Lords Sitting of 21 February 1979

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Worcester):
The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

LORD SCANLON
Hugh Parr Scanlon, Esquire, having been created Baron Scanlon, of Davy-hulme in the County of Greater Manchester, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Pannell and the Lord Lee of Newton, and made the solemn Affirmation.

SOCIAL AUDIT REPORT: DRUGS AND FOOD SALES
2.40 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the exposures made by Social Audit, they will conduct an inquiry into the promotion of drugs and food sales in Third World countries.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of HEALTH and SOCIAL SECURITY (Lord Wells-Pestell): No, my Lords; the burden of this report is that the operations of multinational companies in the Third World should be subject to a code of conduct. Her Majesty's Government are participating in the work on a United Nations' code of conduct concerning the activities of such companies worldwide; and are also making a voluntary financial contribution to the Commission's technical co-operation programme which aims to help developing countries to negotiate effectively with these companies.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I thank the Minister especially for the information with which he concluded the Answer. However, is it not the case that this wide advertising campaign promotes the sale to the Third World of products which it does not need, which it can barely afford and which often bring no benefit? Is it not often misleading and sometimes dangerous? Is it not the case that manufactured foodstuffs advertise their protein value when they are less than the staple values, and that sometimes those foodstuffs cost 100 times more than staple foods? Is it not dangerous that a drug which is not allowed for sale over our counters is freely sold in India by a subsidiary of Boots? In addition to what the noble Lord has suggested, will he refer this matter to UNCTAD and the Commonwealth Secretariat?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, it is for the Governments of the Third World countries to decide whether they will permit that to happen. If I may say so with very great respect, there is a limit to what Her Majesty's Government can do. May I just say that the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry already publishes a consolidated Compendium of United Kingdom drug "data sheets," and that is available for reference to any country or any regulatory authority elsewhere. So far as Her Majesty's Government are concerned, we have taken up the matter with the main firms in the pharmaceutical and food industries. We have asked them to look into the matter and we hope to hear from them in due course as to what action they are proposing to take.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, as regards the particular question of the sale of artificial milk products for babies in the Third World, is it not a fact that the Department of Health has recommended breast-feeding as the most beneficial way of feeding small infants? In view of that fact, is it not inconsistent that large quantities of these artificial feeds should be sold to the Third World? Moreover, is it not also inconsistent that, although the Ministry of Overseas Development is emphasising rural health in its programmes to many of the poorer countries, at the same time multinational companies are selling these artificial foods which are undermining the efforts of our aid programme?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government subscribe to the view and recommend that breastfeeding is preferable and desirable. However, I should like to emphasise what I said a few moments ago. We have taken up this matter with the food industries as well as the pharmaceutical industries, and I have no doubt that we have made that point and shall make it again.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that his last remarks will be some reassurance at least to the World Health Organisation as well as to others who deplore the fact that many of the dubious drugs which are produced in the highly-developed countries, and which are barred from those countries by, for example, the Food and Drugs Act in America and by our own legislation here, are, in fact, being promoted as large-scale clinical experiments on people who do not even know that they are being experimented upon?

PAY INCREASES AND EXPENDITURE PLANS
2.45 p.m.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what they anticipate to be the level of pay increases in the current financial year, and what consequential revisions are being considered to the latest White Paper on expenditure plans.
The SOLICITOR-GENERAL for SCOTLAND (Lord McCluskey): My Lords, the Government's objective for the current pay round is to secure settlements as close as possible to the guidelines announced last July. The number of double-figure settlements is still comparatively small. But if the impact of such settlements were to assume significant proportions, the Government would take whatever action proved necessary to adhere to their fiscal and monetary policies.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that
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Answer, but is it the intention of Her Majesty's Government—I hope that it is not—to transfer the costs of higher wages from the majority of people in the country to the minority, in the shape of transferring from the taxpayer to the ratepayer? Secondly, does he not think that it is time that a campaign was started among our young people, in the universities and especially in the teacher training colleges, to impress upon them that higher wages without increased productivity and tax cuts simply increase the costs of the housewife's shopping basket and diminish our competitive capacity in the world as regards trade?
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, first, as regards the suggestion that the Government might be considering transferring the burden to others, the Government's position is plain. The Government will not finance inflation either directly or by making money available to local authorities. So far as a campaign is concerned, I should have thought that the Government's position and, indeed, the position of Parliament in relation to inflation, is absolutely plain.
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, can the noble and learned Lord say whether it is not contrary to precedent, if not to the Rules of Procedure, for noble Lords to carry advertisements on their person when in the Chamber?
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, I am not sure that that question arises out of the Question on the Order Paper. However, if the noble Earl will consult the noble Lord the Chief Whip for the Opposition, he will find that before I placed this particular affirmation where it now is, I consulted the noble Lord, Lord Denham. I sometimes feel a little deprived in this Chamber that I cannot, like so many noble Lords opposite, wear an old school tie. So, on the one occasion when I get a chance publicly to declare my faith in devolution to Scotland, why should I be denied the opportunity?
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARY-LEBONE: My Lords, would it not be better if Ministers displaying this device answered as briefly as the device indicates?
Lord McCLUSKEY: No, my Lords.
Lord PARRY: My Lords, would my noble and learned friend agree that, if the answer were "Yes", it would be well received in parts of Wales.
Lord McCLUSKEY: Yes, my Lords.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord refer back to the Question itself and the consequential revisions to which reference was made? Can the Government tell us what cuts will be necessary and whether they will be published in a document before the Financial Statement for 1979?
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, I certainly shall not comment upon speculation as regards cuts. There has been such speculation, but there has been no Government decision as regards cuts. The House may like me to enlarge a little on the matter of cash limits. Of course the Government must take decisions in relation to cash limits for the coming year and announce them in a matter of a few weeks at the most. So these detailed cash limits are now under discussion, and they will be published shortly. I do not think that today I can properly comment upon what may be announced and decided.
Lord WEDDERBURN of CHARLTON: My Lords, will my noble friend accept that it is a matter of great joy to those of us who teach in higher education that his silence appeared to imply a rejection of the suggestion by the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, that there should be advice from the Government as to the particular ideological manner in which economics should be taught in the universities?
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, I think that I can properly endorse that.

PUBLIC SERVICES: NEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS
2.50 p.m.
Lord GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, following the joint Statement of the
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Government and the TUC made on 14th February, what steps they are taking to ensure that industrial action affecting children and the seriously ill in hospital does not recur.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the Government and the TUC have agreed to examine means by which workers in the public services could establish arrangements for negotiating their pay and conditions which would make it unnecessary for them to resort to industrial action; and have also agreed as a matter of urgency to identify the groups that might be covered by such agreements.
Lord GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his helpful Answer which is consistent with his constant helpfulness in these matters. However, for the following reasons, I should like to ask whether the Government have a real sense of urgency about this: first, because we are dealing with people and not with money; we are dealing with life and death; secondly, because we are dealing with that part of the nation which cannot do anything for itself and which is entirely dependent on others for help and succour; thirdly, because, unlike most of our present troubles, this matter is one on which the country is totally united—namely, that there is nothing good to be said for action taken against children, the elderly and sick people. In other words, can the Government assure us not only that this action is being taken, but that with the utmost urgency thought is being given to a new kind of rule—and I do not use any of the "tired" words—which might at some stage need to have a sanction at the end if there were opposition?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I can give your Lordships that assurance because I know what has been going on for some considerable time now: meetings have sat through the night simply because the Government recognise, as much as anyone in your Lordships' House, what a deplorable situation this is. We are anxious to see that this is resolved at the earliest possible moment. The code of practice to which I referred in your Lordships' House some time ago, which the unions devised themselves to protect all groups by providing a minimum service, has, on the whole, worked well, but

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unfortunately—and this is very regrettable—it has not worked in some places. However, the Government are very mindful of the urgency of the whole matter.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, from what the noble Lord has said, can I draw the conclusion that the Government hope to get a "no strike" agreement as regards children?—because that is what the public want.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I think that the Government want to go further than that. I think that the Government want to get machinery in operation whereby all possible steps that can be taken and ought to be taken should be taken before there is any question of a strike.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, despite his reference to the deplorable situation, both his answers seem hardly in touch with the situation? Is he not aware that in the eyes of many the country has never sunk so low as where a section of those employed in the public sector are taking it out on the old, the sick and the dying, as is happening at this very moment?
Lord NUGENT of GUILDFORD: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Government's continuing refusal to call for volunteers to help in these vital services is causing grave disappointment with the Government's powers of leadership? Is he aware that there is a natural instinct in all humanity to help the sick and the children, and that a call for volunteers would meet with an immense response? Is the noble Lord further aware of the grave disappointment that there is throughout the whole nation in the Government's failure in leadership in this respect?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not want to be misunderstood, but when one says that it is a matter for the Government to call for volunteers, the only people who know whether or not volunteers are necessary, whether they can be used and in what circumstances they can be used, are those in the hospitals. Many of the hospitals have done so and have profited by it. But in some places—and we must face this fact, whether or
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not we like it—it has been counter-productive.
The Lord Bishop of SOUTHWARK: My Lords, are the Government aware that although I would gladly support reasonable increases for the lowest paid, nevertheless sheer human compassion means that, although these discussions are continuing, we must do everything we can to protect the elderly and the children? Are the Government aware that in my own diocese alone when I appealed to people to go through the pickets if need be, and to help old people to the lavatories, to feed them and to ensure that they were taken to their beds, we had far more volunteers than we could cope with? If a bishop can get that number of volunteers, the Government could get a thousand times more.
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there are volunteers who normally go to the hospitals who have in fact been told to keep away because if they do their voluntary work it will incur the wrath of the strikers?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, that is precisely what I said a moment or two ago: that sometimes such actions are counter-productive and create difficulties.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that to expect assistance from volunteers in a deplorable affair such as this is not a satisfactory way of dealing with this problem? Why is it that we only seek to deal with deleterious situations after the event and never seek to anticipate them? Are we not reaching a stage when, although the right to strike should not be completely withdrawn, we must provide some remedy in order to avoid too frequent strikes? Ought we not to have recourse to arbitration, even if sometimes it is unsatisfactory? Ought it not to be tried in order to prevent these horrific events that have recently occurred?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, it is one of the lessons of life that most of us are wiser after the event. The very fact that the Government and the TUC have recently got together with a view to trying to formulate a scheme whereby the strike is the last resort and not the first

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resort should, for the future, meet some of the difficulties—if not all the difficulties—that we have recently encountered.
Lord MACKIE of BENSHIE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that a firm attitude rather than to a slow one on the part of the Government might lead to a quicker agreement?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not know whether or not it is permissible to ask the noble Lord what he means by a "firm attitude".
Lord MACKIE of BENSHIE: My Lords, I suggest the use of volunteers.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of reports in the Press of hospitals having worked much better with fewer porters, and that this has proved that the National Health Service hospitals are in many cases overstaffed in the number of porters they have?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, this is the first time I have been informed that hospitals have worked more efficiently with fewer staff. I thought the complaint had been that so many people had been inconvenienced by what has been going on.
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, will the noble Lord accept that there is a distinction between, on the one hand, hospitals calling for voluntary helpers and, on the other hand, hospitals actually turning away those who normally give voluntary help?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, we went over this a few minutes ago. I said that there was a reason for hospitals taking that line—because they thought that it would exacerbate the situation.
Lord ROCHESTER: My Lords, will the noble Lord accept that within the next few months there may well be a change of Government and that, therefore, if a lasting solution is to be found to this vexed problem of pay determination in the public service, it is vital that it should be acceptable to parties other than merely this Government and the TUC? If that is so, may I further ask why it is that the Government persist in refusing repeated pleas from all sides of this House that they
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should consult with Opposition Parties as to how these difficult problems, industrial and of an economic kind, can be solved?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord has said, that this country may suffer the misfortune of having a change of Government in the next few months, which will considerably exacerbate the present situation. Of course I hope that that does not happen. But my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and others, who are in daily and nightly touch with this situation, have examined the possibility of whether any useful purpose would be served by calling together the leaders, as the noble Lord has suggested, and I think the answer to that is that the Prime Minister has not found that that course would be likely to be helpful.
Lord ROBBINS: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for the temperate way in which he has answered a barrage of questions, may I ask him what comfort any of his answers will bring to the 16, 17 or 18 year-old people who are taking their A-levels this summer?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, we are going down another road now, but I have great sympathy with the question which the noble Lord has asked. The situation is deplorable and we are concerned about it, and the Secretary of State for Education and Science is concerned about it, and it is something that ought not to have happened; but I am hoping that in the very near future these difficulties will be resolved so that we can get back to normality.

AMBULANCE SERVICE DISPUTE
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask Her Majesty's Government a Question of which I have given Private Notice. The Question is as follows:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a Statement about the strike of ambulancemen in London and elsewhere and if they will state how cover for emergencies is being maintained."
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m., my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell will answer this Question in the form of a Statement.

PROSECUTION OF OFFENCES BILL [H.L.]
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain enactments relating to the prosecution of offences in England and Wales and to repeal certain obsolete enactments relating thereto. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT: COLOMBO CONFERENCE
3.3 p.m.
Lord VERNON Lord VERNON rose to call attention to the international parliamentary conference on population and development to be held in Colombo in August 1979; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, two weeks ago there was a debate in your Lordships' House on the International Year of the Child, introduced by my noble friend Lady Faithfull. It is, I think, appropriate that this debate should follow, because one can think of few factors which will affect children more in the immediate future than population growth. My noble friend on that occasion quoted ten principles adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1959 relating to the rights of the child: the right to adequate nutrition and medical care; the right to full opportunity for play and recreation, and so on. I shall not repeat them all. But I venture to assert that at least eight out of those ten principles will be prejudiced, if not completely nullified, so long as the population of the developing countries continues to grow at its present rate.
There are 4,000 million people in the world today as compared with 2,000 million in 1930. In 21 years' time, by the
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year 2,000, there are likely to be 6,000 million, and in the 20 years after that, because the increase breeds on itself, there will be perhaps 10,000 million. It has been called a population explosion, but really it is a series of explosions with each one double the size of the last—double the size, that is, unless we can take steps to stop it.
What can we do? Most people are agreed that birth rates will fall when living standards can be improved, and yet living standards cannot be improved while population growth continues at its present rate. The answer seems to be that we should tackle both aspects simultaneously. Some countries have already pointed the way. They were quick to realise that a higher quality of life for their people was dependent on curbing population growth. Japan has made dramatic progress; China, with its rigid discipline and dedication to family planning, has been able to reduce birth rates in the region of 40 per thousand to 22 per thousand, an incredible achievement, bearing in mind the scale of the country and its huge population of over 900 million. There have been similar encouraging developments in some of the small island states like Mauritius, Singapore, and others; but these are exceptions. Overall birth rates continue at a very high rate while mortality rates decline. To give a few examples: Kenya, with 15 million people, will double its population in 21 years; Bangladesh, with 85 million, already the most densely populated country on the face of the globe, will double in 26 years; India, with 635 million will double in 35 years, and so on.
When I attended an international conference in Berlin a short time ago we were told the story of the African water lily. This lily was so prolific that it doubled itself every day; it reproduced itself every day. It started growing in a certain large pond, after 29 days it had covered half the pond, and the farmer in question was interested to know how much longer it would take to cover the whole pond. He thought it would take quite a long time, but it does not take great intelligence to see that the whole of the pond would be covered on the 30th day; that is, in one more day. We have not yet reached the 29th day as regards the maximum numbers which the earth can support, but in the next few decades we shall approach very close to it.
When one considers that this massive increase is taking place almost exclusively in those countries which can least afford to cope with it—countries which are already suffering from chronic poverty, from malnutrition if not starvation, from disease and unemployment—and when one further considers the increasing urbanisation which is taking place in these countries, with illiterate peasants flocking to shanty towns which are springing up like mushrooms on the edge of the big cities, shanty towns where conditions are so appalling that an English slum is a palace by comparison, the problem which faces mankind is indeed alarming.
It is estimated that 45 per cent. of the youth of Mexico are unemployed; yet in 20 years' time there will be another 66 million people in Mexico. What sort of future will those people and their children have? And it is not just a question of the children. What about the unfortunate women who bear this endless succession of children? Should they not be given the opportunity to choose how many children they want and whether they wish to fulfil themselves in some way other than as perpetual breeding machines?
It was with this picture in mind that a working group of parliamentarians from the developed and developing countries, acting in conjunction with the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, met in Tokyo in 1978. It is important to stress that the working group was concerned not just with population but with economic development and improving the quality of life in the developing world; the two aspects go hand in hand. It is really a question of timing. The delay of a single generation in achieving population stability in the world results in an increase in world population of 70 per cent.
The 1974 world conference in Bucharest on population had agreed upon some useful principles, but they were not enough. More positive action was urgently required and it was felt that that was more likely to be accepted in the developing countries if their parliamentarians could be directly interested in the problem. The International Parliamentary Conference on Population and Development, which will take place in Colombo later this year under the sponsorship of the IPU and in close co-operation with the United Nations Fund for Population
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Activities, stems directly from the Tokyo meeting. But Colombo is envisaged not as an end but as a beginning, and it is hoped that there will be continuing international parliamentary conferences, regional meetings and so on. As the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, who is the chairman of the British Parliamentary group, will be speaking later in the debate, I shall say no more on that aspect, except to express the hope that when the Leader of the House replies he will be able to give, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, every support and encouragement to the initiative which has been taken.
A word about the United Kingdom. We live in one world and the Western nations cannot isolate themselves. We may have a lower birth-rate than in the developing world but we consume a far higher proportion of the world's diminishing natural resources, a fact of which the developing nations are very conscious. Even looked at purely from a national point of view, I suggest that we should consider very carefully where we are going. There is a general misconception at present, encouraged by the media, that our population is falling. It is not. It is a roughly stable population; there is a change in the age structure with a decline in the school population, but it is still expected that owing to the number of women coming into their maximum reproductive period, the population of these islands will be several millions greater in a few years' time.
Many people believe that the social and economic problems facing us today, and, goodness knows!, they are enough, would be greatly eased if our population were smaller than it is. By "economic and social problems" I mean of course our high dependence on imported foodstuffs and the questions of unemployment, inadequate health and housing facilities, the low ratio of teachers to pupils in schools and many others. A population of 56 million may have been appropriate to the labour-intensive conditions which prevailed in our heyday as an imperial power in the 19th century, but they are hardly appropriate to the era of the silicon chip. There is not sufficient time for me to develop the arguments in favour of this proposition, but they are admirably set out in a booklet written by Professor

