Sitting of 15 July 1968

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

  Rhodesia
  Mr. Turton: I beg to ask leave to present a Petition signed by 96,304 members of the Anglo-Rhodesian Society residing in the majority of constituencies represented in this honourable House. The Petition recites Rhodesia's record of peaceful history and claims her right to be recognised as an independent sovereign State.
  The Petition prays, first, that the call of the United Nations for increased sanctions against Rhodesia will not be implemented; secondly, that existing sanctions be removed; and, thirdly, that negotiations be commenced immediately with the Rhodesian Government with a view to resuming diplomatic relations with her as an independent State and so to bring to an end the unhappy divisions between the two countries.
  The Petition ends:
  "And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray."
  To lie upon the Table.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  SOCIAL SECURITY

    Industrial Death Benefit (Appeals)
    Mr. Wingfield Digbyasked the Minister of Social Security in how many cases her Department has appealed to the National Insurance Commissioner against a decision of the local tribunal made in favour of an applicant for industrial death benefit under the Industrial Injuries Act.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Social Security (Mr. Charles Loughlin): During 1967 there
    1002
    were 32 appeals by the insurance officer against awards of industrial death benefit made by local tribunals.
    Mr. Digby: As there are so few cases, cannot the Ministry afford to be a little more generous to widows who have already won their appeals?
    Mr. Loughlin: The Ministry is as generous as possible to widows, but I draw the attention of the Houe to the fact that we are here bound by independent procedures. The insurance officer acts as an independent person when making a reference of this kind, and if ultimately, as in this instance, a case goes to the Commissioner, he too, of course, is completely independent of the Ministry.

    Family Allowances
    Mr. Fortescueasked the Minister of Social Security for what sociological reasons the increase in family allowances for 1968–69 was arranged so that, when taken in conjunction with reduced Income Tax allowances, they leave married men with four or five children worse off than before at gross earnings of only £1,336 and £1,452 per year, resepectively.
    Mr. Loughlin: The object of the tax changes is to restrict the benefit of the family allowances increases to those who most need them. The families quoted received a small additional net benefit in the last six months of 1967-68. Otherwise they will get the same net benefit this year as in previous years.
    Mr. Fortescoe: Can the hon. Gentleman assure the House that this apparent discrimination against the large family in no way reflects the strictures, made in a speech sponsored by the London Rubber Company, against the pro-creational proclivities of the British people, by his right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton).
    Mr. Loughlin: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no relationship between my Answer and the speech of my right hon. Friend. I make it absolutely clear that there is no restriction on these families as he says. With all the tax and family allowance changes together, these families will receive in total the same amount by the end of October this year as they received at the end of October last year.
    Mr. Will Griffiths: Is my hon. Friend aware that in my constituency there is a married man with three children, who is a weaver earning £18 a week, who claims that the whole of the increase in family allowances has been eliminated by tax changes? Is he aware that I have had other cases at similar wage levels when it has been said that more than the family allowance has been taken by Income Tax?
    Mr. Loughlin: My hon. Friend ought to let us have details of these cases, because one has to be careful about these things. I can give the definite assurance that the tax total on the family allowances pre the 7s. and 3s. increases, added to that which has to be paid in consequence of the give and take, result in no additional taxation to these families.
    Mr. Fortescueasked the Minister of Social Security what is her estimate of the number of families with four children or more who will have lower incomes in 1968–69 than in 1967–68 as a result of increased family allowances and reduced Income Tax allowances.
    Mr. Loughlin: The Board of Inland Revenue estimate that about 300,000 families will be affected.
    Mr. Fortescue: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that this is a very serious number of families? Does he still stick to his previous statement that all these 300,000 families will be no worse off in 1968–69 than they were in 1967–68.
    Mr. Loughlin: I can only assure the hon. Gentleman that these questions should be put to the Chancellor of the Exchequer—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Obviously, the Inland Revenue is a matter for the Chancellor—
    Mr. Fortescue: Why did you not transfer the Question, then?
    Mr. Loughlin: The hon. Gentleman put it down to us. The difficulty is that if we transfer the scream goes up, "Why did you tranfer?"—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. We have many Questions before us.
    Mr. Loughlin: But I must answer the Question if it is put to me, Mr. Speaker. Anyway, I suggest that the hon. Gentle-
    1004
    man now puts the Question to the Chancellor.
    Dame Irene Ward: On a point of order. Could you ask, Mr. Speaker, whether the House could be told now whether we can choose to which Ministers we put our Questions, since it would be most convenient to the House if we could put all Questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer?
    Mr. Speaker: That is a consummation devoutly to be wished.
    Mr. Pardoe: I hope that everyone is not quite as confused by the Parliamentary Secretary's answers as I am He said that 300,000 families will have lower incomes as a result of these changes. Is that right? Are we to understand that, as a result of these changes, these people will have lower incomes in 1968-69 than they had in 1967–68? Will the hon. Gentleman tell us why there has been no liaison with the Chancellor of the Exchequer over this?
    Mr. Loughlin: I do not know why the hon. Gentleman is getting excited about this. He must realise that when we are talking about the offsets, that is, the give-and-take principle of family allowances and the Inland Revenue, we are talking about those families who are paying up to standard rate Income Tax. It is the families over that level who will be affected, and they are the 300,000 referred to in the second Question.
    Lord Balniel: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that we are absolutely certain that there are families with four or five children who are worse off as a result of the changes being made this year? Is this an accident, or is it on purpose? If it is an accident, will he correct it?
    Mr. Loughlin: Let me make it clear that up to the standard rate of Income Tax payment families will not this year be worse off. If one takes a global position in relation to family allowances as a whole, the 300,000 families to which I referred are those in the higher tax bracket than the standard rate.
    Mr. Hooley: Would not hon. Friend not agree that it is very strange that hon. Members opposite should clamour for selectivity but object strongly when it is applied to the higher income scale?

    Sickness Benefit
    Mr. Gwilym Robertsasked the Minister of Social Security what figures she has available of the average number of days sickness benefit paid annually to self-employed and employed persons; and if she will publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT a breakdown of these figures according to occupational groups.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Social Security (Mr. Norman Pentland): Employed persons receive on average about 15 days sickness benefit a year whereas the average for self-employed people is less than 8 days. Such information as we have about occupational groupings is for employed people only and is contained in a comprehensive report on an "Enquiry into the Incidence of Incapacity for Work" produced by the Ministry of Pensions; and National Insurance in 1965. Copies are available in the Library.

    Old-Age Pensioners (Rents)
    Mr. Gwilym Robertsasked the Minister of Social Security if she will give an assurance that she will retain those powers which enable her Department to meet fully the additional rental costs met by old-age pensioners and others on supplementary benefits when they move into dearer housing accommodation.
    Mr. Pentland: I can assure my hon. Friend that there is no question of removing the statutory powers of the Supplementary Benefits Commission to meet reasonable rents payable by supplementary benefit claimants who need to be rehoused.
    Mr. Roberts: Would my hon. Friend accept that single elderly people often want a second room so as to have occasional visits from relatives or friends? Would he circulate local authorities to make it clear that it is his Department's policy to have the best possible social and economic accommodation available with no extra charge to these people?
    Mr. Pentland: Yes, Sir. This is a matter, of course, for the Supplementary Benefits Commission, but if, as I gathered from the tone of his supplementary question, my hon. Friend has any par-
    1006
    ticular case in mind and would like to draw it to my attention, I should be glad to look into it.

    Local Offices (Mergers)
    Mr. Eadieasked the Minister of Social Security how many of her department's local offices were merged in 1967 and to the nearest available date in 1968; if she will list the areas concerned; and what further merging is planned for the current year.
    The Minister of Social Security (Mrs. Judith Hart): In 1967, offices of the former Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance and of the National Assistance Board were merged in five places, and in 1968 up to 30th June, in ten places. In addition, work was transferred from 40 former National Insurance offices to neighbouring offices in 1967 and from another 11 up to 30th June, 1968. With permission, I will circulate lists of these offices in the OFFICIAL REPORT. By the end of this year, we expect that some 50 to 60 more changes of both kinds will be made. I cannot be more precise because they depend on premises becoming available.
    Mr. Eadie: Is my right hon. Friend certain that mergers which have taken place in the past and those which will take place in future have resulted in increased efficiency and not in too much inconvenience? What volume of correspondence has she had protesting about this matter?
    Mrs. Hart: I can assure my hon. Friend that I have had no volume of protests at all from people affected by the closures, although I have had some discussion with one or two of his hon. Friends and with hon. Members opposite. What is sometimes not understood is that in almost all cases we keep open a caller office for the public. What is happening is that the backroom work is being merged. Since so many payments are now made by postal draft, this should have no substantial effect on the general public.
    Mr. Wingfield Digby: In considering these closures, would the right hon. Lady bear in mind the special problems of travel in rural areas, where it is very difficult?
    Mrs. Hart: I am intensely aware of these problems and I look very carefully at any proposals which affect the rural areas because of this point, which

    FORMER OFFICES OF M.P.N.I. AND N.A.B. MERGED IN NEW PREMISES DURING 1967 AND BETWEEN 1ST JANUARY. 1968 TO 30TH JUNE, 1968

    Region

    Year

    Former Offices

    Name of Merged Office

    Northern

    1968

    Sunderland (Southwick) N.I.O.

    Sunderland North

    Part of Sunderland (Pallion) N.I.O.

    Sunderland (North) A.O

    Sunderland (Gray Road) N.I.O.

    Sunderland South

    Part of Sunderland (Pallion) N.I.O.

    Sunderland East A.O.

    Sunderland West A.O.

    Yorkshire and Humberside

    1968

    Rotherham N.I.O

    Rotherham

    Rotherham North A.O.

    Rotherham South A.O.

    London North

    1968

    Colchester N.I.O. and A.O.

    Colchester

    Watford N.I.O. and A.O.

    Watford

    London South

    1968

    Southwark North N.I.O.

    Southwark North

    Bermondsey A.O.

    South Western

    1967

    Bristol (Bishopston) N.I.O.

    Bristol (Horfield)

    Part of Bristol (Central) A.O.

    Part of Bristol (Eastville) A.O.

    1968

    Penzance N.I.O. and A.O.

    Penzance

    Wales

    1967

    Merthyr Tydfil N.I.O. and A.O.

    Merthyr Tydfil

    West Midlands

    1967

    Birmingham (South Yardley)N.I.O.

    Birmingham (South Yardley)

    Birmingham South-East A.O.

    North Western (Manchester)

    1967

    Ashton under Lyne N.I.O. and A.O.

    Ashton under Lyne

    North Western (Merseyside)

    1968

    Widnes N.I.O. and A.O.

    Widnes

    Scotland

    1967

    Bathgate N.I.O. and A.O.

    Bathgate

    1968

    Glasgow (Queens Park) N.I.O.

    Glasgow (South Side)

    Glasgow (South Side) A.O.

    Inverness N.I.O. and A.O.

    Inverness

    FORMER NATIONAL INSURANCE OFFICES FROM WHICH BACKROOM WORK WAS TRANSFERRED TO NEIGHBOURING OFFICES DURING 1967 AND BETWEEN 1ST JANUARY, 1968 TO 30TH JUNE, 1968

    Region

    Year

    Work Transferred From

    Work Transferred To

    Northern

    1967

    Windermere

    …

    …

    …

    Kendal

    Whitby

    …

    …

    …

    Scarborough

    Guisborough

    …

    …

    …

    Redcar

    Saltburn

    …

    …

    …

    Redcar

    Loftus

    …

    …

    …

    Redcar

    Appleby

    …

    …

    …

    Penrith

    Washington

    …

    …

    …

    Sunderland North

    1968

    Alnwick

    …

    …

    …

    Part to Ashington

    Part to Berwick

    Morpeth

    …

    …

    …

    Ashington

    Yorkshire and Humberside

    1967

    Driffield

    …

    …

    …

    Bridlington

    1968

    Rawmarsh

    …

    …

    …

    Rotherham

    Dinnington

    …

    …

    …

    Rotherham

    East Midlands and East Anglia

    1967

    Haverhill

    …

    …

    …

    Part to Bury St. Edmunds

    Part to Braintree

    Dereham

    …

    …

    …

    Norwich

    Ashbourne

    …

    …

    …

    Derby

    1968

    Daventry

    …

    …

    …

    Northampton

    London North

    1967

    Biggleswade

    …

    …

    …

    Bedford

    Hoddesdon

    …

    …

    …

    Hertford

    Rickmansworth

    …

    …

    …

    Watford

    Maldon

    …

    …

    …

    Chelmsford

    Plaistow

    …

    …

    …

    Canning Town

    London South

    1967

    East Grinstead

    …

    …

    …

    Part to Crawley

    Part to Tunbridge Wells

    Kennington

    …

    …

    …

    Southwark North

    Bermondsey

    …

    …

    …

    London West

    1967

    Wallingford

    …

    …

    …

    Reading

    South-Western

    1967

    Shepton Mallet

    …

    …

    …

    Bath

    Shaftesbury

    …

    …

    …

    Dorchester

    Kingsbridge

    …

    …

    …

    Plymouth

    Minehead

    …

    …

    …

    Taunton

    1968

    Okehampton

    …

    …

    …

    Exeter

    also afiects, I think, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie).
    Following are the lists:

    Region

    Year

    Work Transferred From

    Work Transferred To

    Wales

    1967

    Dowlais

    …

    …

    …

    Merthyr Tydfil

    Merthyr Vale

    …

    …

    …

    Merthyr Tydfil

    Rhosllancrchrugog

    …

    …

    …

    Wrexham

    1968

    Penarth

    …

    …

    …

    Part to Cardiff (Westgate Street)

    Part to Cardiff (Newport Road)

    Milford Haven

    …

    …

    …

    Haverfordwest

    West Midlands

    1967

    Ludlow

    …

    …

    …

    Part to Shrewsbury

    Part to Hereford

    Evesham

    …

    …

    …

    Worcester

    Rugby

    …

    …

    …

    Coventry

    North-Western (Manchester)

    1967

    Stalybridge

    …

    …

    …

    Ashton-under-Lyne

    Mossley

    …

    …

    …

    Ashton-under-Lyne

    Shaw

    …

    …

    …

    Oldham

    Royton

    …

    …

    …

    Oldham

    Prestwich

    …

    …

    …

    Manchester (Cheetham Hill)

    Middleton

    …

    …

    …

    Manchester (Cheetham Hill)

    North-Western (Merseyside)

    1967

    Liverpool (Walton)

    …

    …

    …

    Bootle

    1968

    Kirkham

    …

    …

    …

    Blackpool

    Runcorn

    …

    …

    …

    Widnes

    Scotland

    1967

    Penicuik

    …

    …

    …

    Loanhead

    Peebles

    …

    …

    …

    Galashiels

    Strathaven

    …

    …

    …

    Hamilton

    1968

    Linlithgow

    …

    …

    …

    Bo'ness

    National Insurance Benefits
    Sir B. Rhys Williamsasked the Minister of Social Security on what basis National Insurance benefits are now calculated.
    Mrs. Hart: To deal adequately with such a wide-ranging question would require an excessively long answer. In any case the answer would be different for different benefits. If the hon. Member will let me know what particular benefit, or benefits, he has in mind I will write to him.
    Sir B. Rhys Williams: Is not the plain fact that, in assessing contributions and benefits, we have lost all contact with reality in National Insurance? Is it not wrong that 2½ million families should need to take supplementary benefits on top of National Insurance? Has not the time come to wipe the slate clean and reconstitute the National Insurance Fund so that it does what is required of it?
    Mrs. Hart: Supplementary benefits, of course, are: a separate matter from National Insurance benefits. I am afraid that if the hon. Gentleman is asking me to discuss in a Parliamentary Question and Answer the reality of our social insurance scheme, I must advise him that he would do better to raise it in another way on another occasion.

    Earnings-Related Contributions and Benefits
    Sir B. Rhys Williamsasked the Minister of Social Security whether in order to end the hardship caused to people with low incomes by the cost of the flat rate National Insurance contribution, she will now introduce legislation to substitute an insurance contribution related to earnings.
    Mr. Worsleyasked the Minister of Social Security when she will publish her White Paper on proposed changes in the National Insurance Scheme.
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Minister of Social Security what progress has been made towards the production of a comprehensive scheme of social security based on graduated contributions and graduated benefits; and when she expects to introduce legislation.
    Mrs. Hart: As I have previously made clear, we hope to publish by the end of the year a White Paper setting out the Government's proposals for a new scheme in which both contributions and benefits will be related to earnings, and to have the necessary legislation on the Statute Book within the present Parliament.
    Sir B. Rhys Williams: Would the right hon. Lady give an undertaking that the

    1011
    National Insurance contribution will be related to people's capacity to pay, so as to end the present situation in which it has become so high as to be actually a contributory cause of family poverty?
    Mrs. Hart: As I have said a number of times in the House in the last few months, the White Paper will put forward a scheme by which contributions will be related to earnings.
    Mr. Worsley: Will the right hon. Lady give an undertaking that, before she publishes this scheme, she will discuss it with those responsible for occupational pensions in the private sector, so that there shall be no disincentive effect on those pensions?
    Mrs. Hart: The hon. Gentleman need not be concerned about any failure to consult. We shall be and are very much aware of the need to have the right kind of consultation on this.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Would my right hon. Friend not consider the desirability of publishing a Green Paper rather than a White Paper, so that the House may be consulted before the legislation is introduced? Will she further undertake that this Government scheme will be very different from the Tory swindle which was introduced to finance the existing pensions?
    Mrs. Hart: I can give my hon. Friend a total and complete assurance on the last point which he raised. On the first, we envisage that there will be time between the publication of the White Paper and the actual preparation of the detailed legislation for full consideration to be given in the House, and I would suppose that the House will certainly wish to consider and discuss the White Paper very fully. It is a little difficult to envisage a Green Paper on the subject because, as my hon. Friend will appreciate, many of these are highly technical matters and it is not so easy to cover that kind of subject in Green Paper style.

    Housewives (Illness and Accidents)
    Mr. G. Campbellasked the Minister of Social Security if she will make a statement on the social security arrangements for housewives who become completely incapacitated, owing to
    1012
    illness or accident, but do not need to be in-patients in hospital.
    Mrs. Hart: I would refer the hon. Member to the replies I gave to the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Astor) and other hon. Members on 8th April.—[Vol. 762, c. 874–6.]
    Mr. Campbell: As such persons do not even qualify for supplementary benefits, and as I heard the right hon. Lady make a sympathetic speech on this subject yesterday afternoon in Trafalgar Square, why cannot she now be more definite about future action?
    Mrs. Hart: I appreciated the fact that the hon. Gentleman was there yesterday afternoon. I think that this was one of the few Trafalgar Square occasions when we rose above party politics. The hon. Gentleman will know from what I said in Trafalgar Square that I outlined the difficulties of moving, as it were, tomorrow or the day after, into a totally new scheme of this kind.
    Mr. Molloy: Despite this Government's all-time record in the raising of social security pensions, this nevertheless makes even worse the position of the ordinary housewife who is incapacitated. Will my right hon. Friend be prepared to consider meeting the officers of the Disablement Incomes Group to go into detail concerning this problem?
    Mrs. Hart: I assure my hon. Friend that on a number of occasions over the last few months I have met Mrs. du Boisson and other officials of the Disablement Incomes Group and we have discussed the whole range of problems involved here.
    Lord Balniel: As I shared the platform with the right hon. Lady, might I ask her whether she accepts as a principle that disabled persons who cannot contribute to the insurance scheme and cannot receive supplementary benefits should be brought within the social security system?
    Mrs. Hart. I think that I implied as much yesterday. I said that I recognised that there is a gap here. I explained the historical reasons why the gap existed and what I believe should be our philosophy of social insurance to enable us to cover the gap in our social security system.

    Social Services (Abuses)
    Mr. Tapsellasked the Minister of Social Security when she intends to introduce measures to prevent abuses of the social services.
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Minister of Social Security when she intends to publish her proposals designed to deal with fraudulent claims for social security benefits.
    Mrs. Hart: My Department has many well established checks designed to limit abuse of the schemes it administers. Plans are now well advanced to intensify these checks on able bodied unemployed people when they could reasonably be expected to find work. I shall indicate what these are very shortly.
    Mr. Tapsell: While recognising that only a tiny minority cheat in this way, may I ask whether the right hon. Lady agrees, as she seemed to indicate in a recent speech in the country, that it is extremely important to maintain public confidence in the working of the social services by instituting the most rigorous safeguards against abuses of this kind?
    Mrs. Hart: Yes, indeed. In the very interesting debate that we had on Friday, I think we all examined various aspects of the problem. I am very much concerned about the reflection on our social security system that arises in the minds of the general public when they observe this tiny minority of cheaters getting away with it. For this reason I am proposing to tighten up in one or two respects which I shall make clear shortly. But it is extremely important that we in this House at least get the right balance and understand that it is only a small minority.
    Mr. Hamilton: Will the Minister consider breaking down as between the regions the figure of 451, which was the figure she gave in the debate last Friday? Is the Minister also aware that her interjection in the debate was very interesting in that she said there were certain ex-public schoolboys who were cheaters in this regard?
    Mr. Winnick: Old Etonians!
    Mr. Hamilton: Will the Minister give us the specific figure?
    Mrs. Hart: Not without advance notice. It is certainly true, and it is within my own experience on the basis of visits to offices in the London area, that there is a very tiny minority. We are considering only small figures, but there is undoubtedly a tiny minority of very well educated middle-class boys in the London area who apparently regard it as their right to receive social security support. I am as concerned about them as I am about the cheaters we find in other regions of the country in social groups less fortunate than they.

    Occupational Pensioners (Unemployment Benefit)
    Mr. Kenneth Bakerasked the Minister of Social Security when she intends to introduce Regulations following the Report of the National Insurance Advisory Committee on the question of paying unemployment benefit to occupational pensioners.
    Mrs. Hart: I hope to refer draft Regulations to the National Insurance Advisory Committee in the near future.
    Mr. Baker: Is the delay in implementing the recommendations of this Report due to the Minister not entirely agreeing with all the recommendations? When the Regulations are presented, can the right hon. Lady assure us that we will have a chance to debate them?
    Mrs. Hart: To answer the last part of the question first, when the Regulations are presented there will automatically be a debate in this House to consider them.
    On the first point, I assure the hon. Gentleman that he is quite wrong in drawing any such conclusion. It is normal on matters of this kind for the Minister concerned to have ample time to discuss the proposed changes with interested parties. Over the last two or three months I have had a considerable number of discussions with interested bodies. But I am preparing to refer the draft Regulations shortly.
    Mr. Worsley: Can the Minister indicate whether these consultations have included those interested in Service pensions, because they are concerned about some of the provisions in this Report?
    Mrs. Hart: Yes, they have.

    Low Income Families
    Mr. Kenneth Bakerasked the Minister of Social Security how many families with fathers in full-time work she estimates will be living below supplementary benefit level after 7th October, 1968.
    Mr. J. E. B. Hillasked the Minister of Social Security what is the total number of families she estimates will be living below supplementary benefit level after 7th October, 1968.
    Mrs. Hart: I would refer the hon. Members to the reply given to the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) on 10th July, and to my remarks in last Friday's debate.— [Vol. 768, c. 99.]
    Mr. Baker: Has the Minister any proposals to give real incentive to those breadwinners in families with very low wages to continue to stay in work and thereby forfeit their right to supplementary benefit rather than to stop work and move to a higher level of supplementary benefit out of work?
    Mrs. Hart: I am delighted to see that the hon. Gentleman, after such a short time in the House, has immediately perceived a point which I have been making in every debate on social security since I became Minister, namely, that the fundamental problem is that we have raised the level of social security payments, as it was necessary and right that we should, but that below that level there is a small minority whose wages do not match up to the level that the State guarantees. This is a very real problem and I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is aware of it.
    Mr. Hill: In last Friday's debate, the Minister said that she could not give these figures. Is it not a strong probability that the number has in fact increased? Could the Minister say whether proportionately it is a more serious problem in rural areas than in urban areas?
    Mrs. Hart: No, I do not think that it is. It naturally occurs more frequently in those regions and areas where wage levels tend to be low. If asked what I propose to do about it, this, of course, is tied up with the whole economy of the country. It is also linked with the
    1016
    degree to which trade unions and employers, in making wage agreements, succeed in establishing proportionately higher increases for the lower paid than for the better paid.
    Mr. Bidwell: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the application of the £15 a week minimum income will go a long way to rectify this situation, and that the employers could take some initiative in this regard?
    Mrs. Hart: I agree with my hon. Friend's last point. I think what is really encouraging is that during the last six or seven months there has been an increasing amount of discussion within and without the trade unions about this problem. To the extent that that is so, I am optimistic that we can look forward to what will inevitably be a gradual, steady improvement in the position of the low-wage earner compared with the high-wage earner.
    Mr. van Stranbenzeeasked the Minister of Social Security what steps she proposes to protect families with one child living below supplementary benefit level from the price increases following devaluation, in view of the fact that they will not be helped by current increases in family allowances.
    Mr. Loughlin: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Fortescue) on 8th April.—[Vol. 762, c. 876.]
    Mr. van Straubenzee: Did not that reply, which naturally I have in my mind, show how very indiscriminate and unselective are increases in family allowance payments right across the board and, therefore, that they do not help an identifiable group which could, under other circumstances, be more effectively helped?
    Mr. Loughlin: I am not too sure whether the hon. Gentleman is now complaining that we are increasing supplementary benefits. If so, that is not the question which he put on the Order Paper. I have a great deal of sympathy with a number of families with one child. As my right hon. Friend said in a recent debate, the only way that we can see of assisting these families is through free school meals and rent and rates rebates.

    1017
    I do not think that it is possible to include them in the family allowances scheme.
    Mr. Barnesasked the Minister of Social Security when she intends to launch the general entitlement campaign to ensure that low-income families are aware of the various forms of help available to them which she is planning.
    Mr. Hooleyasked the Minister of Social Security why the campaign to inform low-paid workers of their rights to exemption from prescription charges has been deferred; and when it will take place.
    Mrs. Hart: It is starting this month.
    Mr. Barnes: Can my right hon. Friend give an assurance that in addition to the very large numbers of leaflets which she has had printed she will also use the Press, radio and television to try to motivate people to get benefits if they are qualified for them?
    Mrs. Hart: I am considering this in the hope that it will be possible to use this campaign not only for the purpose of ensuring that people have the benefits to which they are entitled but to try to indicate the type of response people have to different approaches of this kind. That, I think, in itself would be a rather useful exercise.
    Mr. Hooley: Will my right hon. Friend make sure that information is also broadcast firmly to those people—such as Members of Parliament, councillors and social workers—who are called upon to advise people about these proceedings?
    Mrs. Hart: Yes, indeed. I shall be writing to Members of Parliament concerned—[HON. MEMBERS: "All of us."] —in the first stage of the exercise, and also to the local authorities. This is a matter of stages. The campaign is beginning this month, and certainly, as hon. Members are affected, I shall be communicating with them because I think they can give enormously valuable help.
    Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Will the right hon. Lady write to all Members of Parliament, first of all, and bearing in mind particularly the agricultural areas, lay special emphasis on using local Press and television for people living in remote coun-
    1018
    try areas, so that they may be made aware of the benefits available to them?
    Mrs. Hart: Yes, indeed. There is a particular job which the local Press, radio and television can do here. Because of the complexity of the various means-tested benefits in local areas, my leaflet cannot tell everybody wanting assistance what level of income he would have to have to get a particular local benefit. Some amplification of my leaflet could very usefully be done by local agencies, and I shall certainly consider that.

    Disabled Persons (Wage Stop)
    Mr. van Straubenzeeasked the Minister of Social Security how many disabled persons have been helped so far by her Department's recommendations on the administration of the wage stop that the requirement to register for work could be removed and with it the obligation to apply the wage stop.
    Mrs. Hart: I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) on 11th June on this subject. Disabled claimants subject to the wage stop have, of course, benefited very considerably from the decisions of the Commission already implemented, and from the increases in family allowances—[Vol. 766, c. 24.]
    Mr. van Srraubenzee: While I appreciate the Answer previously given, may I ask whether the right hon. Lady, particularly after her experiences yesterday, does not appreciate that this Question deals with only a small section of those to whom she was addressing her remarks? Does not she feel that the suggestion made in the Question would, if quickly implemented, be of real effect to a large number of disabled people?
    Mrs. Hart: Yes, I think that it will. We certainly intend to implement it as quickly as we can. What the hon. Member does not, perhaps, appreciate is that every disabled case on the wage stop has to be examined individually by a member of my staff in consultation with the Department of Employment and Productivity and, perhaps, with the local authority. It is bound to take time simply to work one's way through the number of cases, but the process is now going on as fast as we can conduct it.

