Sitting of 21 November 1963

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN
THE VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's answer to the Address, as follows:—
I have received with great satisfaction the loyal and dutiful expression of your thanks for the Speech with which I opened the present Session of Parliament.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  HOME DEPARTMENT

    Witchcraft
    Commander Keransasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will introduce legislation to ban witchcraft and associated practices in the United Kingdom.
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Henry Brooke):Witchcraft ceased to be a criminal offence in 1735. It is not in my mind, 228 years later, to bring in fresh legislation on the subject.
    Commander Kerans:Has my hon. Friend seen the considerable comment in a Sunday newspaper recently of alleged practices of wichcraft in this country, and will he further look into the matter because I have reason to believe that a good deal of this witchcraft is a cover for sexual orgies and other malpractices?
    Mr. Brooke:I did see the article referred to. Acts of sexual perversion can be dealt with under the Sexual Offences Act. If there is any matter which my hon. and gallant Friend knows about and which he thinks could not be
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    dealt with under existing legislation, I shall be grateful if he will let me know.

    Parking Offences
    5. Mr. Costainasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps are taken to collect charges for parking offences before arrests are made in the police area for which he is responsible.
    Mr. Brooke: Persons who have committed or are alleged to have committed parking offences are given all reasonable opportunity to pay the charge or to appear in answer to a summons, before a warrant is issued. The issue of a warrant is entirely a matter for the magistrate. Once a warrant has been issued, it is an order of the court and the police must execute it.
    Mr. Costain:Whilst appreciating that it is a matter for the court, does my right hon. Friend agree that the police are getting unpopular with motorists over matters which do not really concern them? Will he do all he can to publicise this fact and to bring about a better understanding between the police and motorists?
    Mr. Brooke:I am anxious to do everything possible to further a better understanding between the police and not only the motorist but all members of the public. I think my hon. Friend will realise that in the last resort there is no way of bringing a person before the court except by arresting him.
    Mr. S. Silverman: Is the right hon. Gentleman really not aware that magistrates do not issue warrants unless someone asks for them, and will he look into the practice of the Metropolitan Police asking for warrants in cases that are perfectly absurd?
    Mr. Brooke:No, Sir. If a summons is issued and repeatedly the person does not appear in court, the magistrate will, sooner or later, issue a warrant
    Mr. Silverman: Only if someone asks him to do so.

    Nuclear Warfare
    Mr. Lubbockasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will authorise the publication of an evaluation of the effects of a nuclear attack on

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    Great Britain, for the information of the general public as well as Civil Defence workers.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. C. M. Woodhouse): No, Sir. The effects of a nuclear attack would depend on so many variable factors that no single estimate that could be published would be of value.
    Mr. Lubbock: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that there is a pamphlet, No. 1, issued by the Civil Defence, entitled "Nuclear Weapons", which gives a picture of these effects but which is far too technical for the general public to understand? Could not it be shortened and made less technical so that it could be issued to the general public as well?
    Mr. Woodhouse: That pamphlet is, of course, available to the general public if they want it. There is a much simplified version also on sale to the public which eliminates all the technical language.
    Mr. Bence: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in the leaflet which has been mentioned there is a suggestion that every householder should get some bricks with which to brick upwindows? Will he give an assurance that these bricks will be available?
    Mr. Woodhouse:I think there would be no difficulty in carrying out the simple advice given to householders, but the pamphlet makes it perfectly clear that this advice is of no value inside areas of complete devastation. It would only be helpful to householders to take these simple precautions if their houses were outside the area of devastation.

    Approved School Housemasters (Allowances)
    Mr. Boydenasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department when it is proposed to award housemasters in approved schools the same extraneous duty allowances as are paid to educational staff.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Miss Mervyn Pike): This is a matter for the Standing Joint Advisory Committee for Staffs of Children's Homes, which is an independent negotiating body.
    Mr. Boyden:That is the usual answer. The housemasters are very discontented with the present gap between their wages and the wages of the teaching staff. Will the hon. Lady do something about this matter in order to bring about conditions in which the housemasters can approach more nearly to the situation of the teachers?
    Miss Pike: The position is as I have stated. This is an independent negotiating body, and it would be inappropriate at this stage for my right hon. Friend to interfere.

    Prisons (Welfare Officers)
    Mr. Boydenasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proposals he has for increasing the number of welfare officers working in Her Majesty's prisons, and for more closely associating prison officers with welfare work.
    Miss Pike: I understand that the Central After-Care Association and the National Association of Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies, who are responsible for the appointment of prison welfare officers, propose to appoint ten more officers during the next financial year. The Prison Officers' Association has recently submitted a memorandum on the role of the prison officer in a modern penal system. This was considered at a recent meeting of the Prison Department Whitley Council, which decided to set up a joint working party to study the proposals.
    Mr. Boyden: I am grateful for the hon. Lady's statement that a working party has been set up. Will the Home Office give every consideration to this most imaginative proposal from the Prison Officers' Association which could transform the whole atmosphere in the prison service?
    Miss Pike: We certainly realise the importance of this matter.

    Election Counts (Television Cameras)
    Mr. Lubbockasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what guidance he has given to returning officers on the admission of television cameras to the count at the next General Election; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Woodhouse:Last November my right hon. Friend issued a memorandum of guidance to returning officers on the question of admission to the count at Parliamentary elections, including the admission of representatives of the Press and broadcasting. Copies of the memorandum were placed in the Library of the House. He is not aware of any need for further guidance before a General Election.
    Mr. Lubbock: Is it not a good thing that public interest in electoral processes should be stimulated? Will the hon. Gentleman therefore encourage returning officers to co-operate to the maximum extent with representatives of the B.B.C. and I.T.V.?
    Mr. Woodhouse: I have no doubt that that is in the mind of returning officers, but the matter is one for their discretion—and the premises in which the count takes place vary greatly from one part of the country to another.
    Sir G. Nicholson: Why was it that in the recent Luton by-election television was given preference at the expense of the Press? Could they be treated similarly?
    Mr. Woodhouse: I have seen reports to that effect. I have made inquiries from the returning officer, who was solely responsible for the count, and he has told me that representatives of the local Press and of one of the associations covering the national Press were given facilities to be present.
    Sir G. Nicholson: That is not good enough.

    Miss Christine Keeler
    Mr. W. Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is now satisfied that all possible steps were taken by the Metropolitan Police to ensure that Miss Christine Keeler would be available to give evidence in the Edgecombe case; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Brooke: Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Hamilton: Will the Home Secretary answer the last part of the Question?
    Mr. Brooke: Miss Keeler gave evidence at the committal proceedings;
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    she was bound over to give evidence at the trial and was due to appear in court on 14th March. She left the United Kingdom on 8th March. There is no power under existing law to prevent a prospective witness from leaving the country, or to compel him to return to the jurisdiction once he has left it.
    Mr. Hamilton:Can the right hon. Gentleman then explain how Miss Marilyn Rice-Davies was kept in the country? Is it not the case that at least a dozen questions were asked in public by the Sunday Citizen many weeks ago and that neither the right hon. Gentleman nor his Department has made any attempt to make public answers? If I send those questions to the right hon. Gentleman, will he undertake to give detailed replies in the OFFICIAL REPORT?
    Mr. Brooke: I am always ready to answer Questions put to me by hon. Members, but I am not under an obligation to answer questions by newspapers. Miss Rice-Davies was arrested at London Airport on a charge of suspected larceny, asI have told the House in great detail.

    Committal Proceedings (Inquiry)
    13. Mr. D. Footasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress has been made in the current inquiry into the nature and purpose of committal proceedings; and when the report may be expected.
    Mr. Brooke:I have asked a number of interested persons and organisations to assist me by giving their views in answer to a detailed questionnaire on this matter. Several have already been good enough to send me full replies, butnot all have yet been able to do so, and I cannot yet say when the inquiry will be completed.
    Mr. Foot:Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is now over five years since the Tucker Committee on committal proceedings reported and nearly two years since the present inquiry was announced? How much longer must we wait before we have any possibility of fresh legislation?
    Mr. Brooke: I hope that the hon. and learned Member may be able to assist me. I understand that he is chairman

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    of the Society of Labour Lawyers, which is one of the bodies which have not yet replied to my questionnaire.
    Mr. Foot: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that over 18 months elapsed after the announcement of this inquiry before interested bodies were asked to produce their evidence?
    Mr. Brooke: As soon as I get in all this information, it will be possible for me to give it consideration and seek to reach conclusions. The replies that I have been getting up to now are somewhat contradictory.

    Cardiff Prison (Psychiatric Treatment)
    Mr. G. Thomasasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what provision is made in Cardiff Prison for psychiatric treatment to be available for prisoners in cases recommended by magistrates' courts for such special treatment.
    Miss Pike:Prisoners thought to be in need of prolonged treatment may be sent to the special prison at Grendon or to psychiatric clinics in other prisons. Prisoners serving short sentences may be seen by a visiting psychiatrist, and arrangements can be made for them to undergo voluntary treatment at outside clinics on discharge from prison.
    Mr. Thomas: Is the Minister alleging that there is a regular psychiatric service at the prison? If so, can she tell me how often the visits are made?
    Miss Pike: The position is that the medical officer at the prison can prescribe visits of a psychiatrist, and in that case the psychiatrist will attend, as and when needed.
    Miss Bacon:Is the question of psychiatric treatment included in the investigation which is taking place into the prison medical service? When can we expect a report on that investigation?
    Miss Pike: There is a Question about that on the Order Paper.
    Mr. Elwyn Jones:Should not penal establishments now have qualified psychiatrists in strength? Although the courts still hopefully say to prisoners, "Any treatment that you require you will get in prison", is it not the case that
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    the number of qualified psychiatrists is quite inadequate to meet that which the judges and the courts hope the prisons will accomplish?
    Miss Pike:This is a question that we have to face in the Health Service as a whole, but the hon. and learned Member will recognise that in the prison service at present we have an adequate psychiatric service and an adequate medical service.
    Mr. Elwyn Jones:The hon. Lady is the only one who believes that.
    Mr. Speaker: That does not sound like a question.

    Prisoners (Solitary Confinement)
    Mr. Liptonasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners are at present in solitary confinement for more than 28 days; and whether he will make regulations that solitary confinement shall not be extended for more than 28 days without his direct sanction in each case.
    Miss Baconasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department for how long George Madsen has been kept in solitary confinement at Parkhurst.
    Mr. Brooke:The number of prisoners segregated for more than 28 days is at present 63, of whom 61 are so treated at their own request. George Madsen, a dangerous professional criminal and a determined escaper, is one of the other two. He has been segregated under Rule 36 of the Prison Rules from 4th January, 1962, to 11th April, 1962: from 13th June 1962, to 25th September, 1962: and from 8th May, 1963, to the present time—on each occasion for planning or taking part in a break-out from prison. Only Visiting Committees, Boards of Visitors or senior officers of the Prison Department can authorise such segregation, and every case is subject to continuous scrutiny.
    Mr. Lipton: Is it not quite a monstrous state of affairs that a man should be kept in solitary confinement for such a length of time? Has not the moment come for the Home Secretary to reconsider the whole question of this soul-destroying punishment? No matter how criminal a man may be, can he possibly merit such soul-destroying punishment?
    Mr. Brooke: This is a matter of great concern to me. In fact, the words "solitary confinement" are perhaps misleading, because the prisoner is able to watch television for one and a half hours, six days a week, and he exercises with another prisoner. This is a very difficult prisoner. But what I have in mind is to consult the Board of Visitors with a view to transferring him to another prison, where he will be less isolated.
    Miss Bacon:Even though this prisoner appears to be difficult and tries to escape, is not it monstrous that a human being should be treated in this way? Can the right hon. Gentleman say what being kept in solitary confinement means? Is it true, as is alleged by George Madsen, that for months on end he was not even allowed to visit a lavatory? Can the right hon. Gentlemen say what are the conditions in which this prisoner is being kept?
    Mr. Brooke: He is kept in a cell by himself. He exercises with another prisoner and, as I say, he is able to watch television. Twice this man has been released from segregation and in each case he has taken advantage of that to plot a fresh break-out. I have a responsibility to protect the public from dangerous criminals.
    Mr. Driberg: Does the figure of 63, which the right hon. Gentleman quoted as the total number of men in solitary confinement, cover prisoners to whom Rule 36 is automatically applied as soon as they are received in prison if they are serving a sentence of more than five years?
    Mr. Brooke: As I explained, 61 of the 63 are segregated at their own request because they do not wish to associate with other prisoners. If the hon. Member has a more detailed Question perhaps he would be good enough to put it on the Order Paper.
    Miss Bacon:Will the right hon. Gentleman please answer my supplementary question more fully? He said that the prisoner was in solitary confinement. Will he say whether or not it is true that for months on end this man was not allowed to go to the lavatory?
    Mr. Brooke: I do not think that that is true, but I will certainly make inquiries.
    Mr. Lipton: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

    Betting and Gaming (Fruit Machines)
    Mr. Wingfield Digbyasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he will introduce legislation to amend the Betting and Gaming Act by increasing control of fruit machines in proprietory clubs and shops other than licensed premises; and whether he will make it obligatory on the owners of proprietory clubs to make a record of the disposal of profits.
    Mr. Brooke:I am in consultation with the local authority associations on the question whether the law relating to the grant of permits for the provision of amusements with prizes, including gaming machines, in places to which the public have access requires improvement. But I am not contemplating any change in the law under which gaming machines may be installed in places to which the public do not have access provided that the proceeds are devoted to purposes other than private gain.
    Mr. Digby: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the police are having great difficulty in enforcing the law as it now stands, having been so recently revised by Parliament?
    Mr. Brooke: There arc certain difficulties. If my hon. Friend has any suggestions to make, I will gladly take them into consideration.
    Mr. G. Thomas: Is the Minister aware that the Betting and Gaming Act has unleashed a gambling craze all over the country which is doing us no good, to say the least? Will he consider setting up some impartial committee to consider the effects of that Act on the life of the nation?
    Mr. Brooke: The Betting and Gaming Act has achieved its first objective, which was to stop street betting. In my view, it would be much too early to embark on another general review of the situation, which is what the hon. Member is suggesting.

    Premises, Wanstead (Police Search)
    Mr. Liptonasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will investigate the circumstances in which two Metropolitan Police officers searched the residence of Mr. Laurence Bell's parents at Wanstead on 12th May last without a search warrant.
    Mr. Brooke: The Commissioner of Police informs me that consent to the search was obtained before it took place.
    Mr. Lipton: Is the Minister aware that the giving of that consent is completely and unequivocally denied by the parents of this man? Would he not agree that it is a most dangerous and undesirable practice for police officers to pretend that they have a search warrant when they have not one at all?
    Mr. Brooke:There was no question of pretending that they had a search warrant. The man concerned was informed that it was intended to search the room. He raised no objection and his room was searched, with the consent of his mother. The question of the searching of this room was examined during the trial at the Central Criminal Court and no unfavourable comment was made by the Court on the action taken by the police.

    Unlicensed Clubs (Fire Precautions)
    Mr. Mappasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will take powers to secure control, through the local authorities, of the means of escape from unlicensed clubs in the case of fire.
    Mr. Woodhouse:My right hon. Friend has under consideration legislative proposals designed to strengthen the control of local authorities over fire precautions in residential establishments and places of resort generally, including unlicensed clubs.
    Mr. Mapp: But when is this legislation coming forward? Is the Minister aware that in my own town of Oldham—where I think the situation is typical—there are four clubs each attracting 800 people each night and that the premises are totally outside any fire precaution
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    arrangements? Is not it overwhelmingly urgent that the necessary precautions should be taken quickly?
    Mr. Woodhouse: I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the urgency of this matter, but it is an intricate one in which we are in consultation with the local authorities associations and I cannot enter into a commitment about the date of legislation.

    Criminal Law Revision Committee (Reports)
    Sir L. Ropnerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he accepts the recommendations contained in the Third and Fourth Reports of the Criminal Law Revision Committee.
    Mr. D. Footasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether Her Majesty's Government intend to introduce legislation to give effect to the recommendations of the Third and Fourth Reports of the Criminal Law Revision Committee dealing respectively with the order of closing speeches in trials on indictment, the substitution of a new form of verdict for the verdict Guilty but insane, and the creation of a right of appeal against a finding of unfitness to plead.
    Mr. Brooke: I am not yet in a position to make a statement.
    Sir L. Ropner: Can my right hon. Friend say whether the implementation of the recommendations would need legislation?
    Mr. Brooke: Yes. I think that in each case it would need legislation.
    Mr. Foot: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how long it will take him on this occasion to arrive at a perfectly simple decision?
    Mr. Brooke: These matters are not so simple as they seem. When a Reportlike this has been published, it is valuable to give some opportunity for public opinion, including legal opinion, to play on the matter.
    Mr. Elwyn Jones: Is it not the case that a distinguished Committee has made recommendations for these two reforms in the criminal law which are very important in the administration of

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    justice? Where the Home Secretary is in the presence of a unanimous opinion of this kind, is not it vital to get on with the process of introducing legislation, or once more is this to be one of those matters which are left for private Members to accomplish?
    Mr. Brooke:I would remind the hon. and learned Member that it was I who took the initiative in referring both these questions to the Criminal Law Revision Committee, a body for which I have the greatest respect. I would have thought that it would be carrying things a bit far to say that there must be immediate legislation on the Report of a Committee such as this before people have had time to study it carefuly and to say whether or not they agree with it.

    Greek Royal Visit (Incidents)
    Mr. Dribergasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how soon he expects to receive the report of the special inquiry into the circumstances in which various people were charged with offences alleged to have been committed during the Greek Royal visit; and if he will make an oral statement on this matter before the Christmas Recess.
    Mrs. Butlerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will order a public inquiry into the circumstances in which certain persons were charged by the Metropolitan Police in connection with the State visit of Queen Frederika last July.
    Mr. Brooke: The Commissioner of Police has instituted a special inquiry by a senior officer into the facts of certain cases in which persons were arrested on 11th July for being in possession of offensive weapons. I expect to receive a report in the near future, and after I have done so I will make a further statement.
    Mr. Driberg: Can I take it that this means a further oral statement, since the right hon. Gentleman will not be reached at Question Time until February?
    Mr. Brooke
    Mr. Driberg: Can I also ask in this connection whether he will at least publish that Report, or else consider an
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    independent public inquiry for which there is now very strong pressure, as he must be aware? Can he also say whether the detective sergeant, who is now said to be mentally ill, was responsible for many other convictions before this particular series?
    Mr. Brooke: The detective concerned undoubtedly wore himself out with overwork. He is now not said to be mentally ill—he is mentally ill. I hope that the hon. Member will not press me to answer his further question as to what subsequent action I shall take, until I have received the Report. I am anxious to keep Parliament fully informed.
    Mrs. Butler:Since it is believed that there are at least eight other cases in which this detective-sergeant was involved, regarding which people are still serving sentences in Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville, and since in another case three other officers were involved and, in any case, there were officers who witnessed and condoned these events, is it not quite clear that we shall get the true facts only through a public inquiry which will make it manifest to the public exactly what happened? After all, the rights and liberties of the public are very much involved in this really scandalous affair.
    Mr. Brooke: There are, in fact, eight cases now being inquired into. I deprecate the allegation that experienced police officers are not capable of drawing up an objective and thoroughgoing report on what has been done by their subordinates. When I receive this Report, I will consider whether it is necessary for me to take further action.
    Mr. Fletcher: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that there is very considerable public disquiet about this series of incidents? The public will not be satisfied unless either there is an independent inquiry or the Home Secretary gives an assurance that when he receives the report for which he has asked it will be published and the House will have an opportunity of discussing what is in it?
    Mr. Brooke: I am very anxious to keep Parliament fully informed, but the hon. Member must not press me to make a further statement about what I will do when I receive a report which I have not yet seen.
    Mrs. Butler: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter again.

    Advisory Committee on After Care (Report)
    Miss Baconasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement about his intention with respect to his Advisory Committee's Report on After Care.
    Mr. Brooke: I would refer the hon. Member to my reply on 18th November to a Question by the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock).
    Miss Bacon:Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is perhaps one of the most important things he could do in the next few months? When a man comes out of prison, without a home, without friends and without money, unless there is adequate aftercare he soon finds his way back to prison. How soon is the right hon. Gentleman to introduce these changes?
    Mr. Brooke: I agree with the hon. Lady that this is an extremely important Report. I am very glad to have the opportunity of thanking the whole of the Committee, especially the members of the sub-committee, who gave so much time to this subject. I entirely share her view that we ought to be giving more consideration to the problem of seeking to save those who have been discharged from prison from getting back into prison. I am hoping to make an early announcement. The matter would be somewhat easier for me had there not been a minority report which I must also take into consideration.

    Crimes of Violence (Compensation for Victims)
    Mr. Prenticeasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will introduce legislation to compensate the victims of crimes of violence.
    Mr. C. Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will publish as a White Paper Her Majesty's Government's proposals for the payment of compensation to the victims of crimes of violence.
    Mr. Brooke: The Government intend to publish their proposals in a White Paper this Session.
    Mr. Prentice: Can the Home Secretary tell the House whether the rather ambiguous words in the Queen's Speech mean that there will be a comprehensive scheme for compensating victims of crime and whether public money is going into a compensation fund? How soon does he expect to introduce a Bill on this matter? Is he aware that three times in the last four years there have been Private Members' Bills introduced on this subject from this side of the House—each time he has resisted them—and it is time some action was taken by the Government?
    Mr. Brooke:I am anxious to lose no time. A White Paper will be published as soon as possible, but I cannot give the date. The Government hope that it will be possible to devise a scheme which can be brought into operation quickly without legislation.
    Mr. Johnson:Are we to understand from his statement that the Home Secretary does not now intend to introduce legislation on this matter? Is he aware that that will be a great disappointment to many people, including those who were at the recent Conservative Party conference and were led to believe by his speech there that he would introduce legislation. Can he give in general terms some idea of the basis of the scheme? Will the compensation be on a weekly basis or lump sum payments? If so, on what basis and by whom will it be administered? Will it be by an independent compensation board?
    Mr. Brooke: I do not think there will be disappointment when hon. Members and the general public see the White Paper. I ask the hon. Member to await that. I am thinking in terms of an experimental non-statutory scheme which might provide a basis for legislation later.
    Mr. F. Harris: When my right hon. Friend has prepared these proposals, will he take the most generous view he can, because this covers an issue which many of us have been advocating for more than 16 years and we want to see the action to be satisfactory when it appears?
    Mr. Brooke: I said that I hoped to be the Home Secretary who might introduce action on these lines. I hope to introduce a White Paper which will be the subject of debate so that we can get opinions from all parts of the House.

    Bingo Halls (Fire Precautions)
    Mr. Prenticeasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what replies he has sent to the letters he has received from the East Ham County Borough Council and other local authorities, suggesting amendments to the law to give powers to enforce fire precautions in premises used for playing bingo similar to those exercised in respect of cinemas and theatres.
    Mr. Woodhouse:The local authorities in question have been told that the Government have examined the existing law relating to residential establishments and places of resort, such as clubs, and have concluded that it needs to be strengthened and rationalised. They have also been told that it is proposed to discuss with the local government associations and other interested bodies the form that suitable amending legislation might take.
    Mr. Prentice: May I once again ask the Government to show some signs of urgency? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Gaumont Cinema in East Ham High Street, when it became a bingo hall, was subject to extensive alterations? Seating was taken across the gangway and the conditions there now would have been illegal when it was a cinema, but it is now in operation as a bingo club. This is repeated in many areas. It is leading to danger, particularly in the event of fire. Will the hon. Gentleman do something quickly?
    Mr. Woodhouse: I am aware of the kind of difficulties to which the hon. Member draws attention. These are among the reasons why, as I told the hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Mapp), this is an intricate problem which we regard as urgent and we cannot commit ourselves to introducing a report until we have consulted the local authority associations and other interests.

    Girl (Death)
    Mr. Dribergasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps have been taken to find out where and from whom an 18-year-old girl, described in a case heard at the Old Bailey on 25th and 28th October, 1963, as addicted to violence and a worshipper of Hitler, obtained the guns that were in her possession at the time of her death; and if he will make a statement on the result of these inquiries.
    Mr. Brooke:I understand that she had one pistol in her possession at the time of her death, which had been lent to her by the man who was convicted of her manslaughter.

    Children and Young Persons Act
    Mr. MacCollasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department which Sections of the Children and Young Persons Act, 1963, have so far been brought into force; and when he intends to bring into operation the remaining provisions of the Act.
    Mr. Brooke: Sections 1, 14 and 15, 45 to 49, 54 to 56, 58 to 65 (save for subsection (2) of Section 64), and the related provisions in Schedules 3 and 5, were brought into operation on 1st October last. I intend to bring the remainder of Parts I and III (and the related provisions in the Schedules) into force early in 1964. I cannot yet be sure when it will be possible to bring Part II into force.
    Mr. MacColl:Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the nature of his Answer shows the obscurity of his policy? How is it possible for anybody to know how much of this Act is in force and what the law is? This Act of Parliament was passed unanimously by this House. Is it not rather an abuse of the right hon. Gentleman's prerogative so arbitrarily to select bits of it to be brought into force? Why not bring the rest of the Act into force; that would not cost any money?
    Mr. Brooke: If the hon. Member examined Statutory Instrument 1561, made on 12th September last—he has had plenty of time to do so—he could see exactly what is in force already. I

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    consider that I have been very expeditious in getting forward with the bringing of this Act into operation. I want to bring the remaining Sections into operation as soon as I can.
    Miss Bacon: Does the Home Secretary know that we are fully aware of what is in operation but that we are rather concerned about the parts of the Act which are not yet in operation? Is he aware that by 1964 the Act will have been passed for nearly a year and the Government will be getting credit for these things which probably will not be put into operation before the Government go out of office?
    Mr. Brooke: I think the Government will be in office in plenty of time to bring this into operation.

    Children (Emigration)
    Mrs. Butlerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many children in the care of local authorities have been sent overseas under emigration schemes where the parents or guardians had indicated their opposition when consulted under the provisions of the Children Act. 1948.
    Miss Pike: Since the Children Act, 1948, came into force the Secretary of State has given his consent, despite the objection of a parent, to proposals for the emigration of children in five cases, one concerning a family of five children. Two of these cases were under emigration schemes.
    Mrs. Butler:Is the Minister aware that many members of the public have been concerned when reading in the Press about these cases and very concerned that such cases can take place? Will the Minister, undertake a review of this type of incident, which is most unsatisfactory?
    Miss Pike: I should have thought from the figures I have given that it is true to say that this permission is asked only in very rare cases. My right hon. Friend has given permission only in those cases after very extensive consideration of the factors involved.
    Mrs. Butler: Is it not most unsatisfactory that these cases should take place?
    Miss Pike: This is embodied in the 1948 Act and this continues the regulation which was in previous Acts.

    Commonwealth Immigrants
    Mr. N. Pannellasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the net influx of Commonwealth immigrants for the period 1st July to 30th September, 1963, as compared with the corresponding period of 1962.
    Miss Pike: It was 24,117, compared with 6,048 in the same period in 1962.
    Mr. Pannell: Do not these figures indicate the rising tempo of arrivals and the fact that net immigration is running at a rate of over 90,000 a year, which is higher than the average for the three years preceding the Commonwealth Immigrants Act? Can she give an assurance that the Act will be properly implemented by severely restricting arrivals in the future?
    Miss Pike: I remind my hon. Friend that we shall be debating this subject very fully in the near future. I think that these are the sort of points which are better made in debate than in Question and Answer.
    Sir J. Eden:Will my hon. Friend assure the House that all these immigrants have fulfilled the requirements laid down by the Act that they should be seen before they come into this country?
    Miss Pike: Yes, Sir.
    Mr. N. Pannellasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the net influx of Commonwealth immigrants, excluding those from Australia, Canada and New Zealand for the period 1st July to 30th September 1963, as compared with the corresponding period of 1962.
    Miss Pike: It was 23,131, compared with 9,150 in the same period in 1962.
    Mr. Pannell: While thanking my hon. Friend for that Answer, may I ask her whether attention has been drawn to the recent book by F. A. McClintock entitled "Crimes of Violence" which shows that Irish and Commonwealth immigrants are responsible for 33 per cent, of all attacks on the police and over 20 per cent, of all public fights? Will these factors please be taken into consideration when further action is being considered about the implementation of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act?
    Miss Pike: I can assure my hon. Friend that all relevant factors will be taken into consideration.

    Paraffin-Vending Machines
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what liaison exists between his Department and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in respect of the power of local authorities to grant or refuse permission for the provision of paraffin-vending machines.
    Mr. Woodhouse:The Ministry have been informed by the Home Office that local authorities who have inquired have been told that my right hon. Friend has no plans for statutory control of the sale of paraffin from these machines.
    Mr. Sorensen: Do I understand that only one Ministry has any kind of relationship to this problem? Is he aware that among some authorities it is an important problem? Can he clarify the position a little more?
    Mr. Woodhouse: The application in the case which the hon. Member I am sure has in mind was for planning permission, and it was therefore dealt with by the Ministry of Housing. But when the Ministry drew our attention to the appeal in this case, we informed the Minister of Housing that the Home Secretary was aware of no sufficient evidence to justify control of such machines under safety legislation and it therefore rested with the Ministry of Housing alone.

    Summer Time
    Mr. John Hallasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if, in view of the successful experiments in other European countries, he will consider retaining Summer Time throughout the year.
    Mr. Woodhouse: This is a possibility which is kept under review but my right hon. Friend has no immediate proposal for legislation.
    Mr. Hall: Is my hon. Friend aware that despite the fact that it may be a misnomer to speak of summertime in our climate, nevertheless I have had a surprising amount of correspondence since I tabled this Question, and that
    1172
    the vast majority of my correspondents are very much in favour of introducing Summer Time throughout the year? Will he not do his best to cast a little light at the end of our days?
    Mr. Woodhouse: This is a matter on which, as my hon. Friend knows, there are divided opinions. Out of over 170 organisations which we have consulted on this matter, roughly 80 favoured going over to mid-European time but others had objection to it. Hon. Members will see that there are differences of opinion. We prefer at the moment to continue with the limited experiment of a three weeks' extension.

    Undesirable Magazines and Films
    Dame Irene Wardasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions he has initiated with the appropriate authorities to consider further steps to prohibit undesirable magazines and films from entering this country.
    Mr. Woodhouse:The Customs authorities have powers to seize indecent or obscene articles and have used them in the past three years to seize many thousands of paper back novels and magazines. These are matters over which the Home Office and the Board of Customs and Excise are constantly in touch.
    Dame Irene Ward:Will my right hon. Friend now deal with the other part of my Question? May I have an assurance that no film dealing with the life of Miss Keeler will be allowed to be shown in this country?
    Mr. Woodhouse: The answer to the latter part of the Question would depend on whether the film was obscene. A few films were seized both in 1962 and in 1963.

    CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER
    Mr. Donnellyasked the Prime Minister what are the Departmental responsibilities of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
    Mr. Stonehouseasked the Prime Minister what duties he has assigned to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
    Q1. Mr. Haleasked the Prime Minister what are the official responsibilities of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; and who will be responsible for answering questions in the House of Commons on matters for which he is responsible.
    The Prime Minister (Sir Alec Douglas-Home): It has not been customary to detail the functions discharged by senior Ministers who have no Departmental duties. The Duchy is not a Government Department and has no Vote. It has nevertheless been the practice to accept Questions put down to the Chancellor about those aspects of the Duchy administration which parallel the work of Government Departments. Such Questions will be answered by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General.
    Mr. Donnelly: While thanking the Prime 'Minister for that illuminating reply, may I ask him whether it means that he has no objection to the next Government appointing the Chief Executive of Transport House to the Government payroll?
    The Prime Minister: It depends what the next Government is. When the hon. Member says that the reply was illuminating, I would point out that it was almost exactly identical with that made by Lord Attlee in similar circumstances.
    Mr. Stonehouse: Is the Prime Minister aware that, although he may be uncertain, there is no doubt on this side of the House that we shall win the next election? Does he not understand that there is a great feeling outside the House that it is rather disgraceful that the Chairman of the Conservative Party should not only be given a peerage on a plate but should also be given a job of this character, and that many people regard this as bordering on the corrupt?
    The Prime Minister: Peerages on a plate are rather a sensitive subject for me. I do not think that the hon. Member need worry at all. My right hon. Friend takes a full part in all Government business and a full part in the other place.
    Mr. Wilson: Is the Prime Ministeraware that, while we may have two different views about who will win the next election, we regard it as wrong to
    1174
    appoint a practically full-time party chairman to the Government payroll? The right hon. Gentleman has two Ministers on the Government pay-roll who are doing Conservative Party work—the Minister Without Portfolio, who does Conservative Party propaganda, and the Chairman of the Conservative Party, in another place. Does he not feel that it is quite unwarrantable to put these charges on the taxpayer?
    The Prime Minister: What the right hon. Gentleman may feel in certain circumstances is an academic question. I have taken these steps, and I am perfectlysatisfied that my right hon. Friend takes a full part in the work of the Government and in another place. That is my answer.
    Mr. Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is simply a difference of standards between his side of the House and ours?

    LORD CHANCELLOR
    Mr. W. Hamiltonasked the Prime Minister if he will introduce legislation to establish a head of the judiciary divorced from Government responsibilities.
    The Prime Minister: No, Sir.
    Mr. Hamilton: Can the right hon. Gentleman explain in what capacity the Lord Chancellor appeared on the platform at the Tory Party conference in October? Will he say in what capacity the noble Lord addressed the German judges a few months ago, a speech in which he made a violent attack on the Leader of the Opposition in this House? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is the way to teach German judges the impartiality of the judiciary?
    Mr. Speaker:Ts the hon. Gentleman making an attack on the conduct of a Member of another House? If so, it would be a matter requiring a substantive Motion.
    Mr. Hamilton: I am asking a question of the Prime Minister, Sir, and I should very much like an answer to it.
    The Prime Minister—
    Mr. Speaker: It is a serious point of order here. I was asking the hon.

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    Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) to explain whether or no he was making an attack upon the conduct of a Member of the other House. If he is, it would require another form of procedure.
    Mr. Hamilton:I am simply making a comment, Mr. Speaker. I am asking for information. [Hon. Members: "No."] I am making a comment and, if need be, an attack on a member of Her Majesty's Government. Surely that is in order?
    Mr. Speaker: I think that on that answer I would have to say that what the hon. Member is seeking to urge does require a substantive Motion.
    Mr. C. Pannell:On a point of order. Surely, once a Question has been admitted to the Order Paper in this form it cannot be an attack to comment on what took place and on what the Lord Chancellor said? This surely would be an unwarranted defence of a functionary of the Government?
    Mr. Speaker:I do not defend anybody at all. I simply defend the rules of the House. The Question as tabled is in order. What I think does require a substantive Motion and is not in order as a question is the supplemental question.
    Mr. Hamilton: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I should very much like some clarity on this issue. In the course of my supplementary question I made what I thought was an attack or a Minister of the Crown. Surely I am entitled to do that. I should like guidance as to which rule of order indicates that such a question, made as an attack on z member of Her Majesty's Government, is out of order.
    Mr. Speaker: The difficulty about it is that I do not know in which capacity the noble Lord was engaged in these activities, whether he was acting as a member of the Government or not acting as i member of the Government—[Interruption] No, this is quite complicated. 1 do not know whether he was acting a; Lord Chancellor, whether as a Member of the other place, or where the attack is directed. [Interruption.] Order. The hon. Gentleman asked me to explain. I have the difficulty that I have a duty to protect Members of the other House.
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    whether they are Ministers or no, from attacks on their personal conduct. That is why I was asking the hon. Member for Fife, West what form the attack took. On the answer that the hon. Gentleman gave me I thought it was one that required under our rules a substantive Motion.
    Mr. Hamilton:Further to that point of order. I thought that I had made it clear in my supplementary question that I was asking the Prime Minister, first in what capacity the Lord Chancellor appeared on the platform at the Tory Party conference, and, secondly, in what capacity he addressed the German judges.
    Mr. Speaker: I would not back myself at the moment to remember whether the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question did not go on in some form of comment, because it was the comment that attracted my attention. Having heard what the hon. Gentleman now says and in great hope that we may not consume Question Time with points of order, I would allow that part of the supplementary question which consisted of asking the Prime Minister in what capacity the noble Lord did these things.
    The Prime Minister: I think in the usual way; the Lord Chancellor attends party conferences, as I understand it, as a member of the Government, but he does not take part in the discussions.
    Hon. Members: And in Germany?
    Mr. Hamilton:Will the Prime Minister now answer the second part of my supplementary question? In what capacity did the Lord Chancellor address the German judges?
    The Prime Minister: The Lord Chancellor was on a tour on behalf of the British Council, meeting various people under the auspices of the British Council, which I think is a perfectly proper thing to do, talking about matters which are his proper concern in this country. As I understand it, a speech had been made by the Leader of the Opposition which seemed to suggest that a Conservative Government—[Interruption.] I know that he has tried to explain the speech, but it seemed to suggest that a Conservative Government might be tempted to tamper with the judiciary. The Lord Chancellor thought it right to answer that.
    Mr. H. Wilson:First, if the Prime Minister seeks to bring me into it, will he read my speech first and quote it properly in the House? Secondly, since this matter has been raised, will the right hon. Gentleman explain why a Lord Chancellor going abroad in his judicial capacity under the aegis of the British Council, speaking in his judicial capacity to German judges and lawyers, should make a party political speech? Will he also explain why right hon. Members opposite cannot do as we do and keep party politics for this country and not for other countries?
    The Prime Minister:Of course, I have done the right hon. Gentleman the honour of reading his speech. Perhaps I might quote what he said:
    "There is widespread public concern, not least in responsible organs of the Conservative Press, that Mr. Macmillan does not have the regard which his office demands for that rigid distinction between the Executive and the independent judiciary which is the foundation of British liberties."
    Either that is blatant party politics, of which the right hon. Gentleman complains, or by implication the Prime Minister of Britain is interfering with the judiciary.
    Mr. H. Wilson rose—
    Mr. Bellenger rose—
    Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition does not observe that another right hon. Gentleman behind him is rising to a point of order.
    Mr. Bellenger: Mr. Speaker, as you have just ruled that it is inappropriate or out of order for hon. Members to criticise members of the other House, might we not have reciprocal treatment from members of the other House in regard to the Leader of the Opposition or members of the Opposition?
    Mr. Speaker: Let us not get involved in all these points of order. The Leader of the Opposition was on his feet seeking to ask some question, I believe.
    Mr. H. Wilson: Yes, Sir. Since the Prime Minister wants to pursue this, is he aware—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I did not bring my name into this. The Prime Minister did. Is the Prime Minister aware that, though he regards this
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    as a party political speech on my part—and it was made at a political meeting—it was at any rate done in this country, and it was not done under any false pretences of being a judicial or non-political speech?
    The Prime Minister: If I may say so with great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, when he makes a speech in this country he ought to consider its repercussions abroad.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sure that the House would like to make better progress with Questions.

    TSR2 AIRCRAFT
    Mr. Healeyasked the Prime Minister if he will appoint an independent inquiry to examine the cost of the TRS2 programme in relation to Britain's defence needs.
    The Prime Minister: No, Sir.
    Mr. Healey:In view of the very large proportion of our defence resources which the Minister of Defence informed the House last year this project was likely to pre-empt, and as the only independent authority which has been allowed to examine the project, namely, the Conservative Government of Australia, rejected this weapon on both military and economic grounds in favour of a comparable American aircraft, does not the Prime Minister feel that it would be wise to settle one way or the other the doubts which have arisen about this project, both inside and outside the Services, by appointing an independent inquiry to consider it?
    The Prime Minister: Ido not want the hon. Gentleman or the House to be denied any facts. Any information which could be given to an independent inquiry could equally well be given to the House, so I would prefer it to be done in that way.
    Sir J. Eden: Is it not a fact that much of the electrical equipment and many of the black boxes in this machine and also the engine itself have applications in other directions and in other parts of the industry? Is it not also the fact that the aircraft industry is a leader industry

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    in this country and its continued support is vital for the technological advancement of the nation?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is right. I have said that any information which would properly be given to an independent inquiry could be given to the House, though there is certain information which could not be disclosed either to an independent inquiry or to the House.
    Mr. Healey:With respect, is it not the case that, so far, no facts have been given to the House about costs, about the progress of the aircraft or even about the date on which it is expected to go into squadron service, except only in the most general and vague terms? Is it not also a fact that the Ministry of Defence and other Service Ministries have often set up independent inquiries of responsible persons who have been given information which possibly, and rightly, was not able to be given to the House? I have in mind the Nye Committee which inquired into the administration of the War Office. Why is it not possible to set up a similar committee in this case?
    The Prime Minister: As I said, I do not think that any facts that could be given to an independent inquiry could not also easily be given to the House. If we come to debate these matters I shall have no wish to conceal any facts that can properly be given. As to the cost of an aircraft or weapons of this kind, I do not think that such details are ever disclosed, for clearly if countries overseas know the cost they can calculate, for example, the number of aircraft we have.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. H. Wilson: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business of the House for next week?
The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 25TH NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Housing Bill, and Committee stage of the Money Resolution.
And, in view of their urgency, we shall ask the House to take the remaining stages of the Kenya Independence, the
Zanzibar, and the Bahama Islands (Constitution) Bills.
TUESDAY, 26TH NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Police Bill.
Motion on the Summertime Order.
WEDNESDAY, 27TH NOVEMBER—Committee and remaining stages of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill.
THURSDAY, 28TH NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Electricity and Gas Bill, and Committee stage of the Money Resolution.
Motion on the Judicial Offices (Salaries) Order.
FRIDAY, 29TH NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Navy, Army and Air Force Reserves Bill.
Committee and remaining stages of the Nigeria Republic Bill.
MONDAY, 2ND DECEMBER—The proposed business will be: Second Reading of the Air Corporations Bill, and Committee stage of the Money Resolution.
Mr. Wilson: On Monday's business, is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the proposal to take after the Housing Bill the remaining stages of the Kenya Independence, the Zanzibar and the Bahama Islands (Constitution) Bills, in view of the urgency of these matters, meets with no objection to taking them at a late hour? We appreciate that they must be got through.
What arrangements are being made for a two-day debate—and it must be a debate of two days—on the distribution of industry, with particular reference to the two White Papers on the North-East Coast and Scotland?
Mr. Lloyd: I am grateful for what the right hon. Gentleman has said about Monday's business. We are in some difficulty because of the dates which have been fixed for the independence of these countries.
We are discussing through the usual channels the second part of the right hon. Member's question and hope to be able to arrange for a debate to take place during the week after the week for which I have announced business.
Mr. Wise: Is there any prospect in the near future of our being able to discuss the Denning Report?
Mr. Lloyd: All I can say is, not next week.
Mr. G. Thomas: In view of the importance of the White Paper which was issued yesterday on the official status of the Welsh language—[Laughter.] The people v/ill hear that laughter in Wales; I will see to that—and in view of the complete absence of any reference to Wales in the White Paper, will we have an opportunity soon to discuss this official statement?
Mr. Lloyd: I would like an opportunity of talking to the hon. Member about that.
Sir C. Taylor: Will the Committee stage of the Police Bill be taken on the Floor of the House or upstairs?
Mr. Lloyd: It will be taken upstairs.
Mr. Shinwell:Will the Leader of the House consult his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about the practice of transferring Questions addressed to the Prime Minister to other Ministers? Could he ascertain from his right hon. Friend whether the Prime Minister vets the Questions himself; whether he looks at them and comes to a conclusion about whether or not they should be addressed to him?
Hon. Members: Order.
Mr. Shinwell: Am I in order, Mr. Speaker?
Mr. Speaker: As far as I heard the right hon. Gentleman, entirely, but I am not sure that I heard all that he said.
Mr. Shinwell:I was asking the Leader of the House to consult with the Prime Minister to ascertain whether the Prime Minister vets Questions himself, or whether someone does it for him and, the Questions having been looked at, there is any interference with the privilege of hon. Members.
Mr. Lloyd: There was a Question to my right hon. Friend on the Order Paper today on this matter. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will await the Answer, which will be contained in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
Mr. Shinwell: Surely I am entitled to ask a question. Why must I wait until I read the Answer in the OFFICIAL
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REPORT, whereupon I shall not be able to put a supplementary question?
Mr. Speaker: I cannot make Ministers answer Questions if they do not want to.
Mr. W. Yates:Taking into account the nation-wide interest in the question of televising Parliament, will my right hon. and learned Friend consult the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition and arrange for the House to have a discussion first, and simply, on the technical aspects of this problem?
Mr. Lloyd: This is certainly a matter in which many hon. Members on both sides of the House are very interested and I am now seeking to obtain their views on it. I will also consider my hon. Friend's suggestion.
Mr. Willis:Is the Leader of the House aware that the Housing Bill changes the law of Scotland far more than it does the law of England and Wales, and that it contains one Schedule of 20 pages affecting Scotland? Will he consult the Secretary of State and make arrangements for a Scottish Minister to speak in the debate on Monday, and, if possible, to have the Scottish Schedule at least referred to the Scottish Grand Committee?
Mr. Lloyd:I am not sure that I agree with what the hon. Member has said, but I will certainly discuss his remarks with my right hon. Friend.
Mr. McMaster: If there is to be a debate on Government assistance to the development areas, with particular reference to the White Papers on Scotland and the North-East, as mentioned in the Gracious Speech, will my right hon. Friend make sure that the Motion is widely enough drafted to cover Northern Ireland?
Mr. Lloyd: I will certainly consider what my hon. Friend has said.
Mr. Lawson:Is the Leader of the House aware that one Schedule in the Police Bill, covering 10 pages and more than 20 paragraphs, deals with Scotland alone and transforms the law of Scotland on the basis of legislation by reference? Since this will be an exceedingly difficult part of the Bill with which to deal, will the Leader of the House

1183
put the Schedule into a separate Bill and deal with the matter separately for Scotland?
Mr. Lloyd: No, Sir. I think that it is too late to do that.
Dame Irene Ward: Can we expect a new Royal Warrant next week on regular Service widows' pre-1958 pensions in view of the fact that the winter is approaching and that we want these pensions to be raised without further delay?
Mr. Lloyd: Not next week.
Mr. Frank Allaun: Will the Leader of the House consider making an early statement, perhaps jointly with you, Mr. Speaker, about the possibility of setting up a Press cuttings service for hon. Members?
Mr. Lloyd: As I have told the hon. Member, I will certainly consider what he said recently during an Adjournment debate.
Mr. Jennings:Despite the discussion we had during the debate on the Gracious Speech, can my right hon. and learned Friend say whether any time will be given in the near future for a debate on the Robbins Report, the Newsom Report and the Report of the Trend Committee on Civil Science—and, as I have just heard an hon. Member say, on the Jennings report, too?
Mr. Lloyd: I have no doubt that that is a matter that will be discussed through the usual channels.
Mr. C. Pannell: Will the Leader of the House consider making a statement at this time next week about the possibility of setting up an Accommodation Committee? Will he bear in mind that just before the Summer Recess we had a debate in which it was demonstrated that Sir William Holford's plans for Bridge Street would have to receive the consideration of the House to ensure that we got the sort of accommodation we wanted? Will he also bear in mind that the proximity of a General Election might make hon. Gentlemen opposite the principal beneficiaries of any extra accommodation?
Mr. Lloyd: I have already had some conversations with hon. Gentlemen on
1184
this matter, without any forecasts included in them, and I will consider the hon. Gentleman's suggestion.
Mr. Robert Cooke:Will my right hon. and learned Friend try to find time in the near future for a discussion of the perfectly appalling building which the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors proposes to erect in Parliament Square?
Mr. Lloyd: I will consider what my hon. Friend has said.
Mrs. White: Will the Leader of the House try to find time to discuss the cinematograph industry, and the serious state of British film production at present; and also the future of the British Film Finance Corporation?
Mr. Lloyd: I will consider that matter, too.
Mr. Steele:Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman reconsider the questions put by my hon. Friends the Members of Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) and Motherwell (Mr. Lawson)? There is a growing practice of adding to United Kingdom Bills the Scottish interpretation, and it becomes ridiculous when it takes a Schedule of 20 pages to enable that to be done? Is it that the Scottish Ministers are now becoming afraid of the Scottish Members in the Scottish Grand Committee? Would it not be possible for the Leader of the House to agree to meet a deputation, to see whether we cannot do something about this, and at least get the Scottish parts of the Bills sent to a Scottish Committee?
Mr. Lloyd: I will gladly meet any hon. Members who want to talk about the matter, and will go into it myself.
Mr. Ross:Can the Leader of the House say whether he consulted the Prime Minister before deciding to insult Scottish law in this way? Or did he consult the Scottish Law Officers, whom we have never seen? Is he aware that he is quite wrong in saying that it is too late to do a certain thing? If he consults his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary he will find that part of the Town and Country Planning Bill had to be reprinted in a special Scottish Bill.
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman look at what happened to

1185
the Teachers Superannuation Bill, some years ago, when the whole of the Scottish part of that Measure was taken out and sent to the Scottish Grand Committee?
If the right hon. and learned Gentleman knew his job, and appreciated the rights of Scottish Members and of Scottish law, he would not continue with this farce of lumping matters relating to the police and housing in this way. Is he aware that, hitherto, the Scottish aspect of such Measures has always had special legislation?
Mr. Lloyd:I have said, rather more politely than has the hon. Gentleman, that I will look into the matter, and meet hon. Members who want to see me./membercontribution>
Mr. Parkin: Has the Leader of the House seen a couple of Motions on the Order Paper concerning the Church Commissioners? Does he not consider that as seven senior Ministers are members of that body it would not be a bad idea to have a debate in this Chamber from time to time on how they carry out their jobs?
Before he answers that general matter, is he also aware that I want to take those Motions off the Order Paper because, in regard to the narrow issue of two or three houses and a particular course of action, the Church Estate Commissioners have taken immediate action, for which I am very grateful?
[That, in the opinion of this House, legislation ought to be introduced to relieve Mr. Speaker of his membership, however nominal, of the Church Commissioners, in view of the fact that the activities of this body have now become controversial in regard to the management of their estates.]
[That this House deplores the terms of letters sent by Milles Day, solicitors, claiming to act for the Church Commissioners of England, to Mr. Kerr, protected sub-tenant of 54 Warwick Avenue, W.9, and to Mr. Gilmore, of 56 Warwick Avenue, demanding possession of their flats, deplores also attempts to evict other sub-tenants, and the previous eviction of sub-tenants from 52 Warwick Avenue, and calls upon the Church Commissioners to formulate a policy directive to the
1186
Estates Commissioners and their agents more in tune with public opinion.]
Mr. Lloyd: I cannot promise that I will be able to find time to discuss the Motion that remains on the Order Paper.
Sir C. Taylor: If my right hon. and learned Friend cannot find the time next week, would he bear in mind that many hon. Members on both sides would like a debate in the near future on the whole policy of trading stamps?
Mr. Lloyd: There are already a great many candidates for discussion in the House, and I will simply have to say to my hon. Friend that I will take note of his suggestion.
Mr. Wigg:Is the Leader of the House aware that, just about a year ago, the Government set up a Select Committee to help them out of the difficulty occasioned by large numbers of ex-Service men standing at by-elections? Is he further aware that the Committee, under his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, met during the Recesses? An interim Report was presented to the House, and just before the Summer Recess the final Report was presented, and the then Leader of the House assured my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot)—who, we all hope, will soon be back with us—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."]—that an early debate would take place.
As some of us have laboured on this subject for a long time—involving, as it does, the liberty of the subject and the right of Service men to stand for Parliament—will not the Leader of the House take an early opportunity to bring the matter before the House?
Mr. Lloyd: I certainly cannot do so next week, but I will bear in mind what the hon. Gentleman has said.
Mr. Speaker: Mr. William Hamilton.
Mr. W. Hamilton rose—
Mr. Wigg: I was not asking the right hon. and learned Gentleman to bear in mind what I say, but what his predecessor said.
Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot make progress unless I am allowed to call hon. Members without two people being on their feet at the same time.
Mr. W. Hamilton: Can the Leader of the House say when the Hire Purchase Bill will be available, and can he give an assurance on this matter that, in view of the much greater abuses of hire purchase in Scotland—with the difference in law there—there will be a separate Scottish Bill this Session?
Mr. Lloyd: The answer to the first part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question is, "Shortly", and the answer to the second part is that 1 will consider it.
Mr. Pavitt: Will the Leader of the House find time to discuss the AnnisGillie Report on General Practice? Does he recall that the Government have published ten-year plans on the other two sections of the profession, and will he consult his right hon. Friend the Minister of Health on how the Government propose to deal with this very important facet of the Health Service, and make an early statement?
Mr. Lloyd: I will certainly consult my right hon. Friend. As for an early debate, I will add it to the list of possibilities.
Mr. Wigg: Further to what I have asked the Leader of the House, will he bear in mind the undertaking given not to him, but to the House of Commons?