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Bernard Benjamin, published by the Birth Control Trust at a cost of 55p, entitled The Decline in the Birth-Rate: Towards a Better Quality of Life ", and I strongly commend it to the Government and noble Lords.
We are fortunate today in that the Leader of the House is also the Minister responsible for population policy, and I hope the debate will give him the opportunity to enlighten the House on the Government's thinking in this important field. I conclude by asking him two specific questions. First, according to the figures I have been given, of our total disbursements of £585 million on overseas aid in 1977, only £5·5 million, or under 1 per cent., was allocated for family planning purposes. I understand the commitment for 1978, although larger, still amounts to only 1·6 per cent. That is grotesquely inadequate, by any standards. It would be unrealistic in the present economic climate to ask for an increase in the total of disbursements, but surely a strong case can be made for stepping up the percentage of the total allocated to family planning. If we do not do so, much of our aid will be wasted. It would be like pouring money into a basket with a hole in the bottom.
My second question is closer to home. Do the Government welcome unreservedly the present decline in the birthrate in this country, and do they agree that the quality of life of everyone in these overcrowded islands would be enhanced if we could work gradually towards a reduced population. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.20 p.m.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, we are grateful to my noble friend Lord Vernon for having introduced this short debate on a subject on which he is an expert and on which he speaks with much feeling and knowledge, and which is of course of vital concern to this country and to all other countries of the world. There are many aspects—economic, social, political, medical, moral, ethical—and each provides for contention, disagreement, deep feeling, and division; and in this short debate it is impossible to give due regard to all of them. As often happens regarding these very sensitive issues, lobbies and pressure groups are created, and it is
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often the ability of the group which leads to one conclusion rather than to others.
I must tell my noble friend that I shall not be following him in all aspects of his argument. However, I believe that we would all share agreement on the first paragraph of the Declaration of the Tokyo Planning Meeting of the International Working Group of Parliamentarians concerned with Population and Development, to which he referred, which reads as follows:
"In the interests of peace and humanity the world must recognise the urgent need to improve the quality of life for families in the developing countries, giving due attention both to rural areas and to the urban disadvantaged poor".
I believe that none of your Lordships would disagree with that objective. However, one might take issue with the following paragraphs, though, on the other hand, some might agree with them. The second paragraph states:
"One of the greatest impediments to such an advance is the yearly addition of 80 million people to the world population …";
and it goes on in that vein.
There are some basic questions which need to be considered, if not satisfactorily and completely answered. The first is: how far should Governments interfere, directly or indirectly, in the control of their own population numbers? I leave aside from the consideration of this question the matter of immigration, which I consider to be a subject on its own; and so I shall not deal with immigration in considering population figures. We only have to recall what success we have had with the Select Committee on Science and Technology which dealt with the subject of population in 1969–70, to see the kind of results that emerge from considering population at parliamentarian and governmental level. The Select Committee made various policy proposals to the Government, some of which were supported and implemented by the Government, and which had been introduced originally by the birth control campaign in about 1967–68.
Using the population projections which now appear to be like fairy-tales, we can look at what the result has been—and this was a matter to which I referred in your Lordships' House in December 1972. The projection of 1960 estimated that up to the year 2,000 there would be 63 million people, but by 1964 the figure rose to

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77 million. By 1968 it came down to 66 million. In 1976, according to the latest figure available per base projection, there was to be a population of 59 million in this country in 1980. At the moment the figure is about 55.7 million, with a declining birthrate; in fact we have got below replacement level of the population.
I do not say that these figures will be proved right or wrong in the end, even if it is at the end of the year 3,000, but the fact of the matter is that these projections as they stand have only one common denominator—that they are all wrong. Therefore, it seems to me that the kind of population policies which are based on population projections are neither helpful nor relevant to the problems which face either this country or the world as a whole.
Other European countries have also shown the danger of pursuing aggressive population control measures through national health organisations, when in fact the real danger which faces us is quite another matter. It is the low level of births, a declining population, and the consequence of a large elderly population to be maintained and supported by a decreasing number of young people. The Federal Republic of Germany now has a natural increase rate of minus 2·4 per cent., and many other countries are now trying to raise the birthrate in order to achieve a more balanced population.
Secondly—and this, I believe, is not only a political issue, but a very deep moral one—how far should developed countries interfere in the population policies of other countries, particularly developing countries? I personally believe that it is morally and politically indefensible and offensive to seek in any way to interfere in the population policies—whatever they may be—of developing countries. These countries—whether they be in Latin America, Africa, or Asia—must have the intrinsic right of deciding their own policies in accordance with their own philosophy, and their own cultural and economic needs. In Africa many countries are woefully underpopulated, and (heir social and economic development will make progress only with a larger population.
Let us take as an example Angola, which admittedly is one extreme. It has a land area of about 488,000 square miles,
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which is five times the size of the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 6 million people, which is 11 times less than that of the United Kingdom. Whether one has a successful economy has nothing to do with the size of the population. Hong Kong is at the other end of the scale. Hong Kong is one-thousandth of the size of Angola, but with a population practically the same (about 4·5 million) but it has a systematic increase in economic growth. So there is no immediate correlation between the size of population and wealth.
My noble friend rightly raised the question of China. I should like to refer to a very interesting conversation which I had with one of the most senior people in that country when I was there just under two years ago. I asked him about the population, and he told me that they had to feed between 800 million and 900 million people. I asked the Vice-Premier, "How do you know that you have so many people? What I have read in the West shows that it is impossible that so many people are living in your country." He replied, "No, no—we have that number." I asked, "When did you last have a census?" "Ah, we never have a census ", he said, "We have not had one." So I asked, "How do you know that you have so many people?" He replied, "Well, Lady Elles, I will let you into the secret. Every province sends in a list every year of the number of births, because that is what decides the rations they get for their food and their cotton, but they never send us the number of deaths." It may be that the figure of 800 million is somewhere near the truth, but certainly no one in China at Government level can confirm that.
The third point I wish to make in the short time at our disposal relates to the methods used by non-governmental organisations to influence population programmes, because these, too, are of interest. Support by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (a leading organisation in this field) for abortion, sterilisation, and so on, while acceptable to many members of that organisation, and indeed to others, has also had particular influence on some of the developing countries. Though, of course, one cannot put the blame on that particular organisation, one has only to think of the methods

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which were recently used in India on thousands of Indian citizens, either by force or by bribery, including free radios, et cetera, which were a total denial of human rights of the individual. Whatever the method was to force women to have sterilisation and to force men to have operations which denied them the chance of having children, it cannot have been, in any sense of the words, a recognition and honouring of the human rights of any individual. If there is to be choice in these matters, it surely must be a free one and in accordance with recent discussions on the demographic subjects at the Twentieth Conference of UNESCO. They were to the effect that the choice must be left to the couple; and this confirms the decision contained in the final resolution of the World Conference on Population at Bucharest, to which my noble friend referred.
Fourthly, I should like to refer very briefly to the agenda of the conference to be held in Colombo, which includes the very important item of "Human Rights"—two words which are very often abused and misused. I think it is worth recalling from time to time that surely the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to life; and it is not irrelevant to recall to our parliamentarians who go to Colombo—and, indeed, my noble friend has referred to this—that this is the United Nations International Year of the Child; and that they should read again, not only all the 10 articles of the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, which was proclaimed universally by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1959, but also the preamble to that Declaration, which says:
"Whereas the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection before as well as after birth…".
I hope that when the human rights item on the agenda at Colombo is discussed, this particular preamble and basic philosophy of United Nations member States at that time will be recalled.
My Lords, one further aspect of population control which concerns Governments and, therefore, of course, parliamentarians is, as my noble friend rightly said, the availability of natural resources to support the world population, whether it increases
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or decreases. In this part of the world, of course, it is very often those who say that we are over-populated who also complain of the food surpluses in the Community—they are often apt to be the same people—and seek to diminish the production of food supplies. I think there are really two main aspects of this question of shortage and surplus of natural resources which must be considered. First, it is not so much the availability of supply of resources as the availability at point of demand. There are vast quantities available. The world is rich in resources still undiscovered, and we need think only of the recent developments in marine biology and marine science to realise the immense potential of even the wealth under the sea. The question is how to get those resources to those who are short of food and need it for their families. Even if the conference turns its mind only to these vital questions of distribution, it will be making a major contribution to the solution of the problem of starvation.
Secondly, following on from the availability of these resources is, of course, the need for conservation, for recycling and for continued research into and development of new resources and new scientific discoveries for the maintenance and support of mankind. Who, 50 years ago, would have dreamed of nuclear energy being able to replace other, more well-known sources of energy of that time? There is surely also a real need, not for the elimination of populations but for balanced populations as between urban and rural parts of the country. Surely we have to assist in raising the economic and social development of rural areas. Here, the experience, both good and bad, of Western, developed nations should be put at the service of less developed countries, not to inflict upon them our theories but to use our experiences for the benefit of these countries, so that they learn from our mistakes just as much as from the things we have done well; and so that, through joint programmes, joint ventures and the training of nationals of less developed countries, they can adapt our knowledge and experience to their own local needs in the light of their own economic resources and cultural and social development.
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Vernon has today given us the opportunity to debate a subject which is fundamental to

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the wellbeing and prosperity of mankind, but let us remember that the world land mass is still only 5 per cent. inhabited. There are still vast areas of the world which are uninhabited; and let us remember once more, in the United Nations International Year of the Child, that surely the first consideration is to let them live.
3.35 p.m.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, has friends like the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, he does not need enemies. I find—and I am serious—that, without reservation, in the 12 years I have been in this House I have never heard a speech with which I so profoundly disagree in every sense. I am not talking about the controversial element of it. The noble Baroness has been using arguments which are completely untenable on her own basis. She has been using the numbers game. She said, "Do not pay any attention to demography; it has always been wrong", and then she used demography to prove that she was absolutely right. That is nonsense—complete nonsense. What we are looking at in the world at the moment is unquestionably a situation which, if it goes on, will be totally and completely disastrous. Do not let us start to get sentimental and waste sympathy on all the people who are going to die of starvation; because, numerically, we are going to die of starvation. This is the situation which we are looking at in the world today and which is, beyond any equivocation, absolutely inescapable and must be faced. What we have been hearing in that speech is a complete denial of all the manifest truths.
I have been living with this situation—most of us have; some of us more inteligently than others, if I may boast a little—for some 30 years now, when it was quite clear that there was going to be human intervention in the best sense of the word. We were going to introduce the developments of modern medicine, which we did extremely effectively; and we were going to make available to developing countries the resources of science, which we did very effectively. We were going to get rid of a good deal of our (shall we say?) pharmaceutical surpluses in the process; nevertheless, we did it with the best of intentions. What we did was to release, by man-devised means, the population
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explosion. The population explosion is an inescapable truth. What we have done is in fact to inhibit the natural forces, if they are natural, because a lot of them are social neglect, and so forth; nevertheless, they were a corrective factor. We are in fact enabling people to live longer.
Let me give your Lordships one simple example. When the British Raj gave up India, the expectation of life of the average girl child born in India was 27 years. Today it is something like 50. It is almost irrelevant; we will not argue about detail. The fact is that that average Indian girl child is now living through her entire reproductive period; therefore she can go on having children. What we have done is not just to increase the population by virtue of the fact that we have expanded the span of life; we have increased, first of all, the number of people who are born and exist, and we have increased the potential number of people who can be born. I have never suggested, and I do not think any of my friends in the population movement have ever suggested for one moment, that a child who is born should be deprived of any of the resources we can make available. But what we can do is to say that the resources which will be available will be better available if there are fewer people. One of my arguments with the international population control people has been that we should not say, "Here is a starving child"; we should say, "Here is the child you want".
I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, and I was absolutely fascinated. I listened to that sort of argument in the Assembly of the World Health Organisation 30 years ago. And when we got to the Bucharest Conference on Population and the less developed countries were cocking a snook at us and saying, "Who are you to talk to us like that?"—they were right! They were using the same arguments as we in the developed countries (under constraints which I will not elaborate, constraints which were religious rather than political or economic) had been imposing on them and on their thinking.
What has now to be faced, beyond any argument, is a simple truth. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, on one thing: that it is no good doing this by exhortation. As Indira Gandhi has shown, to our distress, in the population movement, you cannot do it by force, by

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sterilisation, by compulsion or by bribery. You must get down to two people in bed. They are the people who decide whether they are going to have more children or not. How are you going to get to them? You are not going to get into bed with them. You must convince them—as we have failed to do in the past in most of the underdeveloped world—that, first of all, we can keep children alive; they do not now have to have children who die. That is the element of this question. You do not have to have 10 children on the historical record in order that five will be there to provide hands for work in your fields because you cannot afford a bullock or because you must in your old age be sustained in social security by your own family.
The aim must be to convince the people of the world of the fallacy of thinking that by having children merely as an ultimate social security their standard of life will somehow improve. There is no question about the fact that every new child born into an Indian family reduces the capacity of that family better to deal with the family that they have—whether educationally or in feeding them or anything else. We are not playing a great numbers game. Years ago in discussions about population, I stopped talking about 6,000 million people in the year 2,000. This, I think, is an underestimate; nevertheless, forget it! The 6,000 million more people is the order of it. We are going to double the population. But this does not mean anything. It does not mean a thing. Zeros become an anaesthetic. People cannot cope with that order of numbers.
What you do see is what actually happens in a family, or in a village, or a community when you see that the increase in population is degrading the whole of the population and the family, and is denying children the possibilities which we hope we can offer them. What we must do, first of all, is to get away from all the nonsense. We must make available the knowledge and the means by which people can control their population. I am not talking about methods that you can practise. There are religious bodies which practise celibacy and continence. This is demanding a lot of the total population of the world. You do not
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have to debate methods, whether continence or anything else: you must convince people of the fact that not just they themselves, but (let us take) the family, will be better off the smaller that family is. There is no escape. You can go on through all the figures, all the books, the statistics and so on. This is an elemental, simple truth. People cannot make available to their families what they have not got. Is it a great crime? Pope John said: Bring the children up with a human responsibility and in human dignity. But you cannot have human dignity in the degrading situation in which people today are forced to have their children, for there are too many children to bring up.
My Lords, we are going into this conference in Sri Lanka—to which I give my blessing. I hope that the parliamentarians of the world will learn one truth. What the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, has said is true: that it is no part of our job to dictate or to lecture to the people of the developing countries. We must say to them: "Here are the things that you and we desire; and not because we are going to get more benefit out of it than you are "—because it is a fact that we are not in a position, having disqualified ourselves over the last 30 years, to dictate to the developing countries how to conduct their policies. All that we can do is, I hope, to inspire them and give them hope for the future.

AMBULANCE SERVICE DISPUTE
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement being made in another place in answer to a Private Notice Question on the ambulance service dispute. The Statement is being made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Security. The Statement is as follows:
"As the House knows, most ambulance authorities have been able to provide only an emergency service for nearly a month as a result of official industrial action over pay. An unofficial group have been urging even tougher action and last week threatened a 24-hour strike for today and a withdrawal of all services.

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"At an official delegate meeting in London yesterday, ambulancemen voted by a substantial majority not to withdraw emergency services, though they did decide to continue their action while negotiations over pay proceed. After this decision was known, one of the leaders of the unofficial group announced that the threatened 24-hour strike had been postponed for a week.
"Yet, as honourable and right honourable Members will know from radio and television reports, in several areas some ambulancemen have ignored the advice of both their union and unofficial leaders and have walked away from their duties. I am sure that the whole House will join me in strongly condemning this reckless and irresponsible action. It will do nothing to help the pay negotiations which I hope will lead to a very early settlement.
"In London and Manchester, this unofficial action has meant that, even with the support of police and voluntary organisations, the emergency service could not be maintained. Accordingly, I have given authority for Service ambulances to provide assistance, and I shall do so in any other area where this situation arises. I also authorised the use of Service ambulances in Somerset, but further volunteer ambulances became available and the Service ambulances have so far not been used. In Liverpool, where unofficial action has also taken place, I understand that so far the ambulance authority are managing with police support.
"The Whitley Council management side put a new offer to the ambulancemen's negotiators on Wednesday of last week. This has been discussed by the staff side of the Council and more widely with shop stewards. The Whitley Council meets tomorrow to discuss this offer and any other proposals. Today's unofficial action would be irresponsible at any time, but when an offer is on the table and being negotiated it is pointless."
My Lords, that is the end of the Statement.
3.50 p.m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord
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Wells-Pestell, for repeating the Statement of his right honourable friend in another place. May I say first how strongly we on this side of the House support the Secretary of State in condemning the reckless, irresponsible action of the ambulancemen who walked away from their jobs. We believe that today's unofficial action has been a grossly offensive act. We further believe that the unofficial group, in proposing the action of a further 24 hours' stoppage in a week's time, is something which will arouse equal and very wide public condemnation should this take place, and we hope that the Goverment will use their best efforts to prevent it. What underlines our anxiety is the situation with regard to the waiting list as a whole. May I draw the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell—and I am sure his attention is already drawn to it—to the general waiting list for operations in the country as a whole which stood last year at an unacceptable level of over half a million.
I do not know—and I do not wish to press the noble Lord this afternoon for any figures—whether he can either confirm or deny that that figure has been rising very sharply owing to one month's action by ambulancemen and indeed ancillary staff within hospitals and is approaching well over 600,000 now. Further, in regard to the arrangements being made for Service ambulances by the Secretary of State, can the noble Lord tell us whether it is possible to transfer additional Service ambulances to the London area from areas where the number of ambulances is in excess?
3.52 p.m.
Lord ROCHESTER: My Lords, we on these Benches should like to join in thanking the noble Lord for having repeated this Statement. We also readily join in condemning, in the words in the Statement, the action that has been taken. We further fully support the Government in making use of troops, of police and volunteers in any case where this proves necessary.
There is reference in the Statement to the pay offer which has been made. The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, has not referred to this in any detail—perhaps advisedly—and I shall therefore understand if he is a little guarded in