    Additional Contributions (Pensions)
    Mr. J. E. B. Hillasked the Minister of Social Security whether she will seek to increase the increment in pensions received after retirement due to additional contributions paid after retirement age by those who continue in work, to an actuarial level.
    Mr. Pentland: No, Sir. Increments are complementary to the retirement condition and are not solely an actuarial matter.
    Mr. Hill: If it is the Government's policy to encourage people to continue in work after reaching normal retirement age, is it not markedly inequitable that they should receive less than their actuarial entitlement later on? Does that happen in any other part of the pensions provision?
    Mr. Pentland: The opportunity to earn increments has never been one of the major factors influencing decisions to defer retirement until after pension age. The financial attraction of earning, the ability and, in many parts of the country, the opportunity to continue at work are much more important

    Pensions (Payment)
    Mr. Worsleyasked the Minister of Social Security whether she will make arrangements for retirement pensions to be paid during the first week of entitlement irrespective of the pension pay day.
    Mr. Moyleasked the Minister of Social Security whether she will consider amending the National Insurance (Claims and Payments) Regulations (S.I. 1948, No. 1041) to provide more flexibility in the payment of the first instalment of a widow's pension.
    Mr. Loughlin: The present system of weekly payments normally provides a payment of a week's benefit within at most a week of death or retirement, as the case may be, and links naturally with the customary methods of paying wages.
    Mr. Worsley: Will not the hon. Gentleman appreciate that the present rules have the curious effect in some cases of depriving a person at a very difficult time of nearly a week's benefit? Would it not be worth looking at this again?
    Mr. Loaghlin: That is news to me. I had not seen that aspect. There is a week's delay in payment of benefit, but there is no depriving of the applicant of the benefit to which he or she is entitled.

    Supplementary Benefits (Claimant)
    Mr. Evelyn Kingasked the Minister of Social Security on how many occasions, and on what date, a 38-year-old bachelor, whose name has been supplied to her, has obtained supplementary benefit at Bristol, Yeovil, Truro, Bournemouth and Weymouth; what is the total amount he has received; and on how many occasions he has been gainfully employed.
    Mr. Pentland: Since 1959, this man has made 47 claims and has received payments of National Assistance or supplementary benefit amounting to £130 14s. in all. Of this sum, £82 3s. has been paid since 27th February, 1968, at the offices named. In spite of a long history of mental disturbance he had a fair work record until the beginning of 1967, since when he has worked for a few weeks in the spring and one day in August of that year.
    Mr. King: Is not this case of a man of 38, with no family responsibilities, wandering from resort to resort along the South Coast and living on taxpayers' money, something of an abuse of the generosity of the Minister?
    Mr. Pentland: Surely, the hon. Member will be fully aware of this case. The man in question is mentally disturbed. He has had to live rough many times. Indeed, we think that he has always claimed when he has been entitled to do so. Apart from short periods—and this has been when he has been living rough —he has had his full entitlement whenever he has claimed. I might add that the people in our offices have done everything possible for this man.
    Mr. Winnick: Is my hon. Friend aware that many of us, certainly on this side, consider it somewhat mean and spiteful for this case to be brought to the Floor of the House in view of the mental disturbance from which this person obviously suffers and of which we have now been informed by the Joint Parliamentary Secretary?
    Mr. Pentland: I agree with my hon. Friend. I thought, in anticipation of the Question, that the hon. Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Evelyn King) would compliment our officers on what they have done for this man.
    Hon. Members: Withdraw.
    Mr. King: On a point of order. May I explain, Mr. Speaker, that I asked the office and was not informed of the mental disturbance? Had I been so informed, the Question would not have been put down.

    Pensions (Excluded Persons)
    Mr. Tapsellasked the Minister of Social Security whether she will take steps to give pension as of right to those persons over 80 years of age excluded in the National Insurance Scheme when it started in 1948, when she raises the supplementary benefit levels this autumn.
    Mr. Pentland: No, Sir, because the supplementary benefits scheme provides a supplementary pension for those who need one.
    Mr. Tapsell: As this is a small and, by the nature of things, a rapidly diminishing group of people, nearly half of whom are already drawing supplementary benefits, would it not be both administratively simpler and socially welcome if they could be given some pension as of right?
    Mr. Pentland: They can have supplementary benefit as of right, as agreed by Parliament. I draw the hon. Member's attention to the fact that 70.000 of the group of non-pensioners about whom he is concerned are already drawing supplementary pension and that the increased rates which will come into force in the autumn will also extend those benefits even to some who are at present not able to receive supplementary benefit.

    Unemployed Persons (Earnings and Pensions)
    Mr. Donald Williamsasked the Minister of Social Security what steps she plans to take to prevent an unemployed person receiving more in social security payments than he could reasonably expect to earn in his own district.
    Mrs. Hart: Improvement of family allowances, which are paid whether a man is in work or not, and the corres-
    1022
    ponding reduction of National Insurance children's allowances, which are paid when a man is unemployed, have already eased the position and the process will be taken a step further with the changes due in October. Supplementary benefit payments are already restricted, where necessary, so that a person's income is no greater than it would be if he were working full time in his normal occupation.
    Mr. Williams: In thanking the right hon. Lady for her Answer to this and previous Questions on the subject, may I ask whether she would not agree with and stress the importance of a man being in employment and also ensure that incentives will be given to such people to go out and get work?
    Mrs. Hart: It is because this is very much in our minds that it is important that the increases in family allowances themselves improve the relative position very considerably.
    Mr. Gwilym Roberts: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that the responsibility here lies largely with employers who are paying too low salaries for employment? Would not my right hon. Friend accept that the situation which applies in this Question and also in Question No. 15 will continue to arise to some extent until we have a form of something like negative Income Tax?
    Mrs. Hart: No, I would not agree entirely with the conclusion drawn by my hon. Friend towards the end of that question. A number of very difficult problems are involved in the concept of negative Income Tax, some of which can be answered and some of which it is difficult to answer. It is, however, true that low wage earners tend to consist, in part at least, of wage earners in occupations which have traditionally been paid very low wages. There are also special problems such as those of the partly disabled and the disabled worker. These are separate problems requiring separate attention.

    Supplementary Benefits (Costs)
    Mr. Donald Williamsasked the Minister of Social Security how much the last increase in supplementary benefits cost in the first full year; and how much the previous increase cost.
    Mr. Pentland: The increase in supplementary benefits in October, 1967, would have cost about £40 million in a full year taken by itself, but as there was a larger increase in National Insurance benefits at the same time, there was a net saving of £23 million. The wide-ranging improvements introduced in November, 1966, when the supplementary benefit scheme replaced National Assistance, are estimated to have cost in all about £80 million in the first full year, including the payments made to the large number of claimants attracted by the new scheme.
    Mr. Williams: Would not the Minister agree that, having pledged himself to help the poorest people in the community, these additional benefits have been lost through inflation?
    Mr. Pentland: No, they have not been lost at all. I advise the hon. Member to read last Friday morning's debate, in which he will find an ample answer.

    Deserted Wives
    Mr. Biggs-Davisonasked the Minister of Social Security whether she will consider giving some National Insurance benefit to deserted wives in her Social Security Review.
    Mrs. Hart: Under the National Insurance Scheme, a deserted wife retains her right to retirement pension and widow's benefit on her husband's insurance, and the husband, when sick or unemployed, can receive dependency benefit for her provided he contributes to her support. Apart from this, State provision for deserted wives is through the supplementary benefit scheme. To have National Insurance benefit for this purpose would involve considerable difficulties.
    Mr. Biggs-Davison: Does not the right hon. Lady, on reflection, think that desertion ought to be recognised as an insurance risk? What would be the approximate numbers and cost involved in carrying out this proposal?
    Mrs. Hart: I must confess to the hon. Member that the same thought has passed through my mind. I will not deny it. It is not so much the cost, it is the sheer difficulty of this. For example, how would one define desertion? What account would one take of the support a wife was continuing to get from her
    1024
    husband? These are the kinds of difficulties which have led me so far to suppose that we are probably still right to regard the supplementary benefit scheme as being the best and most flexible method of helping deserted wives.
    Lord Balniel: Yes, but would the right hon. Lady agree that the whole position of women in the social security system— deserted wives, widows, disabled housewives—should be given the very highest priority in the reconstruction of the scheme?
    Mrs. Hart: Yes, indeed I do. I have always taken the view, as one of my colleagues, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said, that social security is to a considerable extent about women, but I think that it does not necessarily follow that one must throw overboard the whole of the existing scheme. I think it means we have to look very closely at the provisions we have rather than replace them with something new.
    Mr. Molloy: Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that at least she will move very much more quickly than did the party opposite when it was in power? Would she examine the possibility of having legislation introduced which would make it easier to help wives to get maintenance from their husbands who make no effort to give it?
    Mrs. Hart: There has been a recent report from a Committee appointed by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on points connected with this. It is, of course, a question in which we are concerned simultaneously with the courts and with our social security system. There are a great many points here worth a great consideration—that I will certainly agree—but I am not yet convinced that we would be right, as we are asked in the Question to do, to replace the supplementary benefit scheme by insurance benefits.

    Chronic Sick and Elderly Persons
    Mr. Biggs-Davisonasked the Minister of Social Security whether she will give preferential help to the chronic sick and persons over 65 years of age when she raises the supplementary benefit levels in the autumn.
    Mr. Portland: Such claimants already receive, on top of the basic scale rate, a 9s. long-term addition and this is being increased by 1s. in the autumn.
    Mr. Biggs-Davison: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I am glad that my Question has proved unnecessary?

    Supplementary Benefit (Disregards)
    Mr. Goodhartasked the Minister of Social Security whether she will increase the amount of savings and income disregarded for the purposes of paying supplementary benefit when the rates are increased on 7th October this year.
    Mr. Pentland: No, Sir. This would benefit only those who are already living above the normal supplementary benefit level.
    Mr. Goodhart: Does the Minister appreciate that the sharp increase in prices following devaluation has fallen particularly heavily on those who are just above the supplementary benefit level because they still retain some small savings of their own?
    Mr. Pentland: Yes, but during the 18 years of the National Assistance scheme disregards were increased only once, and that was in 1959. We think, in general, it is better to improve the position of all recipients of supplementary benefit by increasing the rates of benefit.
    Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that one of the hardest hit sections of recipients is that of those who are not receiving ordinary pension— the people over the age of 80 whom we are talking about? Will he not look at the question again particularly with regard to them?
    Mr. Pentland: As I have already said, if these people come within the range of the supplementary benefits scheme, if they have a capital of £800, they will receive supplementary benefit, and in addition to that the Supplementary Benefits Commission has discretionary powers which it can apply in cases of dire need.

    Pensions (Entitlement)
    Mr. Montgomeryasked the Minister of Social Security what plans she has for ensuring that all persons entitled to pensions are informed of their rights.
    Mr. Pentland: A great deal of publicity and effort is directed by my Ministry to telling people about the benefits of the National Insurance Scheme, but the responsibility for ascertaining his rights must at the end of the day rest with the insured person.
    Mr. Montgomery: But does the Joint Parliamentary Secretary agree that those people still in work at retirement age are informed, while those people who retire earlier, possibly for health reasons, and who are, therefore, the needier cases, are not informed? Is there not some way in which the Ministry can do something to tell those people they are entitled to pension, if pension is due?
    Mr. Pentland: We do everything possible to do this. The hon. Gentleman will not have overlooked the fact that the Ministry has a very large number of local offices to help people with inquiries, and there is also a comprehensive leaflet, about retirement pension in particular, which is available from our local offices.

    Benefits (Payment)
    Mr. Montgomeryasked the Minister of Social Security what plans she has for altering the provision in the National Insurance Act, 1965, which prevents payment of benefit in respect of any period more than six months before the claim is made.
    Mr. Pentland: The National Insurance Advisory Committee has recommended an extension of this and related time limits to 12 months. My right hon. Friend has accepted the Committee's recommendations and will implement them as soon as there is an opportunity of doing so.
    Mr. Montgomery: But does not the Joint Parliamentary Secretary feel that this is a fraud? He knows a case I have brought to his attention, that of the lady who lost pension for four years nine months—a pension which she paid in for. Why do we have this silly regulation? Surely the Ministry should pay her the full amount?
    Mr. Pentland: No. We fully debated the case of the hon. Gentleman's constituent, with whom he is concerned, in an Adjournment debate to which I replied only recently. The National Insurance Advisory Committee pointed out in its

    1027
    Report that absolute time limits are necessary both to avoid making nonsense of the initial time limits for claiming, and to avoid wasteful administrative expense.
    Mr. Worsley: Will the hon. Gentleman look at this in a rather more generous way? Is he not aware of these cases of real hardship, particularly of separated wives who do not know of their husbands' death, or something of that sort? Would he look at it again?
    Mr. Pentland: The hon. Gentleman knows full well that the National Insurance Advisory Committee has looked at this and made recommendations only a few months ago, and my right hon. Friend has said she will accept the recommendations.

    Large Families
    Mr. Goodhartasked the Minister of Social Security what proposals she has under consideration for reducing the payment of benefits to the parents of large families.
    Mrs. Hart: None, Sir.
    Mr. Goodhart: Will the Minister now categorically dissociate herself from the sterile speeches, made by her own Parliamentary Private Secretary and also the Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, in which they suggested that the raising of large families is anti-social behaviour?
    Mrs. Hart: In fact, the hon. Gentleman may not know that on 4th July, after my right hon. Friend's speech, my own Ministry issued a Press statement in which we said that my right hon. Friend was certainly speaking for himself, and the Government took the view that the size of a family is certainly a private and personal matter. This, therefore, is my view. I believe myself that we are still a very considerable way from the horrors of 1984.

    Prescription Charges
    Mr. Pavittasked the Minister of Social Security in what circumstances rent is not allowed in full in assessing the requirements of an applicant for exemption from prescription charges on grounds of low income.
    Mr. Molloyasked the Minister of Social Security whether rate rebates are taken into account in assessing the requirements of an applicant for exemption from prescription charges on grounds of low income.
    Mrs. Hart: Where there are other people living with the applicant but not dependent on him the rent will be treated as being reduced by their proportionate share. In all other cases the net rent is allowed in full. Rate rebates are taken into account indirectly, in that the net rent is taken as the amount of rent or rates actually paid by the claimant.
    Mr. Pavitt: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that in areas like my constituency, where there is a shortage of housing and rents are abnormally high, it is very difficult to make an assessment for children living in the same house? Will she bear this family consideration in mind?
    Mrs. Hart: I think that we do pay particular regard to the rental in relation to the particular housing circumstances of the area. I am quite certain that all my local officers will give the most sympathetic consideration to any specific difficulties that may arise in any of these cases.
    Mr. Molloy: Will my right hon. Friend also consider that the very fact that there are people who are entitled to rent rebates means that they then suffer another form of disquiet because they feel that if they get a rent rebate their right to a free prescription may be cancelled; that this is going much too far, and that the most sensible thing she can do is to get in touch with her right hon. Friend the Minister of Health and get prescription charges abolished?
    Mrs. Hart: I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern, but another point that arises is one on which I have just touched; the fact that we meet the difficulty of the variety of means-tested benefits there are as between local authority and Government. This pinpoints the need, of which the Government are already very well aware, to work on the possibilities of simplification that might arise in this field.
    Mr. Pavittasked the Minister of Social Security what amount is allowed

    1029
    for prescription charges in assessing the requirements of an applicant for exemption from prescription charges on grounds of low income.
    Mrs. Hart: The charge for one item. This shows whether, by standards laid down in the Regulations made by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, the claimant can afford to meet the minimum charge in a week. If it shows that he cannot afford this, a certificate is issued authorising him and his dependants to claim exemption from all charges for a period of up to three months.
    Mr. Pavitt: Is not this inadequate? Is it not possible that even the 2s. 6d. may be too much in certain circumstances? With a "season ticket" of 30s. will there be a restriction to a total not exceeding this sum on the number of prescriptions allowed?
    Mrs. Hart: I am afraid that this has nothing to do with the particular aspect my hon. Friend raises. The point is simply that only one item is required in order to assess people in terms of exemption on grounds of low income. It has nothing to do with exemption on grounds of chronic sickness or with the special arrangements that are being made for people who, though not categorised as chronic sick nevertheless need a number of prescriptions over a given period.
    Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Is it not clear from the Questions and Answers that this whole scheme has gone completely haywire? Will the right hon. Lady not look at the whole thing again, and consult her right hon. Friend the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister in order to bring in a scheme that is viable and works properly without all these endless complications?
    Mrs. Hart: I would say to the hon. Gentleman that the scheme we are now operating certainly bears infinitely less hardly on those who need help than did the scheme operated by his Government.
    Mr. Hooleyasked the Minister of Society Security whether she will publish the instructions issued to local officers of her Department regarding the administration of the prescription charge scheme.
    Mrs. Hart: In my view, no useful purpose would be served by the publication
    1030
    of these instructions. Particulars of the way in which claims for exemptions from prescription charges on grounds of low income are assessed are available in the guide and claim form P.C.11, which can be obtained from any post office or local office of my Ministry. My local officers are available to give guidance in any particular case.
    Mr. Hooley: Is it not a fact that my right hon. Friend is considering publishing what I believe is called the A Code; in other words, a code of instructions for the general administration of benefits? Would it not therefore be appropriate to publish some information about the way in which this very important form of exemption is to be handled?
    Mrs. Hart: The question of the publication of the A Code is very different; the Supplementary Benefits Commission is certainly concerned to look at the possibility of publishing something which will explain the principles on which it exercises all its discretionary powers, Exemption from prescription charges is relatively straightforward and there is hardly anything to add to the details which already exist on the claim form which is obtainable by any member of the public.
    Mr. Lipton: Does not my right hon. Friend now realise that in all quarters of the House and everywhere in the country this whole business of prescription charges is now regarded as a complicated fiasco? As the savings will be quite negligible, has not the time already come for the whole wretched business to be abandoned?
    Mrs. Hart: If my hon. Friend were as aware as I am of the extent to which people in advance of having to pay prescription charges have claimed exemption in the first week of the operation of prescription charges on the ground of low income, I think that he would at least agree that what the Government have done is to introduce methods of administering prescription charges which really assist people on low incomes infinitely more than was the case previously.
    Mr. Molloyasked the Minister of Social Security whether annual bonuses

    1031
    are taken into account in assessing entitlement to exemption from prescription charges on ground of low income.
    Mr. Loughlin: Annual bonuses will fall to be taken into account only in so far as they affect the claimant's current circumstances.
    Mr. Molloy: Is it not now patently evident that as the years go on all these special schemes of special exemptions, though reflecting the good will of the Government to try to be fair, will be much more expensive than would be the case if she took the decision now to urge her right hon. Friend the Minister of Health to abolish the whole principle of charges for prescriptions?
    Mr. Loughlin: I cannot very well see how the question of annual bonuses will increase the cost to the extent of discrediting the scheme.
    Mr. Bidwellasked the Minister of Social Security how many applications for exemption from prescription charges have been received; and how many exemption certificates have been issued by her Department.
    Mrs. Hart: I assume that my hon. Friend's Question refers to applications for exemption from charges on grounds of hardship. In the period from 10th June to 18th June—the latest date for which figures are available—nearly 5,000 applications on these grounds were received, and just over 2,000 exemption certificates were issued. Of these successful applicants only 362 also required refunds. This suggests that of the applicants so far, most have claimed in advance of ever having to pay a charge.
    Mr. Bidwell: Is my right hon. Friend not aware that there are lots of poor paid workers who, if the onus is fragmentary, do not feel that they can go for this kind of exemption? Is she aware that she is hitting people like this? Is she further aware that I have run out of inspiration and am full of exasperation, and will she now prevail on her right hon. Friend the Minister of Health to get rid of the nonsense altogether?
    Mrs. Hart: I am not absolutely clear whether my hon. Friends would prefer that a system had been introduced which did not provide for exemptions on low
    1032
    income grounds. The tenor of their remarks this afternoon seems to suggest that that is what they would prefer. If so, I can only disagree with them, because to do it in this way is not adding an undue complication to the whole machinery, and it does ensure that we can be a great deal fairer to people on low incomes than was the case when prescription charges were introduced by the previous Government.
    Mr. Lubbock: Does not the right hon. Lady agree that the small number of applications that have been received shows that many people entitled to exemption have not understood the scheme sufficiently well to make application? Has she not seen these figures, which show that a 25 per cent. to 30 per cent. drop has taken place in the number of prescriptions following the introduction of the new scheme, and does not this indicate that it has been very harmful indeed?
    Mrs. Hart: The figures I have refer to the very first week, because those are the latest figures we have. I find it an extremely encouraging figure in relation to the time there is available for people to apply before sickness begins to bear on them. The hon. Gentleman will realise that in most cases previously, since there were only applications for refunds, one could only measure the number of applications after people had become sick. These are the figures of people who have applied before going to their doctor.

    Pensioners (Cost of Living)
    Mr. Ridsdaleasked the Minister of Social Security whether she will make a further statement on the proposals to establish a cost of living index for retirement pensioners, and the effect it will have on present benefit rates.
    Mrs. Hart: Additional information about pensioner households will be welcome but, as the Cost of Living Advisory Committee itself noted in its report, prices are only one of several factors influencing the level of benefits. Over the last few years the growth in the level of the National Insurance retirement pension has so far exceeded the increase in the Retail Prices Index that the picture is not significantly altered by the Index

    1033
    figures for pensioner households calculated for the Advisory Committee.
    Mr. Ridsdale: When benefits were last raised, did the Minister take into consideration that retirement pensioners were being hit more than any other section by the cost of living?
    Mrs. Hart: Perhaps I can amplify a little what I have just said. When benefits have been raised by this Government, not only has a rise in prices been taken into account but an effort has been made to increase the real value of pensions. So successful have those efforts been that, far from merely increasing the benefits in terms of rises in prices, we have actually increased the real value of pensions and other benefits by 20 per cent. between October, 1964 and September, 1967.

  TECHNOLOGY

    European Airbus
    Mr. Hastingsasked the Minister of Technology whether he will make a statement on the progress on the European Airbus.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Technology (Mr. Gerry Fowler): The evaluation of the project is continuing, as planned, in preparation for an international Ministerial meeting later in the month.
    Mr. Hastings: Does not the Minister realise that that is not good enough and that reticence and indecision over this joint project is leading to inevitable failure? Had he not better consider building on the success of Rolls with the R.B.211, withdraw from this scheme, and finance a British project?
    Mr. Fowler: We are determined to go ahead with a commercially successful project, but not on a venture which would be merely political and not commercial. We hope that we shall be able to proceed with this project on a commercial basis, but we must allow proper time for evaluation and an agreed programme of Ministerial decision.
    Mr. Fortescue: What are the latest indications from Paris and Bonn as to the likelihood of the French and German Governments buying this aeroplane?
    Mr. Fowler: I think the hon. Gentleman is aware that the German Government have given every indication that they intend that their national airline should purchase this aeroplane if the project is completed successfully. There is no further indication I can give the hon. Member.
    Mr. Hastings: On a point of order. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

WORMWOOD SCRUBS (BOYS' WING)
Mr. Hogg(by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will make a statement about conditions in the boys' wing at Wormwood Scrubs.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. James Callaghan): The borstal allocation wing at Wormwood Scrubs has given concern for some time, for, like too many other parts of the penal system, it is overcrowded. Short-term improvements to the conditions are in hand, but no satisfactory long-term solution is possible other than by new building.
As to the specific complaints, it is not true that boys are continuously kept locked in their cells, unless they are undergoing punishment. There were 490 boys in the wing on Friday. There are four workshops and 227 boys were working in them. One hundred were undergoing allocation procedures, and a further 30 were engaged on cleaning parties. Three hundred and eighty have a cell to themselves.
The buildings are over 100 years old and obsolete. Although systematic re-decoration is a continuous process, it cannot overcome the basic defects.
I am examining the prospects of speeding up the transfer of boys to training borstals, although the House will recognise that this may cause a measure of overcrowding in these establishments. Reducing the population of the wing would also reduce the strain on the sewerage system. I am accelerating the programme for replacing beds and mattresses and for further redecorations.
Mr. Hogg: While we all recognise the difficulties about spending Government money in the present economic situation, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that this is a very disquieting report which he has given to the House? He can count on a great deal of support from all quarters, because we cannot allow our children, even when they are in need of discipline, to be subjected to degrading and insanitary conditions.
Mr. Callaghan: I think that the magistrates were fulfilling a public service in drawing attention to this, because public opinion is very fickle on these matters. I have no doubt that the whole of our prison system, which is obsolete and antiquated, needs a high system of priority. There is, I am glad to say, the largest programme of prison rebuilding going on now than at any time during the last century, but it is quite clear that we cannot overcome all the deficiencies in an obsolete system within a relatively short time.
This is a very discouraging state of affairs for those who are working in these buildings. This is a transit camp and those who have continually to work there are up against great difficulties. Nevertheless, they have reduced the population of this borstal from 700 in March, 1966, to 600 last July and 500 today. The staff has increased by 27 in that period from 145 to 172, but there is no solution to this problem short of rebuilding most of the prisons.
Mr. Shinwell: Can my right hon. Friend disclose to the House how long these facts have been known to him and his several predecessors over a period of years in order to avoid any misunderstanding or the making of political capital out of the problem? Is it not remarkable that publicity was not given to this deplorable affair until a body of visiting magistrates went to the prison?
Mr. Callaghan: I am constantly endeavouring to give publicity to this state of affairs. I have today invited a Press photographer and a reporter to go to Wormwood Scrubs to see the conditions for themselves, for I see no reason why any of these conditions should be hidden from the public. This has been a situation which has persisted over generations.
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Only within the last six or seven years has any attempt been made to overcome the deficiencies which exist.
Perhaps I may say that a new borstal will be opened at Olney this year. Complete rebuilding is going on at Portland Borstal and Dover Borstal and substantial extensions to Hollesley Bay Colony next year. There are further plans in hand, but they cannot begin to overcome the deficiencies which have mounted over several decades.
Mr. Deedes: Further to the questions and answers which have taken place, is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that the Select Committee investigated very fully the whole of this disquieting state of affairs and reported on it in full detail to the House a year ago, and that that Report was ignored? Will he give his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House a nudge and remind him that sometimes it is a good thing for the House to take note of what Select Committees tell the House?
Mr. Callaghan: It is quite untrue that the Report was ignored. The Government have been battling against constant pressure from the Opposition to reduce public expenditure within the allocation of resources. I ask hon. Members to think what would take priority between a new school and a new borstal. When it is a question of priority the House must accept responsibility for this situation. We only wake up—although some of us tried to get continuous publicity for it—when a newspaper and visiting magistrates suddenly say that here is a situation which has become intolerable. I want to do my best to bring everybody's attention to bear on these conditions.
Mr. Grimond: Is it necessary to have an institution of this sort more or less in the middle of London? If this is an urgent matter, could a temporary solution not be found by asking the Royal Engineers to adapt buildings outside London, or by using temporary camps for these boys?
Mr. Callaghan: The staff at the Home Office have considered these various alternatives over a period, but a lot of these boys need special treatment and special care. It is not easy to build camps. I have considered whether they