BRITISH EUROPEAN AIRWAYS AND BRITISH OVERSEAS AIRWAYS CORPORATIONS
The Minister of Aviation (Mr. Julian Amery): With your permission Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, 1 should like to make a statement about the British European Airways Corporation and the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
Lord Douglas, who will be 70 in December, will be retiring from the chairmanship of B.E.A. at the end of the financial year. He will then have completed fifteen years as Chairman and I am sure the House will wish to join me in paying tribute to his great services to British aviation. Lord Douglas will be succeeded by Mr. Anthony Milward who has been Chief Executive of B.E.A. for the last seven years.
Sir Matthew Slattery will be retiring from the chairmanship of B.O.A.C. in
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the new year. He has given B.O.A.C. great service in a very difficult period.
Sir Matthew Slattery will be succeeded as Chairman by Sir Giles Guthrie, who is a member of the board of B.E.A. and has an outstanding aviation record in peace and war.
I understand that it is Sir Giles Guthrie's intention to undertake himself some of the functions of the Managing Director. Sir Basil Smallpeice, after many years of devoted service to B.O.A.C., has agreed to retire to facilitate the changes.
I have carefully considered whether a merger between B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. would be in the best interests of British aviation, but, on balance, I have decided against it. I am convinced, however, that the two Corporations need to work more closely together than they have in the past. Sir Giles Guthrie, the Chairman-designate of B.O.A.C., will accordingly retain his seat as a part-time member of the board of B.E.A.; and Mr. Anthony Milward, the Chairman-designate of B.E.A., will also become a part-time member of the board of B.O.A.C.
Before we rose for the Summer Recess I undertook to publish a White Paper about B.O.A.C.'s financial problems, This White Paper will be available in the Vote Office when I sit down. I will not attempt to summarise it now, but the House will want to know the immediate steps the Government are proposing to take. These are set out at the end of the White Paper and are briefly as follows.
First, we have decided to strengthen the management of the Corporation.
Second, I am inviting Sir Giles Guthrie to prepare a plan during the coming year for making the Corporation financially sound. When this plan has been considered we can then decide how to deal with the accumulated deficit and how to provide for the financing of the Corporation.
Meanwhile, some losses are likely to continue before the new plan can be drawn up and put into practice. I will, therefore, shortly be asking the House for an extension of the powers I already have under the Air Corporations Act 1962, to make loans for the purpose of financing deficits on revenue account.
Mr. Lee: I am sure that the whole House will join with the right hon. Gentleman in what he has said about the services rendered to aviation by Lord Douglas and Sir Matthew Slattery.
May I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on being able to get through a statement of this type without once mentioning the Corbett Report? I assume that when the right hon. Gentleman tells us that Sir Basil Smallpeice agreed to retire to facilitate the changes it was the kind of agreement which the right hon. and learned Gentleman the present Leader of the House made to retire a year or so ago.
In view of the concern which we all now feel about the affairs of B.O.A.C., will the right hon. Gentleman now agree to publish the Corbett Report in full? The right hon. Gentleman is to publish the White Paper. What guarantee have we that the main recommendations of the Corbett Report are even mentioned in the White Paper? Is it the case, for instance, that the Corbett Report recommended that the £80 million of accumulated deficits, most of which came about as a result of the Government's own policy, should be written off and that the Government have refused to do so, and that it is failure to agree on this point which has led to the fourth retirement, of Sir Matthew Slattery and the chief executive of B.O.A.C.?
Is it the case that the right hon. Gentleman and his colleauges are arguing that if the £80 million is to be written off it may as well be done by the incoming Labour Government and not by the present Administration? Is it also the case that the original intention in the White Paper, and the reason why we have had to wait so long for it, was an announcement that there would be a joint board of both Corporations of which Sir Matthew Slattery would be the chairman?
Finally, it is the case that during the negotiations with the B.O.A.C. board, which, I understand, did not even know the contents of the Corbett Report, the right hon. Gentleman was threatening that the whole of the southern route of B.O.A.C. might well be hived off to B.U.A., a private corporation? Has the right hon. Gentleman seen a statement in the Evening Standard today that Radio Rentals representatives have stated that a Mr. Charles E. Hardie, of
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Radio Rentals, has also been given a seat on the board of B.O.A.C? As the new chairman also belongs to Radio Rentals, could the Minister assure us that this is not a further take-over by that organisation? We should be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman could answer these questions, because, frankly, we are thoroughly dissatisfied that a vital report made as a result of the right hon. Gentleman sending these people to B.O.A.C. is still not available to us, and we still insist that it should be made available at once.
Mr. Amery: The hon. Gentleman has asked a number of questions and I will try to deal with them. It is quite true that Mr. Hardie, a very distinguished accountant, will be joining the board of B.O.A.C. This is a vacancy, which arises in January on the retirement of Mr. Staple, the present secretary of the company. This has nothing to do with the other changes that I have announced.
There has been no discussion whatever of hiving off the southern routes to anybody else, nor has there been any particular discussion of the southern routes with the Corporation.
Equally, there has been no discussion with the Corporation about a joint board. I took the opinions of both B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. on merger earlier on, and the White Paper contains a summary of the arguments for and against. I have already expressed the Government's views on this
The hon. Gentleman suggested that Sir Matthew Slattery had resigned on the question of writing off the deficit. It may help to clear the air on this, in view of Press statements this morning if I read to the House the letter of resignation which I received from Sit Matthew Slattery on 19th November. It reads:
"You have told me in our recent talks of your plans for reconstituting the B.O.A.C Board In particular, you expressed the view that it would be necessary, at any rate for the next couple of years, for the Chairman to undertake many, if not most, of the duties that are at present assumed by the Managing Director.
I explained that I would not myself feel disposed to attempt this double task. You then told me that in these circumstances you would propose to appoint Sir Giles Guthrie to the Chair when my term of office expired on the 28th July, 1964.
On reflection, I have come to the conclusion that it would be in the best interests

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of the Corporation if the changes you have in mind were introduced as soon as convenient rather than after a delay of some months. You will be telling Parliament about your plans in the course of this month, and to avoid leaving uncertainty in the minds of Corporation's staff it would be best, in my view, if the new appointments were made as soon as possible after your statement.
If you agree, therefore, I would propose to vacate the chairmanship of the Corporation on 31st December, 1963 and so make way for Guthrie to succeed me as Chairman."
This letter makes it plain that there was no issue of policy at stake. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Indeed, there has been no discussion of the question of writing off the deficits. The issue has been simply one of organisation and the best time for reorganisation to take place.
On the question of the deficit itself, our view is that it would be illogical and wrong to ask the House to write off £80 million of public money until we can recommend a plan to the House, which we think will put the Corporation on its feet financially. When we are in a position to do that, we can then tackle the question of the deficit and consider whether it should be written off, in whole or in part.
On the hon. Gentleman's first point concerning publication of the Corbett Report, I have already explained to the House that it was commissioned on the understanding that it would be confidential, and the evidence was given to Mr. Corbett on this understanding. I am not, therefore, prepared to publish the Report.
Sir J. Eden: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in view of the heavy losses sustained by the Corporation, any step which could put the whole of this important national asset on a sound commercial basis would be very much welcomed by all sides of the House? Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that every encouragement will be given to Sir Giles Guthrie to proceed as rapidly as possible with his plan, which, at the same time, will bring a new spirit to the Corporation and give new opportunities to ensure that we hold our place in the forefront of this market?
Mr. Amery: The Corporation has done a tremendous job in terms of reliability,
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safety and service to passengers. It has not yet been able to break even financially. I hope that under the new management it will be able to achieve this result. I am sure that both sides of the House will wish to give Sir Giles Guthrie all possible support in the task which he has undertaken.
Mr. Grimond: Does not Sir Matthew Slattery's letter show that he has reservations about the new arrangement by which the new chairman will discharge some of the functions of managing director, and is it not a fact that these reservations are widely shared? Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether there is to be a managing director and, if so, what breakdown of functions between him and the chairman there will be?
Is it not a fact that the Government have had the Corbett Report since July and that it would appear from the right hon. Gentleman's statement that there is still no plan whatsoever for improving the financial state of the Corporation and, meanwhile, the deficit is increasing? Can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that this plan will be put into operation very quickly? Will he bear in mind that the same thing happened over the railways? We were assured for years that the deficit would not be written off, though, of course, in the end it was written off.
Mr. Amery:The appointment of a managing director and the functions of management are matters for the chairman of the board and not for me. Accordingly, I will leave this to Sir Giles Guthrie, though, as I said in my statement, I understand that he proposes to take on some of the functions of managing director himself. As for the plan, it can only be drawn up by the new management. There are, no doubt, sections of the Corbett Report which will be very valuable in helping the management to draw up this plan.
Mr. McMaster: Has my right hon. Friend's attention been drawn to comments in this morning's Press and on television and the radio about serious differences of policy? Can he say whether or not these statements are correct?
Mr. Speaker: It is not in order to ask a Minister whether he has seen something in the Press in order to ask him to deny

1193
or confirm it. It is not part of his duty. I am afraid that we sometimes forget that.
Mr. Albu: Can the Minister say whether or not he has accepted now the recommendations made by the Select Committee on Estimates as long ago as 1959 about Government interference with British Overseas Airways Corporation with regard to routes causing part of its losses and to the costs of developing British aircraft also causing losses, and whether he also took into account the Report of the Select Committee in February, 1962, which showed that the Corporation's costs were coming down substantially and had, in fact, been the subject of a much greater reduction than in many other international airlines?
Mr. Amery: The hon. Gentleman's questions raise big subjects which I think we had better treat in the debate which will take place shortly.
Mr. P. Williams: Can my right hon. Friend say when the debate on the White Paper will take place? Will he not agree that one of the greatest tasks of the new chairman is to restore the morale of B.O.A.C. which has sagged considerably, for whatever reasons, over recent years? Would he also accept the thanks of some of us who have taken an interest in these matters that there is not a merger, and that, in practice, a sharing of membership of the boards of the Corporations can produce the best possible results for the two Corporations without destroying the morale of B.E.A.?
Mr. Amery: It is my belief that the system of interlocking boards will achieve the advantages of merger without its disadvantages. I have every confidence that Sir Giles Guthrie will be able to give a very good lead to the staff of B.O.A.C. I think that the morale of the pilots and of the operating staff is very good. I have no anxiety there. My anxiety has been on the financial side.
Mr. H. Wilson:Is it not perfectly clear that there has been for some time a real crisis of confidence between the Government and the board of B.O.A.C, and that we cannot get over that crisis by some of the words used this afternoon? Is it not proved by the fact that
1194
here we have a Minister, who, no doubt, considers it right, who has been interfering a great deal more on the question of the allocation of functions between members of the board, between the chairman and the managing director, than is normal in the case of other public boards?
This being so, since there is great public anxiety about this, and since, quite clearly, there has been a clash—and whether he was sacked or has resigned in protest is a matter, to some extent, of words—is there not a real obligation on the right hon. Gentleman now to publish the Corbett Report so that the House can consider it?
Mr. Amery: The right hon. Gentleman's assertions of a crisis of confidence are his own. They are not mine. As I have said, Iam not prepared to publish the Corbett Report. It was commissioned as a confidential document. The evidence was given on a confidential basis. I think that the right hon. Gentleman would be the first to agree that, if we are to have nationalised industries, it is important that the Government should be able to commission a consultant to make inquiries for them, without necessarily having to publish the findings on every single occasion. I believe myself that the problem of B.O.A.C. can be solved and overcome, and I believe that, with the co-operation of the new management, it can and will be achieved.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot debate this now without a Question before the House.

BILL PRESENTED
AIR CORPORATIONS
Bill to extend the powers of the British Overseas Airways Corporation and the British European Airways Corporation to borrow from the Minister of Aviation sums required by them for financing any accumulated deficits of theirs on revenue account; presented by Mr. Amery; supported by Mr. Green and Mr. Marten; read the First time; to be read a Second time Tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 17.]

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  DEFENCE TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  4.4 p.m.
  The Minister of Defence (Mr. Peter Thorneycroft): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The purpose of the Bill is to implement the Government's decision, which was announced last March, radically to reorganise the central organisation of defence and to set up a unified Ministry of Defence under a Secretary of State. The House will recall that the details of all this were published in the White Paper in July. We had what I think was a valuable debate at that time in the House and I do not want to repeat all the arguments which we then used. At the same time, I think that I should say something about the background.
  We are dealing here in the Bill, albeit the effective Clause is a short one, with offices and organisations of really great historical interest and significance. The development of the Service Departments is deeply interwoven in the fabric of our history, and the reasons for some of the present forms and methods of administration and divisions of responsibility and titles are really now lost in the mists of time and in controversies the exact reasons for which have often been forgotten.
  I will not try to give the House an analysis of this historical past. Those familiar with it, and there are many in the House who have taken a great interest in these affairs, have full knowledge of the obligations of the Cinque Ports and the Admirals of the North and South and the original Navy Board, which is very much associated with the name of Samuel Pepys.
  All through that history there have been examinations and reports made, one or two of which are of significance in the light of our present discussion. There was Lord Howick's Report in 1837, which said:
  "If the military defence of the Empire is to be conducted upon a footing of economy as well as of efficiency it appears obviously necessary and expedient that there should be some one member of the Government particularly charged with the duty of exercising
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  a general supervision and control in all these matters."
  There was the Duke of Wellington's passionate opposition to what he then regarded as a revolutionary conception, his condemnation of what he termed
  "This new Leviathan, a Secretary at War …placing authority in the hands of one Member of the House of Commons and Cabinet."
  And then nothing happened, because, obviously, of the opposition of the Duke of Wellington, at that time a powerful proponent on the stage of our affairs.
  There was the Northbrook Committee which, in 1868, had said that
  "No scheme which is not based on the accomplished fact that all the Departments of military administration are housed under the same roof can be otherwise than abortive."
  More latterly, we come to the appointment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) as Minister of Defence, which carried, really, the whole conception of defence organisation from the single Service into the inter-Service field. And so to our debate today.
  The history of these defence arrangements is full of colour and of controversy and it forms the basis, the foundation, on which we have to build. I would say just this about those great organisations, that whatever criticisms one can offer of the past, whatever amendments or alterations we offer now, they served their country very well, and their success rested not on administrative perfection—because they were often changed—but rested, as the success of these proposals must, on the quality of the serving officers and civil servants who are called upon to man them.
  The proposals now made represent quite formidable alterations. I explained in the summer the reasons why we considered them necessary. In essence, they were twofold: first, to make it easier to formulate and to control an integrated defence policy, that is to say, to have one defence policy which was more than a synthesis of four different themes drawn from different sources: and, secondly, and also important, to improve our control over defence spending. Those were the objectives that we had in mind.
  I stated then the main principles which we intended to follow. The first

  1197
  was that we must set up a single unified Ministry of Defence, that there must be one Ministry with one Minister effectively in charge of all these affairs. Secondly, however much he might be in charge, he must have facilities to decentralise responsibility because, without that capacity to decentralise—which one had to build into the machine—the burden at the top would become quite intolerable.
  Thirdly, whatever organisation were set up, we must make it sufficiently flexible, because, with the best will in the world, no one can today foresee precisely what the requirements of some Government may be ten years from now or what the requirements of the defences of this country may be ten years from now. Therefore, we must not set up anything so inflexible and so bounded by legislative barriers of all kinds that we cannot change it; we must have room to develop as we go along.
  Fourthly, we must get a proper balance between the military, the administrative and the scientific sides of this new Ministry. Particularly on the scientific side, to which I attach great importance—there has been much discussion about the use of science in the modern age recently—I believe that in the Ministry of Defence we have already been setting something of an example in these matters. We have scientists in at every level. We have them considering problems, not only purely scientific ones, and putting their ideas forward on many aspects of strategy not solely so that we may accept the views of scientists, but so that their views may be a challenge to the views of the establishment within the Ministry. I attach the greatest importance in this new organisation to having the scientists built in with the administrators and with the military, not only at the top but at every level.
  Fifthly, but perhaps as important as any, we must, whatever we do in the central organisation, preserve the individual loyalty of fighting men to their ship, to their squadron, or to their regiment. This we must always keep in mind.
  Lastly, for reasons which I gave, the Ministry of Aviation is not to be part of a unified Department. If I may
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  borrow a word from my right hon. Friend, we are not here proposing a merger in these events, but we are proposing that the links should be closer, including moving the main echelons of the Ministry of Aviation into the same building as the Ministry of Defence.
  Based on these principles, the internal structure is as follows. There will be a Secretary of State with full control over, and responsibility for, the whole Department. He will be assisted by three Ministers of State and three Parliamentary Secretaries. The Ministers of State will undertake any task over the whole defence field—I emphasise that—which may be allocated to them, and each of them will be responsible to the Secretary of State for a designated Service. There will be a Defence Council which will be established with the Secretary of State in the chair, and its main job will be to consider and weigh the main problems of defence policy and to exercise powers of command and control at present exercised by the Board of Admiralty and the Army and Air Councils.
  Mr. E. Shinwell: May I, at his stage, ask a question which is extremely important? The right hon. Gentleman has emphasised the imperative need for injecting the advice of scientists in the defence field. I accept that wholeheartedly. But the Bill provides that the Defence Council should be responsible, among other things, for the command of Her Majesty's Forces. Will the Minister explain why it is necessary to have scientific advisers determining policy in respect of the command of Her Majesty's Forces?
  Mr. Thorneycroftt: If the right hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I shall come on to the particular Clause to which he refers and explain why.
  To digress for a moment, because of the right hon. Gentleman's experience and interest in these matters, I say just this. If we are to have a central body at the top which is to decide the really big questions of defence policy, it would, I think, be mad at this point in the century to exclude the chief scientist from consideration of problems of this kind. Looking ahead, as this body will have to do, to see the kind of dangers one may face five, ten or fifteen years' hence—one knows the length of time

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  over which problems tend to develop—and the sort of way one should meet them, one can do these things only by having the best scientific advice possible at one's disposal.
  Perhaps I may develop that a little later in my remarks.
  Mr. George Wigg rose—
  Mr. Thorneycroft: I do not want to speak for too long. If I give way to thehon. Gentleman, may I have an understanding from the House that I shall then be allowed to proceed, since I am anxious that others should have the opportunity to intervene?
  Mr. Wigg: It is rather important that we get this clear at the start. As I understood him, the right hon. Gentleman has already introduced a new principle. I thought, when we discussed the White Paper, that the three Ministers of State would operate at a lower level in the three Service Departments. Now, the right hon. Gentleman tells us something which, to me, is quite new, that they will be designated to operate over the whole field of defence, right across the Services.
  There is one element of Service organisation to which I attach enormous importance, namely, the maintenance of discipline. Are we to have the administration and maintenance of discipline run by someone going right across the three Services, with three different traditions and with three different Acts, or have I misunderstood, and will it remain as at present, under the three separate Services?
  Mr. Thorneycroft: If the hon. Gentleman will wait a little for me to come to discipline and courts-martial, I shall deal with that.
  On the first point he makes, which I am on now—I agree with what he says about its significance—I attach the greatest importance, as I made clear in the summer, to the Ministers of State having more than a single Service responsibility. The Ministers of State will have a responsibility right across the defence field, and they will be doing any job in the defence field which is allocated to them by the Secretary of State. Indeed, I do not think that one could have in any sense a truly integrated
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  Department unless one had an arrangement of that kind.
  Mr. Arthur Henderson Mr. Arthur Henderson(Rowley Regis and Tipton)rose—
  Mr. Thorneycroft:I shall now continue, if I may; otherwise, this will become just a cross-examination. We are to debate the matter all day. Hon. and right hon. Members will be able to make speeches, and there will be a reply.
  I come now to day-to-day management. In general, this will be delegated to Navy, Army and Air Force boards which will discharge, on behalf of the Defence Council, the judicial and quasi-judicial functions—this touches on the point raised by the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg)—of the present board and councils. A Minister of State will normally deputise for the Secretary of State as chairman of these boards. Below board level there will be a three-prong structure, military, administrative and scientific. I shall take each of these three now and say a few words about them.
  The military side will be headed by the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Chiefs of Staff, who will remain the principal military advisers to the Government. The Chiefs of Staff—I say again what I said in July—will remain as the professional heads of their respective Services.
  The naval, general and air staffs and the joint Services staffs which already exist will now form a defence staff. Within that general concept, certain changes will take place and where the nature of the work is suitable a full integration of the staffs is planned, particularly in the case of intelligence and operations.
  The administrative staffs will be headed by a Permanent Under-Secretary—I am talking now of the Civil Service side—assisted by four Second Permanent Under-Secretaries, one for each of the Services and one for the Defence Secretariat. These staffs will be formed from the civil administration staffs of all three Services into a single team with a direct line of responsibility to the Permanent Under-Secretary.
  There is new machinery for long-term financial planning and the detailed management of the money voted will be delegated to the Second Permanent Under-Secretaries, who will be the accounting

  1201
  officers for their respective Departments. I know that that is a matter of particular interest to those hon. Members concerned with the Estimates Committee.
  The chief scientific adviser will be in charge of all the scientific effort of all three Services in the new Department, and there are various changes in the scientific committee structure with which I need not, perhaps, detain the House at this stage.
  This then, in outline, is the new organisation, and the proposals, if not acclaimed were at least, I believe, generally accepted in the House in July. Some hon. Members thought that we might be over-centralising and others thought that we were not going far enough. But I think that there was a general consensus that the reorganisation was necessary and well contrived.
  Our intention, subject to the wishes of Parliament on the Bill, is that this organisation should come into effect in April next. All this, of course, has meant, and will continue to mean, a good deal of work. The staffs mainly concerned with policy clearly need to be housed together and they have been allotted the Board of Trade-Air Ministry building in Whitehall. That will hold about 3,400 of a total staff of about 25,000.
  The Minister of Aviation, with the principal officers associated with his headquarters, will go into the main building. The planning of the accommodation, with each section close to the other sections with which it deals, not only those within its own Service but in sister Services, has been a major exercise. We have also had to design a new system of operations rooms and a new system of communications to take the place of the four separate departmental systems which operate at present.
  All this work, which I think any hon. Member can understand is on a large scale, is making good progress, and, unless there is an unexpected hold up, the occupation of the Whitehall main building should take place on vesting day. But, if the new arrangement is to function efficiently at once, as many as possible of the new features should be put into operation beforehand.
  We have, of course, already done a good deal of that work. The Defence Operations Executive has been formed.
  1202
  The Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff dealing with operational requirements has already been appointed and his staff has started work. The Second Permanent Under-Secretary (Defence Secretariat), whose job it is to identify particular parts of this organisation where integration might go further, has been appointed, as has the Deputy Under-Secretary (Programmes and Budget), while a great deal of consultation and study has gone on into financial techniques. We have also been studying the latest methods not only in this country but in some other countries as well, and have made progress on the scientific side.
  In short, everything we can do before April is being done, but some things must wait until we move into the main building. This is a very big job. It is a vast array of administrative problems, ranging from questions like display arrangements in the new operations centre to the uniforms of the messengers. It is being done to the best of our ability.
  The Bill itself is concerned solely with the reallocation of statutory powers now with the Service Ministers and Departments. It is not concerned with the prerogative powers under which many of the activities of the Service Departments are carried on. Nor is it concerned with the details of the reorganisation, the transfers of staff, the alterations in lines of responsibility, allocations of accommodation or the 1,001 administrative details I have been touching on. It has, therefore, been possible, and I hope that the House will count it to our credit, to boil down the legislative implications of what is a very large reorganisation to a comparatively simple Bill.
  The Bill is part only of the process of setting up a united Ministry of Defence. The other formal step is, of course, the appointment by Her Majesty of the Secretary of State for Defence and the establishment, under the Royal prerogative, of a Defence Council and of Navy, Army and Air Force boards. Clause 1 makes it plain, starting as it does with the word "if"—which is a rather unusual beginning—that the proposed legislation is dependent upon Her Majesty being pleased to make such arrangements.
  I have been authorised to say that Her Majesty has been informed of the con-

  1203
  tent of the Bill and has been graciously pleased to indicate that she will, in due course, be prepared to make the necessary arrangements under the prerogative powers.
  Under these arrangements, the offices of First Lord of the Admiralty, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air and Minister of Defence, together with the Board of Admiralty and the Army and Air Councils will disappear. It is necessary to transfer the statutory powers which hitherto have rested in them to the new Secretary of State for Defence and to the Defence Council. That, in brief, is what Clause 1 does.
  The allocation of functions between the Secretary of State and the Defence Council is explained in paragraph 2 of the Memorandum. Briefly, what it does is to perpetuate the division of powers between the Ministers and the Councils broadly as it exists today. The powers of the Secretary of State for War and the Secretary of State for Air are transferred to the Secretary of State for Defence. The powers of the Army Council and the Air Council are transferred to the Defence Council.
  The statutory powers of the Admiralty have to be dealt with rather differently because the whole of the Admiralty is in Commission, but they are being allocated on a broadly similar division. Of course, the historic office of Lord High Admiral—at present held by the Lords of Admiralty in Commission—with its title and flag will be assumed or, as some say, reassumed by Her Majesty, while the statutory and other functions will be discharged by the Secretary of State and the Defence Council.
  Clause 1 (5) deals with the relationship between the Defence Council and the three Service boards. It provides that subject to any direction by the Defence Council, the boards can discharge finally—this is important,"finally"—any function of that council. The point here is, as explained in the White Paper, that the council will deal mainly with policy. The boards will deal mainly with management. I do not want to be pedantic about this because, as we all know, these overlap. The council plainly is free to intervene at any point. Meanwhile, we must make the fullest possible use of the
  1204
  large complex administrative structure which exists.
  The real problem that faces me and my associates at this moment is to keep the shop open while we are carrying out this reorganisation, and what we have to do is to use to the full the whole of the administrative organisation and, indeed, to continue it while at the same time introducing these reforms. Many of the functions which are mainly managerial will be appropriate, and it is the Government's intention that they will continue to be discharged by the boards subject to any directions which are given.
  This applies particularly—this is part of the point raised by the hon. Member for Dudley—to the judicial and quasi-judicial powers, the review of disciplinary awards, the redress of grievances, and so on. As I made clear in the White Paper, our intention is that these will be discharged finally by the boards. I do not want to interfere with the long-established practice that appeals against finding and sentence of courts-martial should be dealt with by the Service to which the accused belongs. These arrangements preserve that situation, which I am sure is the sensible thing to do.
  Mr. Denis Healey: Could the right hon. Gentleman clear up one point? I am clear, so far as the boards of the various Services are concerned, that the existing functions will in a sense be retained, but what is the function of the Minister who is now given part-responsibility? Does he have the final political responsibility in connection with each of the Services, or is the political responsibility that of the new Secretary of State himself?
  Mr. Thorneycroft: The political responsibility is with the Secretary of State himself.
  I should like in a moment to come on to discuss some of the implications of that arrangement in the House of Commons. But there is no question about the principle of the matter. The final political responsibility for the whole Department must rest with the Secretary of State. In other words, this reorganisation is not just a conglomeration of existing individual political entities under one roof. It is

  1205
  the creation of one new political entity or Ministry under a responsible Secretary of State
  Mr. Wigg: Suppose that Private Snooks has been sentenced to five years' imprisonment and has gone through all the appeal procedure, and then the case goes to the Secretary of State for War for review. Suppose then that the Secretary of State for War, on the six-monthly review, says "No" and refuses the appeal. Would the Secretary of State for Defence set up another appeal court or would the decision of the Secretary of State for War finish the matter?
  Mr. Thorneycroft: This is the meaning of the words "finally discharged". That is to say, it will go on exactly as it does now. If Private Snooks wishes to appeal against the court-martial finding, the case will go to the Army board as it would have gone to the Army Council which would finally discharge the appeal.
  Mr. Shinwell: In the normal case to which my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) referred, confirmation is vested in the present political chiefs of the Service Departments. As I understand it, confirmation will finally be vested in the Secretary of State for Defence?
  Mr. Thorneycroft: The Secretary of Stale is the chairman of the Army board. There is no question about the ultimate political responsibilty. As we all know, in practice, if there is a great debate, as there occasionally is, about a court-martial, the matter having been raised in this House, the Secretary of State might have to answer. But T am dealing with the ordinary sort of case—those 99 per cent, of cases where there is an appeal from a court-martial or where the case goes to the Army Council.
  So far as Private Snooks is concerned, it will go on in exactly the same way, and the important point from his point of view is that in that case the matter will be dealt with by soldiers and it will be finally discharged there. However, if hon. Members wish to develop this point further we can, no doubt, deal with it in debate.
  The Secretary of State for Defence, as I have said, will be Chairman of the
  1206
  Defence Council and also of the Service boards, and he will be responsible to Parliament for all business that is transacted. It will be obvious to hon. Members that we shall need to consult together through the usual channels, and through any others which may be convenient, on the best way of dealing with Questions in the House of Commons. Our object here must be to ensure that hon. Members have facilities at least equal to those which exist at present for probing the problems of policy and administration over the whole of the defence field. This is a matter for discussion. I do not think that we need debate it now, but we certainly want to deal with the matter of putting Questions down, of deciding who is the best Minister to answer particular Questions, and so forth. This we should do.
  Equally, at an appropriate stage we ought also to consider not only the matter of Questions, but the presentation of Estimates and the parliamentary control over defence expenditure. The Estimates will be presented in one volume, but they will continue to be debatable on separate Votes. Of course, the method whereby Parliament exercises control over expenditure within the framework of the Estimates is really a matter for Parliament itself. It is not something which anyone should or could seek to lay down from outside. Hitherto, in practice, we have concentrated during the period of March-April a series of important defence debates. We have generally had two days' debate on the Defence White Paper, and then we have had a day on each of the Service Estimates. We can, of course, continue the same pattern.
  It falls for consideration whether we might not try some debates on subject matter divided by roles rather than by Services. For example, we could have a day's debate on the whole role in Europe—the British Army of the Rhine, the tactical nuclear weapon, the role of the Royal Air Force in Europe—concentrating it on a whole specific role. Or we could have a whole day's debate on the role in the Far and Middle East—Singapore, Aden, the question of the carrier force and the situation in South-East Asia. Or we could devote a day exclusively to the deterrent, instead of having the question of the deterrent

  1207
  raised at various moments in debate. We could have one whole day on the subject of the deterrent, the V-bomber force, Polaris, TSR2, the MLF and all that complex of questions.
  It is possible—this is entirely a matter for the House—that broader-based debates related to specific assignments might be more interesting and more productive, and, if I may say so, might attract a rather larger audience than just spending a day mulling over the administrative details of one particular Service. However, I do not press this matter. These are matters entirely for the House of Commons, but they are suggestions which I throw out and on which we might reflect.
  Sir Harry Legge-Bourke: I am sympathetic to the idea that my right hon. Friend has been propounding. But will he not recognise that all debates on Estimates are inevitably to some extent governed, so far as the Chair is concerned, by which Minister is responsible for the particular Vote? Therefore, if, under our present procedure, each of the Ministers of State were to present Votes for each of their Services, there would be great difficulty in enabling debates to take place on the Vote of one of the Services on matters concerning the Votes of others as well. There would be considerable procedural difficulty in the matter, unless in future the Secretary of State for Defence is to be mainly responsible for all the three Services.
  Mr. Thorneycroft: He will be mainly responsible. Also—the point made by my hon. and gallant Friend is an important one—I emphasised earlier that in future Ministers of State will be more than Ministers responsible for a single Service. They will be responsible across the whole of the defence field. So it will be possible—I am not pressing this; it is for the House of Commons, not the Government, to decide these things—to hold debates on the basis of separate assignments rather than separate Services if the House so wishes, or the House may try to do something on those lines.
  Clause 2 transfers all Service property, rights and liabilities to the Secretary of State for Defence, and provides for the acquisition and use of land. The broad
  1208
  object of the Clause, which we shall debate in detail in Committee, is to apply one code, the Army code, to land acquisition, and to relate that code not to a single Service, but to all the purposes of the new Department.
  Clause 3 contains consequential and transitional powers, and Clause 4 is, I think, self-explanatory.
  This is a technical Bill, made necessary by the abolition of single Service authorities and the creation of a single unified Ministry of Defence. No new powers, broadly, are taken. The transfer is of existing powers from old authorities to the new. The basic principle of unification was, I think, broadly welcomed in July. The Bill is necessary to that unification, and I hope that the House will support it.
  4.42 p.m.
  Mr. Denis Healey: Perhaps I may begin, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, by raising a point on procedure. It is clear from what the Minister of Defence has said, and from the Bill and from the White Paper which preceded it, that this Measure is a constitutional one of major importance. It liquidates three Ministries, some of which have existed for centuries. It vests in one new Minister who does not yet exist a great concentration of power and responsibility than any Minister in our history, other than the Prime Minister himself, has ever held—responsibility for spending £2,000 million a year and for administering a force of nearly 1 million civilian and military personnel. It also, incidentally, gives the Minister power to vary the whole structure of the defence system at will from time to time without further reference to the House.
  It seems to me, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that this is pre-eminently the sort of Bill which, according to custom and, indeed, to the recommendation of the Select Committee on Procedure of 1958 should be taken in Committee on the Floor of the House I hope that the Minister can assure us that it will so be taken I wonder whether he could clear that up right away.
  Mr. Thorneycroft: I should have thought—I am not controverting or agreeing with what has been said—that this was typically a matter which might

  1209
  be dealt with in discussions through the usual channels. These things are normally discussed in that way. I am sure that we shall be very happy to enter into discussions on that basis. But I should not like to give a firm answer at this moment.
  Mr. Wigg Mr. Wigg rose—
  Mr. Healey:I think that this is a subject which I might pursue myself. I understand that if the Bill is to be taken in Committee on the Floor of the House the Government are required to put forward a Motion to that effect at the end of today's business. There is not much time left. I understand that there has already been consultation through the usual channels and that an indication has been given that it is the Government's intention that the Bill should not be taken in Committee on the Floor of the House. My right hon. Friends and I would deeply deplore such a decision by the Government and would note it as a precedent for the future.
  Mr. Thorneycroft: I will treat the hon. Gentleman's proposals with all the courtesy that they deserve. He has put a proposal to me. I have spoken in reply to it. What the hon. Gentleman says indicates that discussions have gone on and are now going on through the usual channels. I shall acquaint myself with the latest position. We have several hours left. I will reflect on what the hon. Gentleman has said.
  Mr. Wigg:Before my hon. Friend accepts that offer, will he bear in mind that not only the usual channels are involved? This is a matter of great constitutional importance which affects the responsibility of every hon. Member in the House. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will bear in mind that it is not only a matter of the convenience of the two Front Benches.
  Mr. Healey: My hon. Friend's responsibility is, I think, well understood in the House, but I assure him that so far as this side of the House is concerned we fully recognise the importance of this issue. That is why I raised it at the beginning of the debate.
  The odd thing about the Bill, as the Minister has confessed, is that it gives the Government a blank cheque. It
  1210
  transfers an enormous range of power and responsibility to a new Minister who has not yet been appointed. It transfers all the powers of the existing permanent heads of the Services—the Army Council, the Air Council, and the Board of Admiralty—to a new Defence Council. It also gives the Government the right to pass powers back from the Defence Council to the individual Services at any time they think fit.
  There is in the Bill no commitment whatever as to the precise shape of the defence organisation when the Bill has been passed, although we have had an assurance from the Minister of Defence that the present Government propose to use the powers that they are given in order to set up an organisation along the lines indicated to the House in the White Paper on reorganisation which was discussed in July.
  I should like to press the Government to clear up the matter of discipline a little further. The Opposition regard it as of fundamental importance from the points of view of the rights of the individual serving man or woman and of discipline in the individual Services that, so long as the Acts governing discipline remain separate and distinct for every Service the responsibility for discipline should be in the particular Service.
  I understand from what the Minister has said that in the case of serving Service personnel it is intended that the new boards of the individual Services will be the final authorities on discipline. The point which 1 and my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) raise is whether, once the matter becomes a political matter and passes from the permanent military personnel to people who are politically responsible, a Minister with special responsibility for the Service will, as now, play a part in decision or whether the only Minister concerned will be the Minister of Defence.
  I would press this matter again. I think that the Minister will agree that he did not clear it up in his reply. Perhaps he did not fully take the point. I hope that we can have an answer. The Opposition and, I am sure, many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite take this as a matter of the greatest importance.

  1211
  As the Minister said, the main purpose of the Bill is to establish machinery which it is hoped will produce, or make it easier to take, better decisions on the shape, structure and weapons system of our armed forces. The Minister said—I agree with him—that it is essential that decisions in these fields should be based on the requirements of national defence in general rather than on the interests and traditions of the individual Services. So far, I think, there is no disagreement between him and, at any rate, most of us on this side of the House, but I must say that as he deployed his description of the new machinery, enthusiasm on both sides of the House seemed to be visibly waning.
  In many fields it seemed to me that the Minister had no clear view on precisely how the machinery would operate, and it was not clear whether he expected the machinery to produce decisions at all. It seems to me that if we take the new structure as he explained it in which the individual Services, in spite of the formal transfer of power, retain very many of the rights and authorities which they possess at present, the only person who can take decisions is the Minister himself. The question whether or not this new machinery represents an improvement on the existing machinery depends entirely on the will of the Minister in charge at the time to use it.
  The Minister has never cleared up, either in this debate or in the debate in July, the point which many of us made, namely, that the Minister of Defence has had power to take decisions ever since the reorganisation in 1958. What we all deplore is the fact that he has not used the power, and we have absolutely no assurance that he will make better use of the additional powers which he is to get under this Bill than he has made of the powers which he already posseses and which are almost as extensive concerning decisions as the powers which he gets under the Bill.
  Those of us who had some confidence in the Minister's will to use the new machinery he is asking for have been extremely depressed by the example he has given us in the last week in his handling of the PI 154 project. We all
  1212
  congratulated him when he came to the House on 30th July, only three months ago, and told us mat he had taken a decision that the Navy and the Air Force should have a common aircraft to replace the Sea Vixen and the Hunter. I quoted him yesterday, and I quote him again, as telling us that a decision had been taken and that the Services had already agreed on the requirements of the new aircraft. Now we gather that they have not even agreed on whether the new aircraft is to have one man or two men in the crew, a point which everyone has known from the beginning was one of the crucial matters of decision.
  I believe that the right hon. Gentleman's statement in the House yesterday was a lamentable confession of his failure as Minister of Defence. If he is incapable of using the powers which he has already and of carrying out a decision which he has already taken, there is very little ground for believing that he will use any better the new powers for which he is asking in this Bill.
  I have been reading his speech in the last defence reorganisation debate. He went much further even than he did when he announced his decision to the House. He said:
  "The announcement yesterday"—
  he was referring to his own speech—
  "of the adoption of a common aircraft for the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force is a significant indication of the new approach in which all Services play a role,"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st July, 1963; Vol. 682, c. 478.]
  Now we are told that, so far from anything having been adopted, there is very serious trouble in the design study, and according to all the rumours we hear, there will be no common aircraft, and there is even a serious question as to whether one or both Services will get an aircraft at all—certainly a British aircraft.
  Sir H. Legge-Bourke:I do not want the hon. Gentleman to be unfair to my right hon. Friend over the question of his having used or not used the powers which he has been given. Does the hon. Member appreciate that the big difference between this Bill and what has happened before is that this Bill gives my right hon. Friend financial powers in estimating which, hitherto, he has not had? One of the difficulties in the past may

  1213
  have been due to the fact that in the context in which the hon. Member has just been talking, it was only the Secretary of State for Air who could introduce the necessary estimate, whereas now there is the possibility of the new Secretary of State for Defence submitting an estimate which embraces more than one Service.
  Mr. Healey: I cannot accept that at all, because under the 1958 reorganisation the Minister of Defence—and I quote the terms of the White Paper—
  "has authority to decide …all major matters of defence policy affecting the size, shape, organisation and disposition of the Armed Forces".
  their equipment and supply, their pay and conditions of service. There is not the slightest doubt that the Minister has power, and, indeed, he has not contested that.
  What the Minister has told us is that there is a fierce argument between the two Services as to whether it is possible to have a compatible aircraft. I noticed that when he expounded his latest views on this matter to the electors of Dundee he said that there was, "not a hell of an argument, but some damned hard talking." I have no doubt that he chose to use swear words to describe the situation because it might possibly give an impression of toughness and decisiveness which was totally absent from his actual behaviour in this matter. But, despite the fact that he put some false hair on his chest in his speech at Dundee, the plain fact is that the Minister has shown no toughness or decisiveness.
  I put it to the Minister and to the House that either he was totally misled by his advisers in July, or that he has been totally out-manoeuvred by his advisers since. In either case it is a pathetic example of flabbiness which augurs very badly for the success of the reorganisation presented to us this afternoon.
  What must be equally disturbing is the spate of rumours in the Press about the current crisis over the Defence Estimates. We have had a crisis every year over the Defence Estimates which has tended to begin about July and to reach its peak about October or November, and we know why the crisis develops. It develops because each Service is given to understand that it will have roughly a third of the Defence
  1214
  Vote to play around with. When the three Services present their Estimates it turns out that they are far too large, partly because each Service tends to underestimate the cost of weapons to which it is already committed. We had the example recently revealed by the Public Accounts Committee, I think, of one weapon—I think it was Seaslug—costing forty times the original estimate.
  The Minister of Defence knows very well that under-estimates of the likely cost of weapons is one of the major reasons for the current crisis. I do not blame the Minister, any more than my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition did not Thursday, for sometimes making mistakes in his sums. This is an extremely difficult problem, on which it is literally impossible to be certain in advance whether a weapon will cost a certain amount, or whether it will require modification in the course of its development and production which will vastly increase its cost.
  However, I do not think that the Minister would deny that the weapons programme to which the Government are committed will add up to far more than the 7½ per cent, of the gross national product to which the Minister committed himself. We have the TSR2, with an almost unlimited cost. I will come to its actual cost later and, in view of what the Prime Minister said earlier, I hope that the Minister who replies to the debate will be a little more forthcoming on this matter. There is the commitment in respect of the ASW681 transport aircraft, the P1154 commitment and the Shackleton replacement commitment, all falling on the Royal Air Force. We have the commitment to Polaris submarines, to a new aircraft carrier and possibly to a contribution to the proposed multilateral force, all falling on the Royal Navy.
  Finally, we have the commitment, I am glad to say, which is now coming to fruition, to provide the Army with new tanks, and the commitment which was not bargained for, and which, I suspect, will be extremely costly, to redeploy part of the strategic reserve in the Far East because of the unexpected difficulties in Malaysia.
  Yet the Government have committed themselves to keep the defence bill down to about 7½ per cent, of the Budget, or

  1215
  under £2,000 million. The Prime Minister promised the country during his by-election speeches only a few weeks ago:
  "I think we will be able quite shortly to begin with the physical process of reduction of armaments and use the expenditure for other more peaceful purposes."
  I only hope that he is right, but I cannot help remembering that he told his party a few days later that for the next few months electioneering must have priority over all other factors in Government policy.
  Whatever view one takes of the Prime Minister's statement, the Minister of Defence must agree that something in the existing programmes to which the Government are committed will have to go. He made this clear when he pointed to the financial aspects of the decision on the P1154. Will the Navy have its carrier? Will it get its Sea Vixen replacement? Will the R.A.F. get the TSR2 and the Hunter replacement for which it is asking? Will the Army get the tanks which it needs? Most important of all, will it get the married quarters on which its recruiting, in large part, depends, and the transport aircraft on which its mobility, in large part, depends?
  I say this very sincerely to the Minister. I hope that, whatever decision he takes on this question, he will not cut the Army. He must know that the recruiting figures at present are highly disturbing, and there seems to be little prospect that the target which the Government set themselves only six months ago will be achieved in the immediate future, if, indeed, at all.
  The Minister of Defence himself had to warn N.A.T.O. recently that it now was uncertain whether Britain would be able to fulfil the firm commitment to which it has been pledged now for, I think it is, seven years, to provide 55,000 effective soldiers in the British Army of the Rhine. I hope that the Minister will give first priority at this time to the fulfilment of this commitment and to the steps which will give us an effective Army because, whether we like it or not, the Army is at present committed all over the world, and there is very grave danger that if its needs are not given first priority—its needs both in recruiting and mobility—the elastic which is stretched so tight by commitments, expected and un-
  1216
  expected, will snap in the next few months, with results which could be absolutely disastrous for this country's prestige throughout the world.
  Sir H. Legge-Bourke: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again. He has made a particularly important request to my right hon. Friend. I assume that in making it he has worked out what he, if he were in the Minister's position, would himself do. If, for some reason or other, voluntary recruitment does not produce a sufficient number of men to provide 55,000 in Europe, is he saying that he would be prepared to introduce some form of national service to enable that to happen?
  Mr. Healey: That is a very hypothetical question indeed. What we have said from this side continuously is that we are determined to provide troops adequate to fulfil our commitments. The question of how we provide these troops, whether it is possible to reduce commitments, whether it is possible by changing inducements to increase regular recruiting, I cannot answer from this position at this time, but I am very conscious that I or one of my right hon. or hon. Friends may well be faced with this problem within five months. I assure the hon. Gentleman that, when we face this problem, we shall maintain the pledge which I have just repeated to him.
  Mr. Thorneycroft:If the hon. Gentleman is contemplating that he might have to face this problem, perhaps he ought to face it a little more clearly now. He is saying, as I understand it, that he would give first priority to bringing the number of troops in Europe up to 55,000. So far as I can see, there are only two ways in which he can do it, unless he assumes some increase in recruiting. One is by introducing conscription; another is by moving troops out of the Far East, where we are under pressure, into Europe. I think that he ought to give the House some indication which of these he would prefer.
  Mr. Healey: I think that the Minister, if he is wise, will reflect on what I have said and realise that I did not say that I would give first priority to the maintenance of 55,000 troops in Europe. What I said—and what I ask him to do—is to give first priority, when he has to decide

  1217
  on what cuts are to be made in the current Estimate being presented, to the maintenance of the recruiting and mobility of our present Army forces over the whole field.
  I would not be prepared at this moment to say, especially in the light of the very substantial changes in N.A.T.O. strategy which are under discussion inside N.A.T.O. at present, and in the light, also, of the most important speech by the American Secretary of Defence, to which I shall refer—
  Sir H. Legge-Bourke rose—
  Mr. Healey: No, I shall not give way. I think that I have been extremely lenient in giving way to interruptions and I feel that I should get on with discussing the implications of the Bill.
  We have from this side of the House made several suggestions as to possible cuts in the programme in recent weeks, and we have asked questions about elements in the programme. Hon. Members opposite, and, in particular, the Minister of Aviation, every time we have raised the question, have described this as being unpatriotic for casting doubts on the viability or legitimacy of particular parts of our military expenditure.
  One might think from the way they talk that the Government had never cancelled any project the whole time that they have been in office;yet the right hon. Gentleman knows very well that his first act when he became Minister of Defence was to cancel Blue Water. The Government have cancelled projects at this time of the year every year for the last twelve years. The Minister of Aviation was kind enough to give us details last June of 30 major projects on missiles or aircraft which have been cancelled during the present Administration, at a loss to the country in unfruitful expenditure of over £250 million.
  I hope that the Minister realises that when we raise these questions—he knows perfectly well that these are questions which he is having to consider at this moment, as he has to consider them at this phase in the financial year every year—they are questions that it is perfectly legitimate for the Opposition to ask and that there is no question of unpatriotism when we ask them. That is why we want an inquiry into the tremendous expenditure on the TSR2
  1218
  which, at the present time, is preempting such a very large proportion of the resources available for defence. No one who knows anything about this aircraft will deny that if it flies and comes up to planning and expectations it will be a superb technological achievement worthy of the greatest traditions of our aviation industry. But the question which the Minister has to decide, and the question on which the House and the country will judge him, is whether this tremendous expenditure will meet our real defence needs better than the same amount of money spent on some other defence purpose.
  The Government have been extremely coy in giving us figures of the amount of money spent on the TSR2. I understand that when the project was first approved in 1959, the Government were assured that the total cost of research and development would be about £90 million. I understand that we have already spent about twice that amount and yet the aircraft has not yet flown.
  Eighteen months ago, the Minister of Defence told the House that the cost of the project—he did not make it clear whether this was research and development or the total cost of the whole project—would be about £400 million. Since then, the project has fallen six months behind schedule, because we were told earlier this year that the aircraft was expected to fly in about September and now we are told that it may not fly until March next year.
  The Minister of Aviation yesterday rejected, with his usual hyperbole, an estimate, which I asked him to confirm, or deny, which was printed by the Observer. I understand very well why the Observer is not the most popular authority on any matter on the benches opposite, but I remind the right hon. Gentleman that the air correspondent of the Daily Telegraph stated—rightly or wrongly, we do not know—a month ago in an article which he wrote on the TSR2 that the Government had paid £15 million for each of the first 18 aircraft which they had ordered.
  The Sunday Times, which again, 1 expect, is a more acceptable source of information on these matters to hon. Members opposite, in a long and careful argument which it produced the other day on the TSR2, gave an estimate

  1219
  of £600 million as being the likely total cost of the project, including the special nuclear bomb which must be produced for it if it is to have a serious strategic nuclear rÔle. I do not believe that the Opposition are being unpatriotic when they ask the Government to tell us whether these estimates are right and whether expenditure of this magnitude is justified in the light of the total needs of all our Armed Forces.
  We on this side resent almost as in-, tensely the shiftiness of the Minister of Aviation when he does give information as we resent his arrogance when he refuses it. I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will not authorise his——
  Sir Douglas Glover: On a point of order. Is it in order for an hon. Member to accuse a Minister of being a twister?
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir William Anstruther-Gray): I did not hear anything that I thought required my intervention.
  Mr. Wigg: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I called the Minister a twister.
  Mr. Anthony Kershaw: Further to the point of order. Is it in order for an hon. Member to call a Minister a twister?
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: What I said was that I did not hear anything that, I thought, required interruption from the Chair, and that is how I rule.
  Mr. Healey:When the House and the country are denied information on this project, we have to look for information where we can find it. The only hard evidence which we have about the TSR2 was the behaviour of the Australian Government when faced with a choicebetween the TSR2 and other aircraft to meet their own requirements. It is no good the Government trying to run off into fantasy as to why the Australian Government rejected the TSR2, because the Conservative Prime Minister of Australia—who, I do not think any of us on either side would deny, is British to his bootstraps—has given the following as his reasons for rejecting the TSR2.
  1220
  The Prime Minister of Australia said—and I quote from The Times of 14th November—that the mission of the Australian Air Force which had examined several alternative aircraft overseas
  "had reported that both the TFX and the TSR2 would meet R.A.A.F. requirements but had believed the TFX superior in range, short take-off and landing ability, weapons carrying capacity and reconnaissance capabilities."
  He went on to say that the terms on which the Australian Government were buying the TFX would save Australia
  "scores, literally tens of millions of pounds"
  compared with the cost of two squadrons of the TSR2.
  I do not know whether what the Australian Prime Minister said is true, but I do not think that the Minister could deny that the Australian Prime Minister was sincere when he gave those as his reasons for refusing to accept the aircraft. The argument from the Minister of Aviation that the Australian Government refused the TSR2 because they had heard that the Labour Party in Britain was not keen on going on with a nuclear deterrent is as intellectually ludicrous as it is morally contemptible, because if the Australian Government thought that a country without nuclear weapons would not consider the TSR2 worth while, why should the Australian Government even look at the TSR2, because the Australian Government do not have nuclear weapons and have no prospect of obtaining them in the immediate future?
  Mr. Thorneycroftt: I do not know what relevance an Australian order or no Australian order for the TSR2 has to the central organisation of defence in this country. I did not expand on this in my speech; I thought that it would be marginal to the main subject of the debate. What I am concerned about is a constant attempt to shoot this aircraft to pieces on the ground before it ever gets off.
  It is not a question of the nuclear deterrent. It is the doubts which are raised, not only in Australia, but everywhere, by speeches such as the hon. Gentleman's, which raise, or are designed to raise, every kind of doubt about this aircraft. Demands for inquiry into it and demands as to whether it is needed or will have a rÔle are making

  1221
  our chance of ever selling this aircraft far harder.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If I might intervene, perhaps it would be as well for the House to remember that what we are debating is the Defence (Transfer of Functions) Bill.
  Mr. Healey: The Minister knows better than anybody else that the TSR2 project is a monument to the failure of inter-Service co-operation, because if there had been proper inter-Service cooperation at the time this aircraft was first ordered we would not have had both a naval strike aircraft and an air-force strike aircraft, performing very largely the same functions, developed totally independently with no serious attempt to render them compatible. The Minister knows this perfectly well.
  Mr. Thorneycroft Mr. Thorneycroft indicated dissent.
  Mr. Healey: The whole history of the TSR2 is an object lesson and is extremely relevant to the subject which is under discussion.
  The question which is raised by the TSR2—and the Minister knows this, because he is at present having to decide which of the projects to which the Government are committed will be cut before the next Defence Estimates are presented to Parliament, in the same way as the 30 major projects have already been cut by the Government in the last twelve years—is the fundamental one that we cannot do everything. We cannot cover every conceivable danger with every conceivable weapon. Nobody expressed this point of view more cogently than the right hon. Gentleman himself when he resigned from his position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. I will not embarrass him by quoting his words to him again, but he knows this very well.
  If we are ever to make sense of our defence expenditure at a time when the cost of replacing weapons is increasing ten times as fast as our national income is increasing—this is the problem which is at the root of our dilemma and which is the reason behind the Bill—we must decide what type of war is most likely, where it will be and what weapons and forces are most suitable for fighting or deterring it.
  The first question, as the right hon. Gentleman admitted in presenting the
  1222
  White Paper, is a question for the Cabinet as a whole, but there is still no sign that the Government are trying to answer it. We heard a lot from the right hon. Gentleman the other day about the establishment of a joint defence and overseas committee of the Cabinet. I should like to know whether this committee, which does not depend on the Bill, has already been set up and is working.
  The Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. John Hay): Yes, it is.
  Mr. Healey:I am glad to hear it. What we want from the Government is what we had from the American Secretary of Defence in impressive measure on Monday of this week—that is, a comprehensive statement of where the Government feel that the defence problem will face us over the next ten years, so that we have a basis on which to judge the Government's proposals for meeting those needs.
  I wish that occasionally the Minister of Defence would reveal his thinking, if he has any, on these matters to the House and the country. He failed to do so in this year's Defence White Paper and again today. If Mr. McNamara is right, for example, it would be much wiser for us to spend money for forces for local conventional war rather than forces for global atomic war. This is a relevant point which is worth considering.
  The Prime Minister pointed out in the debate in another place on 31st July that our forces had been committed in hostilities fifty-six times since the end of the last war. Thanks to the Secretary of State for Air, I had an opportunity of seeing something of the work which those forces are doing in one of those wars, in Malaysia. What those forces are crying out for is helicopters, not TSR2s. I would not be prepared to take a decision myself on this without knowing far more about the problem than I do, but the Government must take some decisions on the type of wars we are likely to have to face, so that we have some ideas about which are the sort of weapons systems which are most likely to be appropriate to our needs.
  If the Cabinet takes the right decision on this, the question is whether the proposed reorganisation will help us to choose the right pattern of arms and

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  forces. The real trouble, as we said in July and as was said again in the debate in another place, is that the proposals presented to Parliament in July and implied in the Bill are essentially a compromise which hedges on almost every important issue. We still have four major worries about the proposals on which the Minister of Defence has done nothing by what he has said this afternoon to allay our concern.
  The first is the Parkinson's Law problem. It is now clear from the Bill that the reorganisation will mean a big increase in personnel and a big increase in expenditure. In the Preamble to the Bill, the Minister of Defence says that he hopes that this increase in expenditure and in personnel will some day be offset by streamlining, but there seems to be no provision inside the organisation for this streamlining to take place. It goes against all precedents, set not only in British but in defence reorganisation all over the world, to believe that this streamlining will come about automatically.
  The noble Lord Field Marshal Montgomery said in the debate in another place that what was needed was a great dose of weed killer, and there is not the slightest doubt that he was right. What worries us is that instead of producing integration, the new organisation will produce a fourth party to what has so far been a three-party argument among the three Services and that the Government will produce a penthouse, an additional storey, on the defence structure rather than pull the three existing Services together.
  The Minister increased rather than allayed our concern about our second worry, which is that the downgrading of the Service Ministers while leaving the Chiefs of Staff untouched will mean less pressure for unity and a general weakening of political control throughout the system. It is absolutely intolerable that the individual Chiefs of Staff should retain not only the right of separate access to the Minister of Defence, which, I suppose, is arguable, but also the right of separate access to the Cabinet, while the only Minister with any real authority over them will be the Minister of Defence himself, and even he could be outflanked by a direct approach to the Cabinet.
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  It seems to me, even more from what the Minister said about giving the Ministers of State functions beyond those of supervising the individual Services, that he must either downgrade the Chiefs of Staff in the new organisation, or must upgrade the Ministers of State. It is quite unacceptable to produce an organisation which reduces the possibility of political control, because any hope of carrying thisintegration further will depend primarily on continuous and persistent pressure from the politicians. The pressure will not come in the required measure from the Services themselves.
  That takes me to my third major complaint, which is that the new Secretary of State for Defence is to have such a colossal range of responsibilities to cover that the prospect of his giving the time and energy required for decision on the major political issues is almost nil. A great deal about this was said in our last debate and in another place, but nobody on this earth is superhuman enough to carry out the manifold responsibilities of policy formation and administration imposed on the Secretary of State alone, unless he has senior political assistance not provided for in the White Paper and, of course, not mentioned in the Bill in any way.
  I put again to the right hon. Gentleman a proposal on which he did not comment last time and which was made simultaneously by Lord Swinton in another place—that there is a strong case for a senior assistant to the new Secretary of Defence whose prime responsibility would be the defence budget. I think this for two reasons, partly because effective political control of expenditure, multifarious and extensive as defence expenditure is, is absolutely impossible under the proposed system, and partly because it is through defence budgeting that the major advances towards functional integration are liable to take place. I do not believe that a second Permanent Under-Secretary can be made solely responsible for taking new initiatives in functional integration and a Minister of senior status—I will not say whether he should be in the Cabinet, for that raises many other questions—responsible for the defence budget is the only

  1225
  person likely to exert the continuing pressure for the progress in this respect which is desired.
  All of us who are interested in the Bill would agree that the real question is whether it will be the first step towards continuing functional integration of the Services, or whether it is to be the; last step in an old story. The Bill will be judged not by what is in it, but by whether the Government responsible can keep up the momentum towards further integration once this proposal is carried out.
  I must confess—and this is not just a party statement—that I have no confidence in the ability of the present Administration to maintain the necessary pressure in this direction. If I thought that the present Administration would last, I would strongly oppose giving it the sort of blank cheque which is provided by the Bill. But the doubts and fears about the Bill which many of us on this side of the House have are considerably reduced by the thought that even though it is a blank cheque, it will be for right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House to cash it.
  5.27 p.m.
  Mr. Nigel Birch: I hope that it will not tax your patience too much, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if I actually spend the whole of my time discussing the Bill. The hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) shares with his chief a total inability to speak for less than an hour on any subject whatever. When it comes to who is the bigger bore, I should be inclined to award the hon. Member the palm.
  In its present form, the Bill isacceptable and is not really amendable. All it does is to lay foundations on which the proposed superstructure is to be built. However, as a House of Commons we have a duty to examine this matter closely, because there are many matters in which the interests of the House are concerned. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald once very sagely remarked that great words like "truth" and "justice" had serpents in their folds. It may equally be true that big words like "centralised power" and "integration "also have serpents in their folds, and I should like to set out to scotch three of them.
  The reason why the Bill in general is welcomed is that it means an addition
  1226
  of power to the Minister of Defence. He himself referred to the old Service Ministries as fortresses and believed that those fortresses ought to be stormed. They have been successfully stormed and he now has the power. But we have to think not only about power but about the way in which advice will be tendered, because power is no good on its own unless the right thing is done.
  That brings me to my first point, which is one which I made last March. I am extremely doubtful about whether it is right to have a Chief of Defence Staff. I should like him to be replaced by a military secretariat as part of the Cabinet Office. I will expand a little on that.
  At the central point at the Ministry of Defence the questions that come up are not only military. It is at that point that the political, military and economic strands all meet, and, indeed, become inextricably intertwined. The problems are very complex. Lord Trenchard once said in another place that it was far harder to be Minister of Defence in peace time than in war time. I think that that is true. In war, the options are so few. One knows who one's enemy is and who one's allies are. The time to produce weapons is always now, and, obviously, economic considerations have to take bottom place. But in peace the problems are many. The political situation is always changing. One cannot tell when a war might come, and whether one ought or ought not to go in for the production of any particular weapon is always a very finely poised question. It seems to me that if we are to get the right advice on these matters we must be advised by people who have spent their lives thinking about these precise points where the military, political and economic strands meet.
  The weakness about the Chief of the Defence Staff seems to be simply that our choice is very limited. He must be a very senior officer indeed. Very often there will be only one possible man, and he is always, certainly at present, someone illumined by the panache of the battlefield. He is not always the sort of man who has spent the whole of his life thinking about the intersections of the military, political and economic threads. If he were, he might not have won a battle.