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any responses that he may make into the questions that I, nevertheless, should like to put to him. We on these Benches wish to support the Government in using such influence as they have with the management side of the Whitley Council in seeing that no further increase is made in the pay offer which has reportedly been made which would bring further substantial burdens on ratepayers or taxpayers.
More specifically on the question of the comparability study, which we understand is contemplated, may I ask whether this would fully take into account, if it is undertaken, not simply basic pay and earnings, but also such relevant items, as we see them, as indexed-linked pensions and relative job security? As regards any productivity payment which may be under consideration, may I ask what are the criteria under which any payment will be made? In particular, do the Government agree that such a payment should not be made until improvements in productivity have actually been effected, and that it is wrong in principle that people should be recompensed for simply doing what it is their duty to do under contracts of employment; namely, attend for work?
Finally, is it not the case that if truly self-financing productivity payments are to be made in a service like the ambulance service, then these would have to be accompanied—would they not?—by reductions either in the standard of service provided or in the number of people employed, which in this particular field presumably none of us would wish to see?
3.55 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for the temperate way in which they have dealt with this particular matter. The noble Lord, Lord Sandys, raised the question of waiting lists. It is no good my pretending that they are not rising. They are rising and this is a matter of very great regret. Regarding Service ambulances being available in London, if there is a need for Service ambulances to be used or others to be brought in, this is certainly in the mind of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State.
The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, referred to the pay offer and wondered
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whether I am able to say something about it. I think that your Lordships are entitled to know what the situation is. The offer which has been made would provide for increases in pay of 9 per cent. from the settlement date of 1st January this year. The question of comparability between the pay of this group and that of others outside the public sector would be referred urgently to an independent standing commission which the Government have agreed to set up. This will report by 1st August this year, and 50 per cent. of any further increase recommended—if there was such a recommendation—will be paid from 1st August of this year, and the remaining 50 per cent. will be payable from 1st April next year.
The management side have also offered urgent talks on the possibility of a self-financing productivity payment. With regard to the criteria of the comparability, which I think was another point raised, I cannot give the noble Lord any information about that. We do not have it ourselves. This is something which has to be looked at very carefully. It is not going to be easy to make these comparisons between manual workers in the local authority and ancillary workers and ambulance workers in the National Health Service, but it will be done. However, I cannot help the noble Lord by saying anything more than I have already said.
Lord TAYLOR of GRYFE: My Lords, we have had evidence recently of trade unions disciplining workers who stay at work when the union has declared a strike with serious consequences in a closed-shop situation. Has my noble friend any information as to whether unions are applying similar disciplinary action to workers who go on strike when the union policy is to remain at work?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I have no information at all regarding that.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, in his Statement the noble Lord seemed to pay special regard to the problems of Liverpool, and he gave a good response to my noble friend regarding London. Has he anything further to say on the arrangements for service in Manchester? Has he had any encouragement from the local authorities that they

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would welcome that? If they are prepared to accept it, has he the facilities ready to put into Manchester in order that they may get over their problems, too?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, so far as the Greater Manchester ambulances are concerned, from midnight 19 stations were providing emergency service and 15 providing none at all. During the day four more stations have withdrawn services, so 15 are now providing cover. None of the eight stations covering the Central Manchester area is providing a service. During the night, cover was provided in the areas normally served by the strike-hit stations by 32 police vehicles and by four vehicles provided by the St. John's Ambulance Brigade which were driven by policemen. They coped with services until 10.00 hours, when the vehicles were required for the urgent transfer of patients between hospitals that are some distances apart. The Regional Health Authority were authorised shortly before 10.00 hours this morning to call upon the services for assistance. Emergency services are being maintained throughout Greater Manchester.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARY-LEBONE: My Lords, I do not want to pursue the noble Lord with demands for an immediate answer to this question and I shall be perfectly content if he simply says that he will take advice from his colleagues; but is it not obvious—and I speak only of the withdrawal of emergency services now—that it is intrinsic in the nature of such a withdrawal that human life is quite certainly in danger, and if not human life human serious bodily injury? Is it not also obvious that it is in breach of contract? Does it not follow inexorably from that that an offence has been committed by those who are now guilty of such conduct against Section 5 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875? While I am sure that all Members of the House will concur with the Government in condemning such irresponsible conduct, is condemnation quite enough? Is there not an Attorney-General and is not his duty either to enforce the criminal law or, by civil process, by means of an information, enforce it by way of injunction?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for allowing me to say that I will obviously take this point and see personally that it is drawn to the attention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, who will, I know, read with some interest what the noble and learned Lord has said.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, if the comparability board says that public service employees and the ambulance employees are being paid more than is the case in the private sector, will there then be a corresponding reduction in salaries of 50 per cent. in August and 50 per cent. next year?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, it is quite clear that the noble Earl does not know the basic pay of either of those groups.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, has not the noble Lord seen the figures published in various newspapers, showing that in fact there is considerable doubt whether the public sector are paid less than the private sector?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, when one sees the figure of average earnings one needs to look very carefully at how those earnings are made up. A leading ambulance man's basic wage is £47·32 per week. The rest of the money comes as a result of shift work, weekend work and overtime. You have to look not at the figure of £84, or whatever it is, but at the basic pay.
Lord WINSTANLEY: Would the noble Lord bear in mind, in addition to the other matters that have been brought to his attention, that the present absence of ambulance services has in fact revealed that in many cases services formerly provided by the ambulance services were not strictly necessary? It is a fact that large numbers of people who were being taken regularly to hospital for treatment or for outpatient appointments are now getting there quite happily under their own steam. I recognise that this has no relevance to emergency services, but I think it is a point that should be borne in mind.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, it is nice to know that something good may come out of a situation of this kind. Obviously we shall all learn lessons from it—at any rate I hope so.

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT COLOMBO CONFERENCE
4.4 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Viscount INGLEBY: My Lords, I, too, must join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, for introducing the debate on this important subject of population control. I should like also to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, that it is not that the world is short of resources: it is that we have somehow or other failed to get those resources to the right place at the right time. However, I must disagree with some of the ideas which have been proposed to help this situation. The International Planned Parenthood Federation, which no doubt will be closely involved in the Colombo Conference, has interests far beyond the provision of family planning services to overburdened families in the underdeveloped countries. It has a strategy of legal reforms on matters such as the family, divorce, sterilisation, abortion, sex education and so on. This strategy it seeks to implement through family planning associations in various countries and it has a Government grant of £3 million.
As examples of some of the ideas that have been put forward, I should like to quote from a chart prepared by Frederick S. Jaffe, vice-president of Planned Parenthood World Population, a member-body of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Table 1 is headed:
"Example of proposed measures to reduce US fertility by universality or selectivity of impact".
I apologise for the rather long words involved there. Under the heading of "Universal impact" Mr. Jaffe lists as "social constraints" the following:
"Restructure family (a) postpone or avoid marriage; (b) alter image of ideal family".
Next comes a heading referring to the compulsory education of children, followed by:
"Percentage increased homosexuality, educate for family limitation, healthy control agents in water supply".
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Then there is a heading referring to economic deterrents which include the following:
"Require women to work and provide few child-care facilities".
Under the heading of "Social controls", Mr. Jaffe puts forward these suggestions:
"Compulsory abortion of out-of-wedlock pregnancies; compulsory sterilisation of all who have two children except for a few who would be allowed three; confine childbearing to only a limited number of adults; stock certificate-type permits for children".
The source is given as:
"Frederick S. Jaffe Activities Relevant to the Study of Population Policy /or the US: Memorandum to Bernard Berelson, March 11, 1969".
I am not suggesting that all or any of these suggestions form part of the present policy of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, although some of them may well do so, but I would ask the Government, when the question of the grant to the IPPF comes up, to look closely at their strategy for legal reforms.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, before the noble Viscount finishes, may I just ask who is Mr. Jaffe?
Viscount INGLEBY: My Lords, Mr. Jaffe, as I said, is vice-president of Planned Parenthood World Population, a member-body of the IPPF.
4.8 p.m.
The Earl of LISTOWEL: My Lords, my excuse for taking part in this debate, apart from the intrinsic importance of the subject under discussion, is that I have had some first-hand experience of population and development problems in countries in the developing world where those problems are particularly acute. I lived for three years in West Africa and had at one time ministerial responsibility for India, where I recently spent a most interesting visit trying to bring myself up to date with its population and development problems. India and West Africa unfortunately have this in common: they both include many of the world's poorest of the poor and are both faced by an explosive population situation. I therefore welcome the substance and timing of the noble Lord's Motion, as well as the powerful and intensely humane speech in which he moved it.

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The impact of the population explosion on millions of our fellow men can only be mitigated as time goes on if Governments can be persuaded to take urgent action now. But Governments, as we all know, will not act unless there is strong pressure from parliamentary or public opinion. The international parliamentary pressure group to which the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, belongs, is therefore, in my view, performing a most useful service, both here and in all the other countries where it is represented. I should like in my very few remarks—I shall not take up more than my fair share of time—to advert upon some of the matters which I hope will be on the agenda of the programme for international action which will be before the Colombo Conference in August.
I do not think that any of us can have an easy conscience, until we are satisfied that everything possible is being done to reduce the "absolute poverty" in certain parts of Africa and Asia, described by Mr. Robert McNamara, the President of the World Bank, in his foreword to the report of the World Bank on World Development in 1978. It is a horrifying thought that, owing to this population explosion, we shall not be able to eliminate—we can only hope, at best, to reduce—the number of those who will still be living in these inhuman conditions of absolute poverty, as Mr. NcNamara described them, at the end of the century.
Even this alleviation of the direst poverty will depend upon a combination between a much faster rate of economic growth, and a more effective drive for family limitation in the developing countries. The extent of malnutrition and possible famine before the end of the century in the developing world, will be measured by the pace of economic development and population control. The faster they both proceed, the sooner will the poorest countries reach a tolerable standard of living, and conversely. What we, therefore, have to consider is what we can do as parliamentarians in this country to influence policies for accelerated economic development, accompanied by family limitation.
To take, first, the question of family limitation, a rapid decline in the birthrate in developing countries from 40 or more per 1,000, as it is at the moment, to
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20 per 1,000 or less is possible only if people really want to reduce the size of their families, and if their efforts are supported and encouraged by Government policies. A remarkable change from the pattern of the 1960s, both in Government policies and in human attitudes towards family size, will be necessary if we are to make a substantial reduction in world population increase in the next 20 years. Only about half the Governments in Latin America and Asia support family planning, and less than half of the African Governments South of the Sahara. But even in these countries there is an increasing awareness of the urgent need for population control.
The main difficulty, of course, is in persuading people to have small families, and the greater their poverty the more children they want to have. I found when I was living in Africa, that the high mortality rate among infants and children obliged their parents to have large families, in the hope that enough children would survive to become adults and, at the same time, to become breadwinners. If they had girls, they went on until they had sons. In the extended African family, each male child became an insurance policy against destitution.
How can we help to find an incentive to have smaller families. Propaganda from Government or private sources is not enough, while people continue to live in extreme poverty. There must first be a substantial improvement in their conditions of life. This means, of course, public health services and Government revenue to provide them, as well as a regular job and a larger family income. The alternative of compulsion was tried out for a short time in India, as the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, has reminded us, and has resulted in a severe setback for the Government of India's family planning programme. I was told when I was in India that the number of families visiting clinics has been halved in those States where compulsion has been introduced. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Elles—I am glad to find something in her speech with which I entirely agree—that there can be no doubt that people should be allowed to decide for themselves about family size.
But there is also need for birth control devices that are both more efficient, and

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more likely to be psychologically acceptable. One of the main obstacles to the spread of contraception has been the difficulty of finding a method that is both generally acceptable and effective. The All India Institute of Medical Research, which I visited when I was in New Delhi, has recently discovered a contraceptive vaccine for mass use, which is certainly a step forward. But the resources of the industrial countries for medical research are so much greater than those of the developing countries, that this is surely a field in which we, and other industrial countries, ought to help.
I should like to ask the Government to allocate a proportion of whatever grant is made for medical research, specifically for research into methods of contraception. This is a task that deserves a very high priority in all contemporary scientific research and development programmes. My noble friend Lord Peart, in his capacity as Lord President, is also chairman of the Cabinet Committee which deals with research and development, and I hope that he will take note of this suggestion. I should also like to support the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, that the Government should give more money for family planning.
But the other factor which I regard as no less important than population control is more rapid economic development in the developing world. This will require for these countries a balanced development of industry and agriculture, with the main emphasis on agriculture, which will have to produce enough food to sustain a vast increase—and an increase is inevitable—in world population. Such a rapid transformation of countries that still depend mainly on traditional farming will be possible only if there is a massive transfer of capital technology from the developed to the developing world, through private investment, international trade and public finance, such as loans, capital grants, technical aid and so on.
I think that the best augury for the future relationship between what is sometimes referred to as the northern and the southern hemispheres, and for the abandonment of present adversarial attitudes, is their growing awareness of economic interdependence. The North provides capital for the South, but the South
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provides markets for the exports of the North. And who are we to neglect any opportunity for export markets? It is a striking fact that in the last 25 years, as Mr. McNamara's report of the World Bank pointed out, developing countries have emerged as a major market for the manufactured exports of the industrial countries.
When we recognise this interdependence, we perceive the extent to which the future of each nation, North and South, is bound up with the future of all. It makes us realise the necessity for a North/South partnership, based on a shared vision of the common task. This common task is to preserve and extend industrial civilisation as a whole, by bringing forward to full modernisation the latecomers from the South, while enabling the early arrivals of the North to continue on the path of economic growth.
I have one last sentence which is addressed to putting forward, very tentatively, a suggestion for your Lordships' consideration. Is this not a matter that might be worth referring to a Select Committee of your Lordships' House for examination and for a report? The reports of your Lordships' Select Committees are widely read, not only by members of both Houses but by the public generally, and your Lordships may agree that this is a matter of such world importance that it is worthy of examination and report by a Select Committee.
4.19 p.m.
Lord VAIZEY: My Lords, I should like to join other speakers in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, for putting down this Motion today and for allowing this important subject to be debated. Owing to the juxtaposition of our names, we often get our post and our coats muddled up, so it is a great pleasure to take part in a debate that he has opened. It is a very important subject, and it is also a very highly controversial one. There are very different religious views on contraception and abortion, and I am very pleased that my own church—the Church of England—takes a view which I regard as highly responsible on this vexed and social question. I think that what unites the churches in this field is that they all agree on the importance of responsible parenthood, and the vitally important role of

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an informed public opinion. There is disagreement within the Roman Catholic Church, and, with great diffidence, I must express some slight regret that the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench chose to represent one version of Roman Catholic teaching in this particular field which I should have thought would not appeal to the great majority of practising Catholics in the United Kingdom.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me to intervene for one moment, I must inform the House, since the noble Lord has raised the matter, that I am not a Roman Catholic. I am a member of the same Church as he is—Anglican.
Lord VAIZEY: My Lords, that is very welcome news, which makes the views of the noble Baroness even more bizarre, if I may say so. The information which the noble Baroness presented was ably dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder. The facts are absolutely indisputable. During the last 25 years when I have been visiting the developing countries on business concerned with economic development, we have become completely aware that the pressing problems of world population are, in country after country, continually outstripping anything that the growth of conventional capital or the advances in new technology can possibly meet.
I was particularly shattered during my last visit to Bangladesh, a country to which I have gone from time to time during the last 25 years, to realise that the population of Bangladesh has now completely outstripped any conceivable means of dealing with the economic and social problems of that country. Once we have seen the utter and the terrible degradation of the people of Bangladesh, even to imagine that in our lifetime or in the lifetime of our children there will be scientific advances which will enable those people to be brought out of degradation unless some effort is made to control population, is, I genuinely believe, a counsel of utter despair to offer to the people of the poor countries of the world.
I have a particular interest in the problems of education and rural development in the countries of the Third World. That is why I have been going to those countries to try to study the problems and
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to see what help international agencies can give to them. During the course of those visits and that study, I have come to the view—which is held by most people who have studied the question in any depth—that if there is to be economic development in the countries of the Third World the crucial question is the role of women. Women are absolutely the central part of the labour force in the villages dealing with agriculture. Also, they are the means by which children are educated; and, of course, they bring up their families.
One of the reasons why I feel so strongly that we have to give to the governments of poor countries whatever help we possibly can in the field of family control and education about family size is because it is in this area that the status of women can most rapidly be raised. The noble Lord, Lord Vernon, pointed out very clearly and succinctly that the moment when women cease to be regarded just as breeding machines and are raised to the full dignity which they have achieved in countries like our own, the sooner we shall see progress in all fields of education, and economic development and social advance. My own view is that the question of family planning is fundamentally linked to the dignity and status of half the human race; namely, women. I feel very strongly that everything that we in this country can do to help international agencies to raise the status of women and at the same time push the cause of responsible family planning will lead to economic and social development in many countries.
This is a sensitive and difficult area, and I feel very conscious of the fact that we are seeing both advances and a falling back in this field. We have the tremendous success story of Singapore. We have the desperate failure of the country of Bangladesh, not through its own fault but through the civil war in Pakistan and the problems which have overwhelmed that part of the world. We have had the relative success story, so far as one can understand it, of China. We have had success in some parts of India. But the question which is of crucial importance in all of these countries is how to raise the status of women.
The really quite frightening thing which one has seen in recent years—particularly,