1037
could go into open camps and that kind of thing. We are getting some help by permitting a greater degree of overcrowding—I say this candidly to the House—in some of the other borstals.
Those of us who went through transit camps in the last war know the filthy places they are and in some respects Wormwood Scrubs is a transit camp. We have to speed the through-put of boys in this institution, but that is not just as easy as putting them into camps, because a lot of them need very special care and attention and discipline.
Mr. Oakes: Has my right hon. Friend looked at the other allocation centre at Strangeways, Manchester, to see whether the conditions there are as bad? Would he agree that it is wrong for anyone sent for borstal training to set foot in a prison, because that innoculates him against prison life?
Mr. Callaghan: Yes. I can assure the House—although I do not think that hon. Members need this assurance—that we do not have to wait for Private Notice Questions for these matters to be brought constantly under review. The allocation centre at Manchester accommodates rather fewer than 300. If I had to make a judgment between that and the Scrubs, I think that I would say that it is rather better than the Scrubs. That is not to say that it is perfect by any means.
In the long term, resources must be made available. If people want public expenditure to be devoted to these buildings, there are plans for rebuilding both allocation centres, both the Scrubs and that at Manchester. But they must take their place against the background of a great many other objectives in the prison service as a whole which will have to be ranged in order of priority.
Mr. Hogg: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that I did not ask this Private Notice Question to subject him to any form of pillory, but precisely because I realised that it is so difficult to get priority for prison building as it is for other things which we all want, such as schools and hospitals? Will he none the less accept from me that he will get support from this side of the House if he presses his colleagues in this matter?
Mr. Callaghan: I acknowledge the spirit in which the Question was asked,
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and I hope that I have not implied anything else, but I am bound to say that the House is always in favour of particular types of expenditure but never in favour of expenditure in general. The Cabinet has to discuss these matters as a whole. I am very glad indeed that the magistrates, the right hon. and learned Gentleman and public opinion are focusing upon these issues.
Mr. W. T. Williams: Bearing in mind the run-down in the defence commitments of the country, has my right hon. Friend considered the possibility of transferring some of these boys to what may become disused Service camps, as that might overcome some of the difficulty?
Mr. Callaghan: I fear that that would not be a satisfactory solution. There is no overcrowding in the normal borstals. It is a particular type of borstal for particular types of boys who need special care that is required here. That is the difficulty which is causing the overcrowding. But I certainly accept my hon. and learned Friend's suggestion. If there is any way in which it is possible to use any Service camps, perhaps for some of the boys who do not need special care and attention, I will gladly look at that possibility.
Mr. Sharples: Would the right hon. Gentleman say whether any boys sentenced to borstal training have undergone the whole of their sentence at Wormwood Scrubs? In view of the long-term prisoners there, does he feel that Wormwood Scrubs is a suitable place for these boys?
Mr. Callaghan: Without notice, I could not swear that no boy has ever completed his sentence there, but I think it an extremely unlikely occurrence. The average boy spends about three weeks to a month there, and boys are committed for minimum periods of six months. Some boys may spend a little longer there than others in rather difficult cases.
I do not think that Wormwood Scrubs is suitable as a prison for anybody. The boys' wing is entirely separated physically from the rest of the prison. Lord Ston-ham has been there this morning, and I have looked at it from time to time.
Mr. Woodburn: Would my right hon. Friend consider relieving the pressure on these places by trying to find out how

1039
many of the boys in borstal have reached a point at which they could be paroled, thus taking some of them out of borstal on parole and leaving room for some of the boys at the other end of their sentences?
Mr. Callaghan: I doubt whether there is much to be gained from that. Pressure is constantly on the governors of borstals to release boys to avoid such overcrowding as that at Wormwood Scrubs. Governors at borstals would probably protest that they are being pushed to release boys rather too quickly at the moment, when they would rather keep them in for a longer time—pushed, perhaps, because we are trying to keep down the population at Wormwood Scrubs.
Mr. Gresham Cooke: Would the right hon. Gentleman also look at the remand home at Ashford, because the Estimates Committee was worried about that? Boys are kept there under lock and key for some time. In any event, does he not agree that we should have a debate on prisons, borstals and remand homes in the near future?
Mr. Callaghan: The hon. Member well illustrates the point when he refers to Ashford. Wormwood Scrubs is, alas, not the only institution where there is overcrowding, or where the conditions are not satisfactory.
The hon. Member asks for a debate on this subject. I have very vivid recollections of the House refusing time for a debate which could have carried on from 7 p.m. I was sitting here waiting to put these problems before the House, but hon. Members declined to have the debate.
Mr. Pavitt: Would my right hon. Friend make every attempt, in his review, to take the borstal away from the precincts of the Scrubs? It causes a certain amount of distress among mothers in the area, for, when these boys are placed on remand in the Scrubs, to them the Scrubs has only one meaning—not a borstal, but a prison.
Mr. Callaghan: If that is the desire of some hon. Members, I will look at
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that proposition again, but the problem has been considered more than once to see whether we could get the boys out of Wormwood Scrubs. So far, I have not been able to find a satisfactory alternative. I will certainly continue to look.
Mr. Kenneth Baker: I believe that the Home Secretary is aware that most of the prison officers working in Wormwood Scrubs are my constituents. Does he not agree that they have complained about these conditions and that they find the conditions just as repugnant as do the offenders? In particular, does he not agree that the Scrubs is quite the wrong sort of prison for any young offenders, even for a week?
Mr. Callaghan: We can all go on complaining about these matters. Indeed, I think that I have covered both the points which the hon. Member made. The question is whether we shall find the resources in order to put them right. I have a record amount of expenditure allocated to me this year for these purposes, but I do not think that we can necessarily pick out the Scrubs in advance of other priorities. I do not think that the House can settle on one institution and say that that is the only one which needs attention. We ought to see all the institutions with which we are concerned and then we could make up our minds between priorities, as I have to do.
Mr. Emrys Hughes: As an old boy of Wormwood Scrubs 50 years ago, may I ask the Home Secretary whether he does not agree that the place has become more intolerable since then? Is he aware that we expect him to liquidate the place, and to hurry along with greater speed than that with which we are trying to dismantle Dartmoor?
Mr. Callaghan: If all the old lags turned out as well as my hon. Friend, there would be a case for continuing it. But my recollection does not go back to the time when he was there.
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Greenwood. Statement.

FLOODS
The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Anthony Greenwood): I should like to make a further statement about the floods.
At my request, the Joint Parliamentary Secretary made a tour of the South West on Friday. He found that the local authorities had gone into action with commendable speed and had the situation well under control. Police and firemen, working very long hours, have made a sterling contribution.
The Army has given invaluable help in the restoration of road communications. The emergency bridge at Fenny Bridges was opened yesterday. A bridge at Marsh on the A303 was opened this morning—a day earlier than expected— and the bridge at Pensford on the A37 was also opened this morning to one lane of traffic. All major routes are now open —a remarkable achievement. The A.A. and the R.A.C. have ably assisted the police in traffic control.
In all the welfare work which has been necessary, the W.R.V.S. and other voluntary organisations have been of great help. They were first alerted in the small hours of Thursday morning and responded as once.
The R.A.F. has supplied equipment for drying out houses. The Home Office has made available Civil Defence equipment.
River authorities' flood warning arrangements were generally effective. But there is great difficulty in working out a reliable warning system for very small catchment areas.
In the South West, about 3,500 houses —about 1,650 in Bristol—have been affected; about 150 families have been rehoused. Water supplies have been maintained, but in Bath householders have been advised to boil drinking water.
In the East and West Midlands, the damage, though less serious than in the South West, was severe in some areas. Five hundred houses in Leicester have had to be dried out.
There will be many cases of personal hardship and a number of flood relief appeal funds have already been set up. The Government welcome this initiative and as on similar previous occasions will be pre-
1042
pared to contribute generously to these— and to any other bona fide relief funds which are set up for the purpose—as soon as the extent of the need has been determined. Parliament will be asked to sanction this expenditure by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government by means of a Supplementary Estimate, to be presented in due course. In the meantime, the money will be advanced from the Civil Contingencies Fund.
So far as local authorities' losses are concerned, sympathetic consideration will be given to assistance in the light of the scale of the damage, the availability of specific grants, and insurance cover and the extent of local resources.
I understand from my right hon. Friend the Minister of Social Security that officers of the Supplementary Benefits Commission of the Ministry of Social Security are co-operating with local authorities in ensuring that needs for food and clothing are met and in visiting damaged homes to provide for the replacement of essential household items.
I am sure that the House would wish to join me in congratulating the local authorities and all who have co-operated with them, and in again expressing sympathy with the relatives of those who lost their lives and with all who have suffered from these floods.
Mr. Rippon: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the whole House will join him in expressing appreciation of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary's visit and of the work done by local authorities, the Services, voluntary organisations, and workers in relieving hardship and mitigating damage?
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that floods of this kind appear to have been rather more frequent in the West than in other parts of the country during recent years and to have wreaked far greater damage and caused much loss of life and damage to property? Does he contemplate any action to prevent damage on this scale happening again in the future, whether by setting up special machinery, or otherwise?
Finally, will he give the House an assurance that he will bring heavy pressure to bear on the Treasury to ensure that his promise of sympathetic consideration and financial support is turned into effective action as speedily as possible?
Mr. Greenwood: It is always a pleasure to put pressure on the Treasury.
The first part of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's question raises a very important issue. The river boards and local authorities have regular meetings with the Ministry of Agriculture, and a great deal of attention is paid to securing that there is an adequate early warning system. On the whole, on this occasion it seems to have worked well, although in one case it did not work out effectively, but this is something which I shall call to the attention of my right hon. Friend.
Dr. John Dunwoody: May I assure my right hon. Friend that his statement will be widely welcomed in the West Country? Can he go further and assure the House that tourist traffic should now be able to travel freely in and out of the region, and that it is unnecessary, and indeed foolish, for anyone to change his holiday plans?
Mr. Greenwood: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for having put that supplementary question. I agree completely with what he said. I think that anyone would be most ill-advised if he was dissuaded from going to the West Country because of these events. The West Country has had other blows in the past. It depends to a large extent on its tourist industry, and I hope that the public will bear that in mind in deciding where they will go for their holidays.
Dame Joan Vickers: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether compensation will be paid to farmers for the loss of some of their crops, and whether he will ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to remit the payment of S.E.T. by hotels which have been badly hit?
Mr. Greenwood: I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will note the second half of the hon. Lady's question.
Farmers who suffer personal distress will be eligible for the same treatment as other people in the same situation. I am happy to tell the House that my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture is going to the West Country tomorrow to get a proper assessment of the scale of the damage to agriculture of the area.
Mr. Ellis: Will my right hon. Friend consult the local authority in Bristol and give it some advice on how to dispose of goods which may or may not have been damaged by the floods? Would he also ask the local authority to try to sort out goods which have been damaged from those which have not? The tip in the news is in my constituency. As I understand, there was no consultation with the police, and we have had some rather regrettable incidents there. The matter ought to be looked into a little carefully.
Mr. Greenwood: I think that everybody must have been extremely disquieted at some of the pictures on television last night of people scrambling to get materials and foodstuffs salvaged from the floods. If the City of Bristol needs advice, the principal regional officer of the Minister of Housing and Local Government is situated in Bristol and is always ready and available to help any local authority, whether Bristol or any other, in the area.
Mr. Dean: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we in North Somerset much appreciate the visit on Friday of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary? We are also very grateful to the Armed Services for the speedy help they have given us. The right hon. Gentleman said that in the stricken areas we are doing all we can to help ourselves. We in North Somerset have set up a number of local funds to give immediate assistance. Perhaps I might ask the right hon. Gentleman two questions. First, what assistance is he going to give to local funds? Will he tell us the details as soon as possible? Secondly, can he let the local authorities in the stricken areas know, so that they realise what information he requires so that Government assistance which we shall undoubtedly need can come as speedily as possible?
Mr. Greenwood: I expect local authorities will be in touch with me fairly soon and will let me know the extent of the damage which they have suffered.
With regard to the flood relief appeal funds to which the hon. Gentleman referred—and I appreciate his keen interest in this problem—I do not think I can go further than say that we will, as on similar previous occasions, be

1045
generous in our contribution, and we hope that the public, too, will be generous in their response.
Mr. Michael Foot: Can my right hon. Friend say what happens in a case such as that which occurred in parts of my constituency where the damage may be very extensive to some householders, but where it may not be on such an extensive scale as to make necessary the establishment of a flood relief fund? How does the householder who may have suffered hundreds of pounds worth of damage in such circumstances make his application—through the council, and, if so, does the council make it to the Government?
Mr. Greenwood: I think that the best way is for the constituent affected in that way to get in touch with the local authority, and no doubt my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales will be informed by the local authority.
Mr. Pardoe: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the West Country is profoundly thankful to those who have involved themselves in the rescue and salvage operations? Is he aware that there seems to be some difference between those areas which had remote control rain gauges fixed in the catchment areas and those which did not? After all this has died down, will the right hon. Gentleman issue a leaflet to indicate how effective this has been?
Can the right hon. Gentleman also say whether, when the inspection of bridges is carried out, not only is the soundness of the bridge tested, but an estimate is made of how much water can be allowed through?
Finally, will the right hon. Gentleman, with all the authority of his Department, assure the potential tourist that the West Country has had all the rain it can possibly have in one year, and that from now on it is sunshine all the way?
Mr. Greenwood: I know that the House will welcome the hon. Gentleman's last remark. When we remember that in one valley 7 inches of rain fell in as short a time as seven hours, we realise the magnitude of the task with which local authorities and river boards had to contend.
I think that I am right in saying that the question of remote control gauges is
1046
a matter for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, and I shall talk to him about that. As I understand, the system worked reasonably well, but the area which was most badly affected was one where there were not the remote control gauges to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
The question of bridges is entirely a matter for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport, who holds the hon. Gentleman in high esteem and will, no doubt, have noted everything he said.
Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: The right hon. Gentleman thanked the W.R.V.S. Does not the whole tenor of his answer show that a wider voluntary body would be desirable on a permanent basis to replace the work of this kind done in the past by Civil Defence?
Mr. Greenwood: I mentioned the W.R.V.S. and other voluntary bodies. There is no evidence to suggest that the existing services and voluntary bodies cannot cope with situations like this. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary sees no reason to change his view that the retention of the Civil Defence primarily or solely for the purpose of dealing with peacetime disasters would not be justified.
Mr. Emery: Will the right hon. Gentleman consult his right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport to ensure that the permanent rebuilding of bridges on certain roads is done above flood level in order to obtain major improvements rather than a return to the status quo?
Would he consider whether the loss of crops on smallholdings, which is not normally compensated, but which in certain parts of Devon has been much the most serious financial loss, can in some way rank for compensation, either from the relief fund or from the Government?
Mr. Greenwood: My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport is on the Front Bench with me. He will have noted the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that bridges should be built above flood level.
The second part of the hon. Gentleman's question will be considered after my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has paid his visit

1047
to the West Country. It is obviously a most important consideration.
Mr. Peter Mills: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider advising the Ministry of Transport to make a thorough survey of vital bridges into the West Country, so that they can either be rebuilt when the money is available or temporary bridges can be laid alongside them in case of further emergencies?
Mr. Greenwood: I do not think that it is for me to advise my right hon. Friend on a point of that kind, but I am sure that he will have the matter under consideration.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)
Ordered,
That this day Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten o'clock.—[Mr. Peart.]

ORDERS OF THE DAY
  SUPPLY
  [26TH ALLOTTED DAY],—considered.

  SCOTTISH REGIMENTS (FUTURE)
  4.2 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Noble: I beg to move,
  That this House deplores the decision to abolish Scottish units announced in Command Paper No. 3701.
  Mr. Speaker: May I announce that I have not selected either the Amendment in the name of the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), in line 1, leave out from 'House' to end and add:
  'congratulates Her Majesty's Government on following the precedent set by previous Governments in abolishing Scottish units'.
  or the Amendment in the names of the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. James Davidson) and his hon. Friends, in line 1, leave out from 'House' to end and add:
  'whilst accepting the need to reduce the total strength of United Kingdom regular army units towards a level of approximately 150,000 men, urges that, because of their potential for recruitment and service in civil emergency, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and other territorially based units which are to be abolished should be retained as reserve formations'.
  This does not prevent the points of view expressed in the Amendments, together with other points of view, being expressed in the debate.
  Mr. Noble: My speech today, which, I hope, will be reasonably short, as so many hon. Members on both sides of the House will want to express their opinions, will be largely about the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. This is not because I do not fully appreciate the feelings of those connected with other regiments or battalions affected, but because, in Scotland, they, perhaps more than the Scots Guards, are affected. The Scots Guards are losing one battalion; the Argylls are threatened with disbandment.
  I should like to start with a story recorded during the Korean War, when the Argylls were serving with an American division. The general of that division,

  1049
  who was an American, was wakened in the early hours of the morning by his aide and given a signal requiring immediate action. The general shook himself awake and said to his aide, "Bring me my boots. The Argylls and we will get moving immediately." I find this story rather more to my liking than the use which the Government propose to make of their boot in getting rid of the Argylls.
  I should also like to make it quite clear that though I am the Member of Parliament for Argyll the question of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders affects much larger areas of Scotland than just the County of Argyll. Our main recruiting areas, apart from the county from which the Argylls take their name, have always been the Counties of Stirling, Renfrew, Dumbarton, Clackmannan and Kinross. I am quite certain that the Government's decision will have brought the same blight of sorrow to a great many families in those areas as it has in Argyll.
  We in Scotland felt a great deal of sorrow about the disappearance earlier this year of the Cameronians. Therefore, this is not an isolated incident. I am sure that no Scottish regiment wants to place its own merits above that of any other. It is our view on this side of the House that there should be no further cuts in Scottish regiments or units at all.
  When we look at the problem and and understand at least part of the problems which the Government have brought upon themselves, it is fair to consider for a moment the reasons which may have influenced them in their decision. I took part in a television programme last week with an hon. Member who suggested that perhaps the Argylls had been chosen because their commanding officer was less than fully responsible, and that by their action in Aden the Argylls had become the worst ambassadors for Britain in the Middle East.
  I entirely disagree with that view, and I believe that it would also be entirely disagreed with by the Secretary of State for Defence, with whom I have spoken in the past, and who has always given it to me as his view that Colonel Mitchell was an extremely efficient and gallant soldier.
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  The second reason why it was suggested in the television interview that the Argylls might well be dispensed with was that there were many hon. Members opposite who do not want any commitment east of Suez, and, therefore, by implication, as the Argylls have made a great deal of their famous name and tradition in the East, it was perhaps suitable that they should go.
  I cannot believe that this is a serious reason for picking one regiment rather than another. It is true that in the last war the Argylls' defence of Malaya and their many actions in Egypt and Europe made them well known to friend and foe alike. It is also true that during the past few years their record in Korea, Borneo, where they have served three times, and Aden have all been outstanding—this in a theatre of war which is particularly difficult for both soldiers and commanding officers.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian) rose—
  Mr. Noble: Perhaps I may finish my speech. I know that the hon. Gentleman will want to make his own speech later.
  Mr. Dalyell: The right hon. Gentleman has made a specific reference to me.
  Mr. Noble: Then I will give way, if the hon. Gentleman wishes.
  Mr. Dalyell: The argument was not at that moment about the Argylls in the Far East. The right hon. Gentleman will agree that it was whether there was a credible operational requirement.
  Mr. Noble: Yes, but my point was not to argue the merits of whether there should be a different policy in the Far East. The implication of what the hon. Gentleman said in the television broadcast was that the Argylls might well be dispensed with because of their record in the Far and Middle East. I find this difficult to understand.
  It could be that the Argylls have been chosen because in some way they were less efficient than other units who were in the melting pot, if one may use that term. But I cannot seriously believe that that can be held by anybody in the British Army. I may be biased, but I feel that they are probably the best fighting unit in the Army today. I believe that if one went to any unit in the

  1051
  country its officers and men would claim that position for themselves. But if one then asked them who was the next best unit the Argylls would probably come very high on their list. Therefore, I do not think that there is any question about their efficiency in this selection, and I am sure that the Minister would agree.
  Can it, then, be simply a question of money? It is difficult to believe that that is the answer, because it is infinitely more expensive to train and produce a battalion of paratroops than a battalion of the Argylls. If it is just a question of money, the Argylls do not seem to me to be a particularly expensive unit for the Government to maintain.
  So one comes back to what the Chief of Staff is reported in the newspapers as having said, that, all other criteria having failed, it must be a question of last in first out. It is difficult to believe that the modern professional Army is to be run in this way. This policy could not operate in any other type of business. The Minister of Defence might think that this was a reasonably good method of dealing with the Cabinet, since on this basis he would be there for ever, having been one of the first in. If that is seriously the reason for the selection of the Argylls, in this day and age, it is a thoroughly bad reason.
  If the Minister is right in thinking that units must be cut, and if we are to achieve the small, highly efficient, professional Army which we need, then probably the biggest problem facing the Army today is that of recruiting. The Argylls have always had a good recruiting record, and during the last two years they have been outstanding. To cut the regiment which has the best recruiting record, surely, if we need recruits, does nothing except discourage men from other parts of the country from joining the Army. The cutting of the regiments with the best record of recruiting cannot possibly act as an incentive.
  A view held by some quarters in Whitehall is that it makes no difference whether or not a regiment has a local base. None of the great regiments would substantiate that for one moment. General Graham told me over the weekend that he had personally interviewed practically every recruit into the regiment
  1052
  for many years. Of all the recruits that he had interviewed, 90 per cent. had said, "Sir, I want to join the Argylls", and not, "Sir, I want to join the Army"; and 60 per cent. wanted to join the Argylls because their friends and relatives were serving in that regiment. A large percentage of those serving in the regiment come from the recruiting area of the regiment and there is a great tradition of family and friends serving in it. This is one of the strongest arguments for not abolishing the Argylls.
  I have two quotations which I would like to read to the House. The first one comes from a book by Colonel Angus Rose, who was an officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. The book, published in 1944, was an unofficial record of the Argylls in Malaya at that time. He speaks of the general principle of the responsibility of people other than the Army for allowing the Armed Forces to get run down to a level beyond which it is impossible to maintain fighting efficiency.
  Speaking of the last days in Malaya, he said this:
  "These I think were the contributory causes that brought about the most ignominous defeat that Britain has suffered since the loss of the American colonies."
  I detect there another allusion to Lord North. He goes on:
  "May it be seen that a share in the responsibility for this defeat must be borne by almost every section of the public. The object of recriminations is to prevent repetitions, so let each one draw his own particular lesson so far as his own duties or his responsibilities as a member of the electorate are concerned. Above all, let the cautious and conventional time servers who have not the interest of the country at heart be cast out."
  There are many people who, when they look at the impending fate of the Argylls, feel that this is not altogether an unworthy thought today.
  My other quotation comes from a book written by Brigadier Ian Stewart, again about the last day of the campaign in Malaya. He writes:
  "A detachment of the regiment, after covering the retreat of British and Indian troops, was cut off with very little chance of escape. The last job given them was to hold the pipe line. Three of them, ragged, exhausted and sun-tanned, made their way through a British force holding another position. Told that the Argylls had been wiped out and advised to get some sleep inside the British lines, a corporal said: 'If we are the last of the battalion

  1053
  then I am senior non-commissioned officer. My last order was to hold the pipe line. If the C.O. is alive, he will be expecting us there. If not, he will expect us to hold the pipe line.' The three turned back towards the enemy."
  Today, it is not just these three noncommissioned officers from the Argylls who may be the last of the battalion; it is the whole battalion. This spirit of turning to face the enemy in serious straits is one that wins battles, and I would say to them that they should not despair. The people of Scotland are behind them in their fight to keep the regiment and the tradition alive. As the people of Stansted won their case, so let those who are few in numbers but strong in courage take faith.
  We on this side of the House do not accept that these cuts in the infantry are wise or necessary. The Defence White Paper will be discussed in detail next week, but I say to the House that if we return to power before the Argylls are disbanded we shall seek to find a way of retaining an appropriate place for this regiment, with its splendid tradition, with its fine recruiting record and with its high level of efficiency.
  4.19 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army (Mr. James Boyden): I give the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) a categorical assurance that it was not the capacity of the present Commanding Officer of the Argylls, nor the Far and Middle East record of the Argylls, nor their efficiency that led to their disban-ment, but I must take the fate of the Scottish regiments in the context of the Army reductions as a whole.
  The right hon. Gentleman knows full well that it was a painful duty for the Army Board to make reductions. The battalions that have been nominated in the White Paper, and in the White Paper of a year ago, have served with distinction and won fame on many battlefields; their names are household words. All these regiments have played an important part in preserving Parliament and our democratic institutions. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have played their part in these regiments and not least in the Scottish battalions which are the subject of the debate today.
  However, painful decisions have to be taken, and the House will wish to know
  1054
  how the nominations were made. The key to the situation goes back to 1962, when the infantry of the line was reorganised. On that occasion, the infantry reformed into 13 brigades, 10 of four regiments and three of three regiments. One of the universally recognised facts of that reorganisation was that it would cater for a variation in the number of battalions, whether more or less.
  The House will appreciate that the reduction of a regiment causes less disturbance if it is part of a group in which regimental identities and traditions have become linked, as they have in the case of the large brigades and as they will be in the new divisions. This was the policy in 1962, and we ourselves have carried it a stage further in the new divisions of infantry.
  In the light of the experience of 1957, when the party opposite made a number of amalgamations of regiments—
  Mr. Hugh Fraser: Including Scottish ones?
  Mr. Boyden: Yes, including Scottish ones.
  It was recognised that, should it again be necessary to cut a number of battalions, it could be achieved by reducing one regiment in each of the larger brigades. That was the Conservative policy, and it was well known to the infantry. It was recognised as a fair and reasonable way of preserving tradition and comradeship. Administratively, it was efficient and flexible.
  At the beginning of last year, the defence reductions gave the Army Board the task of making 14 reductions—
  Mr. James Ramsden: I am not clear what the hon. Gentleman says was the official Conservative policy about the reductions in the infantry.
  Mr. Boyden: The right hon. Gentleman will not expect me to deal with the Conservatives' policy on the present 14 reductions, but the 1962 reorganisation was based on the same principle as that which is happening now. That is the point that I am making.
  There are 14 infantry reductions to be made; and I may say that the reductions proposed in all arms were made only after the most careful consideration. The most careful planning has taken place.