  1227
  Field Marshal Lord Montgomery certainly made one political pronouncement which I think caught the imagination of people in the country, and one which they approved by their votes. Hon. Gentlemen will remember that at the last Election he said that anyone who voted Labour ought to be sent to a lunatic asylum, and obviously the country very generally agreed that he was right. I think, however, that even his greatest admirers must admit that the Field Marshal's other political pronouncements have shown rather less maturity.
  First, I would like to see the Minister of Defence get his advice direct from his three Chiefs of Staff, but having behind him this secretariat organised something in the way that Lord Hankey and Lord Ismay did in the past. The military Staff can be taken from any rank or service and there will be people working away year after year at these problems and having the confidence of both the military and political sides. They would, of course, have the right to sit in at meetings of the Chiefs of Staff, and so on. I think that a far better way of doing it.
  If my right hon. Friend does not feel able to abolish the office of Chief of the Defence Staff, then I would wish that he would revert it to what it was when it was created in 1955 when it was simply Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, in the same way as in America. The upgrading was part of the war of nerves against the Service Departments. It seems a dangerous accretion of power in one person.
  I think it particularly important because of the next point I want to raise, which is the question of the Service Ministers, Ministers of State (War) or whoever it may be. I am worried about this and am particularly worried by something which my right hon. Friend has said repeatedly, that he does not think they should be firmly attached to their Services. He considers them to be sort of deputy Defence Ministers. He sees himself hovering this clutch of six junior Ministers under his capacious wings.
  I think it terribly important that they should have a local habitation and a
  1228
  name not in brackets. One has always to bear in mind the enormous number of human beings involved. It is not only the men and women in uniform and the civil servants but the industrial employees too. We all know the number of problems that are constantly arising for personnel employed by the Services. Of course, far more questions come up through the usual channels than through Members of Parliament. I think it psychologically important that some one person should be responsible for dealing with those things.
  My right hon. Friend said in an earlier debate that no one is going to bother about the Secretary of State for Defence. He is too far away and too remote. In the past a Service Minister—he might have been liked or disliked; he might have been good at his job or less good, but he was there—could be seen, could be written to and could be kicked. I think that actually knowing who is responsible is frightfully important. My experience of taking up matters on behalf of constituents is that if they get what they want, well and good, but that if they do not get what they want they are still relieved that their case has been taken to the highest quarter. I have again and again had people say to me, "I am sorry that I did not get what I wanted, but at any rate I have done all I could and have taken it to the top".
  The next reason for attaching Service Ministers firmly to their Armed Services is this. I have been a junior Minister, a Secretary of State and a junior Minister in the Ministry of Defence. A Junior or Senior Minister when visiting units and stations was welcomed everywhere. The men were glad to see him. The reason that they were glad to see him was because they wanted to talk about their work, their ideas, their hopes and their fears and they knew that the Minister would do what he could to help. On the other hand, if one went round as a representative of the Ministry of Defence they were polite but they were not forthcoming. They did not want to talk to one. They did not trust one. They thought that one might want to take something away from them and give it to another Service.
  It is important for this House that there should be an easy relationship be-

  1229
  tween politicians in the Service Departments and the Service personnel. If we do not get that things will go very wrong. There is another reason which is even more important. The Secretary of State has all the important promotions, all the honours, all the awards at his disposal. That means that when an officer in any of the Services gets in bad with the central body he may very well be done for.
  One of the big jobs of a Minister going round is to get to know as many people as he can, not only the top people but all the promising men. If the politician has a good idea that a promising man is not getting his deserts, he may be able to help him. The Secretary of State for Defence will never be able to do any of these things. He cannot possibly know more than a tiny fraction of the people who matter. That is another very important reason for attaching Ministers firmly to their Services.
  Another reason is that Service Ministers have a great deal of work to do not connected with strategy. In all the Service Ministries workis decentralised. For instance, the Under-Secretary of State for Air will deal with the disposal of land, cadets and volunteers, the weather and many other things. He will not be able to deal very successfully with these matters unless he knows the man with the files and the man who works in the Department. It is no good thinking that this sort of work can be centralised.
  I hope that at any rate the Ministers of State will not be called Ministers of State but that they will be known respectively as the Secretary for War, the Secretary for Air and the Secretary for the Navy—and will be paid as full Ministers. If that is not done, and if the pay and conditions are not right in future, we shall not get the right people.
  The last serpent that I wish to scotch is the question of the Ministry of Aviation's remaining completely intact, I deeply regret that while all this integration is going on the one Ministry to escape should be the Ministry of Aviation. It is true that the Minister has been sent under a flag of truce to sit in the poultry house at the Ministry of Defence there to have negotiations with B.O.A.C., but that is not the same thing. The fortress of the Ministry of Aviation, like some masterpiece of Vauban, remains unsealed and unscale-
  1230
  able. It is all wrong. That Ministry has been responsible for more wrong things than all the three Service Ministries in their long histories.
  It is entirely responsible for the long delay in the amalgamations in the aircraft industry, which was so damaging to our cause. It works under the motto that the boffins are always right, and it has always kept things to itself. It is always insanely optimistic in respect of its own projects, and it goes on with things long after it is clear that nobody wants them. The Fairey Rotadyne was a classic example. Is it not ridiculous for someone else to order one's clothes, try them on and tell one that they are what one ought to wear, and to go on producing those clothes although one says that one does not want to wear them? Yet this is the position with the British Air Force.
  Does anyone suppose that the American Air Force would be in its present great position if it had had a Ministry of Aviation round its neck? To the Americans our system is laughable. I hope that the Military part of the Ministry of Aviation will be taken away. The Ministry could be sliced up in a number of different ways. All I want to see is the military part taken away and put directly under the control of the Services.
  I have made three suggestions, and in the long run I believe that they will all be adopted. But as the motto of the Government is "Accelerate!" perhaps one or more of them will be adopted in the short run.
  5.42 p.m.
  Mr. E. Shinwell: I gather that the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch), although indulging in some mild criticism of the Bill, accepts the basic principle embodied in it. That is a remarkable conversion, because, in 1956, when proposals were made for more effective co-ordination, and even integration, in respect of our defence Services, the right hon. Gentleman, then Secretary of State for Air, said—and if there is any doubt about it let me say that I am quoting him—
  "The reason why it was decided not to integrate these services was that the tasks of the Services are different."
  He went on to say that integration of

  1231
  different organisations produced chaos and he added, in that characteristic sneering fashion with which we an familiar:
  "Administrative chaos seems to be something which hon. Members opposite are very willing to create in the sacred name of integration."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th February, 1956 Vol. 549, c. 1321.]
  Mr. Birch: It is absurd to say that the three Services are integrated; the) are separate.
  Mr. Shinwell: I say that it is a remarkable conversion. What could have caused it I am quite unable to understand.
  There have been some mild criticisms—and I agree with some of them—but the right hon. Gentleman has no right to criticise my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). My hon Friend had a legitimate right to raise a number of defence issues associated with this highly important matter of defence reorganisation. If my hon. Friend did not devote adequate attention to the provisions of the Bill, that is something we can deal with in Committee.
  I regard the Bill as of fundamental importance. It is the most drastic takeover bid since 1066. The right hon. Gentleman is asking the House to agree that there should be transferred to him more than 700,000 acres of land, and a vast number of depots, storehouses, and the like. How many, I am unable to say. I made inquiries through the Research Department of the House of Commons Library—which seeks to render assistance to hon. Members who, like myself, are unable to gain the required information from other sources—as to the number of depots, storehouses, and so on, at home and overseas, which would be transferred to the right hon. Gentleman. The answer was that there was not sufficient time for the Department to produce the information. I should have thought that the information was handy, and properly tabulated. That is one of the fundamental defects which hon. Members have to deal with on defence issues. We simply do not know.
  I say that with some deliberation and emphasis, because, when I hear my hon.
  1232
  and right hon. Friends not only dilating about the iniquities of the Government—and I agree with them generally—but also directing attention to the defects in our defence system in respect of weapons of various kinds, and aircraft—and such a point has been referred to by my hon. Friend—I confess to be in a condition of abyssmal ignorance. I simply do not know.
  I am in exactly the same position as other hon. Members, except for Members of the Government—and not even all of them—those who have discussions with members of the Army and Navy Club—or perhaps the Union Jack Club, for all I know—and those who have a close association with the highly-paid defence correspondents of reputable newspaper organs.
  I do not have that familiarity or association. It was only when I was in the Department that I knew about these things, and even then I did not know all that I should have liked to know. I should be surprised if the right hon. Gentleman is not in that situation. When I was Minister of Defence I was not aware of the activities associated with the production of the nuclear bomb. That was a closed shop—the close preserve of some members of the Government.
  I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is better informed than I was—for all the good that it may do him. But I am not concerned with the position of members of the Government. I am concerned about the paucity of information available to hon. Members on both sides of the House. We ought to be much better informed and, if we were, perhaps many of the statements which are made would remain unsaid, and that might prove better in the long run.
  I wish to give an example. Time and again reference has been made to deficiencies in the equipment of the Army and Air Force—not so much the Navy. I am unable to say whether these statements are true because I do not know. Indeed, when it comes to our major defence debates we indulge in rhetoric and make dialectical attacks on members of the Government. Some hon. Members preen themselves because they believe that they possess a vast knowledge of the subject. But at the end of the day we

  1233
  reach a most unsatisfactory conclusion, namely, that we have learned very little indeed.
  I think that we ought to know more about the defence situation—the right hon. Member for Flint, West is muttering to himself. Perhaps he would like to become a little more audible. I do not mind. Or if he finds anything objectionable in what I am saying, and if he cares to absent himself from the Chamber, I shall bear that with fortitude.
  Mr. Healey: The right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) is drowning himself in his own bile.
  Mr. Shinwell: The right hon. Gentleman only has the capacity to irritate me, anyhow. He is now leaving the Chamber, and we are finished with him. Now I shall do as he suggested, and address myself to the Bill.
  I must confess that the provisions in this Bill alarm me, although, when the White Paper was debated in the House, and as the Minister is aware, I supported wholeheartedly the basic principle underlying the Measure. For a long time I have believed that more effective co-ordination was essential. For a long time it has been my view that if it were possible to effect complete integration, that would be more desirable than the present haphazard system. I should like to bring together the whole defence organisation, not under one roof, except metaphorically—it may be staggered about in various parts of London or the Provinces—but in respect of policy and the direction of administration.
  There is a difference between direction of administration and administration itself. I would leave the administration in the hands of the Service Ministers to a very large extent. But the direction of administration and the policy must reside, in my opinion, in a centralised organisation and in a Minister charged with full responsibility for policy. Therefore, I make my position clear beyond peradventure. I support the basic principle embodied in this Bill, and the sooner it is put into operation the better I shall like it.
  Now for certain reservations. The right hon. Member for Flint, West who has just departed from the scene, suggested that instead of designating the
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  Ministers as Ministers of State we might describe them as Secretary of the Army, Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of the Air Force. That is not an original suggestion. If hon. Members care to look at HANSARD they will find that that was precisely what I suggested during the debate in July on the White Paper and I still hold that view. I believe that it would add prestige to their position and, besides, it is a much more appropriate designation than that of Minister of State.
  Now I come to what I regard as one of the principal issues involved in the creation of this proposed organisation. When the right hon. Gentleman was speaking, I intervened on the subject of the membership of the central board, the Defence Council. Some time ago we were presented with a document or a chart which is contained in the White Paper entitled "Central Organisation for Defence", and which provides for a Secretary of State for Defence at the top and, immediately below the Defence Council, the Ministers of State, the Chief of the Defence Staff, and Chiefs of Staff, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State and the Chief Scientific Adviser. However competent he may be in the sphere of science related to military affairs I cannot understand why the Chief Scientific Adviser should be included on a Defence Council primarily responsible—as is indicated in the Bill—for the command of Her Majesty's Forces.
  In Clause I of the Bill there is a reference to the Defence Council
  "…having powers of command and administration over Her Majesty's Armed Forces…"
  Leaving out for the moment "the matter of administration, it is a matter of command. Of course we must avail ourselves of scientific advice in these days of alleged modernisation. But I cannot understand why a scientific adviser, however competent he may be, should be a member of a body responsible for policy. I hope that my hon. Friends will agree that during the Committee stage we should seek to eliminate that part of the provision.
  Even on the matter of the Chief of the Defence Staff—much as I dislike doing so—I must say that I agree with the right hon. Member for Flint, West. I do not believe it is necessary to have, apart from the three Chiefs of Staff, a

  1235
  principal Chief of the Defence Staff We did not have that in our time and the office did not exist during the war, largely because the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) was Minister of Defence, and believed that he was vested with all the military knowledge necessary—but leave that aside. I cannot see why a Chief of the Defence Staff is necessary now; someone who would, or could, override the decisions, not of the Minister—although probably he might try that on—but particularly the decisions of the Chiefs of Staff. What is required is somebody with military knowledge at the disposal of the Minister of Defence with an effective liaison with the three Chiefs of Staff representing the respective Services. I believe that that would be quite sufficient.
  Now I come to a matter which troubles me more than anything else. I referred to it during the debate on the White Paper. It is the danger of the overwhelming strength of the military personnel dominating the political strength. Once that happens, democracy in the defence organisation will disappear. Indeed, it might prove the beginning of the end of our democracy, and I do not want to see that happen. There may be a very tough, competent and well-informed Minister of Defence sitting alongside a Chief of the Defence Staff who regards himself as a great panjandrum regarding defence and who has more prestige in the eyes of the public, with a military personnel subordinate to him and, it may be, a chief scientific adviser, and people of that ilk. It seems that the Minister of Defence has to be more than tough to stand up to them. Policy may very readily be directed, not by the Minister of Defence himself, but by the overpowering and overbearing pressure exerted on him by his associates.
  I speak with some experience in these matters. It is the easiest thing in the world to bring pressure to bear on a Minister. Every Minister knows that. The civil servants do it. The military are not the least bit behind in their endeavour to impose their will on a Service Minister, or even on the Minister of Defence. Take the case of Field-Marshal Lord Montgomery, He has been making speeches recently in the course of which he has been condemning the Labour Government
  1236
  for inadequate defence in his time. The trouble about Field-Marshal Montgomery—a great fighting soldier and great man in the field—is that he is ageing very rapidly.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am reluctant to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but I hope he will endeavour to see that his remarkshave a direct bearing on the Bill we are debating.
  Mr. Shinwell:The last person in the world who wishes to transgress rules of this House is myself. I am bound to say, however, after listening to some speeches which have travelled all over the place and which seemed to ignore the provisions of the Bill, that the rebuke is not entirely justified, if I may put it very mildly.
  It was an illustration, purely an illustration. I was dealing with the question of Chiefs of the Defence Staff, those who bring pressure to bear on the political chiefs. I recall when Field Marshal Montgomery was Chief of the Imperial General Staff. By the way, I am very glad that a suggestion I have made from time to time to change the designation to Chief of the General Staff has now been accepted. That anachronism has now disappeared; it was about time. It had no relevance in the present situation, militarily or otherwise.
  When Field Marshal Montgomery was Chief of the General Staff and, according to himself, sent a memorandum to the Cabinet demanding more adequate defence, he apparently forgot that I was Secretary of State for War because I have no recollection of receiving the memorandum. That is the kind of thing that can happen even with the Minister of Defence. Field Marshal Montgomery was wrong when he said that we did not provide adequate defence. I give this only as an illustration. There was the Korea affair when we alerted a brigade more rapidly than the present Government alerted their brigade at the time of the Suez affair, and we were able to create a Commonwealth division.
  Field Marshal Montgomery got all his own way because he demanded from the then Minister of Defence—my colleague who now sits in another place, Earl Alexander of Hillsborough—two years' National Service, and he got it. He imposed his will and, if he had not got

  1237
  his way, he would probably have resigned, or he might have become a candidate for Parliament because he has always regarded himself as a great politician. Here is the rub. Some of these defence people—highly intelligent, delightful people to work with, I do not dispute that for a moment—do regard themselves sometimes as having more political understanding than the politicians themselves. I could write a book on the subject. If I did it would be a best seller, more than some of the books I have written.
  I say to the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, who perhaps will convey it to his right hon. Friend, that I accept the basic principle of this Bill. How it is to work I do not know. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East was quite right. He has his doubts and suspicions. How it will work we cannot say, because this is a vast organisation. We are taking over about 240 high-ranking officers above the rank of brigadier from the Army. We are taking over about 70 or 80 flag officers from the Navy, nearly all admirals or vice-admirals, and about 140 high-ranking officers in the Royal Air Force, with all the depots, all the land and all the equipment and paraphernalia. We are also taking over 400,000 civilians operating on behalf of the Services. It is a vast organisation and, as I said, the most remarkable take-over bid that has ever happened.
  How it will work I cannot see. One thing which is essential is that it should work. Otherwise, it would be disastrous for the whole of our defence system. I have a great many reservations. I see no advantage in dealing with them in this debate, apart from what I have said and apart from what my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East, has said, but I hope that when we are in Committee on the Bill the Minister will be rather more resilient than he has been this afternoon. I hope that he will be rather more forthcoming and perhaps more in accord with the line he took when we had a debate on the White Paper in July.
  I recall, for the benefit of the Civil Lord and his right hon. Friend, that the Minister, outlining his proposals in July, referred more than once to the need for "collecting the voices." He
  1238
  declared that he had an open mind. In reply to some observations 1 made, he repeated himself along those lines. If he has an open mind let him collect the voices. Let him pay attention to what hon. Members say on this issue because, if he fails, he may well find himself in difficulties if he remains as Minister of Defence. He will need all support and all the encouragement from hon. Members who are acquainted with this subject if he is to act as an effective and efficient Minister.
  It may well be that changes will occur in the next six or nine months—I mean political changes. It may be that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East, may occupy this honourable position. May I assure him that when that happens he will have a tough task in the legacy which the present Government willleave. He will then have to live up to some of the proposals he has made and the criticisms he has indulged in—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] There is no escape from that. It is unwise to indulge in criticism and then, when one is in office with responsibility, to seek to escape. We have to face it.
  A Labour Government will meet many difficulties in the sphere of defence. Therefore, we need a strong, efficient organisation, not subordinate to the military chiefs, but a system where the military are subordinated to the political chiefs. If we have a provision of that sort, if that is what this Measure indicates, if that is what will be produced in due course, when it comes to fruition there will be no partisan feeling about it. In the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), who has said it so often, then this partisan attitude on matters of defence will disappear and we shall concentrate on what is regarded as essential in the interests of the security of our people.
  6.10 p.m.
  Mr. Aubrey Jones: In his opening speech my right hon. Friend said that there was a broad consensus of opinion to the effect that the arrangements in the Bill and accompanying the Bill were necessary and well contrived. I do not think that the debate has controverted that statement. The right hon. Member for Easington (Mr.

  1239
  Shinwell) expressed reservations, and doubts and criticisms have been put from both sides of the House, but, broadly speaking, the Bill has been accepted and I, too, accept it. But while I accept it, I should like, with some diffidence, to make two observations, or, at any rate, to ask two questions—and I put them with diffidence because, frankly, I find this a most difficult and complicated, if fascinating, subject.
  I will put the first question which we should ask ourselves. It has been said more than once today that the Bill is a step in an evolution. An evolution towards what? Where are we going? Before we part with the Bill can we try to see the end of the road? I do not think that that question is without virtue. Secondly, we cannot regard defence on its own, abstracting it from the rest of the Government structure. It seems to me that the Bill must have repercussions on the rest of the Government structure. One consequence, it seems to me, is to fortify the expression of a defence point of view in Government as against the expression of other points of view.
  This, by itself, could be extremely dangerous unless the Bill were accompanied by certain corollaries—and I should like to go into these corollaries. The two questions which I should like to ask, then, are: first, where do we go from here; and, secondly, what other changes are implied by the Bill for the rest of the structure of Government?
  The problem with which the Bill tries to deal is the narrowness of Service loyalties. Not that I believe the Services to be worse than any other walk of life. Whatever the organisation—academic faculties, industrial companies, Departments of State, for example—all generate their loyalties, and these loyalties have their strengths and their weaknesses. The main weakness is the narrowness they display at the frontiers with other organisations, and all the important problems, all the critical problems, arise at the frontiers.
  The Bill tries to deal with this narrowness of loyalty in the field of defence, and it tries to overcome the narrowness by a number of measures. It flings the Services into the same building, and it deprives individual Services of a political
  1240
  head who could identify himself with the interests of his Service. It ensures that all promotions above a certain level are approved by the Minister of Defence. Above all, it tries to overcome the narrowness of Service loyalty by securing a greater integration of staff and. in particular, by establishing such new organisations as the Defence Operational Requirements Staff and the Defence Intelligence Staff.
  All this seems to me quite ingenious and commendable, if I may say so, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend upon it. I think that all of this goes some way to deal with the problem. But is this enough to allow drastic decisions to be taken? This is the point which the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) was asking. That there are drastic decisions to be taken is, I believe, undeniable; I do not think that my right hon. Friend will deny it.
  The hon. Member kindly refrained from quoting my right hon. Friend's resignation speech. I, too, will refrain from doing so. But in his resignation speech my right hon. Friend defined, accurately, I think, the defence problem of this country. It is that we are trying to perform three tasks. We are still, as we were before the war, trying to be a world power. We are—and this is something we did not do before the war-trying to be a European land Power. Thirdly—and, again, this is something we were not attempting before the war—we are trying to be a deterrent Power.
  What my right hon. Friend said in 1958 was that faced with this spread of effort we had to make a drastic choice. If this was true in 1958, then it is truer still in 1963. The burdens of being a world power have increased. New nation-States have emerged, threatening military bases—Indonesia threatening Singapore, Egypt, through the Yemen, threatening Aden, and so on. The burdens of being a world Power have increased. The pressures to maintain greater conventional forces in Europe have increased. The pace of technology in the field of the deterrent has been far faster than the growth of our gross national product—and our defence policy aims at keeping out defence expenditure as a fixed percentage of the gross national product.

  1241
  In other words, the military effort is becoming more and more tightly spread over all the fields, and, by being more tightly spread, clearly it is less and less effectively spread. It is this problem, I believe, which calls for drastic decision, and the real trouble is that it is very difficult to conceive of any drastic decision which does not unduly tilt the balance of influence of one Service as against another. This is the real problem.
  I very much doubt—I am sceptical about this—whether the organisation now proposed deals with this problem, because, as I understand this organisation, what we are doing is to arrange for military advice to go up through more and more joint, more and more integrated, channels, but, nevertheless, it culminates at the top in the Chiefs of Staff Committee, the members of which, with the exception of the Chief of the Defence Staff, are concerned with the day-to-day running of their Services, and are the embodiment of their Service loyalties. There seems to be a contradiction here. The changes proposed are all at the lower and the intermediate level, and at the top echelons of the system there is no change at all.
  This might not be so bad were there arrangements for the strengthening of civilian control in the Ministry of Defence, but I do not see that that is proposed. There is no Deputy Minister of Defence surveying the whole field, no Deputy for Finance, as has been suggested in the debate, nor has the Permanent Secretary authority to integrate the military, the scientific and the civilian points of view. At least, I think that that is the position, judging by the chart at the end of the White Paper. There seems to be this contradiction of a joint effort at the lower and intermediate levels, but the old arrangements at the top.
  I well understand the rationale of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. The rationale which has guided this country in the military field for a very long time is that policy must be made by those responsible for its execution. But, in fact, we have been departing from this policy. We departed from it, to my mind, in constituting a Ministry of Defence, which was responsible not for execution, but purely for policy-making. We departed from it further in creating
  1242
  the Chief of Defence Staff, with no executive responsibility at all, but with power to determine policy.
  I believe—I am neither criticising nor praising this—that the net result of this contradiction in the arrangements which I have tried to describe must lead to further departures from this tradition. I describe this as a contradiction, and the hon. Member for Leeds, East described it as a compromise. It is a different way of looking at exactly the same thing. There is a consensus of opinion in accepting the Bill because there is change and yet there is no change.
  This is one of those very famous, happy British compromises. For some time I have been rather suspicious of our happy British compromises. They are not so very happy and they are not so very durable. What they imply is a shift in the balance of power between contending forces, each shift inviting in its train a further shift.
  We have here a shift. This will invite, to my mind, a shift at a later stage, not merely at the lower and intermediate levels, but at the top level of military advice, the Chiefs of Staff Committee. I believe that the end consequence of the Bill must be to produce integration at the top of the military echelon. I express no view as to whether this is right or wrong. Frankly, I think that I have learned enough from Karl Marx to realise that there are some moments in time when this question is irrelevant. This seems to me to be in the womb of what has been done and of what we are likely to be doing today by putting the seal to the Bill.
  I turn now to my second question. What are the implications of the Bill for the rest of the Government structure? It is not merely an armed Service which can display a narrowness of loyalty. As I said earlier, a Department of State can display a narrowness of loyalty, too. Just as a Chief of Staff can show narrowness in his attachment to his Service, so can a Minister of Defence show narrowness in his attachment to defence considerations as against other considerations.
  It is a truism to say that defence is a servant of foreign policy, and in the age of the cold war this is truer than ever. But the Department of Defence

  1243
  is the executive arm. it carries the executive responsibility. Therefore, the attitude of the Ministry of Defence towards the Foreign Office, the policymaking body, is exactly the same as the attitude of a Service Department towards the Ministry of Defence.
  Iwill give one or two examples. Take the whole problem of conventional forces in Europe. The Foreign Office, on grounds of foreign policy, may well desire an increase in British conventional forces in Europe, but it is the Ministry of Defence which carries the executive responsibility and has to find the money, and therefore it resists. Take the multilateral nuclear force. The Foreign Office, on grounds of foreign policy, may well wish to see this country take part in a multilateral nuclear force, but the Ministry of Defence has to find the money. It has to see to the execution of this, as well as to the execution of a nominally independent deterrent force. So, understandably, it resists. There is a conflict which is there already.
  What I wish to suggest—this is the ground of my fear—is that the ability of the Department of Defence as a result of the Bill to express a defence point of view as against a foreign policy point of view is increased. This, it seems to me, is what has already happened locally in both Aden and Singapore through the creation of the integrated commands. I am not criticising the act of integration, but the net effect of military integration in both areas has been to give a greater force to the military point of view as against the civilian point of view. What I fear from the Bill is an enlargement of this consequence on a much wider scale.
  This, it seems to me, requires two corollaries. First, if, by the Bill, we set out to unify the defence structure, it seems to me that correspondingly we ought to unify the foreign policy structure. Foreign policy is at the moment fragmented between three offices—the Foreign Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office, and the Colonial Office. The Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office now have an identical Minister, but there is no real fusion between them. There remains a dichotomy
  1244
  between the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office so that in dealing, for instance, with an area such as Malaysia there is, as a result of a unified Department of Defence, a unified military view, but as a result of the dichotomy between the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office there is a divided view on foreign policy. A consequence of the Bill, a corollary of the Bill, is, I suggest, the integration of the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office.
  The second corollary—here my mind runs parallel with that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch)-—is a strengthened office under the Prime Minister. What happened, it seems to me—I have no direct experience of this; my impressions are drawn entirely from books—in the old days was that the Secretariat of the Committee of Imperial Defence sorted out differences not only between the three Servics, but as between the three Service Departments and other Departments—the Foreign Office and the Treasury. When the Ministry of Defence was created early after the war, the staff of the Secretariat of the Committee of Imperial Defence passed largely into the Ministry of Defence, some of it into the Cabinet Office.
  The ability to deal with differences of view between the three Services was in this way increased, and it will be further increased by the Bill; but the ability to sort out differences of view between the Services, on the one hand, and other Departments, on the other, was not increased. Indeed, I suggest that it was decreased. If we have failed, as I believe we have failed, to take drastic decisions in the field of defence, it has not been merely because of the entrenched positions of the three Services. It has been, to my mind, because we have failed as a whole to integrate defence, foreign policy and economics. We have failed to see British policies as one integrated whole.
  It may be that this is recognised in the White Paper which was a prelude to the Bill. It may be—I do not know-that this is the significance of the new Committee on Defence and Oversea Policy which was referred to by the hon. Member for Leeds, East and, I think,

  1245
  by my right hon. Friend. If this is so, I welcome it. However, nowhere, either in the debate in the summer on the White Paper or in today's debate, has there been to my knowledge any suggestion of a strengthened staff for this Committee. There has been mention of a star:, a staff drawn from the Cabinet Office, but it has not been stated whether or not the staff is stronger than the staff which served the old Defence Committee, or whether the staff will approximate more to the Lord Hankey staff of the Secretariat of the Committee of Imperial Defence.
  Be that as it may, I should like to make one suggestion. I should like to suggest that a strengthened Prime Minister's office should contain a small element dealing with intelligence. I do not mean collecting intelligence, but interpreting intelligence, looking at world trends. Indeed, I believe that this is much more important than all the security issues which have obsessed us in recent months. I think this follows from the defence reorganisation which we are discussing in the Bill. Under the Bill, Air Ministry intelligence will be integrated in the general intelligence activities of the new Ministry of Defence. What is the case for this? The only case, as I see it, is that intelligence emanating from an Air Ministry, from an executive arm, is likely to be coloured by the policies which that arm wants to pursue. In other words, it will not be totally objective and disinterested.
  If this is true of intelligence coming from the Air Ministry, it can be equally true of intelligence coming from a Department of Defence, just as it can be equally true of intelligence coming from, say, a Foreign Office. Take, for instance, Malaysia, where one sees the whole thread from defence to politics upwards. We have a military base in Singapore which is threatened by the problem of the Singapore Chinese. To cope with this problem—I do not dispute the Tightness of the policy—we integrate Singapore in a larger Malaysia, but it is possible that by doing this we are elevating the danger of the Singapore Chinese to a higher plane and creating a danger for the whole of South-East Asia.
  If so, we need to be on the alert and to amend our policies accordingly. We are more likely to be on the alert if
  1246
  we have a centre of intelligence that is not too closely identified with the Ministry of Defence, which is responsible for military policy in South-East Asia or the Foreign Office, which has responsibility for the existing foreign policy towards Malaysia. Alertness of this sort would be much more quickly achieved if it were done by an independent secretariat, independent of existing policies, in the Prime Minister's office.
  To conclude. I accept the increased powers that will accrue to the Minister of Defence under the Bill. But the corollary of that is that he, in turn, must give up power to those who are higher up the ministerial echelon. The Bill will turn the Minister of Defence into an executor of defence policy, but this means that the formulation of defence policy must rest even more openly than now higher up; that is, with the Prime Minister. I do not mind this, but I would feel happier about the Bill if I were convinced that the appropriate administrative arrangements to this end were, in fact, being made.
  6.31 p.m.
  Mr. George Wigg: During your absence from the Chair, Mr. Speaker, I got involved in a slight fracas and made a comment that I would not have made had I not believed that the hon. Member to whom I referred was in the Chamber. I therefore take this opportunity of withdrawing that comment of my own volition because I rather like my birds on the wing.
  I regard it as a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Aubrey Jones). He is a serious student of defence matters and I find myself in considerable agreement with his conclusions, just as I found myself in agreement with many of the conclusions of the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch), albeit I arrived at them by a different method.
  I have a fundamental belief in the power of democracy and an elected Chamber. My complaint against the Government is that in defence matters during the last 12 years they have consistently refused to appreciate the latent abilities and knowledge of this House and have turned their backs on the power that comes from an informed and educated democracy.

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  I recall that in the dark days of 1940 the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) could never have formed his Administration and carried the necessary policies through had he not appealed to the latent strength of the British people. That is why we won the last war. One of the things I learned—and I regret my need to repeat this to the House, but I must do so—from my reading of our history is that the British people have never failed when they have been told the truth. As a nation we have got into trouble when we have not been told the truth.
  In defence matters in the last 12 years Britain has paid a tremendous defence bill—£18,400 million. Yet the British public have been kept in the dark throughout these years, and they are still in the dark and, as a result, our defence resources are much less than they should be. In this connection, I should like to have seen a Select Committee tackling the preparation of the Bill, meeting over several months, so that hon. Members could have educated themselves to understand the principles upon which the Bill is based. I say this because I share the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) in that, frankly, I do not know what the Bill is about. Indeed, I do not believe that the Minister does either.
  I know what the Minister is trying to do—or I think I do. I know the methods and principles on which he is working and I believe that basically they represent an exercise in semantics. When one attempts to bring the exercise in contact with reality by asking the Minister Questions one merely gets fobbed off with excuses. The facts are that the Government's defence policy, after 12 years, has run into a series of barriers because they have followed this, that and the other object without regard to an overall formulae of a policy that would result.
  The present Minister of Defence realised this in his resignation speech when Chancellor of the Exchequer. One cannot afford the lot if one lacks the power and strength to carry it through he said in effect. Thus, faced with problems
  1248
  arising from trying to do too much the Government, in order to put things right, have produced another White Paper which gives them no more power than they took in the 1958 White Paper and yet leaves the objects substantially the same.
  When the right hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan) was Minister of Defence I remember him telling me that one of the things he was going to leave behind was a knowledge of his views on the subject of defence organisation. For while he could carry the policies he wanted to follow, he was doing it on the authority of his grey hairs and he thought that in due time the Ministry of Defence must be organised on the basis of a legislative foundation.
  Whatever views the Government now take, they must realise that the policymaking instrument must be right outside the Ministry of Defence. One of the things from which the three Services have all suffered, the Army in particular, is that no one has been able to make up his mind what he wants the Army for. Even now the Government do not know the answer to that one. If that is true of the Army then it is also true of the Navy. To show what I mean, I suggest that we follow the story through in terms of cost and relate it to what has happened to the Navy during the past few months.
  Consider the County Class frigate, There were to be six of those and the total cost was to be £90 million. In 1959 we were told that Seaslug would cost £40 million. We were also told that the cost would be £20 million more for Seacat—that is, a total of £150 million. What was the County Class frigate supposed to do? Presumably it had to defend us from something—and that means defending an aircraft carrier. Therefore, at all costs, the County class had to be provided with one or more aircraft carriers to defend.
  We move on to the 1963 Naval Memorandum in which we were told that there was to be a replacement for "Victorious" at a cost of £60 million—I have heard it said that we need three—representing a bill of £180 million. Add to that the original cost of the County Class and the missiles of £150 million and we have a bill of £330

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  million. But if one has an aircraft carrier in order to defend it one must then have aeroplanes for the aircraft carrier. Having taken it this far we must ask what is going to happen to the Sea Vixen. We were told that in the Air Estimates the P1154 was to replace the Hunter and then on 30th July the Minister told us that the P1154 would replace both the Hunter and the Sea Vixen.
  The cost of the P1154 by the time it becomes operational would add another £500 to the bill so we add a bill of £830 to our defence costs in order to replace an aircraft carrier conception and its supporting weapons and this is done in order to meet the latest suppression of a group of hon. Gentlemen opposite who are living in the backwoods, on the traditions of TrafalgarÔ
  Commander Anthony Courtney: I do not want to draw the hon. Member off his train of thought too far for obvious reasons, but has he heard of the protection of merchant shipping in times of war, particularly the protection of convoys, without which this country could not live?
  Mr. Wigg: Of course I have, but 1 also have an extraordinarily good memory. I listened intently years ago to the speeches of the right hon. Member for Woodford and I recall it being said then that in future it would not be a long war—that it would last for only a couple of days or so. In order to justify this vast expense of over £1,000 million the Government and some hon. Members opposite must invent the kind of war of which their whole deterrent policy is a denial. If one has a thermonuclear war, what is the point of talking about convoys? They were the sort ofconsiderations with which we were concerned in 1914 and in 1939. It is sheer unadulterated nonsense to talk in such terms these days. Anyway these matters are not subjects which can be decided by a group of naval blimps meeting in the backwoods of the Tory Party. These are matters that are capable of objective examination. On them may depend the life or death of the country; not the feelings of prestige of admirals and the like.
  This should be decided after the most careful and objective examination of the
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  facts. This is what Mr. McNamara has brought to the United States—this is what the "wizkids" mean. Mr. McNamara has got rid of the old guard of Conservatives there. He says that the argument for an aircraft carrier, the argument for the TFX, is a matter of scientific analysis, and then a decision can be taken. Mr. McNamara comes to a decision, knocks the heads of the three Service Departments together and says that TFX there will be. Then all the vested interests exercise their rights—as they should be exercised in a democratic society—and Congress is at present meeting in public session to argue the merits of the TFX so that the American people can know the truth and, on merit, a decision can be taken to spend fantastic sums of money to ensure the security of the United States. But, let us note, the facts are hammered out in the light of day.
  What do we do? If any of us dare, as some of us have in the last few days, to question the TSR2 we are told by that brilliant development of the new nobility, the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Sir G. Nabarro), that we are being unpatriotic. I have been unpatriotic a few times—but I have been right. I was right about Blue Streak, and I was the only one who was right—
  Mr, Emrys Hughes: Not the only one.
  Mr. Wigg: Well, my hon. Friend was, I might say, marginally right. But, on issue after issue, some of us have been right—because we have examined the facts.
  Let us look at the TSR2. This should be the object of the most careful examination—private examination, if the Prime Minister wishes it—but if the United States can do it in public, so can we. What is the case for the TSR2? We even forget this. This was trotted out in 1958 by the then Secretary of State for War as a Canberra replacement. In paragraph 61 of the 1957 White Paper it was said that there was to be no successor to the V-bomber. The Royal Air Force did not like that, so the vested interest that speaks for the Royal Air Force in this House—I would not, of course, say for the manufacturers' interests, for that would be improper; they would never raise their

  1251
  voice in that way—pressed for me building of a tactical reconnaissance strategic aircraft. As recently as last March we were once again being told that the role was to be tactical and reconnaissance and what the poor old Army was to have, God's blessing to them. We were told that it was to be used from small airfields and that its black boxes were to be serviced by equipment carried in the AW61.
  The truth is that the Government are afraid of the electorate—even worse, they are afraid of their own back benchers. They dare not tell them the truth. They dare not face the hon. and gallant Member for Chelsea (Captain Litchfield) on the future of the aircraft carrier, and they dare not face the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey) on the future of a particular aircaft. That is what has gone wrong. So we are landed with the TSR2 which is just another weapon. I do not have any feeling about the deterrent, because to my thinking it is another weapon. The argument is not about the deterrent but about how it is to be carried. That is where the money is spent and that is what the argument is about. If, in actual fact, the security of the country made it absolutely essential to have a successor to the V-bomber, I would support it—if it could be proved to be so.
  But what are the facts? In 1957—the Government said get rid of conscription, no successor tothe V-bomber, no more fighters after the PI. We were to have the atomic streamlined forces armed with Blue Streak, though even that was not British. Above all, we were to save money. On every single issue the Government have been proved wrong. If, at present, there is a case for the V-bomber and the Government have made a mistake, let the Prime Minister tell us. Let him prove it to the country, but do not let us be charged with lack of patriotism because we refuse to believe fairy stories. I take the right hon. Gentleman as I find him. I believe him, but he quite clearly does not know the facts of life when he comes here and speaks of my hon. Friends talking about abandoning the British deterrent.
  What is the deterrent? Is there a truly British deterrent? Does anyone imagine that we could use a nuclear weapon
  1252
  without the British Army on the Rhine being involved in the use of nuclear weapons? Does that Army possess a British nuclear weapon of any kind. I have had this out with the right hon. Member for Bromley. Honest John, the atomic artillery and Corporal—all are under American control.
  That is why I spoke about the Minister of Aviation as I did. I am surprised that hon. Members opposite let him get away with it. He takes an aircraft, puts on it a contingent of the Ulster Rifles and a stack of 30 journalists to see Blue Steel fired. A few years ago a newspaper had great headlines—"Macmillan talks from strength"; "Blue Streak wins". This time if would have been "Blue Steel triumphs. Home talks from strength". But Blue Steel failed. It did not fire. The Vulcan came along at over 40,000 ft. and they started to count down in the usual television style—ten, nine, eight, and so on—but a few seconds before it was due to be fired the exercise was called off.
  Then the most wonderful stories appeared in the Press about the range of Blue Steel, but if the range of the Mark I—Mark II having been cancelled by the Government—is only just over 100 miles then the viability of the V-bombers is limited and it certainly cannot be sold very effectively, for the Russians have fighters and missiles with an effective range of over 100 miles. So it was put about that Blue Steel's range was anything up to 750 miles. Do hon. Members opposite believe that? In my judgment, those stories have had their origin in the Ministry of Aviation and, above all, in a Minister of Aviation who, however good he may be otherwise, plays politics with everything he touches.
  That is one thing we must get right if we are ever to have a defence policy that is sound and within our financial capacity. We have to get defence out of politics. I am one of those who do not only talk about things but try to do something about them. So I put forward concrete proposals. In the debate on the White Paper I urged on the Government that what we should do—and the right hon. Member for Hall Green says, the same—was to revive the old Committee of Imperial Defence—drop out the word "Imperial" and call it

  1253
  Committee of Defence—and that that Committee should be situated in the Cabinet offices. It is there that policy decisions should be taken.
  Let us take one decision upon which a tremendous amount, perhaps the country's whole economic viability, depends—sterling oil from Kuwait. It may well be that there will be no oil shortage, but the question of whether we shall have an oil shortage or an oil surplus over the next 20 years is something that should i>e objectively examined by the best brains in the country. And it cannot be examined in the Ministry of Defence.
  The second thing that should be decided is whether the sterling area would be viable if we had to buy dollar oil. Is it or is it not a fact that 50 million people cannot live at a high and expanding standard of living here unless we have sterling oil? Again, these things are far beyond the mind and understanding of people who have had Service training. They are matters of political life or death for the country, and should be handled right outside the defence Services. But let us remember that right answers to such questions are the foundations of a sound defence policy. The Ministry of Defence should be the handmaiden of the policy decisions taken in the Cabinet secretariat. This is how democracy works.
  If this were done it would enable another proposal which is near and dear to my heart to be carried out. In six months' time when my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. Wilson) is Prime Minister I want him to give a pledge. I want him to undertake and pledge his personal honour to examine the defence situation which he finds and then undertake to carry through whatever steps the situation requires regardless of the political consequences to his Party. [Laughter.] Certainly it has never been done by the Government of the Civil Lord of the Admiralty. That is why he laughs. This is the first step that must be taken. My right hon. Friend could then do what was done before the First World War. He could invite the Leader of the Opposition and one or two of his principal associates by arrangement to become members of that committee.
  Unless we can elevate policy above the party battle we can be absolutely sure
  1254
  that we shall not get this matter right. I generally end my speeches at this point, but I have plenty of time tonight since apparently nobody else wants to speak. If we do not elevate policy above the party battle we shall get involved in a kind of sham battle. And the characteristic of a sham fight to me is that nobody wins, which is just what has happened, and we have spent £18,400 million in 12 years with little result.
  When a week ago the Prime Minister made a speech in this House and said that he would take the question of a deterrent to the country I thought that he was politically green. Perhaps he is all the nicer for that, but he does not understand what he is talking about in this context. I did not realise then that the Government were in the mess they are now in on defence matters. This goes right to the core of the problem we are discussing.
  The hon. and gallant Member for Chelsea and the hon. Member for Horncastle (Sir J. Maitland) have done their part to make sure that we get landed with an aircraft carrier, a County Class frigate, Seaslug and Seacat and the P1154 at a cost of about £1,300 million. Then we have recruiting declining and we have the AW681, at another £300 million. Unless the defence budget is to go far beyond £2,000 million something must be done about it. So that smart operator, the Minister of Aviation, gave a clue yesterday when I questioned him about the AW681 which was settled six months ago. There was a conflict about the engines and whether Bristol Siddeley would instal the Pegasus or whether Rolls-Royce would instal the Medway. We know that it was to be the Medway, but no-one answered that question because the Minister is going to slow the project down. The Government cannot carry it out this year and therefore they slow it down to next year.
  This is what has gone on in the aircraft industry. The TSR2 is a brilliant conception. Blue Streak was a brilliant conception. There is a list of 30 major projects which contains some of the finest engines and aircraft the world has ever seen. In 1953, for example, we cancelled the Developed Hawker Hunter after spending £140,000 on it. If we

  1255
  had gone on we would have captured the world market and would have been years in front of the Mirage III. The same would have applied to the TSR2 if when we decided upon it as a Canberra replacement we had gone on with it. Now it is too late and too heavy.
  Aircraft after aircraft, weapon after weapon tell exactly the same story, and the only thing British about the British soldier is the man inside the uniform. All his equipment is foreign. We produce little or nothing. The FN rifle is Belgian. We produced under the Labour Government the EM2, the finest rifle in the world, and the first thing that the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) did was to cancel it. We had the 25-pounder which was a field gun in the last war. Its successor is the 105 mm. pack howitzer, which is Italian.
  Then there is the 155 mm. (S.P.) close support weapon, which, of course, is the American M44. If we want to do the right thing for the Navy we should buy the F4, the Phantom II. It will do all that the TSR2 can do in the tactical and reconnaissance roles. At the time it was conceived it was in competition with the American A3J, the Vigilante. This again is obsolete. The current competitor of the TSR2 is the Phantom II, but when the TSR2 flies it will be in competition with the TFX.
  Let us be honest. We here are not all descended from the early Christians. We are not all examples of nobility and light. We on this side of the House get involved in the same kind of pressures. This is the nature of politics, and what we must do at all costs is to elevate defence at policy-making level to a point where objectivity and wisdom can operate. In the process the Government should use the House of Commons as part of its educational machinery so that in due course the man in the street can understand what defence problems are about.
  The right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) said that we were engaged in laying the foundation. We are not. What we are doing is puttingthe roof on before we have put the foundation down. This is the danger, because the Government are driven by the impelling force of economic circumstance and by the size of the bill. The
  1256
  Minister of Defence lacks the power to put things right. I do not think that he lacks the guts or political ability, but he lacks the power to carry through decisions which must be taken within a time-scale which makes them effective. He therefore has to postpone the AW681 for a few months and has to do the same with the P1154.
  The right hon. Gentleman was, of course, right and it was one of my hon. Friends who was wrong when he suggested that something had gone wrong with the P1154 technically. What has gone wrong is that the Government cannot fit the expenditure, which ought to be undertaken and which ought to have been undertaken months ago, into next year's Estimates, because the defence bill is going over the £2,000 million mark. The potential for designing and manufacturing these weapons exists in this country if we care to use it, but if we try to do too much we shall surely fail.
  I ask hon. Gentlemen, however, to turn to a Question which was put down by my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) for a Written Answer on 17th June and study the list of missiles and aircraft which had been cancelled, or look at a reply to another Question which I put down because I did not think that that list went far enough. My list of aircraft and engines which had been cancelled was so long that it would not go on the Order Paper. Some of these had been the most brilliant conceptions, and I pay tribute to the technologists, scientists and skilled workers who have conceived the best engines and aircraft in the world. If I pay that tribute, it is in itself an indictment of the Government for not having had them carried through from the drawing board until they became saleable afterwards.
  I went to Paris recently and took the opportunity there of saying a few words to the Americans about the pride which this country has in its achievements. I told them that if they want N.A.T.O. to be viable they ought to have regard to our need for an export market. I was glad to have the opportunity of saying this, because we have not always in the past had very much to sell. I throw back the words in the teeth of the Minister of Defence and the Minister of

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  Aviation when they charge us with lacking patriotism. I will compare my patriotism with that of the Minister of Aviation any time. I may not have had quite so much for it, but let him realise that the criticisms we make of aircraft techniques and recruiting policies are made because we want to put things right. I certainly do not run away from the logic of my conclusions. I want to get this right. I believe the time is very short indeed. The recruiting figures have gone from bad to worse, and I am sorry that I have been proved right.
  I issue this invitation. If the Government introduce a Bill for selective service in the lifetime of this Parliament I shall vote for it, come what may. I mean what I say. I am saying what ought to be done. This is the logic of the defence situation. I have always said that, and I say it again.
  In this expensive field of equipment we cannot put the matter right by the kind of speeches which were made by the Prime Minister on the first day that he spoke in this House. I thought he made a most unwise statement. Any Prime Minister with a regard for his country, for his own self-interest and the interest of his party should have said exactly the opposite of what he said. He should not seek to get defence caught up in the arena of party politics. He ought to take exactly the opposite step. He should strive by every means in his power to take politics out of defence and inject into it all the knowledge, all the objectivity and understanding which, after all, is the foundation not of the kind of patriotism of the hon. Member for Kidderminster or of the Minister of Aviation, who use it as an insult, but of future action which can at long last give us a sound defence policy.
  7.2 p.m.
  Captain John Litchfield: I am always impressed by the powerful speeches which are made by the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) without a single note, and I wish that I had his facility to do the same. I have a tremendous respect for his views on defence, but I must say I take exception to one or two things that he said today.
  The hon. Gentleman referred to Navy "blimps", and it seemed to me that he was looking in the direction of Chelsea.
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  I must remind him that "blimps" were never naval officers. They were always colonels.
  Mr. Wigg: Yes, I know.
  Captain Litchfield:The hon. Member also displayed a surprising ignorance of the Royal Navy. He asked what the Navy is for. As I wish to speak about this Bill, I do not intend to enter into a Navy Estimates debate, or even a defence debate, but I must tell the hon. Member that people were asking the same question, "What is the Navy for?", in 1914, and, inside and outside this House, in the years before 1939.
  I wish to put to the hon. Member one final point which I think he will consider, because I know that he considers these matters fairly and objectively. If he and his right hon. and hon. Friends imagine that the only kind of war for which the Navy or the other Services have got to prepare is a full-scale nuclear war, they ought to do some more thinking. We have got more difficult circumstances than that to consider as a possibility. For example, there is the possibility of a British task force being attacked or threatened with nuclear weapons in distant theatres which are not an American interest, and where we could not expect the Americans to pull our chestnuts out of the fire.
  In the debate on the White Paper on the reorganisation of defence at the end of July, the House took note of that White Paper without a Division, and I assume, therefore, that both sides of the House have accepted the objectives and principles underlying the Bill. On that occasion, Mr. Speaker, I was lucky enough to catch your eye and I certainly do not intend to run over the course a second time on general questions of defence.
  This seems to me to be a straightforward Bill to legalise what the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) described as the biggest takeover since 1066. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the brevity of the Bill, but there are one or two expressions in it which may be less obscure to a legal mind than to the mind of a simple sailor. For instance, as I understand it, one of my right hon. Friend's future designations is to be a "corporation sole" in Clause 2.

  1259
  There are other references in the White Paper to titles which will be introduced as a result of the Bill, and some of them seem to be unnecessarily cumbersome. For example, the "Second Permanent Under-Secretary, Royal Navy" seems to be a rather expanded version of the present title "Secretary of the Admiralty". It seems to me to be in conflict with some of the principles on which others of my right hon. Friends are insisting in other directions.
  I am in a state of crisis at the moment over the name of my constituency which my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government wishes to shorten to "Kensington", whereas all I am asking is that it should be called "Chelsea and Kensington". Here, in this Bill, we have another member of the Government, and a very important one, expanding Government titles in this extraordinary way.
  Before I get on to rather wider thoughts, I should like to ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War to ask whichever of his right hon. or hon. Friends is to wind up the debate to deal with one point. Clause 1(4) lays down:
  "There shall be transferred to a Secretary of State by subsection (2) above, and not to the Defence Council by subsection (3), any power to make ordelegate the making of orders …by the following sections of the Naval Discipline Act, 1957,…"
  I want to be sure that those functions, which, apparently, are to be transferred personally and individually to the new Secretary of State, will be able to be delegated by him to an Under-Secretary or to some other appropriate deputy. This seems to be an important point which ought to be cleared up.
  The Bill confers immense and, I think, unprecedented powers and authority upon my right hon. Friend, as the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) reminded us. Indeed, I think that this is the central purpose of the Bill. I hasten to assure my right hon. Friend that I welcome more power to his elbow. I believe that this is necessary, and I know that in his case it will be used wisely. What really alarms me, however, is the thought of these great new powers being exercised by right hon. Gentlemen opposite. I do not wish to
  1260
  descend into party politics, and I think it fair to say that this is not a likely contingency, certainly in the foreseeable futureÔ
  Mr. Willis: What is the hon. and gallant Gentleman worrying about, then?
  Captain Litchfield: But, without wishing to encourage any false optimism in the bosoms of hon. Members opposite, I must admit that it is a conceivable possibility. I think that the possibility of a future Minister of Defence holding these great powers—they are very highly individual and personal powers—and trying to put into practice the thoughts on defence which hon. Members opposite hold, is truly terrifying.
  I am not in any way seeking to criticise those hon. or right hon. Gentlemen opposite who might in such circumstances occupy this office. I am talking about the policy which may be imposed on them. If, by some dire electoral mischance, a right hon. Gentleman opposite should find himself in this position of supreme responsibility for defence, I can only say that, whatever else he commanded, he would certainly command my sympathy. He would never lack advice from one side or other of his own Front Bench, or from behind him. Perhaps he would share the feelings of the Duke of Wellington about the rank and file behind him—"I do not know what effect these men may have on the enemy, but by God! they terrify me!" Perhaps, too, he would recall Macaulay's lines from "Horatius":
  "Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack—But those behind cried forward, And those before cried back!"
  For a Minister of Defence to have to stand in this House and try to put over and implement a divided policy imposed upon him by different influences in his party would indeed be perilous.
  Mr. Healey: What about the differences on the other side of the House?
  Captain Litchfield: The hon. Gentleman should not encourage himself to think that on this side of the House there is any difference on basic matters of defence. There is none; we think alike. The contradictions, ambiguities, confusions, evasions and unanswered questions on Labour's defence policy

  1261
  may do no more than lose hon. Members opposite a fourth General Election while they are in opposition; but if they were the Government of the country, it would, in my opinion, be a national catastrophe. However, this contingency is remote, so remote that I can only say to my right hon. Friend that 1 think the House can afford to accept it.
  Mr. Cyril Bence: The hon. and gallant Gentleman is only trying to cheer himself up.
  Captain Litchfield: I do not need any cheering up.
  I turn now to less controversial matters. Anyone with experience in Whitehall will know that this integration will not be a simple matter, and certainly not as simple as one might imagine from the Bill. The House may arm my right hon. Friend with all these powers and authority, but there is a great deal more to it than this when one gets down to the sharp end and to implementing the integration. One cannot fight an enemy with Acts of Parliament. All of us, on both sides of the House, whatever our views on defence matters, are I think, in favour of the Bill and an integration of this kind, and I think that all hon. Members wish my right hon. Friend well in carrying out his task; and I am perfectly certain that the Services wish him well and will loyally support him in making a success of it.
  I cannot do better, on this point, than quote some thoughts expressed the other day by the present Controller of the Navy—who is an admiral—when addressing the Navy League. He said that the Services must be not "with it" but "ahead of it", and that this organisation must be drip dry, clinically clean, polythene wrapped and sophisticated, and that the aim must be—as I am sure it will be—to get the right answers cheaper and quicker. These are admirable sentiments, and I am sure that they represent the views and intentions of my right hon. Friend and everyone in the Services who is connected with this great integration.
  Yet I think that it would be a mistake to imagine that all this will be accomplished easily or in a moment by just passing this Bill, which, after all, is not
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  an end in itself. It merely arms a man to do the job, gives him the authority. The success of this amalgamation will depend at least as much on individuals in senior positions and in the middle positions as it will on the chains of command and responsibility and paper reorganisation of staffs, although these are important.
  I should like to offer two thoughts to my right hon. Friend on the basis of some experience of joint staffs in Whitehall and outside. I would urge him, first, that there is a very real danger in a scheme like this—it is not always recognised—of over-centralisation through over-enthusiasm in paper schemes, charts, and so on, a risk of stifling independence of thought and initiative and slowing up decisions. I hope that my right hon. Friend will guard against this.
  Secondly, I hope that my right hon. Friend will set his mind very firmly against any unnecessary proliferation of staffs and committees. I have had a great deal of experience of committees in Whitehall, in the Services and with the Foreign Office, and so on, and I do not think there is any doubt—I do not think that anyone would question it—that the committee system in Whitehall is a sound and really essential system. But, though I certainly do not advocate as a principle that we should go in for any committees of one, small committees are nearly always better than big committees, and no committees are better than any committees if not more than one authority is concerned.
  There is in these grand schemes, however admirable they may be in principle, a risk of producing situations in which everyone thinks that he has to be consulted and everyone refers everything to everyone else. That is a danger which has arisen in the past, and it is a danger which could very easily arise in this sort of mammoth reorganisation. I hope very much that this will be guarded against, and that my right hon. Friend and other Ministers will interest themselves in this personally. It is a matter of internal organisation and discipline within the Ministry which it is very important to get right when we start the new scheme.
  Finally, and perhaps a little more controversially, though not in a party sense, I hope that my right hon. Friend

  1263
  will use his powers to grip very firmly the problem of conflicting inter-Service interests. Of course, the Services work well together—they always do so—but there are interests which are particular to different Services—and it is natural, and, in many ways, not at all a bad thing, that Services should represent what they believe in firmly and fearlessly. There are those of us in the House who have a particular allegiance and loyalty to the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, or the Army, and some of us are perhaps inclined to judge defence projects and policies from the point of view of how they will affect the interests of particular Services.
  I do not doubt that my right hon. Friend, and any Minister of Defence, would take a more objective view than this. For him, it is not a question of, "If we are to continue to have a Navy, an Air Force or an Army, then we must have such and such a weapon—this, that or the other." The question for the Minister is, "What do we really need to implement our defence policy, regardless of which Service operates it?" We simply cannot afford to produce weapons or projects of the vast cost of some recently announced projects merely to keep this Service or that Service in business.
  Mr. Healey: Could the hon. and gallant Member enlighten us as to the weapons he has in mind? Perhaps we share a common view.
  Captain Litchfield:I doubt very much whether we share a common view. That is a perfectly fair question, but it is not one that I can answer, because I am not thinking of specific projects. I am trying to enlighten the hon. Gentleman on certain principles with which I am sure he agrees. I do not think that there is any difference between us there.
  With his new powers, I hope that my right hon. Friend will set in motion, if he has not already done so, an appreciation ab initio of defence needs and projects and will be ruthless in cutting out duplication of all kinds, regardless of Service interests. I hope that no one who has heard my words of wisdom—and I hope that they will be regarded as words of wisdom—will think that I am trying to get at anyone, or at any
  1264
  project, as the hon. Member appeared to imagine.
  I am wholly with my right hon. Friend the Minister on the various problems and on what he is doing about them. They are not as easy and as simple of solution as the hon. Member for Leeds, East may think, and I believe that he probably understands and accepts that. They are very difficult problems to settle. I am not sure whether this new organisation will ever really make a decision easier when it comes down to one man's decision on conflicting advice, that is to say, the Minister's, but I only hope that it will make it a little less difficult for him.
  7.22 p.m.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: To me, this has been a very interesting debate, even if it has not been very well attended. It has gone through the centuries without coming to the immediate present. The Minister of Defence referred to Samuel Pepys. We then worked our way through to the Duke of Wellington twice and to two world wars. We do not seem to have realised that we are living in an age when the dominating personalities are, perhaps, Major Gagarin and the cosmonauts. We have indulged in nostalgic reminiscences of the past.
  I was awaiting to hear from the hon and gallant Member for Chelsea (Captain Litchfield) a precise definition of the role of the Royal Navy in the nuclear age, but we did not get it. I should like a really independent and objective study of the Navy made by somebody like Dr. Beeching, who has made a very good study of transport on land. I should like a fresh mind directed to the question of exactly what the function of the Navy is in the atomic age.
  Some hon. Members have been trying to find out what will happen under this new Ministry. As far as I can see, it will be the most remarkable debating society that we have ever had in the history of British Governments. The Minister of Defence is to be a sort of presidential plenipotentiary over the "brasshats"—I will not call them "blimps"—the representatives of the Army and the Navy, and there is to be debate after debate on the various functions of the different Services. The