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perhaps, in the recent events which have been drawn to our attention by the crisis in Iran and by the visit of the Royal Family to the Arab States—is the way in which, in substantial parts of the world, the status of women, far from advancing, is sinking. That seems to me to be something which is not only reprehensible on the grounds of human dignity but quite alarming from the point of view of economic and social development, more generally speaking. I must apologise to the noble Baroness on the Front Bench opposite if I accused her of belonging to the wrong faith. However, I was slightly unnerved by the kind of arguments which she produced, arguments which I have heard produced many times by opponents of family planning and which, I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, seem to be fundamentally misconceived.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, if tomorrow the noble Lord will kindly read what I said very carefully, he will find that I did not oppose responsible family planning at any point in my speech.
Lord VAIZEY: My Lords, what I objected to was, first, that during the time that the Party of the noble Baroness was in Government and during the time she has been on the Front Bench, she has seen different speculations as to the size of the United Kingdom population in the year 2000 and has cast doubts upon demography generally. It seems to me that that is an irresponsible view, since we now know, because of the number of children actually existing in the world, the likely dimensions of the world's population in the year 2000 or 2020. As the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, pointed out, the exact figures do not matter so much as the fact that there will be an overwhelming increase in numbers. Secondly, the noble Baroness pointed out that only something like 5 per cent. of the surface of the earth is inhabited. You only have to get into an aeroplane to see that most of the rest of the world consists of desert and mountain ranges. Since I have spent a great deal of time travelling in poorer countries and trying to help the poor people in those countries, that kind of attitude makes me feel very disturbed and upset. That is the part of
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the speech of the noble Baroness about which I was particularly distressed.
May I revert to the point which was the only reason why I put down my name to speak, the point to which I want to draw your Lordships' attention. The crucial question in economic and social development is not so much family planning as the status of women; and that, in my view, is intimately connected with responsible family planning.
4.28 p.m.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, I am grateful indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, for his perseverance in keeping his name in the ballot for short debates and I congratulate him on being successful in bringing this matter before the House. As he said, I am the chairman of the British parliamentary group, which is one of the many international parliamentary working groups on population and development.
The noble Baroness, Lady Elles, will probably be surprised to learn how swiftly this movement has spread throughout the Parliaments of the world. The acceptance so speedily of the opportunity that this movement offers to parliamentarians to have, on an all-party basis in their respective Parliaments, a meeting ground, a focal point for the study of the population problems not only of their own country but of others as well, has astonished me. It began a year ago last December when delegations came to this country from the Congress of the United States, the Federal Parliament of Canada and from Japan. They came to London to engage our interest in the movement which they had resolved, in a separate, informal gathering, to promote. We went from here to Bonn and, as the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, mentioned, a preliminary conference took place in Tokyo last March and the Sri Lanka Conference to take place at Colombo at the end of August this year is the outcome, within a little over a year, of this remarkable growth of parliamentary interest in this subject.
What has happened in the last 12 months would have been impossible 10 years ago. There were too many obstacles, too much controversy in the way of getting national groups to come together in this way. The United Nations itself had great difficulty in getting population and allied

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matters brought before the General Assembly. But it was refreshing to find that this step taken a year ago was inspired by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities and they and the Inter-Parliamentary Union are the sponsors of the conference to be held in Colombo next August.
This, for the first time, offers the opportunity to Parliamentarians everywhere of having national parliamentary studies and international parliamentary studies on this subject. Previously the point of entry has been between voluntary organisations of one kind and another and Governments. Rarely have Parliaments been engaged in active consideration of these matters. I think our problem at Colombo later this year will be to control the size of the conference, so many parliamentary groups wish to come and to send so many to the conference itself. However, I think this is a remarkable development, and a very welcome one, and I must say to the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, that events are sweeping over her head. They are just engulfing the arguments that she put forward to us this afternoon.
Take, as a simple example, Japan. After the war when the Japanese, who had spread their influence and their people over Manchuria, over the whole of South-East Asia, all went back home, it confronted that country soon after the war with a most frightening population problem. We know that pressures of population can be at the root of international discord and war. The Japanese decided that the only way in which to control the population growth as quickly as was needed was by induced abortions. Well over a million a year of induced abortions were taking place in Japan. No other country in the world has been faced with the prospect of having to deal with its population pressure in that ruthless way. This was not interference from anybody else; it was something which the Japanese did for themselves. Small wonder, then, that the delegation from Japan was very keen indeed on spreading this opportunity for inter-parliamentary action.
The noble Lord, Lord Vernon, referred to the Year of the Child and the debate which we had last week. What surprised me about that debate was how little stress
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was laid upon the fact that one way of improving the lot of the children of the world is to have fewer of them. There is no question whatever about that. When we consider the position in India, reference has been made to the objectionable methods which were employed by Mrs. Gandhi's emergency Government for vasectomy in India, which proved politically explosive and probably counterproductive. But that country was faced, and still is, with 26 million children who are bearing traces of malnutrition and infection. We talk about the Year of the Child, and in the recent debate we were putting forward new ideas for improving the happiness and the condition of children in this country. By comparison with the state of affairs in India, we are of course extremely lucky people and our children are very fortunate indeed.
Very shortly there will be a steering committee of this international movement holding an interim conference in Mexico. I am going to refer to Mexico because that is a country recently visited by the Pope and by the President of the United States of America. When the noble Baroness asks the question, "Why should the developed countries interfere with the population of the underdeveloped countries?" I would stress in that connection that there was no interference necessary with what has happened in Mexico. Mexico is the most populous of the 19 Spanish-speaking countries in South America and it used to be bastion of the traditional pro-natalist views of the once under-populated Catholic countries. Today it has one of the most comprehensive family planning programmes ever developed by a Government. They set a demographic goal to reduce the population growth from over 3 per cent. a few years ago to 2·5 per cent. by the end of 1982. To achieve that they will need to get over 8½ million women of fertile age into the programme as acceptors of contraceptive practice by the end of 1982. Figures released last year for the first year of the programme showed that over 850,000 women—90 per cent. of the target for the first year—had become new acceptors of contraception and family planning.
While official policy looks no further ahead than 1982, the Government of Mexico are speaking about reducing the population growth to 1·8 per cent. by 1988, 1·3 per cent. by 1994 and finally to 1 per

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cent. in the year 2000. It is only by a programme of that magnitude that Mexico is likely to keep down the population growth from its present 62 million to no more than 100 million by the turn of the century. This means that family planning size must be a norm of the two-child family.
The consequences of failure could be very grave indeed. Why did President Carter go to Mexico? One reason was to see whether the Americans could come to some satisfactory arrangement to use Mexican oil. New discoveries of enormous importance and value to Mexico, and indeed to the world at large, have been made, but another reason why he went to Mexico was to deal with the very difficult problem of the illegal immigration of Mexicans into the United States, running at the present time at between half a million and a million a year. We may all have seen on the television the suggestion that they might have to build a new edition of the Berlin Wall, a huge wire netting arrangement—probably imported from Australia where they use it to control rabbits—as a means of preventing people from crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States of America.
I would say myself that during the next 20 years peace between the United States and Mexico will depend on finding solutions to those two problems which are at present the source of considerable friction between them. And here I think we have to take note of the fact that during the Pope's recent visit to Mexico he will have been made aware of the national population policy and of the most comprehensive birth control programme of any country in the world today.
This is not interference. Nobody has interfered with the freedom of Mexico. A third of the economic activity and of the population is in Mexico City and in its environs, and nobody can see any solution to the problem of poverty and deprivation, bad housing and disease, unless there is something done to control the population. Indeed, Sri Lanka, the country to which the conference is going at the end of August, has its ethnic, religious and political difficulties over economic policy and is confronted with the problems of a beautiful fertile island which no longer produces enough food to feed its own
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people. These are the facts of life. It is not a question of the developed countries trying to induce other countries to solve their problems in a particular way, but of international conferences, with exchanges of view, economic appraisals, studies of social problems, consideration of the various techniques of a contraceptive nature for the control of population; all these matters are of great importance to all the countries concerned.
My Lords, I will conclude my remarks with a blatant commercial, because this Group of which I have the honour to be chairman is the British Parliamentary Group and it consists of Members of both Houses of Parliament and of all the Parties. We think we are doing a good job by not only taking part in this new movement but providing a good deal of inspiration and energy for it, and I sincerely hope that Members of your Lordships' House will wish to know more about what we are doing and be anxious to participate at our periodical meetings, when we have the opportunity of meeting leading speakers from different parts of the world on this subject. That, at any rate, does provide us with the foundation for taking our part in this new, and I believe vitally important, movement.
I think the future of the world will be grave indeed if there is not a universal effort to control the human population. I do not believe that the happiness of the world will be found in a human infestation of our planet, gobbling up, frequently for an affluent standard of life rather than for basic necessities, the finite resources of the world. I think this is a grave challenge confronting us all. We have to have vision about this; we have to try to foresee the future. Otherwise, I think our neglect will lead to grave problems for the children whose future welfare and happiness we are trying to promote in the Year of the Child. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord's Motion this afternoon will be an encouragement to us all to carry on the work which has already begun.
Viscount BARRINGTON: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, he mentioned the study of new contraceptive techniques. This is a technical question, but does he regard abortion as one of those, or is it something separate? Is abortion, in his opinion, or the opinion

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of the Group of which he is an admirable chairman, a contraceptive technique or something different?
4.45 p.m.
Viscount CRAIGAVON: My Lords, I should like to say just a few words in support of this very important conference and to thank the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, for giving us the opportunity to consider it; I also congratulate him on what I thought was a very powerful speech. I will concentrate more directly on the Colombo Conference and political aspects. I think we should be extremely grateful to Sir George Sinclair, a Member of another place, for his very hard work and the thousands of miles he has covered on behalf of our British Parliamentary Group on Population. At the preliminary conference at Tokyo last year, which he attended, I understand that one major country, in a bout of frankness, confessed to many mistakes and problems. Admittedly, these were the responsibility of a previous Administration. This apparently loosened the tongues of other countries and a quite genuinely full and frank exchange of views took place which was extremely useful. That would seem to me to be the best and most productive atmosphere in which to conduct these sort of discussions. I hope the Colombo Conference can be slanted towards informality so that each country does not feel obliged to put on its best face the whole time.
In fact one of the advantages, I believe, will be that most of the delegates will be Back-Bench politicians not necessarily committed to their present Government's policy. On their return to their own countries they will be in a good position to alert Governments in political language to the full scope of the problems, together with possible courses of action. Because of the basically long term nature of the population problem, it is not best suited to the short term vote-winning habits of most politicians. The linked problems of energy and raw material resources are similarly long term, and what we say we should do and what we actually do about them are far apart.
With regard to population policies, because Governments have often been shy of the subject, I think we are still at the stage where mere talk about it is not only
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profitable but vital, to raise the consciousness of Governments, and, at the end of the day, the most important grass roots level. I am just saying that this is one area where there can never be too much talk, because the main aim is to change attitudes on a vast scale right down to the individual level. At the same time, I think we should fully recognise and accept the enormity of the associated cultural upheaval that is being implicitly suggested.
I should now like to refer to the Tokyo Declaration which the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, mentioned. There is a heading in this very long document, "A Call", and this seems to me to be the central call of the conference. It seems to me, although I hesitate to hold forth on Conservative policy, that it is pure Conservatism in the Party sense. It says:
"This Conference calls on all Governments to rededicate themselves to the principles adopted at the 1974 World Population Conference in Bucharest, that all should have the information, education and means to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children".
And it goes on in a slightly more nebulous way:
"…and that the quality of life in their respective countries can be improved by setting up guidelines for population policies in keeping with their national values and internationally recognised principles".
The "call" of the conference is thus for what seems to me to be one of the greatest freedoms of life—a freedom which we in the more developed countries can take for granted. From a selfish point of view, that concept would seem to be the cheapest and most cost-effective form of help that we can offer to less developed countries, in terms of both our and their long-term quality of life, trade and stability. For me the quality of life is the essence of this whole subject, although I know that it is a concept which begs many questions. I think that this country still has a special influence and relationship with many key countries such as India, and that the object of this conference, to encourage an increasing awareness and understanding among parliamentarians, should be fully supported.
Finally, although I have spoken so far about population problems, I am not forgetting the other side of the question

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with which the Colombo Conference is concerned; namely, our responsibility in regard to the poverty, economic plight and resources of the less developed world. The change of attitude required from us would seem to be well on a par with the changes that are suggested in population policies. They are all longer-term matters than politicians are used to, but I hope that the Government will continue to support the momentum of the Colombo Conference in keeping these vital problems before the public eye.
4.52 p.m.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, I am deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, for initiating this debate and for calling attention—and this is what is important for me—to the International Parliamentary Conference on Population and Development to be held in Colombo in August 1979, organised by a small number of parliamentarians. That, of course, makes it an inter-governmental conference on world population. In a short debate it is hard to do justice to this subject. It is staggering to realise that the Bucharest Conference on population was the first inter-governmental conference on world population ever held in the world. I hope that many such conferences will follow, because, except for a handful of specialists, our ignorance about population and development requires our study now and for ever more.
As I have said, we cannot, in a short debate, do justice to the continuing need for knowledge, insight and heart-searching into these world problems. Although in the United Nations, population and development were annual items on the agenda, the approach was mainly political, superficial and elementary. We, in the West, were uneasy about advocating birth control for the poorer countries, and it was only when we ourselves took firm action on birth control that we could discuss population problems without arousing suspicion and hostility from the Third World poor. That is not surprising when we remember that many in Western countries were suggesting that aid should be tied to birth control. Can your Lordships remember when the ordinary people of this country were saying: "We cannot give them aid unless they reduce their population"? This con-
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ference, like the Bucharest Conference, has no intentions to interfere with the populations of other countries.
I used to argue in the United Nations that a woman had the right to have as many or as few children as she wanted. I thought that this might somehow sugar the pill. However, the greatest change that has taken place in our understanding and attitudes towards development and population is that today, since the Bucharest Conference on population, development has become top priority. I attended the Bucharest Conference on population where family planning was hardly mentioned. There were a few side committees which dealt with that matter, but the speeches from practically every country representing the Third World were concerned with aid—not just economic aid, but technical and scientific aid and know-how.
I am ashamed to say that although I was a disciple, or perhaps one might call "a camp follower ", of Marie Stopes, it seemed to me that that was the most serious encounter that I had had with the facts of international life and the problems of the Third World. The clear message that came from the Bucharest Conference on population was: Take care of the people and the population will take care of itself. That is an over-simplified conclusion because family planning is an essential human right as regards taking care of the people. The world plan of action that emerged from Bucharest was that by 1985 2,500 million people should have family planning available to them. That is a most remarkable sentence to be found in the plan of action.
I hope and expect that many intergovernmental conferences on population will follow and that we may work towards some kind of international social code which may include an obligation not to over-breed in a shrinking world. That is not my own original idea; it comes, I think, from the president of the Club of Rome who has said that people's attitudes must change to these matters. It is not just a question of taking economic steps. It is not a question of just family planning. All those matters together must change the hearts of the people so that we have a much fairer world.
Finally, I should like to say a few words about the question of the noble Viscount,

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Lord Barrington, as regards abortion. Abortion is one form of contraception. It is not a form that I personally like, but all the same I can never understand why the word "abortion" and the fact of abortion causes such horror when we do not have a shocked response when we hear about people killed in wars. Why do we not have the same shocked response to war as we have to abortion? I should like to understand that.
4.59 p.m.
Lord WINSTANLEY: My Lords, I must apologise most humbly to the House for intervening in this debate as what can only be described as a "late starter ". I did not put my name down earlier because I was under the impression that I had a meeting with one of Her Majesty's Ministers this afternoon and I did not think it appropriate to speak in this debate not having heard the earlier speeches. However, as so often happens, the Minister cancelled the meeting, with the happy result that I have been able to be present for the whole of this fascinating and very important debate. I am also, therefore, able to crave your Lordships' indulgence if I say a few brief words on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches on this very important matter. If no one had spoken from these Benches it might have been thought that we did not regard the subject as being of any importance. The reverse is the truth: we regard the whole subject of population growth as being of immense importance—indeed, possibly as being of greater importance than any other single subject which anyone can name.
I shall not weary the House with figures. Indeed, even the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, who has all the figures at his fingertips, did not burden us with them in detail. I shall merely say that if we accept—as I think we do—that almost half the world's population is now aged 15 or under, surely that gives us some idea of the potential for explosive growth. If we are not to speculate about the future, but merely to look back at the immediate past, and if we remind ourselves that the last year for which we have full, final and incontrovertible figures shows that the world population grew by about 100 million, surely that gives us some indication of the importance of this whole subject.
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In the main noble Lords have been concerned with population growth overseas and in underdeveloped countries. Here perhaps I might strike a somewhat novel note in agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Elles—which it appears this afternoon is not a particularly popular pastime. However, she was absolutely right in reminding your Lordships that it is no business of ours to interfere in the policies of other countries. Certainly it is not. But surely it is our business, and indeed the business of any citizen in the developed world, to do what we can to assist people in the underdeveloped countries, which is surely a very different matter.
It was the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who, quite rightly, made the point that in talking about population control, we are really talking about raising standards of living. We are really talking about overseas aid. If we do what we can to ensure that economic and social standards in underdeveloped countries rise, we shall find that somehow, of its own volition, there rises also a will among the people to control family size and thereby to control population growth as a whole. I am quite sure that we have made great progress in that direction. In principle we have managed to make progress because of a technological development, and I refer in particular to the contraceptive pill. I do not regard it as the only method of family planning, but it has the unique quality that it is a method which is in the total control of the woman and not the man. That has been absolutely vital in underdeveloped countries in getting anything done at all. To put the whole question of the control of fertility firmly in the hands of women has given us a chance to make the kind of progress that has been made, as it has been made with other developments, such as the intra-uterine device, and so on. When the means of controlling fertility rests in the hands of women, we make progress in these underdeveloped countries; whereas were it to remain in the hands of men, we would not make any progress at all.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, I should like to interrupt the noble Lord, particularly as I know that he is a medical man. Will he agree with the conclusions which the noble Baroness, Lady Summer-skill, always reached, that the contraceptive pill is not the safest method for

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women to use, that it has very many side effects and that, of course, the use of this particular form of contraception leads—as he will know—to many other illnesses from which the woman is not protected? I should like his opinion on this, because if we are talking about the status of women, there are other considerations besides this one. I should be grateful for his comments.
Lord WINSTANLEY: My Lords, I do not want to go too far into what is a very complicated matter. I imagine that the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, meant the safest rather than the most reliable method. Present medical opinion indicates that the contraceptive pill is probably the most reliable method. I accept that there is some evidence that there are possibly very, very limited risks involved. My own personal view—and it is no more than that—is that these risks are extremely small and are far smaller than the risks which are almost inevitable in the occurrence of an unwanted pregnancy. However, I take the point made by the noble Baroness. It is a matter which should be thought about, and thought about very carefully. But perhaps we could pursue that in more detail on some other occasion.
Lord McGREGOR of DURRIS: My Lords, I should like to ask one further question on the medical aspects of this. Will the noble Lord give his medical opinion on the issue whether or not the risks of taking the pill for women are greater or smaller than the risks of the childbirth that would result if they did not?
Lord WINSTANLEY: My Lords, I thought I had already indicated that in my opinion they are in fact smaller than the risks of the subsequent pregnancy. I accept that this is debatable. Perhaps we can debate it on another occasion. Having arrived as a late starter, I must try to be brief, and I assure your Lordships that I have so tried so far.
I should like to turn to our own situation rather than to the situation overseas—I think that we have discussed that enough. I am a little anxious about the tendency for people in this country to regard the population problem in the United Kingdom as having been solved for all time. I do not think that it has
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been solved. Certainly there has been what we might call a temporary hiccup and we have suddenly reached an apparently stable population. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, who initiated this debate, referred to this. We must remember that this may be no more than a temporary occurrence and we could very soon be back to the situation in which we were a year or two ago, when we were adding to our population something like a city the size of Wolverhampton every year. That is perfectly possible if we relax. So let us not accept that our problem is solved; it is not solved. It could return.
If it returns, I believe there would be consequences. There would be the many social consequences which have been referred to by noble Lords and noble Baronesses in this debate, and I shall not weary the House by repeating them. I would merely mention one or two. Recently I have been particularly interested in studying closely further investigations into the whole question of battered babies. It seems to me to be incontrovertible that very largely the battered baby tends to be an unwanted addition to an already overlarge family. Further research has been made, particularly in East Anglia, into the family situation of children who are in some form of custody for offences of one kind or another. Over and over again we find that the offender appears to have been an unwanted addition to a large family.
On this home question, I believe—as I think the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, implied—that we have made immense progress. There has been a very big change in public attitudes. In a recent survey of young people entering industry for the first time, when they were asked what was the optimum size of the family it appeared overwhelmingly to be two, although not very long ago the choice would have been five or six. That is the size that young people are now regarding as the ideal number of children in a family. That is a very big change. It has been brought about by the efforts of people like the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, and many other noble Lords and Baronesses in this House who have campaigned in this matter. It is immensely encouraging.