  1055
  My own impression is that the General Staff who have worked on the plans have been quite outstanding in their ability and are completely respected throughout the Army not only for their ability, but for the fairness with which they have done their work. I make that point for the benefit of the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser).
  As far as the infantry was concerned, the Army Board decided that, on the lines of the 1962 policy, each of the larger brigades should be reduced by one battalion. That left four further reductions to be made. The Board decided that it would be unfair and unwise to make a second reduction so quickly in any of the large brigades, so that it was left to the Foot Guards and the smaller brigades of infantry of the line to share the burden.
  The policy is perfectly clear and straightforward. The Foot Guards and each brigade and large regiment of the infantry of the line are to be reduced by one battalion. The general principle is the same as in 1962, and that was understood and accepted by the infantry. It is not an easy way out, but we are satisfied that it is fair and, in the long term, is in the best interests of the infantry, the Army and the country.
  One of the purposes of grouping regiments into brigades was to even out recruiting as between regiments within the brigade. That will be even more effectively achieved by the new divisions. Because of this, coming straight to the point that the right hon. Member for Argyll made, the recruiting record of particular regiments is no longer quite the significant factor that it once was. In the past, the recruiting records of brigades did not vary to anything like the same extent as the recruiting records of regiments. It is an essential feature of the new divisional arrangement that each one has access to one of the main centres of population. We are satisfied that recruiting will be well balanced as between one division and another.
  Although regimental recruiting is important, the supporters of the regiments to be amalgamated or disbanded have tended to exaggerate the significance of local variations for the Army as a whole. Over the Army as a whole, 80 per cent. of men joining simply wish to join the Army and
  1056
  have no strong preference as between one unit and another. That does not mean that some regiments do not have stronger affiliations and stronger loyalties in their areas. I concede the right hon. Gentleman's point about the Argylls. However, it does mean that to press the regimental concept to the extreme can damage Army recruiting as a whole and can be bad for other regiments.
  Mr. John Brewis: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Boyden: No. I want to keep my remarks as short as possible.
  In the reductions which we are discussing today, the Scottish share is rather more favourable to Scotland than to England. If the battalions retained were distributed strictly according to the population of the United Kingdom, the result would be as follows. England would have 36 battalions, whereas, in fact, it is planned to have 30 in 1972. On the strict population basis, Wales should have two, but will have three, Northern Ireland should have one, but will have three, and Scotland should have four, but will have seven. Those figures include the Guards but exclude the Parachute Brigade.
  Mr. James Davidson Mr. James Davidson (Aberdeenshire, West) rose—
  Mr. Boyden: I will give way in a moment.
  The reductions in Scotland have included the disbandment of the 1st Battalion the Cameronians from the Lowland Brigade. This famous regiment was disbanded two months ago. The House will be glad to hear that nearly all the officers and soldiers have transferred to other Scottish regiments. The amount of redundancy has been very small.
  Mr. James Davidson: The point that I wish to make is that Scotland, with one-eighth of England's population, supplies a third of our regular soldiers, although only 4 per cent. of the United Kingdom based Army is based on Scottish soil. In other words, England has one regular soldier per 1,000 of the male population, whereas Scotland has about three per 1,000.
  Mr. Boyden: The point that I am making is that, as between England and Scotland, this is a fair arrangement. I do not depart from that.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: Could the hon. Gentleman's figures have anything to do with the fact that the unemployment rate in Scotland is higher than that in England? That may be the reason.
  Mr. Boyden: I am sorry to disagree with my hon. Friend. Unemployment seems to have no bearing on recruiting to the Army. In a way, that is a good thing.
  The Highland Brigade is now to lose one battalion. This is a most distinguished brigade, and the House will appreciate that it was a very difficult task to select the Argylls, the Gordons, or any other of the Scottish regiments for reduction. I agree at once with what the right hon. Member for Argyll said about the Argylls, and I have picked out the most recent records of the Argylls and of the Gordons. Both regiments were at Mons, at Ypres, on the Somme and at El Alamein. The Argylls were at Casino. The Gordons were at Anzio. The Argylls served with distinction in Korea and Aden. The Gordons served with distinction in Malaya, Cyprus and Borneo. I mention these distinguished records to show there is great difficulty in assessing the qualities and other indefinable matters that go to make a good regiment.
  With tremendous regret, the Army Board decided that the Highland Brigade should be reduced by the junior battalion of the brigade, the 1st Battalion the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. There are two ways of bringing about the reduction of a unit. The first is by amalgamating with another unit. The second is by disbandment. These alternatives were put to the Council of Colonels of the Highland Brigade, and its advice, which was accepted, was that the regiment to go should be disbanded.
  Turning now to the Foot Guards, also the subject of today's debate, as the House knows there are at present three regiments of Guards with two battalions and two regiments with only one battalion. It was inescapable that one of the second battalions would have to go and, on the principle of juniority, the 2nd Battalion the Scots Guards was nominated.
  At this point, it might be appropriate to say something about the Royal
  1058
  Armoured Corps. As hon. Members know, the White Paper announced that the Royal Armoured Corps would be reduced by one regiment which would be nominated at a later date. There has been a lot of speculation that this regiment will be the Royal Scots Greys, and all that I can tell the House today is that no decision on the future of the Royal Scots Greys or on any other R.A.C. regiment has been taken. When we have decided how to make the reduction in the Royal Armoured Corps, an announcement will be made.
  I want to turn now to the question of how units within brigades are selected for reduction. In general, we have followed the principle that, if other factors were equal, we should select the junior battalion of each brigade or large regiment. This is not to say that we would always work to this principle: we should not do so if there were other overriding factors. But in the case of the reductions announced last week, there were no factors of such significance as to outweigh the principle of juniority.
  There have been suggestions in the Press and elsewhere that in selecting units for reduction we should take into account, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested, such things as their recruiting records or their qualities as regiments. I have already explained how the brigades of infantry have evened out the previous variations in recruiting as between regiments, so that in this context of unit reductions this is no longer a main factor.
  As for the quality of regiments, there is no doubt that certain regiments are noted for their qualities—such as dash, spirit, steadfastness or doggedness. The aim of the Army as a whole is to have these qualities within the infantry divisions right across the board. It would be extremely dangerous, most disheartening and most divisive for the Army if there were to be a kind of auction as to the quality of the regiments. The judgments which would come out of such an approach would be bound to be instinctive and subjective. At different times different regiments are serving in different rô1es in different parts of the world.
  It is almost impossible to weigh comparatively the efficiency and valour and other good qualities of particular regiments. If one were to draw up a league table of the qualities of the regiments and

  1059
  strike off the last six, I can imagine an absolute outcry on both sides of the House, quite rightly. There would be endless recrimination and arguments about discrimination. Nobody would be satisfied that the decisions were fair. It seems to me that the principle that has been adopted in these cases, of juniority, is well understood in the Army; it is hard, but it is fair.
  While I am talking about fairness of treatment I would try, as I did in the Adjournment debate on 25th June, to dispose of the myth, raised by the right hon. Gentleman, that Scotland has been singled out for unfair treatment in the rate of reductions. In last week's White Paper the announcement was made of the reduction not only of two Scottish battalions, but of four English units. Since 1950, the percentage reduction, including the Guards, comes out as 44 per cent. reduction in English battalions, a 42 per cent. reduction in Scottish battalions, and the Irish and Welsh battalions have each been reduced by 25 per cent. There is no truth whatever in the statement that has been circulating that there is discrimination against Scotland.
  Mr. Hector Monro: Following the announcement of last week's White Papers, am I not right in saying that, although there has been a reduction of only 10 per cent. in English battalions, there has been a reduction of 22 per cent. in Scottish battalions?
  Mr. Boyden: The hon. Gentleman cannot pick out this particular short period and make that statement as a valid statement.
  Disbanding famous regiments is an unhappy business, the whole House agrees—
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: Why?
  Mr. Boyden: —except my hon. Friend.
  The feeling of deep sadness and regret is not confined to the Scottish regiments. My right hon. Friend and I have received several deputations of members of regiments that it was expected would be amalgamated or disbanded, and I must say to hon. Members who came to see us that they conducted their discussions in a fair-minded and broad way, in the same way as I hope they will receive my
  1060
  remarks today. This makes it all the more grievous to read and hear some of the wilder statements made about the disappearance of battalions by persons associated with them.
  To say, as some people have done, that they do not care where the axe falls as long as it is not on their own regiment helps no one. To make attacks on the Parachute Brigade as a means of saving a regiment is despicable. I earnestly hope that in the interests of the Army as a whole such remarks will stop.
  Mr. Noble: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that in all the talks that I have had with officers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders not one of them has taken this line.
  Mr. Boyden: There was a television broadcast in which a person—I will not name the officer; he was not a serving officer—gave the impression that he did not care a damn as long as the axe did not fall on the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
  My view of the situation is contained in the words of a leading Conservative newspaper. The heading is large:
  "Army making the best of amalgamations. Hard task for generals in effecting changes."
  The article starts:
  "Contrary to general expectation, the amalgamations in the Army announced seem likely to be accepted if not with acclaim at least with resignation. This is striking proof of the Army's confidence in the Army Council."
  Hon. Members opposite need not get alarmed. There has not been a split in the Tory Press. That quotation from the Daily Telegraph, which, two days before, had this heading:
  "Army cuts by pairing units, 15 line regiments and 20 artillery to go",
  was on 27th July, 1957.
  I hope I have made it clear that the Army Board and Ministers in the Ministry of Defence sympathise with the feelings of sadness and pain which the disappearance of these regiments cause. But a contraction in the size of the Army is an inevitable consequence of the Government's determination to have a defence policy which nationally we can afford. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may attack that, but they cannot attack the logical consequences which flow from it. We are not repeating the mistake made by

  1061
  the Conservative Party, when in power, of taking on commitments which were beyond our economic resources. We have reshaped our defence commitments so that they accord with what we can afford.
  This is a policy which is both prudent and reasonable, and it is ultimately in the interests of both the British Army and the nation as a whole. I ask the House to reject the Motion.
  4.38 p.m.
  Sir Fitzroy Maclean: I am perhaps in a better position to answer some of the Minister's last remarks than some people because I was no longer a Service Minister at the time when the cuts to which he has just referred were made and I continued to criticise them for a good many years after they were made. But two wrongs do not make a right, and that is something that the Minister and hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite should bear in mind.
  In the White Paper, the Secretary of State for Defence—I am sorry to see that he has gone already—recognises what he calls the "inherent fallibility" of his own judgment. That is a very telling phrase and a very true one. Considering the Government's record in defence, this admission comes, as The Times points out, not a moment too soon. This is the fourth Defence Statement that we have had in 18 months and it includes reversals of policy decisions that were taken as recently as last November. Indeed, I think that it even includes reversals of decisions made only a few weeks ago.
  The Secretary of State went on in the White Paper to express the hope that the Services would now enjoy a period of stability. Well, if that is what he hopes, he is setting about it the wrong way. Let us leave aside for a moment what the Secretary of State is doing to the other Services. We are dealing today with the Army and specifically with the Scottish regiments, with the disband-ments which have already been announced and with the others which we fear may still be to come.
  The Government are worried, or should be worried, by the appalling recruiting figures for the Army. The present strength is 172,000 men, excluding boy soldiers. Last year it dropped by the
  1062
  unprecedented figure of 5,000 in one year. If this goes on, it will have reached a strength of only 115,000 by the mid-1970's instead of the 152,000 which I understand is aimed at and which, in all conscience, is aiming extremely low.
  Personally, as Under-Secretary of State for War, I was always against the proposal in the circumstances then prevailing to abolish National Service. I first opposed it inside the Government and from 1957, with the change of Prime Minister and of Minister of Defence, I opposed it outside the Government.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman want it back?
  Sir F. Maclean: I think that the Government may well find themselves in a position where they either have to give up altogether or have it back. But that is all past history and no one would seriously expect a Labour Government, of their own free will, to reintroduce conscription after a Tory Government had abolished it. I think that even the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) would agree with that.
  Today, rightly or wrongly, we have a professional volunteer Army. Many people who know much more about these things than I do say that this is the ideal. But now that we have got it, the Government somehow have to get enough recruits for it and the right type of recruits. And if they are not to reintroduce conscription or, as I have said, just give up trying—they must go about the job in the right way. And I believe they are going about it the wrong way.
  I can think of no more effective way to damage morale inside the Army or to discourage recruiting for it than to abolish a regiment like the Agyll and Sutherland Highlanders. The same applies to the 2nd Battalion the Scots Guards, another regiment with a magnificent record. This, I agree, is a rather different question because many line regiments have felt it wrong that the Guards regiments should have two battalions each when line regiments only had one each. However, one may ask why it is that, when the Government decided to abolish the 2nd battalion of a Guards regiment, they picked on the Scots Guards. That, again, looks rather like racial prejudice.

  1063
  To return to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. They are a regiment with a tremendous historical tradition and a deeply rooted local and, to borrow Field Marshal Montgomery's famous phrase, tribal connection, and a tremendous righting record dating from the 18th century and earlier, through two world wars, Korea and Malaya right down to Aden only a few months ago. They also have a first-class recruiting record.
  And here I think that the Undersecretary of State rather tried to have it both ways. I understood him to say that recruiting figures are not all that important.
  Mr. Boyden: I did not say that recruiting figures for the Service as a whole are not all that important, but that individual regimental recruiting figures are not quite as important as they used to be.
  Sir F. Maclean: If they are becoming less important it is possibly because of the way the Government treats the regiments. But then, on the other hand, the Ministry of Defence took the trouble to put out a statement saying that recruiting for the regiments of the Highland Brigade was notoriously bad.
  Mr. Boyden: I did not say that they were notoriously bad.
  Sir F. Maclean: No. But the hon. Gentleman's Department did. This is a difficult one to deal with and the Minister who replies will require all his skill. The Ministry put out a statement saying that recruiting figures for the Highland Brigade were bad, and when one considers what has been done to the Highland Brigade over the last six or seven years this, if true, is perhaps not surprising. But what the Ministry rather dishonestly failed to say was that, whatever the recruiting records of other Highland regiments, that of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was quite exceptionally good.
  The Defence Secretary, who I really think might have waited a little longer in the debate, said on television the other day that 80 per cent. of recruits nowadays have no preference for a particular unit of the Army and that, if a local unit was abolished, people from that locality joined another. Now that may be true of English regiments, although I very
  1064
  much doubt it. But it is quite certainly not true of Scottish regiments and, in particular, of Highland regiments.
  The Secretary of State for Scotland served with great distinction in the Highland Light Infantry during the Second World War. He is present and I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he ask the Secretary of State whether his regiment did not have a strong esprit de corps and everything that goes with it.
  The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): I certainly confirm that the Highland Light Infantry had a strong esprit de corps and a very proud record. The Tory Government abolished it, just the same.
  Sir F. Maclean: I sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman because they did exactly the same to my own regiment, the Cameron Highlanders, by amalgamating it.
  Mr. Ross: And the Royal Scots Fusiliers.
  Sir F. Maclean: Yes.
  Mr. Ross: As well as the H.L.I.
  Sir F. Maclean: I can see that the right hon. Gentleman shares my feelings on the subject.
  The difference between Scottish and particularly Highland regiments and English regiments was, I think, well put about 150 years ago by General Stewart of Garth. He wrote this:
  "With a Highland soldier it is otherwise … He is surrounded by the companions of his youth and the rivals of his early achievements: he feels impulse of emulation strengthened by consciousness that every proof he displays, either of bravery or cowardice, will find its way to his native home … Hence he requires no artificial excitements. He acts from motives within himself; his point is fixed and his aim must terminate either in victory or death."
  I was interested, therefore, to read in a newspaper a day or two ago what had been said on the same subject by Colonel David Boyle, a former commanding officer of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders:
  "Every sngle Jock knows that if he does badly the woman next door at home will know that he has done badly."
  That comes to much the same thing.
  The Scottish regiments are more than just regiments. Many men will join one

  1065
  or other of the Scottish regiments, but will not join any other regiment in the British Army. That is something which one cannot translate into statistics but which, in the long run, shows up clearly in the recruiting figures.
  During the bleak years which followed the Rising of 1745 the Scottish regiments were the chief means of preserving intact the tenuous thread of Scotland's existence as a nation. And here I should like to pause for a moment to mop up the crocodile tears shed elsewhere by the hon. Lady the Member for Hamilton (Mrs. Ewing) who, as usual, is not in her place. She is reported as saying how awful it is that the Scottish regiments should be abolished, but we here all know perfectly well that her party is committed to doing away with the whole lot of them.
  To this day the Scottish regiments have remained an essential part of Scottish national life, and in many senses, both at home and, perhaps even more abroad, a living symbol of Scotland. To my own father, for instance, who, as a regular soldier, spent most of his life abroad, his regiment, the Cameron Highlanders, was for many years his closest link with Scotland. When, in due course, I myself came temporarily to leave civilian life, it was to the same regiment, with which I had spent the early years of my childhood, that I naturally returned, and when I did it was like coming home. That is an experience which I share with innumerable other Scots.
  That is why when this or any other Government—and, right hon. Gentlemen opposite are not the only culprits—destroy a regiment like the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, or the Cameronians, the Scottish Rifles, they are doing much more than wiping out one infantry battalian. That, after all, is something which the Germans have done before now, but they have come back to life. What they are doing in the name of pretended efficiency is destroying two or three hundred years of history, tradition and comradeship. They are destroying something which extends far beyond the regiment itself.
  If the Secretary of State has any doubt about this, let him go to Argyllshire and the regiment's other recruiting areas and see for himself, as I did this weekend, what the feeling is there and throughout
  1066
  Scotland. It is for this reason that when a Government destroy a regiment like the Argylls they do so much harm to recruiting and morale. A corps of infantry may be a very tidy concept on paper. But the regimental spirit is what pulls in the recruits and, in the ultimate analysis, what wins battles. And I am very glad to have the support in this of as disin-guished a soldier as Field Marshal Templer, a former C.I.G.S., who, I was glad to see, made this point very clearly a month or two ago.
  I know that the Government are under all kinds of pressure, from the "gnomes of Zurich", their own Left wing and from my right hon. Friends, and I sincerely hope that before long this pressure will be too much for them and that they will give up and go to the country and leave a Tory Government to implement the pledges which I understood my right hon. Friend the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) to give. For I am sure that my right hon. Friend would not allow any Government of which he was a Member to carry on with the dis-bandment of the Argylls.
  On the other hand, if the present Prime Minister somehow manages to run his course, I hope that his Government will at least pay heed to some of the things which I and other far better qualified and far more distinguished than I have said and are saying on this subject every day. The Government have managed to find the money for 60,000 extra civil servants in three years. If they can afford to squander such vast sums on thick red tape, surely they can spare a modicum for the "Thin Red Line".
  4.55 p.m.
  Mr. E. Shinwell: What are we debating this afternoon? Are we debating the reorganisation of Her Majesty's Forces, or the simple and single issue of whether the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders should be disbanded? If we are considering the latter, I suggest that we might have waited until a more appropriate time to debate the reorganisation of Her Majesty's Forces. I therefore agree with the hon. Member for Bute and North Ayrshire (Sir F. Maclean) that in this respect the debate is premature.
  Because of the contemplated withdrawal of forces from east of Suez and

  1067
  the apparent decision to supplement our forces in Europe, sooner or later the Government will be compelled to ask the House to debate the whole subject of military reorganisation and the kind of defence which the United Kingdom requires. But this is not the occasion. A simple Motion is before the House and it is opposed by the Opposition.
  The time will come, perhaps very soon, when we have to debate the reorganisation of our defence, but at this moment why allow this unnecessary debate to take place? In the midst of discussion among the General Staff and in the context of the kind of defence which the United Kingdom will require in future, why should this question of the disbanding of a regiment intervene?
  It is not a matter of whether a regiment is more capable than another of recruitment. It is rather a question of local tradition, or, if the House requires a more appropriate term, a tribal military consideration. For that reason I see no reason why, in the midst of a discussion about the future of our defence, we should decide to disband this regiment. There was also a suggestion in the recent White Paper about disbanding the Gloucestershire Regiment. I recall when I was Minister of Defence, and we were engaged in the war in Korea, what happened to the Gloucestershire Regiment. The idea of disbanding the Gloucesters, with their fame and gallantry and in view of what happened in Korea, is repugnant to me.
  I could understand this, if the Government had decided to reorganise our defence and disband all the regiments, the Argylls, the Gloucesters, the Hampshires —I was about to add the Durham Light Infantry, but that step has, I understand, already been taken, despite innumerable protests which I have received from the North of England. I could understand that, if we were to recruit men just as soldiers for Regiment No. 1 and Regiment No. 2, or Brigade No. 1 and Brigade No. 2. Perhaps that is the most desirable organisation of our defence. But we are still retaining traditional names associated with famous regiments.
  Then why single out this regiment? I cannot understand it. Something has gone wrong with the Defence Depart-
  1068
  ment—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Let us be careful about this. I do not mean the civilian personnel of the Department; something has gone wrong with the people inside, but not for the first time. Anyone who has been a Minister of Defence—there are several ex-Ministers around the place; we have had so many of them since the last war, far too many, I think, and far too many defence debates and reorganisations—can recall how often we were presented with Estimates only to have them amended in a few weeks or months. I am not blaming my right hon. and hon. Friends. It is the people behind them who do not know where they are, because they cannot envisage the kind of defence which this country will require in future.
  This has been argued in innumerable Defence White Papers. Is it to be nuclear war, war on the ground, in the air or at sea? They cannot make up their minds and nor can anyone in the House. We do not know. But, in the midst of all this indescribable confusion, misunderstanding, conjecture and speculation, this trumpery intervention to disband a particular regiment is not my conception of how to organise defence. There are so many experts around, but I am probably as good an expert as any, because I know just about as much as they do; and that is not saying very much anyway.
  Some gentlemen associated with our defence organisation are so cocksure of everything. It might be more important if they were actually cocksure of the direction in which we were going, but they cannot be. Therefore, the time has not yet come to decide about disbanding particular regiments. That should be considered in the context of our future military organisation. We can discuss it in the defence debate next February. Why decide now?
  The Minister of Defence for Administration (Mr. W. G. Reynolds): I am finding it difficult to follow my right hon. Friend's argument. We are discussing an Opposition Motion condemning the Government for closing down one of 14 battalions. This debate has not been initiated by the Government at all.
  Mr. Shinwell: I have been long enough in the House to understand procedure— or I should have been, after 46 years or

  1069
  so. I am aware that this is a Supply day and that the Opposition have taken advantage to direct attention to an aspect of the defence situation. They have concentrated on the proposal to disband a particular regiment. Does anyone query what I have said? I am ready to sit down if anyone does.
  Mr. Boyden: I query it to the extent that it involves at least one other Scottish regiment, the future of the Scots Greys, and the remaining English, Welsh and Irish regiments. By implication, it certainly involves 14 regiments.
  Mr. Shinwell: But that is precisely the Government's fault. That is what they have proposed. The Government need not have produced this White Paper at this stage. How many defence interventions do we normally have in a year? Usually, it is one. Every now and again, there is another intervention, another attempt to reconsider and reorganise our defences, and that is a mistake. Perhaps I am wrong, but I think that the time has not yet come to consider the future of all our defence organisations. We should have waited.
  I am, as a result, in some difficulty— and not for the first time. I am told that I must vote against the Opposition Motion. That is what I am told. I am going to do nothing of the sort. It is as simple as that. I am speaking quite honestly. That is how I feel. When I heard about this, I said that it was nonsense.
  There is a political aspect to this, and I wonder whether I dare mention it. This is an emotional subject in Scotland and it is no use quarrelling with an emotion. One can quarrel with Scottish logic and get away with it, but not with Scottish emotion. I should have thought that, with all the political possibilities which appear likely ahead of this party and of our party in Scotland, we should be mighty careful about ventures of this sort. [Laughter.]
  There seems to be laughter on my Front Bench. I am not laughing about the possibilities. I know Scotland better than most of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench. I have had a longer connection with Scotland than any of them—even the Secretary of State. I spoke in his constituency nearly
  1070
  60 years ago—before he was born. I am not saying that my appearance in Kil-marnock led to his birth—it had nothing to do with it.
  Therefore, I understand Scotland and its emotions and what its people feel about nationalism. I think it is a lot of poppycock. I would give them, instead, some autonomy, but no more than that —but that is another subject. Now, the Government add to the trouble by disbanding the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Where do most of the recruits come from? From Glasgow—
  Mr. Ross: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Shinwell: The Secretary of State agrees with me. Of course they are not Highlanders. The right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) need not deceive himself. He thinks that they come from South Uist and Lewis and the Hebrides and Stornoway: they do nothing of the sort. Most of the Highlanders join the Glasgow police. Most of the Argylls come from Glasgow. I know something about this, because members of my family joined Scottish regiments a long time ago and took part in the First World War. I do not suggest there is anything wrong with the Argylls because most of them come from Glasgow, in view of what is happening there at present. It is better to have soldiers who are a bit ruthless and tough.
  Mention was made about how men are recruited for various regiments. Take the English regiments. Where did most of the recruits come from in the past? They came from Ireland. England got most of her soldiers and generals from Ireland. I am giving the Government information on matters of which they should be aware.
  I am sorry if I appear to have been getting worked up about this matter. I want to protect the Government by suggesting that they should not do something which is unnecessary. It is a stupid intervention at this time. Let us wait until we discuss the whole subject of the defence of the United Kingdom and I will then have something to say. In the meantime, this brief intervention indicates that I am in some political difficulty. As I ventured to say on a previous occasion when we had a very important debate, I will not vote with the Tories. I never

  1071
  did a thing like that before and I will not start now at my time of life. I cannot vote with the Government, so I will just stay away.
  Mr. Boyden: I know that my right hon. Friend is a very good friend of the soldier. This was his reputation in the War Office. But does my right hon. Friend not think that the soldiers affected by defence cuts ought to have a reasonably clear idea where their future lies, and so on?
  Mr. Shinwell: If I am asked that question, of course, nobody has a higher respect for the men in the forces than I because of what has happened in the past. I know there are some who do not care much about defence, but I have always believed that some defence is necessary. We have to provide the people with a feeling of security. Even if it does not exist, we have to associate the idea of security with a defence organisation. I have a high respect for the men in the forces, but, if we are to have defence cuts, and cuts may be necessary in future, I want to see the whole panorama of our military future presented before me before I can come to a decision. The time has not yet arrived, and that is the purpose of my remarks. Incidentally, I had not the slightest intention of speaking. I merely wanted to say that I will not vote either way. But, in view of what has been said, I have offered a few observations, of which I hope the Government will take note.
  5.14 p.m.
  Mr. George Younger: I have been dreading this debate for many months. I think many hon. Members have felt that this was coming. Now that it has come, I am glad that we have the opportunity today to put to the Minister and the Government what I believe is a first-class factual down-to-earth reason why this is a very bad decision.
  I was grateful to the Minister for the way he spoke this afternoon, but I put it to him that he has not begun to appreciate why this decision has caused such terrible dismay throughout Scotland. If the Minister and everyone else in Whitehall will listen carefully for a moment why this is so, I believe they will be doing themselves a good turn and they
  1072
  will certainly be doing the Army a good turn.
  I fully appreciate and support what has been said about the long traditions of these regiments, their exploits in the past, and the fact that on many occasions they have tipped the scales when this country has had its back to the wall. I will leave that part of the argument out of the reckoning in what I have to say. Although it is important, it is not the main point I want to put to the Government. I believe that it is most important for the Government to realise that the solid practical reason for not abolishing regiments such as this is something of which the Army ought to be well aware.
  There are two main criteria which the Army of the present and of the future, will need. First it will need regiments of front line troops of one sort or another which have the morale, the skill, the efficiency and the capacity to stand up to any task they are given at short notice, and often in very difficult conditions. The second requirement is that our Army of the future must have sufficiently good morale and support from the civilian population to get sufficient recruits without the necessity of conscription.
  Those are two aims which I am sure no one on either side will dispute. I believe that the abolition of the most successful of the Scottish regiments at the moment is directly contrary to both these aims and I will explain why.
  I will take the second of these aims first namely, the need to recruit. Mention has already been made that the Government are seriously worried about the present recruiting situation, and well they might be. The shortfall in the recruiting required by the Government is of the order of 25 per cent. less than they know they need to keep the strength of the Army for what they are planning. That leaves out of account the argument that I would put at another time that the proposed scale of the Army will in any case be too small for what the Government will need to do with it. However, that is for another debate. I believe that the shortfall in recruiting is serious and will result in the Government not being able to keep the Army at the size they want in the years to come.
  Let us look at the picture of recruiting as it affects the Scottish regiments. The

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  Scottish regiments have consistently been among the better recruited divisions of the Army—I am not saying the best, but they have on occasions been the best— because they have a close link with the people of Scotland. When their recruiting is compared with that of the Army as a whole, I would point out that it has been something of a speciality for the Scots to provide infantry. Traditionally, the infantry has created the greatest connection with the Scottish people. That is why we have a relatively high proportion or regiments with famous names. I do not accept that it would be reasonable for the Scottish infantry regiments to be cut down to a figure of 8 or 10 per cent. of the whole Army. This is purely unrealistic, because the Scottish contribution to the infantry has always been relatively higher than the Scottish contribution of population to Britain as a whole. Therefore, I suggest that this is not a reasonable proposition to advance.
  The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders are currently providing at least a third of the recruits for the Scottish Division as a whole and about half the recruits for the four present Highland regiments. If we abolish them, we threaten about half the recruiting in Highland regiments and about a third in Scottish regiments as a whole.
  What conceivable sense is there in that at a time when full-page advertisements are being taken in the newspapers with all kinds of glossy pictures and wonderful wordings by the advertising men to get recruits into the Army? What do the Government do? They select for dis-bandment the one regiment which is getting the lion's share of the recruits at the moment. It is an absolutely incomprehensible decision. This is what has been found so difficult to put across to the people of Scotland as a whole.
  We had a statement the other day by the Secretary of State for Defence that 80 per cent. of recruits to the Army did not mention any regiment. I will not dispute that figure. The right hon. Gentleman ought to know, as he is in charge of the Department. But has he not realised that to quote a. figure for the Army as a whole for the country as a whole and then slavishly apply it to the individual case of Scottish regiments is to make a mistake that is made time and time again, year in and year out, of taking a national
  1074
  average and automatically assuming that it affects Scotland just the same as anywhere else. Nothing causes more resentment than that somebody sitting in an office in Whitehall assumes that everything is a pattern. It is not a pattern.
  I can tell the Minister from my experience and that of people to whom I have spoken that the vast majority—I put it no higher—of people who join the Highland regiments request to join a particular regiment. A figure of 90 per cent. was quoted by General Graham, who should know. He sees personally every recruit to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Ninety per cent. of them state that they come from the regimental area and want to join the regiment, and 60 per cent., or nearly two-thirds of them, come because they have a close friend or relative in the regiment who has told them that it is a good thing to be in. Those are the facts from people who deal with these matters. I beg the Government to think again, to look behind the figures and to see these patterns which occur behind the figures.
  Before I leave the question of recruiting, I should like to ask whether the Government have ever done what is often done in industry—that is, some form of motivational research, scientifically conducted, to find out what makes people join the infantry. I ask the Government to reflect on the sort of job that an infantryman has to do. In many cases the infantryman does not have the carrot of learning a trade—becoming, for example, a vehicle mechanic—as in the technical trades or becoming a scientist and acquiring a skill which may last him in later life when he leaves the Army. The infantryman is the maid-of-all-work of the Army and his skill is his morale and his ability to stand together in impossible situations.
  That is why I come on to the excellent remarks of the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) when he touched on the question of regiments and the regimental system. This is not a game of playing soldiers. The reason for the regimental system is that it works. It enables people to withstand situations that are impossible for human flesh and blood to stand. The fact that the men know that they have to live the rest of their military careers with the same people, and have to go back to their