  1265
  ultimate result will be the expenditure of the astronomical sum of £2,000 million, and nobody will quite know what it is all about.
  I will not hurt the Minister of Defence's feelings or bruise his sensibilities by referring to the only speech in his political career with which I agreed, namely, when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he said, "We cannot afford it", Now that he has deserted us for the Ministry of Defence, I still ask, can we afford it.
  There is a tendency to play down expenditure on the Armed Forces, and that is because we do not ask ourselves a simple question: against whom and what are we defending ourselves? We are not defending ourselves against the Dutch. They are not in the Medway. We are not defending ourselves against the French. The Duke of Wellington can sleep safely in his grave. We are told that we must defend ourselves against the Russians; but the Prime Minister has told us that the danger of war with the Russians is passed.
  The questions of defence, and the ideas which lie behind this Bill, are approached very tentatively because the two parties are due to face the electors. If a young person of 19 asks a Labour, Tory or Liberal candidate, "Are you in favour of National Service?", all these gentlemen will say indignantly that they do not proposed to introduce anything of the kind, except probably my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), who will say that he is in favour of selective service, and the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) and one or two odds and ends of very earnest and honest soldiers from the First and Second World Wars who will say, "Yes, I am in favour of conscription".
  Sir H. Legge-Bourke: I have always said, even when the Opposition were in power, that I vastly prefer a voluntary Army if we can get one. What I am not prepared to condone, whether with or without National Service, is committing our troops to carry out duties which they are not fully manned or equipped to carry out in the event. If our men were unable to fulfil our commitments without National Service, I would advocate it. However, I do not believe it desirable, because it is the most wasteful form of
  1266
  service and probably means one-third of the men under arms being in the pipeline, either coming or going.
  Mr. Hughes: I understand the hon. Member's view. I have debated with him at all sorts of places—from Cambridge University to the London School of Economics. If a constituent asks him whether he is in favour of National Service on the Isle of Ely, he will risk losing what may or may not be a marginal seat by saying, "Yes" But, on the whole, I do not think he will find in the Government's election manifesto any indication that they are in favour of instituting any system of National Service now that the recruiting drive has almost died down. That is one of the problems which the new Minister of Defence will have to decide.
  I foresee endless debates because these different functionaries, while loyally supporting the different Services, do not have an overriding conception of why we are spending £2,000 million and which country we are defending ourselves against.
  I do not believe that the security of this country is threatened by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is obviously doing its utmost to keep on friendly terms with this country since it wants the products of our engineering, shipbuilding and chemical industries in order to build up its economy. I fail to see why the Ministry of Defence, in its academic exercise as to the country that we are defending ourselves against, should start on the assumption that we have to fight the Soviet Union, because the Soviet Union has never threatened us. It has no vital interests in attacking us, and yet under the Bill we are to have an elaborate new Ministry and to spend an enormous sum of money to fight a country which is not threatening us. That is the fundamental conception underlying all the arguments of the Ministry of Defence over the last fifteen years.
  We heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) boasting about what the Labour Government did in bringing about conscription and building up a tremendous armed force to take part in the war in Korea. Of course, the Labour Party did it with me making an ineffective protest. But I know the result of the Korean War. It

  1267
  drove up prices, resulted in a big armaments bill and kept the Labour Party out of office for the next twelve years.
  This time next year we will be forecasting what is likely to happen in six months' time when a Labour Minister of Defence will be in office. With all my reservations about strategy and the strategical concepts of the Labour Party, I want to see a Labour Minister of Defence because I do not think that he could be worse than any other. He certainly could not be worse than the series of Ministers of Defence that have been paraded before us since 1951. Then I can foresee the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely and I uniting forces and criticising vast Government expenditure of £2,000 million, which may have gone up by then to £2,200 million.
  That is why I agree with the assertion of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley that the Minister of Defence should be subject to a new body, nearer the Cabinet, which would work out what exactly this huge expenditure is for and we should not be involved in these inevitable debates about the TSR2, or the WM34, or whatever is the atest device, and abusing each other about which Government has bundled the thing.
  I think that any Government that sets out on present assumptions that we have to build up an independent nuclear deterrent, that wehave to have a powerful Navy, and this, that and the other, will get involved in contradictions whatever Minister and whatever party is in power. So I say that we should revise our fundamental conception that we have to prepare for a war against the Soviet Union and that we have to be prepared to defend ourselves against Communism. I am saying something that upsets a good many hon. Members. But I do not think that we need to defend ourselves against Communism because, if the General Election is held off till next October, the Government will by then have advanced so far towards Left-wing policies that they will be prepared to advocate Communism. I want our fundamental conceptions revised. We have to take a realistic view because we are living in 1963 and not in 1763 or 1863.
  We see how very quickly our military conceptions and policies about strategy
  1268
  change. Field Marshal Lord Montgomery made a very interesting speech in another place this week. There were parts of the speech of which I thoroughly approved, especially when he said that we would have to withdraw soldiers from the B.A.O.R.—that there was no longer danger there and that the time had come to reduce the number of soldiers there. I think that Field Marshal Montgomery was being realistic in facing facts, in saying that we would need to save the £80 million that we were spending in Germany.
  I departed from Field Marshal Lord Montgomery when he went on to argue that we must spend the £80 million in some other kind of military activity in the Far East—east of Suez. He did not define it any further than east of Suez. The Field Marshal had obviously left the realm of Pepys and the Duke of Wellington and arrived at Rudyard Kipling.
  When the Government say that we have to spend money defending ourselves east of Suez, I want to know what it is all about. I do not know whether we are thinking of defending ourselves against China, or that, if it came to a show-down, we could possibly defend Hong Kong. At any rate if the Chinese wished to take Hong Kong, they could take Hong Kong. Now the Chinese have only to wait until the agreement expires and we shall find that Hong Kong is not a place that we can defend. Then it is said that we must be prepared to defend something in Singapore and in Malaysia. I do not believe that there is any enthusiasm at all in this county for getting ourselves involved in a war in Malaysia. Malaysia is only a name to the majority of people in this country. I do not think that there is any feeling at all that we should be prepared to spend considerable sums of money in a strategy in the Far East or the Near East which is likely to involve us in a war in Singapore.
  Supposing that we had a war in Singapore. It would mean that all the social schemes of the Government would have to be abandoned immediately—all the talk about new universities, new hospitals and new housing. If we were involved in a war in that part of the world, it would be the bottomless pit, and we should have to come out of it as quickly as we came out of Suez.
  Sir H. Legge-Bourke: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that exports of tin and rubber from Malaya earned more for the sterling area—or they did about ten years ago—than the whole of the output of the United Kingdom?
  Mr. Hughes:The surest way to stop the exports of tin and rubber from that part of the world would be to have a war there. That was what we found out at Suez. We went to Suez to protect the oil and as soon as we went into the Middle East the oil supplies dried up. If the hon. Gentleman is thinking of maintaining our supplies of tin and rubber, he should rule out any possibility of our carrying out a policy which is likely to involve us in a war in the Far East.
  The hon. Member has not quite absorbed the elementary lessons in international economics that I tried to teach him at the London School of Economics. To get involved in a war when our economy depends on rubber, oil and tin and on a complicated system of international expenditure could bring only ruin and disaster to this country. If the Ministry of Defence, this little debating society of Army, Air Force and Navy chiefs, would allow me in for half an hour, I would prove it to them conclusively.
  Mr. Thorneycroft: We would always welcome the hon. Member at the Ministry of Defence, but I ask him to reflect on what he is saying. Is he really contending that the removal of the British forces at present serving with such distinction in South-East Asia would increase the stability of that area or remove war further away?
  Mr. Hughes: I do not think that the forces in that part of the world matter very much. In the event of a real clash, if a showdown came there and we began acting in military terms, it would bring only disaster. There is no justification for this country being prepared to spend a considerable sum of British money in that part of the world when the money, the labour and the materials are necessary to build up our economy.
  The hon. Member knows as well as anybody that our standard of life and economic prosperity depend upon a sound British economy and that we
  1270
  cannot have a sound British economy if the cost of defence rises astronomically, as it might do under the Bill.
  Sir H. Legge-Bourke: What about our raw materials?
  Mr. Hughes: The new Minister of Defence is to decide upon whether we are to continue the policy of the independent nuclear deterrent. He has already gone on record against it. I can conceive of nothing more absurd than the new Minister of Defence sitting round with his miniature Imperial General Staff and contemplating an independent nuclear war in which America is neutral. America would not allow it. America would say, "We will create a disturbance in your balance of payments and we will upset you on the New York Stock Exchange", and the Minister would have to stop it, just as Suez had to be stopped. The whole idea that we must be prepared to spend an enormous sum of money maintaining a nuclear deterrent which could not possibly operate is one which, after considerable cogitation, the Ministry of Defence will reject as impracticable.
  Does the Minister think that we can go forward with this expenditure on the Army, the Navy and the Air Force and. at the same time, go ahead seriously with the programme of social reconstruction that the Prime Minister has outlined? Let me bring the right hon. Gentleman down to brass tacks. We are to have immense military and naval expenditure on the West Coast of Scotland. We are to spend £200 million on a Polaris base. We are to have an American Polaris base at the Holy Loch and a British Polaris base a little further up. If we go forward with these schemes, which are contained in the Government's policy and which it will be the work of Ministers to harmonise with the general expenditure of the Government, they must come to the conclusion that they must make a cut somewhere.
  Building a Polaris nuclear base on the west coast of Scotland requires men and material, brains and organisation, which are exactly the same kind of brains and organisation, raw material and labour, skilled and unskilled, that are needed for the industries of the west of Scotland. We cannot have roads,

  1271
  houses and hospitals and have this kind of activity at the same time. The Minister of Defence will have to stop arguing with the Army, the Navy and the Air Force and must argue with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I cannot see, therefore, that the Bill will solve any of the problems that we have been discussing so much during the last fifteen years.
  Take the Army, for example. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley is no longer present, because I thoroughly agree with him when he criticises the Navy and the Air Force; but when he talks about the Army we fall out. The recruiting figures are not working out according to plan.
  I saw an account in one of the newspapers the other day about a son of a distinguished soldier who had gone to become a student at the University of California. The question was put to him, "Your father is a distinguished soldier. Why do you not join the Army?" He said, "I have had a look at a few depots and I did not like it, so I came away. My father disagrees with me." That is the son of the Duke of Gloucester. I can understand his point of view, and that is the point of view of the great majority of young people. They want to know the relevance and to know exactly what sort of defence for the country is provided by this astronomical expenditure.
  I should like to see the Ministry of Defence get more rationalisation. In so far as it is a bit more rational than the Admiralty, the Navy and the Air Force operating independently, the Bill is a step in the right direction. That and other considerations prevent me from opposing the Bill. I fail, however, to see anything that can rationalise this conglomeration of contradictions.
  I should like to know what kind of Parliamentary control we are to have under the new régime. Will it be better? Will we get nearer to the Services 01 will they be more remote from criticism? Now, we have the opportunity of putting Questions to the Secretary of State for War, to the Admiralty and to the War Office. In future, are we to be allowed to put our Questions only once every month or six weeks to the Minister of Defence? If that is to be the case, if we are not to have the opportunity
  1272
  of asking Questions of the various Service Ministers, the opportunity of the House of Commons to criticise expenditure on the Services will be considerably reduced.
  Even though I invariably get unsatisfactory answers from the Admiralty, the Air Ministry and the War Office, yet I see them sometimes. All that we will have in future will be the Minister coming along about every five weeks and the Questions that I will put to him will never be answered, because there will be so many Questions on the Notice Paper.
  I agree, therefore, with my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley. We should have a committee as a watchdog for strategy, for defence and for military expenditure. And so I hope that one of the possibilities of the Bill is that, when we see it in operation, the machinery which my hon. Friend has so consistently advocated in the House of Commons will ultimately emerge.
  I am one of the few who regularly attend these debates. It would be a good thing to have more and more interest shown in the working of the Services. There are men who have devoted their lives to them. The arguments are of great and vital interest to the country, and they should not be brushed aside lightly in the poorly attended debates that we have such as this one today. I would welcome greater interest in debating defence matters and in the welfare of the Forces and public expenditure. My one reason for giving tepid support to the Bill is that it might open up possibilities for discussing defence in its wider aspects and all the considerations which are involved.
  7.50 p.m.
  Mr. Simon Wingfield Digby: The hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) is certainly a regular attender of these debates. I admire his fluency and sometimes his sense of humour, but I hope that he will not neglect to tell his constituents of his rather lukewarm reception for any possible future Minister of Defence.
  I should like at once to come rather narrowly to the Bill, the debate having ranged rather far and wide. I should like, first, to say that I do not like the Title very much. I should have thought that it could have been improved. This

  1273
  is a reorganisation or integration of the Services and "Transfer of Functions" is not a very attractive title.
  In our last debate on these proposals, there was fairly general agreement that what the Minister was trying to do was right, but the Bill is nothing much more than a bare skeleton and I had hoped that my right hon. Friend would clothe it with more flesh and blood than he did this afternoon. We know from the White Paper a little about how it is to be operated, but there are many things which one would like to know. In the meantime, it is incumbent on the House of Commons to watch the position carefully so as to try to discover exactly what systems we are to have. In this matter the good intentions are not enough.
  The Minister went into history and quoted the Duke of Wellington. There are some cautionary tales to be taken from history. For instance, the history of the Board of Admiralty shows many changes and perhaps we should consider the changes of 1832, after the great Reform Bill, when Graham recast the Board of Admiralty. The House will remember that until that time there was a great deal of naval control at the Admiralty. It is interesting to note that the great fighting sea lords and admirals did not always turn out to be very good administrators or successful First Lords when they were made First Lords, as some were. The House should bear that fact in mind when discussing the powers of the Chief of Defence Staff. It is not always the best fighting soldiers and sailors who make the best heads of big Departments, or the best administrators.
  Some years ago, when I was at the Admiralty, I had to receive a delegation of West German Members of Parliament who were studying our Parliamentary control of the Armed Services to see how it could best be done. I told them that I thought that Parliament's control over the Armed Services was something which had been won only step by step and that sometimes it had gone backwards Today, we are discussing great reforms and there is a danger that we might be taking several steps backward in our attempt to get a greater centralisation and control at the top. There is much agreement within the Services themselves about centralisation,
  1274
  but to expect one man at the top to control £2,000 million a year and 400,000 Service men and women and 400,000 civilians is asking too much. It is obvious that we should be directing our attention to those to whom he will delegate these powers. It is in this respect that I am not certain that the change will work out for the best.
  I admit at once that there was a case for going straight away to a functional organisation of the Ministry of Defence. But it is probably right to do it in the way proposed because in this way we are getting the agreement and cooperation of the existing three Services. A great deal can be centralised; for example, wireless communications, where there is a good deal of duplication. However, it is a pity that we should have selected this moment to hive off to the Ministry of Public Building and Works the Works Departments of the three Services and to move them from that central control which we are now trying to achieve. That is a retrograde step.
  A subject already mentioned this evening is the relative power of the six Ministers other than the new Secretary of State. Their position will be much weaker than it now is, while that of the generals, admirals and air marshals will be maintained. It is right that the latter should have access to the Cabinet, because of the men for whose lives they are responsible, but if they are remaining in the same place and Ministers are taking a step backwards, we are altering the balance of power in the Service Ministries in favour of the generals and admirals and against the Ministers.
  The power of the civil servants is to be greatly enhanced, and they are to be permanent members of the councils. Anyone who has sat for some time on the Army Council, or the Board of Admiralty, will know that the civil servants have a tremendous advantage simply because they have been there so long and have heard the subjects discussed before and know the arguments. I agree that there is not a place for the scientists in these boards, even though they are important. But the Ministers, apart from the over-busy Secretary of State, are bound to have their power reduced, and a decrease in

  1275
  their power is a decrease in the power of parliamentary control, which is why some of us are concerned.
  In my own experience, I found that one of the most valuable things to me when I was in the Admiralty was the fact that I was in charge of a Department, a Superintending Lord, as it is called. The mere fact that, as a politician, I was dealing out the money gave me a chance to go into details which I might not otherwise have discovered. I examined six different sets of Navy Estimates on the Finance Committee and I was convinced six different times of how difficult it was to effect real economies in the defence services. One can go through Estimates with a tooth comb, but stilll feel at the end of the day that one has not done a good job.
  Under the new system, it will be rather different and the Deputy Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Defence (Programmes and Budget) will be the kind of man to whom everyone will go direct and who will no doubt have the power to examine Estimates in sufficient detail to achieve the necessary economies, but not the time.
  The Board system in the Admiralty is extraordinarily good and is probably better than that of the Army Council. The idea of having one Superintending Lord responsible for each big Department works well and gets quick decisions, and I hope that nothing will be done to undermine it. After hearing my right hon. Friend, I am not sure what will be discussed at future meetings of the Navy Board, or at Defence Council meetings. It seems that the subjects will be somewhat restricted, but I should like the Civil Lord to give us a somewhat clearer definition of what they are to be, I do not know what is discussed at the Board of Admiralty nowadays, but there used to be a fairly wide range of subjects.
  When I went to the Admiralty, I was struck by how much time the First Lord and even I myself had to spend signing bits of paper for comparatively unimportant transactions. I found that one often had to sign one's name to the transfer of a ridiculously small amount of land—the kind of thing that
  1276
  one would not dream of doing in one's private capacity. This sort of thing should be reduced. It is not the right way to spend Ministers' time when they are so busy.
  As earlier speakers have pointed out, there is a tremendous amount of visiting to do. Ministers have to go round and visit the troops and the civilians who are working for the Services. I regard it as one of the most important functions of a Minister to initiate or make inquiries off his own bat into a certain subject, because such an inquiry often unearths things which he would not otherwise know.
  I come back to the question of how these immense powers of the Secretary of State will be delegated. Who will wield the power? The Permanent Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Defence will be in an enormously powerful position, as will be the second Permanent Under-Secretary of the Defence Secretariat. I do not think that these titles are very good. In many cases soldiers, sailors and airmen will go direct to them, and the other six Ministers simply will not be in on what is going on.
  Finally, the Deputy Under-Secretary for Programmes and Budgets will be enormously powerful. I agree with the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) that he should have a Minister over him. This is hardly a job for a Deputy Secretary, and a civil servant. He will be the one who is concerned with the allocation of moneys, a task which used to be the responsibility of Ministers in the three Service Departments.
  Finally, there is the position of the Chief of the Defence Staff. I do not know what the intention is about his selection. There may be a tendency, or a danger, that a soldier will be appointed one year, a sailor the next, and an airman the next—a kind of Buggins' turn. It will be most unfortunate if that is the case, because a tremendous amount of responsibility will rest upon him. 1 would be content to see him go altogether, as suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch), and to see the Secretary of State get his advice direct from each of the three Service Chiefs. But, so long as we have anyone in that position, he will be

  1277
  enormously powerful and his capacity to see into the future may well be limited.
  So, although in principle we must do something upon the lines set out in the Bill. I am a little anxious to see how it will work out. There is a danger that parliamentary control will be weakened—that we are placing too much power in the hands of civil servants and, at the same time, slightly upgrade the senior officers. The House should watch this process very closely, because I am sure that the only way in which there can be effective parliamentary control is to have Ministers sitting in this House who are in on the discussions in their Departments, and who go through Estimates in the greatest detail. The Secretary of State will have to be a superman to direct this Leviathan. The House must be very wary of its hard-won right of controlling in detail the money expended on the Armed Services.
  8.4 p.m.
  Mr. Cyril Bence: I enter this debate because I want to speak upon the same subject as that 1:0 which the hon. Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Wingfield Digby) concluded his remarks—the problem of expenditure in various Departments. Before referring to that point, however, T must express my surprise at the fact that during the twelve years that I have been here there has been a progressive decline in the number of right hon. and hon. Members opposite who attend these important debates.
  According to the national Press, the defence of our country has always been the first priority of hon. Members opposite. But there has been a considerable decline in the interest which Members opposite take in the subject, and especially in respect of such an important proposal as that which is before us. Some hon. Members opposite who have a great interest in the Services are here, but it is a shocking reflection upon the party opposite that so few Members have been here to take part in a debate on a subject in which their great traditions are so rooted, and about which they boast so much.
  Hon. Members opposite may point to this side of the House. I agree that there are few Members on these benches, but my hon. Friend the Member for
  1278
  South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), who is deeply interested in the defence of this country—from a different point of view from mine—is here with me.
  I want to follow the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) about the tremendous expenditure on weapons that become obsolescent. I feel strongly about this matter. I feel that the Government are doing a disservice to their own Departments, and to the scientists and technicians involved, in failing to point out to our people, through their public relations channels, that if we want army—and I believe that we should have an Army, a Navy and an Air Force; in this respect I do not go all the way with my hon. Friend—it should be equipped as efficiently as possible. We must tell the electorate that if it wants even a small Army, Navy and Air Force, if each man in those Services is to be equipped as effectively and efficiently as any other soldier in the world it will be a very expensive business. We are not telling the people this.
  We are spending thousands of millions of pounds of the taxpayers' money, but there is little criticism of the fact in the national Press. We spend millions of pounds in developing engineering and scientific techniques in respect of aircraft and weapons. Very often, when prototype developments in my own engineering and scientific circles have been completed, it so happens that someone else, working in the same direction, gets there first, and makes what we have done obsolete.
  That is inevitable. But it sometimes frightens me to pick up a newspaper and read that different forces in the country are complaining of the money we are spending on social services and on subsidies for council houses. There are often complaints about wasteful expenditure and about people receiving subsidies. But when we spend thousands of millions of pounds, knowing that 70 per cent, of the money will never produce anything useful in the defence of the country, it is often written off in a Supplementary Estimate.
  It is said that when we spend £160 million or £170 million developing the TSR2 we learn something from it. Of course we do. If someone spends £750,000 in trying to develop a new distributor

  1279
  for a motor car, and he takes twelve months to do it, with four or five of his best technicians on the job, he may not discover a better distributor but he will probably learn something else. Half the inventions and new techniques developed in industry have had by-products for research and development in other directions. It is cheap to ride off the tremendous expenditure on Blue Streak and Blue Steel by saying that we learn something from doing it. If scientists, engineers and technicians engaged on development work do not learn something which will help towards expansion in another field, they are poor scientists, engineers and technicians. The very act of carrying out some sort of project may result in discoveries being made in some other connection.
  I hope, therefore, that those people who want the maximum amount of defence will not begrudge the cost of equipping the members of the Armed Forces with the finest weapons which are available. We have no right to give our Service men second-class weapons. That would be a frightful thing to do. It would be like sending a child out into a storm dressed in thin clothes and exposed to the possibility of contracting pneumonia. The Army and the Navy and the Air Force must have the best and the only people who can put up the money are the taxpayers. If they want the best for the Services they must put up with the cost. I want every soldier to be equipped with the best weapons that our technicians and scientists can provide for them.
  I am used to the idea of big institutions. But it would appear that the institution to be created by the provisions in the Bill will be the biggest property owner in Britain. The Ministry of Agriculture controlled a fair amount of land in the country at one time and we all remember the case of Crichel Down—
  Mr. Shinwell: And surplus stores.
  Mr. Bence: Yes, and surplus stores.
  Here, the Ministry of Defence will assume control of all the assets, property and liabilities and will become the biggest landowner in the country.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: Clore will take them over.
  Mr. Bence: Clore will probably be taken over. Whether the Minister will have power to acquire shares in Central London Investment, I do not know.
  We are creating a politically centralised and powerful Department which will have control of tremendous expenditure. The hon. Member for Dorset, West said that we might be creating such a centralised machine that it would be difficult to keep track of the expenditure. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire asked whether anyone believed that we were threatened by the Soviet Union. I do not believe that any hon. Member thinks that we are. I believe that in this House there is complete confidence, following the events of the last six months, that if the present situation exists, with the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and the countries in Northern Europe in control of the international situation, any talk of war between the Soviet Union and the West is out. With the presence of the nuclear bomb and the existence of that tremendous power to destroy each other, there can be no threat from the Soviet Union.
  There may be threats from other quarters, but not of the kind which will cause people to resort to the use of those sort of arms and that sort of force. I say that to my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire, for whom I have great admiration and respect. I regret that I have not the same courageabout convictions as he exhibits regarding his convictions. If aggressive action were taken against Malaya we should lose our tin and rubber supplies. That is appreciated by everyone, and I should prefer this country to be in a position in which we could ensure that anyone who tried to take away those supplies would not succeed. They might be successful in preventing us from having the supplies. But they would not be able to secure them for themselves. But it is not necessary to use rockets and high-speed bombers to protect the supply of rubber and tin from Malaya and it would be coming to a pretty pass if we had to spend thousands of millions to protect ourselves from Indonesia, who might want our supplies of rubber and tin.
  I am worried over the terrific expenditure on complicated missile devices. As the years go by, I feel more and more

  1281
  convinced that these devices are needed merely to retain for us membership of the nuclear club and to keep us in line with certain conditions existing between the Soviet Union and the United States. Such expenditure bears no relation to what is needed to meet the sort of situation envisaged by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire.
  I wish to return to the point raised by the hon. Member for Dorset, West. I am a member of the Estimates Committee. I have no illusions about the fact that when one meets representatives of the various Government Departments it is never easy to put the right questions at the right time to the right people. I have always found it easier to give a right answer than to ask a right question. This is particularly the case when a layman finds himself faced with an expert. Unfortunately, the Supplementary Estimates with which the Estimates Committee has to deal relate to money which has been spent. No matter what questions are asked or to whom those questions are put, we cannot get the money back.
  It must seem peculiar to members of the public that the Estimates Committee should investigate only money which has been spent. If ever I am vested with any power in this House, and probably I never shall be, one of the things I should like to do would be to provide that the Estimates Committee should examine Estimates relating to money which had yet to be spent rather than Estimates relating to money already spent.
  What will be the position of the Estimates Committee when examining Supplementary Estimates of the Ministry of Defence? When a figure of £5 million or £6 million is put in and the three Services are bunched together, will the Committee, as in the past, be able to hear witnesses from the three Services, or are we to examine the Estimates put in by the Ministry of Defence to cover all three Services?
  I want to feel satisfied that the Secretary of State for the three Services, the civil servants and all whom we meet will be responsible for departmental expenditure of their particular Services. For instance, on contracts for clothing at present we have an estimate for clothing for the Army, another for the Navy and another for the Royal Air
  1282
  Force. Are we to get a Supplementary Estimate for the three Services combined? By questioning we shall have to try to break down each section of the Services to find which is taking more than another.
  Mr. Hay: These are largely matters for the Estimates Committee itself to decide the way in which it would wish to handle a point of that kind. I should imagine there would be no difficulty in providing the details in the form of Supplementary Estimates, if appropriate, in a way in which the Committee would like to have them. Basically, the idea would be that the Ministry of Defence, headed by the Secretary of State, would put forward its own Estimate. It might cover the requirements of all the Services, or only two, or even one in any given case, but it would be entirely a matter for the Committee to say how it would like to handle the details of inquiries on those particular Estimates.
  Mr. Bence: I understand that by the centralisation of all the Departments it will be just a little more difficult to get the figures broken down.
  Mr. Hay indicated dissent
  Mr. Bence:The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. Maybe we shall have to find by experience how to go on. We shall certainly watch these things when we get the Supplementary Estimates. By the time this happens again, I shall do my job, although we shall have a different Government, a different Minister of Defence and different Ministers of State. We shall still be as tough as we can be in finding ways of examining these details respecting the three Services.
  Finally, I raise a point I always touch on in these debates, the holding of land and property throughout the country. The War Office and the Air Force own a great deal of land. Probably the Navy does also, because I suppose that it has so few ships that it has to take over more land.
  Mr. Healey: It has more acres than ships.
  Mr. Bence: The shore stations are growing, the number of admirals is

  1283
  growing and the ships are going down—not literally, but decreasing in number. We have had some tough experiences during the period of this Administration and the previous one. When the War Office, the Navy and the Air Force have got their hands on land, we have had a most difficult job to get that land back into civilian use. There have been some nasty incidents and difficulties and there have been many complaints by citizens.
  I remember the War Office holding on to a piece of land in my constituency. It would not pay its share for the making up of a road, although everyone else paid his share. That was because when the War Office acquired the land it found that it was a "white elephant". That was about seven years ago and in the end the War Office paid up after a little pressure had been applied by me.
  Difficulties about protecting citizens in one way or another will become more and more difficult. I am worried about the Minister of Defence, whoever he may be, having such terrific control over vast blocks of property in all parts of the country. This will create almost a monolithic Department of State with a tight control. I appreciate that in the defence of the country we cannot have such loose threads as there are in other Departments. This is a very important matter and I appreciate that there must be tight control, but we are frightened of these huge Departments of State.
  I have great respect for civil servants, but in view of all the regulations that are laid down I am afraid when I see a further concentration of power at the centre. I am a great believer in local democracy; I like power to be spread. To me, it is not democratic to take power away from people and to concentrate it. To me, democracy means the creation of a community in which power is spread to the maximum and where every individual has power in himself. When I was young I was often asked why I was a Socialist, and I said that it was because I wanted everybody to be an individual. Under our present society, decisions seem to be taken by people at the centre, and the individual is squeezed out and becomes an insignificant factor in human society.
  1284
  I see this in the Bill. I am afraid of this great concentration of power in the Department and this centralisation—this creation of an omnipotent Department over Services with great traditions. I see the individuals in the various branches of those Services being removed further and further from the centre of power. I see the danger to the citizens we try to protect. All this frightens me. Aneurin Bevan used to express his grave fear of the monolithic society. We are here creating a monolithic institution over the defence organisation of the country, and I am afraid of it.
  8.26 p.m.
  Sir Harry Legge-Bourke: The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) has always shown that he sincerely wishes to see that the Armed Forces are properly equipped to do whatever job the House, through the Government, has committed them to do. Although I may disagree with him about many of the ways in which he would like to see these commitments determined, he and I are nevertheless at one in that we both wish to see that our Forces are adequately equipped to fulfil our commitments. This is the question which every hon. Member should ask himself or herself when considering the Bill: do we believe that the new machinery of Government will ensure that our troops are better equipped and our Forces better manned and that the planning will be better carried out than in the past?
  To me the most important feature of the Bill is the extent to which it will enable Ministers to implement the plans set out in the White Paper Central Organisation for Defence, Cmnd. Paper 2097, published in July. What matters most in the Bill is whether the Ministry will be able sufficiently to modernise all Departments by bringing in the scientific knowledge which is essential to anybody who wishes to make sense on the subject of defence. That is the object of the Bill. We must ask ourselves whether the plan as set out in the White Paper is likely to do this better than it has been done up to now.
  Underlying the Bill and the White Paper is the Gibb-Zuckerman Report, presented to Parliament about two years ago. It has immense relevance to our discussion today. That Committee was

  1285
  originally set up to find out what was the best method, both in civil affairs and particularly in defence, to ensure that we did not waste public money and yet did not deprive ourselves of possibly vitally important ideas.
  As a result of that very stringent survey, some grave faults were found in the system, and not least of the faults was that all too often it was discovered that in the Armed Forces the man who was to be responsible for keeping an eye on the development of a project for a Service was moved somewhere else before the project was under way. Someone else was brought in, and there was a lack of experience in the one place where it was needed most for these great projects. This Bill should enable some of these faults either to be eliminated or to be greatly reduced.
  From the Civil Service point of view, the key appointment in the new structure is that o. Chief Scientific Adviser. He is to have the main charge of the Defence Scientific Staff. Whenever an attempt is made to make a diagram of an organisation, one can soon start taking things to logical absurdities and creating nonsenses of the imagination which will perhaps not work out in practice, because we are dealing with human beings and not just digits.
  I think that there is one possible weakness in the new set-up, which I ask my hon. Friend the Civil Lord to deal with when he repliesto the debate. Under the plan, the Chief Scientific Adviser has his Defence Scientific Staff, one part of which is described as the Defence Science Secretariat. That has a transverse line going across to the Defence Secretariat. The civil servant who is to be responsible for the link-up between the Defence Scientific Staff and the Defence Secretariat will be an officer called the Deputy Under-Secretary of State (Programmes and Budgets). There are two other Deputy Under-Secretaries of State in the Defence Secretariat. They are the Deputy Under-Secretary of State (Policy) and the Deputy Under-Secretary of State (Administration).
  It is absolutely essential that there should be a direct link, not merely through somebody else, between the Deputy Under-Secretary of State (Policy) and the Defence Science Secretariat. As I see it, if the Deputy Under-Secretary
  1286
  of State (Policy) wants to get in touch with the Defence Science Secretariat he has to go through the Deputy Under-Secretary of State (Programmes and Budget). It may be that, because of the inevitable consequences of having a diagram, I have misunderstood this. If so, I shall be glad to give way to my hon. Friend.
  Mr. Hay: I think that it is a fault of the diagram. The Defence Science Secretariat would itself be a part both of the Defence Secretariat and of the Defence Scientific Staff. It will be a kind of joint body. The Deputy Under-Secretary who will be responsible directly for the Defence Science Secretariat will, as is shown in the diagram, be the Deputy Under-Secretary of State (Programmes and Budget). This does not mean that the other two Deputy Under-Secretaries, dealing with Policy and Administration respectively, will not be able to get in complete touch both ways, forwards and backwards, with the Defence Science Secretariat. I can give that assurance to my hon. Friend.
  Sir H. Legge-Bourke: I am grateful for that assurance. I think that my hon. Friend would agree that it is not immediately apparent from the diagram.
  I think that we must address ourselves to this problem. At present the Chief Scientific Adviser is an extremely distinguished man. Everyone knows that he is immensely clever. I think that he, too, knows that he is immensely clever. Are we certain that there will be adequate Ministerial control over this distinguished man or his successor? I thank scientists above all things for having created nuclear weapons, because I am quite certain that we would have been at war since 1945 had they not existed. I am very grateful to them indeed.
  We are now moving into a period of world history where it is becoming increasingly important that there should be real political control over any scientist who is concerned with government. The more my hon. Friend can bring to the Minister's mind the importance of political control of the Defence Scientific Staff the more grateful we shall be.
  Mr. R. T. Paget: At present, it takes ten years for any Department to get a piece of equipment

  1287
  into service. The result is that we have not got, for example, the transistor in service yet, although every taxi firm has a transistorised radio communication system. Now, if through the sort of system the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) is proposing there will be yet another layer, will there be a delay of twelve years before a piece of equipment gets into service?
  Sir H. Legge-Bourke:I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman is wrong in fearing that. My belief is that there is more chance of getting things done rather sooner than hitherto if we have scientists spread through Government Departments and in close touch with one another.
  I do not restrict my remarks to defence. One Government Department which needs scientists very much is the Treasury. We must have men who understand the scientific vernacular, not only men with excellent qualifications but those with a more general type of education, trying to decide whether or not this, that, or the other project is worthy of public expenditure. I wish to see the sort of delays about which the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) speaks disappear.
  This brings me to the last point I wish to make. I do not wish to delay the House because I know that other hon. Members are anxious to speak. We are at an important turning point in the whole machinery of Government. We are in the process of trying to bring the technical, technological and scientific into the machinery of Government in a way that has never been done before The miracle is that we have managed to do what has been achieved by the system we have had up till now. That is to the everlasting credit of the scientists who have so far been concerned, because it cannot have been easy for them.
  We are by the Bill moving in the right direction. I have no doubt that in time certain imperfections will develop. I hope that they will soon be put right. A great deal is at stake, as I made clear in the science debate the other day. I hope that we shall have a full-dress debate on the machinery of Government, because it is no good putting one
  1288
  Department right if the whole machinery of Government is not geared to present times.
  One Department above all has an enormous responsibility; for having in the past allowed men to go into action inadequately armed. I am referring to the Treasury, for no other Department has been more responsible in the past for the unnecessary slaughter that has resulted from this inadequacy of arms. Now the chance presents itself to bring in scientific and techincal skill to all Government Departments. As this is done we must alter the Ministerial structure. We must also alter the system by which Parliament demands that it controls spending.
  The new plan in the Bill may provide the lead on which other Departments may have to base themselves. The idea of having a Minister with three Ministers of State below him may result in as good a system as one can find, provided the right men are chosen for the task and provided all the Government Departments concerned are geared to take full advantage of the opportunities of the new structure.
  I hope that the same sort of improvements will take place in education. Lord Eccles made this point in another place yesterday when, speaking about education and science, he suggested that one Minister should be responsible for that with a subdivision responsible for various types of education, with various other Ministers in charge lower down.
  When my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) returned to power in 1951 he tried to do this with the overlord system. It wasnot a great success because the overlords were too remote from Parliament. We need a new system with the Secretary of State in charge and other Ministers under him, the Secretary of State being responsible for the Vote. Whatever may be required of each Departmental subdivision, I still believe that the Secretary of State must clearly be responsible for finance and that we should have one grand debate on the expenditure of each Secretary of State's Department each year, if necessary this being hived off into Committees upstairs, so that they would be able to go into the various aspects of each Department, operation by operation, whether that concerned

  1289
  one, two, three or all the Services simultaneously.
  We have to be flexible in this, just as we demand modernisation in our system of Government, and I believe that this Bill goes in the right direction. Granted, it gives enormous power to the Secretary of State, but it is up to us to help to work this out and, as time goes on, and provided we here also regear ourselves, ensure that our defence is better than it has been in the past. We can rest assured that the best scientific and technological devices and knowledge will be at the disposal of our Armed Forces. Let us hope and pray that they will be able to keep the peace of the world.
  8.40 p.m.
  Mr. E. G. Willis: I agree with the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) that we constantly need to keep our system of government under survey in order to keep it up to date. I also think that our failure to keep our system of defence control up to date has resulted in the waste of many millions of pounds. I do not think that anyone, looking back over the last twelve years or so, would deny that. We are now trying to do something about it, but something could have been done about it before the introduction of the Bill.
  Like my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), I believe that the Ministers of Defence have had considerable power since 1958 to have stopped the waste that was going on. Even now we have examples of large expenditures—which now look like being very severely cut—without any weapons system being introduced for the forces. That suggests that perhaps there has been something wrong with the Ministers. I do not say this in any party sense, but we may not have had the right Ministers, or the Ministers may not have had a chance to show their capabilities. Indeed, very few of them have been in office sufficiently long to show their capabilities. That has been one of the big weaknesses of the past.
  We are creating by the Bill a tremendous Department, and we must, therefore, examine the implications very thoroughly. As the Economist pointed out at the time of the publication of the White Paper, we are creating a
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  Department that will have a budget approximately equal to the total yield of personal Income Tax, and that is a very considerable section of our taxation to account for.
  The set-up we are embodying in the Bill contains very great dangers, in thatit makes it possible for tremendous powers to be vested in people who are not responsible to Parliament, such as the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Chief Scientific Adviser. What control is exercised over these people depends on the Minister, and if we carry on as we have, with nine different Ministers in eleven years there will be very little such control. I recollect only one of the Ministers ever really trying to control the Ministry of Defence, and that is the present Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, but I do not recall that his control was very beneficial from the strategic or defence point of view. It seems to me that a tremendous amount of what the Bill can do depends on the abilities and capabilities of the Minister himself, and the manner in which he is able to control the permanent officials of his Department.
  I examine the structure proposed to be set up under the Bill from two points of view. The first is whether or no it will help the Minister to achieve a more efficient conduct of defence and defence research and the production of weapons systems. I wonder whether the Bill will help the Minister to overcome the inter-Services rivalry which has characterised a tremendous amount of defence effort since the war and has undoubtedly been a major cause of much waste.
  It is doubtful whether the Bill will do this, because the Services are left to peddle their own wares in the Defence Council and we are once again left with the fact that the man who must decide is the Minister of Defence, or Secretary of State as he will now be known. I am, therefore, not certain whether the Bill will enable us to overcome that difficulty, unless the Minister plays a much more vigorous part than he has played in the past.
  The second matter in the Bill that causes me concern is the relationship between military and political power. It has been pointed out in the debate, and I agree, that no one can be satisfied

  1291
  that we have the right balance here The fact is that while the military leaders retain their power and position the political leaders suffer diminution of power under the Bill. The danger of this has been pointed out. I believe that the Bill weakens political power and that that is a bad thing.
  I do not know how that is to be counteracted, unless the House of Commons devises in time, in the course of operating the Bill, some such committee system as has been put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) which will provide an opportunity for exercising greater political influence and pressure. We must do something like that if we are to offset this giving of more power to the military element.
  It seems to me that while the Bill creates the machinery for achieving greater efficiency in the control of our forces and the expenditure of the moneys involved, a great deal still depends upon the Minister. The Bill provides machinery which can be helpful but the position remains as it was before, namely, that the real need is not so much for machinery as for the will. We not only need a Bill, we need the will.
  8.50 p.m.
  Commander Anthony Courtney: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) for being brief and thus allowing me to take part in the debate. I share his anxieties and doubts about the organisation of defence in this Bill, and I must echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) who said that he found serpents within the leaves not only of the Bill itself but also of the White Paper which preceded it.
  I am next mostconcerned with what I call the Teutonic principle, the danger that this increasing concentration of military power, perhaps without adequate political safeguards, may lead us insensibly towards that terrible weakness of a centralised organisation which was shown by the German O.K.W. during the war when the creation of plans and the formulating of operations became increasingly divorced from the men who were actually to carry out those plans and operations.
  1292
  I see this danger more particularly in the absolute necessity which exists in the new organisation for not allowing plans and operations to be separated from the problems of supply and production. The Service experience in this respect has varied greatly, and I think one can say—it was mentioned by one hon. Member opposite—that in this field the experience of the Royal Air Force has not been the most happy of the three Services. The hon. Member went on to say that the Royal Navy had perhaps evolved the best system, and this was remarked on by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Wingfield Digby) when he paid tribute to the organisation of the Board of Admiralty where the Controller of the Navy, the Third Sea Lord, was an integral member of the Board, and thus was in the closest possible contact with the staff requirements which dictated his supplies and production for the Navy.
  As I see it, the responsibility of the defence operational requirements staff is going to be immense, and I beg the Minister to watch this point particularly closely when one remembers the desperate straits into which all three Services got in the last war when trying to fight battles and plan ahead in the production of weapons from very limited resources.
  My second point is that in this reorganisation of the Ministry there is a separation of the Service intelligence organisation, now concentrated in the defence intelligence staff, from the Foreign Office intelligence organisation and the political intelligence which is such a vital part of the general picture on which plans and operations have to be formed. It has even been suggested by one hon. Member that there should be a small combined political and service intelligence staff under the Prime Minister in the Cabinet Office. I would not go so far as that, but I deplore any further separation of the political intelligence gathered by the Foreign Office from the intelligence which we are now concentrating in the defence intelligence staff.
  May I here draw attention to another danger which I foresee in this new organisation. It is that of not observing the separation between plans and

  1293
  operations on the one hand, and intelligence on the other—one of the fundamental mistakes of military organisation in many countries. I cannot help thinking of a present instance in which a change of American policy towards the concept, as I see it, of an eventual return to a fortress American strategy, with the deployment of immense amphibious and airborne resources overseas—the giving up, in fact, of the principle of the occupation of territory—has been accompanied by the most remarkable reassessment of the Soviet ground forces with which we are faced. At the same time as we get a change of policy, we get a surprising reassessment in which we are assured by the intelligence authorities that the Soviet land forces number rather less than half what we have previously considered them to be. That is the type of danger that we must at all costs avoid in the new combined defence organisation.
  I now want to say a word about the problems of manpower. We all hear references to Parkinson's Law in connection with the new defence set-up. We must watch that, and watch it very carefully indeed. We must remember that more staff officers collected together create more work, as any of us in the Services who have served in Service Departments, particularly in war time, know to our cost. More work coming from more staff others in an integrated defence staff will, in my view, put a far greater strain on the senior officers at the head of those departments, and it is, in all conscience, already heavy enough. Although this may well suit the principle of the promotion of younger officers through the earlier mortality of their seniors, I feel that that is a point which my right hon. Friend should watch very closely.
  Also, there is a tendency in an integrated organisation for the cream of officers in individual Services to be appointed to the integrated staff, thus weakening the parent Services from which they have come. All these items in the pages of the Defence White Paper will need the closest possible watching both in Parliament and, I hope, by my right hon. Friend.
  Thirdly, I should like to say a word about nomenclature in connection with my own Service, the Royal Navy.
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  Naturally, we lament the passing of the Board of Admiralty. However, I myself welcome the return to the term of 130 years ago. I refer to the old Navy Board of which Samuel Pepys was once the secretary. I am delighted that Her Majesty has reverted to the title of Lord High Admiral. But why—here my right hon. Friend knows that I hold views slightly different from his own—must we abolish the word "Admiralty"? This point has not been mentioned so far in the debate. By implication, in the Defence White Paper the word "Admiralty "will no longer appear in any of our official publications. I, for one, feel that that is a retrograde step dictated by motives which are perhaps not of the worthiest in the re-making of this organisation.
  The White Paper, which is the foundation of the Bill, refers to the necessity for a focus for the management of each individual Service for the purpose of efficiency and leadership and to meet the requirements of morale. I fail to see why that focus in the case of the Royal Navy should not remain in the word "Admiralty", the executive being vested, perfectly rightly, in the Navy Board which is to succeed the old Board of Admiralty.
  Are we going to have the loss of that quality hallmark of many maritime applications? Are we going to have "Navy Board" charts and "Navy Board" tide tables in future? Are we to equip our yachts with "Navy Board" pattern anchors? Are we to drive into Trafalgar Square through the "Navy Board" Arch? My right hon. Friend should think again about abolishing this fine old term which the Navy has so much respected.
  I also think that the term "Sea Lord" should be retained. I would ask my right hon. Friend to look at this again. He has made a concession in respect of the First Sea Lord and the Second Sea Lord, the Personnel Member of the new Navy Board, but why cannot he extend that to the Controller of the Navy, the Third Sea Lord? Why must the Royal Fleet Auxiliary personnel now owe allegiance to a Chief of Naval Supplies and Transport when their historic subordination has been to the Fourth Sea Lord?
  While welcoming the Bill in general, I believe that it must be watched at

  1295
  all stages by this House. I ask my right hon. Friend to look into the points which I have attempted to make.
  9.0 p.m.
  Mr. Frederick Mulley: I think that the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) was perhaps exaggerating a little when he said that some aspects of the proposals before us reminded him of the Wehrmacht. However, he stressed, as many hon. Members have done, the need for control by this House in particular and Ministerial control in general to be rather greater than it appears to be on the surface of the proposals. I want to say something more about this aspect of the Bill.
  I do not wish to get involved in an argument about the nomenclature of the Navy, but I have a suspicion that behind the hon. and gallant Member's comments there was the fact that he and probably the Navy generally are not terribly keen at being integrated, and I suspect that they have not yet fought their last battle in Whitehall. It may be that we shall have an amusing debate in Committee when, I imagine, the hon. and gallant Member will try to get the Admiralty back into the Bill.
  We have had a debate of quiet character, because the main points at issue were debated at length in July when the White Paper was freshly before us. Today, the formal job of giving a Second Reading to this Bill concerns only a very small part of the genera] problem posed by the White Paper. We on this side will not oppose the Second Reading because we accept the principle that greater integration of the Services is necessary, and, although we hope that during the Bill's progress we shall learn rather more about the detailed arrangements to implement the integration, we are not tonight seeking to oppose the Bill.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) said, we are asked in a rather extraordinary way to give a blank cheque to the Minister of Defence. What the Bill says, I understand, is that everything shall now be under the new Secretary of State for Defence and, in other respects, the Defence Council. I think that it is in-
  1296
  sufficiently recognised that the problems of defence organisation are probably less due to the lack of power of the Minister of Defence than the way that the powers which he has have been exercised, not only by the right hon. Gentleman but by his eight predecessors in the 12 years of Conservative Government. Clearly, if we are to have an effective defence organisation, and although the right hon. Gentleman will not hold office very long because of the inconvenience, from his point of view, of an election in the near future, we would hope that a Minister of Defence would stay longer in office than has been the case with the present Government.
  However, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Aubrey Jones) said in a very thoughtful speech, this is an extremely complicated and difficult problem, particularly for hon. Members like myself whohave not held high office or office in Service Ministries. But it is significant that all the Privy Councillors who have spoken today, and all those with previous experience in the Ministry of Defence or Service Departments, have been critical of the proposed arrangements for this central organisation. I thought that the right hon. Member for Hall Green was right to warn us that, while we may get away from the rather narrow concept in the Ministry of Defence of the individual Service, we may fall into an equal or perhaps, even greater error of putting defence in a narrow compass within the wider governmental machinery. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) said, clearly the defence organisation must be the handmaiden of policy and that policy must take in wider considerations than the Services.
  My first doubt about the proposals concerns the Cabinet structure proposed. I understand that there will be operating a new Cabinet Committee called the Committee on Defence and Overseas Policy. Comparisons have been made between this Committee and the old Committee of Imperial Defence, which, as far as one understands from the books, worked extremely well. I believe that the main characteristics of the Committee of Imperial Defence were, first, that it was right in the centre of Government, being under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, and, secondly, that

  1297
  the secretariat, as well as being made up of extremely distinguished public servants, held a key position within the governmental machinery. It is not by any means clear that the new proposals will be as efficient in forming policy as the old Committee of Imperial Defence.
  It is not clear what the Defence Council will do. I understand that the Army, Navy and Air Boards will deal with the management side of defence. What exactly will the Defence Council do? Will it produce policy? In my view, policy ought to be within a wider framework than within the Ministry of Defence. Disarmament, foreign policy and economic policy are involved in the decisions. There is the particular case of military aircraft. In every military aircraft there is a concealed subsidy for the civil aviation industry for the production of engines which serve civil as well as military purposes. As the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir. H. Legge-Bourke) said, all these decisions need to be taken within a wider compass. They should come not merely under one Department but under wider aspects of the machinery of government.
  Secondly, there has been much criticism about accountability, both Ministerial and Parliamentary, as a result of the proposals if they go through in the form suggested in the White Paper. While, on 31st July, the Minister said that he would take fully into account all the views expressed in the debate that day, as far as I could gather from his speech today—and we have nothing else to guide us, because there is nothing in the Bill to tell us about the machinery which is to be set up -he is merely carrying on as though that debate did not take place. His proposals, I gather, are exactly the same as were put forward in the White Paper. If I am wrong, perhaps the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, when winding up the debate, will tell us in what respects the Government propose to differ from the White Paper proposals. It would have been more helpful had we been told this at the beginning of today's debate rather than at the end.
  The Minister said that many of these were matters for the House of Commons. That is a grand phrase, but the right hon. Gentleman is an old enough compaigner to know that when
  1298
  he says "House of Commons", he means the Government, because they control the House of Commons. I thought that the Minister was seized of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East and which, I understood, had the support of back benchers, on both sides, that the Committee stage of the Bill should be taken on the Floor of the House. This was the first point about whether the House of Commons was to be consulted.
  I am now told that the Government are not willing for the Bill to be taken on the Floor of the House. It is a new constitutional precedent to send Bills of this character to a Committee upstairs. One can, perhaps, understand that the right hon. Gentleman needs an Act of Parliament to fortify him in dealing with the Services if on a matter of this importance he is not able to prevail over his own Chief Whip.
  Mr. John Cronin: Why not?
  Mr. Mulley: I do not know why he has not succeeded. I will be happy to be corrected, but I understand that it is not proposed at the end of this debate to move a Motion for the Bill to be taken on the Floor of the House. This is a bad beginning to the promises of consulting the House of Commons on matters of accountability.
  There are a number of important matters still to be settled about Questions. The point was raised by several of my hon. Friends. We want to know what is proposed about the customary debates in the spring on the Estimates. While the Minister's suggestions about debates on our role in Europe, on the deterrent or about some other aspect of defence policy would be extremely valuable and interesting, I must ask him why we cannot have those debates now, because the Government have control of Parliamentary time. There is no reason why the Minister should not propose, on a Motion for the Adjournment or some other suitable occasion, that we have that kind of debate.
  Certainly, we should have a proper debate on defence policy at this time of year, because, one imagines, the Estimates are now reaching the point of decision. It is much better to have a debate of one or two days now rather

  1299
  than to have everything in late February or early March. Certainly, one could go into those aspects with profit. More than ever, one needs to assert the right of the House of Commons, and, in particular, of back-bench Members, to get information about the facts of Government policy.
  It was encouraging that at Question Time today, the Prime Minister said that he could see no reason why the House of Commons shouldnot be told the facts of Government defence policy. That is an interesting political innovation, because up till now we have not been told the facts. To take one example, although many questions have been asked of Ministers over the years concerning the TSR2, we were not given any information. In the Recess, however, for what one can only conclude were party political reasons, the Press was called in and lots of information which hitherto had been declared secret was suddenly released. Why as that? Had we asked for that kind of information on the Floor of the House, we would not have been given it but would have had the old formula that it was contrary to the public interest that the capability, and even the picture of the aircraft, should be disclosed.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley suggested that there should be a Parliamentary Committee dealing not merely with expenditure, as the Estimates Committee does now, but with the wider question of defence policy. I am not sure whether this would meet with general support, because it raises problems about whether such a Committee would have classified information and whether some of its activities would not be available to the House as a whole. We ought. perhaps, to look at other ways and means of increasing the interest of the House in defence.
  It happens that, for the first time, the Canadian Parliament has had such a special committee during its present Session. That committee is now visiting London. I understand that it has been found extremely worth while and has not sought classified information. If, therefore, such an innovation is possible, and if, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) said, there is a willingness to
  1300
  give that information to Members of Parliament, it should be adopted.
  The major problem about Parliamentary accountability is connected with the status of the proposed Ministers of State. The right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) made a strong point when he said that nobody in the Ministry or in the Services would pay any regard to somebody who was called merely a Minister of State with the name of one of the Services in brackets as his title.
  I wondered why the provision for status and responsibility of these Ministers was not included in the Bill. Perhaps the Civil Lord will explain how it is proposed to deal with these matters and when and why, if this can be done without legislation, the status of the Minister of Defence, too, cannot be dealt with without legislation. What is the point of giving the Minister a Bill and not dealing with these other matters?
  All those hon. Members who have had experience of Service Departments have suggested that it is a great mistake to downgrade the Ministers and upgrade the Chiefs of Staff, which is what the proposals amount to. Clearly, the Ministers cannot have the same statutory powers as they now enjoy. There is no dispute about the need to bring statutory powers within the responsibility of the Secretary of State, but I would have thought that there was much to commend the proposals made by several right hon. Gentlemen, my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell), my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson), in our last debate, the right hon. Member for Flint, West and the right hon. Member for Hall Green. They all thought that it would be much better to have a Secretary for the Army, or a Secretary for the Navy, as the title, obviously not of Cabinet status but of Cabinet rank, as they now enjoy.
  I cannot think that the objection is that they might then be paid as much as the Secretary of Defence himself. If the right hon. Gentleman is worried about his status, if he looks down the list of Ministers he will see many right hon. Gentlemen who, in terms of Government power, are clearly less powerful

  1301
  than himself. He says that salary is the important thing, but if he judges by salary he will rank about 120th in the new Ministry, for several of his scientific advisers, many civil servants and officers from the three Services will be paid more than he. If he is worried about it, he had better do something about his own pay quickly.
  This is a serious matter, not only for relations, within the Services but because to have a Minister of State (Army) cannot be to have a Minister with the same kind of responsibilities and respect which the Service Ministers have had hitherto. It would also be more difficult to arrange matters at Question Time and in correspondence between Members and Ministers. It is important that constituents should feel that we have gone to the top in a Department when we have made representations on their behalf.
  If everything has to go to the Secretary of State for Defence, even matters of discipline such as those which my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley quoted, we shall have to pester the right hon. Gentleman himself. If he is to do all these things, quite apart from driving himself to an early grave, he will not be able to give the kind of satisfaction to hon. Members which Service Ministers have successfully given in their dealings with personal cases over the years. I ask him to look again at this aspect of the relations with Parliament and in particular the status to be accorded to the new Ministers.
  I was rather surprised when he said that there would not be one Minister of State dealing with one Service but, as it were, Ministers of State at large within the Ministry of Defence. We shall not know to whom to go, and everything will have to go to him. We shall not know which Minister is dealing with the Army, the Navy and the Royal Air Force. I wonder what other jobs they are to have within the Department. Is the Secretary of State suggesting that he is getting the same functional organisation, Ministerially, now, and not—as we have understood—dealing with the matter mainly on a Service basis? I hope that we shall be told tonight the answers to these questions.
  1302
  The third doubt that I have concerns the real objectives that the Government have in mind in promoting this reorganisation. I believe that the right hon. Member for Hall Green called it a compromise. It would be more accurate to regard it as a halfway house because, if we consider all the objectives that a military establishment should have, we cannot rest at the point suggested in the White Paper. It seems to me that we can put the objectives as: first, the military appreciation of plans; secondly, advice; thirdly, conduct of operations; fourthly, the military budget; fifthly, research and development of weapons: and, sixthly, administration of the Services. We have either to do this on a three Services basis, perhaps with modifications, or we have to move—slowly but certainly—to a functional approach. We have heard of the three fortresses of the Navy, Army and Air Force, but, as one right hon. Gentleman said, the most difficult fortress of all—the Ministry of Aviation—remains.
  The right hon. Member for Hall Green properly, but perhaps belatedly, mentioned the dreaded word "Treasury". In allthese decisions and in all the mistakes that the Government have made over the years the Treasury must bear its share of responsibility. Before we endorse these new changes the House should be told whether we are going to move towards a more functional integrated Service, or are going to stop at this halfway point. If we are to move towards a more rational, integrated structure, it is surprising that the Works Services, which are crying out to be integrated within the Ministry of Defence, should be given, as a sort of hors d'oeuvre to the Ministry of Public Building and Works. I would like to hear tonight that, as a token of their good faith, these Works Services are at least going to be brought back. Hon. Members who have connections with the Admiralty will probably be familiar with the point that I am trying to make.
  We have also heard criticisms of the role of the Chief of the Defence Staff, and there is much in the suggestion that his power will be much too great in the proposed organisation. It is an open secret that the Chiefs of Staff system has not worked well for quite a long time. If the Chief of the Defence Staff is to remain we should be told quite