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Let me make it clear that the fact that we are perhaps going to have smaller families need not mean that there must be no large families. I welcome large, happy families; indeed, I came from one. But the price of having some large families is surely that there should be other families with no children, or at least that those families should be limited to the extent to which the parents wish their families to be limited. There is no need for draconian measures, like dissolving the contraceptive pill in the water supplies, or measures of that kind. All that is necessary in this country is to ensure that now and in the future every pregnancy is a wanted pregnancy at the time of conception. If we can do that, we shall very largely solve this problem.
We have greatly aided family planning by opening up the General Practitioner Service. I wish that some of the hospital services were similarly available. There is difficulty in obtaining a vasectomy for a patient who has decided that his family is now complete—and there may be good medical reasons for the wife not conceiving again. One can wait many months before such an operation can be performed under the National Health Service. Under the Family Planning Services I believe that vasectomies are more freely available.
I should like to comment on the point made to the noble Viscount, Lord Barrington, by the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell. I believe that we should continue with a liberal attitude towards abortion but, personally, I do not regard abortion as an acceptable alternative to sensible family planning. I want to make that absolutely clear. The two are related, but they are not interchangeable. Therefore, I merely repeat that if we make sure in this country that every pregnancy is a wanted pregnancy at the time of conception, we shall have no re-emergence of the population problem in Britain. Nor would there be the consequences of an aging population. I am sure that that will iron itself out. I am sure that new technology will cope with that particular problem. Our problem will disappear if we continue with liberal attitudes towards those matters as we have in the past. The overseas problem will disappear if we continue to help these people: help them with advice and practical assistance to solve their own problems, because I believe that they will then do so. I am
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deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, for having introduced this subject, and I am deeply grateful to the House for allowing me to say a few words on behalf of my noble friends at this late stage.
5.11 p.m.
Viscount BARRINGTON: My Lords, I have no intention of making a speech, but I have been mentioned three times, and, with the permission of the House, I should like to say a few words. I asked, I thought, a straightforward question which the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, no doubt rightly did not answer because it might have taken too long. Later, I got one answer from the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, that abortion is a form of contraception, and another from the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, to whom I am grateful for saying that in his opinion it is not. It is difficult to know the right answer but there is a difference.
It is only a personal feeling, but when I am accused by the noble Baroness, who is the kindest person in the world, of being shocked by the word "abortion" but not being shocked by murder, kidnap, rape and some of the appalling things that go on over the world, I would say that that is not so. I am shocked by many things that happen now. It is not the word "abortion", that shocked me; but to my mind there is a clear distinction between preventing a child being conceived, and killing it after it has been conceived. The quickest way I can make that clear is by saying that while some people would object to immigrants being allowed into this country (I do not), most of us would object to immigrants being killed on shipboard as they were arriving.
5.12 p.m.
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart): My Lords, I believe that this has been one of the most interesting debates we have had for a long time. We have had short speeches. I believe that noble Lords who supported the Motion not very long ago, that we should make our speeches short, have done so very effectively. I really do not think that I can single out any specific speech. Inevitably I will deal with certain questions later. I should like to put my own point of view first. I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Vernon for introducing this

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debate. May I apologise to him for being delayed, and I did not hear his early remarks. I am afraid I could not help it. It is right that at the outset I should pay a tribute to the noble Lord, and to the noble Lords, Lord Oram and Lord Houghton, and to the several Members of another place who have been active over many months, indeed years, in bringing to public attention the inherent problems which arise from an ever expanding population on this planet.
It has been argued that parliamentarians and administrators do not fully appreciate the problems which are produced by rampant population growth. I am not aware of that in this House. I think that the speeches of all who have spoken show a deep concern. I liked the phrase used by the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon: "a quality of life which emerged from the arguments from the Tokyo Conference". I liked his emphasis on that. All of us believe that we are dealing with a most important subject. Here and there there may be old feuds, or arguments perhaps, that are seen to rear their head again in this debate, about the need for birth control, et cetera. I believe there is a desire on the part of all of us, of whatever philosophy or religion, to see that we tackle this problem, which is one of the great problems of the world.
That is why I always take a great interest in the FAO; in men like Boyd-Orr, whom Ritchie-Calder knew very well, and I knew: men who are seeking to feed the world. The noble Baroness and others touched on this. Also UNESCO, which is seeking to conquer illiteracy. These are two great international organisations. But here is work now done by parliamentarians: men like the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, whom I always admire for his enthusiasm, which he generates among his colleagues. I wish him well in what he has been doing.
Robert McNamara, speaking as president of the World Bank, put the situation succinctly but dramatically in an address to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in April 1977 when he said:
"In many ways rampant population growth is an even more dangerous and subtle threat to the world than thermo-nuclear war, for it is intrinsically less subject to rational safeguards, and less amenable to organised control. The population growth of the planet is not in the exclusive control
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of a few Governments, but rather in the hands of literally hundreds of millions of individual parents who will ultimately determine the outcome".
This puts the main threat and the main problem in a nutshell. The control of population is indeed in the hands of individuals, and this means that democratic Governments cannot control the situation as closely as they might wish. But again many Governments are not fully aware of the implication of population growth in their own and other countries. So it is encouraging that action has been taking place during the past few years to make parliamentarians and, through them, their Governments increasingly aware of the priority that must be given to these matters.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, speaking for the Liberal Party, said that we must not force our views on people. But we can influence people in other countries. That is the whole purpose of international conferences. I believe that this is what my noble friends are wishing to do today; to make certain that we do, through the medium of the bodies we have been discussing today, the international organisations, concentrate our efforts on this urgent problem.
The problem is, of course, not one which we ourselves face in the United Kingdom, but it is no less our concern. The formation of the British Parliamentary Group on Population and Development, in February 1978, under the chairmanship of Lord Houghton was a notable landmark in arousing parliamentary interest. It followed a series of meetings of parliamentarians held in Washington, Ottawa, London, Bonn and Berlin. This led to the first Preparatory Committee Meeting of the International Parliamentarians on Population and Development which took place in Tokyo in March 1978 and at which, for the first time, Members of Parliament from developing countries, including India, Sri Lanka, Mexico and Colombia, attended. This in turn led on directly to proposals for the conference next August; and I am glad to note that Britain has been represented all along on the Steering Committee.
Britain was one of the first countries actively to demonstrate a concern with population problems in the operation of its aid programme. This concern has

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continued since then, and the priority which is attached to population assistance was restated in the Government's White Paper on aid policy More Help for the Poorest (Cmnd. 6270) which was published in October 1975.
Britain has at all times been very aware that in many areas and cultures, population, family planning and the mis-termed "population control" are very sensitive issues. On the bilateral plane, we have been careful to ensure that Britain's support for such programmes has been responsive to local demand and has recognised that recipient governments often prefer to seek aid through specialised agencies rather than from individual donors. At the same time, as the 1974 Conference in Bucharest which produced the World Plan of Action clearly demonstrated, most countries are concerned on a national level that their populations can be accurately assessed and provided for; and, on an individual level, that each person should have the freedom of choice to determine the number and spacing of their children. The noble Baroness, Lady Elles, was anxious to have an announcement on that; namely, that there must be no attempt to coerce, that it is the free choice of the individual.
I think it is right at this stage that I should acknowledge the work being done in the population field by such multilateral agencies as the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, known in short as UNFPA, and, on the non-government organiation front, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the co-ordinating body for a host of national family planning associations around the world. In their different spheres, these two organisations have built up a reputation of efficiency and practical response to the needs of governments and non-government organisations which is admired throughout the world. 1979 marks the 10th anniversary of the UNFPA, and 1979 is therefore important for that organisation, and during that year some 500 million dollars will have been spent on population projects around the world. I am glad to say that the British Government have been a supporter of the UNFPA for most of that period, and the Ministry of Overseas Development plans to contribute £4 million to it during 1979–80.
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The Ministry of Overseas Development also recognises the unique ability of nongovernmental organisations to make a contribution in the population sector and has a long history of support for the major agency working on a global basis, IPPF. As I have mentioned, IPPF operates through national family planning units.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, is it not a fact that the UNFPA is short for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities and is in no way connected with any family planning association? Would the noble Lord clarify that?
Lord PEART: The noble Baroness asked me about that, my Lords, and I will come to it later, althought I think she is wrong. In many cases where a government do not have an active population programme, the only form of advice and supplies comes through the voluntary organisations of the national family planning associations. ODM plans to contribute £2 million to IPPF activities in 1978–79. In addition, ODM had also channelled assistance to population projects being undertaken by individual British non-governmental organisations through its joint funding scheme. In 1978–79 ODM spent about £90,000 on this type of project.
It is of course in the developing countries that population growth has such a desperate effect on the continuing battle to increase living standards. Indeed, it can be said that one of the more immediate and ironic side-effects evident through improvement in living standards would be an initial increase in population, as improved nutrition and health services result in improved health for mothers and small children and, consequently, increased life expectancy at birth. This obviously will bring its own problems. Unless the expansion of a country's economy and its ability to provide for its citizens can keep pace with an increasing population, living standards will tend to sink rather than rise.
This leads me to a very important point which was raised by Lord Vernon and which is fundamental to any discussion of population problems. I have referred to the help which the United Kingdom is giving to developing countries in the population field; and much of the help is, of course, aimed at encouraging the

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spread of knowledge about family planning and the provision of family planning services as a contribution towards a reduction in population levels and growth. But it is our view, and it has been frequently and forcefully expressed by my right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development, that the problem of rapidly rising populations is not one which will be solved simply by the provision of family planning services. Couples must actually want to reduce family size if any progress is to be made in this direction.
But they will not do so unless it is clear to them that their families will be healthier, better fed and generally better off; that the children they do have can be expected to survive; and that a large family is not a necessary prerequisite to ensure support in their old age. In other words, population and family planning programmes must go hand in hand with broader development programmes which will improve the total quality of life for ordinary people, particularly the poor, and help them to plan their lives as a whole. The more important determinants of fertility include the status of women, a reduction in infant mortality and the age of first marriage, which can of course be influenced by employment opportunities.
Although 136 countries subscribed to the 1974 World Population Plan of Action, following the Bucharest Conference—and there has been a detectable slowing in the rate of increase of population in certain countries in the past five to 10 years—the problem is a long term one which will still be with us at the turn of the century, if not well beyond that date. Current projections forecast that there will be no decline in population numbers until after the year 2020 and, to draw on Robert McNamara's words again:
"The speed at which fertility in the world declines to the replacement level will have a very significant effect on the ultimate size of the stationary population…If current trends in fertility continue, it appears that the reproduction rate might not drop to replacement level until the year 2020. This would lead to a steady state population of 11 billion some 70 years later. If the date at which replacement level fertility is reached could be advanced from 2020 to 2000, the ultimate population would be approximately 3 billion less".
The House will understand the significance of these figures when I say that the
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current world population reached 4 billion in 1976. Consequently, the Government consider it imperative that nations should face the problem together and consider solutions which will result in a net advantage to all countries. The Colombo Conference is expected to discuss the urgent need for population policies and for their integration with individual governments' economic and social policies. We hope that, by having representatives from countries with populations currently at or near replacement level, as well as from countries where there is both a much higher rate and a will to see it decreased, useful discussions and practical solutions will result.
But while the problem is a global and national one, it is essential to bear in mind that the final results of any government's policies depend on the co-operation and conviction of individual families. Therefore we consider that part of the Conference should deal specifically with ways of producing maximum community participation in family planning programmes and at the same time link the desirability of smaller families to the ultimate benefits from economic and social growth. The Government wish the Conference well and look forward with interest to receiving reports on the deliberations in Colombo.
The noble Lord, Lord Vernon, asked me two specific questions. He asked me about the proportion of the aid programme spent on population activities. In 1970 it was 1 per cent. In 1978 it was 1·6 per cent. There is the question of whether this is enough. We are ready to see more of our aid funds spent on population projects. The amounts are increasing, and expenditure in 1978–79 will be about £10 million, or 2 per cent. of the total.
In the bilateral field we can do only what we are asked to do, and the subject is often a sensitive one, but I am glad to say that our bilateral activities are expanding, as is our support for the multilateral agencies. But I must stress that this is for direct population activities, and that we see our own aid programme, aimed as it is at helping the poor of the Third World, as a contribution to the solution of the problem of the increasing population.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, suggested that we should support research into more

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acceptable methods of contraception for the Third World. We are providing extensive support for such a programme, which is being undertaken by the World Health Organisation. Last year we increased our contribution to this important programme from £140,000 to £1½ million; and I am glad to be able to mention that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Elles, suggested that the Government should review their grant to the IPPF (the International Planned Parenthood Federation) because of its association with the compulsory sterilisation programme in India. It is our understanding that the International Planned Parenthood Federation associate organisation in India played no part in that programme. I appreciate that many other noble Lords asked questions, but this is a short debate, and I recently gave a promise about short speeches and short debates. It has been a good debate, and I congratulate all those who have taken part.
5.32 p.m.
Lord VERNON: My Lords, I wish to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I find it difficult to thank my noble friend Lady Elles. I found her speech very disappointing. I hope that it represents her views only, and not the views of the Conservative Front Bench.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, perhaps I should take the opportunity to say that I was putting forward my own views. This is not a matter on which our Party has any particular policy, but in The Right Approach there is a sentence which refers to the right of families to decide their own future and to pay great attention to the right to life of the child.
Lord VERNON: Well, my Lords, that is encouraging, at least to some extent, because I am quite certain that the views my noble friend expressed are not shared in general by noble Lords on this side of the House. I thought that her remarks were disappointing. I felt that they were based on bigotry, prejudice and misrepresentation of the facts in many cases. There is one particular point I should like to take up. My noble friend mentioned countries such as Angola. She said that there is plenty of space and that they can have millions more people in Angola.
Baroness ELLES: I did not say that.
Lord VERNON: My noble friend suggested it. Of course they can have many more people in Angola than they have today; it is just a question of timing. If there were to be millions of people immediately, it would be found that there was not the economic infrastructure to cope with them, and in such circumstances poverty and other problems become worse. That is the point that I was making. However, I believe that my noble friend was answered by the noble Lords, Lord Ritchie-Calder, and Lord Vaizey, and so I do not think I need say any more about that.
I am glad that the noble Lord the Leader of the House was able to give us some encouragement, and I was pleased to learn that the Government, generally speaking, support the initiative of the parliamentary group. I hope that the debate will have done something to stimulate interest not only in population policies generally, but also in the parliamentary group. Following what the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, said, I think I am right in saying that the Japanese Parliamentary Group has no fewer than 144 members, and we have a long way to go to catch them up, but I hope that we will. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