  1075
  home areas where everyone will know what their conduct has been, is the sort of factor which enables them to withstand more than reason could expect them to do.
  That is one of the reasons why the British Army is the envy of other armies all over the world. It is not an accident. We are not a military nation. Most of us in this nation do not like militarism. We hate wars and we would gladly do without them. The reason why the British Army, in a non-military nation, has been so outstandingly successful in this respect is because we have the regimental system, which binds men together in situations of danger. If any proof of that is needed, let the Minister reflect that almost every other army would give an awful lot to have a system like our regimental system. Very few people would deny that.
  I should like to say a brief word on the second of the main necessities which our modern Army will need—that is, units of the highest efficiency and skill. This is no longer a question of square-bashing, of marching and countermarching on squares. The task of the modern infantry soldier is an infinitely skilled one.
  There is no possibility of getting together 600 men and three weeks or three months later having a first-class battalion. A first class battalion takes years to build up. It requires mutual confidence between officers and other ranks, between non-commissioned officers and other ranks and between the whole personnel of a unit. One cannot build up a unit without years of hard work.
  The Argylls, partly through circumstance and partly through the first-class quality of the men and their officers, have over many years built up the standard of efficiency of the battalions to something that is quite outstanding in the British Army. I do not make the claim that they are the best battalion in the British Army, although there are many who would. I do claim that they are one of the most outstandingly well-trained units that the Government have in the Army. That is one of the main reasons why the people of Scotland are absolutely unable to understand why this regiment has been chosen at this time to be abolished. I beg the Government to
  1076
  realise that they are up against an impossible task of explanation if they are trying to persuade the people of Scotland that it can be right for the best and most famous regiment to be abolished in this way.
  I should like to make a final point. This is where I move away from the interests of the Army to ask the Government to consider public opinion in Scotland. I believe that the country as a whole—this will probably not be in dispute between the two sides of the House —has had a very difficult time in the last few years. A lot of things have gone wrong—and I am not here apportioning blame. We have had troubles in our economy and with our exports and things have gone wrong left, right and centre.
  When one looks back, surely one of the things which shines out in the minds of ordinary people as having been successful and having been well done has been the conduct of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, particularly in Aden. People were able to open their newspapers and say, "Well, somebody is doing a good job. Something is successful. We cannot be entirely unsuccessful in everything all the time." When there is that sort of feeling people are glad suddenly to find something to cheer them.
  Within a few months, however, the Government select the very people who, through years of work, courage, industry and everything else, were responsible for producing that one glimmer of sunshine in years of hard graft. That is the regiment that the Government have decided to disband and abolish. Can they be surprised that the people of Scotland are raging mad about it?
  5.27 p.m.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: I can understand the sentiments, emotions and feelings of hon. and gallant Members who are taking part in the debate, but when they say that they speak for the great majority of the people of Scotland they are labouring under a delusion. I know that there is a Press campaign about this matter in which every kind of national, sentimental and patriotic emotion has been exploited for political and party purposes, but I do not think that there is any great amount of criticism of the Government by ordinary people

  1077
  because a number of ex-officers have worked themselves up to this mood of prefabricated indignation.
  We have had all this before. I remember 1957. In 1957 we had cuts by a Conservative Government. My right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) has recalled that there have been many different former Defence Ministers. One of them came in to the debate for a short time and drifted out. That was the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys). I remember the drastic cuts that were imposed in what was called the Sandys White Paper of 1957.
  At that time the then Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Macmillan, made a television broadcast in which he committed himself and his party to a drastic reduction in defence expenditure irrespective of tradition and vested interests. I believe that the hon. Member for Bute and North Ayrshire (Sir F. Maclean) protested at the time. The right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble), I believe in 1957, was a Scottish Whip and he will recall that there was no outbreak of indignation then among Conservative Members of Parliament, except for a few old soldiers like Brigadier Prior-Palmer and soldiers of the First and Second World Wars.
  Mr. Michael Clark Hutchison: If I may correct the hon. Member, my right hon. Friend the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) was not then, in 1957, in Parliament, so he could not have been a Whip.
  Mr. Hughes: I do not remember exactly whether he arrived here in 1957, but I do not remember any kind of protest from the right hon. Member for Argyll when many Scottish regiments were disbanded as a result of the defence policy of the Macmillan Government.
  Mr. Gordon Campbell: Again the hon. Member is quite wrong. Those were not disbandments; they were amalgamations.
  Mr. Hughes: They were put out of action, anyway.
  This time what the Conservatives are saying is, to me, sheer political hypocrisy. I remember when Winston Churchill decided to come out of the Suez base. We had the Suez Group attacking
  1078
  that policy of the Tory Government when the then Government realised they had to reduce expenditure, during a time of financial crisis; and they were assailed by the Suez Group, and Winston Churchill said we had to be realistic and we could not stay in Suez without staying in Egypt. This controversy about the regiments did not start when the present Government came in.
  I have been corrected about the right hon. Member for Argyll, but he has come in for criticism in the Scottish Press. I have here a letter from a correspondent in The Scotsman who recalls that when the right hon. Member for Argyll was asked for his comment on the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders' disbandment he said that when he first saw the news of that his comment was unprintable. Well, he was not unprintable today. At least, he was audible. But a lady writing in reply made the point, "Was he so indignant when the other Scottish regiments were disbanded?".
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has mentioned them. What about the Ayrshire regiment? We have just heard a speech from the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) and one would think that Ayr was seething with indignation about the disbanding of the Argyll and Sutherland Regiment. Pure nonsense. Absolute, sentimental poppycock. What is the position in Ayr? I am very glad to say that recruiting figures in Ayrshire are going down. In Ayr they have had to do away with the Churchill Barracks. That sacred cow has been executed. There is no Churchill Barracks in Ayr. Why? Because they cannot get the recruits. The Government have faced this position: if there are no recruits then the sensible thing is to disband the regiment.
  Mr. Younger: Is the hon. Member not aware that the Scots Greys are the best recruited regiment in the Army and recruited mainly in Ayrshire?
  Mr. Hughes: They did not live in Churchill Barracks in Ayr, anyway.
  Mr. Ross: There is no Churchill Barracks. It is a fairground.
  Mr. Hughes: Well, I think that is an improvement. I would rather see a fairground there than the Churchill Barracks, which was an absolute eyesore. If

  1079
  there were this enthusiasm for the Scottish regiments, and the sentimental glamour of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, then if the recruiting figures were going up, that would be a sign of there being something behind it; but the recruiting figures are not going up; they are going down.
  I made one interjection about unemployment. I know there is this controversy; there has been some controversy in recent years that when the unemployment figures go up, recruiting goes up, too, and I understand that this has been challenged by some Departmental Committee, but I know why so many people joined the Argyll and Sutherland Regiment in the past, and the reason was poverty. Not of the officers, but the great Highland counties were poor counties, counties where ordinary people had nothing else to do but go into the Army. It was not because they were hot-beds of patriotism at all. It was simply because they had to go in the Army or starve. When we hear about the glorious history of Scotland it is as well to recall these facts.
  I believe this problem is with us. I believe that when economic prosperity returns to the Highlands—and I am sure there are signs of its beginning, as a result of this Government's redevelopment policy—it will be more and more difficult for the Army to get its recruits, simply because the people there will get jobs, they will get better wages, they will be able to live with their families, and they would prefer to be in some kind of settled occupation at a reasonable wage to being in the Army.
  Mr. Brewis: Can the hon. Gentleman explain then why the young men in Ayrshire are joining the Ayrshire Yeomanry and paying their own money to go to Territorial camp?
  Mr. Hughes: It is quite true that Opposition leaders made a big fuss about the disbanding of the Ayrshire Yeomanry, but I receive letters, too. I received two letters, one from an officer whose name was so undecipherable I could not understand it, and the other from a colonel who did not know that I represent South Ayrshire and who lives in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ayr. I thought one of the letters
  1080
  came from an illiterate, because I could not understand his writing. The other came from somebody who did not understand anything at all, except that this small clique of Yeomanry officers were not going to have social opportunities which they had had in the past. There is no outbreak at all of any real indignation because the Ayrshire Yeomanry were disbanded.
  What I say is that if these gentlemen want to carry on, paying their own expenses, I have no objection to their operating in a voluntary capacity, and the hon. Member has just given another illustration of this completely bogus agitation, which is not based on the feelings of ordinary people at all.
  Mr. Younger: I do not want to break the hon. Member's heart, but perhaps he is not aware that the Ayrshire Yeomanry have not been disbanded and have no intention of being disbanded and are very much alive and kicking.
  Mr. Hughes: I apologise if I used the word "disbanded", but they are not going to operate with Government finance, and if they are carrying on their avocation without asking us for any money, I have no more objection to that than I have to the Boy Scouts or the Boys' Brigade.
  We are living in an age when people are asking, what are we going into the Army for? Whom are we going to fight? Is Scotland in any danger of being invaded? I remember the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) speaking on Moscow radio, when he said that we must not only co-exist with the Russians but co-operate with them Yet the assumption in all these debates is that we must have a big Army, or a big reserve Army, because at some time or other we have to fight the Russians. I do not believe that that is a sensible argument, or that, in any case, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders are relevant to it. People ask, "In these days, what is the Army for?" We get no satisfactory answer, but the answer will be the dilemma and the problem of Ministers of Defence.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Easington brought a touch of realism into this debate. He pointed out that these romantic regiments were recruited

  1081
  from what are called the Glasgow "keelies." He said that they were tough people. I am told that they made the best fighting soldiers but that unfortunately some of them had not forgotten their old habits.
  I would prefer to see potential recruits to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and to the Highlands and Lowlands regiments going to the police. That is where they are needed at the present time. The trouble in Glasgow at present is not that the security of its citizens is menaced by the Russians. The Russians do not go out at night smashing people on the head, collecting in gangs and using razors. It is the civil population. I am therefore delighted when I find that fewer people are going into the old regiments, because some of them may drift into the police force and so help to tackle crime in Glasgow.
  I am not making a romantic speech, and my sentiments will probably not be endorsed by any hon. Member opposite—
  Mr. Edward M. Taylor: Has the hon. Gentleman received any messages of support from Czechoslovakia for the argument he now puts forward?
  Mr. Hughes: I am reminded that this is on'y a three-hour debate—
  Mr. Edward M. Taylor Mr. Edward M. Taylor rose—
  Mr. Hughes:Leave it alone—I am coming to my peroration.
  The right hon. Member for Easington pointed out that some of the greatest soldiers have been Irish. That is true. It was the Duke of Wellington who said, "Sir, the military profession is a damnable profession." I believe there to be a general realisation that there is no great future for the old kind of Army, and I am glad to see that the Government are doing something sensible and are facing the fact that the Army's numbers will be reduced. I hope that the time will come when the numbers in the Army will be smaller than the numbers in the police force.
  5.44 p.m.
  Miss Harvie Anderson: I think that hon. Members opposite are in some confusion about the state of our defences, but there has been
  1082
  no shining light of clarity in their contribution.
  It is inevitable that this debate should range far more widely than over the one part of the Defence White Paper upon which I intend to speak. I do not think that it really matters where the recruits come from. Of course, recruits to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders come from Argyll, they also come from Renfrew and Stirling, from Clackmannan and Kinross, and from among the Glasgow "keelies", of whom I am one, as are the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) and many hon. Members. We are now studying the effect on a nation to which we are all proud to belong of disbanding a great regiment. I extend my remarks to point out that the widespread dismay is occasioned by the fact that the White Paper makes plain to all thinking people that the Government have once again struck at the defences of the country, and are again illustrating that our defences are now falling below the strength that many people regard as necessary for the safety of this island today.
  It is true that we have a professional Army. Anyone who, like myself, was fortunate enough recently to go on a delegation to the B.A.O.R. recognises that we have a highly trained, highly skilled, professional and well-equipped Army, but, for those qualities that are necessary to make the Army what it is, the men and the units are still dependent on the basic requirements of morale, discipline and recruiting. Who in this Chamber would dare analyse what morale really is? Who is prepared to describe precisely what it is that creates the conditions in men and in units which my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) has mentioned? If an army or a unit is to achieve the badge of distinction in its rôle, it is for all of us to accept that the two qualities I have mentioned, plus recruiting, are necessary.
  The first quality required is morale, so I see in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders the indefinable quality that is required above all else in any fighting unit. There is also the follow-on of the discipline of the men and of the unit, and the relationship between the various ranks and those who have formerly served in the unit, which builds up this indescribable force.

  1083
  There are other things. There is the discipline, and within the discipline I count a career structure. I do not think that a man can have confidence in his career and be expected to be a professional highly-trained soldier—or any other Service man—unless he is reasonably sure of the security of his employment. If the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) and I agree on no other point, perhaps we can agree that security of employment is today as essential to a soldier as to any other person in the community.
  The Minister has told us that jobs are being found for those who were affected when the Cameronians disbanded, but does he not realise that some of those jobs were in the ranks of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders? How does he think these men feel today. What prospect does he suggest is being offered to men who have joined a regiment with which they had no ties only to find that unit disbanded two months later? What is the prospect of those men for the next 10 years? It is not at all surprising that the recruiting figures are affected. We cannot conceivably imagine any men wittingly taking on a job whose future they doubt in view of the experience of their friends in having to change their jobs twice in two months. That is not on for recruiting.
  If, as I and countless other Scots believe, there are within the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders those qualities necessary for the best in the British Army, has serious consideration been given to the retention of their identity in another form, such as a parachute regiment? It has been said in another place, by someone who knows much more about these things than I do, that this should be a practical solution. I should like to see it looked into, even at this stage, as a practical possibility. Goodness knows, in Scotland we produced from the Highland Light Infantry in time of war as good a parachute battalion as there is in the British Army and very proud they were of their tartan trews. I cannot see why this solution should not be applied to this proposed disbandment.
  Mention has been made of recruiting and the apparently new idea that recruiting is not so closely tied to employment as the hon. Member for South Ayrshire
  1084
  thinks. So far as I have been able to discover, over two centuries at least the proportion of the population in Scotland who have sought to join the Regular Army has been just about constant. Therefore, I think it quite right to accept the view that the proportion of the population who wish to serve in the Regular Forces in Scotland is a constant figure, considerably higher than the proportion from any other part of the United Kingdom.
  I understand that today the Royal Scots Greys consist 93 per cent. of Scots. In the event of disbandment, as it is the only Scots cavalry regiment, the men would have to go to English, Welsh or Irish units. We may have views about where Scotland stands, but most of us want Scots people to have a Scots regiment to join. I hope that the English Ministers appreciate the strength of feeling there is in that respect. This is a decision affecting not only the Argylls but one weakening yet again the defences of this country and destroying that part of the very spirit on which we depend when ill times befall us.
  5.54 p.m.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: Aware that what I am going to say will cause anger, some bitter resentment and some rather brutal hurt, I regret, to cherished personal feelings, I should like the House to be clear about what is not in dispute. It is not in dispute that the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the Scots Greys have given remarkable service to this country in two world wars. It is not in dispute that in a number of exceedingly unpleasant campaigns, such as the Greys had in Palestine in the late 1930s and the Argylls in many campaigns, such as the Indian Mutiny and the Siege of Lucknow, there have been many feats of considerable personal heroism displayed by individuals in those regiments.
  The four issues I raise arise out of the serious speeches by the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) and by the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), whom I listen to with great respect in these matters, and from what he has been saying in the Press and in his speech this afternoon. Any contempt I have is reserved for representatives of the Scottish Nationalist Party. Dr. McIntyre,

  1085
  Provost of Stirling, says "Keep the Argylls" but other Scottish Nationalists want most defence costs to be abolished. This is a wholly contemptible attitude of having one's cake and eating it, for which I have no time.
  The issues I raise, following the debate, and in particular, the speech of the hon. Member for Ayr, are, first, whether there is a credible operational requirement; secondly, whether the effect on recruiting will be adverse and if so to what extent this matters; thirdly, the whole question of cost; and fourthly, the question whether the cuts are unfair to Scotland. On the question of a credible operational requirement, of course if we take the view of Sir Gordon Macmillan that there has been a mistaken defence policy and that we should remain in Singapore, it probably follows from that basic assumption that we should keep the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. I do not find it adequate for the hon. Member for Ayr to say that of course there may be tasks to be performed at short notice. We must be very open about this. I trust that this or any future British Government will not take those kind of "tasks at short notice" outside N.A.T.O. and the United Nations.
  It is up to the Opposition to be a little clearer about their attitude. I have not got the script, but I listened to what the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) said on Thursday night on the radio about these defence cuts. I may have got him wrong, but I understood the right hon. Gentleman to make it pretty clear that he was not going to endorse any kind of a pledge that, should a Conservative Government be elected, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders or any other particular regiment would be restored. He is a canny politician and also an ex-Chancellor. Having seen him in the House this afternoon—not personally, but having seen him present—I find it a little strange that the right hon. Gentleman has not appeared at any time during this debate. My guess would be that, foreseeing man as he is in many ways, he will not want to be seen to commit himself to this kind of Motion.
  Basically, I accept the assumptions of the Defence White Papers. I should have thought that if the Scots Greys have a contribution, either as an
  1086
  armoured regiment or an armoured engineering regiment, to make to N.A.T.O., they should be kept. Otherwise they should not be kept. The same goes for the United Nations balanced force. I hope that any contribution we make to a United Nations force will be no greater than a proportional contribution. Therefore, in this balanced force I do not think we can argue that there should be other than a decrease of infantry.
  Then we come to the question of Aden. This is not the occasion on which one should talk of the politics of Aden, but I simply ask how this looks in retrospect. Was any great historic purpose served by those who laid down their lives in Aden? I went with Lloyd's Underwriters to Cairo to try and get the release the ships lodged in the Bitter Lakes. If one talks in the Arab world one find that our activities in Aden are mostly counter-productive. This is the view, not only of politicians of the Left, but of a great many British businessmen.
  I had not intended to raise the question of Colonel Mitchell, but it was raised by the hon. Member for Argyll, and by the hon. Member for Ayr who made a central point about Colonel Mitchell and asked how we could do such a thing to his regiment. Colonel Mitchell was reported in the Daily Express to have said that one of the first Britons to land in Aden in 1827 started off by hanging the Mayor of Crater from the mast of his ship, and the colonel said:
  "This is the right standard discipline in this sort of situation. I had to be tough. I think they were very glad to see me go."
  I simply remark that I do not want to be represented abroad in the Arab world by this kind of man. I think many young British people would feel the same way. I do not doubt that Colonel Mitchell is personally a brave man and I am not even saying, as many of my colleagues have said, perhaps rightly, that he is a publicity seeker. It may well have been that he used the title "Mad Mitch" in order to project a certain cause in which he believed. In any case, if we are to be critical of serving soldiers who air their opinions, let us not go for colonels. Let us go for generals and ask some rather detailed questions of General Sir John Hackett.

  1087
  If we are to criticise that kind of thing, let us go for the generals rather than for the colonels.
  I am provoked by the hon. Member for Ayr to ask what, in fact, did happen in Aden. After brief reflection, I propose to use the privilege which is given to Members to say things in the House of Commons and to ask questions in the House of Commons which they might not do outside for fear of being brought to the courts. I should like to ask some pretty loaded questions, as the subject has been raised.
  I ask my hon. Friend, is it or is it not true that Colonel Mitchell disobeyed administrative and operational orders in Aden given by his Brigade Commander, Brigadier Jeffries, and the Army Commander, Major-General Tower? Secondly, if Colonel Mitchell disobeyed orders, what was the reaction of the Commander-in-Chief? Did the Commander-in-Chief raise this matter with the Secretary of State for Defence? If Colonel Mitchell disobeyed orders, why was he not relieved of his command? For example, is it or is it not true that during the Aden operation an order was given that grenades were to be kept at regimental headquarters, and is it or is it not true that when an inspection was made by senior officers, grenades were found to be distributed among the platoons of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders? If that is true, why did it happen?
  In the House of Commons it would be quite proper to give a categorical denial, if such is the case. I am asking the questions for the wider purpose since a claim has been made about their superiority to other units. What exactly happened in the progress into Crater? That was a tricky political operation. Is it true that the Colonel of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders disobeyed the time schedule of his orders? I had better be very blunt about it. Is it not true that the Argylls in Aden, far from being the superbly disciplined force which they were claimed to be by the British Press, in fact suffered from a lack of discipline? Is not that the actual truth of what happened?
  Hon. Members: No.
  Mr. Younger: Leaving that scandalous allegation aside, would the hon. Member,
  1088
  in the interest of fairness, record that once the Argylls had taken control in Crater there was a period of several months in which there was practically no incident, due to the fact that they had taken control, thus saving a great many lives?
  Mr. Dalyell: That may be so, but it would be much better in Britain if we were to ask questions for the truth and if the truth were to come out. There is one point on which the hon. Member and I could agree, and that is that rumour is extremely damaging. All I can promise the hon. Member is that I did not ask these questions lightly. But the whole issue of Colonel Mitchell has been raised so widely, and in this debate, and with me personally, that I think it legitimate to ask these questions.
  Another question to ask is, are the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and their like, the infantry, essential to the defence of these Islands? I am not a pacifist. I am a fortress Britain man. I understand that there must be some Regular Forces. At the risk of incurring the wrath of my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire, I remind him that in Tribune and other Left-wing journals I have advocated the British retention of Polaris, because it strikes me that when we are defending Britain, it is the Polaris nuclear capability which acts as a deterrent and no longer is it the famous infantry regiment, though some must be retained.
  That brings me to the question of recruitment. I would say to the hon. Member for Ayr that if, as a young man, I were attending an interview with General Graham, I have a suspicion that I might say to him what I thought he wanted to hear. I do not take that evidence about a huge percentage wanting to join a particular "tribe" which he gave quite as seriously as he takes it. I feel that regimental identity is not a major factor compared with, for example, career structure. There is the evidence that the recruiting figures for the Royal Corps of Transport, which has never had any kind of regimental set-up, are extremely good. What matter for recruitment are the kind of bold schemes which my hon. Friend introduced in relation to linking serving officers, and I hope n.c.o.s, with industry when they

  1089
  come out of the Forces. The announcement of 9th July about a link between industry and serving soldiers is extremely good. That will matter to recruitment. The hon. Member for Bute and North Ayrshire (Sir F. Maclean) said that it was important to get the right type of recruit. So it is. And the right type of recruit is a much more highly educated person than ever before in our history. I suspect that this kind of man, whom it is highly desirable that the Army should recruit, will not be attracted by what is loosely called the tribalism of the regiment about which we have heard this afternoon.
  I do not want to go into detail, but the issue for recruitment is the rôle and the use to which the Forces are put. Without wanting to be immodest in any way, and simply to safeguard myself against charges of shirking the issue and not going into it, I refer to a Fabian pamphlet which I wrote with Andrew Wilson, Lady Kennet, Neville Brown, the defence correspondents, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ilkeston (Mr. Raymond Fletcher), which outlines how modern forces should be geared to civilian tasks when they are not being used for military purposes. That raises the whole question, very properly initiated by the hon. Lady the Member for Renfrew, East (Miss Harvie Anderson), when she spoke about a worth-while career in the Forces. That is very important. It is the problem which we must face, and the Government are facing it.
  I turn to the question of cost and the rise in cost in the last five years. If Sir Gordon Macmillan was here, I would address him in another capacity, namely, in his capacity as former Chairman of the Cumbernauld Development Corporation, because as Chairman of that Development Corporation he was very properly crying out for more funds to do all sorts of extremely important things in Cumbernauld. There is a competition for resources in this nation, and we must face up to that problem.
  I wish to ask about the rise in the cost of a unit. I am a member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology and, without mentioning any matters which might be privileged, I can say that we make visits and learn things and that one of the things which we have learned
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  is the fantastic cost of even the orthodox equipment used for today's Army. For example, the simple range-finding equipment for guns, which used to be a very cheap and simple contraption, is now an electronic computer which costs £25,000 to put on a jeep. It is in that context that the Conservative Party must view their own commitments. Those who want to petition most against the disbanding of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders are also the most formidable lobby in the country for the reduction of taxation. It must be made clear that the Exchequer consequences of this kind of attitude are very considerable.
  What is the cost of the Argylls? It would be interesting if some indication could be given of the cost of the regiment for a year, because I do not believe the right hon. Member for Argyll when he says it is not particularly expensive.
  Mr. Noble: The hon. Gentleman has deep knowledge of defence matters, which he gains from the Select Committee. The only point I was making was that in my view they must be cheaper than the Parachute Battalion.
  Mr. Dalyell: I take the point, but it is still not cheap.
  I think that other comparisons have to be made. The proposal is to keep the Argyll and Sutherlands. This is proposed in a country which under-pays its nurses and its teachers, which does not build as many hospitals as it ought, and a country, moreover, which cannot apparently afford to go ahead with the developments in particle physics at C.E.R.N. and Culham. Yet are we to incur military expenditure for which there is no operational requirement?
  An Hon. Member: It is the kind of Government that we have.
  Mr. Dalyell: I do not think it is. I rather suspect that the right hon. Member for Barnet knows that my kind of argument is true or else, as a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, he would have been here today.
  Fourthly, are we being unfair to Scotland? During my National Service I served with the Royal Hampshire Regiment. They have their precious traditions, just as the hon. Member for Ayr who served in Korea knows that the Gloucester have their traditions. Their

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  traditions are as precious to them as those of the Argylls may be to us, and on the issue of tradition perhaps I might be forgiven a personal reference.
  As some of my hon. Friends know, one of the regiments under discussion was founded in 1678 by an ancestor and namesake of mine, a man who was sent to the Tower of London, from which I am glad to reveal he escaped. I have had many letters from people saying that they are appalled that a descedent of his should publicly take my kind of attitude, but from all that we know about him he was a realist. He founded a troop of cavalry with a clear and definite operational requirement in his view, namely, to restrain the activities of some 17th century Scottish religious bigots. That was a clear operational requirement in his view, and I think that he would have been the first to be appalled at keeping regiments for which there was no operational requirement.
  If his shade could be convinced by the Defence Secretary about the assumptions on which the White Paper is written and the operational need for the Greys, because it would all depend on the arguments used by the Defence Secretary, he would take a different view and keep the Greys. But failing that in the absence of a demonstration of operational requirement, even though he founded the Scots Greys, he would have been the first to move the closing order on them.
  It is a question of realism and operational requirements. I am told in many letters that I am irresponsbile, that I am not fit to be a Scottish Member of Parliament, and that I am not fit to represent West Lothian, although I receive many letters of a contrary opinion. On this kind of issue it would be better if politicians spoke out and said what they really feel, because only in that way will some of us be able to drag what I believe to be a minority of our fellow countrymen into the realities of the late 1960s.
  6.13 p.m.
  Mr. James Davidson: I seem to be fated to follow controversial speeches by the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), and I hope that I shall be forgiven if I do not
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  follow him, except in one respect: that I intend to say what I think.
  I should like to make a constructive proposal, and if possible to draw a common sense line between emotion, tradition, and sentiment on the one hand, and manpower planning and cost on the other. The Minister will no doubt be relieved to know that I do not intend to make a long speech.
  I probably have as much right as anybody here to be sentimental about Scottish regiments. For three generations and two wars members of my family served with the Cameron Highlanders, another with the Highland Light Infantry, and another with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Three of them never came back, and two of them were severely wounded. Hon. Members may think that that was a very good reason for joining the Navy, but my main reason for doing so was that it was the only way that I knew, at 13, of getting a tin hat and a Service respirator.
  I was also among a group of Members who carried out a quiet campaign behind the scenes to see that the Gordon Highlanders were not one of the regiments which bit the dust. This was a group of Members representative of the three main parties in the House. While we are relieved that the Gordons are not one of the regiments to go, I am sorry that the Argylls are scheduled for disbandment. If they go, only the Gordons of the four regiments which I mentioned will remain, though I do not accept the inevitability of the disbandment of the Argyll and Sutherlands.
  Perhaps I might try to put the position in perspective. The latest proposed cuts are the end of a long series of amalgamations begun in 1957 by the Tory Government. By 1961 the Army had been reduced by no fewer than 51 units of regiment and battalion size. In the light of that, the Tory Motion rings a little hollow. When I and my colleagues vote in the same Lobby as the Conservatives tonight, we shall be voting against the Government's policy of disbanding the Territorial Army and scrapping the Territorial tradition, against their policy of wasting great potential for recruitment and for service in civil emergency based on one of mankind's most powerful instruments. According to a book which

