ask the permission of your Lordships to withdraw it.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.