DISARMAMENT: UN FINAL DOCUMENT
5.35 p.m.
Lord NOEL-BAKER Lord NOEL-BAKER rose to call attention to the Final Document of the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Disarmament; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: I do not claim that the Final Document was a masterpiece of English prose. I do not say that it was a model of what John Stuart Mill might have called logical ratiocination, but I do say that the historians of the future—if there is a future and if there are historians—will say that the Final Document is the greatest State paper of all time. In this short debate, I shall try to justify the bold assertion in 15 minutes flat—or as nearly flat as good fortune may allow.
I start by referring to the words with which the document begins. In the past, it says, nations relied on armaments for their security, but today the accummulation of weapons constitutes much more a threat than a protection to the future of mankind. The time has therefore come, it goes on, to end this situation, to abandon the use of force in international affairs, and to seek security in disarmament.
The document sums up the conclusions of the most remarkable international debate which I believe has ever taken place. It involved 20 Heads of Government—presidents and prime ministers—including those from Britain, France, Italy, Western Germany, India, and Canada; 26 vice-presidents, including Mr. Mondale who, like our own Prime Minister, delivered a magnificent oration; 54 Ministers of Foreign Affairs. One hundred ministers of senior rank spoke for 100 nations from all the continents. The document sums up their unanimous conclusions against which no single speaker uttered one word of reservation. The speeches were all long and carefully prepared. I heard them, and I spoke with many of the speakers. I believe that there has never been an international declaration which has such high authority behind it as has this Final Document. It is therefore of sensational importance that the document should say that armaments today constitute much more a threat than a protection to the future of mankind. Later in the document it elaborates this theme. It says that each new increase of armaments—and new increases are taking place still today—does not strengthen international security, it weakens it; it leaves less security than there was before the increase was made.
The document speaks with anger of what it calls the waste of vast resources on the unproductive and spiralling arms race. It speaks with contempt of the policy of the balance of power. It says that stable and enduring peace can never be founded on a precarious balance of deterrents, still less on a doctrine of strategic superiority. It speaks with regret and consternation about expenditure on military research and development. Have noble Lords really reflected on what is happening with military R and D? World expenditure by the Governments this year on military research is 25,000 million
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dollars. No such expenditure has ever been made on any scientific research before. More than half the top scientists and technologists in the United States are working in military R and D. I do not doubt the number in Russia is just as great, and we are not very far behind. We have all the ultimate weapons. Our Christmas Island H-bombs were better than those of the United States; we have the nerve gasses, the fire weapons, the biologicals; and yet in 1978–9 we are spending £782 million on military research. What would that mean for social justice if it were used for houses, pensions and in other ways? What would it mean for human betterment if we were spending £782 million on scientific research for peaceful ends?
The document says that, thanks to R and D, the real issue now at stake in the UN work on armaments is that of the survival of mankind. Let us not skulk that thought. Let us remember that the greatest scientists and some of the greatest soldiers—President Eisenhower—have told us that it is true. Let us remember that the Final Document repeats this warning of total annihilation of mankind no fewer than seven times. We shall assume a grave responsibility if we skulk that thought. Faced with the risk of total devastation, the final document proposes a policy of total change. It says that partial measures of disarmament will do some good. It puts forward a long list of such partial measures, but it says that they are not enough; and on almost every page it urges that disarmament must be general and complete—and it defines what it means by "general and complete". It says that after the disarmament has been carried through, Governments should have at their disposal only those non-nuclear forces, armaments, facilities, establishments, as are agreed to be necessary for the purposes of internal security only, for the protection of the personal security of citizens, and in order that Governments may maintain and provide manpower for a United Nations peace force.
That concept of total, general and complete disarmament is very British. Lloyd George put it forward 60 years ago. I worked on his proposals. He put it forward in Part 5 of the Treaty of Versailles—the total disarmament of Germany so that she should be incapable of aggressive war. Robert Cecil put forward the

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same idea at the League Disarmament Conference in 1932. He proposed that every nation should be made incapable of aggressive war by the abolition of the weapons of offence and the drastic reduction of military manpower. President Hoover and President Franklin Roosevelt took up his proposal, and it came within an ace of full success. Forty years after Lloyd George, a British Foreign Secretary, our colleague whose passing we so much regret, the late Lord Selwyn-Lloyd, proposed in the General Assembly of the UN the reduction of armaments to the level at which there would be no possibility of aggressive war. He gave an alternative definition—the same as that of the Final Document. He said that armaments should be reduced to the level at which Governments had only what was needed for internal security purposes alone.
Faced with total devastation, the Final Document proposes total change; and, of course, it proposes that the vast resources released by general and complete disarmament shall be re-allocated to development instead. It proposes that 400,000 million dollars a year, now being spent to prepare the final war, should be used, instead, for human happiness and welfare, for abolishing the poverty, the hunger, the preventable disease, the illiteracy, which we all deplored in another debate two weeks ago today. Is there any rational man who must not want this policy if it could be achieved—general and complete disarmament, and the abolition of world poverty? Reflect on the last three decades of our arms race, with its inflations, its crises and its wars. Inflation is a serious problem for Britain: elsewhere, it is a catastrophe. In Turkey, inflation today is 70 per cent., and 20 per cent. of all the workers are unemployed. Incomparably the most important cause of the inflation is the world expenditure on arms. Another factor helps to make the economic chaos in which we live, a fact of which I have spoken already, that we have made science the prostitute of war.
Reflect on the wars of the arms race! Who can think of Indo-China, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia without a sense of nausea and shame, a veritable cataract of cataclysms, each worse than the one that went before. And the gravest dangers may still lie ahead. For a century, our number one strategical requirement has been Middle
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Eastern oil. In 15 years from 1963 to 1977 the Middle East spent 133,000 million dollars on what they called defence; and today it is one of the least safe regions in the world. Reflect on Iran! In five years from 1973, the Shah spent 27,950 million dollars on armaments—£14,000 million. If he had spent it on schools and hospitals and houses, then Iran would be a bulwark of stability today. But he spent it on tanks, on missiles and on aircraft—and he is in exile, his generals have been shot, Left-Wing rebels have great quantities of arms and the future of Western oil supplies is very seriously in doubt.
Who can look at that record without wanting the policy that the final document proposes? I am sure that every member of the Government must want it; but perhaps they have doubts, as some noble Lords have doubts, whether in the real world it can be done. On Sunday last on television I caught a line from Shakespeare:
"Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt".
The new Disarmament Committee, now sitting in Geneva, needs a leader; it needs a government who will put forward the practical treaty clauses by which the policy of the final document can be made to come to life. I wish our Government could be that leader; I wish that they would put forward the practical proposals. No other government could have such influence as ours; for we have demilitarised the greatest empire in world history and our influence is correspondingly immense. Let the Government remember Shakespeare:
"Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt".
Let them cast away their doubts; let them not fear to attempt; let them win the good that will bless our nation and all the other nations, too!
My Lords, 60 years ago at the ending of the First World War I had a strange and wonderful experience. On November 30th, 1918, I was still at the front after four years of war. On January 1st, 1919, one month later, I was in Paris at the Peace Conference, a secretary to the commission that drafted the Covenant of the League of Nations. I had a sudden radiant vision of new hope. Let

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the Government give the youth of every country a vision of radiant hope! Let them make youth understand that they can leave behind our centuries of blood and sorrow and that they can be the people of a glorious world for all mankind!
5.57 p.m.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I would not attempt a philosophical response to the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, for what he has called security in disarmament; but I do pay respect to his 60 years' experience and I had already discovered that he was a member of the 1919 Peace Conference. May I add that I am quite certain that if I am alive in 60 years' time I shall still be unable to make that kind of speech without resort to notes. I feel that we should congratulate him on that astonishing ability.
I, too, found this an impressive document which ranged very far, including outer space, through many pages. I have to say that I felt the resolution was at its best when it was advocating specific steps. I should love to believe that, as they say, general and complete disarmament under effective international control was an attainable objective within the foreseeable future. I am afraid that I believe that to suggest that we are on our way towards it is not only a delusion but possibly even a dangerous delusion. As the noble Lord said, the document itself, right at the outset, sadly recognises that very little progress has been made. In paragraph 4 they say:
"Unfortunately the objectives established on that occasion "—
that is, looking back 10 years to 1969—
"by the General Assembly appear to be as far away today as they were then, or even further, because the arms race is not diminishing but increasing and outstrips by far the efforts to curb it".
Some might say that this was defeatism; but I would prefer to call it realism.
I must say that I believe that those who wrote this document overstate a strong case when they say, as they do on one of the seven occasions the noble Lord referred to, in paragraph 18:
"We must halt the arms race and proceed to disarmament or face annihilation".
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I recognise that increasing armament inevitably increases the possibility or indeed the likelihood of war; but I do not believe it is right to say that it is inevitable. This spoils a case by over-stating it. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, and I were addressing ourselves to a limited area of arms control negotiations in this House last night; and we have to recognise that all the time, pain and grief that has gone into the SALT negotiations to achieve very little on a very narrow front is not reassuring to the possibilities of disarmament on the scale that is being advocated in this document.
Turning to one or two more detailed points, may I start by looking at what the document calls one of its fundamental principles in paragraph 26. They talk about the importance of refraining from the threat or use of force against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of any State. I cannot help wondering whether that is wholly consistent with what the paragraph goes on to say:
"or against peoples under colonial or foreign domination seeking to exercise their right of self-determination and to achieve independence".
I am not sure that these two are wholly consistent. In paragraph 34 what is meant by:
"the respect for the right to self-determination and national independence "?
Some of us would have grave doubts if that means President Amin. Is that something that we should respect? I would have thought that it at least poses a question.
The document is at its best and its most realistic when right at the outset there is reference to the gradual but effective process of disarmament. But then in paragraph 10 they refer to the political will and the need for international machinery. I would have suggested that it may well be that the existence of what they call appropriate international machinery could well precede political will and indeed make political will possible. I grant you, my Lords, that it is the chicken and the egg argument but it seems to me that the likelihood of the political will existing, unless the appropriate international machinery already exists, is slim indeed.

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Then on much the same theme, paragraph 110 refers to the key to the whole problem. It says:
"Progress in disarmament should be accompanied by measures to strengthen institutions for maintaining peace and the settlement of international disputes by peaceful means".
Surely the whole possibility of having the state of what the noble Lord called "security in disarmament" must depend upon the creation of what that paragraph refers to. This is absolutely fundamental. It has to be said that there is no such body which commands the kind of international respect referred to, and I should not have thought that our experience quite recently, for instance in the Southern Lebanon, was wholly reassuring in this respect. With the best will in the world, the United Nations achievements there have not given the kind of security which these people have been seeking.
The document very rightly draws a distinction between deliberative and negotiating machinery. Of course, one is always a little worried in dealing with a United Nations document which talks about setting up additional machinery because there seems to be a great deal of machinery threshing around already. I hope that what is meant by this is to make existing machinery work better, and resisting the temptation to create more and more agencies which is so often what these kinds of bodies do. However, here again they show welcome recognition of reality in paragraph 85 when they refer to the principle of undiminished security of the parties with a view to promoting and enhancing stability at a lower military level.
Certain specific suggestions are put forward as to how this may be achieved. For example, in paragraph 106 the concept is advanced of sponsored peace studies, programmes for education for disarmament and peace studies at all levels. I understand in view of the earlier assertions in the document that the prime targets for disarmament should be the nuclear Powers; I wonder whether it is really sound to say that in order to promote expertise in disarmament the proposal is that fellowships on disarmament should be set up with the specific target being in the developing countries. If they are going to be consistent and say that the primary targets are the nuclear Powers, then the places where those fellowships are needed are in the developed countries.
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In paragraph 33 they put forward the entirely practical and sensible proposals for nuclear weapon-free zones. This is something which we can applaud and agree with. However, two paragraphs earlier, this document refers to a very vexed question which again we were discussing last night: the matter of verification. It is no use pretending that people trust each other in this matter of disarmament, because I am sorry to say that they do not. I said last night, and I say it again: if one agrees to a level of disarmament but declines to allow the people with whom one is agreeing to verify that one is sticking to that agreement, it seems to me inevitable that people are going to say: Are they genuine in their desire to achieve this disarmament?
This leads me to plead for a strengthening of paragraph 118, talking about the kind of bodies which might be set up, when it says:
"In so far as possible decisions on substantive issues be adopted by consensus".
I would have thought that it was absolutely necessary that decisions should be by consensus because in the disarmament game if one person opts out one is in trouble for everybody else. I have to confess that I prefer the recognition of reality when in paragraph 94 the document suggests that the Secretary-General should initiate studies on the relationship between disarmament and development, rather than some of the perhaps rather over-hasty assertions. Here I recognise what the noble Lord is saying, but it is not, I think, wholly something that can be accepted without question, that all the money spent on armaments could usefully be spent on some other things. That is a very attractive doctrine but the fact is that very many economies have been built on money coming from the sale of armaments. It is also true that a great deal of the more dramatic research which has been achieved throughout the world has been achieved on the back of military contracts. That may be regrettable, but it is true. Therefore, I find myself saying that this document advances many good ideas and this has made the whole elaborate and laborious process of all the leading statesmen, to whom the noble Lord referred, worthwhile. I doubt whether it is today what we might call "a productivity bonus ", but I hope it has been beneficial.

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I should like to end by re-stating what perhaps may sound rather a "square" position: it seems to me that disarmament only becomes real if you are negotiating from a position of strength. Unilateral disarmament, in so far as it hides an economic weakness or a reduction in armaments in the face of economic necessity, tends then to look like dressing up that economic weakness in a kind of hypocritical pose of universal benevolence which I believe deceives no one—or possibly deceives only ourselves.
6.12 p.m.
Lord BANKS: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, for raising this important subject this evening. We all know the distinction, the eloquence and the sincerity with which he has espoused the cause of disarmament over the years, and nobody will deny the importance of the subject in the world of 1979. I should like to begin by saying that, like the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, my noble friends and I do not support unilateral disarmament. We believe that in point of fact the peace has been kept—however precarious that peace may have been—by the existence of a balance between the East and the West, between the major powers: a balance in nuclear and conventional weapons. We believe that we cannot afford to allow our forces, the NATO forces, to be outstripped.
The peace between the major powers has lasted for some thirty years, but I do not deny for a moment that peace based on a military balance, and on an escalating military balance, must inevitably be dangerous and precarious. While an imbalance would have been even more dangerous, we have to recognise the danger in the present situation. We cannot but be alarmed at the arms race in nuclear weapons and at the prospect of a possible spread of nuclear weapons. We know also that the strategic balance of the world has been disturbed by the emergence of China on to the world stage. So while we cannot support unilateral disarmament, we do support, and support very strongly, all efforts to achieve general military disarmament. Greater security at a lower level of armaments must be the immediate aim and I should like to praise the role played by Her
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Majesty's Government in the Special Session and in the preparation for the Special Session at the United Nations, in seeing, with our allies, that constructive proposals were put before that body. In this connection, I am aware, as indeed the House will be aware, of the part played by the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, in this field.
When we debated in this House this Special Session before it actually took place, I expressed the view that any progress made would no doubt be peripheral to the main core of the disarmament problem, but nevertheless it would still be important. The main arena for disarmament negotiations would clearly be the SALT talks, the Vienna talks; and so it has proved. I must say that I feel that less was achieved in the Special Session than I had originally felt was possible. Nevertheless, there was a high-level and widespread debate—a discussion involving Heads of State and Foreign Ministers, to which the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, has referred.
There was also an agreed Final Document: It certainly was not clear at all times that there was going to be one. I would not go so far as to say that it is the greatest State paper of all time, as the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, did, because I must confess that I find it in places vague and in places platitudinous; but I think that by general agreement the most positive feature has been the reform of the composition of the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva—or rather its replacement by a more widely representative Committee on Disarmament. The ending of the co-chairmanship of the United States and the Soviet Union has paved the way for France to take part. I think we must welcome that, and it is good to know that in the meetings already held by that Committee France is playing a part. Provision has also been made for China to play her part, and while that has not happened yet, one understands that the Chinese are keeping closely in touch with what is going on in that Committee. I hope that the Committee may be able to further the prospects of achieving a comprehensive test ban treaty and a ban on chemical warfare.
The possibility of nuclear weapons becoming available to more countries

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remains a serious threat and a constant anxiety. It is, of course, mentioned in the Final Document, but I think it is clear that more positive action will be necessary than is there envisaged. This is a matter which cannot be put aside with expressions of hope for the future: it is something which requires to be dealt with in concrete terms.
I was sorry to read in the White Paper dealing with the Special Session that certain non-aligned States have opposed a study on the world-wide build-up of conventional weapons. After all, the wars we have had since the end of the Second World War have been conventional wars and not nuclear ones. The Final Document tends to play down the importance of conventional weapons, though we all recognise the signicance of nuclear ones. Of course, I understand that nations insist on the right to have a proper means of defence. I understand, too, that developed countries—the countries which produce the arms—would have economic problems if they were suddenly to cease to do so; but I think we tend to rely too much on the sale of armaments abroad. Certainly we on these Benches feel strongly that the trade in arms must be restricted.
In view of the difficulties of finding other occupations for the people who are at present involved in that trade and the difficulty of ensuring that countries have a proper access to weapons they need for their defence, it is clear that this matter can be dealt with only by international agreements and control. I hope that the United Kingdom will continue to press for that. Of course, the United Nations Special Session was not binding on any of those taking part, as General Assembly resolutions are not binding. It was not a negotiating body coming to final grips with the problem, and trying to set up regulations which were immediately to be enforced. So that although there are many fine sentiments in the Final Document, as we have heard—the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, has examined some of them this evening, and, certainly, the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, extolled them earlier on—it remains to be seen how many of them will be translated into action.
I wonder whether there will be a monitoring conference, which bears a
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relation to the Special Session similar to that which Belgrade had to Helsinki. Will the Disarmament Commission of all nations of the United Nations, which I understand is to meet for four weeks in the year, fulfil that role? Clearly, much will depend on what actually happens in the SALT talks, in the Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions talks in Vienna and to a lesser, but nevertheless important, extent in the Disarmament Committee. Soon we should have SALT II—perhaps next month. Whether or not it will go through Congress, is a question to which we cannot yet see the answer.
As noble Lords have already stated, this matter was debated in this House last night when the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, asked the Government whether they were happy about verification, happy about proposals generally for SALT II, and happy, in particular, about those dealing with theatre nuclear weapons. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, was, on the whole, reassuring in what he had to say, and in a speech on the very same subject yesterday, reported in today's papers, so was President Carter. But I must say that after reading the report of last night's debate, I am left with a feeling of unease about the position with regard to theatre nuclear weapons in Europe, though since that subject was discussed last night I shall not pursue it further this evening.
Then there are the Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions talks in Vienna. So far as they are concerned, the mills certainly grind slowly. When we had our last debate, there was a prospect of advancement; there had been, at last, encouraging signs on the Warsaw Pact side, but I think that we are still waiting for a Western initiative in response. I hope that it will soon be forthcoming and will not be long delayed. But these talks deal with very complicated matters and take a very long time indeed to move forward.
To sum up what I have been saying, we have to maintain a balance in arms between East and West. We cannot afford to be outstripped, because that would lead to an even more dangerous situation. Yet we must recognise the appalling dangers of the arms race and urgently seek a controlled reduction in armaments. I hope that, encouraged by

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the United Nations Special Session, this will be achieved in the negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union in Vienna. But I do not underestimate the importance of what can be achieved by the Committee on Disarmament in the fields of chemical warfare, nuclear tests, nuclear proliferation, the trade in arms and confidence generally.
6.24 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, this is a short debate and time is getting on, so I shall therefore speak very briefly indeed. There does not seem to me much necessity to develop our case, after the monumental speech which we heard from my noble friend Lord Noel-Baker in opening. The noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, said that he was speaking as a realist. The point I want to urge tonight is that we have now reached a stage in international affairs where disarmament is realistic. Over many years, those of us who have advocated disarmament have been called idealists and have been rejected as such as not being practical. We are now in a new situation. We have had a Special Assembly of the United Nations, at which all the Heads of State have spoken on behalf of their Governments, and as a result of that discussion the Final Document, which my noble friend Lord Noel-Baker has analysed was accepted. It is true that the Assembly of the United Nations is not decisive as an executive body, but it has been followed by the committee in Geneva which is under the instruction to carry out the proposals which it made.
Our own British Government, at the Special Assembly, put forward quite radical proposals. They do not go as far as many of us would desire, but, if carried out, they would make a very great contribution towards disarmament. President Carter has gone much further. He has declared immediately for a reduction of nuclear weapons by 50 per cent. and has even said that if the SALT talks succeed, as, happily, it now seems they will, he will reduce nuclear armaments to zero, and he is the head of the most powerful industrialised nation in the world. President Brezhnev of the Soviet Union has gone even further, and has stated not only that nuclear warfare should end, but that all the stocks of nuclear weapons
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in the world should be destroyed. These are the statements of the two great Powers, between whom there is the greatest confrontation.
Are they sincere? Do they really mean what they say? If so, there is great hope. I have had a letter from our Foreign Secretary, Dr. David Owen, to which he has allowed me to refer publicly, in which he recognises the sincerity of Brezhnev, making his proposals for disarmament from the Russian side, equally with that of President Carter. Therefore, we are now in this situation. If Governments are to be believed, if they are sincere in the proposals that they make, if our own British Government are sincere in their radical proposals made at the Special Assembly, which will come before the Geneva Committee, then we are now at a stage where great progress towards disarmament is practicable. We have now become the realists. It is those who are still in favour of greater armament who are the illusionists—illusionists because, if we go on building armaments as we have them today, war will mean the destruction of the whole of mankind.
I want to say to the Government that I have been terribly disappointed that the media and the Members of our Government have not placed greater emphasis upon the decisions which were reached at the Special Assembly and the opportunities which have now been provided for by the Geneva Committee. Even in our quality papers, there have been hardly any reports of the proceedings of the Special Assembly from which one has been able to learn what happened there. In the speeches of the representatives of our Government, no emphasis has been placed upon the importance of a subject which could save mankind.
I believe that the Government are making a very great mistake, not only from the point of view of not realising present hopes but also from that of underestimating the desire of the people of this country, and of the world, for peace. If our Government were to go to the country and say, "These are our proposals and plans. We put them at the forefront of our Manifesto so that the people may endorse the hope for disarmament and for peace ", I believe that the response of our people—because they desire peace, as do all the peoples of the world—would be great.