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  I read recently, man's territorial instinct is even more powerful than his sexual instinct and that is saying something.
  Before making a practical and constructive suggestion, perhaps I might remind the Minister of one or two facts of which he is probably well aware. One point has already been made. I am referring to this figure of 80 per cent. non-preference. The statement that 80 per cent. of recruits joining the Army do not claim one unit rather than another is not true, at least not of that part of Scotland where I live. I know it cannot be true, and I have that on good authority. This may be the average figure for the United Kingdom, but not for Scotland.
  I propose to make against the statistical point which I made earlier, namely, that whereas Scotland has about one-eighth of the population of England, she has one-third as many Regular soldiers as England has.
  Sir Cyril Osborne: Is that so?
  Mr. Davidson: Yes, that is an established fact, and I can produce the figures if the hon. Gentleman is interested in them.
  Sir C. Osbome: No.
  Mr. Davidson: England has a population of 44 million, with 46,000 Regular soldiers. Scotland, with a population of 5,200,000, has about 15,000 Regular infantry soldiers. The hon. Gentleman will therefore see that my figures are correct.
  Against that is the fact that only 4 per cent. of the United Kingdom based Army, 11 per cent. of which is Scottish, is based on Scottish soil. In other words, one man per thousand of the male population in England is a Regular soldier, whereas for Scotland the figure is about 3 per thousand. I think the Minister should bear those figures very much in mind when final decisions are taken on the subject under discussion this evening.
  Has the Minister calculated the value to trade and commerce of the Scottish regiments? I am not speaking idly. I was present in Bangkok at the Asian Trade Fair on British Day. The pipe band of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards was playing, and it attracted more attention and drew more people into that
  1094
  enormous display on that day than did any other event when other nationalities had their national days.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: Were they pipers?
  Mr. Davidson: Yes. As a piper perhaps I might tell the hon. Gentleman that the 1st Battalion, Scots Guards are outstanding as pipers.
  Perhaps I might also ask the Minister whether he has taken into account the adaptability of the Scottish Regiments.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: Even if they were not in uniform, is it not true that the people would still have gone to listen to the pipers?
  Mr. Davidson: They would have been a great deal more comfortable if they had not been in uniform, because it was a sweltering hot day.
  Has the Minister taken account of the extreme adaptability of Scottish soldiers? I was given an instance by a colonel the other day of how one unit, which I shall not name, was transformed into a para-troop unit, back into an infantry unit, then into something else, and back into an infantry unit again during action in France and Italy.
  Has he taken into account the enormous financial savings that could be made —I say this without stating facts, but on very good authority—if a few of the planners were allowed to do a little less planning and weapons could be produced, when they must be produced—I am not a warmonger—without being modified, re-modified and modified again, so that the cost escalates from start to finish by perhaps 400 or 500 per cent.?
  I am prepared to accept that there is a need to reduce the total strength of the Regular Army. The Army today is trained against a background of armoured weapons, nuclear weapons, and even, perhaps, chemical and biological weapons, and beneath the shadow of air power. Obviously, we cannot preserve, and do not want to preserve, the same ratios between infantry and other troops as the armies which fought at Minden, Waterloo and Mons. We accept this, but given the general defence context of today, the decision to abolish the regimental centres and identities in the absence of a reserve territorial force is very unwise in my view

  1095
  and that of my hon. Friends on the Liberal Bench.
  I wish to end by making a constructive proposition, and I should be most grateful if the Minister would give it his serious consideration. I am certain that we need a national Territorial reserve, regionally-based, which could take over civil defence and activity in times of civil emergency. It could assume the role of the previous Territorial Army, but with perhaps a greater accent on training for guerilla warfare and activities of that sort. I draw the Minister's attention to what is going on in the West Country at present, where members of the populace are looting from scrap dumps. I hope that they will not fall prey to disease as a result. A Territorial unit on the scene could take charge and stop that sort of thing going on.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: So can the police.
  Mr. Davidson: If there were more police, but the police are already there and have their hands full. The job is more suitable for a Territorial unit.
  The redundant regimental centres could be used as headquarters for such a national Territorial reserve. Such a plan would obviously need to be very carefully devised. It might well be possible to retain a Regular company, or possibly a smaller unit of each of the famous Scottish regiments—and English regiments, but that is not what we are debating—regiments which have come through both world wars with such honour and distinction. Such depot units could have the function of training the territorial reserve, recruiting for both territorial and Regular battalions, maintaining the traditions and ceremonial, and providing the essential link between, for example, an Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Territorial reserve regiment with all the functions I have outlined and the Highland Brigade of Regular battalions which already exists.
  I hope that the Minister will give this proposition very serious consideration. I believe that it would mean the retention of all that is best in the Scottish regiments. It would not be immensely expensive, and it would provide the type of reserve that I feel the country cannot afford to be without.
  6.24 p.m.
  Mr. Hector Monro: I should like to make one or two comments in the two minutes remaining to back-benchers.
  First, when the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) makes a speech such as he did, he should stay in the kitchen and take the heat that should be coming to him. He made a grossly improper speech and put forward heavily-loaded questions to the effect that the commanding officer of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in Aden had behaved quite improperly, and that his battalion had failed to do its duty. It is absolutely outrageous for any Scottish hon. Member to say that in the House. I hope that when he winds up the Minister will put the record straight. He knows, as we all do, that the regiment would welcome an inquiry on what happened in Aden. Then the record would be straight, and some other heads might roll, including that of the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Tarn Dalyell)— notwithstanding General Dalyell 200 years ago.
  But today we have been debating what may be the demise of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and possibly the Scots Greys. All Scottish Members should be putting their backs into seeing that this does not happen, yet we had cries of "Hear, hear" from Members opposite, including the Secretary of State for Scotland, to every suggestion that these regiments might go. This is outrageous, and something the Scottish people will not forget when the Election comes. I am glad that, if at all possible, we shall retain the regiment if it has not been disbanded. I hope that every hon. Member will support the Motion in the Lobbies.
  6.26 p.m.
  Mr. Gordon Campbell: I must at the outset declare some interests. First, I was in the Regular Army until a German bullet put an end to that. As a Gunner commanding a Scottish battery in a Scottish division for most of the war and fighting alongside Scottish regiments, I feel well qualified to speak about them. Indeed my testimony is free of that suspicion of partiality which might be ascribed to me had I been a member of one of these regiments.

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  I am obliged to declare a further interest. I should probably not be alive and here today if the battalion of Highlanders with whom I made the assault crossing at the Elbe had not, after I was wounded, detailed a party to take me back speedily across the river for the necessary blood transfusions and penicillin. This is a personal debt which I must acknowledge.
  In addition, most of us have family links with these regiments. Hon. Members who have spoken have made this clear. I make no apology for having started on a personal note because it is important that the Government should understand that in Scotland the regiments are closely connected not only with areas but with people and families. This is more so in Scotland than anywhere else in Britain. It is the secret of the good recruiting in Scotland, and it explains the tradition of soldiering as a career which is widely found in Scotland, and which has just been recorded in the figures given by the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. James Davidson). The regimental system has given British infantly a spirit and fighting strength which has carried it through unbearable situations, and has been, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) pointed out, the envy of other countries. This is not limited to Scotland. It also applies to English and Welsh regiments, but that system means more in Scotland and is more prized and precious there. To damage it in Scotland is to take serious risks with future recruiting, besides shattering a delicate mechanism.
  The Government propose to disband the second battalion of the Scots Guards and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders as a regiment. In their White Paper they say that a regiment of the Royal Armoured Corps is to be nominated later—presumably for disbandment. If that later announcement were to be the Royal Scots Greys, this would mean an inordinate proportion of the cuts falling on Scottish regiments, and that would be intolerable.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) had an Adjournment debate on 2nd July, when he pointed out that the Greys were the only Scottish cavalry regiment, and spoke of
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  their prowess. It was appropriate that he should raise this, as he is related to that Ensign Ewart of the Greys who captured a French Standard at Waterloo after the famous charge of the Greys.
  I applaud the attendance at the debate of the four or five Scottish Labour Members who have been here throughout, though at least one of them was here in order to press for the abolition of most, if not all, of the Army. But where were the other 40 or so Scottish Labour Members? Why have they not been here during the debate? The hon. Gentlemen who are pointing have not been here during the whole of the debate. Others have, and I applaud that.
  I am not suggesting that no reductions in the infantry have been necessary in the last 10 years. Our charge against the Government is that these latest proposals have been made necessary only by panic decisions to reduce Britain's commitments, and that these panic decisions have arisen from gross mismanagement of our economic affairs. The extraordinary changes in policy, apparently made necessary only for economic reasons, are recorded in the Government's own statements over the past two and a half years. In the White Paper of February, 1966 it was stated that, after far-reaching examination of the nation's defence needs in the next decade, it is in the Far East and Southern Asia that the greatest danger to peace may lie in the next decade, and I quote:
  "We believe it is right that Britain should continue to maintain a military presence in this area."
  That was in February, 1966. In June, 1966 the Prime Minister was reported in the Press as warning that the world was too small for Britain to contract out and leave it to the Americans and Chinese, eye-ball to eye-ball, to confront each other. By the end of last year Ministers were swallowing these words and taking decisions to pull out of both South East Asia and the Persian Gulf. It was Labour mismanagement of the economy that forced the Government to take decisions which the Secretary of State for Defence admitted involved serious risks. Last week's White Paper made it clear that the reductions now proposed arise from those decisions. We must not be surprised if we lose hundreds of millions of pounds in trade in the Far East

  1099
  and Middle East as a result of these decisions, but I will not pursue those matters now.
  This evening we are concerned that serious damage is being done to the defence forces of this country, and in particular to the infantry. This is another grave risk which we need not as a country have run.
  The Under-Secretary reminded us of the amalgamations carried out a few years ago when the Conservative Party were in office. He then read an excerpt from the Daily Telegraph reporting that these amalgamations were acceptable. But they were not disbandments; they were amalgamations that even the newspapers were reporting were proving acceptable, though not necessarily in all cases. These were painful, but they were part of a reduction which could be seen to be necessary. I was especially interested in the amalgamation of the Sea-forth and Cameron Highlanders, regiments which I knew well. As could be foreseen, that amalgamation, though its necessity was regretted, was happily and successfully accomplished. The resulting new regiment, the Queen's Own Highlanders, was very soon distinguishing itself by its prompt and skilful action in Brunei. What the Under-Secretary read out confirmed the acceptance that those proposals at that time received, even though there were, naturally, considerable doubts and anxieties beforehand.
  Last week's proposal was altogether different. It proposed the death of a highland regiment, the Argylls. To many of us in Scotland this is incredible; in fact, it seems impossible. Do the Government realise that they are proposing to abolish the original "thin red line"? I have been glad to note that in the last few days some of the Press have recalled this part of the Regiment's history.
  Mr. Reynolds: The second battalion.
  Mr. Campbell: The Minister says it is the second battalion. This is the point; there is only one battalion now. If he abolishes the one remaining battalion, the successor of the "thin red line", he is abolishing the "thin red line".
  Mr. Reynolds: The hon. Gentleman will forgive me for intervening. He
  1100
  referred to the "thin red line"; he now claims that the second battalion is the successor to the "thin red line". I would accept that other battalions in the amalgamation could be the successors of the Argylls.
  Mr. Campbell: I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should consult the Argylls and he would find that they are the "thin red line". I am glad that some of the Press recently have recalled this part of the Regiment's history, under Sir Colin Campbell, a sturdy Scottish soldier whose career spanned the Peninsular and Crimean Wars as well as the Indian Mutiny.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Hamilton (Mrs. Ewing) has not been here during the whole of the debate, although she made a statement reported in the Scottish Press last Saturday which, in my opinion, was a shocking attempt to face both ways, for the Scottish National Party have adopted on this question an attitude entirely unrepresentative of Scottish opinion. At their annual conference last year they defeated by a huge majority a motion deploring disbandment of the Scottish regiments. Among the reasons given was that the regiments had been formed by London Governments to hold down the Scots and to build the so-called British Empire. Although this is the fundamentalist attitude previously taken by S.N.P. leaders, 1 wish to make it clear beyond any doubt that these sentiments, together with the conference vote, are the exact opposite of the feelings of the majority of people in Scotland. I need hardly say that the S.N.P. conference in Aberdeen this year did not dare to raise the subject at all, and I can understand why the hon. Lady has decided to stay away from this debate.
  I turn to the Argylls, which is the regiment now under threat. This regiment has done much in recent years, and last year the regiment pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for the Government in Aden by reoccupying Crater without a casualty. This was at an anxious time when several British lives had been lost and when there was a prospect of considerable further bloodshed on both sides. This is the kind of task, a task of international policing, at which the Scottish infantry have been superb. Before Aden that same battalion was for two and a half

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  years in South-East Asia, for long periods of that time in Borneo, engaged in confrontation. I visited the battalion in South-East Asia a year and a half ago and in every headquarters I visited I heard how well they had done. This was before they went to Aden.
  Incidentally, the Under-Secretary in his opening statement mentioned some of the operations in which the Argylls had been engaged since the war as if that were a complete list, but he did not mention Borneo or Cyprus.
  Mr. Boyden: I was selective; I was not trying to be complete.
  Mr. Campbell: The Argylls were in Cyprus and Borneo, as well as the Gordons. Before that they were in Korea.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr was himself with the Argylls in Korea, and they were engaged immediately in a desperate action in support of the United Nations where a posthumous Victoria Cross was awarded to them. They were then in Cyprus. Here they faced a very difficult situation. Not only was it made difficult by the invidious task of keeping order with two embattled communities on the island, but they also had to contend with visiting politicians. Here I refer to the right hon. Lady who is now Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity. She was widely reported in the Press as criticising the Argylls at that time, and when she held a Press Conference on her return it was reported in The Times of 23rd September, 1958;
  "Mrs. Castle said that she stood by her comments on the rough handling by British troops when 'in hot pursuit.' … I believe it is wrong for detainees of various ages and conditions of health to be expected to stand the same treatment through drill or parades as tough, young Highland soldiers."
  I am glad that the right hon. Lady was rejected by the Government of that day in what she said and rejected by many of her hon. Friends. Incidentally, I gave notice to the right hon. Lady that I should be making reference to her in this debate. I hope that she had nothing to do with this decision, although she is a member of the Cabinet.
  Now I come to the incredible speech by the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell). It contained what I can only describe as shocking statements about the Argylls' conduct in Aden and that of their commanding officer, Colonel
  1102
  Mitchell, put in an interrogative form to the Government and asking for an inquiry. Fortunately, the Secretary of State for Defence has already assured my right hon. Friend the Member for Argyll —and he nodded his assent again today when the point was raised—that Colonel Mitchell's conduct was correct, and the right hon. Gentleman confirmed that he was an outstanding officer in his duties in Aden. If the Government decide to hold a special inquiry, we shall support them from this side of the House. We are sure this it would simply add further credit to the Argylls' record.
  One of the reasons for the good recruiting of the Argylls is that in recent years they have been engaged in operations in which they have been successful and have been seen to be successful. Only last week, the Ministry of Defence held a Press conference pointing to the apparent paradox of a crisis in recruiting at the same time when severe reductions were being made in the infantry. However, it is no paradox. If the Army is truncated, it becomes less attractive. In a recruiting crisis, the worst and clumsiest action that a Government could take would be to kill off a regiment. This document is a death warrant, but, fortunately, it is one which can be rescinded.
  If the Government understood that intangible but powerful force—the regimental spirit and its strength in Scotland —they would be acting differently. Instead of the expensive advertising in the Press which has been referred to, including photographs of self-conscious young officers with pipes leaning against mess mantelpieces surrounded by dogs, they would foster rather than destroy the regiment, which is the chief factor in infantry recruiting. They would then get more recruits less expensively.
  In recent years, recruiting for the Scottish regiments has been outstanding compared with others. In have the most recent figures before me, and the Argylls' recruiting figures for 1967 and the first half of 1968 are better than those of any of the other Highland regiments. As I have said, no doubt part of the reason for that is the successful operations in which they have been engaged. What folly it is to throw away an asset like that.
  Then I would draw attention to the many officers from Scottish regiments

  1103
  who have risen to high positions and occupy them today. This is not remarkable, because I know that this is where the tradition of soldiering enters in—as a profession of world peace-keeping besides the defence of Britain in times of grave emergency. I would refer only to the recently retired Chief of the General Staff, the top post in the Army, who was promoted to Field Marshal earlier this year. This latest Field Marshal is from a Highland regiment.
  The infantry will continue to be needed for peace-keeping in disturbed areas, besides the defence of the free world. The situation in Cyprus today is an example of peace-keeping being needed. The British infantry at battalion and company level excels in the adaptability, tact and skill to do the right thing in dealing with local peoples, terrorism, and difficult political situations. This has been proved in Malaya, Borneo, Aden and elsewhere. In his interesting speech, the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) pointed out cogently the rôle played by the regimental spirit; and another outstanding quality of the British infantry is their dependability in extreme adversity.
  What is it that keeps groups of ordinary men, not a carefully picked elite, hanging on and fighting back, though exhausted and decimated by casualties, running out of ammunition and supplies, knowing that plans have gone wrong because of enemy successes, outnumbered and surrounded, continuously shelled, in appalling conditions of cold or mud, and with no sign of help or relief? It is the feeling that their regiment will never crack—that the Argylls will not falter or fail in their allotted tasks. That is the key to the invincibility which wins the last and vital battle. Field Marshals Wavell and Montgomery and Sir Arthur Bryant have stated this plainly. Can we afford to throw away all this?
  It was largely due to this that the Nazi jackboot never reached these shores and Hitler's pogroms were brought to an end. Those facts are too easily forgotten over 20 years later.
  Now the Government are proposing to do what our enemies in two world wars could not, to obliterate the Argylls.
  1104
  However, the Government have not heard the last of this, because a petition is being started in Scotland which I can assure the Minister will gather strength from day to day.
  Before the Minister accuses me of being a militarist, let me make it clear that a great deal of my work since the war, as a diplomat, was spent in working on disarmament and the peaceful settlement of disputes, including several years in our permanent delegation to the United Nations in its early days. That is why I am conscious of the continuing need for world police forces.
  I repeat the undertaking given by my right hon. Friend at the beginning of the debate. The Conservatives will, if returned to office before the disbandment of the Argylls, seek to find a way of retaining their identity. However, we ask the Government to look again at the matter now, especially this shortsighted decision on the Argylls. If they persist and we are not able to reverse this decision, Ministers will be haunted for the rest of their lives when they hear the mourning music of the pipes. There are many sad tunes, laments and pibrochs, but there will be no sadder, not even "The Flowers of the Forest", than a composition that I can foresee, "Scotland's Lament for the Argylls".
  6.49 p.m.
  The Minister of Defence for Administration (Mr. G. W. Reynolds): Frankly, I am a little surprised that we should have had this debate sorting out one infantry battalion from a considerable number of others that have been axed or brought to an end over the last 10 years. It is invidious for anyone in my position to have to defend the Government's attitudes which, inevitably, must appear to be denigrating one infantry battalion as against another. I have no intention of doing that, but I shall have to make one or two points to answer what we have heard from right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite.
  I have a very high regard for the Argylls. I visited them at Plymouth a few weeks ago after they returned from Aden. I was extremely impressed by their commanding officer and by the spirit shown by the regiment as a whole. I also remember having a pleasant and excellent lunch sitting by the side of the colonel

  1105
  of the regiment at the regimental headquarters; at Stirling Castle two short years ago, having seen the old standards of the battalion hanging in the regimental museum. One only has to do this to see with what sort of regard local communities look at battalions in Scotland.
  But I must go on to say that local communities look at them—perhaps they are not quite so eager to express it in words—in a very similar way in the rest of the United Kingdom—in Ireland, in Wales and in England itself. There is no special problem of this nature in Scotland. Perhaps things are put more publicly into people's feelings in Scotland. But the love and respect given to a local battalion is common throughout the whole of the United Kingdom.
  But today we are dealing mainly with one particular Scottish battalion. The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) said that in 1957 there were no cuts in infantry battalions in Scotland but that there were two mergers. That is true. But the basic decision then was that the number of infantry battalions in Scotland had to be reduced by two, and it was done by merging four battalions into two. That was apparently acceptable to the hon. Gentleman.
  The decision that has been taken this time is also that two battalions should go from Scottish infantry regiments. One was announced a little while ago. It has already been disbanded at its own request. It felt that once the announcement had been made it was better for it to go quickly.
  The other has now been announced, and we are debating it. But it does not necessarily have to be an actual disbandment, if that is what the hon. Gentleman is objecting to. We have no objection to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders merging with any other battalion in the Scottish Division that the regimental Colonels can agree upon. We took the decision of a reduction of one battalion in the Scottish Division having consulted those concerned—the colonels of the regiments and others—and it was they who expressed the point of view that it should be a disbandment rather than an amalgamation, and so we accepted that. But if they want to change their minds and provide for the amalgamation of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders with another regiment in the Scottish Division,
  1106
  we are prepared to accept it provided that the amalgamation can be one within the Division.
  The Government have decided that as our commitments have been reduced we must reduce the Scottish Division by one battalion. How it is done is a matter primarily for agreement. The final decision rests with us, but we try to meet the wishes of the colonels of the regiments and the officers and men serving in them; and up to this moment they have decided that they would rather have a disbandment. That is how it is being done. As long as we finish up with one battalion less we are prepared to look at it if the desire exists among the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the other Scottish regiments. But there is no doubt about the fact that one battalion must go in the Highland Brigade in the time scale laid down in the White Paper.
  Sir R. Cary: Following the debate, could the colonels be asked to reconsider the matter again?
  Mr. Reynolds: They have already considered it and given their advice and we have accepted that advice. The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn thought that there was something wrong in disbanding a regiment, but he accepted that traditions were still carried on with amalgamation. The Government's decision is that one battalion in the Highland Brigade must go. If the colonels and all others concerned want to do it a different way, we are prepared to do it, but one battalion must go. The Government should not be blamed for deciding specifically that it is to be by disbandment rather than amalgamation. Amalgamation would cover the point as well as disbandment. One battalion must go. If the individuals concerned rethink the matter, there is pleny of time. We are talking about a disbandment to take place several years from now. If those concerned want it done a slightly different way, it is up to them.
  Mr. George Brown: I am puzzled. Who are the colonels? If the Government have decided that one battalion shall go, we shall all vote for that. But why does my right hon. Friend say that a group of men—I do not know who they are—whom he calls the colonels

  1107
  shall decide whether a regiment goes? Could he tell us who the colonels are?
  Mr. Reynolds: They are the representative colonels, who are usually either the senior officer of the battalion still serving or, more likely, a retired officer of that battalion. They look after regimental interests. The Government's decision was that there must be a reduction of at least one battalion in that brigade. In our attempt to bring it about, we followed the normal method of consulting the regimental colonels. I can best explain this to my right hon. Friend by saying that it is almost akin to consulting the chairmen of the trade union branches concerned to find out what their views are before coming to a decision. We have had the consultation, and the decision has been taken.
  Mr. George Brown: But the chairmen of the trade union branches are in office. The colonels are not.
  Mr. Reynolds: They are in office as colonels of their regiments. It is an office which is actually there on the establishment at any particular time. We had consultations with them and took their views into account before saying that it would be a disbandment rather than an amalgamation of battalions in the regiment.
  But in the White Paper just issued and in the White Paper issued last year we are dealing with 13 or 14 battalions which are to be disbanded over the next few years. We have heard a great deal today about the history of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. I could go through every one of the regiments in the British Army—the Lancashire Fusiliers, the Irish Fusiliers, the 4th Battalion the Queens, the 4th Battalion Royal Anglians—and without exception give a similar regimental history for each one. This is the difficulty that one has when one tries to take a particular regiment and make a case for its being exempted from any general reduction, because pretty well every regiment in the British Army can justly claim that it has a fine record over a long period. As with other organisations, their efficiency tends to go up and down over the years. At one time they are at the peak of success, but individuals move on and at other times they are not quite as
  1108
  efficient as they were before. So it would be unfair to try to decide which battalion should go solely on the basis of efficiency. We have looked at all methods of doing it; and we have been forced to the conclusion that, unless there are other real overriding factors, one has to look at the juniority of the regiment concerned. and it has been done on the basis of "last in, first out", which works in a number of other fields.
  The hon. Member for Bute and North Ayrshire (Sir F. Maclean) said that the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was one of the most successful Scottish regiments over recruiting. He claimed that half the recruits to the Highland Brigade went to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. This sort of thing has been said so many times that I must look at the facts. Taking the Scottish Division as a whole, there is nothing to show that that Division recruits better than any other infantry division in the British Army. This is a myth that seems to have got about. There is nothing in it. No one can prove that the Scottish Division or the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders recruits any better than any other unit. It all depends on where one takes one's figures.
  I would point out that between January and March this year the Army as a whole was recruited up to 1·3 per cent. below establishment. That is the figure for the Army as a whole over the whole of the United Kingdom. In the first quarter of this year the Scottish battalions about which we were talking were 7 per cent. below establishment, compared with 1·3 per cent. for the Army as a whole.
  Sir F. Maclean: Will the right hon. Gentleman say how the recruiting figures for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders compare with those for other regiments? It is not the Highland Brigade or the Scottish Division; it is the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
  Mr. Reynolds: For several years, under arrangements brought into operation by right hon. Gentlemen opposite, recruits have gone to the brigade rather than an individual regiment. I was interested to hear the hon. Gentleman trying to claim that the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders had been better than anyone else at recruiting in the last few months. I have the figures for the period

  1109
  1st March to 1st June last. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders got 32 new recruits, the Gordons 44 and the Highland Fusiliers 33. So the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders did no better and no worse than any other battalion in the Highland Brigade or the Scottish Division.
  But most of these new recruits to all these battalions at present remaining in the Scottish Division were not brought in off the streets. They were men from the disbanded Cameronian Regiment transferred to other battalions in the Scottish Division in the main. Most of the recruits to the Scottish battalions over the last couple of months have come from that source, the Cameronian Regiment, which was disbanded, and this has now brought all the Scottish battalions up to establishment.
  Mr. G. Campbell: The figures I have are different from those being given by the right hon. Gentleman. However, I cannot go into them now, but I will gladly do so later with him. The right hon. Gentleman mentions the first part of this year for his purpose but that is a very short period. In addition, the death of the Cameronians was about to happen. It is, therefore, a bad period to select as a picture of Scottish recruiting.
  Mr. Reynolds: Quite so. One can take any period and show the figures in all sorts of ways—that is precisely what I was saying. The way in which figures have been bandied about today does not prove anything either to the credit or to the discredit of any regiment or Division. The figures prove nothing about the Scottish Division. They do not make it better or worse than any other infantry division of the British Army. But the recruiting myth has grown up and we must dispel it. We must have it established that Scottish recruiting is no better and no worse than the recruiting for any other good infantry battalions and divisions in the United Kingdom.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) said that he found difficulty in supporting the Government and that he would abstain. He said that the Government should bring out their policy for the future of our defence commitments and manpower before deciding on piecemeal cuts of bat-
  1110
  talions. But in July last year and January this year we brought out two White Papers spelling out our commitments and stating that there was to be a reduction of 75,000 in the uniformed manpower of the Services. This latest White Paper spells out how that reduction is to be brought about. It does not represent a change of policy but a working document arising from the major policy decisions of the last 12 months.
  My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) asked a number of questions about the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders including some details which I cannot give him today. He asked about reports of differences of opinion which appeared in the Press about the recapture of Crater by the Argylls in the closing months in Aden. I want to make it clear that there was complete agreement between the military and civil authorities on the need to go back into Crater at that time. The Aden Brigade was ordered to enter it on 3rd July.
  It was then far from certain that our Forces would not be bitterly opposed and it was, therefore, decided that only a limited penetration should be made with exploitation afterwards should it prove successful. From reconnaissance reports, the Commanding Officer of the 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was optimistic that a relatively deep penetration could be made. The agreed outlined plan was for the 1st Battalion of the Argylls to enter and advance in a series of phases, with a second battalion—in the event it was not required —in reserve and available to occupy the north-west of the town.
  The Argylls were to enter by Marine Road and establish, by phases, a presence in the banking and business centre. Secondly, they were to exploit to the police station and control the central and southern parts of the town and then move towards the armed police barracks but avoid close contact with it.
  After some slight initial opposition on 3rd July there was little further firing during the operation and at midnight the Brigadier-General (Staff) of Middle East Land Forces, accompanied by the Acting Commander of Aden Brigade, who was present with the Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion of the Argylls, personally ordered the Commanding Officer

  1111
  of the Battalion to exploit the speed and success of the initial thrusts, and the G.O.C. the following morning ordered the rest of the town to be taken over by 5 p.m. on 5th July.
  The whole operation was carried out in accordance with the plan laid down and agreed between the civil and military authorities in Aden. [HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."] My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian has nothing to withdraw. He asked some important questions, and I am answering him. I am emphasising that the operation was carried out superbly by the battalion and also by the armoured cars. People have tended to forget the part played by the armoured cars because of the publicity given to the Argylls. I emphasise that the plan was drawn up in Aden and that it was carried out extremely well and was seen in a favourable light by public opinion here at the time.
  Mr. Dalyell: Is this a clear statement that on every occasion Colonel Colin Mitchell of the Argylls accepted the orders of his brigade commander and of the Army Commander?
  Mr. Reynolds: It is a clear statement that, so far as the re-entry of Crater is concerned, it was done in complete agreement on a plan worked out between the military and civil authorities of the area. Everything worked smoothly and the relations between all officers and units concerned were as they should have been.
  I return to the main theme of the debate. We are being accused of treating Scotland unfairly. But, as my hon.
  Friend the Under-Secretary of State said, Scotland, with 10 per cent. of the population, will have 16 per cent. of our infantry battalions in 1972 — seven battalions, instead of four, which is what Scotland would have had if a percentage basis had been chosen.
  This battalion, the Argylls, was formerly the 91st Foot, formed in 1794, and the 93rd Foot, formed in 1799. It has been present at many battles. I met a former Pipe Major of the Argylls before the White Paper came out. He said that it would be unfair if there were any further amalgamation of the Argylls because, he said, "We have been amalgamated before". When I asked him when this had taken place, he replied that it was after Alma and Balaclava, when the 91st and the 93rd were amalgamated under the Cardwell reforms. That is true, but so has nearly every other regiment changed from numbers to names over a similar period.
  I understand that the motto of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders is Ne obliviscaris. This is an injunction to people not to forget. It also has a positive meaning for people to remember. Whatever happens to this gallant regiment in this unfortunate time of cutting down the number of units, people will always remember the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
  Question put:—
  That this House deplores the decision to abolish Scottish units announced in Command Paper No. 3701.
  The House divided: Ayes 250, Noes 299.