  1303
  clearly that the principle of Buggins'turn, as it was called, will be abandoned. Certainly, if we are to have a Chief of the Defence Staff, we should have the person most qualified for the job, whether or not his predecessor happened to have the same background Services as he had. We ought to have an assurance on this point.
  So far the Ministry of Defence and the Service Ministries have been most reluctant to co-operate with an outside body. I hope that the thinking that has preceded this organisation will persuade them that it is not a deadly crime to talk about military matters, especially matters of strategy, either with people in industry, as the right hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Watkinson) suggested on 31st July, or with bodies such as the Institute for Strategic Studies. There is a great gap. This Minister gives a yearly oration to the Institute, but during the years of its operation it has not had a great deal of help either from the Ministry or the Service Departments.
  Mr. Birch:The hon. Member is right. But surely the real point here is that the Institute for Strategic Studies is not equipped to do research work on a very big scale. It is not like the Rank Corporation, or other American organisations. It is not set up in that way. It is much more a forum of discussion.
  Mr. Mulley: I should here declare an interest as I am a member—as indeed is the right hon. Gentleman—of the Council of the Institute. But I agree that on its present working it is not a research organisation. The Rank Corporation began in a small way. But it has grown because the United States Air Force found that it was worth while to have such a body. I am complaining that so far there has in defence circles in Whitehall been no recognition of anyone who does not wear the right uniform or has access to classified papers as having views that are worth listening to, I suspect, although I do not know, that that goes as well for speeches by hon. Members of this House.
  We must make clear to the Government that no matter how the Ministry and the Service is organised it is no substitute for a defence policy. The other day I heard of a leading American senator who was intending to buy a
  1304
  computer in order that he could feed into it the speeches he had made over the last year to find out what was his real policy. I suggest that it would be an interesting exercise to feed into a computer all the speeches made by the Ministers of Defence over the last 12 years to see what is the Government's defence policy.
  Mr. Bence: It would bust the machine.
  Mr. Mulley: No matter what kind of organisation we get we shall not have a proper defence policy unless the Government are prepared to reconsider the great number of errors which they have made over the past years. We are all familiar with the unsatisfactory manpower situation and I would reiterate what was said about the need to givepriority to the Army in future considerations. We all know that by the cancelling of Blue Streak it was the Government and not the Opposition who took us out of the independent deterrent business. The cancellation of Blue Water was even more serious. In my view it was better than the American Sergeant, but, nevertheless, the U.S. weapon got the N.A.T.O. orders. In the case of the TSR2. quite apart from other considerations, it happens that we had our Operational Requirement 339 a year before the American TFX and if we had got on with the job and concerned ourselves with getting only a tactical and reconnaissance plane, we might have had a Canberra replacement in service by now.
  This in an interesting point because the right hon. Gentleman took it for his peroration on 31st July and said it illustrated co-operation between the Services, this joint operation with the P1154, which he says is not going on any more. It seems to me elementary, and something for which one would not need a study group, to determine that if a plane is operating over the sea it would need a navigator and that if it was to be a two-seater in one case and a one-seater in another that would make a difference to the structure of the plane. But it looks as if that grand design has gone and it will be a permanent shame on the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues if, as I prophesy is likely to happen, the first V.T.O.L. plane adopted in N.A.T.O. is not a British plane but the Mirage, using the Rolls Royce

  1305
  system which was refused support by the right hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friends. It is interesting that the French, looking at the two systems, decided to operate that, and as we know, the Americans are extremely interested in the project. If we do not go ahead with our V.T.O.L., I suspect that the first successful V.T.O.L. plane will use British inventiveness without having any British equipment in it.
  We have now lost the command of the Second Tactical Air Force in Germany. One can go down the sorry list of the Government's defence failures over the last 12 years. We say, as my right hon. Friends have said, that we welcome it if the Prime Minister and his Friends want to make defence an election issue when the time comes. If the Government think that by having a new organisation they will persuade the public that somehow or other they have a new defence policy, they are mistaken. I hope very much that this is a genuine scheme to get a more efficient defence system and not another capsule to add to the stock of amnesic pills to get the public to forget what has happened in the last 12 years. If that is the exercise, I believe it is bound to fail.
  9.31 p.m.
  The Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. John Hay):In one of the more amiable passages of his speech, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) drew for us a graphic picture of my right hon. Friend inserting into a computer the various speeches that had been made on defence policy over the years in order to ascertain what Government defence policy is. The House, quite naturally, laughed at that, but I must confess than an equally graphic vision flashed before my mind of the speeches made by hon. and right hon. Members opposite on defence policy over those years also being put into a computer. I think that the answer which would come out might be a very rude five letter word.
  The truth is simply and solely—and it is the answer to the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) and several other hon. Members who have taken the time of the House this afternoon and this evening in speaking, not about the Bill but about what they claim are our failures In defence policy—that, whether
  1306
  they like Government defence policy or not, over these years Government defence policy and Government defence effort have kept this country at peace. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about Suez?"] That is the proof of the matter. I hope with them, that whatever party remains in power in this country in years to come that will still be the case.
  Mr. Mulley rose—
  Mr. Hay: I have not really started yet.
  Mr. Mulley:I thought that if the hon. Gentleman was taking us out of the N.A.T.O. Alliance and rather suggesting that the whole credit for the peace of the world should be given to the British Government, that ought not to pass without notice.
  Mr. Hay:I am sorry, but the hon. Member has completely missed the point. The point is that if we had made all the mistakes which the Opposition claim we have made, done all the things that they say we have done and not done those things they claim we ought to have done, I doubt whether we would retain the position we have in the world today and whether our contribution to N.A.T.O., S.E.A.T.O., CENTO and other alliances to which we are committed would have been as effective as it has been.
  I come to the Bill. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Park did a little prognostication about the future as a whole and asked whether in the Government's view this was a half-way house; did we intend to proceed from this Measure and the reorganisation of defence for which it is the foundation, to a much closer integration of all the Services? I hope he will forgive me if I do not say yes or no to that question. 1 must take refuge in the words of the poet:
  "…I do not seek to see The distant scene; one step enough for me."
  Mr. Healey: Is the hon. Gentleman interested in the direction in which the step is to be taken?
  Mr. Hay:Of course. Unlike the party opposite, this party always looks before it leaps.
  I will deal now with some of the anxieties which have been expressed in the debate. It is quite natural in a big

  1307
  operation of this kind that anxieties should be expressed. Hon. Members have expressed anxieties about the possibility of our over-centralising, they have expressed anxieties about possible loss of Parliamentary control and about the possibility that the status of the Ministers in charge of the Services might be degraded somewhat by what we propose. They have also expressed anxiety about the possibility of the position of the military and of civil servants being enhanced at the expense of the politicians.
  I will do the best I can to allay these anxieties and to answer a number of questions which have been put to me. But I hope at the outset that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen will keep in mind that what we are seeking to do is not to integrate the Services. We are not trying to provide one single Armed Force. We are doing what was stated in the White Paper—reorganise the higher organisation, the higher echelons, of defence. As my right hon. Friend said at the end of July and again today, the ordinary men serving in the various forces will be completely unaware of what happens. The system will run very much as it has run up to now. All that will happen is that at the top, where the policy-making has to be done, there will be a much closer integration, a much closer working together, side by side, and we feel that this is bound to lead to much greater efficiency.
  May I turn to a matter which has been particularly in hon. Members' minds—and it is natural that it should be so. That is the position of the Service Ministers. I was a little shaken to hear some hon. Members talk of the Ministers of State whom we propose to appoint as though they were some sort of dogsbody. When one is humble, like me, a chap who is Minister of State is "right up there". I could not quite share the contempt which some hon. Members appeared to show for the rank of Minister of State.
  It is important to remember that under our law the Minister of State is a Minister of Cabinet rank. One looks at the front pages of HANSARD and from time to time one sees a list of Ministers not in the Cabinet who are of Cabinet rank. They include a number of Ministers of State. They are not the same as Parliamentary
  1308
  Secretaries. It has not been mentioned in the debate that in addition to the Secretary of State for Defence and the three Ministers of State for Defence, there will be three Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State for Defence.
  Mr. Thomas Steele: Is not the hon. Member aware that we had a Minister of State for Scotland for five years and that nobody had heard of him until he became Prime Minister?
  Mr. Hay: They have heard of him now and they will hear of him again.
  This system of Ministers of State, of Under-Secretaries and of a Secretary of State has worked extremely well for a number of years in the Foreign Office, and no one pretends that the Foreign Office necessarily suffers because it has this system. It is something on the model that we are adopting today. The analogy is not complete, but there are many points of similarity.
  The hon. Member for Sheffield, Park asked how the Ministers of State and the Secretary of State would be appointed. The Secretary of State for Defence will be appointed under the Royal prerogative. The Minister of State for Defence will be appointed under the Royal Prerogative and on the advice of the Prime Minister. There is no great difficulty about this, but there are certain technicalities with which I will not burden the House. Indeed, if I may make a confession, I am not altogether sure I understand them myself. But, basically, the position is that the appointments of Minister of State and Secretary of State will be taken under the Royal Prerogative and not by the Statute, and that is why there is no specific reference in the Bill to the appointments of Minister of State, although there is a reference in Clause 1(1) to the appointment of the Secretary of State by Her Majesty if she so wishes.
  Mr. Mulley: Hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed the feeling that they would like the title "Secretary for the Army" to be used, Are we not to be able to advocate this in Committee?
  Mr. Hay: That is not a matter for me. I cannot say what is in order and what is not. That is a matter perhaps

  1309
  for hon. Members to try for themselves. Reference has been made to the powers of the Ministers of State as Departmental Ministers—and I use this in its traditional sense meaning Ministers in charge of the Service Departments.
  I cannot conceive that they will be entirely devoted only to one particular job in respect of their own Service. In practice, each of them will preside over the day-to-day administration and running of the individual Service to which they are attached. As my right hon. Friend was at great pains to make clear earlier—I am sorry that it did not go over to the House as a whole—the great virtue of appointing them as Ministers of State is that they will have, in addition to their departmental responsibility, the power to range over the whole field of defence. They will, for example, be able to answer Parliamentary Questions in the House on behalf of the Secretary of State for Defence.
  They will, perhaps, be able to go abroad and negotiate on matters of defence with the full authority and under the delegation of the Secretary of State. It may well be—I am not making any pledge or promise about this—that one of them will have a specific and particular responsibility for the oversight of defence expenditure, a suggestion made by the hon. Member for Leeds, East in a slightly different context and also by other hon. Members during the debate.
  I take note, on behalf of the prospective Ministers of State, whoever they may be, of the kindly words of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Park about their pay. This is a measure of status and, although I can make no promises about it, we will certainly take the hon. Gentleman's suggestion into account.
  I should like to emphasise that what we have in mind is not a de-grading of the Service Ministers, but the creation of an entirely new type of three-tier structure. The Secretary of State for Defence will be at the top. It will be his job to oversee the whole policy and operation of the various Service Departments. As a member of the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee he will have access to the major thinking of the Government on defence, foreign affairs and economic affairs
  1310
  which, as some hon. Members have pointed out, are so closely intertwined today.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: Will the Civil Lord explain whether we shall have the same opportunity under the new scheme of putting Questions to the Army, Navy and Air Force Ministers as we now have?
  Mr. Hay: I took note of what the hon. Gentleman said and I hope to say something about the specific subject of Parliamentary Questions before I sit down.
  I was saying that the object is to have the Secretary of State at the top. The Ministers of State will be his immediate deputies, and they are so shown in the chart at the end of the White Paper. They will operate over the whole field of defence, but will have specific responsibility, each of them, for one of the Services. Each of them will be assisted by Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State.
  I believe that this should prove to be an extremely efficient method of working. I suggest to the House, however, that it would be unwise to adopt the suggestion made by some hon. Members today that we should somehow flank the Secretary of State with another senior Minister, whether it be for finance or for some other subject. If that were done, we should run the serious risk of depreciating the value of the Ministers of State. We should run the risk of creating a fourth tier, because the other senior Minister appointed would inevitably be regarded in the Department as the No. 2 and the Ministers of State would automatically come to be regarded as No. 3s. I do not think that would be a satisfactory way of going on.
  I turn now to the complaint which was made by some hon. Members that this might well lead to a weakening of the political control over the Services. We have benefited in this country, I hope, by the many experiences that we have gained in the past in this field. The illuminating history which is now emerging in full detail of what happened in the First World War is a very good guide as to what to avoid. I remind the House that we live in a country which, fortunately, is ruled by

  1311
  Cabinet government. The major decisions which are taken are seldom decisions of one Minister on his own. Inevitably he consults his colleagues on all matters of great importance.
  The decisions of the Cabinet and of any Minister are always open to question in Parliament. We have this control, which other countries do not possess either in the same way or in the same measure, and I believe that those who, like the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell), expressed some anxiety about this should bear that in mind.
  A lot must depend on the personalities of the Ministers who are appointed, but I should have thought that, whatever be the experience of the past, with a system such as that we propose to erect—of the three tiers of Ministers—the risk of the military being able to override and bear down upon the Minister in charge is much less than it might otherwise be because the important factor to remember is the existence both of the Defence Council and the various Service Departments. If it came to the pinch the Secretary of State for Defence, plus the three Ministers of State—that is, four politicians—would be able to have these matters out in the Defence Council where, if it came to a question of counting heads, they could outnumber the military and civil servants.
  Mr. Shinwell: What would prevent the Chief of the Defence Staff from by-passing the Secretary of State for Defence and going direct to the Prime Minister?
  Mr. Hay: I admit that there is nothing, but if that were to happen I presume that the Prime Minister—certainly a Prime Minister provided by this party—would say at once that he wished to see the Defence Minister; and the matter that had been raised would obviously be raised at the Cabinet. This is the way government works. I must confess that while I have not moved in the stratospheric regions in which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Easington once moved, I cannot imagine any other system being operated in his Government, just as it operates in ours.
  Mr. Shinwell: May I furnish an example? Field Marshal Lord Montgomery declared recently that he sent a memorandum on what was regarded by himself as the inadequacy of our defence at a particular time to the Prime Minister, by-passing not only the then Minister of Defence but, although he was the Chief of the General Staff at the War Office, even the Secretary of State for War.
  Mr. Hay:I can only imagine that the matter was not particularly well handled by the Government of the day. I had better leave it there because I do not want to cast aspersions on the right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great affection and regard, as has the whole House.
  Another point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Aubrey Jones) was the question of there being a risk in the whole of this operation unless we are careful; that is, that the Department of Defence might become very great indeed and, therefore, of enormous influence. I believe that we are circumventing this by means of the Defence and Oversea Policy Committee. My right hon. Friend also asked whether the Secretariat of that Committee had been strengthened. The answer is "Yes "-Anyone who is interested might read again paragraph 16 of the White Paper, which sets out exactly what we have done.
  The position of the Chief of the Defence Staff has come in for criticism and it has been suggested that such an officer may no longer be necessary. My right hon. Friend believes, from his experience, that to have a Chief of the Defence Staff, which is now an office of several years' standing, provides him, as the Minister in charge of defence, with a particularly useful focus to unite and bring together the views of the various Chiefs of Staff of the different Services. The present holder of the office, who is well known to the House, has been able to divorce himself from any particular Service loyalties he may have had. He now represents all the Services and I have no doubt whatever that from whichever Service any future Chief of Staff is drawn he will be in exactly the same position and of exactly the same type.

  1313
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Easington criticised certain aspects of the Chief Scientific Adviser. I confess to having been somewhat surprised at this, for I thought that science was all the rage in the party opposite. Apparently it is not.
  Mr. Sliinwell: That was not my point.
  Mr. Hay: I made a note of the right hon. Gentleman's words. He said that he could not understand why the Chief Scientific Officer should be a member of the Defence Council.
  Mr. Shinwell indicated dissent.
  Mr. Hay: Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding. If so, I apologise I think that the right hon. Gentleman has been confused by the use of the word "command" in respect of the phrase
  "The Defence Council will have the power to command"
  It does not mean that the Defence Council will gallop into battle on white horses with the Chief Scientific Adviser in its midst. The use of the word "command" is a technical one, and means, simply and solely, that the fount of authority will be the Defence Council in respect of those functions that are conferred upon it by Clause 1. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman will find in practice that it is a bad idea to ensure that scientific advice is available at all stages of the policy-making process in defence, and since the top policy-making body in defence, short of the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee of the Cabinet, will be the Defence Council. I think it only light that the Chief Scientific Adviser, whoever he may be at the time, should be a full, titular member of the Council. I must say that I endorse entirely what my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) said; that the enhancement of the position of the scientist in the defence policy-making process is one of the most important products of this reorganisation.
  I feel that many of these criticisms and anxieties may have been based on a misunderstanding of the division of functions and duties between the Defence Council and the Service boards and between the Secretary of State and the other Ministers. I have tried to describe
  1314
  how I foresee the Ministerial position will work, but the position of the Defence Council and the boards is simple. The intenis that the Defence Council will concern itself with broad issues of policy. Save in the most extraordinary and most unusual circumstances, it will not get involved in the day-to-day working of the Services.
  On the other hand, the boards will be responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Services. For instance, my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Wingfield Digby) asked whether the subjects that will be discussed by the boards will be the same as, for example, those that are now discussed by the Board of Admiralty. My answer is that I think that they will be very much the same as they are today because, as I say, the boards will be responsible for day-to-day administration. Of course, the power is reserved for the Secretary of State, who will be chairman of each board—although not necessarily present at every meeting of each of the boards—to intervene, if necessary. The Defence Council will have powers of delegation and that, I take it, carries with it power of withdrawal of delegated powers, but, basically, that will be the position.
  The hon. Member for Leeds, East asked about the quasi-judicial aspect—and we can examine this in Committee—of the provisions of Clause 1(5). If he looks carefully, he will find that for all practical purposes we have fulfilled what we said in the White Paper we would do. We have vested in the boards the power of dealing with disciplinary and quasi-judicial matters. We can, perhaps, pursue this a little more deeply later, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that our intention is that the boards shall deal with all these cases, and they will be the end of the line. It will be only in the rarest instances, I imagine, that the Secretary of State will be concerned with these cases. That fulfils our pledge that these disciplinary matters will be dealt with throughout by men of the same Service as that to which the person involved belongs.
  My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelsea (Captain Litchfield) asked about Clause 1(4). I would remind him that this is a fairly limited subsection. It deals with the order-

  1315
  making powers under the Naval Discipline Act, and these powers will normally be exercised by the Secretary c State personally. They will, I should imagine, be very infrequently used. The will be concerned with making regulations regarding courts martial and similar matters, and only when it is necessary for them to be amended in the light of a change of circumstances will it be necessary for the Secretary of Stat to do anything about them. It would not normally be our idea that these powers should be vested in or delegate to the respective boards.
  I should like to say a word about another matter which I had anticipated would be referred to, and which is some what dear to my heart—the effect of this reorganisation on Greenwich Hospital
  Under the Bill the property of Green which Hospital is now vested in the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, and the functions of the Lords Commissioners with regard to the hospital willbe transferred to the Secretary of State in the same way as other properties and functions of the Admiralty. Unlike Chelsea Hospital, Greenwich Hospital derives its income almost entirely from its own resources. We have therefore carefully considered whether we should completely exempt Greenwich Hospital from the scope of the Bill, in which case it would be necessary, because of the impending demise of the Board of Admiralty in its present form, to amend the Greenwich Hospital Acts so as to vest the property and management of Greenwich Hospital in another body, for example, the new Navy Board. But to do this would be to complicate the Bill considerably and we have therefore decided that it would be better that the Navy Board should acquire the necessary powers by direct delegation from the Secretary of State.
  I take this opportunity, therefore, of declaring my right hon. Friend's intention that under these delegated powers Greenwich Hospital shall be administered in all respects by the Navy Board thus ensuring that the long-established objects of the institution shall be safeguarded and be seen to be safeguarded by a body on which sailors will be strongly represented by officers of their own Service.
  1316
  Hon. Members have been anxious about how Estimates will be debated in future. There is little I have to add to £ what my right hon. Friend said earlier, 1 except to say that Estimates are normally taken in Opposition time and it will be normally the case that the Opposition in future will be able as now to arrange the type of debate they want. If, for example, they want this year or I in the coming financial year to debate s broad issues rather than the administrative details of a particular Service,: which as my right hon. Friend suggested might be a course which we could adopt in future, it is open to the Opposition, if they wish, to do that.
  As for Parliamentary Questions, on which the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) had something to say, this again is largely a matter for the House, but it is clear that we need new arrangements for dealing with them. Our object is to make sure that hon. Members have facilities at least equal to those they have at present for asking Questions. It may well be that we shall have as a new Department two days for answering Questions, and of course all Questions would have to be put down to the Secretary of State for Defence.
  It might be convenient—and this is a matter for the House—that the appropriate Minister of State should normally have to answer Questions concerned with the day-to-day management of an individual Service. It might, therefore, be for the convenience of hon. Members if we arrange some kind of system whereby Questions relating to a particular Service could be grouped together on one or other day. We suggest therefore that Questions which hon. Members would expect to be answered by the Secretary of State himself should be put down on one day together with Questions relating perhaps to the Navy and on another day Questions relating to the Army or the Air Force should be put down and answered by the appropriate Ministers of State, although I emphasise that the Secretary of State for Defence can answer over the whole field.
  Mr. Wigg: Now we have four occasions on which we can ask Questions and in future we are to have two.
  Mr. Hay: This is a matter for the House. I am not laying down any dicta. I am giving a view of this and it is for the House through the usual channels to make its views known. We shall have to deal with the problem.
  I do not think that there is anything more I can add to the very full explanation given on two occasions by my right hon. Friend to the questions which have been put about this organisation. The only thought which I would leave with the House is that this policy on which we are engaged, and for which the Bill forms a foundation, is all of a piece with the plans which the Government have for the modernisation of the institutions and equipment of our country. We believe that these changes will prove in the course of time much more effective than the present system, and we believe also that they will continue to keep the Services in full trim as they have been for so long, enabling them also to improve from a much better and closer integration. I hope, therefore, that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading and then we can proceed to the next stage and eventually to implement our new programme.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 Committal of Bills).

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  Ordered,
  That the Proceedings on the Expiring Laws (Continuance) Bill may be entered upon and proceeded with at this day's Sitting at any hour, though opposed.—[Mr. Selwyn Lloyd.]

  EXPIRING LAWS (CONTINUANCE) BILL
  Read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House—[Mr. Michael Hamilton.]
  Committee Tomorrow.

  EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE [MONEY]
  [Queen's Recommendation signified]
  Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 88 (Money Committees).
  [SIR WILLIAM ANSTRUTHER-GRAY in the Chair]
  Resolved,
  That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to continue certain expiring laws, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of such expenses as may be occasioned by the continuance of Part I of, and Schedule 1 to, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 till the end of December 1964, and of the Rent of Furnished Houses Control (Scotland) Act 1943, the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act 1946 and Part II of the Licensing Act 1953 till the end of March 1965, being expenses which under any Act are to be paid out of such moneys.—[Mr. Alan Green.]
  Resolution to be reported.
  Report to be received Tomorrow.

  INDUSTRIAL TRAINING [MONEY]
  Resolution reported,
  That, for the purposes of any Act of this Session to make further provision for industrial and commercial training, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—

  (a) grants or loans, not in the aggregate exceeding £50 million or such greater amount as may from time to time be by order determined, to bodies exercising functions under that Act in connection with industrial or commercial training;

  (b) any expenses incurred by any person in acting in place of the members of such a body in pursuance of default powers exercisable under that Act;

  (c) allowances to members of a Central Training Council established under that Act;

  (d) fees and allowances to members of tribunals established under that Act, and allowances to persons giving evidence before such tribunals;

  (e) any administrative expenses incurred by any Minister under that Act;

  (f) any increase attributable to that Act in the sums so payable by way of Rate-deficiency Grant or Exchequer Equalisation Grant under the enactments relating to local government in England and Wales or in Scotland; and

  (g) any increase in the sums so payable under those enactments in respect of general grants which may arise from any increase attributable to that Act in the expenditure relevant to the fixing of the aggregate amounts of those grants.

  Resolution agreed to.

  CONSOLIDATION, ETC., BILLS
  Lords Message [20th November] communicating the Resolution. That it is desirable that, in the present Session, all Consolidation Bills (whether public or private), Statute Law Revision Bills and Bills prepared pursuant to the Consolidation

  1319
  of Enactments (Procedure) Act 1949. be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament, to be considered forthwith.—[Mr. Hughes-Young.]
  Lords Message considered accordingly.
  Resolved,
  That this House doth concur with the Lords in the said Resolution.—[Mr. Hughes-Young.]
  Message to the Lords to acquaint them therewith.

  PLANNING APPEAL (MR. W. P. HOLLAND)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. M. Hamilton.]
  10.3 p.m.
  Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine: The matter which I wish to raise this evening relates to property known as "Earley Mead", Hastings Road, Bexhill. This property was purchased by a constituent of mine in 1946. In 1948, the Bexhill town map was drafted showing the Bexhill old town by-pass passing through the grounds of that property. The road in question is the Folkestone-Honiton trunk road known as A.259, and the information that I have is that it is not scheduled for work until perhaps as far off as 1978. My constituent, as long ago as 1955, had asked for plans to be passed and these were rejected on the ground that this work had not been brought forward far enough.
  When I first came to this House in 1955 this was one of the first matters that came to my attention. I find that during the period from then till now I have had ten letters from various Ministers and Ministries. I find that my constituent has been to the Lands Tribunal and got a decision in his favour, which was overruled by the Court of Appeal. My hon. Friend's predecessor was good enough to see my constituent and listen to the points which we put forward to him on 14th February this year.
  The matter is, therefore, somewhat lengthy, but is summarised, fortunately, in the Journal of Planning and Property Law, 1962, on page 519, in an article by Mr. Desmond Heap, which says:
  "Mr. Holland bought his house in Bexhill in 1946. Later, a plan was approved to build a new road which was to pass through the house. Mr. Holland endeavoured to sell the house, but without avail. Later, he converted it into two dwellings in an effort to seil, but
  1320
  again he failed; clearly, others had heard of the proposed new road. Finally, he quitted the premises and left Bexhill in 1951. He had not lived there since; nor has he paid rates on the empty house. He inspected the property from time to time, picked fruit in the garden and cut back creepers. But could not sell the property which remained blighted and unoccupied.
  Nothing could be done about this until the 1959 Act came into force on 16th August, 1959. Then Mr. Holland sought to get help from Part IV of the Act. But though he succeeded before the Lands Tribunal he failed in the Court of Appeal, which would not regard him as the occupier of the house, either in whole or in part, for the requisite statutory period of at least six months prior to the making of his claim. The court would not regard the storing of articles in three sheds in the garden of the house and in the garage as being such an occupation of pan of the hereditament as to require the Ministry to purchase the whole of the hereditament. In short, Mr. Holland was not an owner-occupier, let alone a resident owner-occupier, and so he lost his case and leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused.
  But if Mr. Holland cannot go up to the Lords he can, at least, go back to Bexhill. Presumably, this is what he will now do. He will go back to Bexhill and will once again take up residential occupation of his blighted hereditament. Then, having lived there for six months (which is probably less time than that needed to get to the Lords) he will start again with the mixture as before, commencing with the service of a fresh claim on the Ministry—there seems to be nothing to stop him doing this if he wants to do it."
  My constituent did not go back to Bexhill. He complained that once the Act had been passed in 1959, when he had served his purchase notice on the Minister under the provisions of that Act, the Minister then served a counter notice, objecting to the purchase notice on the ground that Mr. Holland was not an owner-occupier.
  My constituent feels that the Minister was wrong in taking that action because of the words set out in paragraph 64 of Circular No. 48/1959 of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, under the heading:
  "Obligation to purchase interests of owner-occupiers affected by planning proposals."
  The previous paragraph states:
  "Although the rights given in Part IV will in the Minister's view meet most cases of hardship, there may be isolated cases which fall outside the provisions."
  It is paragraph 64 which my constituent felt applied particularly to his case. It reads:
  "The Minister hopes that local authorities who are asked to buy in such cases will

  1321
  consider them on their merits and will exercise a reasonable discretion to buy land in advance of requirements, so long as they are satisfied that the property is 'blighted' as a result of a proposal for acquisition by them and that there is genuine hardship."
  My constituent is, therefore, complaining, first, that there was a counter-notice served on him; secondly, that there was refusal by the Minister to make any compromise settlement prior to the hearing before the Lands Tribunal; and, finally, that after he had won his appeal before the Lands Tribunal there was then a further appeal set down by the Minister. There was a good deal of discussion between that period and 14th February this year. On that day my hon. Friend's predecessor was good enough to see my constituent and he made a determined effort to see whether there was some way in which this unfortunate matter could be brought to a satisfactory conclusion.
  There is a letter from my right hon Friend the Minister of Transport dated 2nd July, 1963, in which that interview is summarised in these terms:
  "What was to be clarified was exactly what part of Mr. Holland's property would be required for the trunk road diversion shown on the Bexhill Town Map. On this basis Mr. Holland would then have alternative schemes of development prepared showing what might have been done with the land if he could use it all or if he could use only the part not required for the new highway (and for possible improvements of Hastings Road itself). It was hoped that this exercise would enable the measure of his real loss from the highway plan to be demonstrated and, in the light of this, we would see whether we were justified in making any proposal to him."
  The basis on which my constituent is approaching this matter and the basis on which the Ministry was approaching it seemed to have certain differences in the way that the results would be calculated, but, clearly, if it could be demonstrated that a particular piece of my constituent's property was required for this road it would be possible to work out two different schemes and it would apparently be more than likely that some figures on which a reasonable settlement could be based could be worked out.
  That interview took place on 14th February, and it came to my constituent's attention on 11th April that the Ministry had not even issued any instructions that the necessary survey should be made to indicate precisely the piece of land which
  1322
  would be required for the road so that it could be marked out on my constituent's property.
  My constituent now feels that, with the delay which has taken place, there is very grave doubt whether the Ministry is trying genuinely to meet him in this matter, and there might well be something which my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary could explain to him tonight which would make him change his view. As this discussion took place in February, and nothing has so far happened, he does not feel that the Ministry is doing what it could.
  I therefore have had a letter from my constituent in which he explains to me what he would like me to put to the Minister tonight, and the words which he uses are as follows:
  "What I am aiming at is an inquiry to ascertain from what source the Minister of Transport obtained the false information in 1959 …"
  The false information to which he refers relates to some correspondence at that time which suggested that he had purchased this property purely as an investment. He strenuously denies that such is the case and says that he purchased it in 1946 before there was any suggestion that this road would take part of the property and that he would then be able to live there quite happily.
  As I have said, in this letter he wants to know the source from which the false information was obtained
  "which is at the bottom of all this trouble and for the falsehoods to be exposed with the people who accepted them without a proper check. When this has been achieved the Minister should himself be asked why he did not proceed in accordance with the Ministry of Housing circular and exercise his discretion to end the 'blight'on my property from the date (eleven years after it was blighted) in 1959 when my notice to purchase was served. Finally, why he should not do so now backdating his purchase to December, 1959, with compound interest thereon to date and paying my costs or alternatively resigning for 'welshing', a term I believe he may know. Why should any property owner be asked to finance the Ministry of Transport until, to quote Admiral Hughes Hallett, 'it is our policy not to compensate owners until they are ready to proceed with their plans not within twenty-five years of its being planned for seizure.' Once again, I repeat this scandal should be publicly stamped on and those responsible for flouting Parliament's intention made to suffer".
  My constituent feels that, after twelve years of being unable to sell or occupy his property, this is a matter which the

  1323
  Minister should be able to deal with at a very early date.
  10.15 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith):My hon. Friend the Member for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine) has put his case in a very forthright and persuasive manner. I do not think that anybody could have done it better than he has. Certainly over many years he has been most assiduous in his endeavours to help his constituent and I hope that tonight I may be able to answer his point and to remove any misunderstanding which still exists and to show him and his constituent that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has acted very fairly throughout.
  As 1 see it, my hon. Friend's constituent, Mr. Holland, has been asking for two things: first, he wants the Ministry of Transport to purchase his house and garden at Earley Mead, Bexhill, and secondly he wants to know why it should be taking so long to determine the extent of his land which is required for the road and so enable various calculations to be made. I will try to deal with these two points separately.
  First may I explain why the Minister is not in a position to purchase Mr. Holland's property and then show that, far from there being any delay, matters have been progressed more speedily than they would normally warrant, especially in order to help Mr. Holland.
  With regard to purchasing the house, the position is controlled by the Town and Country Planning Act, 1959, which laid down four conditions entitling a person to serve a notice on an authority requiring it to purchase the property. All four conditions have to be met and one of them, which is spelt out very carefully in Sections 39 and 43, was that the person serving notice had to be the owner-occupier, and for this purpose "owner-occupier" was defined in Section 43(2) as a person who occupied a property during the whole of the six months before serving his notice or who occupied it for six months up to a date ending not more than six months before serving notice, the property having since remained unoccupied. As my hon.
  1324
  Friend knows, Mr. Holland submitted a claim stating that he was the owner-occupier within that meaning.
  As is usual in these cases, the Ministry made the normal inquiries through the district valuer and we were informed that the property had been unoccupied by Mr. Holland for two or three years. That was the information we got, but we now know that it was an underestimate and that Mr. Holland and his family left the property on 16th August, 1951. This is important, because the Act was not retrospective; it dealt with conditions as they were in 1959 or at any later date and at no date after the passing of the Act did Mr. Holland appear to the Ministry of Transport, at least, to be an owner-occupier.
  It was, therefore, the clear duty of the Department on the receipt of Mr. Holland's claim to issue a counter-claim. Although Mr. Holland complains of this, I do not see that the Department could have done anything else. Mr. Holland, however, maintained that he had remained the occupier, at least in the legal sense, up to the date of his notice. That argument was tested through the Lands Tribunal, as my hon. Friend pointed out, and the Court of Appeal and the verdict in June, 1962, was that Mr. Holland had not been the occupier This seems to me to be a complete vindication of the Department's decision to serve the counter-notice.
  After reference to the Lands Tribunal had been set in train, it was suggested that the Minister might have made a compromise, but no compromise was ever proposed to him by Mr. Holland or on his behalf. The buying of the whole property was, and still is, what Mr. Holland is claiming. The suggestion, therefore, to buy the whole property scarcely seems to be a compromise and certainly is not something that the Minister could reasonably have entertained while the case was sub judice.
  Nevertheless, Mr. Holland seems to think that the Minister should have accepted the ruling of the Lands Tribunal that he was the owner-occupier. I should, therefore, explain why the Minister did not feel that he could do this. The decision was unacceptable because it appeared to create a definition of occupation—a few odds and ends

  1325
  and gardening tools in three sheds—which was not only contrary to the definition of occupation for rating purposes, but what would have opened the door to all sorts of artificial forms of occupation which would have extended the scope of the Act beyond what we in the Ministry believed to be Parliament's intention. Such a precedent was, naturally, well advertised in the professional publications, one of which my hon. Friend has read. We thought, therefore, that it should be tested in the courts. This explains why the Minister appealed and his justification for doing so is that his appeal was unanimously upheld in the Court of Appeal.
  I turn now to the important part played by my hon. Friend in all this matter. He first wrote to my predecessor, the present Civil Lord of the Admiralty, on 1st February, 1960, asking whether a way out of the difficulty could be found, as otherwise Mr. Holland would have to move back into the house for six months to establish occupancy. In the light of these representations, the Department considered the possibility of a discretionary purchase, the Minister having been given permissive powers under Section 48 of the 1959 Act to purchase land in advance of actual requirements for road construction. At that stage, I fully admit, there was an incorrect inference from the information provided by the district valuer, although it was not a mistake of any great importance.
  By 1959, as my hon. Friend will recollect, the house had been divided vertically and one-half had been made into two fiats. The district valuer's report said that shortly after the purchase of the house by Mr. Holland, it had been divided vertically. This was quite true—this is what had happened—but the period of family occupation from 1946-1951 was unknown to us at that stage. This led to the inference that the house had been bought for investment purposes. Naturally, this wrong inference annoyed Mr. Holland and I apologise to him for this mistake.
  The important thing, however, is that the inference was corrected within a few days and the full facts were known when a discretionary purchase was declined in April, 1960 The reason that
  1326
  it was declined was that neither the house nor the larger part of the garden was likely to be required for the road. It was, therefore, decided that there was an insufficient case to justify an advance purchase of the whole property from public funds.
  I should, perhaps, say a word on the principles which guide us in deciding whether to make a discretionary purchase. This matter was the subject of a Ministry of Housing and Local Government circular to local authorities in August, 1959. That circular contains a clear proviso that the authority is to be satisfied of genuine hardship before making a purchase. The trouble is that in this case we have never been satisfied that genuine hardship existed. The locking up of a man's capital in an asset which he finds it difficult to dispose of is not comparable with the sort of hardship that we try to relieve, for instance, when a man whose employment is transferred cannot buy a new home unless he sells his old one first. That is what we mean by hardship.
  The planning of new roads and the warning given of them in development plans are processes which must go on in the general public interest all the time, but if the Minister and local authorities had to buy every property affected in which capital was locked up there would be no end to the bill and a serious reduction in the amount of money available for urgent actual construction would result if this policy were adopted.
  Parliament was clearly aware of that when it approved the 1959 Act, as is shown by its careful limitation of the scope of relief. It struck what it thought was a reasonable balance and the Minister cannot be expected to exercise his discretion beyond what Parliament provided. Far from flouting the wishes of Parliament, we believe that we are carrying out Parliament's wishes.
  Of course, my right hon. Friend has exercised his discretion frequently since the Act was passed up to the present time in 129 cases. On the other hand, besides Mr. Holland's there have been a further 32 cases in which we have declined to purchase from applicants who turned out not to be owner-occupiers. I think that this shows that the Minister's discretionary powers have

  1327
  been used with a due sense of responsibility for both the public purse and for personal hardship.
  I would now like to turn to the question of delay, which is the most recent cause of Mr. Holland's worry. The position at the beginning of this year was that Mr. Holland had failed to prove himself an owner-occupier—he had failed in the courts to establish that—and my right hon. Friend was not prepared to exercise discretion to purchase, for the reasons I have already given. Nevertheless, my predecessor, the present Civil Lord, following pressure from my hon. Friend, was anxious to see whether there was any way in which he could help Mr. Holland. A meeting was accordingly arranged and the discussion, as my hon. Friend will remember, was without prejudice.
  The proposals which were made hinged upon an exact determination of what part of Mr. Holland's property would be required when the by-pass at Bexhill was brought into our trunk road system. It was at this point that it is possible that a misunderstanding crept in. Mr. Holland seems to have assumed that the calculations could take place at once, but in fact the necessary calculations could not be deduced from a line on a development plan. As I am sure my hon. Friend realises, the first step is an order under the Highways Act, and such orders are part of a statutory procedure laid down by Parliament under which all owners, not just one like Mr. Holland, affected by a proposal are given rights of objection. This, naturally, takes a good deal of time.
  The Minister is bound to proceed in this way, and I can assure my hon. Friend that he is doing so as quickly as the procedure laid down by Parliament allows. In fact, design work which might not otherwise have been started for a few years has been put in hand already. But I must warn my hon. Friend, and I hope that he will pass my words on to his constituent, that it will be several months yet before draft
  1328
  orders can be published, and so patience—however difficult that may be—is still necessary.
  There is nothing sinister about this. It was fully explained in letters which my hon. Friend has had from my predecessor and my right hon. Friend. It is all part of the normal process and Mr. Holland has not been and is not being victimised in any way. Just the reverse; we have done what we can to help him.
  To clarify matters, perhaps I should say, in conclusion that the position is the same as it was when Mr. Holland came to the Ministry and saw my predecessor. It is that we are ready to re-examine Mr. Holland's case and all the circumstances which have led up to it when some reasonable estimate of his loss can be made on a proper determination of what part of his property is required for the new road. We do not retire from that position at all, but the time taken to do this—I do not like using the word "delay", because there has been no delay—is inseparable from the normal procedure and cannot be speeded up without prejudicing the rights of other citizens, which is obviously out of the question.
  However, I will give this assurance, that while we must continue to reserve our views about the property as a whole, I can say that we will sympathetically consider the advance purchase of whatever part of the grounds of Mr. Holland's house are found to be necessary for the construction of the road. I am sure that my hon. Friend will understand me when I tell him that I cannot go further than that tonight. But I hope that I have shown him that his persistence has produced results and that we have already set in train action which, I trust, in due course will result in a mutually satisfactory solution to this difficult and very long-standing problem.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at half-past Ten o'clock.

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Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chichester

DISABLED PERSONS' CAR BADGES
3.5 p.m.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any statement to make as to the issue of car badges to disabled drivers, and whether they will encourage local authorities to extend this concession to disabled persons who have vehicle under the auspices of the Ministry of Health or the National Health Service, in which they are taken out by a nominated driver; and to other severely disabled persons who have difficulty in walking and who are driven by a nominated driver.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HEALTH (LORD NEWTON): My Lords, a review of the scheme has recently been completed. It shows that the scheme has had considerable success in easing the parking difficulties of severely disabled drivers. The suggestion that it should be extended to include the cars of disabled people driven by a fit driver was one of the main points covered by the review. My right honourable friend has taken note of all the opinions expressed by those consulted in the course of the review, including his Advisory Committee on the Health and Welfare of Handicapped Persons, and has decided that, while the scheme should be reviewed from time to time, no extension of its scope should be made at present.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, will Her Majesty's Government call the attention of the Minister
442
to the fact that the local authority of Brighton have, as a matter of fact, issued regulations which meet the point of my Question? Further, will Her Majesty's Government bear in mind that the number of persons involved is extremely small—perhaps a few hundred throughout the whole country—and that this is one of those special cases where a concession, though perhaps not supported by logic, may well be supported by sentiment and be worth while doing? It is very difficult for a blind person or a limbless person who is being driven by his wife to get out of the car and go to his appointment alone; and if the car is left alone for five or ten minutes, then the "yellow peril" comes along and sticks a £2 fine on it. Will Her Majesty's Government think about this again?
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, as regards the decision of the Brighton County Borough Council, they recently decided to extend their scheme to include disabled people who have our Ministry vehicles with nominated drivers, but they took this action without consulting or notifying us at the Ministry, and in fact it is not in accordance with official policy. I quite appreciate my noble friend's arguments, and I think the Advisory Committee did, too. The reasons why they recommended no change at present were these. They foresaw dangers of abuse in extension of the scheme; difficulties for the police if people driving and parking vehicles bearing a badge were seen to be fit; and a reduction in the effectiveness of the scheme, which, after all, is founded on the good will of the police, of the traffic authorities and of the public generally.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, does this not show that Brighton is a little more sympathetic than are Her Majesty's Government?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, can the noble Lord enlarge on the point about the dangers of abuse? And, if he is making representation to his right honourable friend on what his noble friend has said, will he bear in mind the extreme difficulty of some disabled drivers in being allowed a vehicle which will carry only the driver? Is it not possible to consider that these disabled drivers should be given vehicles which can carry a second person?
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, that last question is a very, much wider question, and I should not like to answer it without notice. All I can say is that this question was considered very sympathetically by my right honourable friend's Advisory Committee, and, for the reasons which I have given, they decided to recommend against it, and we have accepted that recommendation.
LORD HAWKE: Is my noble friend not aware that what Brighton does today England does to-morrow?

REPAYMENT OF DECEASED DEPOSITORS' POST OFFICE SAVINGS
3.10 p.m.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware that the Postmaster General has a discretionary power, under the Savings Bank Act, 1887, to allow repayment of a deceased depositor's moneys not exceeding £100 at the date of death, without production of a Grant of Representation that, when the £100 was fixed, Estate Duty was payable on estates of above £100, whereas now an estate of £5,000 is free of Estate Duty and if they will accordingly amend the law to bring the out-of-date concession into line with modern values.]
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM): My Lords, the Government are actively considering the suggestion implied by the last words of the noble Lord's Question. As the noble Lord will appreciate, this involves a number of different Statutes and bodies besides the Post Office.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, does "actively considering" mean "considering sympathetically"?
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: This matter is receiving the consideration of Ministers. They have not yet reached a conclusion, but as soon as they do I will let the noble Lord know.

WEST IRIAN AND THE UNITED NATIONS
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will present to Parliament a full report of the circumstances whereby West Irian was handed over by the United Nations to the Republic of Indonesia, what safeguards were included in the transaction destined to protect the indigenous people and what steps Her Majesty's Government, as a Member of the Security Council, are taking to ensure that inspections and reports are made by United Nations officials relating to the welfare of the West Irianians.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CARRINGTON): My Lords, the Secretary-General of the United Nations has already given such an account in chapter II, section 15, of his Annual Report on the work of the Organisation for 1962–63. The safeguards for the indigenous peoples of West Irian are contained in Articles XIV to XXI of the Agreement between the Republic of Indonesia and the Kingdom of the Netherlands concerning West New Guinea, United Nations Document A/5170 of August 20, 1962. Both of these documents are available in the Library of the House. Inspections and reports are not required of the Secretary-General by the Agreement, or any provision of the United Nations Charter, except in respect of the final act of self-determination. This need not take place until 1969, and it is entirely within the discretion of the Secretary-General as to when he should report about it.
LORD OGMORE: But, my Lords, is it not the duty of Her Majesty's Government to see that the Secretary-General makes a continuous survey of the situation? And is it not absolutely incredible that Her Majesty's Government and the other members of the Security Council should have handed over these poor people to Indonesia without making any proper safeguards for their welfare?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I do not think that is quite true. I do not think it is a fair representation of what happened. In point of fact, there is provision for the Secretary-General to designate experts who will visit the territory from time to time under the terms of Article XVI of the Agreement, and this is stated in section 15 of the chapter to which I have already referred.
LORD OGMORE: But will Her Majesty's Government press him to do this? That is the point. Are not Her Majesty's Government responsible, as a member of the Security Council; and will they press the Secretary-General to make use of these powers?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, the Secretary-General has already said that he intends to do that.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may we ask the Government, in any event, for a very early report?
LORD CARRINGTON: There is a report on these matters every year from the United Nations, as I understand.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I am not asking for an Annual Report. This matter has been shown to your Lordships to be important, and I think the Government ought to undertake to get more information and report to the House.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I think there is perhaps some misunderstanding about that. We have no evidence whatever that the Indonesian Government are not carrying out their obligations under the Agreement.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, we will come back to this subject again.

PRISON OFFICERS AND PRISONERS' REHABILITATION
3.15 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they accept the proposals of the Prison Officers' Association for the
446
active co-operation of prison officers in the rehabilitation of prisoners as set out in their recent memorandum to the Home Office; and, if not, why not.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD DERWENT): My Lords, the memorandum to which the noble Lord refers was discussed at a recent meeting of the Prison Department Whitley Council, at which the representatives of the official side said that they welcomed this constructive approach to the work of the prison officers and suggested that the proposals contained in the memorandum should be studied by a Joint Working Party. The Working Party has now been established and will meet for the first time next week.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for his reply. I am sure it will give great encouragement to the Prison Officers' Association and to all those of us who are very much concerned with this problem of prisoners and the whole prison system.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
VISCOUNT GOSCHEN: My Lords, I should like to inform your Lordships that at a suitable moment after 3.30 my noble friend Lord Chesham will be making a statement on the British Overseas Airways Corporation.

CONTINENTAL SHELF BILL [H.L.]
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision as to the exploration and exploitation of the continental shelf; to enable effect to be given to certain provisions of the Convention on the High Seas done in Geneva on April 29, 1958; and for matters connected with those purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a—(Lord Derwent.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

JUDICIAL BUSINESS (OPINIONS)
3.16 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE)THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE) rose to move to resolve, That on consideration of a Cause Lords may deliver their Opinions in writing. The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper will involve, if your Lordships agree to it, a departure from the traditional manner in which this House exercises the powers of the High Court of Parliament.
As your Lordships will be aware, the practice of your Lordships' House, when sitting as the final appellate tribunal for the United Kingdom, differs very little from the procedure that is followed when the House is disposing of its ordinary legislative business. In particular, it is the custom that every Lord hearing an appeal gives his reasons orally, in the form of a speech before the House, for allowing or dismissing that appeal, as the case may be. My judicial colleagues and I have, however, lately been considering whether it is right that this practice should continue.
The volume of litigation, and thus of appeals to this House, has been constantly increasing over the past few years, and this has made it necessary to examine what methods are open to your Lordships to ensure that appeals continue to be heard and disposed of as expeditiously as possible. Although there is naturally a certain fluctuation in the number of appeals which are brought before your Lordships each year, I find, upon examination, that, on an average, a total of three full weeks tends to be taken up each Session solely for the purpose of delivering judgments in this House. Every morning of the week before Whitsun this year, for example, was taken up in this way, with the result that those of your Lordships who were concerned in those appeals were unable to devote any of the time to other judicial work.
My legal colleagues and I have come to the conclusion that it would accelerate the administration of justice if the practice of delivering oral judgments in appeals to this House were the exception rather than the rule. If your Lordships agree to the present Motion, I envisage that the new scheme will work as
448
follows. On the day fixed for delivery of judgments copies of the speeches will be made available to counsel who are appearing in the appeal at least one hour before they are delivered. I envisage that, as a general rule, the House will meet for delivery of judgments at 10.30 in the forenoon, and the oral judgments delivered will do no more than state that, for the reasons which are contained in the speeches of which copies are available, this House either dismisses or allows the appeal, as the case may be, and gives any consequential directions which may be necessary.
My Lords, I shall be arranging for copies of the speeches to be held available for purchase by the public from the Official Shorthand Writer. In addition to this, one copy of each of the speeches will be available for inspection by any member of the public who wishes to consult them, at the Judicial Office of your Lordships' House as soon as the judgments have been delivered.
I should particularly like to make it clear that the power to dispense with oral speeches will be no more than a discretionary one, and it will always be open to any of your Lordships, should he wish to do so in any case, to deliver his speech orally in the House, as in the past.
My Lords, the proposals which I put before your Lordships are not entirely novel, since those Members of this House who sit to hear appeals in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council will know that it is the almost invariable practice of the Board there to deliver its advice in writing, no oral Opinion being read. Nevertheless, I am deeply conscious of the break with the tradition
of your Lordships' House which is involved in my proposals, and my colleagues and I gave long and very careful thought to them before deciding to recommend this Motion to the House. We are satisfied, however, that not only will appeals be thereby disposed of more swiftly, but the dignity and the authority of your Lordships' House will in no way be impaired. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved to resolve, That on the consideration of a Cause, Lords may deliver their Opinions in writing.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.20 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I am sure that the House will approve of any steps which can be taken to speed up the Judicial Business of your Lordships' House. It has become—I will not say a "public scandal", but at any rate the delay in receiving the decisions of your Lordships' House on matters which come to it in Judicial Business has been a matter of great public apprehension and is causing hardship in many cases. Any step that can be taken to expedite this business will be welcomed, and this new procedure looks as if it might help materially. There are one or two questions that I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor about the way it will operate.
As I understand it, normally decisions will be given at half past ten o'clock in the morning, and if counsel appearing for the respective parties are to get copies at least an hour earlier, they will presumably have to be available at half past nine or earlier. This might impose some hardship on some counsel, who
have to come a long distance and who normally are accustomed to appearing at half past ten. Moreover, in some cases, though probably not in a majority, there will be as many as five different Opinions, and some of them may be lengthy.
Presumably they will be more lengthy because the case is a difficult one. Again, it would be rather difficult for counsel, within the time available, to absorb the contents of five Opinions. I imagine that it may be said that, in any event, there is not much that counsel can say about the Opinions. Nevertheless, if it is to be of real value for counsel to know what is being said, I think they ought to have ample time to digest the effects of an Opinion and that it should not be left to the last moment. Therefore, I wonder whether it would be possible somehow to give counsel rather longer notice and an opportunity to see the Opinions at a more convenient time than is suggested here. For instance, it might be possible for these judgments to be given at 2.30, so that counsel could have them in the morning, and have adequate time to study the various Opinions before they are actually presented
There is also the question of the litigant who appears in person. I presume
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that he, equally, will have the Opinions made available to him. He would need at least as long a time as counsel to digest the effects of the decision. I know of cases in criminal appeals where a decision has been given on the spot and the reasons for the decision were given much later. In particular, there was one case where the person was actually executed before the reasons for the decision of the House to dismiss his appeal were made known. I hope that that kind of thing will not happen in future, but, as I say, there is one case on record where that has happened.
Finally, I should be glad if the Lord Chancellor would explain in what circumstances he envisages that a noble and learned Lord would exercise his discretion to give his Opinion orally. I should have thought that if this new procedure is decided on it would be followed pretty universally, but perhaps the noble and learned Lord can say whether he has in mind any particular kind of case where an oral Opinion would be delivered, as against a written one. Subject to these points, I think that this is a very great improvement on our Judicial procedure.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, if this proposal is going to speed up the administration of justice, then, of course, we must acquiesce. I believe that the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor has made an unanswerable case. But I think that we ought to take note of the fact that this proposal is going to accentuate still further the divergence between your Lordships' House sitting in a Judicial capacity and your Lordships' House sitting in a political or Parliamentary capacity. I myself deplore this growing distinction. I agree that in this case it is inevitable, but we ought to take note of the fact that it is one more widening of the breach, which I feel is a pity.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, it seems to be that we might take advantage of this procedure to write out our speeches and hand them into the Hansard Reporter.
3.25 p.m.
LORD REID: My Lords, I should like to add a few words. I hope that those of us who support this change are not

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thought to be disrespectful of the traditions of your Lordships' House. Indeed, I think that this will be a rather more respectful method than has been adopted recently, because at the present moment the reading out of these speeches is a pure formality—and not a very edifying formality at that.
Your Lordships may be aware that, in practice, we all circulate our printed speeches long before the date of judgment and we all know what the others are going to say. We have all made up our minds how we are going to vote, and all that happens is that a speaker gets up and reads his Opinion as rapidly as possible (and I am afraid that I must plead guilty sometimes to rather gabbling my speeches), because, if we spoke at the same speed at which we speak when addressing the House as at present, I am afraid that we should take not only three weeks, but nearer six weeks, to deliver all our judgments. So I do not think that this new procedure will diminish in any way the traditions of the House.
May I add a few words about the need for this change? Your Lordships may be aware that in recent years additional criminal jurisdiction has been conferred on us; and, much more important than that, there is now Legal Aid, where the litigant can qualify for it, which, again, has added very substantially to our work. I personally welcome very warmly this provision of Legal Aid in House of Lords appeals. Not only has it proved to be an advantage to the litigants, but it has also proved to be of great public advantage, because a number of very important cases have come before us, in which the parties—sometimes both of them—have been legally aided. The cases have raised issues which it was very important should be decided and which might not have been decided for a very long time if we had to wait for some unassisted litigant to bring them before us.
I am glad that arrangements are to be made for prints to be available. I regard that as extremely important. The public are entitled to come and see what is being done by this House in the administration of justice, and if we are not to read out our speeches, they must be available—I hope at a nominal price
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—to anybody who wants them immediately after the decision, whether the people who want them are purely private individuals or members of the Press, and I very much hope that, when we proceed to put this procedure into operation, there will be no hitch of any kind about that.
Finally, my Lords, if I am not delaying the House, there is good reason for the optional provision. To begin with, it used to be the habit, certainly in the days of Lord Halsbury, half a century ago, to give judgment extempore at the end of an argument. That has not been done during the fifteen years that I have been a Member of your Lordships' House, but it is quite possible that in future there may be a case when noble and learned Lords who ate sitting may think that a desirable thing to do. Of course, we cannot do it when we are sitting in Committee. We can do it only when we are hearing an appeal sitting in this House, as we do whenever we can—that is to say, whenever we can get a full day and your Lordships do not wish to sit in a political capacity on that day. Although extempore judgments have never been given in the last fifteen years, I remember two occasions, when I was engaged as counsel in your Lordships' House—over 30 years ago, I am afraid—when that was in fact done. So it is not entirely archaic.
We cannot foresee what the effect of this change will be, but I trust that it will prevent the accumulation of any arrears. I can say that at the moment the position is not too bad, but it might easily get worse. Further than that, I very much hope that this will enable us to shorten materially the interval which at present normally elapses between the hearing of a case in the Court of Appeal and the hearing in this House. I think that the period is too long, but unless we do something of this kind I can see no possibility of shortening it.
LORD JESSEL: My Lords, as this procedure obviously admits the fact that there are considerable delays, will the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor consider the possibility of advising Her Majesty to appoint additional Lords of Appeal in Ordinary so that retired Lords of Appeal will not be continually called upon to sit?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, that is another question, and one that I keep under consideration the whole time. Perhaps I may reply shortly to the various points which have been raised. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, really replied to the last point put by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, as to the need for preserving the power to deliver speeches giving reasons. The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, thought that this new proposal would mean an increasing divergence between the procedure of this House in a Legislative capacity and its procedure in a Judicial capacity. I do not think there is much substance in that point, for the simple reason that the real difference here will he, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, pointed out, the difference between speeches being read fairly fast and prints of those speeches being circulated, but at the end the Motion being put that the Lords are "Content" or "Not Content" with a proposal that is made.
One point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, to which I should refer,
and that is the question of copies of Opinions being available to counsel. My experience is not so very long, but I have never known of an occasion where counsel have had any reason to say anything after the speeches giving the views of your Lordships have been delivered. I should have thought it was a considerable improvement that there should be available to them, if they want to see them, prints of the speeches at least an hour before the Sitting, rather than that they should merely listen to the speeches as they are read out fast. They will have plenty of time thereafter to consider at their leisure what is said.
I commend this proposal to your Lordships, because I think it will lead to the acceleration of the disposal of Judicial Business and, indeed, may make it unnecessary to follow the suggestion put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Jessel.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, before my noble and learned friend sits down—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order, order!
LORD KILLEARN: I cannot raise a point from this Bench. I am sorry.
On Question, Resolution agreed to.