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The noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, said that because of mutual suspicion the proposals for disarmament are difficult to implement. The verification of disarmament by another side is the answer to that point. We have now reached the stage whereby, by means of inspection by satellite and the proposals which the Soviet Government themselves have accepted for inspection, verification that other Governments are carrying out their promises can be obtained. I say to Her Majesty's Government and to my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts, whose sincerity on this issue none of us doubts, that I trust that our Government will be able to go to the people of this country with a disarmament programme which will give some hope that the recommendations of the Special Assembly will be carried out.
6.35 p.m.
Lord TAYLOR of GRYFE: My Lords, this has been a great day in the House of Lords. We have discussed this afternoon two of the major problems facing mankind: the problem of over-population and the problem of disarmament. I suppose that the cynics might describe today as "Do-gooders Day" in the House of Lords. It is a reflection of the state of our times that "Do-gooding" is cynically observed. We have been asked to face what I regard as the major issues, outside the day-to-day conflict of party differences. The future of mankind has been debated in this House.
I was in Germany last week, and found that the major preoccupation in the newspapers and on television was the American television programme "Holocaust". Young people were turning to their parents and saying, "We didn't know", and the parents were excusing themselves by saying, "We didn't know". Young people were asking, "What did you do in these circumstances?" and again the reply came back, "We really didn't know about these things".
This afternoon we have been asked to address ourselves to two questions from which we cannot hide—two questions which we must face if mankind is to survive. After all the speeches which have been made, this sounds like a cliché, but it is true. This is an important debate and it enables me to pay my own personal
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tribute to Lord Noel-Baker, who initiated it, for his great constancy and consistency in pursuing the ideals of peace and disarmament. When we consider the history of this matter, which Lord Noel-Baker retold so eloquently to this House, I believe that many of us will have grown weary of well-doing. But Lord Noel-Baker has stated the case for disarmament and for peace as eloquently as he did 60 years ago.
My own credentials are these. I went to my bookcase the other night for some books to prepare for this debate, and I came across one which had the insert "This Prize is Awarded for an Essay on Peace and Disarmament." I won this book 50 years ago in a schoolboy's competition. I was brought up in the peace movement. When I was 15, I assumed, with some optimism and hope, that there would be a dramatic change.
Alfred Nobel wrote in 1876:
"I should like to invent a substance or a machine with such terrible power of mass destruction that war would thereby be made impossible for ever".
We have invented that machine, but we have not accomplished what Alfred Nobel assumed would be accomplished. He assumed that if we created a destructive machine of such power, we would turn away from its use. He assumed, as some of the speakers today have assumed, that if you build up sufficient power you will guarantee some security and peace. It has been a story of conflict and war over the centuries, with one side hoping to be stronger than the other. The British Council of Churches said:
"If a process of arms reduction begins, States wish at all times to avoid being left in a position of relative military inferiority vis-à-vis all possible combinations of adversaries. It is impossible for all States to be stronger than all other possible combinations".
But still we pursue that objective and multiply our arms to achieve it.
I admire the speech that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, at the Special Session; I admire his patient devotion to securing arms reduction, and I hope he will be encouraged by this debate today to carry on with his efforts. He made the statement at the United Nations:
"It is a sad fact that our world, riven though it is by poverty and by social and economic injustice, devotes 6 per cent. of what it produces

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to military expenditure. We manage collectively to spend over one billion dollars a day on armed forces and armaments—a figure which is equivalent to the combined incomes of the poorest half of the world's population. This is double the world's expenditure on health and larger than its expenditure on education".
That statement was made by the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, to the Special Session and I know that he feels deeply about this matter.
I would not suggest that we can disarm completely unilaterally. I do not think the public would accept it. I do not think that it is a policy that would command any substantial support at the moment. Personally I am a pacifist, but I would not suggest for a moment that that policy would get acceptance. We have a great deal of education to do on this subject of disarmamament; we have got to get people behind the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts; we must get him to feel that he is supported by a large number of people in this country, and give him courage.
During this Special Session two countries spoke quite dramatically: Canada announced, through M. Trudeau, that his country is phasing out nuclear armed planes and replacing them with conventional weapons aircraft. He went on to say:
"We are thus the first country in the world with the capacity to produce nuclear weapons that chose not to do so".
The Indian Prime Minister said that he challenged all nuclear Powers to follow his lead in renouncing nuclear tests for both war and peace. These were statements made by Prime Ministers at the Special Session. There will always be risks involved. I listened to the debate last night on strategic arms limitation and the nervousness that there was about our inability to inspect and control. There will always be risks in taking dramatic actions but there are even greater risks in carrying on with our present business of building up and multiplying arms. I hope that as a result of this debate today we shall feel encouraged to do a little more.
Our own Prime Minister, addressing the Special Session, said:
"We are here to talk about, and I hope commit ourselves to, a real disarmament programme".
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He proposed a further Special Session in 1981 to check the progress made, following this year's gathering. His concluding words were:
"And when the time comes, let us render that account not in fine words we have spoken, but in action we have taken".
I hope that in 1981 our Government will be able to announce a substantial contribution to that end.
6.44 p.m.
Lord MILFORD: My Lords, I shall start my speech with a quotation:
"It will be the largest ever international gathering on disarmament and it can focus world attention, stimulate Governments to rethink their policies and give new impetus through progress in arms control and disarmament".
That was the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, speaking in this House on 21st February 1978. I should like to ask him—I am afraid he is not here at the moment—whether he feels that that was carried out.
I was in despair this morning on reading the Hansard report of the debate last night on the Question tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. After those questions and answers in this House, I really feel that there is not the mood for disarmament in this place at the moment. There was such hatred shown, such disbelief and distrust of other Governments, especially the Soviet Union. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, said that they had broken their promises several times. Of course, we must get verification if we are to have SALT and disarmament; of course we must get verification on whether it is being carried out, but that can be done in a friendly discussion so that we do not have this awful feeling of distrust the whole time. If that sort of discussion was going on in the Soviet Union about not trusting America and having to do certain things in case America is not carrying out its promises, we should all be absolutely flabbergasted, but that happened last night in this House.
I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, for this debate. I look upon him as one of the great statesmen of this country. We have heard a statesmanlike speech tonight, and compared to him I find that most people are pygmies in politics. If only we had more people like him there would be no question of danger of a Third World War. This

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document which we are discussing tonight is a wonderful document so far as it goes—absolutely wonderful and a great hope to mankind. Any Minister of any government who does not try his utmost to implement it is criminal to mankind.
The United Nations Special Session was hailed by people throughout the world, and I think it took place because of the pressure of the ordinary people in their organisations throughout the world. To the ordinary people the nuclear Powers looked as though they were leading humanity to destruction, and I believe that the united wish of millions of ordinary people can in the end in all circumstances make itself felt and heard. I took part in CND marches. At first we were a few dedicated people, but that movement grew and grew throughout the world among the ordinary people and when one visited other countries—Scandinavia, Greece, the Mediterranean countries—again and again one saw somebody wearing the CND badge and one felt that the people of the world were becoming more and more united under the cause of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. I believe it was the grass-root peace organisations, which played a tremendous part, which rocked the United Nations into initiating a Special Session on Disarmament in which all countries were welcome to be present. All these peace organisations, even the World Peace Council, formerly proscribed, went to Washington to discuss peace and disarmament.
Alas!, almost at the same time the whole thing was unheeded by the military. During that period when the Special Session on Disarmament was taking place a meeting also took place of the NATO chiefs in Washington discussing increased expenditure on arms. Then the neutron bomb loomed up and the usual cycle of those who do not want disarmament begins to take place. Tension is built up, the cold war is brought on again, the card of the Soviet threat is once more played. Yet in 1978, in the autumn, not very long ago, Mr. Brezhnev is calling for the stopping of this crazy madness of spending so much money on armaments, and saying, "Let us get round a table and talk sense". What happened to that? When I mentioned it in your Lordships' House, the Minister, in replying to me, said I was trying to lower the guard of Britain.
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I am not mentioning Mr. Brezhnev and the Soviet Union because I am a Communist and so according to some people must follow the supposed dictates of the Soviet Union, but because what he was saying, and many enlightened people in the West, too, were saying, seems absolute sense and the only hope for man—get round a table and discuss. Just imagine what a Third World War would mean to the Soviet Union. What happened to them in the last war, what enormous destruction they had to bear. Do you think the Soviet Union wants another war? According to last night's debate in this House, it was almost implicit that the Soviet Union is not for peace, not for disarmament at all.
Up to date no President of America has said that Soviet armament has outstripped the West, only that the gap may be lessening. If that is happening, is not this the moment for getting round and discussing how to stop things going any further? Is it not the psychological moment now to discuss and discuss and discuss? Instead the trend is to improve the horrific mass destruction weapons that already exist. The neutron bomb which I have mentioned is the latest new device so far, and I am told that our present weapons are being redesigned so that they can stand up to the neutron bomb, which indicates that people are thinking of using the neutron bomb if there was another war.
Finally, is it not essential to the cause of world peace to put an end to selling arms to other countries? This makes the policy of reduction of armaments absolutely meaningless. More and more armaments spread throughout the world will make for greater insecurity, not security. What is now happening in the Far East could be far more dangerous for the whole of mankind if we sell the know-how for more destructive weapons to anyone. Should not we aim to scrap these weapons instead? Let us build up a vast trade with the under-developed world in peaceful goods, agricultural implements and machinery, in which this country is so far ahead of most other countries in the world. The worldwide movement for disarmament is not just a movement to defend the world, not just a movement for survival, but is at the same time and above all a movement for creating new life for the people.
6.55 p.m.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, about twenty years ago I was talking to Julius Nyerere shortly before he became President of what is now Tanzania. I asked him what he hoped an independent Africa could contribute to world society. I believe Julius Nyerere to be one of the great thinkers and statesmen of our age. His answer was pertinent to this debate. He said he hoped to see an African continent in which there would be no need for armies or navies or air forces, because the people of Africa were one people and would have no need to attack each other, and would see no reason for the preservation or development of weapons of war. Only last week I was talking to President Nyerere whose hopes, of course, have been dashed.
Many noble Lords would consider that it would be an accurate description of this change to describe it as coming up against the realities of life, as though the conditions in which President Nyerere and other African leaders are living today are immutable and unchangeable. We have been arguing from this side that that is not so. I have no doubt that President Nyerere himself would agree with us. He and his people have been caught up in conditions which have been created from a whole variety of social, economic and political factors. But I start with this story becase I want to introduce into this debate, for a very short time, an element which has not been touched on by former speakers; that is, the alarming and tragic increase in armaments in the Third World. I do not have time to analyse why this has taken place; I simply state that it has and support that assertion by these figures.
In 1967 81 per cent. of the world's armaments were concentrated either in NATO or Warsaw Pact countries, and 6 per cent. in Third World countries. Ten years later, in 1977, only 71 per cent. were concentrated in NATO and Warsaw Pact countries and 14 per cent. in the Third World. I regard this as tragic. I can see some reasons for it. The colonial period did not leave the newly independent countries with any experience of peaceful internal security. They had been ruled autocratically and even brutally. The independent countries were frequently left without the means to maintain order within themselves. The colonial countries
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were the artificial creations of the European powers, leading inevitably to the possibility of border disputes where tribes overlapped a number of borders where economic units had been divided between separate countries and so on. And, of course, the newly independent countries that have come into world society since the end of the Second World War have the long example of our industrial world as regards the building of armies, navies and air forces, and frequently as regards the organisation of para-military police forces. We must certainly not forget those merchants of death, the military salesmen, who are constantly pressing their wares upon those who can certainly ill-afford to buy them and the use of which must lead to still greater tragedy within Third World countries.
However, I must tell my noble friend, Lord Noel-Baker, that he must not despair at the apparent apathy of Members of this Chamber and the sparsity of numbers interested in participating in this vital debate for humanity. He must not despair at the depressing sight of the empty Benches opposite, at the lack of speakers opposite or at what I may be permitted to call the somewhat stereotyped speech from the Front Bench opposite. There has always been a struggle between those who believe in a peaceful world and those who believe that a peaceful world is somehow unnatural and that therefore we must engage a large part of our economic resources in building up weapons of destruction. He must not despair for his words go much further than this Chamber. I believe, from my own experience, that in the continents of Europe and America and in the Third World itself the younger generation—the generation that was not born at the time of the dropping of the first atom bomb—has heeded and is heeding his words and those of my noble friend Lord Brockway, and today is taking a different attitude towards the wasteful use of resources in the armament industry.
Only last night in the corridors of this House I was talking to a Minister of a Third World country who at one time had been an official of the United Nations. He said to me: "Five years ago I was trying to impress my colleagues in the United Nations with one single fact: that the expenditure of 1 per cent. of our armament bill would be sufficient, in itself,

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to provide clean and abundant water for the peoples of the entire world. It is that at which my country is aiming. It is that which I believe must be the spirit that is expressed through debates like those which take place in the Special Assembly". It is that spirit which I find in our own country among the young people, in Third World countries, on the Continent of Europe and on the Continent of North America.
Therefore, I ask my noble friend Lord Noel-Baker to remember that his life has not been spent in vain and that there are people who have listened to him and who have been affected by what he has had to say. We now have the prospectus—the document on which this debate is based. It is now our responsibility to put that prospectus into practice. One of the central challenges of the rest of this century is to look not just at the waste and the danger of armaments but at the causes of conflict. I am proud to be associated with what I believe is the first school of peace studies in any university in the world, at the University of Bradford in our own country. It has begun to inspire other studies. We know that the lead has been given for many years by the Scandinavians; it is now coming here and it is spreading elsewhere, not least because of the words that have fallen from the eloquent lips of my noble friend Lord Noel-Baker.
I should like to add my tribute to the contribution that my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts has made to the debates at the United Nations. I simply ask him to summon all his strength to make sure that those fine words that he and our Prime Minister spoke at the Special Assembly are translated into action and that the Government associate themselves actively with those forces of peace which they will find ready to be led, not just in the conventional debate between East and West but throughout the much larger population of the Third World countries.
7.8 p.m.
Lord RITCH1E-CALDER: My Lords, as the perpetual beneficiary of my noble friend Lord Noel-Baker I want to repeat, as I always do, my permanent tribute to his persistence, as has been cited already, and above all to what I think was one of the finest speeches that I have heard in the House. Coming at a moment, as
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has been said, when there seems to be an apathy or a failing in well-doing, I am sure that my noble friend Lord Hatch of Lusby does not need to ask him not to lose hope. He made a most inspiring speech which we all appreciate.
Like my noble friend Lord Brockway, I find myself in some great difficulty because we are now being proved to be the realists, the people who really knew what they were talking about over these years. Everything that we have said as regards nuclear armaments has been proved to be true. We have not produced a deterrent; we have produced a balance of fear, a balance of terror, and the one thing that we know that we cannot tolerate in the world today—it is something so deplorable that we should not—is continual fear; fear which is robbing us of all our capacity to do permanent and durable things which mankind, as we were discussing in an earlier debate, must take into account. We are talking about a noble document. I agree with the final document. It is less than generous for us to treat it merely as a piece of grammar analysis or, indeed, as a piece of rhetoric. There things have become embodied because people have been saying them, working on them, realising them and reorganising them as durable truths. The frightened people of the world are the frightened politicians of the world, because that is where the trouble lies: they are afraid of being caught with their pants down. I usually agree with my noble friend Lord Taylor of Gryfe, but I do not agree that we should not go for unilateral action. If we are prepared to take unilateral action—anything on our own—it is a demonstration of our confidence in our cause, in the fact that we believe the way to security is to reduce capacity to destroy.
Lord TAYLOR of GRYFE: My Lords, just for the record, I want to make the point that I believe in taking unilateral action, but I do not believe it is right to have complete unilateral disarmament at this stage, as public opinion is not running in that direction.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord very much. Together with other noble Lords present, I was involved in a campaign for nuclear disarmament, which was in fact unilateral