  Division No. 279.]

  AYES

  [7.6 p.m.

  Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

  Braine, Bernard

  Corfield, F. V.

  Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

  Brewis, John

  Costain, A. P.

  Astor John

  Brinton, Sir Tatton

  Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)

  Awdry Daniel

  Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter

  Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver

  Baker, Kenneth (Acton)

  Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

  Crouch, David

  Balniel, Lord

  Bruce-Gardyne, J.

  Crowder, F. P.

  Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Bryan, Paul

  Cunningham, Sir Knox

  Batsford, Brian

  Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus, N&M)

  Currie, G. B. H.

  Beamish, Col. Sir Tutton

  Buck, Antony (Colchester)

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Bell, Ronald

  Bullus, Sir Eric

  Dance, James

  Bennett Sir Frederic (Torquay)

  Burden, F. A.

  Davidson, James (Aberdeenshire, W.)

  Berry Hn. Anthony

  Campbell, B. (Oldham, W.)

  d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry

  Biffen, John

  Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Nairn)

  Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)

  Biggs-Davison, John

  Carlisle, Mark

  Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)

  Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel

  Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert

  Digby, Simon Wingfield

  Black, Sir Cyril

  Cary, Sir Robert

  Dodds-Parker, Douglas

  Blaker, Peter

  Channon, H. P. G.

  Donnelly, Desmond

  Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)

  Chichester-Clark, R.

  Doughty, Charles

  Body, Richard

  Clark, Henry

  Dougtas-Home, Rt. Hn. Sir Alec

  Bossom, Sir Clive

  Clegg, Walter

  Drayson, G. B.

  Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John

  Cooke, Robert

  du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward

  Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward

  Cordle, John

  Eden, Sir John

  Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

  Kitson, Timothy

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Emery, Peter

  Knight, Mrs. Jill

  Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David

  Errington, Sir Eric

  Lancaster, Col. C. C.

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Eyre, Reginald

  Lane, David

  Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

  Farr, John

  Langford-Holt, Sir John

  Ridsdale, Julian

  Fisher, Nigel

  Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry

  Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey

  Fletcher-Cooke, Charles

  Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

  Robson Brown, Sir William

  Fortescue, Tim

  Lloyd, Rt. Hn.Geoffrey(Sut'nC'dfield)

  Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)

  Foster, Sir John

  Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)

  Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

  Fraser, Rt.Hn.Hugh(St'fford & Stone)

  Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)

  Royle, Anthony

  Galbraith, Hn. T. G.

  Longden, Gilbert

  Russell, Sir Ronald

  Giles, Rear-Adm, Morgan

  Loveye, W. H.

  St. John-Stevas, Norman

  Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)

  Lubbock, Eric

  Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.

  Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)

  McAdden, Sir Stephen

  Scott, Nicholas

  Glover, Sir Douglas

  MacArthur, Ian

  Scott-Hopkins, James

  Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.

  Mackenzie, Alasdair(Ross&Crom'ty)

  Sharples, Richard

  Goodhart, Philip

  Maclean, Sir Fitzroy

  Shaw, Michael (Se'b'gh & Whitby)

  Goodhew, Victor

  McMaster, Stanley

  Silvester, Frederick

  Cower, Raymond

  Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)

  Sinclair, Sir George

  Grant, Anthony

  Maddan, Martin

  Smith, Dudley (W'wick & L'mington)

  Gresham Cooke, R.

  Maginnis, John E.

  Speed, Keith

  Grieve, Percy

  Marples, Rt. Hn. Ernest

  Stainton, Keith

  Griffiths, Eltlon (Bury St. Edmunds)

  Marten, Neil

  Steel, David (Roxburgh)

  Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.

  Mude, Angus

  Stodart, Anthony

  Gurden, Harold

  Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald

  Stoddart-Scott Col. Sir M. (Ripon)

  Hall, John (Wycombe)

  Mawby, Ray

  Summers, Sir Spencer

  Hall-Davies, A. G. F.

  Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.

  Tapsell, Peter

  Hamilton, Lord (Fermanagh)

  Mills, Peter (Torrington)

  Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

  Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

  Mill, Stratton (Belfast, N.)

  Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)

  Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)

  Harrison, Brian (Maldon)

  Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

  Teeling, Sir William

  Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Temple, John M.

  Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere

  Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

  Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret

  Harvie Anderson, Miss

  Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles

  Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy

  Hastings, Stephen

  Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

  Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.

  Hawkins, Paul

  Murton, Oscar

  Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.

  Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel

  Nabarro, Sir Gerald

  van Straubenzee, W. R.

  Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward

  Neave, Airey

  Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John

  Heseltine, Michael

  Nicholls, Sir Harmar

  Vickers, Dame Joan

  Higgins, Terence L.

  Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael

  Waddington, David

  Hlley, Joseph

  Nott John

  Walker, Peter (Worcester)

  Hill, J. E. B.

  Onslow Cranley

  Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek

  Hirst, Geoffrey

  Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

  Wall, Patrick

  Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin

  Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian

  Walters, Dennis

  Holland, Philip

  Osborn, John (Hallam)

  Ward, Dame Irene

  Hordern, Peter

  Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)

  Weatherill, Bernard

  Hornby, Richard

  Page, Graham (Crosby)

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Howell, David (Guildford)

  Page, John (Harrow, W.)

  Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William

  Hunt, John

  Pardoe, John

  Williams, Donald (Dudley)

  Hutchison, Michael Clark

  Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)

  Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

  Iremonger, T. L.

  Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)

  Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Peel, John

  Winstanley, Dr. M. P.

  Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)

  Percival, Ian

  Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

  Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

  Peyton, John

  Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard

  Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)

  Pike, Miss Mervyn

  Woodnutt, Mark

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Worsley, Marcus

  Jones, Arttiur (Northants, S.)

  Pounder, Rafton

  Wylie, N. R.

  Jopling, Michael

  Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch

  Younger, Hn. George

  Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith

  Price, David (Eastleigh)

  Kerby, Capt. Henry

  Prior, J. M. L.

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Kershaw, Anthony

  Pym, Francis

  Mr. R. W. Elliott and

  Kimball, Marcus

  Quennell, Miss J. M.

  Mr. Jasper More.

  King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

  Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James

  NOES

  Abse, Leo

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

  Albu, Austen

  Binns, John

  Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)

  Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Bishop, E. S.

  Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James

  Alldritt, Walter

  Blackburn, F.

  Cant, R. B.

  Allen, Scholefield

  Blenkinsop, Arthur

  Carmichael, Neil

  Anderson, Donald

  Boardman, H. (Leigh)

  Carter-Jones, Lewis

  Archer, Peter

  Booth, Albert

  Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara

  Armstrong, Ernest

  Boston, Terence

  Chapman, Donald

  Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)

  Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur

  Coe, Denis

  Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)

  Boyden, James

  Conlan, Bernard

  Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice

  Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

  Corbet, Mrs. Freda

  Bagier, Gordon A. T.

  Bradley, Tom

  Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

  Barnes, Michael

  Bray, Dr. Jeremy

  Cronin, John

  Barnett, Joel

  Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

  Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Baxter, William

  Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)

  Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard

  Beaney, Alan

  Brown, Bob(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,W.)

  Cullen, Mrs. Alice

  Bence, Cyril

  Buchan, Norman

  Dalyell, Tam

  Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)

  Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)

  Darling, Rt. Hn. George

  1114

  1115

  Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)

  Jackson, Colin (B'h'se & Spenb'gh)

  Parker, John (Dagenham)

  Davies, Ednyfed Hudson (Conway)

  Jackson, Peter M. (High Peak)

  Parkin, Ben (Paddington, N.)

  Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)

  Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas

  Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)

  Davies, Ifor (Gower)

  Jeger, George (Goole)

  Pavitt, Laurence

  Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)

  Jeger,Mrs.Lena(H'b'n & St.P'cras, S.)

  Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)

  de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey

  Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

  Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred

  Delargy, Hugh

  Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)

  Pentland, Norman

  Dell, Edmund

  Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)

  perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)

  Dempsey, James

  Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

  Perry, George H. (Nottingham, S.)

  Dewar, Donald

  Judd, Frank

  Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E.

  Diamond, Rt. Hn. John

  Kelley, Richard

  Price, Christopher (Perry Barr)

  Dickens, James

  Kenyon, Clifford

  Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)

  Dobson, Ray

  Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter & Chatham)

  Probert, Arthur

  Doig, Peter

  Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)

  Pursey, Cmdr.Harry

  Dunn, James A.

  Kerr, Russell (Feltham)

  Randall, Harry

  Lawson, George

  Dunnett, Jack

  Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Rankin, John

  Reynolds, Rt. Hn. G. W.

  Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th & C''b'e)

  Lee, Rt. Hn. Jennie (Cannock)

  Richard, Ivor

  Eadie, Alex

  Lestor, Miss Joan

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  Edelman, Maurice

  Lever, Harold (Cheetham)

  Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy

  Edwards, Robert (Bilston)

  Lever, L.M.(Ardwick)

  Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.)

  Ellis, John

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Robertson, John (Paisley)

  English, Michael

  Linton Marcus

  Robinson, Rt.Hn.Kenneth (St.P'c'as)

  Ennals, David

  Lomas Kenneth

  Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.)

  Ensor, David

  Loughlin, Charles

  Rodgers, William (Stockton)

  Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

  Luard, Evan

  Roebuck, Roy

  Evans, loan L. (Birm'h' m, Yardley)

  Lyon, Alexander W. (York)

  Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

  Faulds, Andrew

  Lyon, Edward (Bradford, E.)

  Ross, Rt. Hn. William

  Fernyhough, E.

  Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

  Ryan, John

  Fitch, Alan (Wigan)

  McCann, John

  Shaw, Arnold (llford, S.)

  Fletcher, Raymond (llkeston)

  MaeColl, James

  Sheldon, Robert

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  MacDermot, Niall

  Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)

  Foley, Maurice

  Macdonald, A. H.

  Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)

  Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)

  McGuire, Michael

  Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N.E.)

  Ford, Ben

  McKay, Mrs. Margaret

  Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)

  Forrester, John

  Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)

  Silverman, Julius

  Fowler, Gerry

  Mackie, John

  Skeffington, Arthur

  Fraser, John (Norwood)

  Mackintosh, John P.

  Slater, Joseph

  Freeson, Reginald

  Maclennan, Robert

  Small, William

  Galpern, Sir Myer

  McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)

  Snow, Julian

  Gardner, Tony

  McNamara, J. Kevin

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Ginsburg, David

  Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)

  Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)

  Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.

  Mahon, Simon (Bootle)

  Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John

  Gourlay, Harry

  Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

  Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.

  Gray, Dr. Hugh (Yarmouth)

  Manuel, Archie

  Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley

  Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Marks, Kenneth

  Swain, Thomas

  Gregory, Arnold

  Marquand, David

  Swingler, Stephen

  Grey, Charles (Durham)

  Marsh, Rt. Hn. Richard

  Symonds, J. B.

  Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

  Maxwell, Robert

  Taverne, Dick

  Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)

  Mayhew, Christopher

  Thomson, Rt. Hn. George

  Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanelly)

  Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert

  Thornton, Ernest

  Griffiths, Will (Exchange)

  Mendelson, J. J.

  Tinn, James

  Gunter, Rt. Hn. R. J.

  Mikardo, lan

  Tuck, Raphael

  Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

  Millan, Bruce

  Urwin, T. W.

  Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)

  Miller, Dr. M. S.

  Varley, Eric G.

  Hamling, William

  Milne, Edward (Blyth)

  Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)

  Hannan, William

  Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)

  Wallace, George

  Harper, Joseph

  Molloy, William

  Watkins, David (Consett)

  Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

  Moonman, Eric

  Watkins, Tudor (Brecon & Radnor)

  Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith

  Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)

  Weitzman, David

  Haseldine, Norman

  Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

  Wellbeloved, James

  Hattersley, Roy

  Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

  Wells, William (walsall, N.)

  Hazell, Bert

  Morris, John (Aberavon)

  Whitaker, Ben

  Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis

  Murray, Albert

  White, Mrs, Eirene

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Neal, Harold

  Whltlock, William

  Henig, Stanley

  Newens, Stan

  Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret

  Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)

  Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)

  Hilton, W. S.

  Noel, Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip (Derby, S.)

  Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)

  Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)

  Norwood, Christopher

  Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)

  Hooley, Frank

  Oakes, Gordon

  Williams, W. T. (Warrington)

  Horner, John

  O'Malley, Brain

  Willis, Rt. Hn. George

  Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas

  O' Malley, Brian

  Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)

  Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)

  Oram, Albert E.

  Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

  Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)

  Orbach, Maurice

  Winnick, David

  Howell, Denis (Small Heath)

  Orme, Stanley

  Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.

  Howie, W.

  Oswald, Thomas

  Woof, Robert

  Hoy, James

  Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)

  Wyatt, Woodrow

  Huckfield, Leslie

  Owen, Will (Morpeth)

  Yates, Victor

  Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)

  Page, Derek (King's Lynn)

  Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)

  Paget, R. T.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Hunter, Adam

  Palmer, Arthur

  Mr. Neil McBride and

  Hynd, John

  Panned, Rt. Hn. Charles

  Mr. J. D. Concannon.

  Irvine, Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)

  Park, Trevor

SCOTLAND (SELECTIVE EMPLOYMENT TAX)
7.19 p.m.
Mr. Ian MacArthur: I beg to move,
That this House deplores the effects of the Selective Employment Tax on industry and employment in Scotland.
The House will know that it is frequently claimed in Scotland that fiscal policies which may be appropriate to the economy of England run contrary to the economic needs of Scotland. The Government must be aware of this feeling and one can on occasion, but only on occasion, detect a ritualistic obeisance to it in the stream of emergency statements which have sprung from their mishandling of the economy. I recall, for example, the promise that the development areas would be sheltered from the effect of some of their wilder proposals, but this, as so much else, turned out to be little more than mere words in the double-talk of the last few years. The Selective Employment Tax is the supreme example of the application to Scotland of irrelevant and harmful taxation. As a national tax, it is foolish enough; as a Scottish tax, it is sheer lunacy.
The House will recall that, by introducing the tax in May, 1966, the Government flew in the face of their own White Paper on the Scottish economy published only four months earlier—a significant four months, because a General Election intervened. Since the tax was introduced, there has been a growing tide of opposition to it in Scotland, where we depend so heavily on the service industries. This opposition has been brushed aside by the Government with an insensitivity illustrated by the Secretary of State's rebuke that the Highlands were "whining" in their opposition to the tax. To other objections, they replied that the tax was flexible and could be refined to assist the development areas.
We had an example of this so-called refinement in this year's Finance Bill, which brought Scottish hotel keepers marching in anger on Whitehall. The present Chancellor confessed:
"… it is not a wholly popular tax."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th March, 1968; Vol. 761, c. 284.]
That is the under-statement of the year. However, I am glad that he agrees that
1118
the tax is unpopular. New taxation is particularly unpopular when imposed by a Government which took office on the promise of no general increase in taxation and then proceeded to increase taxation by over £2,000 million.
The Government have argued that the tax is a success, so they have put up the main rates by 50 per cent. from this autumn. That is a case of a vaulting taxation o'er-leaping itself in advance of the Reddaway inquiry into its effect. No doubt the Government will point today to the £50 million which Scotland will receive in a full year by way of the Selective Employment payments to manufacturers and the Regional Employment Premium, a figure which the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar) obtained in a Written Answer the other day, but this gifthorse has a strikingly ugly mouth.
First, I do not accept that this is a wisely calculated means of assisting manufacturing industry. A sum of £50 million could be invested more constructively than in the present form of a wages subsidy. Second, there is nothing in the premium system to encourage the economic deployment of labour in manufacturing industry. Third, the premium structure has increased the relative disadvantage of the service industries—a discrimination which will be sharpened when the Selective Employment Tax rates go up in September, at a cost to the Scottish service industries of £45 million in a full year.
These figures conceal the geographical impact of the tax. While the manufacturing subsidy goes primarily to the industrial central belt, the tax falls heavily on the rural and semi-rural areas which have long suffered from loss of population to the central belt and which form the bulk of Scotland's land mass. Indeed, the further one goes from the centre, the more one witnesses the impact of the tax on the local economy.
The Highlands, for instance, have little manufacturing industry. Only one in 10 of the working population is employed in manufacturing. The Government claim that they cannot calculate the annual cost of the tax in the Highlands, but they have not yet challenged my estimate of £2 million or more, a figure which will increase from next September and which has exceeded by far the capital

1119
put into the area by the Highlands and Islands Development Board during its two years of existence.
Agriculture also carries a heavy burden. The tax is repaid at the end of each quarter, but by the end of each of these periods, at the new rates, the industry will have made a tax-free enforced loan to the Government of over £1 million—and this at a time when cash in agriculture is short and credit hard to come by.
I now turn to the impact of the tax on the tourist industry. In its last annual report, the Scottish Tourist Board called attention to the hardship which the tax had brought to the tourist industry, a very important growth industry in Scotland. It pointed out that the tax had forced many hoteliers to dispense with staff whom they would normally have retained during the winter months and that the tax served to aggravate the serious staffing difficulties which had faced the industry for a long time. It added:
"The effect which this tax is having on such an important servicing industry requires immediate reconsideration."
Of course, the Government did reconsider the effect of the tax at long last, just as we on this side had urged them to do from the day of its introduction. This led, in this year's Budget, to what the President of the Board of Trade, opening the second day's debate, called a "concession", whereby hotels in certain rural areas would get their Selective Employment Tax refunded.
During his speech, I rose six times to ask him what this concession would amount to in Scotland, but I had no reply. In the debate, I said that we would feel that the Government had cheated if the net result was that the Scottish tourist industry had to pay more in Selective Employment Tax than it had in the past.
This reconsideration led to the notorious Schedule 17 of the Finance Bill, whereby hotels on one side of a seemingly arbitrary line would get the rebate and those on the other side would not. The outcry against these anomalies was such that the Government refrained the Schedule and included large areas which had been previously excluded.
1120
But, because of the relentless crash of the guillotine on our debates on the Finance Bill, the Schedule was not debated, either in its original form or in its more recent amended form.
On Third Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Bute and North Ayrshire (Sir F. Maclean) called attention to the grotesque anomalies still remaining in the Bill and pointed out the hardship and anomalies which would arise in his own constituency, but there was no attempt to answer the important questions he raised.
Of course, this change will help hotels in many rural areas and I welcome that, because it will pay them back a tax which should not have been levied on them in the first place, but the concession is less attractive than it appears. What I feared has come about. Despite the revision of Schedule 17, from this Autumn the Scottish tourist industry will be paying out £150,000 a year more in S.E.T. than before the so-called concession. The increase in the tax will take £750,000. The repayments arising from the original Schedule amount to about £300,000, and those from the revisions to the Schedule to a further £300,000, making £600,000 in all. This information has been given in various written Answers recently.
It will not be surprising if the industry feels cheated when it discovers that the effect of this much-heralded concession is to increase its S.E.T. bill by £150,000. Further, the catering industry is to get no rebate and will suffer the full impact of the increased tax.
The House will know that the Selective Employment Tax has produced a long string of anomalies. I will give just two. First, a horticulturist has pointed out that his flower-growing concern in Scotland entitles him to a straight repayment of the tax, but if he was to switch to the manufacture of artificial flowers he would gain the premium in addition. Secondly, a large computer data processing centre in Dundee has to pay Selective Employment Tax for its computer processing staff. That is its reward for helping the efficiency of commence and industry in the technological revolution about which the Prime Minister used to speak so much.
Apart from the many anomalies, the very nature of the tax is grossly unfair.

1121
The laundry and dry cleaning industry is particularly hard hit, and the new rate will represent between 4½ and 6 per cent. of turnover. This industry cannot absorb it all. Yet housewives are particularly sensitive to prices in this market. Perhaps the Government now regard the laundry and dry cleaning industry as a dispensable luxury. If so, that is in marked contrast with the Government's attitude towards the industry during the war when it was regarded as essential, and work in it was classified as a reserved occupation.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in a letter to me dated 11th July, said:
"We recognise that for some firms, including those within the laundry and dry cleaning industries, it has caused difficult problems of adjustment."
It certainly caused a difficult problem of adjustment for one laundry firm in my constituency. The firm had to close down, making 140 workers redundant. The tax certainly had some part to play in the decision to close. It is often the last straw in the small firm's fight to survive. I know of two shops in my constituency which were forced to close by the tax. The Glasgow Herald of 11th July contained the following notice on the public notice page:
"Barnet & Son. Notice of removal. Owing to tremendously increased rentals, assessments, and selective employment tax, which would have compelled us to considerably increase the prices of our goods, we have decided to vacate our present premises…."
It states that it is moving to another area and cutting down the scope of the business, one reason being Selective Employment Tax. This again illustrates the hardship that the tax has brought to the distributive trades—a fact which gives cause for Co-operative Members to remember whether they are Labour Members or Co-operative Members when it comes to Divisions.
The original purpose of the tax was clearly stated by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech on 3rd May, 1966. The first aim was to raise revenue. The second aim—and it commands more space in the Budget speech —was that the tax should encourage the redeployment of labour. The right hon. Gentleman said:
"If manpower can be saved in the service industries … extra labour might well become
1122
available for manufacturing, giving it greater scope for growth. It would be helpful to have a tax system which recognised this."
There are several similar references. The summing up of the purpose of the tax is,
"… first, as a means of raising revenue, and also as an incentive for labour economies and manpower redeployment."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd May, 1966; Vol. 727, c. 1454–6.]
We on this side of the House have tried to find out what effect the tax has had in shifting people in Scotland from the service industries to the manufacturing industries, but always without success. I hope that the Government will tell us tonight that if the tax has failed to move people from service industries to manufacturing industries in Scotland it has failed in one of its two original purposes, and that is a further argument for removing the tax altogether.
On the other hand, if the Government can show tonight that the tax has influenced a movement out of the service industries in Scotland, they will simply underline the contradiction between what they say about the pattern of employment in Scotland and what they do about the pattern of employment in Scotland. Indeed the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in the letter to which I referred, admits that the tax is discriminating. The letter goes on:
"Nevertheless, the Government is convinced that it was necessary to discriminate between the service trades and the manufacturing sector of industry in the operation of S.E.T. and investment grants so as to give the maximum help to the production industries upon which the nation depends for some two-thirds of its total overseas earnings.
The hon. Lady might try that on the insurance industry in Perth which makes a large contribution to our balance of payments and yet pays Selective Employment Tax in full. At least the Minister's letter was a frank admission of discrimination. It demonstrates again the Government's curious and economically harmful belief that it is more deserving to make than to sell.
This penalising of the service industries and the original attempt to force people out of them is totally contrary to the Government's declared policy for Scotland. In January, 1966, the Scottish Plan was produced. The tone of the plan was set out in paragraph 1 which stated that

1123
130,000 new jobs would need to be created by 1970. The Report stated:
"Of these, some 50,000 might be in manufacturing industry, 20,000 in the construction industry and 60,000 in the service industries."
So the major growth envisaged by the Government in 1966 was that 80,000 of the 130,000 new jobs to be created, or about two-thirds, were to be in the sector of the economy which the Government penalised and discouraged just four months later.
But the contradiction does not end here. Throughout the White Paper there are constant references not only to the importance of the service industries in Scotland, but to their rôle as generators of growth. I want to read some of the Secretary of State's words back to him. Paragraph 124 states:
"The service industries, therefore, have a major rôle to play in the build-up of modern manufacturing industry and in the reduction of emigration from Scotland."
Paragraph 125 states:
"Certain of the service industries can also make a direct contribution to the development of the Scottish economy since they are themselves generators of economic growth."
In discussing office employment, paragraph 129 of the Report states:
"It is important for Scotland to share fully in the development of this type of employment if a balanced modern economy is to be built up."
Yet all of these are the sectors penalised and taxed a few months later, now to be taxed at a rate increased by 50 per cent. We have challenged the Government over and over again on this point. We have reminded them that this White Paper was based on the National Plan, long since discredited and discarded, but the Secretary of State insists that he and the Government adhere to the Plan for Scotland. If that is so, let the right hon. Gentleman consider that the argument in support of the service industries could not be more clearly put than in his own document. The right hon. Gentleman might look again at paragraph 138 to see the dependence of manufacturing industries on the service sector:
"… certain of the service industry activities contribute significantly to the satisfactory working of the manufacturing sectors and can help to improve productivity there."
If the Government adhere to this Plan, as they say they do, they should read
1124
carefully paragraph 143 which states— and I quote it in full:
"The Government is conscious of the role which the service industries have to play in the expansion of the Scottish economy. In addition to the contribution which certain of them make directly to economic growth, they help provide the basic prerequisites for industry as well as providing the facilities and opportunities which go with a rising standard of living. They also play an important part in influencing both the capacity to restrain migration and the ability to attract new industry."
The argument against the Selective Employment Tax could not be better put. Those were the Government's own words in January, 1966. Let them now act on them by relieving Scotland altogether of this wretched and damaging tax.
7.41 p.m.
The Minister of State, Treasury (Mr. Dick Taverne): I should, perhaps, first explain to the House why I am taking part in this debate, which is specifically concerned with Scottish affairs. The effect of the Selective Employment Tax on Scotland cannot, of course, be judged apart from the general question of the S.E.T. Indeed, the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) referred to what he called the general demerits of this tax. Since it is the Treasury which is concerned with the tax as a whole, I am intervening in the debate.
I want to start by looking at the S.E.T. in general. I shall then say something about its application in Scotland and my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Scottish Office will deal with further specific points which, no doubt, will be raised by hon. Members in the debate.
The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire said that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor had admitted in his Budget speech that this was a tax which was not wholly popular. That is true, but it is nothing new against any particular tax. When Income Tax was first imposed, it was wholly denounced. When Purchase Tax was first imposed, it was strongly denounced. The same has happened with the imposition of this new form of tax.
There has throughout been a blanket condemnation by hon. Members opposite in particular without any attempt to