ADDRESS IN REPLY TO HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH
3.33 p.m.
Debate resumed (according to Order) on the Motion moved on Tuesday, November 12, by Lord Tweedsmuir—namely, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
"Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament",
and on the Amendment to the Address, moved yesterday by Lord Silkin—namely, to add at the end of the proposed Address
"but regret that Her Majesty's Government have failed adequately and satisfactorily to make provision for the social services, particularly in the field of housing, education and the care of the sick, elderly and less well-off members of the community."
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, we are now moving towards the end of the debate on the gracious Speech, and no doubt many of us feel that this is the moment when we can comment on some aspects of the debate or the Amendments. I have only one comment to make. It is that I have noticed a curious change in the personalities of noble Lords who wind up our debates. There has been an aggressive spirit introduced. Indeed, if I were of a suspicious nature, I should almost feel that the Conservative Central Office had charged noble Lords to be perhaps a little more aggressive between now and next May. As I sat listening last night to the winder-up, I must confess that I began to think of Henry V and certain lines that I learned when I was much younger:
"… imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard favour'd rage."
This seems to be now rather typical of the attitude of noble Lords, men who, as a newcomer to this House, I have always felt were mild, kindly and well-mannered. I must confess to feeling that last night the noble Lord who

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wound up interpreted these instructions that I suggest have come from the Conservative Central Office in such a way, after a debate on education, that he used epithets which certainly did not reach Newsom standards. He deserved the gentle rebuke of my noble friend Lord Longford. But now I see the noble Lord, Lord Newton, sitting there and I am sure that nothing I have said will apply to him.
I am disturbed to find that the gracious Speech makes no mention of the immediate needs of the most hard-pressed in the country. There is some mention of social advance in relation to education, and we have had a useful debate on that. But surely it is axiomatic that the social progress of a country is measured, in the first place, by a Government's concern for the most helpless in the community. I always remember that a Government could be criticised, in the first place, on the ground that they did not treat their women fairly. But now I think we should criticise a Government if they fail, in the first place, to treat fairly the most helpless in the community.
Is my criticism valid? Why is there no mention of the widows? There are hundreds of thousands of widows in this country compelled to live on a pittance, and if they decide to add to their tiny income, they are subject to an earnings rule. Last night a noble Lord said to me in another room, "It is quite impossible to find women to work in our social services. "Throughout the country there are widows, with no dependants, free to do what they like, but unable to work because this Government, for some incredible reason, make their miserable little income which they earn subject to an earnings rule. What of the millions of aged people in our population? There are now at least 4 million who are struggling to survive on an inadequate retirement pension.
I know why so many of these hard-pressed people are not mentioned in this gracious Speech. It is not surprising that some of our most tragic social problems remain unsolved, because the frequent changes of Ministers in some Departments discourage a consistent policy. With the advent of our new Prime Minister comes a new Minister of Health, the seventh in twelve years.
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The disappearance of Mr. Powell at this juncture is curious. He told the Press that he did not object to the Prime Minister and he did not object to the Conservative Party. But he hinted that there were other factors concerned with ministerial office which he could not divulge. Has he withdrawn from the Ministry of Health because the Treasury are threatening to withhold supplies? But surely this cannot be, because I would recall to your Lordships that it was Mr. Powell who on another occasion resigned from the Treasury because he opined that they were too generous.
Then, again, there is Mr. Macleod. After the squalid struggle for the Leadership, Mr. Macleod took umbrage and immediately went, first, to journalism, and then into business. I ask the House: why should Mr. Macleod aspire to high office? He was, I think, the third Minister of Health in this series, and his record was little better than Mr. Powell's. After twelve years of Tory rule patients are still housed in old and dilapidated buildings, overcrowded and understaffed. Do your Lordships recall the second item on the news this morning,
when we were told of the publication of a report by the School of Hygiene? The
Report said:
"The food supplied to patients in this country was of such a quality that only 55 per cent. was eaten and the rest went in swill."
I anticipate that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, when he rises, is going to tell the House of the very large amount of money which the Conservative Party have spent on the health services. This morning we were told of gross wastage, not by a member of the Opposition, but by an impartial body who had investigated the
conditions of 152 hospitals in this country. Only 55 per cent. of the food is eaten and the rest thrown to the pigs. What I want to know from the noble Lord, when he comes to speak, is how he assesses the wastage.
I should also like to know about the length of the waiting lists. In some areas the waiting lists of our hospitals in Mr. Powell's day were as long as, or even longer than, in Mr. Macleod's time. There is a widespread shortage of accommodation for the aged, and those who stay in their homes are often neglected for lack of adequate domiciliary service. In the two years that I have been in this House I have raised this matter time after time.

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I have said that we cannot have a comprehensive Health Service unless those who
have to remain in their homes can be helped by the local authority with a nurse or a home help. But these people are not there, although the Government for the last twelve years have been urged to provide them.
We know, of course, that these big Papers have been published. We had a debate last year on the ten-year Hospital Plan and the ten-year local authority plan. Why has Mr. Powell deserted these massive exercises without a qualm? I can only suggest that he is tired of straining his eyes to glimpse the Promised Land. For these documents which are put before you and which the noble Lord, Lord Newton, will mention—there are dozens of them—are rich only in promises. I would remind your Lordships of what was said in the Hospital Plan which we discussed last year. It was published in January, 1962, and said:
"The plan here put forward embraces work which might be started up to 1971, and adumbrates the pattern of hospital services to be produced in the middle of the next decade or later."
It really seems that the six Ministers of Health have been adept only at building castles in the air.
Now we come to the general practitioners and other doctors who serve in the hospitals. The supply of doctors in this country is more limited now than it was some years ago, because a few years ago the Government cut down the number of medical students and have only recently increased it. It takes seven years now to qualify as a doctor. Last week a Paper was produced which said that in order to provide enough doctors in this country we should have five more medical schools. To think that we must now build medical schools for the student, and then it will take the student seven years to become a doctor! We are short of doctors now. Although it may be said that many general practitioners objected to the National Health Service at the outset, the concept of that Service is now accepted. But the doctor feels that his conditions have deteriorated. In every charge I make I feel fully supported by a publication of the Government. What did the Gillie Report on The Work of the Family Doctor say? It said:
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"Without exception, every principal we met has regretted the impossibility of achieving a satisfying standard of work with the present maximum under existing working conditions."
I understand that the theme of our new Prime Minister is newness. But you cannot change the character of a Government by interchanging two noble Lords for two commoners. I think I am right in saying that after twelve years the electorate is more entitled to consider the Government's record over these twelve years than to be concerned with the next six months' promises. The fact is that in this country to-day, without doctors and nurses from the Commonwealth many hospitals could not be staffed. The noble Lord denied that last year. May I
remind him of the Platt Report? That Report estimated that 51 per cent. of the
junior staff in the hospitals of the North come from overseas. And this has all come about in the last twelve years. Recently a Report on the development of community care has been published. This has been examined in detail by the Medical Practitioners' Union, and they have listed services in each area which cannot be established until 1972, at this rate of progress. They say that all over Britain there are areas with no homes planned for the physically disabled and mentally subnormal, and no hostels or day centres for the mentally ill. They say that the numbers of health visitors, home helps and home nurses are well below the number needed. Yet these auxiliary workers are crucial to the establishment of a domiciliary service.
In order to cope with the growing number of elderly people in the country, the British Medical Association has urged that domiciliary physiotherapy should be provided to rehabilitate the chronic sick. This cannot be provided because there is a shortage of physiotherapists and, indeed, a shortage of all professions supplementary to medicine, particularly psychiatric social workers. These women are very grateful to this House, because your Lordships will recall that we had a debate on their conditions a years or two ago, and your Lordships were very sympathetic and supported them. But all these young women are grossly underpaid and, consequently, suitable girls are not offering their services.
It has been generally agreed that the right policy is to keep people out of

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hospital in the interests of the patient, the hospital and the funds of the National Health Service. But one does not have to be a doctor to realise that in order to do that we must have a comprehensive domiciliary service. The noble Lord, Lord Newton—and I have come so many times to this Box and asked the same thing in the last two years—said this year that
"the development of a local authority service of trained social workers was in its earliest stages, and it would be premature to decide the most effective way of organising it".
I would remind your Lordships that the Report of the Working Party on Social Workers, the Younghusband Report, was published in 1959; and yet the noble Lord comes to your Lordships this year and tells you that it is premature to make any decision upon it.
We have come to the position in this country now of prescribing pills to all and
sundry because the service which should be available is not there. It is of little use prescribing pills for an old person who cannot look after herself without help, or sleeping capsules to an intelligent young woman who is bored because she is in a New Town. I believe that there are signs of social sickness everywhere, and manifestations of the most appalling ignorance. If a gas man calls on a lonely wife and she offers him a cup of tea and has a talk, she risks being called an amorous wife. But if she calls on the doctor and complains of loneliness and depression, the social conscience is satisfied if she is given pills either to pep her up or to soothe her. This is no exaggeration. The waiting rooms of the country are filled with people waiting for a prescription because the kind of domiciliary service which we should have staffed by the auxiliary workers, who could help these patients and potential patients, are not there. To-day our psychological cripples hobble along alone and provide a fortune for the drug industry. I believe that there is a great deal of untapped ability in the country, and there is no more certain way of inflicting unhappiness, and thereby inducing some degree of neurosis, than deliberately to ignore human capacity.
However, there seems little chance of securing the services of these auxiliary
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workers to help with these problems because this Government under-values those already serving in the National Health Service. I think it is ironical that this Paper was published last week at a time when the nurses were making a protest and asking for more pay and shorter hours. The nurses' leaders argued that the claim should be approved, for only in this way could they reduce staff shortages which are crippling the work of many hospitals. The Ministry of Health officials and the hospital spokesmen refused to reduce the hours, and last week offered the nurses of the country a pound a week for night duty and Sunday work, an offer which had already been rejected.
In order to appreciate the enormity of the injustice, may I remind your Lordships again of the payment of these women? A State registered nurse who has also qualified as a midwife and is working part-time as a staff midwife in the National Health Service receives 5s. 0d. an hour—it actually works out at 5s. 0¼d. an hour. This is for a woman who has trained for at least four years and has had to pass written and practical examinations; who may be responsible for the care of women in labour and lying in, and who may be expected to teach pupil midwives: 5s. 0d.an hour, day or night. Is it any wonder that midwives give up practising and that the maternity units lack staff?
The exploitation of the nurses and midwives during the last twelve years has compelled them to ask for pay for night work and Sunday work, and this of course has created a crisis of conscience among the nurses, whose standards of medical ethics make them shrink from asking for extra nay for night work. Of course, the stupid handling of women's questions by this Government is not surprising when one realises that they have not one woman of Cabinet rank to advise them on even these questions. How can men understand these important problems which concern more than 50 per cent. of the population of the country?
This brings me to another Report published in 1959, the Cranbrook Report, which was concerned with the maternity services. It recommended that

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hospital maternity beds should be provided for a national average of 70 per cent. of all confinements, and that antenatal beds should be provided for 20 per cent. to 25 per cent. of all confinements in the areas of hospital authorities. Furthermore, the Cranbrook Report said that experience in this country justifies adherence to a period of ten days as the normal length of stay in hospital after delivery. The position in this country is so serious that, during the course of discussion of the London Government Bill, it was revealed that in London last year there were 2,000 emergency cases of women in labour who had nowhere to go. The ambulances had to take them when they were actually in labour to find a hospital somewhere in London—despite the Cranbrook Report In some areas the shortage of accommodation is such that women are being discharged two or three days after the confinement.
In the Evening News last week there were the headlines:
"Mothers-to-be in Protest. Thousands of Mothers in North and West London are Protesting about Maternity Arrangements".
It then added:
"New and larger maternity departments are to be provided at the North Middlesex Hospital".
I served for seven years in the North Middlesex Hospital so I know it rather well. The hospital serves a large, congested area of North London and it still uses prefabricated huts of the First World War for its maternity work. Successive Ministers of Health have been told about this condition, but no action has been taken. I think that I have brought to the notice of your Lordships' House that over the last twelve years we have had a spate of White Papers and Blue Books—paper concepts only—but there has been no concrete, comprehensive service.
Finally, my Lords, I wish to say something about the cost and testing of drugs, something in which I believe every one of your Lordships has a special interest, for every one of your Lordships here is, after all, a potential patient. On February 19, 1953, I drew the attention of Mr. Macleod, the then Minister of Health, to the Report of the Auditor-General with regard to the heavy prescribing of expensive proprietary drugs, and I asked what action he proposed to
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take in order to reduce this expenditure. That was in 1953. Mr. Macleod said:
"The doctors must refrain. For my part I am considering what further steps can be taken."
In 1954 the average cost of a prescription—and I hope your Lordships realise that this does not mean just antibiotics; for the average costs of course include a few tablets of aspirin and of the minor things as well—was 5s. 1d.; in 1958, 7s. 4d.; in 1960, 8s. 5d.; in 1961, 9s. 3d.; and now I am told that it is over 10s. 0d. When it came up to 1959 the Government decided to set up a Committee, the Hinchliffe Committee, in order to consider the matter. The Committee recommended that an expert Committee should advise the Minister; but still the costs soared.
With regard to the testing of drugs, your Lordships will, I think, during the last few years have been alive to the dangers of the distribution of untested drugs in the country. Again this has been brought to the attention of successive Ministers of Health, and I think it was the thalidomide tragedy which focused public attention on the scandal. It was generally felt among doctors, and, I think, the public, that an impartial body should be responsible for testing, not the pharmaceutical industry which has a vested interest in the matter. This seems to me to be common sense. These views have been expressed time after time, but we have waited all these years. At last, when the House was in Recess, Mr. Powell announced in September that on January 1, 1964, a Committee will be convened to assess reports on toxicity tests and clinical trials of new drugs. Unhappily the toxicity tests are to be left to manufacturers and not to an impartial body, and therefore it will still be possible for an unscrupulous manufacturer to market medicines which have not been subject to a satisfactory test. When told of this, despite these Committees of eminent people, and despite his statement during the year, in which he said, "I want to show you all that these Committees will have teeth", he then said:
"If an unscrupulous manufacturer did distribute a drug which had not been tested, it could be brought to the notice of the Committee."
I feel that is a little late. These drugs should be tested by an impartial body

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before they are distributed. It is well known that there are many black sheep in the drug industry, which, with its American subsidiaries, has made a fortune out of the National Health Service, and I find it difficult to believe that Committees alone will induce a new, high standard of ethical behaviour among the black sheep. I think this highlights our indictment of the Government in the field of health. The test of a Government is not the aspirations they express, but the real worth of the men, the methods and the money they employ.

B.O.A.C. AND B.E.A.
4.0 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM): My Lords, I hope it may be convenient for me to make a statement about the British European Airways Corporation and the British Overseas Airways Corporation similar to that being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of Aviation.
The noble Lord, Lord Douglas of Kirtleside, who will be 70 in December, will be retiring from the Chairmanship of B.E.A. at the end of the financial year. He will then have completed fifteen years as Chairman, and I am sure the House will wish to join me in paying tribute to his great services to British aviation. He will be succeeded by Mr. Anthony Milward who has been Chief Executive of B.E.A. for the last seven years.
Sir Matthew Slattery will be retiring from the Chairmanship of B.O.A.C. in the New Year. He has given B.O.A.C. great service in a very difficult period. Sir Matthew Slattery will be succeeded as Chairman by Sir Giles Guthrie, who is a
member of the Board of B.E.A. and has an outstanding aviation record in peace and war. I understand that it is Sir Giles Guthrie's intention to undertake himself some of the functions of the Managing Director. Sir Basil Smallpeice, after many years of devoted service to B.O.A.C., has agreed to retire to facilitate the changes.
My right honourable friend has carefully considered whether a merger
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between B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. would be in the best interests of British aviation, but on balance he has decided against it. He is convinced, however, that the two Corporations need to work more closely together than they have in the past. Sir Giles Guthrie, the Chairman-designate of B.O.A.C., will accordingly retain his seat as a part-time member of the Board of B.E.A.; and Mr. Anthony Milward, the Chairman designate of B.E.A., will also become a part-time member of the Board of B.O.A.C.
Before the House rose for the Summer Recess my right honourable friend undertook to publish a White Paper about B.O.A.C.'s financial problems. This White Paper will be available in the Printed Paper Office when I sit down. I will not attempt to summarise it now; but the House will want to know the immediate steps the Government are proposing to take. These are set out at the end of the White Paper and are briefly as follows. First, we have decided to strengthen the management of the Corporation. Second, my right honourable friend is inviting Sir Giles Guthrie to prepare a plan during the coming year for making the Corporation financially sound. When this plan has been considered we can then decide how to deal with the accumulated deficit and how to provide for the financing of the Corporation.
Meanwhile, some losses are likely to continue before the new plan can be drawn up and put into practice. My right honourable friend will, therefore, shortly be asking for an extension of the powers he already has under the Air Corporations Act, 1962, to make loans for the purpose of financing deficits on revenue account. That is the statement.
4.5 p.m.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for giving us the statement which has been made in another place, and at the outset I would say that we appreciate very much the tribute which is made in this statement to the services of Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Lord Douglas of Kirtleside. We feel that the continuation of his services for the last twelve years of the Conservative Government in itself was

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a tribute to an appointment we made three years before that.
The point that strikes me about this statement to-day is that it is like shoving a large part of the problems concerned under the carpet until after the Election. In the first place, I would ask why it is that, in spite of a request made months ago, we have never yet seen the Corbett report on the general position of B.O.A.C. May we ask now that we get the Corbett report published immediately? It is essential that Parliament should know about this, in view of the statements made in this announcement to-day. Is it only because of the Press reports this morning that we have now had a statement the very next day from the Government? We were all disturbed to read the changes proposed and the manner, apparently, in which matters were to be left, not very far removed from the statement which has been made, all in the Press. At last a reference is made to a White Paper that was promised months ago; and still to-day a statement is made in another place, before the White Paper is available. That seems to me to be an extraordinary state of affairs.
I notice what is said with regard to the resignation of Sir Matthew Slattery, who is well-known to Members in all parts of this House for his services to the State, the Admiralty, the Ministry of Aircraft Production, and, in this difficult period as mentioned in the statement, to the B.O.A.C. It is said in the statement that he has agreed to resign, apparently to assist reconstruction or something of the kind. Has he been persuaded to resign, or did he offer before anything was given out at all? I should like to know something about that. It seems to indicate to me, as I read the statement, that apparently the Government are not satisfied with the management that he has given, because it says that his successor, Sir Giles Guthrie, is to be at once engaged in preparing an entirely new plan. It also says that the Government propose to strengthen the management. Under what sort of pressure has Sir Matthew Slattery been on this point, and why is it we have not got alongside that the Corbett report, the up-to-date report on the position?
When it comes to the financial situation, everybody knows what a huge
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deficit has unfortunately arisen in regard to B.O.A.C., not entirely the fault each year of the management, and carried forward in the manner it has been. And now there is to be no attempt before the General Election, after the Government have been twelve years in office, to deal with that situation. A further sum is to be loaned, and what is to be done to put the Corporation on a firm financial basis to take its next steps, is to lend it more money and consider the situation after the Election. That seems to me an amazing position. I am rather astonished to read of the resignation, in order to assist the changeover, of Sir Basil Smallpeice. He is known to many of us as an exceedingly able businessman as well as being a professional accountant, and he has served us in other public offices as well as the one he is in now. I must say at this moment I feel entirely unhappy about this statement.
4.9 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, the noble Earl who leads the Opposition will understand, I am sure, that I was not particularly surprised at the points he put forward, and I will do my best to deal with them. It is important to be quite clear about this matter. My right honourable friend on behalf of Her Majesty's Government carries a responsibility for this very good airline—a very good airline; let us make no mistake about that—which is, however, not at the present time proving the fact by successful financial results. When your Lordships come to read the White Paper, which no doubt you will be doing in a very short time, you will find that it reveals some weaknesses, some of which have been corrected and some not. The proposals of my right honourable friend have been made to enable B.O.A.C. to confront the problems that lie ahead and to get it on its feet. The attitude of Sir Matthew Slattery and Sir Basil Smallpeice to this I think will be made quite clear if, rather than coming from me, it should come from the exchange of letters to the Minister which will be made available later this afternoon.
The noble Earl called for the publication of the Corbett report. He sees no reason why it should not be published—but I do. The reason is that

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that report was commissioned as a confidential report. The evidence collected by Mr. Corbett was on a confidential basis, and on that basis there can be no question of publishing that report. Furthermore, it is clearly and squarely the responsibility of Her Majesty's Government, and not of one particular man. Her Majesty's Government must, I think, be free to employ the services of a professional consultant if they so wish, because what is important or should be important to your Lordships is the conclusions and recommendations of the Government which are to be put forward in the White Paper. I agree that the Corbett report was a useful and major factor in coming to those conclusions, but it was not the only one.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: But it is six months old.
LORD CHESHAM: Nevertheless, reports of this nature and other matters have to be given proper consideration. As to the further complaint that the White Paper should have been produced before the statement, I can only say that the purpose of this statement is to draw attention to the White Paper; so I daresay we could go on stepping backwards, and doing one thing before the other. I most certainly assure the noble Earl that there is no question of this statement's having been made because of what was published in the Press this morning. I think it can be quite easily discovered that this statement was planned some days ago.
Finally, on the question of the deficit, the noble Earl said that it should have been dealt with; but I would say, with an open mind, that when there is a sound plan, leading, one would hope, to B.O.A.C.'s getting on its feet, then that is the time to consider how to deal with the deficit, and that to consider writing off large sums now with no particular prospect seems to be illogical and quite wrong. It is rather like asking Parliament to give a blank cheque. I think I have now dealt with the points raised by the noble Earl.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, the noble Lord has not dealt satisfactorily with the question of the Corbett report. Even if the Corbett report as a whole is confidential, there is no reason why its
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recommendations should not be published, and there is no reason why there should not be at least a reference to it in the White Paper, which I have seen because it was available in another place. The White Paper, in fact, not only is one of the dullest and most inadequate of documents, but fails to deal with the serious accusation which the Minister of Aviation made at the time against B.O.A.C. and the conduct of its financial affairs. The Corbett investigation was particularly concerned to look into those matters, and we have had no information whether the accusation in regard to depreciation policy and other matters which the Minister
of Aviation made are justified. Will he not now consider carefully the desirability of publishing these recommendations, so that we may see, in broad terms, what advice was given to the Government?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I noticed that the noble Lord had nipped smartly off, and I guessed what was his destination. Therefore, as he and I are almost at a sole advantage in your Lordships' House in having seen this White Paper, perhaps it would not be for the noble Lord and me to initiate and carry on a debate on it this afternoon. But whatever the noble Lord may think, I still maintain that it is the job of the Government to put forward their recommendations based on their considerations. And to us confidence is confidence.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, in view of the comments of my noble friend and, in particular, the allegations that were made by the Minister in regard to the Board of B.O.A.C., is it not a fact that the Corbett report has not been shown or been made available to the Chairman of B.O.A.C. and to the Board of B.O.A.C.? Can the Minister confirm or deny that statement? May I further ask the Minister: in view of the fact that the purpose of the Corbett report was substantially to go into the financial working of B.O.A.C. and to make recommendations, will that report become available to the new Chairman of B.O.A.C. in order to expedite his own examination and his own presentation of a plan, so that B.O.A.C. can be put on a sound basis as quickly as possible, and so that there should be no question of evading the issue in the matter of a year or so?
LORD CHESHAM: No, my Lords; there should be no reason to evade an issue for any time at all. I agree with that. I can tell the noble Lord that the report as a whole has not been made available to the Chairman concerned.
LORD SHEPHERD: Extraordinary!
LORD CHESHAM: Not extraordinary; but we will take that up at some other time. What I will say is that there is a section of the report which would be most valuable to B.O.A.C. in considering reorganisation plans, and this will be made available to them.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, may I, as the Minister of the day who appointed Lord Douglas of Kirtleside, join in the tribute to his wonderful work? But may I, as someone who has worked closely, as have others, with Sir Matthew Slattery, say that he has been treated abominably in this matter? I should imagine, too, that Sir Basil Smallpeice has been treated in the same way. He is quite a young man as high people go, and no reason whatever has been given for his removal. We are told that the management is to be strengthened. I am quite sure that the Government have weakened the management by the ridiculous steps they have taken.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I am surprised to hear those observations coming from the noble Earl, and that he should have prejudged the issue without having found out the facts and, in particular, without having seen the exchange of letters to which I have referred. Had he done that, he would have found that what he has just said was just not so.
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, the Minister has just said that to the Tory Government confidence is confidence. Is it not something of a confidence trick, if there is an inquiry into an organisation and the distinguished people at the head of that organisation are denied the right to see the result of the inquiry and the judgment made on it?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I do not think so. I should have thought that if you are charged with responsibility for the competence of something, you are entitled to employ, if you like, a business efficiency consultant to advise
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you on how it is being run. That is exactly what the Minister has done.
LORD LINDGREN: And the business efficiency experts of those who are responsible for the running of the organisation are not given the opportunity of studying the report of the expert.
LORD SHACKLETON: Does not the noble Lord realise that the Government's failure to publish the recommendations of the Corbett investigation must lead us to the only possible conclusion: that these recommendations and conclusions justified B.O.A.C. in their dealings and put the blame where it lies—on the interference of the Government in their commercial policy?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, there is no conceivable way in which I can stop the noble Lord, if he so wishes, from jumping to any conclusion. But if he would kindly read the White Paper—
LORD SHACKLETON: I have.
LORD CHESHAM: —or will have another, and slower, look at what I have just said, I think he will find that the matter will present itself more reasonably to him.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am bound to say at once that I feel just as unhappy, even after the explanations given by the noble Lord. I am sure he has done his best for his side in the matter, and I am grateful for the reply he has made, but it has not cleared my mind at all. The fact is that it stands out a mile that these two high officials, Sir Matthew Slattery and Sir Basil Smallpeice, have been pressed to resign, in my view in order to facilitate the turnover. And, like good public servants, they will write letters that will meet the situation required by the Government.
Apparently they have never been shown the Corbett report, a report which was demanded by the Government months ago; and the White Paper, which is now being issued after the statement of the Minister to-day was promised months ago and has only now been published. This statement has been made to-day only after the revelations which have appeared in the Press this morning. In such an important matter the Government ought to have secured that they

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should first have come to Parliament and notified Parliament of what was going to be done, especially after the questions which repeatedly have been asked. While I am obliged to the noble Lord for the effort he has made this afternoon, we will have to seek an early debate in this House.

ADDRESS IN REPLY TO HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH
4.22 p.m.
Debate resumed.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HEALTH (LORD NEWTON): My Lords, we now come back to the Amendment before the House, if your Lordships can bring your thoughts down from the upper atmosphere to the ground again. At the beginning of her speech the noble Baroness made some observations about a certain aggressiveness which she says she has noticed on the part of Ministers in your Lordships' House. I thought at one moment that she was making a mild attempt to mollify me in advance.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: No.
LORD NEWTON: All I want to say about that is that I can assure her nobody has charged me, at any rate, to be more aggressive or less aggressive than I usually am.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: You are the exception.
LORD NEWTON: The noble Lady made some reference to my right honourable friend Mr. Powell, the former Minister of Health; and I was sorry that she did not feel able to make more complimentary references to him. I was his Parliamentary Secretary for a year, and his spokesman in your Lordships' House for three years, and that is something which I have regarded as a great honour. I have not the slightest doubt at all that Mr. Enoch Powell, as the inspiration of the two great long-term plans for the development of the hospital and local authority services in this country, will go down in history as one of the great Ministers of Health of this country.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
LORD NEWTON: I should like straight away to reply to what the noble Lady said about the Nuffield Report on Food in Hospitals, which was published this morning. Your Lordships will appreciate that I have not had time to study this Report with the detailed attention which it deserves, but I should like to make some observations about it. The first is that many of our hospitals, including their kitchens, are old, badly designed and inconvenient. Indeed, that is why we have a massive building programme in progress. The Report is based on visits to 152 hospitals in 1961 and 1962, and since then much has been done to improve the quality and service of food in hospitals generally.
In January, 1962, my Department issued a booklet giving comprehensive advice about all catering matters, including the avoidance of unnecessary waste; and more catering officers have been appointed by hospital authorities, and training at all levels has been developed. Nearly all the Report's recommendations are fully in accord with what is already the policy of my Department, and it is most helpful to have our policy endorsed. The Report brings out that when the visits were made some hospitals were not acting on the advice I have just mentioned. My right honourable friend and the hospital authorities are determined to secure universally high standards, and I certainly hope that the Nuffield Report will contribute to the attainment of that end.
If I may invite your Lordships' attention to the terms of the Amendment which we are debating, it charges Her Majesty's Government with having failed to provide adequately and satisfactorily for the care of the sick and the elderly. That is not the whole of the Amendment, but is, I think, a perfectly fair paraphrase. Those are strong words. I interpret them as being an attack on the Government for having neglected the sick and the elderly for the twelve years in which the Conservative Party have been responsible for the Government of this country. I therefore expected a massive attack upon our record. What have we had? Yesterday we had the noble Lord, Lord Champion,

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who talked to us, with considerable knowledge, about residential accommodation for the elderly. Had he been here, I should have liked to say at more length that I find myself virtually in complete agreement with his views on how these matters should be dealt with; and later in my speech I hope to say more about it.
Then we had the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, a distinguished member of the medical profession and a Member of this House who frequently addresses us on matters appertaining to health. Lord Taylor entertained and delighted us with some philosophical reflections on the future of your Lordships' House and said, among other things, that he had always thought, until the Peerage Act this summer, that we were here until death us did part. That was the nearest the noble Lord
got to the care of the elderly. Then we had the noble Earl, Lord Longford, who did not even get us near as that; and the noble Earl is a Member of your Lordships' House who frequently addresses us with great knowledge, particularly about problems of mental health.
To-day we have had the noble Baroness. She talked about the Nuffield Report, with which I have dealt. She talked about staffing problems of all kinds, as she has done frequently before, and to which I have replied. She talked about amorous wives as well. But she ignored—and I think she must know this—the fact that the latest available figures, which were those for March this year, show that the number of nurses and midwives are the highest ever recorded. In the opinion of the noble Baroness they ought to be higher still; but, at any rate, they are higher than they have ever been.
Again, the noble Baroness returned to the charge she has so often made before: that the Government are gravely responsible for the severe strain to which the maternity services in some parts of the country are being subjected. The noble Lady knows, I think, that the reason for this pressure is that the number of births has been increasing much more rapidly than has been expected, and our forecasters did not predict what has happened. One of the hardest predictions to make in this world at any moment of time is what
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the birth rate is going to be a few years hence. Then the noble Lady gave us once again the benefit of her views on the cost of drugs and the testing of drugs.
My Lords, that is the evidence upon which, apparently, noble Lords opposite are prepared to invite your Lordships to agree with them that Her Majesty's Government have failed adequately and satisfactorily to make provision for the care of the sick and the elderly.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: The noble Lord has omitted—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order, order!
LORD NEWTON: May I just go on to say this, my Lords? I wish to make two submissions to your Lordships. The first is that the evidence so far advanced by the Party opposite in support of their Amendment is inadequate; and, secondly, that when your Lordships have permitted me to present to you certain facts, which I think will put the picture in a different light, you will agree with me that this Amendment ought to be rejected.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, has the noble Lord forgotten that my main charge now, as it has been on every other occasion, is that there is no domiciliary service? Everybody knows that, and he has omitted that. We cannot care for the old people in homes, unless we have a comprehensive domiciliary service. That is my main charge, and that is relating to the Amendment.
LORD NEWTON: The noble Lady has mentioned that question before. But I have a great deal to say and perhaps, with your Lordships' permission, I could talk about community care, including the domiciliary services, later on in the course of my speech.
My Lords, to begin with I want to give your Lordships some facts about the hospital building programme. We inherited (and when I say "we" inherited, I mean my Party), when we came into office in 1951 capital expenditure on hospital building amounting to £9 million a year. By 1960–61—which was the last year before the Hospital Plan was published—that figure had risen to £23·7 million. Then we had

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the Hospital Plan, and since then the figures for capital expenditure on building have been: 1961–62 £30·8 million; 1962–63 £33·9 million. The estimated figure for the current year, 1963–64, is £46 million; and the estimated figure for next year, 1964–65, is £51·6 million. To each of these two last figures, for the current year and next year, has to be added £2 million each year for salaries. During the first four years of the Hospital Plan we shall have spent £160 million upon capital building projects. When the Plan was published nearly two years ago the value of work in progress was about £70 million; it is now nearly £120 million, and we expect over the next ten years, 1964–74, to spend around £600 million on hospital building. This has all been said before, my Lords, and it cannot be claimed that this is something which the Government have decided in view of the forthcoming General Election.
Now what about the content of this capital programme? The programme includes some 250 new or substantially remodelled hospitals, as well as some 350 other major schemes for the improvement of existing hospitals. There are at present 65 new or substantially remodelled hospitals in the course of construction, and over 100 other major schemes. Since April, 1961, 90 major schemes, including phases of new or substantially remodelled hospitals, have been completed and their total cost was nearly £25 million. In the same period, 144 major schemes have been started, and the total estimated cost of those schemes is nearly £80 million. The present position is that new or substantially remodelled hospitals are being started at the rate of one every nineteen days.
When we debated the Hospital Plan in your Lordships' House nearly two years ago I introduced that debate. I then pointed out that the Hospital Plan—of which I have just been giving your Lordships the bare bones—provided for modernising the whole pattern and content of the Hospital Service, and that it explained the need for bringing together in district hospitals a wide range of modern facilities for diagnosis and treatment. In practice this has entailed giving an intense study to the problems of designing and building new hospitals.
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The fruits of this study (and it is still going on, because we are learning all the time) have been applied, are being applied and will be applied in planning the new hospital departments and facilities which have been built, are being built and will be built.
I have given your Lordships the facts and figures of what is happening. But bare statistics leave much to the imagination, and I want to give the House some idea of what these new buildings are actually like. I think that the best way of doing this will be to describe a few of the major projects which I myself have visited in the years that I have been Parliamentary Secretary.
In June this year I opened a new ward block of six wards at Poole General Hospital providing altogether 180 beds, and those wards are a complete breakaway from the traditional open pattern. To many people, I suppose, the image conjured up by the words "hospital ward" is of a long room with beds, fifteen or more ranged down each side, and giving an impression of a military precision which is incapable of being wholly dispelled by the kindness and compassion of doctors and nurses, however great that kindness and compassion may be. My Lords, the new wards at Poole are not like that at all. The space is divided up into attractive smaller rooms and bays, each holding no more than four beds, and there are day rooms for those who are not so ill that they must stay in bed. Of course this is not the end of the story at Poole; there is more to come: another ward block; new supporting departments; a nurses' home; a nurses' training school, an isolation unit and so on. But why I particularly mention Poole, and why it is significant, is that it is one of the first of the new generation of hospitals designed both to serve needs which we can now foresee and to have built-in capacity for adaptation to meet future needs which we cannot yet foresee.
A pilot project, which points the way to important future developments, is the long-stay geriatric unit which I opened at Heath Lane Hospital, West Bromwich, in April. The significance of this pioneering unit is that it is the outcome of work by a research group whose aims were, first, to provide a modern standard

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of accommodation which would make for efficient nursing of elderly patients in a homely atmosphere—and I think that will please, or at any rate, interest the noble Lord, Lord Champion, whose speech I listened to yesterday, and about which I ventured to make a few observations while he was not in the Chamber.
The research group's second aim was to speed up hospital planning and building by the introduction of industrialised building techniques. A system of dimensional co-ordination was used, and a range has been developed of factory-produced components which can be rapidly erected on the site. This particular project, about which I am talking, demonstrated that such techniques are economically sound, and that savings can be achieved by forward-ordering of components for a programme of similar projects. That is why this is a pilot project. These methods are of considerable interest to the building industry, because they provide long-term orders and because they simplify the processes of setting out and site erection. And, of course, the use of industrialised building techniques is not limited to geriatric units. These techniques are being directed towards a system of standardisations, in which components will be developed for use in any type of hospital building. This is a contribution by the Hospital Service to the age of technology, and I hope that noble Lords opposite who are so interested in technology will take note of that fact.
Lastly, while I am on this subject of new hospitals, I want to mention extensions to the Luton and Dunstable Hospital, which I opened last month—extensions which are the first phase of that hospital's development. The most notable feature is a highly original accidents department designed to deal with all types of accident. Walking cases are kept separate from ambulance cases, and they arrive by separate entrances. In ambulance cases the patients are placed on trolleys, where they remain until treatment is over and they are ready to be put into bed. In other words, my Lords, the trolley serves as a stretcher, X-ray table and operating table.
I should like to go on talking to your Lordships for a long time about this
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particular accident department, but there is not time. However, there is one other feature of this hospital that I would mention, and that is a really superbly equipped X-ray department with a processing plant that produces a developed, fixed and dried film in seven minutes. I have selected these three building projects more or less at random, but they are indicative of what is going on and of what will go on under the Hospital Plan. It is a continuing process, and a process which, I submit, completely exposes the inaccuracy of the charges of neglect which are made in the Opposition Amendment.
Next I want to move on to community care, to the health and welfare services of the local authority. The last fifteen years have seen not only great social changes but, at the same time, a considerable development in the whole conception of care in the community, and to-day there are services which, fifteen years ago, were either non-existent or barely envisaged—for example, the home-help service, "meals on wheels", hostels for the mentally handicapped and training centres for the mentally subnormal. The first aim of the health and welfare services is to promote health and wellbeing and to forestall illness and disability by preventive measures. But where illness or disability occur, then the aim of these services is to provide care in the community—at the individual's own home, at centres or, where necessary, in residential accommodation—for all who do not require the types of treatment and care which can be given only in hospitals. But, of course, hospital is to be regarded as the last resort.
With the publication of the Hospital Plan in 1962 the local authority health and welfare services could also be planned on equally comprehensive lines, and during 1962 the local authorities went ahead and prepared their development plans. These were presented and analysed in Cmnd. 1973, entitled Health and Welfare: the Development of Community Care, which was published in April of this year. In the preface to this Command Paper we surveyed the various services, and suggested aims and standards which should govern development, but we did not attempt to state principles and objectives dogmatically. The purpose was to stimulate discussion,

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study and experiment, so that the local authorities might consider and revise their own intentions in the light of the picture as a whole and in the light of what other local authorities were doing. Revision of the plans already published is particularly appropriate, since whole new fields of prevention and community care, above all in relation to mental disorder, are coming into view, as well as new concepts of training for many types of staff.
The local authorities have therefore been asked by us to review their ten-year plans for their health and welfare services and to let us have summaries of the developments they intend for the next ten years from the beginning of next year. From conversations which I have had with local authorities in the last six months up and down the country, since the publication of the Blue Book, Health and Welfare, I am inclined to think that there may be some quite substantial revisions.
Concepts of training are being actively developed by the Council for the Training of Health Visitors and the Council for Training in Social Work, which came into existence in October of last year, and whose inaugural meeting I had the honour of addressing. Also, a council for the training of staff of training centres for the mentally subnormal is now being set up.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? Would he make it quite clear—perhaps I just missed it—that what he has just said about the setting up of a council is for the training of teachers for the mentally subnormal?
LORD NEWTON: Yes; for teachers.
I come now to the record up to the present time in the local health board welfare authority field. In the years preceding 1958–59, loan sanctions for local health and welfare authority capital building projects averaged about £4 million a year. Since then, the figures have been: 1959–60, £9 million; 1960–61, £14·6 million; 1961–62, £16 million: 1962–63, £15·2 million; and for the current year the Government have allocated £19 million. In addition, authorities have been providing about £3 million annually for capital projects from revenue and other sources, and
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the figure is likely to be nearer £4 million from now onwards.
The result of this investment has been the opening of new premises as follows—and I should like the noble Baroness to hear this record, because I think it is quite impressive. Between 1959 and the present moment, residential accommodation under Part III of the National Assistance Act has been provided in 346 homes, with a total of 16,450 places. In the current year, new homes have been opened at the rate of three a fortnight. Between 1960 and the present moment (and I mean the present moment, because there will be more next week) there have been opened 212 clinics and 7 health centres. In the current year, the rate of opening has been at least one new clinic or health centre each week. In the same period about 100 ambulance stations have been provided. In the current year, the rate of opening has been about one new ambulance station a fortnight. Then, there have been opened 52 hostels for the mentally ill and 211 training centres for the mentally subnormal. In the current year, the rate of opening has been at least one new training centre a week. In passing, I would mention also that, whereas in 1949–50 the revenue expenditure of local authorities on health and welfare services was £39 million, in 1961–62 it was £103 million, and the plans of the authorities assume that the figure will rise by 1971–72 to £163 million at constant prices.
My Lords, I have talked about what has been happening up to the present moment, but, to return to the capital programme, the plans summarised in the Blue Book, Health and Welfare, forecast the following net increased provision by 1972—and I would emphasise that I am talking about additional provision and not replacement projects: 1,100 homes for the elderly, providing 40,000 places; for the physically handicapped, 100 centres and 48 homes, providing 1,500 places. For the mentally subnormal, 79 junior training centres, providing 6,600 places; 200 adult training centres, providing 16,500 places; and 420 hostels, providing 4,450 places. For the mentally ill, 80 centres, 190 hostels and 145 maternity and child welfare clinics and health centres. A further 1,080 clinics will be built to replace existing premises. My

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Lords, I wish the noble Lady, Baroness Summerskill, would be kind enough just occassionally to listen to what I am saying.
I should like to repeat that these figures in the Plan at the moment are subject to annual review. As with hospitals, bare facts and figures about local authority health and welfare services convey nothing about the quality of these services. They are very human services and personal to the individual. I want to tell your Lordships something about two of them; the training centres for the mentally subnormal and the care of the elderly.
Compared with other forms of community care, provision for the mentally disordered is still in its infancy. I take it that the reason is that the treatment of mental disorder is the least advanced branch of medical science. In my experience, the standard of the mental health services varies more between authority and authority than do the standards of the other health and welfare services.
In the course of this year I have visited about twenty training centres and hostels for the mentally subnormal in different parts of the country. I have seen some fine new ones, four of which I have opened. The thinking behind these training centres is akin to the concept whereby a normal child is first educated and then, as an adolescent, trained to do a job. An indication that there has been a change of professional thought in recent years is the fact that people now talk about "training" centres rather than about "occupation" centres. A few of the children attending junior centres are ultimately able to earn a living. Others graduate to sheltered workshops and work alongside those who are physically handicapped but mentally normal. The remainder, although unable to progress beyond the adult training centre, may be expected, under supervision, to do useful work and to be wage-earning. It is immensely important if they can do that.
The nature and suitability of such work depends much upon the location of the training centre. I have found that centres near light industrial areas can usually obtain appropriate contract work, and the local factory managements and local Rotary Clubs are anxious to
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be helpful. Suspicion of mental disorder is deeply rooted in social history. I fancy that a certain amount of public misunderstanding of it has been dispelled in the last few years; but there is still too much. In particular, I doubt whether many people appreciate that more often than not subnormal children, especially mongols, are gay and happy by nature.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord?
LORD NEWTON: No, my Lords, I should like to finish this part of my speech. Even limited achievement at training centres in this field is rewarding, as anybody knows who has watched children respond under imaginative handling; and it brings enormous relief to their parents. Not long ago I saw a most interesting experiment under which a local medical officer held regular clinics for the mothers of backward children. While the children played together the mothers discussed among themselves, or with the doctor, their problems and experiences; and several of them told me that they had derived much encouragement from this sharing of progress reports. The point about community care of the mentally disordered is that it is a social service par excellence. It is up to the community to provide the facilities, the framework within which skilled work can be done and the community has accepted that responsibility. At the end of last year 26,000 people of all ages were receiving treatment in 480 centres. The long-term plans of the local health authorities in England and Wales forecast that another 25,000 places will be provided in the next ten years.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. This is a point of some importance. Twice in the last few sentences the noble Lord has mentioned the "mentally disordered" mixed up with arrangements for treating the "mentally subnormal." If by "mentally disordered" he means "mentally ill," then I would agree with him; but the mentally subnormal are not mentally ill. These are two different classes of people altogether and the noble Lord must realise that it is no good talking about the mentally disordered when he means the mentally ill.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, thinks it necessary to give me a lecture.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: The noble Lord is being aggressive.
LORD NEWTON: If he has taken offence at my description of the mentally disordered, I am sorry. But I am surprised that the noble Lord is not prepared to credit me with knowing the difference between the two types of disorder.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: But you said it.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I will now turn to community care of the elderly, and I shall now be dealing with some questions that the noble Lord, Lord Champion, discussed yesterday. Ten years ago residential accommodation of the elderly was almost entirely in former workhouses, the former Public Assistance institutions. But as the 1950s proceeded, in order to add to and replace that accommodation, new and smaller homes were erected. To begin with, almost all of them were conversions or adaptations of existing private houses. Latterly, practically all the additional accommodation brought into use has been and is built specially for the purpose. And the old institutions are disappearing.
During this year, in my capacity as Parliamentary Secretary I have visited at least two dozen homes for the elderly all over the country, and I saw all kinds of them. I have no doubt at all that virtually all those former workhouses that remain should be run down and closed as quickly as possible. Moreover, when the old people in them have been rehoused, the buildings should not be used for any other residential purposes; and any local authority which may contemplate some
other use for them will have to be discouraged by everybody who is in a position to exercise discouragement. It will be very seldom that one of these buildings will he capable of adaptation into a place which will conform to modern standards. I have seen only one which in my view might be converted successfully: it is architecturally rather good and in charming surroundings; but, even so,
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the cost of conversion would probably be prohibitive.
The most important thing about a home for the elderly is that it should be as home-like as possible. It follows from this that a home must not be too big—about 40 places is probably about right, as well as being the soundest proposition financially—and it follows also that there should be a high proportion, and I would say a very high proportion, of single bedrooms, with a few doubles. It is for these reasons that the emphasis to-day is on purpose-built homes. Converted premises tend to be too large and to have too many dormitories. On the other hand, in purpose-built premises much more active efforts have to be made to promote and preserve a homelike or homely atmosphere. I went to one which my local authority escort mistook for a school—and indeed from the outside it looked exactly like a small new school.
Another advantage of the purpose-built home is that it can be sited where it is most needed. It is tempting to a local authority, when it already has a site on which there are already other services to build on that site a home as well. But this is not really desirable. Old people do not want to be segregated from those younger than themselves or from children. So the right answer is probably a purpose-built house on a housing estate; but, even so, I have seen one or two small adapted or converted homes which struck me as absolutely ideal, since the atmosphere was so nice. A very great deal turns on the personality of the warden or superintendent; and on the whole the local authorities seem to select their staff very wisely. I have been enormously impressed by the care with which local welfare authorities study all the factors I have mentioned and experiment in order to discover the best possible solutions.
But I am really putting the cart before the horse, because, in terms of community care of the elderly, the residential home is, so to speak, the last resort. Before that there is special housing—flatlets, specially designed for old people, with a resident warden. I have seen some very successful examples of this type of provision. It is extremely popular with the old people themselves and, from the point of view of the local authority,

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cheaper than providing places in residential homes.
Provision of these flatlets began in about 1957–58, as they are a comparatively new conception. At the end of September of this year, there were 3,132 specially built ones in England and Wales and a further 1,505 provided by conversion. We have asked local welfare authorities, when making the first revision (to which I have already referred) of their ten-year plans, to include a forecast of the special housing with warden service which they expect to provide in the course of the next five years. I am most optimistic about this. From the talks I have had with local authorities about this type of provision, I feel that they are becoming enthusiastic about it. This may well be one of the most beneficial consequences of the publication of Health and Welfare.
Finally, and again in the wrong order, there are the domiciliary services, which enable elderly people to go on living in their own homes and in which the noble Baroness is particularly interested. Particularly important in this connection is the work of the home nurses, home-helps and members of the voluntary organisations. Elderly people are reluctant to leave their own homes and move into special housing or residential accommodation, unless there is no alternative, and it is remarkable how, in places where the domiciliary services, statutory and voluntary, are well organised, even quite severely handicapped people remain very happy in their own homes. The local authorities are planning to increase their domiciliary staff, as can be seen in the Blue Book, and they may well have to plan for more. It is encouraging, too, that voluntary effort is growing. For example, the number of "meals-on-wheels" provided by the W.V.S. rose from 1,890,000 in 1959 to 3,460,000 in 1962. In my experience, for what it is worth, there is nothing in which local authorities take more pride, at councillor level and at officer level, than in their provision for the elderly. The discovery of this is a stimulating experience, and there could be no better augury for the future.
My Lords, I apologise for having spoken for so long but, in view of the
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strong language with which this Amendment on the Order Paper is worded, I felt that it was not sufficient for me merely to suggest that noble Lords opposite are not justified in the terms of that Amendment, but, in addition, that the facts of what had happened in hospital work and local authority work showed that these charges cannot be sustained. I am content that the facts speak for themselves. I believe that the great long-term programmes for the development of both hospital and local authority services, which are well under way, are the best possible answer to the charges of noble Ladies and noble Lords opposite.
5.4 p.m.
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Silkin, in his powerful and penetrating speech yesterday moving this Amendment, characterised the gracious Speech for what it is. It has length without breadth or depth. It is in fact a meretricious effusion and, as The Times has inferred, is really a pre-Election manifesto. I suppose that it is the first expression of the adjuration of the Prime Minister to his uncertain followers to regulate their actions and their sayings in terms of the impending General Election, not as to the interests of the people or of the nation, but in the interests of Party. The gracious Speech is an incomplete catalogue of the things which successive Governments should have done years ago. Now the present Government is rushing, not necessarily to do them, but to promise to do them, in inadequate and insufficient measure, and without, I fear, any real sincerity either of intent or of purpose.
To-day we are discussing Home Affairs and the Amendment we are debating condemns the Government for their sustained failure to make adequate provision for the social services. The Government have no comprehensive policy or pattern of social services. They still see them in isolation, not as a process of human progress to fit into the changing forms of modern society. Still less do they look upon them other than as first-aid provisions for people who fall by the wayside as a consequence of the operation of our social and economic system; not as attributes of civilised society, wherein national affluence should make for dignified and gracious living, where social justice should prevail and affluence be fairly and justly spread and enjoyed.