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nuclear disarmament. Twenty years on I still believe that if we had been successful then, we would have changed the whole world situation. I mean it. We knew then that we could not afford it. The one thing we could have done was make a virtue out of necessity and say: "We are in a position to produce this, to do anything that anyone will claim to be able to do, and we can demonstrate that we are capable of doing it." At that moment we might have exercised a tremendous amount of influence and anticipated and promoted the non-proliferation pact.
I ask for some degree of belief and faith in what has already been said about the genuine nature of the mass of the people whom we are talking about in the world. We are to believe that they want to live, that they want to exist, that they want their children to grow up and that they want to have fulfilment of themselves and their families. All that is at risk. Why? It is not at risk because we are disarmed. It is at risk because we are armed. If anyone wants to look for security in arms, let him go to Marrakesh now and talk to the Shah of Iran. What did he think he was building up with all those billions-worth of the very latest arms? The United States and everyone else who sold him arms believed that he should be well equipped. The guns of Singapore are once again pointing the wrong way. What are we talking about when we try to find our reassurance in something which is completely unreliable because we do not know what the nature of changes will be? In the present circumstances we do not even know what the pattern of our international relations will be. We hang on tenuously to our belief but we are not quite sure. We arm those beliefs and pretend they are our protection.
Today what we are talking about is the ultimate of our discussions in the present-day world; that is, we are being presented with a picture of what we can do as a rational nation. We are talking through the words of great men who, if they have the courage to go through with their suggestions—and I approve of great men, especially my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts—will make those suggestions reality. Then we could practically change overnight—certainly within the next 20 years—the whole character of the world situation. I speak from 30 years' experi-
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ence of going round on the opposite side, seeing what can be done about the nature of poverty and human development. We could do it. Today we are talking about the costs of armaments and, above all, the diversion of human ingenuity into creating the instruments and weapons of destruction, instead of that intelligence being directed towards something that will find a positive answer for the real world around us.
Apart from that, as has been said, there is the fact that the developing countries of the Third World are now spending such vast amounts relative to their budgets. In fact, they are crippling their capacity to aid themselves. We are not simply afraid that someone will drop a bomb; we are afraid that if we withdraw our armaments industry we shall have more unemployment, et cetera. Noble Lords must realise that most of the arms which we build today are multi-structural weapons; they are transports, carriers, missiles and so on, with all the electronic devices to make them possible. The Disarmament Committee under the chairmanship of my dear friend, and the dear friend of many of us, Mrs. Alva Myrdal of Sweden, looked at this problem five years ago in order to discover the effect of the redirection of the military-industrial complex into genuine peacetime production. I could draw up a prospectus for tomorrow in which one could find the answer to the industrial problem. On the other side, we would not use so much of the resources which now go into the massive armaments. As my noble friend Lord Noel-Baker said, this is a magnificent document; we want to give it substance and meaning. Above all, we must have faith in that document and refuse to recognise malpractices. If we believe that we can say, "This is the wise thing to do", then these are the things we ought to have the courage to do. And do them.
7.19 p.m.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, first I should like to join all those who have payed tribute to my noble friend Lord Noel-Baker who initiated this most welcome debate. His own lifelong devotion to the cause of disarmament has, indeed, been crowned by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize. I would add that as Special Adviser to the

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British Delegation at last year's United Nations Special Session on Disarmament, my noble friend lent a very special authority and prominence to the British contribution.
The Government warmly welcomed the first United Nations Special Session on Disarmament. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Milford, asked whether I was satisfied that the expectations I fairly temperately made in this House last year had been met. Indeed to a fairly considerable degree I would say yes. This was an occasion for giving a new impetus to disarmament and for creating a more structured approach to the achievement of our ultimate goal of general and complete disarmament.
The Session was successful in promoting greater international awareness of the imperative need for disarmament for various reasons, not the least of which have been deployed by my noble friends Lord Taylor and Lord Ritchie-Calder in the closing stages of this debate. The Session stimulated governments, including our own, to review their arms control and disarmament policies and to come up with new ideas. It gave each State the opportunity to understand better the security preoccupations of others. This is a central fact to all discussions on disarmament. It was in our own view very helpful to international confidence and security that, at British initiative, nuclear weapon States gave the non-nuclear powers assurances about their security from nuclear attack.
The final document of the Special Session was in itself something of an achievement. For the first time the United Nations adopted a comprehensive statement about disarmament, and it did so by consensus, with no State dissenting. The reform of the Disarmament Negotiating Committee in Geneva, to make it more representative, was also a most welcome and tangible outcome of the Session. I am proud of the key role which the United Kingdom played in negotiating this result.
Following the Special Session and the reform of that Committee, as the noble Lord, Lord Banks, so well said, important results are already accruing. France is now taking her place, as he said, in multilateral disarmament negotiations, and China is attending the Committee as an
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active observer, with a view, I greatly hope, to taking up soon the full membership now reserved for her. We welcome the return of these two great countries to the international dialogue on disarmament. They have been too long absent from this vital discussion. The noble Lord was quite right to emphasise the importance of developments in Geneva as well as in New York.
Nevertheless, this first Special Session on disarmament did not of course achieve all that we in the United Kingdom would have wished. We are disappointed that the Final Document bears some of the scars of the difficult and detailed multilateral negotiations which produced it. It is not enough for any one country to have the right ideas—and I believe deeply that this country and its people have the right ideas about arms control and disarmament. But that is not enough. You are dealing with 148 other countries who will say the right things all the time, but when you sit down with them it is a matter of very hard discussion and even of bargaining. So it is a triumph that this final paper should have been produced by consensus, given the wide range of views, and even fears and suspicions, among the countries concerned.
It naturally lacks balance and it suffers in places, I agree, from a certain vagueness. It is not the clear and practical programme of action which the United Kingdom advocated as the first of a series of co-ordinated plans leading towards a world where no State need fear the level of armaments of its neighbours. It deals, for instance, somewhat superficially with two matters which, in our view, are crucially important; the prevention of the further spread of nuclear weapons and the need for international action by customer and supplier States—customer as well as supplier States.
Here I join my noble friend Lord Hatch, who reminded us of the alarming increase in armaments in Third World countries, who were spending more in the last year, I regret to say, than they have been receiving in aid. This is a terrible fact of life. However, the point I was making was that there is need for international action by customer as well as supplier States to curb the build-up of conventional arms throughout the world. We have strongly supported—and indeed have made a substantial contribution to promoting—

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the idea of zonal and regional action in this and in comparable fields of arms control and disarmament. I was very glad to hear the noble Lord refer to the possibilities of zonal action. He referred precisely to nuclear-free weapon zones, and there are variations on that kind of zonal provision. We have always been in favour of proceeding regionally and zonally wherever there is any prospect of success.
The true test of the Final Document will be whether it gives new impetus to real disarmament. I take the point about all the fine words, but conferences are made up of words, my Lords, of persuasion, of hard technical argument as well as political exposition. How do we translate those words into real action? This is the test. Eloquence is unilateral; action is multilateral.
It is early to make a proper judgment, but some signs are hopeful. At the 1978 UN General Assembly, the first since the Special Session, the first committee had a much more comprehensive discussion of disarmament than in previous years. Above all, the partners in the major current negotiations have been made even more aware than ever they were of the expectations of the world community. More than one speech last night touched on this in connection with the SALT talks. There is an expectation throughout the world that countries engaged in major current negotiations are expected to consult on, and bear in mind, the interests of humanity as a whole. I have no doubt at all that our partners in the Alliance are doing precisely that.
As I told noble Lords only yesterday, we are looking forward in the near future to the conclusion of a second Strategic Arms Limitation agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. But I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Banks. There are implications here of direct importance to us in Western Europe and indeed to other parts of the world than the United States and the Soviet Union.
This agreement will involve more comprehensive limitations on the strategic delivery systems of both sides—I gave some little detail on that last night—and for the first time the dismantling of some delivery systems. We look forward to
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further reductions in these systems in subsequent strategic arms limitation negotiations. We ourselves are working very hard to achieve early success in our negotiations with the United States and the Soviet Union on a properly verified comprehensive test ban. We are part of a triad of triers to achieve a comprehensive test ban—the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union.
Good progress has been made and agreement has been reached on many issues. The treaty will ban all nuclear weapon tests and a protocol, which is integral to the treaty, will ban so-called peaceful nuclear explosions. There is quite a struggle over this with views sincerely held by both sides about this crucial matter, but we are in sight of success on this difficult question of PNEs—peaceful nuclear explosions. We hope the treaty will not only help to curb the qualitative development of nuclear weapons but also advance our non-proliferation aims by attracting the adherence of non-nuclear Powers, especially those which might be tempted to engage in nuclear tests.
We shall also, of course, be doing everything possible to accelerate progress in the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks in Vienna. Reference was made to the Warsaw Pact proposals of June 1978. We welcomed them. We had been pressing for them for quite a time and, when they came along, we welcomed them warmly as a move towards our concept that the outcome of the negotiations should be parity of ground and air force manpower and that this should be expressed as a common collective ceiling on the forces of the two sides. We have responded constructively to these proposals but I have to say, encouraging as the situation has marginally become, that the Eastern proposals do nothing to solve the continued disagreement about the existing disparity between the forces on each side. One way of stimulating progress in Vienna has been suggested by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary; namely, that there should be a meeting at Foreign Minister level.
Some of the matters mentioned in the final Document will be considered in the new Committee on Disarmament, which began its first session on 24th January. I expressed at the opening meeting the

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view that the international negotiating body would be invigorated by the reforms agreed at the time of the special session. We think there will be scope for the committee to work on a wide range of significant tasks. In the immediate future we hope it will consider important aspects of a convention to ban the production and stockpiling of chemical weapons.
The House will be aware that this country has been a pioneer, a leader, in this field; it produced a very workmanlike treaty or convention to ban chemical weapons. The United States and Soviet Union have been taking the matter further, and while they continue their negotiations on other aspects of such a convention, we hope the committee itself will consider specific aspects of the matter, and in this connection the United Kingdom considers it would be valuable for the Committee on Disarmament to gain practical experience of ways of verifying that the production of chemical weapons has ceased.
A number of noble Lords rightly stressed the importance of verification; there is no confidence unless there is a feeling that undertakings are in fact being carried out, especially in this field. We have invited relevant experts from the member States of the committee to visit the United Kingdom next month. They will visit a commercial plant producing phosphorous compounds and a former pilot plant for the production of chemical warfare agents. The latter is now in the process of demolition, in line with Britain's renunciation of chemical weapons. The purpose of these visits is to examine possible methods of inspection to ensure that civilian plants are not diverted to the production of chemical warfare agents and to show how an inspection can verify the destruction of production facilities for chemical weapon agents. We look forward to demonstrating in this way, in a practical way—translating our words into action—so that the difficult process of verification can be shown on site to be specifically possible. If it is demonstrated in regard to one aspect of arms control and disarmament, it may well lead to the evolution of a technique of supervision and inspection that can be applied to other areas.
Other aspects of the work are being actively pursued at present outside the
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negotiations I have mentioned. One important coming event is the United Nations conference in September which is to consider restrictions on the use of certain conventional weapons which are deemed to be excessively inhumane or indiscriminate in their effects. And preparations have started for the second Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 1980. We hope this review conference, together with the work currently in hand in the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation, will help to identify further measures for pursuing the international transfer of civil nuclear technology while minimising the risk of weapons proliferation.
This is quite an issue, of course. The developing world is naturally anxious to receive the benefits of nuclear technology to develop its countries. I think the developed world—the nuclear world, if one cares to call it that—is prepared, wishes, to do that. At the same time, it is important to see that the transfer of this technology does not, in addition to making it possible to develop civilian programmes of a totally unexceptionable nature, become capable of being diverted into non-civilian, even military and possibily aggressive, purposes. We have a duty to approach this question of the transfer of nuclear technology in this balanced way.
We are also taking steps to implement the Final Document at home. The Government attach the utmost importance to the role of non-governmental organisations in disarmament, and we have shown that. I am the chairman of specially assembled panels in the Foreign Office on various aspects of disarmament, and my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary devotes a tremendous amount of time to disarmament and to the work of these panels. Indeed, it takes me all my time to prevent him from taking the chair away from me from time to time; it is a failing I am very ready to forgive because he is such an excellent chairman. There is plenty of energy and effort in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to engage the interest and contribution of non-governmental organisations in this great work. There are at present in the House tonight, notably my noble friend, people who have attended these meetings, which are fairly regularly held.

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As to propagating news about our policies, we do our utmost, but we cannot tell the media what to print or broadcast. Ministers not only go out to the United Nations or to Geneva, or to Vienna for that matter, and pronounce. Reference has been made to a number of carefully prepared speeches I have made in these various disarmament fora, speeches which, I am glad to say, have generally been fairly well received by their audiences in those fora; but as to the lack of attention paid in our media to news of disarmament efforts, I cannot help that. If the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, is complaining that Government Ministers are not doing enough to inform people of what they are doing regarding disarmament, then I would point out that the channels of communication are not under our control. But we do our best.
Since the Special Session we have distributed more documents on disarmament to non-governmental organisations and to interested individuals. We now plan a regular newsletter to replace the annual publication in a White Paper of a collection of documents. I consider the new newsletter a much more effective and readable organ of information than a White Paper which simply puts together a number of documents. We are also about to publish a new edition of our Short Guide to British Arms Control and Disarmament Policy. Of course I cannot guarantee that any of these documents will be reviewed in the quality papers on any Sunday; all I can guarantee is that we shall publish them and disseminate them in their thousands. Beyond that it is not within the power of a democratic Government, or even of the Foreign Office, to guarantee the kind of propaganda the lack of which my noble friend complains of.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that it is really rather more than this; that the complaint is that our Prime Minister and our Foreign Secretary, whose speeches would get into the media, are not giving the emphasis which many of us would desire to the issue of disarmament?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: Certainly not, my Lords; I am partner (one might say) to every speech on foreign
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affairs, including disarmament, which my two right honourable friends make. I have a fairly considerable hand, I hope, in advising as to the content of such speeches. They are frequent and forceful. Given time, I could give a list of very impressive speeches made in the last year, including the speech made by the Prime Minister at the Special Session. Of course, they make such speeches all the time. I make no complaints that these are not taken up in the news media. I am merely answering my noble friend whom I thought was grossly unfair to Ministers.
Moreover, I should like to tell the House something which perhaps is not sufficiently widely known. I have the privilege and the responsibility of being the Minister who directs the work of what we call the Arms Control and Disarmament Department. It is a first-class Department by any Civil Service standards, manned by officials who are at once expert and dedicated. I cannot speak too highly of them; I only wish that I could name them. Noble Lords can forget the slogans about getting down to the techniques and the technologies; these people do this. In addition to the hard work of studying and of shaping proposals which have some hope of success, they have agreed, with my enthusiastic support, even to address meetings in various parts of the country, to explain what we are about in this vital field, and to answer questions. Their efforts have been extremely successful, but I have yet to see a public report of any one of those meetings. But I do not complain about that. What I am saying is that a great deal of work is done by Ministers, and I add, by officials. It is unusual to refer to officials, but I feel that I should, and that I should refer to this rather novel aspect of their work; namely, their readiness to take part in seminars, to speak at meetings, and to answer questions on this work.
I would sum up by saying that the Government are taking very seriously indeed the recommendations made by the Final Document of the Special Session. Despite its shortcomings, it remains the only generally agreed guide to the action that can be followed to promote our aim of general and complete disarmament. We shall continue to strive for precise, balanced, and properly verified agreements to lead us along the path to a safer and saner world.
7.45 p.m.
Lord NOEL-BAKER: My Lords, I wish to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate for their time and trouble, and I thank them also for the kind things that they have said. I would say to the noble Lords, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, and Lord Banks, that I have never been a unilateral disarmer, and that not one word in my speech tonight was in favour of that course. I want world disarmament; nothing less will do. I believe that the case for unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain is much stronger today than it has ever been, and I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, whether, in his support for nuclear-free zones, he would go so far as to support a nuclear free zone for Western Europe, including Britain. I believe that it might be an admirable plan.
I thank my noble friend Lord Brockway for bringing out the truth that we are the realists today, and that those who so often appropriate the title for themselves, and who urge that great armaments will lead to peace, have proved throughout this century to be, as he said, the prophets of illusion, and of disaster, too. I wish to say a special word of thanks to my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts for his sympathetic and constructive speech, for the fact that Her Majesty's Government put forward the goal of general and complete disarmament as the purpose to be promoted by the Special Session, and for the fact that he took me to New York. I thank him also for the great efforts which he makes in support of this noble cause. I would say to him that I hope he will persuade his great office, in which I have spent more than eight happy years, that great achievements may be within our grasp, and that our doubts are traitors. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

CRIMINAL EVIDENCE BILL [H.L.]
7.49 p.m.
Read 3a.
Viscount DILHORNE: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill do now pass.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Viscount Dilhorne.)
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, before we part with this Bill, I should like to pay a brief tribute to the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, for his initiative in bringing forward this Bill. It remedies a significant anomaly in the laws of evidence which has resulted in injustice in the past and may well do so in the future unless it is remedied. It deals with a highly technical and difficult point, which was explained by the noble and learned Viscount with his customary clarity. I commend this Bill, and I hope it will have a speedy passage in another place.
Lord LYELL: My Lords, I wonder whether, on behalf of my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham, who has not been able to be here tonight, I might add his tribute and his good wishes to those of the noble and learned Lord who sits upon the Woolsack. I know that my noble and learned friend was particularly grateful for everything that was done by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, and certainly I am sure he would wish to be associated with the kind words of the noble and learned Lord upon the Woolsack.
Viscount DILHORNE: My Lords, before the Question is put, may I just say, "Thank you". Owing to the fortunate circumstance that no one could devise a satisfactory Amendment to this Bill, I thought it unnecessary to say anything in moving, That the Bill do now pass, because I would merely have repeated what I said on Second Reading. But I should like to tell the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor how grateful I am, and how much I appreciate his very kind words, as I do those of the noble Lord who has also spoken. My Lords, may I say that I hope that perhaps this may form a precedent for the enactment of uncontroversial amendments to the criminal law, and I hope and trust that this Bill will have as speedy a passage in another place as it has had in this.
On Question, Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.