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Particularly have successive Governments failed in housing and education. Other speakers have dealt with these two matters or will deal with them in the course of the continuing debate. For myself, I propose to confine my remarks to certain problems which beset our economy at the present time, problems which are due, for the most part, to the manifest and manifold failures of Tory Governments and for which no positive policy is to be found in the gracious Speech. Reference
was made by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor the other day in critical terms to the state of austerity which prevailed for some time immediately following the last war. The policy then, which was pursued with regret but yet with courage and resolution by the Labour Government, saved this country from bankruptcy, its people from misery and the nation from the danger of civil commotion. If the conditions which prevailed after the First World War had prevailed after the Second, no one could say what would have happened in this "tight little island".
Irksome as rationing was, it preserved equality and equity on a basis of need and not on that of the length of one's pocket. Especially was this the case with the children. In the shortages that prevailed, rationing enabled them to have a fair chance and a fair provision of food and other essentials, with the result that we avoided a generation of children afflicted with ill-health and debilitation. This policy avoided our becoming once again a C3 nation. The Tory Party's opposition to rationing did a grave and indefensible disservice to the people and especially to the children. Those who opposed rationing from Party political policy should ever be ashamed, and there were many of them.
Since the question of austerities after the war has been rather unwisely raised, let it be said that the grave crime of the Government since 1951 is that they have wasted the fruits and potentialities of the austerities which restored the economic structure of the nation and which had been borne with understanding and fortitude by the people. Instead of building upon the foundations which had been laid, the incoming Tory
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Government threw the economy to the winds of unplanned and unrestrained scramble of so-called private enterprise, which the former Prime Minister described, in his more enlightened days, as "exhibiting the ethics of the casino". The Tory Government of the day set the people free, and consequent Governments continued the so-called freedom—freedom to be complacent; free to let the economy stagnate; free to let production fall away until we were at the bottom of the league of industrial nations; free to allow our share of world trade to drop from 25·5 per cent. in 1950 to 14·6 per cent. in May of this year.
Complacency reigned supreme, and the people were invited to admire and seek the opportunity State. My Lords, opportunity for whom? For the unemployed; for the school leaver without a job; for the homeless trudging the streets; for unmarried couples with nowhere to live? Yes, opportunity—for the landlords' extortionate activities. Indeed, so smug and satisfied were the Government that the former Leader of the House, who has "been and gone and left us", said on July 30, 1962, in the debate on the Finance Bill [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 243. col. 5]:
"The first thing I wish to say is that there is nothing radically wrong at the moment with our society."
Forsooth, this is Dr. Pangloss in excelsis, Strange to relate, in the very same speech the former noble Viscount delivered what I thought was a blistering indictment of our industrial and commercial affairs. In July, 1962, when this statement was made by the former Leader of the House there were unemployed no fewer than 397,000 persons—nothing radically wrong, I suppose, from the point of view of the Government. In October this year the number had gone up to 474,000, including, 14,000 school leavers. And yet we are told by a leading Member of the Government that "there is nothing radically wrong".
The unemployed generally were greatly pleased to know that; and so were the people of the North-East, where the rate of employment in this October was nearly twice the national average. The position there became so menacing that the former Prime Minister sent the

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noble Viscount the former Leader of the House to the area to inquire and report, with special responsibilities. The Report of that effort was published the other day. Whatever may be the merits of the Report—and informed opinion does not seem to be impressed—the former noble Viscount and those associated with him had made a shattering discovery, a real break-through: to wit, that the North-East Region is not in decline; it is only in transformation. Really, really! The people of the area will, I am sure, be greatly comforted by that discovery. The cynic may well say that words are given to us to conceal our thoughts. But, in either case, according to the former Lord President of the Council, there is nothing radically wrong with our society. It has been static and contractionist, when it should have been dynamic and expansionist, and we have succeeded amazingly well in getting to the bottom of the league in production and in exports, and one from the bottom in prices. What an achievement, my Lords! Conservative planning works! So it does—in reverse. And still it leaves nothing radically wrong.
The gracious Speech says that the Government will encourage growth without inflation. What growth? What sort of growth? Growth of the number of unemployed?
Growth of the number of school leavers scrambling to find employment? Growth of
the homeless? Growth of the evicted? Growth of the strong-arm landlords and
their activities? As the editor of the Economic Review of the National institute of Economic and Social Research said, Britain could have created in 1961 £2,500 million of extra resources by matching the performance of the Netherlands, the lowest expanding nation of our Continental neighbours.
Let me be fair and bring the record and achievements of the Government and their Tory predecessors right bang up to date in the field of growth. After all, even the present Government are entitled to their failures. I quote from The Times of yesterday. This is an excerpt from the London and Cambridge Economic Bulletin; it is part of the editorial review, and it says:
"Since Selwyn Lloyd's 'little budget' in July, 1961 the British economy has been running well below its potential. The most visible sign of
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this has been the increase in unemployment; but this factor was actually a relatively minor cause of the loss in potential output. In addition, some people—mainly married women and elderly men—were 'lost' from the labour force, who would have sought and found jobs in a period of more active demand; and output per person actually at work failed to rise in the normal manner, let alone at the higher pace called for by the National Economic Development Council."
That is a very ominous statement, and we unhappily know that it is true. The excerpt also states that for the third quarter of this year there was still a considerable slack in our economy. So, it appears, in the Government's view, that slack is the road to growth. We have had no growth of the right kind in our economy. What we have had is inflation without growth, and the £ is to-day worth about 13s. of what it was in 1950. The retail price level, taken in 1956 at 100, was in August of this year 121. That's inflation that was, and the growth that wasn't. And, my Lords, we proceed from the growth that wasn't to the modernisation that isn't.
The gracious Speech says that the Government will bring forward
"further proposals for modernisation of Britain".
For twelve years the Tory Governments have been in power, and only now do they discover that much of our economic and social structure is out of date, is decrepit and needs to be brought up to date. In support of that, I refer to the Committees which sat and reported on the shipbuilding industry, on a large section of the engineering industry, and on the antiquarian and antiquated condition of the canals in this country; and in the cotton industry, where a special Committee was appointed, the Government undertook to make certain advances to acquire new machinery. One of the persons intimately concerned with that said in February, 1962, that some of the new machinery, the purchase of which had been subsidised partially by the Government, was standing unused and idle.
What proposals have the Government brought forward to modernise our economy and social structure? None, my Lords. Throughout the twelve years of Tory Government the facts have cried out for review and modernisation. Now, when the lost years can never be recaptured, modernisation has become the sacred cow of the Government, to be

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kept available to worship—I will not say "milked"—until after the Election. Somebody has told the Prime Minister about modernisation and automation, and he has become a privileged worshipper of the docile animal. True, he appears to know very little about it, but it is impressive to talk about—it sounds fine. Moreover, the Prime Minister who is going to lead the nation into the promised land of modernisation, growth and expansion, has frankly admitted that he has no economic knowledge, and that when he reads economic documents he has to have a box of matches and start moving them into position to simplify and illustrate the points to himself. So he said, with obvious self-approval, in September, 1962, and there has been no denial of that statement. This is the person who, self-disqualified, is to redeem the nation by modernisation. He is to lead the nation. He does not know where he is going or how, but he is going there guided by a box of matches. That is the fate of this tight little island.
My Lords, not since Alice in Wonderland has there been such a burning faith for illumination in Downing Street. I understand that the students of economics are already—with proper obeisance, of course—exchanging their texts books for matches, that Mr. Macleod is writing a critical appreciation of the P.M.'s technique and that the Spectator has acquired the serial rights. After this confession, not the severest of his critics would say that the Prime Minister is "matchless". We may applaud the former frankness of the Prime Minister as to his personal deficiencies, which, in any event, let us be fair, have already become discernible, but we must deplore the fact that devious Party actions have put the former Foreign Secretary in charge as Prime Minister of the interests and future of this nation's affairs at this most critical time in our peace-time history. Decidedly a bleak outlook. Happily, it is only for the next few months, and then the long night will be over and the people of this country will rejoice.
5.25 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, before I come to the main topics of debate, there is one point
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which I might almost have felt was extraneous to our discussions. But as it was raised, I understand, by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, yesterday when he introduced the Opposition Amendment which your Lordships are discussing, I feel that I should like to give him, if I may, some reply.
I have noticed, from reading the debate, that the noble Lord to whose speech I referred repeated the taunt which was flung last Wednesday by the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, and the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, at the Government: that the proposals of the gracious Speech were nothing more than an Election manifesto. Noble Lords on the other side of the House may regard that as a good debating point, though I very much doubt whether it is even that. But it is certainly no more, for they must know, with their long experience of politics, that any pronouncement, by whatever Party, in the last year of a Parliament is in the nature to some degree of an Election manifesto. That is not confined to Governments; it is equally true of Oppositions. Those brilliant highly coloured speeches which have been made in recent weeks by Mr. Wilson and other Labour leaders, who paint so rosy an account of a Britain under a Labour Government—are they not all in the nature of Election manifestos? Are they not all aimed at persuading the electors of this country of the extraordinary advantages of voting for the Labour Party? It is quite true they are not framed in the form of a speech such as the gracious Speech, but that is only because the Labour Party are not in a position to do that. It is not because they would not if they could. Of course they would.
There was a suggestion, I thought, in the noble Earl's remarks, at any rate, that the proposals of the Government in the gracious Speech were in the nature of a bribe. It is paying a handsome compliment to the Government, if I may say so, that the Opposition should think that these proposals are calculated to attract the support of the electorate, because that is what a bribe is. But, surely, that is a very jaundiced way of looking at this Speech.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Is it not factual in our

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experience in these twelve years—the programmes published immediately after a Budget before going to an Election on two occasions, and then having to run away from it and put on restrictions afterwards? A real bribe by a special Budget.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Perhaps the noble Earl will allow me to finish my remarks. I did not interrupt his. I still think that that is a very jaundiced way of looking at the Speech. What the Speech is, in fact, is a catalogue of the measures which the Government intend to introduce if the Opposition make that possible. The Government may be slightly optimistic in thinking that it is practicable to pass all these proposals into law in a single Parliament. I am bound to say that they seem that to me. At any rate, the Speech is not promising anything which the Government do not intend to perform; and if it does not prove possible in the space of this Parliament—indeed, if the Opposition themselves make it impossible—then the Opposition themselves must surely take a share of the blame which results. So much for the Election address point. I really do not think, if I may say so, that there is very much in it.
Now I should like to turn to the subject of the Amendment itself. My purpose in intervening, quite briefly, as I shall, in this debate this afternoon is to draw attention to what appears to me, and I have no doubt to others, too, to be the strangely selective character of the subjects mentioned in the Opposition Amendment. In his speech with which he opened the general debate on the gracious Speech last week, the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, remarked, a trifle acidly I thought, that the Government seemed most anxious that their failures should not be put before the public. If I may say so, reading the Amendment, the Opposition seem equally anxious that the Government successes should not be put before the public. They mention housing, education, care of the, sick, and so on, all of which everyone of us agrees are subjects of the greatest importance—and all, incidentally, subjects on which vast sums are, in fact, as the noble Lord, Lord Newton told us this afternoon,
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being spent and on which considerable advances have been made, though so much still remains to be done.
But there was no mention in the Amendment, nor, indeed, in the speeches of the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, and the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, in the general debate, or in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, this afternoon, of the equally important subjects of employment and wages—no mention at all. That is, surely, a very strange omission, for employment and wages are a subject about which one would expect the Labour Party to be particularly concerned. Indeed, to press for more employment and higher wages was regarded, when I used to be in the House of Commons, as one of the main reasons for the Labour Party's existence, I was so intrigued by this omission that I took the trouble to get the most reliable figures I could on this important subject. They come from the Monthly Digest of Statistics, issued by the Central Statistical Office.
What did I find? I found that the number of men and women in civil employment in October, 1951, when the Labour Party left office, was 22,146,000; and the number of men and women in civil employment in July, 1963, when the Tories had been in power for twelve years, was 23,963,000; that is, an increase of 1,817,000. Why did not the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, or the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, mention those extremely interesting figures? And what about wages? The total wage and salary bill, divided by the number in civilian employment, gives an annual income per head in 1951 of £348 and in 1962 of £645. If some noble Lord on the other side of the House is burning to point out to me that the cost of living has risen considerably since then, I would reply that I have been at special pains to find out what the increase has been, not in nominal but in real wages; that is, what those wages will buy; and I find that the answer is that real wages are up by 35 per cent. Surely that does not justify the melancholy picture that has just been painted to us by the noble Lord, Lord Latham. Indeed, one has only to go out into the streets and shops

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in practically every town of this country to see what a travesty his account was.
I remember being engaged a good many years ago, when I was still leading your Lordships' House, in a verbal tussle with a noble Lord on the Benches opposite. That noble Lord had described the system of free enterprise which was championed by the Conservative Party, rather as the noble Lord, Lord Latham, has done to-day, as "the economics of the jungle". I, in my reply, said that there was one thing to be said for the jungle: it was at least productive and if it were to be tamed and pruned it could provide fruitful land. I added that I thought it vastly preferable to what I described (perhaps rather impertinently) as the "economics of a desert, where nothing grew at all", It must be remembered, my Lords, that this exchange of views took place at the end of a period when Socialism had been tried for the first time, with a big clear majority in favour of the Labour Party in another place, and it had been tried, too, with the aid of loans from those capitalist countries United States and Canada amounting to £1,900 million; and it had not proved so successful as all that.
The noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, may say—I think he did say in his speech—that this was an especially difficult period in which, considering the circumstances, the Labour Government did very well. But that was not the view of the British people in 1951. What they did was to turn out the Labour Government and put in the Tories; they have kept the Tories in ever since, and the result has been what I quoted earlier: employment up by nearly 2 million; real wages up, on the official figures, by 35 per cent. I quote those figures only to suggest to noble Lords opposite that my metaphor of the jungle and desert—though perhaps it was unduly frivolous—was not so very wide of the mark.
My Lords, I speak to-day as one of those whose speeches during the last few years will surely not have been regarded as unduly laudatory of the Government, but, on the contrary, strongly critical of certain aspects of their policy. There is, indeed, one aspect, which I believe
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is down for discussion in this House next week, on which we are likely to be perhaps more critical than ever before. But there is one thing for which we have never criticised the Government. We have never suggested that the Government have failed to build up the material prosperity of the people of this country. Our criticism has been, if I may say so, exactly the opposite. It has been that everything—the needs of defence, our solemn obligations to our own people in our dependencies and Colonies overseas; all these important things—has been sacrificed to the one object of increasing the material prosperity of the people of these islands. In that object I believe that the Government have succeeded, whatever the cost may have been in other directions; and I do not for one moment believe that the policy of Socialist planning, to which the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, pins so much faith, a policy which means, in practice, putting the community back into the straitjacket from which they freed themselves in 1951 with a sigh of relief, will do any better than the Government's policy, or even nearly as well.
I certainly would not be convinced by the arguments that have been put forward by the Labour spokesmen in this debate, who first attack the Government by saying that they have promised to do too much and that they could not possibly afford it (and those were the words I think of the noble Earl, Lord, Alexander of Hillsborough) and then attack them, as the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, did this afternoon, for not spending more. They cannot both be true.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I should like to get the words over that I actually used.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I do not want to misrepresent the noble Earl, but I think he did say that in the gracious Speech we promised more than we can perform, and he asked where were we going to get the money. If I have misquoted the noble Earl I hope he will tell me so.
I do not, of course, deny for one single moment that a great deal, an immense amount, still remains to be done. That would be true, I believe, under any social

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and economic system. We all know that, in spite of the fact that upwards of 3½ million dwelling houses have been put up in the last twelve years, very many more houses need to be built if the people of this country are to have the homes which all of us want them to have. We all know that in spite of the very high rate of employment which exists to-day there are certain particular areas where the spectre of unemployment is still lifting its ugly head. We are all aware of many of those other things about which the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, spoke to us this afternoon. But that should not blind us to what has been and what is being accomplished. On the contrary, as I see it, it should only spur us on to further efforts. For politics, as F. S. Oliver said a good many years ago, is an Endless Adventure, always reaching out for something better than we already have.
That leads me to the last thing I want to say to your Lordships this afternoon. There is one aspect of the modernisation of Britain (to use the popular jargon of the day) that seems hardly to have been mentioned in most of the speeches of either Party, either here or in another place; yet it is surely very important. It is what I may call a modernisation of the relationship between capital and labour in this country, a subject on which I think I have often in past years spoken to your Lordships. I submit that it is still far too much assumed that the relationship must continue to be in future what it has been in the past, a relationship between a buyer and a seller: of a buyer of labour at the cheapest rate he can get it, and a seller of labour at the highest price he can get for it—a price that is only too often finally settled by a strike.
I am not saying this, my Lords, in any spirit of criticism of trade unionism. I am quite ready to believe that the employers are just as often responsible for industrial conflict as are the men. All I am saying is that this conception of a buying and selling of labour is an antiquated and should be, I think, an outmoded conception. A time is surely coming, and in my view must come, when capital and labour must be regarded not as enemies but as partners in a common enterprise, in which it is to the interests of bath that profits to
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be shared, and shared fairly, should be as large as possible. That is to the interest of labour as much as it is to the interest of capital; and it is to the interest of the country perhaps most of all. For it is only if the wealth of a country can be increased to the greatest possible degree—and industrial strife is one of the great hindrances to that—that we (by which I mean all Parties alike, the country as a whole) shall be able to tackle our major problems, such as housing, with the speed and scope required. That—the increasing of the wealth of a country to the fullest extent and with the greatest speed possible—is perhaps the most vital need to-day, and it can be achieved successfully, I am sure, only by co-operative effort between those who lend their labour and those who lend their money to what both regard as a joint enterprise.
My Lords, I know that in making these remarks I am saying nothing new. I know that it is only what has been long in the minds of many of the more forward-looking trade unionists and employers of labour. But it has struck me that this, perhaps the most important thing to all of us in this country to-day, has as yet bulked very small in this debate on the gracious Speech, and it is for that reason that I have felt impelled to raise it to-day in your Lordships' House.
5.43 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, it appeared to me that the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, having first of all repudiated the Prime Minister's advice to the Conservative Party that with every breath they draw and every blow they strike they should think of the Election, then proceeded to make a very fair electioneering speech. He twitted my noble friends with giving only part of the story when they quoted figures, but I would remind him that in referring to the utterly disparate conditions in 1951 and 1963 he himself was giving only a partial picture, because if he referred to almost every civilised country in the world he would find that the advance in those countries was considerably greater than that we have achieved in the same time in this country, although we had a better start than most of them.
I do not propose to make an electioneering speech. In fact, I am going to devote my remarks to a topic in which

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in my view there are no votes whatsoever. I want to come back to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and first to agree with him to some extent—possibly the only time in my speech I shall agree with him—in regard to his remarks concerning the Nuffield report on hospital food which was published this morning. Like him, I have not read the whole report; I have read only the newspaper accounts of it; and I must confess that so far as my own hospitals are concerned I am unable to recognise the figures in the report as applying to anything of which I have knowledge. The noble Lord said that in so far as the report could be justified it was because hospitals were falling by the wayside and not carrying out his Department's instructions. In the hospitals of which I have knowledge I am quite sure that the food, in variety, content, adequacy, cooking and presentation, is as good as it could possibly be. But I believe that is because we have disregarded his Department's instructions when the conditions of financial stringency were imposed on us; we refused to comply with them if it meant giving the patients an inadequate diet.
The noble Lord complained in his speech that we on this side of your Lordships' House had not attempted sufficiently to justify the terms of our Amendment. I hope he will have no cause to complain on that score of the speech I propose to make, because I want to deal with the services for the mentally subnormal—not with castles in the air and the future or future plans, but the position as it is now. At one time during the noble Lord's speech I ventured to intervene when on two occasions he referred to the mentally disordered right in the midst of sentences when he was dealing with the mentally subnormal. I am, of course, perfectly well aware that the noble Lord knows the very important distinction; it is not a fuddy-duddy thing, it is a vital and important distinction. But he must realise that his speeches will be read, and to those parents of mentally handicapped children it would appear, unless the point were corrected, that he in fact was unaware of the important difference, and that might account for some fundamental deficiencies in the present service.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will be good enough to read to-morrow what I said, and if he really believes anyone reading what I said thinks I do not understand the difference between mental illness and mental subnormality, that individual ought to have his head looked at.
LORD STONHAM: I am sorry the noble Lord said that. Of course I was listening most carefully, and that is why I intervened, because he said that twice. But of course I shall read the whole of his speech again, and I hope he will too, and he will know my intervention was quite justified.
In the early 1950s I was Chairman of the Mental Health Committee of the South Western Region. That Committee had responsibility for some 17,000 beds in 100 mental hospitals and mental deficiency institutions. To-day I am Chairman of the National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children. That is a voluntary organisation comprising more than 300 local societies and more than 20,000 members. I think, therefore, I am in a fair position to judge the position as it was twelve or thirteen years ago and the position to-day, and the need to-day. Twelve years ago conditions in some of my hospitals were such as to prompt me to feel that we ought to have a sign above the door, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". Since then I am very glad, and we are all glad, that the wind of change has blown through our mental hospitals, and whilst there is still an enormous amount to do it is not too much to claim that there has been a beneficial revolution in both the public and the official attitude towards the problems and treatment of the mentally ill. Unfortunately, in my opinion no such revolution is discernible in the treatment of the mentally retarded. True we call them to-day subnormal, or severely subnormal, and we have abandoned the terms "imbecile" or "idiot"; but the patients are just the same and the adequacy and efficacy of their care and treatment shows, to my mind, little general improvement.
The noble Lord gave some important figures of what is now being done. But let us look at the situation as it is, and judge the proportion of those being cared for compared with those who need care. To-day there are probably almost

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250,000 mentally-handicapped people of all ages in the country; yet only some 61,000 are receiving treatment in sub-normality hospitals, and even so these hospitals are 24 per cent. overcrowded. Only people who know what the hospitals are like and what their establishment is know what 24 per cent. overcrowding means. Only 21,000 subnormal children are in the care of local authorities in England and Wales, and of that 21,000 about one-third—I am quoting the official figures—are not receiving training of any kind.
The noble Lord spoke about an increase in the local authority domiciliary services, but the one-third of the 21,000 children are only visited at home—they are receiving neither training nor care. Some adults among the remaining 175,000 are being trained for employment in voluntary and local authority hostels and workshops. But even in the figures that the noble Lord gave this afternoon the plan which he described intends, over a number of years, to provide 16,000 places. That is compared with 175,000 people not receiving any care at all. That means that there are at least 150,000 people hidden away with no chance of receiving the expert training and education which would enable them to realise to the full such capabilities as they possess. I am delighted to hear the noble Lord agree that these people can be trained.
I say that this is a national calamity, which could be removed if we exercised the same determination as we are now applying in the field of mental health. Last night on television the Prime Minister said this:
"It is the rôle of a Government to help each individual to make the most of his talents, his personality and his character."
That is an unexceptionable sentiment. But when are the Government going to apply it to the mentally handicapped, who of all members of the community are the most in need of help and the most neglected? I freely concede that this is by no means entirely the problem of the Government; but I submit it is entirely a matter in which the Government must provide the necessary leadership. For example, in the field of medical education these children—and all of them are perpetually children, whatever their age—are not usually either physically or
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mentally ill; they are just of limited mental capacity. Yet the problem is handled at present almost entirely by doctors with psychiatric qualifications; whereas in the first instance it is almost always a problem for a pediatrician. It is an important part of his function. At present, he just makes a diagnosis and little more. I do not know of a single out-patient clinic in London, or indeed in the country, where there is a consultant pediatrician to help guide and encourage the parents of handicapped children. There are medical problems which are peculiar to the mentally handicapped and which are almost a closed book to the psychiatrist.
We need these special out-patient clinics. It would be a good beginning if we could have one in each teaching hospital. We should also encourage pediatricians, by means of scholarships, to specialise in this subject, and we could make a good start by setting up a professorship in mental retardation. It seems incredible that we have not such a chair already. Of course, if the public are to be educated, their knowledge can only come from doctors who have themselves been properly educated in this subject. The teachers of medical students barely mention this particular problem. A great deal of attention is still given to obscure and rare medical conditions, and questions about them are faithfully asked in all the examinations. But post-graduate courses in general medicine put little stress on mental handicap, a field where a quarter of a million patients are awaiting treatment. I ask: when will the Minister give attention to this glaring need?
Then there is the no less important question of a sufficient supply of skilled trained nurses. Almost all our hospitals for the subnormal are chronically understaffed, and we are nowhere near the one to ten nurse-patient ratio. We have to remove the feeling which still lingers in nursing circles, that this kind of nursing is the poor sister of the profession. It calls for people of the highest intelligence and the widest range of knowledge who, when properly trained, find that they have the most rewarding job in the whole field of nursing.
I am sure that the Royal College of Nursing is becoming increasingly aware of this fact. But it is obvious from their

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report on The Rôle of Psychiatric ward sisters and charge nurses in the rehabilitation of patients that they cannot yet see the problem in the round. They still talk about occupational therapy, as if the division of rôles in the hospital for the subnormal must be treated as between nurses and occupational therapists. They make no mention of the importance in the patient's development of psychiatric and educational methods. Occupational therapy, designed to prevent early senility and atrophy in long-term adult patients, is not relevant to the needs of a child, whose personality has yet to emerge and who cannot be assumed to be inferior merely because his intellectual capacity is limited.
Therefore, my first question to the Minister is: what steps is he taking, what leadership is he giving, to see that the training of doctors, nurses and teachers of child development is related to modern knowledge and to the educational methods most helpful to subnormal children? Has he, indeed, consulted the distinguished consultants whom he brought together on the Scottish Committee, and has he consulted the General Nursing Council on this point? Will he ask them to include in a training syllabus for nurses who are going to work in these hospitals a study of child development? Indeed, the whole problem is vastly more one of special education than it is of nursing or medical treatment. I would ask: is the Minister determined to ensure not merely that the content of their training is right, but that the numbers of specially trained staff are sufficient to enable the hospitals to fulfil a therapeutic as distinct from a custodial purpose? In conjunction with this, will the Minister take steps to ensure that the educational needs of severely subnormal children are fully attended to?
Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Newton, has said, I could from my own knowledge quite fairly say that the educational position of these children is at the moment really appalling—in fact, the majority of them are not being taught at all. We want these needs met by suitably qualified teachers, and if the noble Lord will take vigorous action in these fields it will introduce new life and a new spirit into the existing hospi-
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is action. These children in hospital are tals. Over and over again we have had verbal agreements; what we want now still institutionalised. The staff caring for them are largely cut off from modern psychological and educational techniques. The parents, who are such an indispensable part of their children's training, are still excluded from all but the most formal and impotent relationship with the hospital authorities.
The Scott Report has now been before us for some time. When are the Government, I would ask, going to take action on its recommendations? I know that these things take time, but I suggest that some steps could and should be taken at once. If we have a Committee sitting for two years, if we take another two years to implement its recommendations, and then take another two years to put them into operation, that means a total of six years. They are the vital, formative years of a child's life. It is not long in the political and Parliamentary sense, but it is a very important time in the life of one of these children. I would ask that we should begin immediately to humanise and personalise our hospitals for the mentally retarded so that they can reproduce the life, not of hospital but of the home.
I would suggest, first, that we should include parents and representatives of local authority services on every management committee. In many cases this is a lifetime's business, and those looking after the interests of the patient throughout his life should have a say in the administration of the hospital. It is never sufficiently realised with regard to these children that their parents care for them quite as much as for their normal children; that they think of them not as a burden but as a blessing, and they therefore have a right to a partnership in their care. After all, consumers of gas and electricity have a statutory right to be consulted through consultative councils—why not the parents whose children are permanent or semi-permanent residents of mental deficiency institutions? Secondly, I would ask that the Government should take immediate steps to ease the transfer of a patient from one hospital to another nearer to his parents' home. This should be as normal a practice as changing schools. For there are many cases where a parent would not take a new

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job or take promotion if it meant moving to a district away from where his child is in hospital.
Thirdly, there should be a greater degree of co-operation between hospitals and local authorities. For example, hospital patients should be able to use local authority training centres. Hospital boards and local authorities should get together in establishing and administering, under special supervision, hostels in the community. Fourthly, there should be joint consultation about the training of nurses and teachers to work both in hospitals and in the community, and there should be clarification of the present uncertainty about the future prospects of staff whose jobs may be transferred from the hospital to the community.
The noble Lord, Lord Newton, drew particular attention to the advances in community care and the provisions for it. Everyone welcomes the steps that have been taken, but so far they are hopelessly inadequate. I would submit to him that the problem is now greatly aggravated by the policy which is being operated (a policy to which I do not object) of, as it were, pushing patients out of hospital on to the local authority. The vitally important problem which must be
settled is the financial one: who is to pay? The local authority cannot meet this cost out of the rates. Is the Minister going to provide the money? Will he perhaps have the cost partly offset by an appropriate transfer of money from the Regional Boards to the local authorities? There can be no really decisive action, and we shall make no progress towards caring for the 150,000 unfortunates who are hidden away, until there is bold action to settle the financial question.
I would submit that it could best be settled by a discussion between the Regional Boards and the local authorities, with the Minister in the chair. Both types of authorities have to work together in serving the public need, and they can no more carry out their duties towards these children fully and properly if their resources are divorced from each other than can divorced parents. In fact, unless joint action, properly financed, is taken, community care is a fraud—just a device to lighten the hospital load without providing the
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care the patient needs elsewhere. The patient will obviously benefit by a transfer into the community only if local authorities are in a position to provide enough centres and workshops and residential accommodation in hostels for those who need it.
This year my Society opened a residential training and work centre at Slough, and a research centre and hostel home at Dymchurch in Kent. Both in their respective ways are proving that the subnormal can he trained to lead useful lives in the community. No doubt we shall provide other centres, but it cannot all be left to voluntary and charitable organisations. Centres such as these should be copied all over the country, and local authorities are becoming increasingly anxious to provide them—but they do need financial help.
I ask whether the Minister is ensuring that the necessary arrangements are being made, and whether he will agree to take action to see that hospitals do not discharge patients until training facilities and residential provisions in the community are available to them. Is he also aiming at the same standard of accommodation throughout the country? The noble Lord, Lord Newton, mentioned the wide variation between those standards, but surely wherever parents live they should have the same right to expect the same quality of service as that provided in places like Middlesex and Essex. There should be no question of parents being told that a centre is not available or available only on certain days.
It is unthinkable that we should continue to tolerate the present situation where three-fifths of those in need can get neither training nor education. Rural areas are perfectly capable of solving the problem in a scattered population of providing subnormal children with full-time adequate training facilities. If it is not practicable to arrange daily transport, they can provide hostels for the children to live in during the week. This is being done very successfully in Essex, and can be done wherever a child is deprived of full-time training because he lives too far from the nearest centre.
There is no excuse for any local authority to fail to provide full-time

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training for any subnormal children. The parents, by law, are under the same obligation to send these children to a centre as they are to send normal children to school, and the local authority must see to it that arrangements are made to enable them to do so. And it is not only a question of providing teaching where none exists. Even when it is available, the standard of teaching varies enormously. Some centres still have no qualified teachers at all.
I am glad to see that the Minister has set up the Central Advisory Council which was recommended in the Scott Report, but it is just another highly-qualified talking instrument. What we want is action about the Committee's other very important recommendations. What is he doing to see that we get a 1 to 10 ratio of teaching staff to pupils in all centres and to see that refresher courses are available to the staff already working for local and hospital authorities? Subnormality is a very large problem which has been persistently misunderstood
and neglected for years and there is an acute need for research into the learning processes of the severely subnormal. For these children "treatment" is quite literally education. What action is the Minister going to take to establish a central college with research interests linked with an Institute of Education? These are not matters for which the Central Advisory Council can be responsible. They are the recommendations made to the Minister by the sub-Committee he set up to advise him on the training of staff of training centres for the mentally subnormal. I think we are entitled to know—and I hope we shall know to-night—what it is intended to do to carry out these recommendations, because when a subnormal child lacks a qualified teacher he lacks treatment, and when the teacher lacks opportunities for training and research he lacks the tools which he needs for his job.
Finally, I would ask what research projects the Minister has in hand for the prevention of certain types of subnormality or for its alleviation. I know, of course, about the research project in the Wessex region into the prevalence of mental subnormality, but that is, as it were, almost an administrative inquiry. My society is inundated with
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requests from consultants for research grants. We have set up a medical advisory panel to advise us on priorities and, if the money is available, are to spend something like £15,000 or even £20,000 a year in this field. It is money provided by the devoted, anxious, frustrated and often bewildered parents who comprise our membership. Gladly they will give all they can, but it is not enough, and they look—and I think they have a right to look—to the Government of the day for leadership and help in this field.
They have noted the leadership given by President Kennedy in the United States, where all the resources of Congress have now been pledged to the solving of some of these cruel problems; and on December 4 in New York President Kennedy will present international awards to consultants. I think we want similar action here and an end to half-hearted efforts or no efforts at all. I am asking that the wind of change should blow in the field of mental retardation and that, in the words of the Prime Minister, the Government will do their duty, and provide our quarter of a million perpetual children with the chance to live happily, and to develop to the full the potentialities of which they are capable. My Lords, they have waited far too long.
6.13 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, I have listened with a great deal of interest to all the speeches that have been delivered this afternoon, and particularly to the last speech, of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. I do not suppose there is anybody on this side of the House who would not support him in his plea for handicapped children. We would most earnestly hope that the Government will do all they can in this field of child care. But I am not going to attempt—and I am sure the noble Lord would not want me to do so—to make any answer to all the various queries he has put to the Government, since I am no authority on this matter. But on the general principle, that one wishes to do what one can for this very sad and deprived section of our child population, I certainly do not believe anybody on this side of the House would disagree with the noble Lord.

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I listened also with great interest, and as always with great respect, to the opening speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill. I think there is nobody in this House who has greater knowledge and who puts her case better than she does. But I thought she underestimated a little the amount that had been done; and when the noble Lord, Lord Newton, answered her, he did in fact give quite a different picture of the work being done by the Ministry of Health from that painted by the noble Lady. There is one other thing I want to add because I am interested, too, in what Lady Summerskill had to say about the training of people for domiciliary care work, to which the noble Lord, Lord Newton, was alluding, and which is being done now in quite a big way throughout the country. I have seen the implementation of the Young-husband recommendations on training in a great many places where there are training centres, and in addition there is the Institute of Social Work, of which I am a member, which is also training social workers. Of course, we cannot train people as fast as we should like for a very rapidly expanding service, but it is being done, I think, very effectively.
However, I rise—as, indeed, the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, did—to say that on reading the gracious Speech I was immensely encouraged and impressed by the wide range that the Government's programme is covering at the present time. Almost all aspects of our national life appear in some way or other in the gracious Speech. I know that some members of the Opposition think that perhaps this is too wide a spread. I personally am only too delighted that we should look at the whole of our national interest, and try to do what we can for the whole nation, and not for one section only. So I personally am rising to support the gracious Speech and to speak against the Opposition's Amendment.
I listened yesterday, too—as I think many noble Lords did—to the debate on education, which I thought was also immensely encouraging. The fact is that we now have a tremendous head of steam up for education, engendered first by the Newsom Report, then the Robbins Report and then the Trend Report. On all sides of the House,
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and throughout the country, so far as I can find out from going around, everybody is anxious to do what they can for the education of the children in this country; and it is, in my opinion, a very exciting prospect that we face on the educational front.
I wanted, if I might, to speak about one or two other matters which are not mentioned in words in the gracious Speech but which have been mentioned since, and are in fact mentioned by implication. I am a little encouraged to do so because the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, who leads the Opposition, was kind enough in the remarks that he made to mention something in connection with the work which I have now undertaken as chairman of the Consumer Council. So if I might, with your Lordships' permission, hoping that this can be included in the debate on the gracious Speech, I should like to say just one or two things. I was very glad indeed when the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack told us that there was going to be an announcement about a Hire-Purchase Bill; and very shortly after, as we know, the Secretary of State for Industry, Trade and Regional Development announced in the House of Commons that there was to be a Hire-Purchase Bill.
In my capacity as chairman of the Consumer Council I have received very much evidence of the problems arising from the abuse of the hire-purchase system. The noble Lord, Lord Peddie (who was here a moment ago, but told me he had to leave for a dinner) has, I think, done a valuable job in promoting a Bill on this subject. So I think we are united in this House, anyway, in that we want a Bill on hire purchase. I should like, if I might, to offer one or two suggestions as to what I want to see covered by the Bill, and I hope it will not be taken amiss by the Minister if I do this before I have seen the draft of the Bill.
The Molony Committee in its Report recommended that in a hire-purchase agreement there should be provision for a period of 72 hours in which the purchaser can think over whether or not he was wise to take on this hire-purchase commitment. I think we are all agreed that this is right. The Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, mentions this, and

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I think it is the right thing to do. But I should like to ask for one or two other things in this connection. First of all, that the consumer—that is, the person who is entering into the agreement—should understand what he is undertaking; that the terms of the agreement should be expressed in the simplest language and as clearly as possible, so that the ordinary person can understand it. The agreements are not very easy to understand but are rather complicated. The 1938 Act makes it obligatory that they should be easily understood, but from what I have heard, and from the evidence the Council have gathered which has come to them from the Citizens' Advice Bureaux and in other ways, in many cases these hire-purchase agreements are not in the least clear to the ordinary person, although they may be clear to a lawyer or someone else. I should like to see a copy of the form that should be left with the buyer, or consumer, left, not after seven days, which is what is provided in the 1938 Act, but at the time at which he signs, so that he knows and keeps a copy of what he signs. That should not be very difficult. Since many of us who buy in shops are given carbon copies of accounts which are charged to us, it should not be very difficult for the man who comes to the door with a little book to do the same, if one makes an agreement.
Then I should like to see yet a further thing—namely, that even after the 72 hours have elapsed it should be for the buyer, the purchaser, to tell the firm that he wants to buy the article. In other words, I believe the purchaser should contract in to buy the article, and that it should not be automatically considered after 72 hours that the person is going to buy the particular article. I should like to see, too, the ceiling for purchases which cannot he taken back without a court order raised much higher. The limit is at present £300, and this does not include purchases of motor cars. There was a case the other day in court of a man who had almost completed his payment for a car and then the firm took it back. However, the man took his case to court, the Judge overruled the company and the man kept his car, and presumably completed the payments. I feel sure that any new Bill we have on
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hire-purchase must take care of these points, because they are really of the greatest importance.
I hope the House will not mind my mentioning, as the noble Earl kindly mentioned them in his opening address, the activities, such as they are at the present time, of the Consumer Council. I do so because I think that it is a matter of some interest and because, in the gracious Speech, reference is made to the prosperity and conditions under which our people live—a matter with which the Council over which I have the honour to preside is deeply concerned.
We are pursuing our work as quickly as we can, and we are getting information through the Citizens' Advice Bureaux. They have provided us with immediate matters for investigation, and I want to mention just one or two of these. The first, I think, is the inconvenience—indeed, I should like to use a stronger word: the menace—of the door-to-door salesman who comes and tries to sell to you things which you do not want, and whom, unless you are very strong-minded, you cannot keep outside. They can be a great nuisance to many
householders. I should like also to say that we are actively pursuing this very intransigent problem of the labelling of goods that people are asked to buy. We all know that this is most important. There are many people who are pursuing this cause very actively. The noble Baroness who is going to speak after me is one of the people who has, I think, done more than anybody to try to get clear, simple, well-written and accurate labelling of any package, whatever it is, that the consumer wants to buy. I want to see that that aim is pursued, and that we do it on as wide a range of goods as we possibly can.
There is another point which has been raised and which has come to me, again, through the information that comes to the Council via the Citizens' Advice Bureaux. That is whether or not the guarantees and/or seals of approval that are given by many manufacturers and are put on many goods are really worth while. Sometimes an existing Act of Parliament might carry a stronger guarantee under another law than a form of guarantee issued by a manufacturer with his goods. Then, we have been asked (and this has come from

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Members of Parliament in the other place) whether we can do anything to
investigate the problems of the materials used in school uniforms. These things are in some ways not of vital importance to the world, but they are of importance to individual households, and that is our job—to protect the consumer and to do whatever we can for individual householders.
Those are just a few things, but there will be many others that will come up. I am particularly anxious to try to get an education programme (and this is where education comes in again) on this matter of consumer protection. I think it is most important, not only with the young growing up but also with older people and with groups of women in organisations like the women's institutes, or adult organisations of one kind or another—women's guilds, co-operative guilds and so on. One wants to get a great deal more information and knowledge into the minds of the general public, because there are so many Acts of Parliament that already protect women which they do not know anything about. In many cases a great deal of legislation is already there, but people do not know how to use it. So I am hoping very much that we can try, through our work on the Consumer Council, to educate a generation of discriminating shoppers. I do not want to press these matters further, because we are only at the beginning, but I have been questioned by noble Lords on this matter and I wanted to say just one word, because this is part of the work of the improvement of conditions in the country mentioned in the gracious Speech in a good many different aspects.
There is one last word that I should like to say, and it is on a different subject altogether. In the gracious Speech we had the sentence about the plans for regional development, and we have already had the two plans for Central Scotland and the North-East of England. There is another sentence which says:
"Plans appropriate to other regions will follow".
I should like to urge on the Government that they should look at other regions—and I need hardly say to your Lordships that the region I am thinking of is in Scotland. I hope very much that we may have an inquiry into, and a survey of, the Border area. The Border area is one
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of the loveliest parts of Scotland. It contains two important industries—agriculture and the hosiery industry, as well as the tweed industry—but it is now suffering very much from people leaving the countryside, leaving the Borders, and going to other parts of the country. I very much hope that we may have for the Border area some sort of survey and plan similar to what we have for Central Scotland.
My Lords, those are the one or two things that I wanted to say in this debate. I would only repeat that I think the policy of the Government is a very exciting and challenging programme, and I shall vote with considerable enthusiasm for this gracious Speech, for the policy of the Government and against the Amendment which the Labour Party are putting forward.
6.28 p.m.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness opposite, who is always most generous in her comments. I hope she knows—and I am sure she does—that I wish her Consumer Council very well, but that I am very dubious as to whether it has enough "teeth"—though that is not the fault of the noble Baroness. I should like to pay my tribute in that I have found the noble Baroness and her Council, both officially and unofficially, most helpful and most co-operative. I regret, as other noble Lords want to speak to-night, that I shall not he able to develop that theme much further but I should like to take up one point that she made but, I hasten to say, in agreement with her.
To-night I want to devote my remarks principally to the sentence in the gracious Speech which says:
"My Ministers will bring forward further proposals for the modernisation of Britain, covering many of the economic and social aspects of our national life".
When I first saw this gracious Speech on November 12 and glanced through it I could hardly believe what I thought was missing. I read this two or three times and it then seemed to me—and I recorded this in the notes I began to prepare—that the Government had broken a pledge which was given to this House in the previous Session. I am, of course, referring to hire purchase. It seems to me quite extraordinary that in another place

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on November 14 the Minister for Industry, Trade and Regional Development said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 684 (No. 3), col. 325]:
"Among those Measures not listed in the Queen's Speech we shall be introducing a Bill during this Session to amend the Hire-Purchase Acts. This will be an important part of our policy of extending consumer protection."
Obviously, as the noble Baroness said, there will be much discussion of this whole aspect of hire purchase. I agree with what she said. I would prefer no ceiling at all to a ceiling of any price; but I would hope that the Government, when they bring forward this Bill, will have a comprehensive one and will not tinker with the present system of hire purchase.
What I would want to ask the noble Earl on the Front Bench—and I do not know whether he could tell me now—is why it was that this hire-purchase measure was not included in the Queen's Speech on November 12. I must ask this question; I am really seeking information; because it seems to me quite extraordinary that, two days later, on November 14, we had this statement, and on the day between, the 13th, it leaked to the evening papers—and it seemed to be a well-informed leak—that this was going to be done. I would gladly give way to the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, if he could enlighten me as to why this was not in the Queen's Speech on the 12th.
My Lords, I was afraid that he would not intervene, but I should like to tell him the second reason why I think it so extraordinary. As I understand it, this Session was delayed by two weeks to enable Ministers in new jobs to become acquainted with those jobs; and it seems to me very strange that anyone so industrious as the Secretary of State for Industry, Trade and Regional Development did not know on November 12, when the Queen's Speech was made, that he was going to bring forward this measure, but that the papers knew the next day, and he spoke on it on the 14th. It seems to get curiouser and curiouser.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF DUNDEE): My Lords, if the noble Baroness is so interested, I will do my
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best to find out the information she wants. My only comment is that the noble Lord who moved this Amendment has complained because the gracious Speech was too long.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: Yes, my Lords, but this was before the Speech was made, and I am quite sure my noble friend would not have complained if hire purchase had been mentioned in it. I take it from the noble Earl's reply—and I am grateful—that he will be letting me know if he is able to find out why this matter was not included in the Queen's Speech. On the question of guarantees, the Molony Committee failed hopelessly. The noble Baroness is nodding her head; I am sure she agrees. They went through all the difficulties and then said that they could not do anything about it.
I now wish to turn to something which is vital to both sides of the counter in Britain. It is something which I think the Government should have dealt with in the gracious Speech. Without being electoral in my manner, I would say that they have not dealt with it because they are afraid of losing some votes in an Election year. I am coming now to the question of resale price maintenance. I think it is no secret that the Report made to the Board of Trade on resale price maintenance came down heavily against this practice so far as most goods are concerned, the exception being a few products on which service is important and expensive to provide.
I think noble Lords would agree that, for the past two years, anyway, it has been evident to most people that resale price maintenance was weakening, and it was weakening altogether, apart from food where, as we all know, it broke down on groceries really some long time ago. Any noble Lord who looked at electrical goods in the shops, which were grossly overstocked after the 1959–60 boom, could see for themselves what was happening. But after those stocks ran out maintained prices returned, and from the end of 1961 it has seemed to me that the opposition to the cutting of prices has grown once again. Whether what I want to say now is quite apart from the political aspect I must leave to the House to decide; but I think it is a matter of commercial common sense. I do hope that the

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noble Earl who is going to reply will feel able to comment on this.
If shopkeepers may not reduce at their own discretion the prices of goods they sell, I think it follows that those who have lower selling costs cannot pass the advantages of these on to the public. For example, if we take some of the reasons for these lower selling costs we may find that they are due to efficiency or to a different location of a shop. We may find some shopkeepers adopting this method have self-service or that some may give no credit. Again, others may provide no delivery or no after-sales service. I maintain that if costs are cut by these or by other methods, and if prices cannot be cut at the same time, then obviously this must be checking the rate at which efficient, enterprising, low-cost sellers can extend their business. I have always believed that resale price maintenance bolsters up the inefficient.
I want to submit to your Lordships that Section 25 of the Restrictive Practices Act should be repealed. As the House will know, this allows manufacturers individually to enforce their resale prices. I think that probably any rule either for or against resale price maintenance would have to make provision for exceptional trades so that either way each case would be treated on its merits. I would have no objection to that. I think it is the fair and right thing to do.
I expect that noble Lords will remember with me, if we go back to October, 1962, the claim made by booksellers and publishers for special treatment was upheld, after a hearing of 24 days and a reserved judgment by the Restrictive Practices Court. I want to submit to the House that if such judgments as that can be made it would seem to remove any reasonable impediment to action by the Government on this problem. I should have thought it right that any trade should be required to prove its case for exemption from unrestricted prices. I did not raise this matter tonight simply to illustrate that the Government are afraid of losing votes, and are therefore not prepared to tackle this matter, but because I believe there is another aspect which must be brought home to the Government and which I venture to suggest this House might also consider. It seems to me certainly to
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be one of the "economic and social aspects" referred to in the gracious Speech.
I am coming to the question of trading stamps. I have no intention to-day of taking sides on this matter; but I hope that we shall have the opportunity of discussing it very soon. I am quite sure that many noble Lords, as well as myself, have a great deal of information, and much that they would like to say on this matter. I certainly have. But I should like to say here and now—and I am aware that I shall be treading on a few toes this evening—that I think far too much fuss has been made over what is, after all, only another selling gimmick. But I think the Government have a responsibility here.
I would say straight away to the noble Earl who is going to reply that I do not think the Government should ban trading stamps. I believe that it is for the shoppers to decide whether or not they want them; and they should decide this by the way they spend their money. It should be perfectly obvious whether they wish to shop at the shops that give trading stamps or at the shops that do not. I myself am not drawn to stamps, but it is obvious that many people like collecting them, and I do not see any reason or right to sit in judgment and say that collecting is wrong. At the same time, I feel that the Government have a responsibility here, because I think that they have helped to prepare the background for this upsurge of trading stamps. Resale price maintenance does mean that large suppliers can prevent retailers from cutting prices.
If we take, for example, manufacturers of household appliances, cars or petrol (I do not know whether my own Front Bench is agreeing or not, but I feel a little distracted; I said that I should probably have to tread on some toes to-night, so perhaps they will not mind), they have regained their grip on their prices which they lost in 1960. As everyone who has looked at this matter knows, the case for and against resale price maintenance can be most complicated. I have tried to find the real heart of the matter, and it seems to me that this surely concerns the right of consumers or customers to decide what mixture of price and service they want from their particular retailers. And I think

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that they should be able to choose it. I should not think that any Government of any Party would deny that right; but to obtain it, resale price maintenance must be ended. After all, as I have said, it would take only a small Amendment to the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1956, to do it.
I believe that most shoppers and most large retailers would agree and would like this to be done. I also believe, as I said at the beginning, that the internal committee reporting to the Board of Trade on this matter came down in favour of such a change. I had hoped that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, would be here because I wanted to say two nice things about him, but I see my old friend, or opponent, the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, on the Bench opposite, and I hope very much that this particular suggestion will reach the Board of Trade. It seems to me that if the Board of Trade would look at this matter, the Board would then become a real contender in the stakes for modernising Britain, of which so much has been made in the gracious Speech.
My primary concern in raising this matter is anxiety for the consumer, and if the Government do nothing about this then the consumer is going to suffer. On the legal aspect, I think that the Government must have a look at what is involved and is likely to be involved in the boycotting that is now taking place. I am convinced that, as a result of this boycotting, the one person who is definitely going to suffer is the consumer. Your Lordships will remember that the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1956, has made illegal a form of embargo which is directed towards enforcing conditions as to resale prices. It is now unlawful for any two or more persons who are dealers in any goods to make or implement any agreement or arrangement by which they undertake to withhold orders for supplies of goods from any supplier who supplies goods otherwise than subject to some stipulated condition as to the price at which they may be resold.
I hasten to say to noble Lords that I hope that when they read this in Hansard, if they are kind enough to do so, it will become a little clearer, because
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I had to read it a great many times and put in a lot of stops before I found out where it got me. I am no legal expert, but, having looked into this. I think that this provision does not apply directly to the present boycotting of goods. On the other hand, I think that some attention will have to be paid to such aspects, probably in the near future, because I think that at some stage we shall have to determine in Parliament to what extent the provisions of the 1956 Act, which enables resale price maintenance to be enforced, are breached by a sale at the maintained price, but accompanied by a "gift" of trading stamps.
I read in the Press last week, in the Daily Express of November 12, that the General Secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Operative Bakers, Confectioners and Allied Workers, Mr. Halliday, was extremely worried by the present boycott. I understand that a statement issued by the Union said:
"We are deeply disturbed by the impact on the livelihood and working conditions of our members. The attempts to counteract the introduction of this form of trading by cutting the price of bread and cancelling long-standing orders of bread from the group responsible for introducing trading stamps into the supermarket sphere has created a chaotic situation on the productive side of the industry …"
Mr. Halliday is worried about his members and I am worried about the consumers. It is obvious from all that we have been reading lately that some people believe in trading stamps and some do not. What I want to raise here is: is it necessary to have boycotts?—because these do not improve service to the housewife: they have exactly a reverse effect; they restrict it.
In common with many other noble Lords, I have given a lot of thought to this over the last few months. I have a big file, as probably most of us have. I gather that in a good many countries trading stamps are not redeemed by the
customer. I believe that I am correct in saying that New Jersey, U.S.A., is introducing a law that stamps must be redeemed for cash, if the collector or customer insists. And, as your Lordships will know, a cash option is in force in some overseas countries. Obviously, this must reduce the profitability of the stamp companies, if there is a high yield from those stamps which are at present unredeemed. It follows

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from that that if stamps were redeemable for cash, they would be taken much more care of by customers. Let me ask the Government whether they would be prepared to take action along these lines. Leaving aside for the moment resale price maintenance, would they be prepared to take action to see that stamps are redeemable for cash; or, alternatively, if they are not prepared to take that action themselves, would they be prepared to support a Bill from a private Member putting forward the same thing?
There are three points that I should like to make here. In the first place, I believe that shoppers do not want trading stamps banned. Secondly, many shoppers feel that the first-class quality, and prices, provided by the leading opponents of stamps will be proof against any stamps, however attractive these may be. It certainly is the case with me that I shop where stamps are not given, and nothing would induce me to change; and I should have thought that this was a sufficient answer. But the third point I want to make to the noble Lord is that I feel that many other shops would like to counter trading stamps by reducing prices. The Government could help this free competition in this modern Britain by ending resale price maintenance. Otherwise we really are going to have complete chaos, and the Government will have to step in in the end: of that I am convinced.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: That is anti-social.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I disagree with my noble Leader. I do not know whether he meant me to hear, but I think this is very strong, Socialism. On Friday last, November 15, the John Lewis Partnership started carrying out its threat to introduce price cuts equivalent to the value of trading stamps until manufacturers take effective action against shopkeepers offering gift-stamps with goods subject to resale price maintenance. Twelve large Waitrose supermarkets, including the big variety store at Slough, have reduced the retail prices of a wide range of confectionery, pharmaceuticals, razor blades and kitchen equipment. The discounts offered to the Waitrose customers correspond to the value of the stamps distributed by local competitors selling similar goods. Mean-
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while, the legal advisers of a number of manufacturers have been giving careful consideration to this problem posed by retailers using stamps as a sales incentive on price maintained products.
I am indebted to the Financial Times for much of this information, and I have given this amount of detail because I want to show the House how widespread this whole problem is. It is not said in criticism of the John Lewis Partnership, which is a store for which I have the highest regard. But anyone who has read the newspapers this week will know that the problem is not confined to this. We have now got it in chocolate and confectionery, and, if I read my newspaper correctly to-day, I see that Cadbury's, Rowntree's and Fry's are all basing their decision to refuse supplies to their customers on resale price maintenance. It has gone to furniture, where the Branded Furniture Association has refused on the same grounds; it has gone to the electrical industries, and it has also gone to gramophone records manufactured by the E.M.I. group. It is unnecessary for me to suggest that this will spread throughout the whole of industry.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, my noble friend will forgive me for interrupting. I have been interested in listening, and I am sure she will appreciate that I have been listening to her argument. But, looking at it from the point of view of the subject of the Amendment we are discussing, that does not come very much within our policy. I should certainly, as a member of the Labour Party, be more inclined to take the view of our organised trade unionism for the maintenance of standards, a view which has been taken not only by the operatives my noble friend has quoted but by one of the distributive organised unions. They do not hold the view held by my noble friend on this matter. They regard the introduction of trading stamps operations, imported largely from America, Canada and now from Eire, countries outside our own State, as being just the work of a parasitic organisation which neither manufactures anything nor does anything to add to the retail industry, and as something which, in the long run, even though you start facing it by cutting prices, will be injurious and not beneficial to the consumer.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I am sorry to differ from my noble Leader. I think that eventually, at the end—not the end of my speech, but at the end—we shall arrive at the same conclusion on trading stamps. I would only say that, with regard to speaking on the gracious Speech, I am absolutely in order in regretting that something is not included in the gracious Speech. I inquired about this, and I understand that it is not necessary to confine oneself to this Amendment. If I have to fight this battle by myself, I will fight it by myself against the whole House and anybody else, because I think I am right. After that, I should like to say that my noble Leader is most tolerant.
The Financial Times of November 16 made four points which I think are good points and are relevant to this particular matter. Perhaps I may read these to the House, and then I shall have finished. This is the first:
"Although the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1956, prohibits, among other similar practices, the collective enforcement of price maintenance, one of its provisions specifically enables individual suppliers of goods to enforce such conditions by legal action."
The second point is:
"It is, however, difficult to see how anything which, however indirectly, may be translated into money's worth is not in law a discount on price as much as if it has been given in actual cash."
Thirdly:
"Clearly, the matter is one of importance and, until it has been tested in the courts, no more than a tentative view is possible. But trading stamps are clearly valuable—indeed, they have been described as a kind of inferior currency'."
And lastly:
"The fact that they"—
that is, the trading stamps—
"are not themselves directly convertible into cash would not appear to be in point, if only because by a roundabout method of 'cashing' them for some easily disposed of article which could then be sold, cash can be obtained for them."
Before I sit down, I would only say to my noble Leader, in all humility, that I said at the beginning that stamps did not attract me. To return to the beginning, may the House hope, in view of the urgency of the matter, that this problem of trading stamps and resale price maintenance will be dealt with in
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another measure not listed in the gracious Speech?
6.57 p.m.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I find some curious similarity between Scottish Nationalists and the Socialists, in this way. When I meet a Scottish Nationalist he seems to think or imply that I am indifferent to Scotland's welfare; and when I meet a Socialist he seems to imply that I am probably not interested in the aged, the poor or the sick. Nothing is further from the case in either of those conditions. For when I first addressed your Lordships' House some five years ago I chose the subject of the provision for old age, and, consequently, noble Lords will forgive me if I turn to that subject first in my speech this evening.
I am satisfied that the Government's record in regard to pensions is a good one. The fact is, as I see it, that the Government have been right in resisting the demand for a further general increase. That demand may not have been made in this House, but it has been made outside, and I regard the clamour for such an increase largely as electioneering. In saying this, I emphasise that the Government and the Party that I support are desperately anxious to do as much as the nation can afford for the old, the needy and the sick. Indeed, if the proposals contained in the gracious Speech had really been electioneering proposals, and only that, they might well have included some such general proposal.
Why do I think that there should not be a general increase? It is because such an increase would undoubtedly be to distribute pensions to too many people who in terms of basic living conditions do not need them. Any extra money which is available should go to the really indigent, and to this end the Government have taken, and are taking, real steps in developing National Assistance by bringing in the words "Supplementary Pension" in papers relating to National Assistance for the aged. Now this is a step in the right direction, for that is the way to help those who are too proud or too stubborn, or both, to seek National Assistance under that name and that name alone, which to them may seem to be "going on the rates".

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On the subject of national health, to which I will now turn, I hesitate to step a measure with the noble Baroness who moved this Amendment in what has become her ritual dance. But I would remind your Lordships that I am personally engaged in the pharmaceutical industry, though I do not assume to speak for it. I am proud of the fact that I do belong to that industry. I am not a pharmacist, but I feel a sense of fulfilment in my association with that industry, from which your Lordships will appreciate how much importance I attach to the noble Lady's tirade which we heard this afternoon. The more so do I regret the hue and cry which has recently been raised; and in saying this I do not belittle the dreadful tragedy, to which the noble Lady has referred, of the thalidomide drug.
In an Election debate, I suppose it is fair to conjure up a picture of grisly Tories crowding round their retorts producing compounds to sell at exhorbitant rates regardless of the consequences. It is in fact a false picture, if such were even to be conjured up. The industry is a respectable, responsible and reputable industry. This is no Tory monopoly—far from it. On the subject of the testing of drugs, I, for one, welcome the appointment of the Dunlop Committee, under its distinguished chairman, and one hopes that their procedure will meet with what the medical profession and the Government feel is required, but not so much as to delay unduly the availability of some new drug yet to be devised.
On the subject of costs, the time will come when the public gets matters into perspective. The noble Lady referred to the rise in the cost of prescriptions. But the cost does not apply to the rise in the cost of drugs, because no such rise has taken place—in fact, the reverse. I have here some figures. Between 1954 and 1962 the Board of Trade price index for all manufactured products rose by 19 per cent. Over the same period the index for pharmaceutical preparations decreased by 1 per cent., while the index for pharmaceutical chemicals fell by 30 per cent. Those are the figures taken from the Board of Trade returns.
There is another item to which the noble Lady referred, and that was the question of the testing of drugs. Perhaps
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before I turn to that I would make clear that I am referring to the increase in prescription costs. The noble Lady cannot have been referring, of course, to identical chemicals.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, before the noble Lord goes on from the question of cost, would he not agree with me that time after time the Public Accounts Committee have questioned the cost of drugs; that time after time they asked the Ministry whether they would take action to try to reduce the cost and whether an expert committee had been set up? In fact, the Public Accounts Committee have echoed time after time the kind of thing that I have said in this House today. And I might say that it is not a Party Committee; it is representative of both Parties.
LORD FERRIER: I thank the noble Baroness. Possibly an exchange of technicalities like this would be better in a debate on the subject. I go all the way with her on the criticisms of the Public Accounts Committee. I am simply stating facts from this pamphlet I have here called Facts about Drugs. The fact is that prices have fallen, and the fact that prescription costs have gone up is quite another matter. After all, prescription is in the hands of the medical profession.
As for the testing of drugs, the Cohen Joint Sub-Committee on the subject of drugs, appointed in 1962 to advise the Health Minister, reported that the pharmaceutical industry as a whole discharges its responsibilities for the experimental laboratory testing of new drugs effectively within the limits of existing knowledge, and recommended that this responsibility should remain with the individual manufacturer and
"not be transferred to a central authority."
The noble Baroness referred to the report on food in hospitals—I am still on the subject of the cost of drugs—in a general sort of way.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: If the noble Lord has finished on toxicity, he has shown his approval. I understand the noble Lord has a vested interest in the pharmaceutical industry, but I presume he declared that, as he has done before in this House. Before he leaves the question of testing, surely he agrees

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with me that there are a large number of doctors and, indeed, members of the lay public who have expressed strong views, and said that only an impartial body should decide whether a drug is toxic, and not the company which produces it. Surely the whole thing about thalidomide was that it was never tested on pregnant animals, but that in other countries where it was so tested it was not sold. The whole point is that it never had an adequate clinical trial.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I repeat that this is not, I feel, a debate in which we can enter into exchanges of this nature. I did declare my interest.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: I am sorry, but the noble Lord has invited me to do it. He keeps mentioning me and denouncing what I have said. Surely I have a right to show him that, in my opinion, I was right.
LORD FERRIER: The noble Baroness has been informed, I take it, that I declared my interest, as I have done before. I am sorry if the message I gave to the Whips was late in reaching her, or if I gave too short a notice to her. I will go on with what I was saying about the cost of drugs in the hospital service. The noble Baroness referred to the Report on food in hospitals and mentioned wastage. The cost of food in hospitals is estimated at £41 million in the year. Of course, one appreciates that, no matter how well a hospital is run, there must be waste in some measure. Let us take the huge figure of 35 per cent. as correct. The actual saving would be about the same as the whole cost of the drug bill to the hospitals, which is some £15 million. That amount is the cost of the laundry in the hospital bill: the laundry cost is about the same as the whole cost of the drugs consumed in hospitals.
There is another factor which I should like to emphasise, and that is the contra entry. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, spoke about the treatment of mental illness. I take it that it is appreciated that in the last ten years 21,000 beds which were occupied by the mentally ill are now empty, thanks to the use of drugs. Of course, it is well-known, and the noble Lady will hear me out,
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that the whole pattern of hospital planning has been altered beyond belief by the treatment of tuberculosis over the last quarter of a century. I have been tempted into these remarks by the noble Lady's speech, but before I leave hospitals, and seeing the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, on the Front Bench as Minister of State for Scotland, I shake my head sadly at developments in Lanarkshire. I hope it is not too late for the Secretary of State to revise his thinking on the replacement of the Law Hospital. If their decision is complete, could some adjustment be made so that the nurses training school in the Law Hospital should not be lost?
There is one other point I should like to make specifically in regard to such areas as that from which I come, namely, the wide-flung, rural areas, that when planning new hospitals proper provision should be made for adequate parking facilities, added to proper public transport for the use of visitors, to be run at times suitable to visiting. I think I am right in saying, and I am open to correction, that a modern planner has said that for a hospital in present conditions, built for the next half century, parking facilities should amount to four cars per bed. I should like particularly that this problem should be borne in mind in designs for hospitals in rural areas.
My Lords, I greatly regret I have not been able to attend the House throughout the debate on the gracious Speech but I did hear the noble Lord, Lord Hughes last week: and I love hearing the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, speak. First of all, he is audible; secondly, forthright, knowledgeable and concise; and I am sorry he is not here. I wrote him a note but he must be out of London. However, in the criticisms of the Government's Scottish housing plan which were contained in his
speech he overlooked an important fact: that is, the uneconomic rents which are being charged by local authorities in Scotland, with the consequent restriction in building. I deliberately say that, because rents can be so low that occupiers are, in fact, living on the rates, with the result that I think the Secretary of State has been quite right in threatening, if he has not actually done so, to refuse grants to local authorities who let or

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propose to let houses at uneconomic rents. These rents affect the mobility of labour in a way which is not really acceptable to labour itself as far as their earning capacity is concerned. I feel in what I have said that the Secretary of State can trust on the stout and outspoken support of all reasonable men on the stand he is taking on the matter of rents for local authority houses. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, would have a look, if he doubts what I say, which I do not think he does, at the housing deficit, shall we say, of the Lanark County Council, which shows a colossal figure chargeable to the rates.
If the noble Lord is going to look at the Lanark situation, another problem which applies, and must apply throughout the United Kingdom, is that there are new houses lying empty because they are built in unsuitable places by local authorities. It might be worth enquiring into what methods the councils are using to persuade people to move into such houses from houses which, if not of the first quality, are certainly suitable for residence to-day, and, with a minimum of expense, would be rendered suitable for to-morrow. Further, I would ask how it is that houses are going up in the town of Forth, where the pit has been closed for two years.
While on this subject of Scottish housing, health and social services, including community care, I trust that those of your Lordships who saw the "Panorama" programme will forgive me if I draw attention to it. It was a travesty of the situation in Scotland and I would ask the noble Earl who is going to reply whether something cannot be done to stop this sort of thing. The houses portrayed in Bothwell Haugh were condemned long ago and will soon be demolished. They have been replaced by the modern housing estates of Orbiston, only half-a-mile away. Why was that not shown in the programme, which was reputed to be a documentary? I am informed that those in Bothwell Haugh who sought better accommodation have moved, and long since, to the Orbiston building area. Those who remained in what was shown in the pictures as being little better than
hovels have been described to me by one who knows the locality as "only layabouts". The young men portrayed in the billiard saloon—an old miners' recreational
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hall due to be demolished in the next two years—are not typical of Glasgow youth. The pit there was closed two years ago.
Admitting that vandalism is prevalent all over the United Kingdom, how did the B.B.C. get photographs of vandals breaking windows in empty buses, empty trains and empty houses'? How? Presumably, it was prearranged. Why? Who paid? To whom? Were these vandals on the screen actors? If not, who taught them their parts? And can such be treated as part of a documentary film? I hope that the noble Earl who is going to reply will be able to give your Lordships some assurance that the attention of the B.B.C. will be drawn to the public outcry which has happened in Scotland at inaccuracies like this, which, in my view, are becoming too frequent in this programme. Antics of this sort on the television can do much to nullify all the efforts of the Government and the Scottish Council and those who are endeavouring to get industry to Scotland and to promote the popularity of this Stirling countryside. I have detained your Lordships long enough. I have tried to show briefly that the Government can count on robust support from their Back Benches for what they are doing for the aged and the sick and for their policy regarding housing in Scotland, and I will oppose the Amendment.
7.18 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Silkin described the gracious Speech as an Election address, a description with which I find myself in full sympathy, and it is really on the lines of that that I prepared my comments to your Lordships in my speech this evening. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has already pointed out that the Prime Minister has been quite frank about exhorting his Party to "keep their eye on the ball"—by which I mean on the General Election, which is no doubt much the same thing from his point of view—during the coming months, and, undoubtedly, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, indicated, the gracious Speech has been written very much with this exhortation in view. No doubt the condition of the Conservative Party in the country at the present time is so

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parlous that in fact they would have kept their eye on the approaching General Election without any such exhortation, but it is a little brash to come out with it to the public quite so boldly as did the new Prime Minister.
I suppose that is all part of the Prime Minister's integrity, which we have been hearing so very much about from the Conservative newspapers in the last few weeks. They indicated that he might not have many of the qualities which are required in a Prime Minister, but at any rate he did have this integrity. Indeed, the quality was so rubbed in that I began to wonder whether his predecessor might not begin to feel a little pained about it. If one reflects on the subject of integrity one soon begins to realise that there is a good deal of difference between personal integrity, which all of us who got to know the Prime Minister in this House over these last years would agree he had 100 per cent., and political integrity, which often does not seem to be quite the same sort of thing that one would have in one's private actions. And it may well be that it is within the bounds of political integrity to write a General Election address in the gracious Speech. At any rate, that is pretty obviously what has happened here, and it seems to me that it is a little unfair to the people as a whole that they should be fobbed off with electioneering of this kind at a time when the condition of the country is not an easy one and when the people are entitled to have something rather better.
I had intended to concentrate my speech on some of those matters which are not of sufficient political excitement to be written into an Election address of this kind, and to leave my comments on the Robbins Report, which was a good deal discussed yesterday, to the full-dress debate which I am glad we are going to have a little later on. Yesterday, however, the noble Lord, Lord Eccles, made an important speech against one of the main proposals of the Robbins Committee; that was, the proposal that there should be two Ministries of Education. I find myself in complete disagreement with him about this, and I therefore decided that as the other side of this matter has not been put in this debate I would tear up what I had intended to say to your Lordships
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and concentrate my speech on that topic; although I appreciate that I am a little out of order, because it was agreed that this matter should be discussed yesterday. Unfortunately, I was not in a position to stay late yesterday and therefore could not take up the noble Lord, Lord Eccles, or indeed the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who followed on much the same lines, as I should have liked to do. I appreciate that the noble Earl who is to reply may be a little out of his depth here, but as Lord Hastings who is sitting opposite now obviously was not briefed to deal with this matter yesterday either, I do not think that aspect of it matters very much.
What I particularly disliked, if I may say so, about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Eccles (I disagreed with him on the main points of his speech, which, however, were very well argued) was the way he aligned himself with those who, by talking about "lower" and "higher" education, are conducting what I regard as very dangerous emotional propaganda. This matter is not to be dealt with on lines of that sort, or, if it is, it is going to be very much contrary to the public interest. He and they—and it is very common to hear these expressions used in these discussions—are really not doing any good to the cause of education by attempting to arouse this prejudice in respect of a proposal which must be considered on its merits and dealt with on the basis of rationality and not sentimentality, as is so much in danger of being done. I think personally that it is unfortunate that we have this expression "higher education" at all and that it is now being used so much in this debate, particularly to describe the work of the universities. It has conveyed to the general public a fundamentally misleading conception of the universities, and I am afraid it has conveyed it to quite a number of politicians who really ought to know better.
The universities are basically institutions for original thought and research. Of course, they make their discoveries known by teaching, and therefore they must always play a very important part indeed in the general educational system of the country. But, as The Times put it, admirably I think, this morning, they differ from the schools "in kind as

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well as in degree", and if ever they come to be regarded as "tertiary schools" (another expression which I take from The Times), which I think will become almost inevitable if they are in fact put under the control of the Ministry of Education—for which Lord Eccles was arguing and as he always has been arguing since he was Minister of Education, because it is not new with him; he has argued it in this House, in The Times and in a number of speeches made in public during that time, as he was perfectly entitled to do—the eminence of this country as a leader of thought in the world will be in very great jeopardy.
Education is no doubt, as he said, one continuous process; but even if that were all there were to it and my contention about its not being the fundamental work of the universities at all were not true, it does not mean it should all be dealt with by one Minister. The national economy is a unity, too—its commerce, its industries, the personnel who work in it, the finance necessary for it; they are all part of one great unitary business on which the wealth and strength of the country is built up—but that does not mean we have just one Ministry to handle it. We have a number of very important Ministries: the Treasury, the Board of Trade, which is now becoming the Ministry of Industry or Secretary of Industry, or something of that kind, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of National Insurance; all these Ministries are concerned with various aspects of the national economy, and it could not be run by one Ministry.
And neither can education. It is a vast and complicated business, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Eccles, more than once indicated during the course of his speech; much too vast and complicated to be dealt with by one Minister. And do not let us be fobbed off with the suggestions for Ministers of State, who are really only (with respect to any who may be present this evening on the other side) glorified Parliamentary Secretaries. Even the schools, which is what the present Minister of Education is concerned to deal with, are a good deal more than he can successfully manage, because the work of the Ministry of Education at the present time is a vast business.
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I do not myself subscribe to the view that the Ministry of Education is one of our most efficient Departments; I do not think it is at all. I think it appeared perfectly clearly from Lord Taylor's speech yesterday that we have all over the country many primary schools very little better than slum schools, which over all these years the Ministry has not been able to get rid of; and if I had more time there are plenty of other counts in the indictment which I could bring against this Ministry. I certainly would not trust the universities to them. Even if Lord Eccles were right in the long-term view, and even if, in the end, I should be proved to be wrong—one must admit that one may not always be right—it would be lunacy, in my submission to your Lordships, at the present crisis in higher education to entrust this really frightening task to a Ministry of Education which is already tremendously overburdened and which is going to be still more overburdened, quite apart from anything to do with Robbins, by putting the Newsom Report into operation—because the Government must accept some of its recommendations. Obviously, this is going to mean a great deal more work for the Ministry of Education, and I submit that it would be lunacy at this time to entrust all the business of coping with the crisis in higher education to such a Ministry. Clearly, what we need is a new and vigorous Minister to cope with the emergency, which is one of the most frightening with which we have ever had to deal—as frightening even as the wars which we have been through in the present century.
Lord Hailsham—or should we now call him "Mr. Hogg"?—has evidently cast himself for this rôle and, after surveying the extinct volcanoes on the Government Front Bench, I would say that he is one of the few volcanoes which shows some signs of fire and activity. This is no doubt one of the reasons why the House of Commons has welcomed him back. Obviously, that Front Bench needs a little livening up. I am sure, too, that the universities would much prefer to have him to help

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them with their task than to find themselves under one omnibus Ministry, which at the present juncture could, in my view, result only in a failure in its fortunes in the realm of higher education which the nation cannot really afford at a time such as this. When we have dealt with this crisis, which is clearly going on until the end of this decade, into the 1980s, and if we can deal with it successfully, then let us look again at the whole business and see whether one Ministry of Education is the right solution. But I submit strongly that during this testing period it will be absolute lunacy to put all this work under a Ministry which is already overburdened with work.
There is this further important point, which I have not time to enlarge upon and which has not been discussed in this debate: that the Robbins Committee see in the new Ministry something a great deal more than just a Ministry of Higher Education. They see it as taking charge of many of the general cultural aspects of the nation's life which are of immense importance and which, as compared with other leading States, have never received Governmental support and have never had a Minister to look after their interests. Indeed, they suggest that the title of the new Minister should be not "Minister of Higher Education" at all, but "Minister of Arts and Science," which I agree with them is a much better title for him. It is a pity, I think, that this germinal aspect of their proposal has been overlooked, not only in the debate in this House but in the debates in the country as a whole.
I appreciate, and much regret, that I find myself in disagreement with my own colleagues in regard to this matter, but it is one which I think is of such great importance to the nation's future that I felt I could not keep silent about it. It appeared from the really great speech which Mr. Harold Wilson made at Scarborough, and which, of course, preceded the publication of the Robbins Report, that he was himself in agreement with the need for an independent Minister to handle the problem of our universities and higher education generally at the present time. I am sorry that in the interval he has given way to heavy persuasion which has no
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doubt been brought to bear upon him. The trouble in a matter of this kind is that the Labour Party, which came into existence to fight the battle of the underdog, always has a chip on its shoulder; and if ever some sort of a case can be made out for showing that the privileged classes are being favoured, instantaneously it reacts like a horse shying at a dog. There was a strong streak of this sentimentality, if he will forgive my saying so, in the speech of my noble friend Lord Taylor yesterday evening. It is a most unfortunate matter if this question is to be dealt with on that sort of line.
Finally, I should like to remind my Leaders that the crisis in higher education
which confronts this country at the present time is one which can be solved only by the men and women who work in the universities. During the next seven or more years the university teachers will be called upon to undertake a heavy burden of responsibility—long hours, a great deal of drudgery, sacrifice of leisure, and postponement of much valuable research work. This has not been
mentioned by the speakers in this debate; but it is a real thing, and it is clear that the Robbins Committee understood that side of it very well. In an important passage towards the end of the Report they say that
"any inroads on present standards must be transitory and ought to be redressed as soon as possible."
It was most unfortunate, I think—because this point has been much commented upon in university circles—that the White Paper in which the Government accept the Robbins Report, makes no reference whatever to this condition. When the Government, in time of the war, called upon the workers in the factories and the workshops to give up their hard-won rights in connection with conditions of work, they undertook in the most solemn terms that at the end of the crisis the status quo would be restored. I hope that they will take an early opportunity to make it perfectly clear that this will be done in the case of the universities as well.
I hope that the Government—and indeed, the Labour Shadow Cabinet also—are aware that opinion in the universities is massively against the view which was propounded and argued for by Lord Eccles, as well as by Lord Taylor and

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his Committee. It is a most dangerous policy to override the strongly held opinions of the people who are primarily affected by your decision on the ground that you know better than they do; and that is what has been argued for here. This is what happened in Rhodesia. We have had to spend a number of difficult and painful years getting back to the situation which existed before we tried to thrust upon these people something which they did not want.
I am puzzled, and rather alarmed, at the indifference which my own political Leaders have been showing to the opinion of the universities in regard to this most important matter. If they were considering the adoption of some new and basic policy for, shall we say, transport, it is inconceivable that they would overlook the Transport and General Workers' Union—obviously Mr. Cousins and his colleagues would be brought into consultation at once. I should not like to describe myself as the opposite number of Mr. Cousins, but I have for a long time been the Honorary Secretary of the Association of University Teachers, and I can assure your Lordships that this body, which represents the great mass of the teachers in the universities, has not been consulted—except by Lord Taylor and his Committee, who did us the honour of seeking our views. We left them in no doubt as to how disastrous we thought it would be to be put under the Ministry of Education.
It was clear from the speech by Lord Hastings in answer to yesterday's debate that the Government have not yet made up their minds on this important matter; and the Press seems to reflect that there is a swaying backwards and forwards in relation to this question. Perhaps they are waiting for the result of the St. Marylebone by-election. As it is too much to expect that this will be a Labour gain, I should like to express the hope that the next Member for that borough will be the first Minister of Arts and Sciences.
7.42 p.m.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, I think that the rather cynical remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, on the Prime Minister's integrity were very unnecessary.
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It is surely a sign of weakness in a party when it attacks personalities.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I did my best to make it perfectly clear that I regard the Prime Minister's personal integrity as 100 per cent. It was the political integrity of him and his Party in using the gracious Speech as an Election address which I was bringing into criticism.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: Surely it comes to one and the same thing.
I am going to talk for a short time about modernisation, because it is only by modernisation that we can achieve economic growth and produce wealth in order to have more education, more schools and more social services. Of course, "modernisation" is a very attractive word; rather like "freedom". It is extremely attractive to use, but unless it is put into practice with sound common sense and human understanding behind it, it can destroy our civilisation. The gracious Speech says that economic growth must be matched by social advance. I would rather have said "social happiness". Advance smacks rather of regimentation. The Prime Minister, in his television talk last night, said that the society he was aiming at was a society of opportunity and not orders, and I sincerely hope that Her Majesty's Government can carry that out. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, in his very able speech seconding the humble Address, called for an acceleration in the process of change. We do not want change just for change's sake, but we do want change for progress. As we all know, evolution does not always mean progress. There has been the urbanisation of large areas of our country, and I do not call that progress. We suffer terrible traffic jams, with people in their cars breathing in poisonous gases; and we suffer frightful noise. It is no doubt evolution, but we cannot call it "progress".
We have heard the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and other noble Lords opposite call for more and more houses, social services, and education; but, judging from what noble Lords opposite have said, one would think that we were lagging behind in every sphere. In actual fact we are in the forefront of the most modern nations of the world. Our

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social services are second to none. If one takes our agriculture, how many noble Lords realise that every farm-worker in this country produces food for 23 people—which is the highest in Europe? The next country is Denmark, where the farmworker produces food for 17 people; then comes Germany, with a figure of 9; France, 8; and Italy, 7.
We heard the noble Lord, Lord Latham, deliver a dreary Jonah of a speech, as if this country were completely at the bottom of everything. Our agriculture is by far the most highly mechanised in the world.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, we accept that in regard to agriculture. Our criticism is of the other industries.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: The noble Lord, Lord Latham, appeared to be criticising all industry; but in some industries, particularly the aircraft and motor industry, I consider that we are extremely up to date. I do not know any employer who is not all for automation and modernisation, but there are great stumbling-blocks. There is the human element. It is in some ways far easier to employ machines than to employ men, because machines do not argue and they do not strike, though, admittedly, they do break down. However, one does not have the frustrations of employing a great number of people. Every employer I have known—and this certainly goes for me—is all for modernisation. There is the stumbling-block of capital, and there is also the stumbling-block—and I do not mean this nastily—of the great vested interests of the unions. I have some sympathy with them. I think that on the whole the more responsible union leaders of to-day realise that the object of production is to produce wealth, and that the more wealth the country produces the more wealthy, in the long run, every member of it will be.
The automation of industry is the greatest challenge from the social point of view that Great Britain has ever had to face. It is quite possible that in the next twenty years, or perhaps even fifteen years, automation might mean the loss of 5 million or even 8 or 10 million jobs. It is a frightening thought that to-
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day we find two or even three men doing work which, with machinery, could be done by one man. I quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that we require change to make life worth living. But, my Lords, what does make life worth living? Is it to have an extra car, or more television sets? Surely not. I think that this materialistic outlook is really going quite crazy in this country. What makes life worth living is a job well done and a happy family life. In the small works that I have, one can see a machine operator standing by two or three machines and—of course I do not blame him—he gets extremely bored. How are we to combat that? It is a very difficult problem.
Perhaps the Socialists' idea is that in the days of automation everyone will have a free income from the State, and people will all be trained to use their leisure. I was interested to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, has a Motion down on the problems of leisure, and I hope that the House will be able to debate it soon. But if we are going to have that state of affairs, where perhaps half the population is idle, I do not think that our civilisation will survive, because a civilisation that is not founded on personal responsibility must surely finish. We rose to our greatest power and wealth under the fiercest individualism; as did America, which has had the fastest economic growth in history. I only wish that the noble Lord, Lord Latham, were here to hear that. I am afraid that here I have to criticise my own Party, as to-day both the big Parties of this country appear to vie with each other in trying to find new ways of paying for the individual, and thus dispossessing him of his personal responsibilities. Surely in the end that is the road to disaster. It is rather like the bread and circuses of ancient Rome.
The Opposition's Amendment to the gracious Speech draws particular attention to
"housing, education and the care of the sick, elderly and less well-off members of the community",
and they say that Her Majesty's Government have failed in this respect. I might have had some very slight sympathy with the Opposition Amendment on Defence—but only very slight—but I cannot have any sympathy with this

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Amendment, because we have heard from various Government speakers about what Her Majesty's Government have done in this respect, and how the Opposition can criticise it is really beyond me. The only criticism I have is that, where a man is less well-off through his own fault, I do not: really see, provided his basic needs are catered for, that he needs any extra benefit from the State. I quite agree that the sick ought to have everything that can be done for them. But regarding the elderly, I should have liked to see some form of means test so that in these days of high wages people should try to help their elderly relatives. I think it is a great mistake automatically to have elderly people as a complete 100 per cent. charge on the State. There, again, you are doing away with personal responsibility, which is extremely bad for the national character.
My Lords, perhaps I could just say a short word about housing, and I will be as fast as I can. I feel that in the building industry employers are rather to blame about the question of apprenticeships. In France, for instance, apprentices to the building trade are fully trained in three years, but in England it lakes from four to five years. This is quite unnecessary, but I am afraid that employers in the building industry probably rather like having the cheaper labour of apprentices. There is room for improvement in the training in the building trade. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, who suggested that we ought to have far more prefabricated houses, and, of course, that would certainly make building faster. But we are trying to clear the slums, and the danger of prefabricated houses is that in a short time they rather turn into slums. Automation cannot help us a great deal in the building trade at the moment, but it is helping us with fittings.
Speaking of house building, I was absolutely astounded the other day to read in the newspaper that a council in, I think, Yorkshire, were proposing to build twelve specially constructed houses, at great expense, with unbreakable fittings, for twelve badly behaved families in council houses who apparently smashed up the houses into which the council had put them. Surely, if people behave like that in council houses, they ought to suffer some withdrawal
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of privilege. It seems quite fantastic that, at the expense of the taxpayers and of the ratepayers—at the expense of good citizens—they should have special houses with unbreakable fittings built for them. There again, you come back to my point: that, irrespective of your behaviour, in this country, apparently, you suffer no form of withdrawal of privilege. I also think that this pampering is responsible, to a great extent, for the increasing crime to-day; but that is beside the point.
May I just say a word, on the subject of this great social danger of automation? We have heard a great deal about education. I do not intend to speak on education, but we have heard that we spend £1,100 million annually on education. There appears to be great concern in the House regarding higher education, but I should rather like to start at the bottom, with elementary education. If only, from an early age, the children of this country could be taught more of their responsibilities—or, shall I say, their duties—and less of their rights, it would, I think, be a great help; because I am afraid that in this country we are rather seeing the attitude, "The country owes me a living." If only we could instil into people that it is only one's own effort, either mental or physical, that deserves recognition, deserves payment!
Before I end, my Lords, perhaps I could take again the example of France. In the age of automation we are going to have, as I have previously said, several million people out of jobs. We have had great concern in this House during this debate about 100,000 or 200,000 unemployed here or there, and I quite agree that it is an extremely upsetting thing. But I can assure your Lordships that in ten to fifteen years you are going to have four or five million out of jobs and we shall really have to start thinking then because it is going to transform the whole of our society. So I was pleased to hear the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, say that the Government are introducing an industrial training scheme. In the future, the scope for training is going to be extremely important, and we shall have to train a great number of people for jobs outside industry. For instance, in France they are training comparatively

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old men, men in their forties—not old men, perhaps; middle-aged men—in six months to be craftsmen in metal working. If, under this training scheme, we can really train people in the crafts and arts, there will be great scope for all those who are going to be out of employment. We cannot have them out of employment, for obvious reasons. We shall have to find other employment for them, and I think that in the arts and crafts, outside industry, there is probably scope.
But, my Lords, if we are to meet the challenge of automation socially, I believe that it can be done only through the Conservative Party. It is only through Conservative principles that we can meet this challenge because if one can imagine automation under Socialism, I think it would be dreary indeed. It is all very well for a noble Lord to laugh, but we have seen it in other countries. We should have a nation of characterless morons ruled by equally characterless technocrats. I sincerely hope that the country will rally to the Prime Minister's call to put opportunity before orders and seize the chance, through the vast store of character and individualism in this country, so that automation technocracy may be tempered by humanity and man remain master of the machine.
8.7 p.m.
THE EARL OF SANDWICH: My Lords, as the hour is so late I will not detain your Lordships for long, but I should like to start by expressing some surprise at the nature of the speech and the nature of the movements of the noble Lord, Lord Latham. I should have thought it perfectly proper, in this or in any other House of Parliament, to reside temporarily in the Chamber and to make an uncontroversial speech—what we might call in another place a constituency-type speech; but I should have thought that if one deliberately prepared, and almost read out word for word, a controversial speech of the most extreme character, it was beholden of the speaker to spend some time in the Chamber after the speech in case there were Members who wished to refer to it.
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The noble Lord, Lord Latham, came to his seat just in time to hear his predecessor in the debate. Then, hardly had his successor in the debate started speaking, when he walked out of the Chamber and has not been seen here since. I feel altogether inhibited, even at this late hour, in his absence now, from criticising, as I should like to do, fundamentally and root and branch, almost every sentence that he uttered. It was a really quite disgraceful, partisan speech: one that defended every aspect of the Socialist Party of 1945 to 1951, leaving out whole tracts of the truth, and then proceeded to castigate the Conservatives for what they have done to elevate the country to the present generous standard of living. I wish that we had time, and I wish that the noble Lord were here, to listen to a reply which I think he should have received.
I want to speak on a subject which has not been much discussed in this two-day debate, except for the speech of my noble friend Lord Ferrier, who alluded to it and said in passing something which I thought was of tremendous significance: that in this day and age we cannot afford to dole out bountiful money to those who are not really in need of it. I refer to the system of national pensions and National Assistance, and all the other benefits that go with them. It is 21 years since Sir William Beveridge promulgated his great plan of National Insurance. It captured the imagination of the country in the dark days of 1942 to 1943; but, as we look back on it to-day, from this distance in time, we can see what that policy of Sir William's owed to the dim past, to Lloyd Georgism and to the whole pre-Keynesian era. It had its roots in the Poor Law and in early Socialism, and it compromised also with the capitalism of the period after the 1914–18 War.
For example, the tables which Sir William drew up—for instance, those on the expected unemployment ratio at the end of the last war, which was rated as high as 8¼ per cent. (and that figure also was introduced in the famous Coalition White Paper of 1944)—show that his plan which the Socialist Government incorporated in the Act of 1946 is widely out of date. Then, too, the principle of universality enshrined

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in the Beveridge proposals drew upon common and shared experiences of war time which are not, by and large, with us to-day to the same extent; nor does the nation wish to maintain and reintroduce them. Altogether that document and the system of National Insurance that followed it is a document for another age.
The present system of National Insurance which derives from this contributes little to the affluent society in which we now live and nothing at all to the Government's renovation plans for Britain. Rather it is the reverse, because there is every need to direct unnecessary or wasted resources in National Insurance into the creation of new physical assets. The Prime Minister's drive to modernise Britain is going to call for great thrift in certain places, and this is one of the places. We are not so wealthy in this country that we can drive a coach and four into the future and throw out largesse from the windows on the way; but that seems to be what we are doing at the present time.
The Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance is not an insurance office at all; it is a cornucopia. Seven-eighths of the pension benefits are not contracted for by premium pence and the greater proportion of this non-contracted-for money passes to pensioners not absolutely in need of it, as was indicated a few moments ago by my noble friend behind me, Lord Ferrier. Let me give one figure only. In December, 1962, 23·6 per cent. of all households in receipt of National Insurance benefits were also receiving National Assistance. In the last few years the figure has varied by 2 or 3 per cent., but not more, according to the changes which have taken place in benefit rates and in the cost of living. If you go so far in charity as to double the percentage of 23·6 so as to provide for imagined, as well as actual, need in households, you are left with more than 50 per cent. of households in this country for whom payment to them is a pure Exchequer bonus. As the total amount paid in pensions last year was some £784 million, the sums in question are very large indeed.
My Lords, let us look at some of the improvements in our society since
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Beveridge's day. We have to recognise that our Welfare State is drawing many thousands of people every year into beneficial practices which were far beyond the reach of their parents and grandparents. People now accept wages by the month, drawn by cheque, and are opening deposit accounts with the banks and taking advantage of the banks' schemes for personal loans. They are saving and investing on the Stock Exchange. They are taking out insurance for many risks, including life cover and hospitalisation. I think it is true to say that a diminishing proportion of our people to-day are still observing the old disciplines of cash to hand and cash in outlay.
What else do we see around us? We see roads and cars, houses and television, new hospitals, schools and universities, and we see Ministers vying with each other in departmental activity. My Lords, I have made a small calculation. Out of the 23 members of the Cabinet there are 19 who hit the headlines with new schemes almost every day. The exceptions are the Minister without Portfolio in another place, whose Portfolio is to explain what other people are doing, and the Leaders of the two Houses, whose activities cannot easily be swelled. There is also the Lord Chancellor, who is a "great swell" already. It is when you look down the list of Ministers not in the Cabinet that you pick out the single black sheep. He is the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance—without offence at all to my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn, whom we are very glad to have with us, or to the present incumbent of this office. Somehow, this Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance has been left out of all the exciting plans which make up the new birth of opportunity for the Tory Party. A more obvious field for further advance I can scarcely imagine. Electorally, this is the most sensitive Department of all. Crudely put, there are more votes in a shilling to the old age pensioners than in ten new motorways or twenty New Towns. A scheme that was generous to those in need, that saved money and did not wallow in financial immorality, and that was easy to understand and instantaneous in operation would be of enormous practical and political value.

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I am sure that the time has now arrived to dismantle the entire insurance system and to substitute benefits as of right, but subject, after a period, to a test of means. Let me start with the National Assistance Board. Before the war public assistance was for the most part capricious, irregular and sectionalised. For all that it had splendid personalities associated with it, the system itself was meanly conceived and meanly administered. The National Assistance Board to-day, on the other hand, wins universal acclaim. Its officers are popular everywhere. Their tests of means and of needs are carried out with the utmost sympathy and discretion. The Board has won a position in our national life that justifies expansion to higher levels and wider opportunities. I would rename it the Social Security Board and charge it with the duty of administering all the recognised insurance benefits at National Assistance rates or whichever rate was the highest.
These benefits would be payable on demand to the sick, the unemployed, and to those with industrial injuries, to the retired and to those who claim benefit from any cause. The national pensions scheme would be wound up and become a closed account. On the appointed day contributions and benefits received on the weekly National Insurance cards would cease and contributors would be given the option to withdraw all their past contributions and leave the scheme or, without further contributions, await the date of their retirement and draw a stated amount in a lump sum, as for post-war credits.
I do not believe that there is any reason at the present time why a State-operated endowment assurance should continue—and that is what retirement pensions are to-day or, at least, to the extent of one-eighth of it. Life and endowment insurance through the tariff and industrial offices is widely recognised, as are the personal loan schemes of the Big Five banks. I believe that if a plan of this sort were put into effect the farce we all recognise of moving in and out of National Assistance according to whether a Pensions (Increase) Bill is being introduced in Parliament would be eliminated. The earnings rule for pensions between the age of 65 and 70 would also disappear.
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Both these things have a stigma attached to them and are consequently very unpopular.
I am well aware how tedious it always is for your Lordships to listen to personal ideas and plans expanded at any length, especially from one who is known not to be a great expert in this vast field of the social services. I will therefore end by merely stating my belief that the time for changes in our present system has arrived, and I would urge the Government to act promptly and with resolution. It was left to the Labour Party to implement the ideas which our great war-time Prime Minister in the Coalition Government called forth from the mind of the then Sir William Beveridge. The Conservative Party now have the chance—and not a dying chance by any means—of drawing ahead in the struggle to make Britain again a leader among States in public charity and social justice.
8.21 p.m.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, one thing I am quite sure about is that all my colleagues on these Benches will be uttering a prayer to-night, because the speeches we have heard from the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, can be repeated for the benefit of electors wherever a Conservative candidate is put up, and nothing could make it more certain that our victory at the polls would be overwhelmingly increased. It is an amazing thing. As I listened, my mind went back to the speeches of the late Lord Winterton, not when he was a mature politician but in the early 1900's, and also to the speeches of the Cecils and all the young Tories who were then hard after the heels of the Liberals of that day. At certain stages the Tories have always voted against social reform, until their electoral prospects made it absolutely essential that they should steal the Whigs' clothing while they were bathing.
THE EARL OF SANDWICH: My Lords, if the noble Earl will do me the honour of reading my speech in Hansard to-morrow, he will see at once that there are no votes in it for the Labour Party. He was so busy talking to those on either side of him that he missed the point of my speech altogether.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: The noble Earl forgets how useful all he has been saying to-night will be to Labour speakers.
I want to thank all those who have taken part in this two days' debate, and especially the speakers on my own side, for the magnificent: way they have kept the debate going. May I say that as a person the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, is absolutely charming, and we are all very fond of him, but it seems to me that he was trying to get rid of the Welfare State, though perhaps not so directly as the noble Earl.
THE EARL OF SANDWICH: Nonsense, my Lords! I was making it much better than it is.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I am prepared to accept the view of my noble friends who were listening.
THE EARL OF SANDWICH: You were all talking.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I did not say a word; I was listening to the noble Earl. I should like him to understand that while he has been saying things over there, we have kept practically silent and now he must contain himself a bit and take his own medicine. As I was saying, I should like to thank my noble friends for their valuable support to this Amendment, which was so effectively moved by my noble friend Lord Silkin. I was a little doubtful about how much support I got from my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry, but we shall still be good friends.
The debate yesterday, which dealt largely with housing and education, was notable for the opening speech of my noble friend Lord Silkin and for the follow-up by my noble friend Lord Longford, whom I was able to hear, though I had to go to a speaking engagement later in the evening. But I have read through the debate and I am bound to say that I did not read anything like an effective reply to my noble friend from the new Minister, Lord Blakenham. Although he was exceedingly kind and calm in the way he offered his particular side of the argument, he really did not answer the case. The Conservatives always want to take
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the actual increases in the figures in this or that department and boast about them. I quite understand that, but when we come to examine the figures, we find that they fail to provide for the needs of the country. Figures totalling the sums spent have very little significance in measuring the amount of increased provision.
The noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, who I am sorry was not able to stay, as he kindly informed me, made a reasonable and calm Conservative speech, dragging in figures which he had carefully collected from some source or other about wages, the number of employed and the purchasing power of wages. Surely it cannot be out of the minds of Conservative Members of this House that the whole basis of present values, of wages and production values, was entirely changed by the policy the Tories adopted in 1951. They removed all controls that were keeping us within reasonable bounds. "Set the people free!" was the actual challenge of the Tories when they fought the 1951 Election. With what results? The Budget we handed over in 1951 was just over £4,000 million. I doubt whether the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, will be able to say that the actual expenditure by the end of this financial year, April 4, will be much less than £6,500 million. That is a measure of the position.
Let us take the figures of the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury. He said that there were nearly 22 million employed in 1951; that now there were so many over 23 million, and that this was a great gain. But perhaps he has not taken sufficient notice of the increase of the whole population in the meantime, starting with the large number of war-time births and the unexpected development of the birth rate after the war. In relation to that, it is not unreasonable to expect that there would be a larger number employed. Then he called attention to the purchasing power of wages. Of course the wages of many skilled workers are up, but surely the noble Marquess realises that at the present time over 2¼ million workers do not get more than £11 a week.
Then he puts forward the argument that the purchasing value of wages today is 35 per cent. more than it was in 1951. I am shocked at the idea. What can be included in the calculation to

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give 35 per cent. more purchasing power in wages than in 1951? It is an amazing statement. Of course, if you deal entirely with food commodities, and the limited number of articles for sale covered in the usual inquiries before the Ministry of Labour Index is published, you may be able to show an increase in purchasing value. But you get a different result if you look at the results of the 1953 Act setting up an extra television channel under the I.T.V., if you look at all the pressure salesmanship, and then take into account what has resulted: hire-purchase running into hundreds of millions of pounds—I think nearly £1,000 million is outstanding to-day. Does that point to an increasing purchasing value? Not at all.
To take the other standards that have to be met by workers to keep up with the cost of living, look at the difference in cost of living of the worker in housing alone. I listened to the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, speaking about what the worker gets that he ought not to get; saying that you have to do this and that for him. The noble Viscount seems to forget what has happened to the worker, as a result of Tory policy, in the abolition of the great majority of the area of rent control and the actual increases in rents and rates. He has forgotten what are now the rents for municipally built houses. Where a man was paying, before the war, anything between 7s. 6d. and 15s. a week, he is now readily paying in rent £2, £2 10s., and more a week—plus rates.
It was very good of the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, to come back; I had almost explained that he was not going to be here, and I said it was all right for him to be away. I cannot imagine for one moment that the figure given to him, that wages had increased 35 per cent. in purchasing value, is correct; it is completely out of reckoning in dealing with this matter.
May I say to the noble Marquess, while he is here, that I was most interested in his remarks with regard to the need for modernisation of the relationship between labour and employers in actually settling their disputes. But, as he recognised when he was speaking,
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that was not new. There have always been efforts on the part of trade unions to have good relations with employers. I have visited them many times in their friendly talks in between times. I remember Lord McGowan of I.C.I. doing all he possibly could to keep up good relations; and I remember Ernest Bevin and many other trade union leaders at that time responding and having very good relations. It is not a question of modernisation, but of the maintenance of good will and to have what is best for industry as a whole. Nobody on this side of the House is against that. On the other hand, when you come into the kind of finance I have been talking about, the change in the value of money and the differences the worker has to meet in the present situation, then you have to remember that the trade unions still have to keep the confidence of their members in how they are to maintain a reasonable standard of living, of education and of progress for their families. May I say to the last two speakers from the Tory Benches that what is desirable is just as much the right of the working class of this country as of any landed proprietor or descendant of the landed aristocracies.
THE EARL OF SANDWICH: Hear, hear!
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Thank you very much. I am obliged for that acknowledgment. The case that was put by my noble friend Lord Silkin in regard to housing has never really been met. Of course the percentage of houses now being provided by public authorities has gone steadily down. Of course the control of rents has meant that there has been a great increase in demand upon private builders. And of course, as a consequence, because there has been no real planning and control of that industry, in the circumstances, prices have soared that is, prices not only of houses but of land. How much have we heard from the Government in the course of this debate of the effect upon housing of the price of land? It is shocking, the state into which things have got in this direction. I spoke the other day of three small houses built which I saw myself in a suburb twelve miles north of Westminster. They comprised two bedrooms, stairs going straight up from the

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small hall door, one large living room and a bathroom on the ground floor. The price was £4,500 each. How can the worker, with his present wage and this increased purchasing power suggested by the noble Marquess, get a house like that?
Yet you are launching a scheme going into thousands of millions of pounds after twelve years in office, with these conditions going on outside; and this is to win the electorate back and to maintain the support they have given you over the last three Elections. I do not think they are going to be caught this time. As I suggested to the noble Marquess when we had our little interjection, they have been tried now, twice following. There have come, twice following, great offers of gifts before an Election, and then those offers have not materialised; tax was taken off and put back on again almost as soon as the Election was over. This was so in 1955, and the same in 1959. I do not think they are going to be fooled by the sudden launching of schemes some of which will take years to carry into effect, to catch up the arrears you have set for the nation in the last twelve years, and for which I suggest you will have to pay thousands of millions of pounds.
That will be paid not only by the taxpayer; it will be paid not only by the
users of many of the services thus provided, but it is going to add considerably to the burden of rates. Why it is that nearly all rating valuation assessments have been made at three times the current figures, I am not sure. But you will not be able to disguise from the ratepayers and the municipal authorities concerned, even if you raise your new money at a lower rate in the pound because you have a much higher valuation assessment, the effect this has upon their pockets; and you will not be able to hide what is the actual final position of the consumer.
We have had a reasonable discussion about the consumer's position. I very much appreciated the speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, who is Chairman of the Consumers' Council set up by the Government, and I wish the discussions they are having well; I hope they will produce good results. But when you are dealing with consumer issues, you are not dealing with them from the point of
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view so much as was put in her own inimitable way by my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry. You have to look at the history of the working class. The working class have been fighting, as it were, along two roads during the whole of the last century and a half to get a proper position as consumers. They went through all the dreadful sweating and being half starved until the Truck Acts. It took years to get rid of them, as soon as the poor trade unions could get free from the anti-combination laws by which it was made a crime for men to organise for better conditions. From then on they have been trying to get rid of these consumers' positions.
The other thing is when they got a reasonable wage with which they could feed themselves and their families and be able to get prices which were within their means. I am proud to belong to the movement which really organised consumers. They were really organised in 1844 by a few working men who gathered and said, "We must do something about this. We have tried political action, and we have not got any power. We have not got the votes. We have tried by the Chartist organisation, and we have not got it there. We must do something for ourselves. We are poor because we are robbed, and we are robbed because NAT are poor". They were the words they put into their resolution; and so they started the Co-operative consumers' movement in 1844. The people who have maintained that movement have always been defending the consumer, and doing something that, especially if Governments from time to time had been more lenient than they were in regard to political action, would help to improve the general status of the worker, the housewife and the household, not always by nationalisation, but by voluntary ownership by the people, for the people, under their own voluntary organisation. That is the kind of consumers' action that I like to see, yet at the same time conforming to ordinary reasonable business status and standards.
So I say to my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry that I am not going to argue much with her about the arguments she put forward, except to say that the movement to which I have belonged for well over fifty years is not going to be a party to an organisation

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set up outside to become a complete parasite on the distributive industry to the extent of a levy upon the retailers themselves of maybe just slightly under 5d. in the £. That 5d. in the £ is an additional cost that the retailer has to make prima facie, and that prima facie charge is divided into three. There is a so-called gain of trade by the retailer because he is giving the stamps that he is purchasing. That can be a real gain to him only if all the other retailers do not buy them and give them. Next, who is to meet the cost of this great new headquarter organisation, whether it be the American, the Canadian or the Eire organisation, or others that come in? Where does that come from? It comes out of the 5d.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I think my noble friend must allow me to interrupt here. I have—if he will not be more angry still—not only a great respect but a great affection for him. I hope that does not annoy him. I do not propose to develop this, but I do not think he is talking about my speech. I only wish to make two points. I said that I was not taking sides to-night on stamp issuing. I also said they did not attract me. How my noble Leader can construe that as he has in his remarks I really do not see.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I am trying hard to follow the noble Earl's argument. What I do not understand is this. What is the difference between trading stamps and the "Co-op. divi."? They seem to me exactly the same thing.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I am very much afraid that the noble Lord has not learned from all his Parliamentary experience the very great difference. It is this. The Co-operative Society is a separate and legal trading organisation, in which its trading members are shareholders in the business. It is their business. They sell at market prices, and they distribute their surplus at the end of an accounting period as they see fit. That is the answer. It is in no way at all to be compared to this parasitic organisation which is now being attached to ordinary retail trade.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, are Her Majesty's Government responsible for either trading stamps or the Co-operative dividend?
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I beg the noble Lord's pardon?
LORD HAWKE: The noble Earl is attacking Her Majesty's Government, but are they in any way responsible for trading stamps or Co-operative dividends?
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I am sure they are responsible to some extent for the Co-operative dividend system, because they have always protected that organisation to a large degree in Parliament under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act. They are doing it also for the agricultural co-operatives on the same basis. Until Mr. Chamberlain, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, set up the Inquiry in the 'thirties they were getting their proper share in what they were working to do for the consumer, but he restricted it to a certain extent. That is the position, so it is no use saying that the Government are not interested in that.
I want to say one other thing to my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry. She is perfectly entitled to express her opinion. We, as a Labour Party, are not fond of supporting a case of price cutting. I have been talking about the history of wages, the consumer's position and the workers in the country for that very reason. If you go in for price cutting—and my noble friend seemed to support that to-night—on behalf of the consumers, I say that in the long run that will bring down the position of the consumer and the working class.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt, because I am sure this can only benefit the Government. This week in the papers I have seen big advertisements of the Co-operative Society with prices crossed out and cheaper prices put in. This is the Co-operative Society.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Certainly. So it is the case with others and great chain stores. They are faced
by the other things that have been set up. But in the end

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it must react upon the wages of the people themselves. It must do very largely, and that is why I am saying it is not the policy of the Labour Party.
I want to say one or two words more. I have listened with great interest to the debate to-day, as well as reading the debate yesterday. I feel that we have made out a case that in relation to housing and land profits the Government have not met the real needs of the situation. I say that, with regard to education—that very great social service—they have not met the needs of the situation. You are now proposing a huge expenditure upon education which ought to hava been spread over the last twelve years. In consequence, this year large numbers of students, who were ready for entry into the universities, and qualified to enter, were not able to secure a place due to the cuts in university grants.
In the second place, in spite of the figures that we were given yesterday by the Government Minister about training colleges, many people have had great difficulty in getting into a training college this year. It was estimated within the last twelve months that if you are going to meet the proper demands for the number of teachers required in a developing educational system, you will have in the meantime to overcrowd practically all the existing training colleges as well as build a very large number of additional training colleges. This has all been largely due to an old miscalculation by Government authorities as to what would be the needs of the people in numbers and in style of education in those years. You have not met the need here.
The Government certainly have not met the case put by my noble friend Lady Summerskill this afternoon. We had the usual gentlemanly reply by the noble Lord, Lord Newton—I want to hand it to him—but he did not meet the case. In fact, to-day in many of the hospitals the conditions are not up to the standard they should be as the right and due of any citizen in this country, and proper provision is not made. It is admitted now that the huge sum that Lord Newton has put to us which is to be spent ought to have been provided more rapidly by spreading the expenditure over the last twelve years.
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In relation to the general case for the Amendment, I feel that we have made our case. I hope that all my noble friends will be as full of pleasure and gladness in going into the Lobby to support it and to make sure that the Government know exactly where we stand. This is, indeed, an Amendment to a Queen's speech which, as I said last Wednesday, is really an enlarged Election address. That is what it is. We are convinced that if the Government are returned as a result of it, then the country will soon find, and the people will begin to understand, that they have had played upon them the same kind of trick as was played both in 1955 and in 1959. We shall go into the Lobby with delight.
8.51 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, my first duty in winding up the debate is to congratulate the only maiden speaker, my noble friend Lord Blakenham, whose virginity, I think, was not at all sullied by his membership of the Government; and I think that your Lordships' enjoyment of his speech was in no way diminished by the fact that he was perhaps slightly prejudiced in favour of the Government's policy. At the present time the trade between the two Houses of Parliament seems to be in a flourishing condition. At the moment it seems that our exports are greater than our imports; we have what is called a favourable balance of trade; but I am afraid that the severe limitations of the late Peerage Act make it unlikely that this can go on indefinitely, and that we shall soon return to more or less one-way traffic. My noble friend is one of the most welcome of immigrants and I think your Lordships are probably looking forward to hearing him again very much more than he looks forward to the hard labour which he will have to perform in your Lordships' House.
The debate has ranged over a very wide field indeed—sometimes I thought a little wider than the terms of the Amendment. A vast number of subjects have been discussed which have been of very great interest to me, as I am sure they have been to your Lordships. The noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, talked about the Hire Purchase Bill which is not in the Queen's Speech and wanted to know why it was

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not and why it had been announced so soon afterwards, and I promised to find out for her. It was discussed whether or not it should be in the Speech, and the only reason it was left out was because the Speech was so long that there was not room for it. The reason it was announced so soon after was simply that it had not been in the Queen's Speech. I must, however, firmly decline to say a single word to the noble Lady about stamps, because I am most anxious not to quarrel either with the noble Lady or with her noble Leader.
It is getting very late and we are about to divide upon an Amendment which censures the Government for failing to provide enough for our social services, particularly housing, education and the care of the sick, the old and the less well off, which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, was suspected of trying to identify with all of your Lordships. I shall try briefly to conclude the debate by suggesting to your Lordships not only that the Amendment is unrealistic, as I think it is, but that this Government have, in fact, done more to advance and improve our social services and have done it more quickly than any Government at any time in the history of this country.
In the last five years it has been my duty from time to time to explain and defend Government policy on all the items which are listed in this Amendment. I do not think I have ever tried to exaggerate our performance or to claim that we could always do as much as we should like; and I have certainly always tried to appreciate and to acknowledge the peculiar difficulties which faced the Labour Government in the six years after the war. Therefore, I am not going to attack the performance of the Labour Government and I am not going to contrast the relatively small amount which Labour were able to do with what we have done. I always feel that is rather like stealing toffee from a child.
But I am not going to claim, either, that the Government's policy has always been entirely free from any kind of imperfection. In your Lordships' House, as my noble friend Lord Blakenham will soon find out, the errors of the Government are exposed, attacked and rebuked sometimes less frequently by
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the Opposition than by our own supporters, who are less inhibited than in another place from voting against the Government and often from defeating us. I think that may be so in other Parties, too, in your Lordships' House. When I looked at the Division List on the Amendment to the Defence debate the night before last I drew the inference that if we were to have a Liberal Government in this House, two-thirds of the Government supporters would vote against the defence policy of their own Government. As for the possible future Labour Government I think we must wait, even if we do not ever see.
What I should like to say to the noble Earl, the Leader of the Opposition, is that, as I understand the word, certainly I have never been against, and I do not think our Party have been against, planning.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: Two years ago, that is all.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: I said this much more than two years ago, and I think it is true. There may perhaps have been sometimes a certain amount of verbal misunderstanding. Some people who argue about planning use the word in the sense of Socialist planning. I do not use it in that sense at all. I think everybody will agree that if you are to have a policy you must have a plan, and I think you could not have a better example of the possible difference between our ideas of planning than on this question of housing which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, raised yesterday.
I am not sure whether it is still so—I think it is—that the Party opposite are in favour of reimposing building controls. That is quite a reasonable thing to argue for, if it is going to result in preventing the kind of building you do not want and getting more of the kind of building you do want. We do not agree that that would be so. We certainly would agree in certain circumstances, as, for instance, an emergency like a war, that controls would be necessary. We do not think that wrong or immoral. We think that in present circumstances it is better planning not to have physical restrictions and controls upon the building industry. But if you are going to have a housing target—300,000 houses or whatever it may be

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—that target must be worked out in relation to your estimate of what the construction industries of the country will bear and what the priorities ought to he. Therefore, you must have a national plan, whether the plan includes the control and limitation of the supply of materials or whether it does not.
LORD LATHAM: Then you must enforce the plan.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: When Mr. Aneurin Bevan and others of the Labour Party said in 1951: "You cannot build 300,000 houses a year; you will be lucky if you can get 200,000", of course they did not mean that it would not be possible to do it. If the whole resources of the building industry were concentrated on housing and if we did not build any factories or schools, or did not put any new buildings in the development areas and did not build any hospitals, it would, of course, be possible to do it. But that is not a plan. In a plan you must decide what your economic priorities are going to be, and you must judge the amount of housing you will aim at in the light of that estimate. That is what we did. We were right, and the Labour Party happened to be wrong. We thought that we could build 300,000 houses in accordance with the best economic development of the country, and I claim that we did so.
Even as late as 1957, six years later, Mr. Harold Wilson wrote that the Tory achievement of building well over 300,000 houses per annum was socially desirable but it placed a great strain on our economic resources; these were the years when Britain should have been developing her basic industries. Mr. Wilson was attacking us not for building too few houses but for building too many. He thought that we ought to devote more of our economic resources and more of the construction industry load to equipping factories and not to building houses. That is not what the Opposition are saying to-day: they are suggesting that we have built too few. I put it to your Lordships that our plan, our estimate, has been broadly right. No one, in either Party, suggests for a moment that we have ever built as many houses as we want. Of course, we should all like to abolish the slums the day after to-morrow, if it were a physical possibility. But you must relate these
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things to your estimate of the economic capacity and future economic growth of the country.
The housing achievements we have reached in the last twelve years are 34 million new houses built (like Lord Silkin I am giving only the English figure, because I agree that it is better to discuss the Scottish ones separately), and 700,000 reconditioned; and the emphasis is now on two things, slum clearance, which is the only one that is getting financial support in England (though the situation in Scotland is different), and home ownership. In the last twelve years the number of families living in their own homes has increased from 4½ million to 6½ million and I thought your Lordships were very much impressed by the figures which my noble friend Lord Hastings gave us last night, showing that of these new houses built for ownership the majority of them were not luxury building put up for rich people; that the majority of them were being built for people often in the lowest income groups and very often in the younger age groups—a large proportion under 35, and a great many under 25.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: What does the noble Earl think is being done at the moment by the Department concerned? I raised a question, on the first day of our debate on the Address on the gracious Speech, over the case of Slough, where there are 1,500 unfilled vacancies at the labour exchange. The place is overcrowded; the young people cannot get houses. The local council asked the Minister for permission to build 400 houses, and he cut it to 245 recently. Is that the policy of the Government?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: I think the noble Earl has enough experience to know that if a Parliamentary speech becomes as discursive as he is seeking to make mine it might well become both unmerciful and indecent. I wished to make a general reply and I think I have done so. What the Department is doing now is making plans to increase, and we believe that we shall reach 350,000 next year and 400,000 a few years afterwards. That is, we believe, within the bounds of practicability. I do not know whether or not the Party opposite have any plans which are comparable to that, because they have not told us.

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I am not going to add very much to what has already been said about education, except perhaps to break the bad news to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, that I shall be taking the debate on the Robbins Report in two or three weeks; and that makes me all the more anxious not to anticipate any part of it now. He particularly asked a question last night about the administration, and pressed strongly for an answer. He repeated it several times. He will find it all in the speech of my right honourable friend the Chief Secretary, Mr. Boyd-Carpenter, two days ago in another place, if he will be good enough to look at it. In view of the lateness of the hour, I do not want to pursue the matter now. I think that the achievements which we have accomplished in education—raising the number of people who are having higher education from 100,000 to 216,000, including the colleges of advanced technology; building more than 5,000 new schools, and increasing by 150 per cent. the number of boys and girls staying on after school-leaving age—are indications that our policy has been steadily growing, and the advance we are going to make is not a new thing but the natural corollary of what we have been doing already for the last twelve years.
The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, had several critical things to say about the Queen's Speech. He thought it was an Election manifesto and he thought it was too long. He said that it did not say anything at all about social services. As a matter of fact, it has quite a long paragraph about education, and it has quite a long paragraph about housing. I expect he was thinking of other social services, and that is why I think he was wrong when he described this as an Election manifesto. If it had been an Election manifesto I think it would have said something about the other social services, as all manifestos are likely to do.
LORD SILKIN: I do not want to interrupt, and I am not going to do so again. I said that those things which have been omitted from the speech and which I thought should have been included would have involved immediate action and immediate expenditure, and that is why they were not included.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: I quite accept that. What amazes me is not the omissions from the gracious Speech but the omissions from the speeches of noble Lords opposite. I have been in both Houses of Parliament off and on for 34 years. I do not know how many debates I have listened to about care of the elderly and the less well off, and this is the first one I have ever listened to in which not one single Member of the Party opposite has said one word about old-age pensions or National Assistance. I think it is a most extraordinary omission and one which I take as very complimentary to the Government.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, there was no need to answer the speeches of the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: That is not very convincing because they happened to be the last two speeches in the debate. The only two noble Lords in any part of the House who have referred to retirement pensions or National Assistance are my noble friends Lord Ferrier and Lord Sandwich.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, if I may intervene, may I ask whether the noble Earl was here when I spoke? I mentioned old-age pensions.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: Yes. I was going to mention the noble Baroness and I hope I shall never he discourteous enough to leave her out. She only mentioned it in a sense I was coming to. It is. I think, necessary that someone should say, having regard to the nature of the Amendment which we are discussing, that in the last twelve years retirement pensions and unemployment benefit have been increased from 30s. for a single man and 50s. for a married couple to 67s. 6d. for a single man and 109s. for a married couple. They have been increased five times and have now reached this unprecedentedly high figure, while the workers' contribution has gone up proportionately less for the lowest paid wage earner. The noble Lady mentioned the earnings rule in this connection. She referred to widows, and I was rather surprised when she said that when a woman or a widow was earning wages the Tory Government "imposed" upon her this

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earnings rule. But the Tory Government has relaxed, not imposed, it.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I am sorry, but I must interrupt. I know what the noble Earl is going to say, and he has a good point. But I have said before in this House, and I think I indicated this earlier, that twelve years have passed, and when we had unemployment the trade unions felt that it was fair that this should be. But, twelve years having elapsed, there is a considerable change.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: I think the noble Lady has said that. But it was not only the trade unions; it was one of the recommendations of the Beveridge Report which was adopted by the Government of which she was a member. At that time the earnings limit was only 40s. Anything over 40s. came off. Now we have raised it to 85s., and as regards the widow with children to whom the noble Lady referred, I think the noble Lady's case is really even much weaker, because there it has been raised to £6. In addition, however much the woman is earning—if she is earning £15 or £20 a week—she has still to be left 26s. of her own allowance in order to provide for the expenses of the household. Of course, the allowances for her children, which in her case would be 30s. a week for the first child and 22s. a week for the others, would not be at all affected by this earnings rule. I felt it was a little hard, when we had relaxed the earnings rule, especially for a widowed mother, to this large and liberal extent, that the noble Lady should suggest that the Tory Government had imposed an earnings rule on the working mother.
The future growth of all these social services, which is our aim, depends, as your Lordships know, upon the growth of our economy. Since the war, our economy has grown and expanded far more, two or three times more rapidly, than it has ever done in any previous period in history. But the continuity in its growth has been interrupted and retarded
again and again by inflationary rises in personal incomes. I think your Lordships will agree that in a free country we cannot interfere with freedom of wage contracts, and however much we try to help, as we must, by advice, by information, by research and by persuasion, we must rely in the last resort upon the common sense of all parties who are engaged in industry; and I think there are good grounds for hoping that common sense is going to prevail.
For quite a long time now wage increases have, with a few exceptions here and there, not exceeded the upper limit which has been advised by the National Economic Development Council to the best of their calculation. Wages have been increasing in real value without inflation. Our exports have been going up—they are 8 per cent. higher this year than they were last year, which is a new record. Our industrial production for the third quarter of this year, which we get before we get the G.N.P. figures worked out, is 5 per cent. above the level of 1962 and 3 per cent. above the figure for the earlier part of this year. Real wages are going up, savings are going up, investment is going up, and confidence is going up. It is neither an idle dream nor an irresponsible Election promise, but in my submission it is a realistic expectation to your Lordships that these high targets which have been set in the gracious Speech will be achieved.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I am entitled to reply, but I am not going to exercise that right, because I think that there is nothing to which to reply. Neither the noble Earl nor the noble Lord who spoke last night have really met the case that was made against them, and I think the best plan at this late stage is to divide the House.
9.17 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 24; Not-Contents, 51.

CONTENTS

Alexander of Hillsborough, E.

Lindgren, L.

Shackleton, L.

Burden, L. [Teller.]

Listowel, E.

Shepherd, L.

Burton of Coventry, B.

Longford, E.

Silkin, L.

Chorley, L.

Lucan, E. [Teller.]

Stonham, L.

Henderson, L.

Morrison of Lambeth, L.

Summerskill, B.

Henley, L.

Mottistone, L.

Taylor, L.

Latham, L.

Peddie, L.

Walston, L.

Lawson, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Williamson, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Alport, L.

Dundee, E.

Lothian, M.

Amory, V.

Drumalbyn, L.

Mabane, L.

Auckland, L.

Effingham, E.

McCorquodale of Newton, L.

Balerno, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Blakenham, V.

Ferrers, E.

Milverton, L.

Bradford, E.

Ferrier, L.

Newton, L.

Carrington, L.

Fortescue, E.

Rathcavan, L.

Chesham, L.

Fraser of Lonsdale, L.

St. Aldwyn, E. [Teller.]

Colyton, L.

Furness, V.

St. Oswald, L.

Conesford, L.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Salisbury, M.

Croft, L.

Grenfell, L.

Saltoun, L.

Daventry, V.

Hailes, L.

Sandwich, E.

Denham, L.

Hastings, L.

Savile, L.

Derwent, L.

Hawke, L.

Somers, L.

Devonshire, D.

Hertford, M.

Soulbury, V.

Dilhorne, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Howard of Glossop, L.

Swinton, E.

Dudley, E.

Lansdowne, M.

Waleran, L.

Resolved in the negative, and Amendment disagreed to accordingly.

On Question, Motion agreed to: the said Address to be presented to Her Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.

  LABELLING OF ST. JAMES'S PARK TREES
  LABELLING OF ST. JAMES'S PARK TREES