1125
examine the effect which the tax has on the economy or to see it as part of the tax structure as a whole. It is, therefore, important to look at the aims of the tax, to which the hon. Member referred in part, and to see how far they are being achieved.
The first aim of this tax is to raise revenue. If one is faced with a situation, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was faced in the last Budget, of increasing revenue, it must come from either direct or indirect taxation. For years, hon. Members opposite have complained that the basis for indirect taxation was too narrow. If, however, one looks at the base for taxation on goods, one finds that there is little scope for broadening the base because the only goods, in effect, which have been exempted from Purchase Tax and which are exempt at the moment are food, domestic fuel and children's clothes. If one is looking for broadening the base of indirect taxation in terms of imposing it on goods, if one rejects the S.E.T., one must pursue a course of taxing a particular sector where the tax would be economically harmful and particularly unjust.
There are two areas which are largely free from tax: services and construction. It is on these that the S.E.T. falls. Therefore, the second aim of the S.E.T., to which the hon. Member did not refer, is to broaden the base of taxation by redressing the imbalance between goods and services.
The hon. Member stated, as many hon. Members have done, that to select services or particular services for the S.E.T. was somehow to select them as being unworthy. There is nothing about the particular areas of services which bear the tax which has been selected as being somehow unworthy. The tax is not a judgment about merits. It implies an objective standard. It does not regard laundries as a luxury. It does not regard the hotel trade in some way as unworthy. It is simply that this tax broadens the base of taxation. Just as Purchase Tax falls on a large number of items which are not in any sense unworthy, so the S.E.T. falls or services without in any sense condemning the services involved.
The third aim of the S.E.T. was, as the hon. Member stated, to encourage economy in the use of labour in the
1126
services sector and, in the long term, to make more labour available for expansion in manufacturing industry. Looking at the overall position, there can be no doubt whatever about the need to do this. In the six years before the S.E.T. was imposed, the total labour force expanded by about 1¼ million, yet out of that figure just over 10 per cent. went into the manufacturing sector and over 80 per cent. went into services of all kinds.
Mr. John Brewis: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman relating his remarks in any way to Scotland? I believe that the Scottish figures are quite contrary to what he is saying.
Mr. Taverne: The Scottish figures have shown an even greater growth in the distributive trades and service sectors than the English figures. First, I am approaching the position in general. Then, I shall relate the position to Scotland.
Therefore, one has the position that the vast bulk of the increased labour force —over 80 per cent.—went to services and just over 10 per cent. to manufacturing industry, yet overall manufacturing industry had shown the shortage of labour which had caused the overheating, which had caused the restraint in growth and which had limited the potential for the expansion of our visible exports.
The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire said briefly in passing that what one wanted to see was something in the nature of a payroll tax applying to all forms of employment. A flat payroll tax which was not selective would, however, have exactly the same effect as an all-round wage increase. It would mean, in effect, that the increase in costs would be equally great over the whole of industry. On the best estimates that we can find, if the whole burden were spread evenly over all and had the effect of an equivalent wage increase, which it would have, the effect might well be to affect for the worse our balance of payments by £350 million a year in lost exports or higher imports.
Judged against the aims of the S.E.T., it is important to see how this has worked out. Again, I start with the general effect. The S.E.T. will raise £500 million a year if one excludes the regional employment premium. It provides something like

1127
5 per cent. of the total yield from all taxes, although it still provides only half of what is provided by Purchase Tax and only 10 per cent. of what is provided by indirect taxes as a whole. If there were no S.E.T., the corresponding burden on other sectors would be correspondingly heavier.
Mr. Terence L. Higgins: If the hon. and learned Gentleman is quoting the overall figures, can he at least quote the Scottish figures in brackets?
Mr. Taverne: I shall come to the Scottish figures when I deal with the effect on Scotland.
The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire referred to the general effect of the S.E.T., and it is extremely important first to see the general figures for the whole of Great Britain, including Scotland. The further merits of the S.E.T. are that this is a method of raising revenue which is very cheap, much the cheapest of any form of collection of tax. It has much less impact on the cost of living than Purchase Tax or Customs and Excise duties.
Sir Fitzroy Maclean Sir Fitzroy Maclean (Bute and North Ayrshire) rose—
Mr. Taverne: I prefer not to give way. I do not want to take much time. There is limited time for the debate, and it is important that as many hon. Members as possible should have a chance to speak.
As to redressing the imbalance, services are still much more lightly taxed than goods because, while Purchase Tax ranges from 12½ per cent. to 50 per cent. and duties are even higher, the burden which S.E.T. imposes is something like 5 or 6 per cent. of the total expenditure on services.
In considering the changes in employment trends, there is no doubt that since the S.E.T. was imposed, an important change has become visible. It is still early days, it is perfectly true, and one cannot be dogmatic at this stage, but the signs which there are so far strongly suggest that the Selective Employment Tax is having the desired effect.
There was in the past a rapid increase in employment in services without regard to the rate of increase in the economy,
1128
without regard to whether or not this was a time of slow or increasing rate of growth. Yet between 1966 and 1967, in the first year of the tax, employment in distribution and construction fell by 3·7 per cent. and 5·6 per cent. in Great Britain as a whole. This is a remarkable change and it it reasonable to suppose that the tax has had its effect on this.
Mr. Anthony Stodart: In Scotland?
Mr. Taverne: I am coming to the Scottish figures.
Part of this shift, it is true—it has been claimed to account for the whole of it, which is not true—part of the shift but only a very small part, has been a shift to self-employment or to part time from full time, but this has been only a very small part of the overall decrease.
If one looks at the Scottish position one finds exactly the same trend, though it is less pronounced. Whereas the average decrease over Great Britain as a whole was 3·7 per cent. in the services position in Scotland it was 2·2 per cent. There was one particular reason for that, and that is to be found in the employment in the construction industries, because there has been no decline in the construction industries in Scotland and this accounts for the lower decrease in services generally in Scotland as compared with the rest of Great Britain.
Mr. MacArthur Mr. MacArthur rose—
Mr. Taverne: I am sorry, but I cannot give way. No doubt further points can be raised by the hon. Gentleman's colleagues. I want to finish this explanation.
The reason for the absence of decline in the construction industries in Scotland seems to be an expansion of the construction industry in Scotland and new orders in Scotland. Yet the increase in Scotland, as indeed in England and Wales, appears to have been achieved by higher productivity, which in its turn appears to have been achieved by the Selective Employment Tax.
Mr. MacArthur: I am much obliged to the hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way and I will not detain him for more than a moment. I should be interested to know how the Minister can

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relate this claim to success, that employment in the services sector has fallen in Scotland, with the stated policy of the Government in January, 1966, that 80,000 new jobs would have to be created within these very industries by 1970 if the Scottish Plan was to succeed.
Mr. Taverne: First of all, that refers to 1970, and it is not part of Government policy in any way to found future prosperity on the uneconomical use of labour in any sector of industry whatsoever. The fact remains, in the example from the construction industry, that there, as in other service industries, a considerable increase in productivity has taken place which has seemed to be related to the introduction of the Selective Employment Tax.
However, there is one further outstanding fact which the hon. Member tried to minimise, and that is the overall effect of Selective Employment Tax on the economy of Scotland, because the fact remains that the yield from Scotland of the lax is some £45 million, which is about 10 per cent. of the total, and particularly reflects the size of Scotland in population. Yet regional employment premium going to Scotland amounts to £40 million, the Selective Employment Premium refunds amount to some £10 million. On balance, therefore, the effect on the Scottish economy of this Selective Employment Tax, from which the regional employment premium cannot be separated, is a net gain of £5 million to Scotland. One has the position that the tax remitted from Scotland goes back to Scotland. Whereas if one looks at England and Wales one finds only 20 per cent. is returned in the form of regional subsidies.
It is perfectly true that there has been special concern in particular areas where there has been no industrial base—for instance, the Highlands and Islands, and other areas, and, no doubt, there will be references to these later, and it is suggested that because of this there should be relief of S.E.T. in those areas. Again, of course, one appreciates the very great difficulties with which the Co-operative movement is faced because of the services which it renders in remoter areas, and, of course, because it feels it is wrong in principle to make its members in remoter areas pay, and one is aware of the difficulties which
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the Scottish co-operative societies face, but there is no way to exempt them specially without undermining the tax as a whole, and there is no line which can be drawn which would be defensible as against other bodies engaged in retail distribution.
If one comes to the general question, the answer to the special areas is not a general relief from the Selective Employment Tax. This would be an extremely wasteful way of giving relief to particular areas' need. My hon. Friend the Minister of State will deal with questions about the actual way in which relief is being given and should be given, but the sensible way to do this, in order to help employment services which cater for local needs would be to attract this from outside, and it is for this reason that the Government founded their policy on the concession for hotels, because this is particularly a concession which, in the areas where there is no benefit from regional employment premium, can attract further tourists and benefit other industries. The hotel industry is, after all, the only service industry whose income is derived almost wholly from outside.
This concession—I think this has been misunderstood—is not primarily to benefit hotels in areas where the concession applies. It is a concession designed to help rural development areas by attracting tourists to those areas to the benefit of the areas as a whole.
Of course there were difficulties about defining the areas, particularly when one has to base repayment on the labour exchange areas and, of course, one wanted to hear, in debate, after representations, how best this line could be drawn. I was extremely grateful for the speech made in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Buchanan), who pointed out some of the ways this might be improved, and also for the assiduous representations which were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Mackintosh). I also saw representatives from the hotel trade.
I think this concession is one which is more generally acceptable than the one which was originally proposed. If one looks at the impact of the tax as a whole, and if one looks at the impact of the tax on Scotland, then already some of the

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effects of the tax have become felt, although its real benefits will become available and really visible only in the long-term as the slack in the labour market in the development areas is taken up.
However, I find a Motion such as this, deploring its effect on Scotland, somewhat astonishing, because if one looks at the overall effect on Scotland one finds that, far from harming the economy of Scotland as a whole, the tax should be welcomed in Scotland, because the net effect of the tax is that Scotland, far from being harmed, is a net gainer.
7.58 p.m.
Mr. Anthony Stodart: The hon. and learned Gentleman said, and rightly so, that certain specific areas were bound to be mentioned in this debate, and I make no apologies for immediately doing so by mentioning the City of Edinburgh. It is almost exactly a year ago that I raised the question of the burdens which are falling on the City of Edinburgh. Perhaps I should more correctly say, the City of Edinburgh with Leith and Portobello.
I think it would be wholly wrong if, in this debate, a Member who represents an Edinburgh constituency did not bring to public attention the impossible burdens which are falling on manufacturing industries in the city and on one other industry which has been singled out for unfair treatment in this matter. I refer, of course, to the hotels and restaurants within the capital.
I quite realise that I must be extremely careful not to concentrate on the exclusion of Edinburgh from the development areas and the consequent loss of investment grant and regional employment premium, but in order to make later what I consider to be an extremely important point I must quote something said by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Scotland on reasons for the exclusion of Edinburgh.
In the debate on 5th July last year, the Secretary of State said that the unemployment figures did not justify including Edinburgh in the development areas, and this is, of course, a case that is continuing. The right hon. Gentleman continued:
"Not only are its figures lower than in any other part of Scotland, but they are amongst the lowest in the United Kingdom."
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Then, said the Secretary of State:
"In any case, I do not think that Edinburgh's future lies in manufacturing industry …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th July, 1967; Vol. 749, c. 1942.]
With that remark I entirely and wholeheartedly agree. I do not think that the future of Edinburgh ought to lie in its becoming a great manufacturing and industrial city. The Edinburgh Corporation does not want it to be. But it is one thing to apply a disincentive to new industries starting up there and quite another to penalise industries that are already there and positively encourage them to move out. Whilst Edinburgh should not attempt to be a magnet for new industry, I do not think that the city should lose the industries it already has.
Mr. George Willis: The hon. Gentleman is not forgetting, of course, that Aberdeen has a lower level of unemployment than Edinburgh?
Mr. Stodart: That point had not escaped me. But I imagined that the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar) might want to say something about that.
This is what the restricting of the regional employment premium to the development areas has done. It is extremely ironical that manufacturing firms in my constituency—and, I have no doubt, those in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency—which have drawn, and which continue to draw much labour out of the development areas—in West Lothian, in my case, and probably from East Lothian in the right hon. Gentleman's case—and which have done this useful job throughout the dull days of the pre-war depression, should suffer by being penalised now. It is grossly unfair that they should have to compete with firms not very far away which get the premium in addition to the refund.
The effect of this, is, according to the chamber of commerce report, that 14 out of 26 firms have announced that they have stopped any possible extra development. One might argue that that might not be altogether undesirable if one is not to move in the direction of the industrialisation of Edinburgh, but when it is discovered that eight firms are now considering moving out because of the Selective Employment Tax, amongst other things, one feels that this is where

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the Government are doing something positively harmful.
I turn now to the hotel and restaurant side. Restaurants, no matter where they are, are excluded from the Selective Employment Tax refund but, in my view, they do just as important a job as hotels. I dare say that my girth might allow people to suppose that I rather prefer restaurants to hotels but, be that as it may, I think that, by and large, restaurants are much more desirable places than hotels. Further, holidays by caravan are becoming more and more popular, so that the development of more restaurants and cafes to supply their needs is extremely important.
The Selective Employment Tax refund to hotels in certain areas was a very considerable triumph for the energy of the hoteliers, who put their case rather well, and also for those of my hon. Friends who assisted them by taking them to see the Minister of State, Treasury, in order that he might listen to their difficulties, and who gave what advice they could. I, as representing part of the area which does not share in this bounty, nevertheless welcome that highly desirable achievement.
But if Edinburgh is not to become a manufacturing city it ought to be encouraged to become an even greater city for holidaymakers and for people attending conferences. No one can say that the city's present accommodation can meet the demands made on it. The Scottish Tourist Board reports:
"Next to London, Edinburgh is the most important tourist centre in Britain."
It also says that 2 million bed nights were spent in hotels, guest houses and board residences in Edinburgh during 1966, and by 1970 it is estimated, particularly when the Commonwealth Games are coming along, there will be a need for more than 3 million bed nights, which is an increase of 50 per cent. on the present available accommodation.
What I thought was so significant—and this is why I quoted the Secretary of State's words to the effect that Edinburgh should not become a manufacturing city —was the comment made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 24th April, 1968, during the debate on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill. The right hon. Gentleman said:
"We have, however, thought it right not to extend the S.E.T. concession to the more indus-
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trial parts of the development areas, where we can look to expansion from manufacturing industry and where R.E.P. is of substantial importance. Nevertheless, hotels in these areas will benefit from the proposed hotel incentive scheme under which there would be a higher rate of grant for development areas as a whole." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th April, 1968; Vol. 763, c. 254.]
In other words, what he was saying was "Where we have a city which is not to go in for manufacturing we consider it desirable that it should go in for the tourist trade, and because of that we are extending the concession."
According to the Tourist Board's Report there are 128 hotels and 221 boarding houses in Edinburgh, and I do not know whether that is a complete list. Every one of those establishments will have to pay 50 per cent. more in S.E.T., and there is no question about it that the hoteliers in Edinburgh are being extremely heavily penalised. I know that the other cities in Scotland, among them Aberdeen, are in precisely the same boat in this respect, but at least they get a benefit which Edinburgh does not get, and that is the benefit of higher grants and loans for building and improving hotels, because they are in development areas. That means 5 per cent. more grant, with a £250 higher ceiling. That, again, puts Edinburgh in a thoroughly invidious and unfair situation.
I do not know—perhaps the hon. Gentleman who is to reply to the debate can tell us—why the Secretary of State has got his knife in the City of Edinburgh. If he and the Minister of State are not happy and comfortable in their office in Edinburgh and not enjoying hospitality, everyone would be delighted if the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues vacated their offices in St. Andrew's House and took the whole Selective Employment Tax away with them.
8.10 p.m.
Mr. John Rankin: There are two hon. Members in this House who represent in Scotland, as part of a much bigger job, what is called the Co-operative interest. Those hon. Members are nominated by the Co-operative movement. One represents, and represents very ably indeed, the great industrial, Co-operative and shipbuliding city of Greenock—my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Scottish Office, who is on

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the Front Bench. The other hon. Member is myself, who also represents a great industrial, Co-operative and shipbuilding constituency called Govan. I think I can say that both of us have done our jobs very well indeed and I hope that we shall continue to do so. I say that because it is difficult for other hon. Members to say it for us.
Tonight my hon. Friend and I find ourselves in opposite camps but only temporarily. This is the sort of conflict which arises in public life. From the conflict which does, may be, exist between my hon. Friend and myself at this moment will emerge the progressive synthesis for which the Labour and Cooperative movements, in Scotland particularly, have always been famous. So tonight, as my first job, I want to convey to the House the feeling which has been expressed in the meetings of Co-operative boards in Scotland.
I have here a large volume of information on these matters. As I go along I shall give a selective presentation of the views of ordinary working men and women who are running a business which has progressed very well indeed in Scotland, and also in England. I say nothing about England, however, because that has already been said in this House in other debates. The feeling expressed by the board of Broxburn Co-operative Society is that the Government have deprived it of £6,000 which was rightly its members'. Their grievance lies in the fact that that £6,000 would have gone to members of the Broxburn Society— the members who make their purchases, keep the society going and keep it prosperous.
I have from Central and East Fife board of directors the intimation that the cost of S.E.T. to them during the year will be £18,040. By that amount the living standard, interpreted as they do it, of their members is correspondingly reduced. Central and East Fife tell me that they will lose in a full, year £24,265. Cowlairs in the City of Glasgow will lose £42,000. Dunfermline, in Fifeshire, will lose what represents a 3d. per pound dividend to its members. East Lothian will lose £20,800. There is no reason why I should leave out Greenock. Greenock will lose £19,600, of which my hon. Friend is very well aware. I
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am certain that he, like every Labour Member in Scotland, has made protest on behalf of his members to the appropriate quarters in the Government. I am confident that in due course those protests will bear fruit.
Paisley Manufacturing Society is losing £14,554; the Northern Co-operative Society, which is in Aberdeen, is losing £140,000, and the S.C.W.S., the wholesale society, will lose £105,000. That is what this tax represents to the Co-operative membership in actual money. These losses have naturally created a feeling of dissatisfaction. Whether or not the dissatisfaction will diminish and be finally removed lies in the future, but every one of us recognises that a Government must have money and the demand presented to the Government for more and more services is one of the basic justifications for the course they have taken. That view has been expressed within the circles to which I have referred.
It is recognised and to some extent now accepted. But co-operative shops and other retailers are disturbed by the inconsistencies in the application of the tax. For instance, co-operative societies sell electrical appliances. So does the nationalised industry, but nationalised industries do not pay Selective Employment Tax on their sales of electrical appliances while co-operative shops and other retailers do. They consider that an injustice. I am sure that my hon. Friend will have something to say about that when he replies to the debate.
In addition, the Co-operative movement has employees as chemists, pharmacists and opticians in its shops, and it pays tax on those employees. In the private sector, on the other hand, one-man businesses on similar lines are exempt. That is an injustice which has been recognised, and I am sure that in his reply my hon. Friend will have some helpful and hopeful comments to make about such indefensible maltreatments. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us that he is awaiting the Reddaway Report before he reaches a final decision. In the meantime, co-operators, being in good hands, will live in hope and also in assurance.
Mr. Brewis Mr. Brewis rose—
Mr. Rankin: I do not mind giving way. The trouble today is time, which is the enemy of us all.

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As I have emphasised, the reduction which has taken place in co-operative societies' dividends and what that has meant to societies, I should perhaps point out the great part which the dividend has played in the social and economic life of the people of Scotland. The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) referred to the Island of Arran, off the West Coast of Scotland. It would be interesting, in passing, to know how many men and women holding responsible jobs in Scotland, and how many Scottish people in. many parts of the world, were educated on the co-operative dividend. In the younger days of many middle-aged and older people, there was not the State support for education which exists today. I wonder how many family holidays were assisted by the co-operative dividend and how many houses were built with its aid. I wonder about the household furniture, the pianos and other adornments, which, particularly in Scotland, became part and parcel of the home because of the part which the co-operative dividend played in the lives of such people as those of Scotland, who are fundamentally thrifty. I think of the number of last wills and testaments—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher): Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Member, but I remind him that we are basically discussing the Selective Employment Tax.
Mr. Rankin: I hope that that is what I have been doing. The effect of the Selective Employment Tax on this form of saving is to deprive the people of Scotland of an aid which was significant to them in many periods of their lives. The hon. Member referred to the Island of Arran, where the Co-operative movement, through the dividend, played a very important part. The Co-operative Wholesale Society went into the island and opened its shops there. It bought the produce of the islanders, paying them for it on the spot and giving them what they had not had before—a money income. Previously they had had an income in food, with no fear of its lack; but they were not employed persons. For the most part they depended for their income on summer visitors. The Co-operative movement rescued the crofter from that position by buying the produce of his land at, his own door.
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I shall be brief because many hon. Members wish to speak, but I must emphasise the importance of this type of social income to the people of Scotland and express the hope that my hon. Friend and those in Government with him will bring their promises to maturity. In reply to the protests I have presented one Minister said,
"The Budget proposals were an essential element in the Government's overall strategy for achieving a progressive and massive shift of resources from home consumption to the requirements of exports, import replacement and productive investment. The taxation measures designed to bring about a reduction in domestic consumption were widely spread and inevitably involved some increases affecting the services sector. Moreover, the need to switch resources from consumption to export means ensuring not only that the growth of home demand does not impede exports but also that there must be some redeployment of labour to the manufacturing sector".
I ask my hon. Friend in his reply to tell us whether any evidence can be furnished tonight of any reduction in domestic consumption. To what extent have exports improved and how many people formerly in the service sector are now in the manufacturing industries? Surely, in view of the immense technological advances being achieved, it was possible to win increases in industrial output without making the women of Scotland pay for them.
8.29 p.m.
Mr. John Brewis: I was interested to hear what the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) said about the Co-operative movement, and I shall refer in more detail to his speech a little later.
I am sorry that the Minister who opened the debate has had to leave us. I thought that he made the best case that he could for S.E.T., but he marred his speech by saying that Scotland could not be divorced from the position of England on taxation. It is because we hear that sort of statement from British Ministers so often that there have been such a rise in the S.N.P. in Scotland. Of course, the position of Scotland can be divorced from England on taxation. All that is needed is a differential pay-roll tax taking the development areas at one end, and the overheated South-East at the other.
The Minister said that there was overheating in manufacturing industry at the

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time the S.E.T. was introduced. I doubt whether that applied to Scotland at all. The real problem in connection with the lack of labour in manufacturing in Scotland is the lack of training facilities, and getting trained labour is much more important for manufacturing than the imposition of S.E.T.
We have been given a figure of 2·2 per cent. for the decline in Scotland of service industries, and we have been told that there has been no decline in the construction industry. No figure was given for the decline in industrial employment, but I believe that the figure for 1966–67 was higher than 2·2 per cent. We have now had two years of S.E.T. and I believe that it has proved ineffective in its operation, inequitable in its incidence, and cumbersome to collect. Scotland has naturally more service industries than has England. Scotland has a much greater need for transport, road construction, and so on because of the greater distance from markets.
Incoming industrialists to Scotland during the last few years have been extremely pleased with the standard of the natural amenities in Scotland, the scenery, and so on, but they have had certain comments to make on the standard of the service industries compared with those in England. One thing which sticks out is the lack of private housing, and in many cases hotels, restaurants, and public houses have not been up to the standard of those in England. This is true also of supermarkets, shops, and garages. All of these are undertakings which are hit by S.E.T.
Perhaps I might consider the effect of this tax on shops. This was referred to by the hon. Member for Govan. There is violent opposition to this tax from the co-ops, and I thought that the figures which the hon. Gentleman gave of the money being taken away from the dividends of the co-operatives was extremely impressive, but he is wrong in thinking that there is any necessary synthesis between the Co-operative movement and the Labour Party. The hon. Gentleman spoke about them living in hope, but let them be in hope of a Conservative Government which will abolish this tax. From the lack of interest taken in this debate by Scottish Labour Members it seems that there is no hope of that relief
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coming from a union between the Cooperative movement and the Labour Party. There have seldom been more than five Members on the benches opposite.
This tax is putting up prices on gross turnover by no less than 15 per cent. I wonder how many people, when they go to a supermarket in Scotland and find a long queue at the check out and empty gaps on the shelves, realise that this is due to the labour which has been squeezed out from the distributive trades? Few Members do their own shopping, so they do not realise the effect of this squeeze on shoppers.
About a year ago the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce carried out a survey among 22 of the largest retailers and wholesalers in Scotland, who between them employed no fewer than 19,000 workers. It was found that about 6 per cent. of the employees had been squeezed out by S.E.T. But most of those who were squeezed out were dismissed on account of their age or their disability, and the survey pointed out that these were mostly people who were not fit to take other jobs, particularly in manufacturing. This aspect of the tax is nothing short of inhuman. One of the worst criticisms of it is the way that it incites people to invent dodges. Part-time workers are encouraged to work a whole week in some establishments and then go on to the dole for a week, thus increasing the Government's payment and the unemployment figures. It also tends to replace men with women. Hotels, for example, employ fewer waiters and more waitresses because of the tax. There is a long-range problem in this modern technological age, of finding more employment for men.
But the worst instance is in the construction industry. The extra cost of a 2,000 house will be £90 for the original S.E.T. and, I understand, a further £20 because of this year's Budget. This does not work out mathematically with S.E.T. increasing by 50 per cent. because so many builders have found dodges to get around the tax. For example, if one can isolate the joiner's shop, one can actually get R.E.P. on it. One can make many of one's employees pretend to be self-employed, and thus escape the tax. In industrialised building, for example, if the sections are assembled on the site,

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one does have to pay the tax, but if they are assembled in a factory some way off, one gets R.E.P. and is much better off. As a result, for example, Wimpey pays S.E.T. on industrialised building, while Costain does not.
Finally, it is a most cumbersome tax to collect. A total of 478 extra civil servants are employed just paying out the S.E.T. which another Ministry collects.
Mr. Donald Dewar: Could the hon. Gentleman give me an example of a tax in the present range of taxes for which the administrative costs are a lower percentage of the total raised than the figures for S.E.T?
Mr. Brewis: I cannot give one offhand, but a vast number of civil servants are employed on this. It might be a good idea if the Government themselves had to pay S.E.T. on the extra civil servants whom they have been employing lately.
I hope that Professor Reddaway will produce a much better solution. We should have, as I said, a payroll tax. If and when we enter the Common Market, we shall have to change the tax anyway to go over to a value added tax, which is at present operating on the Continent. I am, therefore, delighted that, when the Conservative Party is returned to power, we shall abolish S.E.T.
8.38 p.m.
Mr. Donald Dewar: There is a tendency, which I find entirely understandable, for the Chamber to empty when Tories start talking about taxation, and particularly when Scottish Tories talk about the S.E.T. It is one of their favourite subjects. It is an occasion for generalised ritual abuse, when all sorts of reasonable people start flogging themselves into a state of spurious indignation. This is a pantomime which has been rehearsed here on many occasions, and I am surprised to realise that it can only have started in May, 1966, when S.E.T. first burst upon the country. One thing which is marginally encouraging is the rather flat and possibly even anticlimactic atmosphere of the House this evening. Perhaps even some of the hard-core Tory agitators on S.E.T. are getting a little discouraged.
It is easy to shrug off this kind of demonstration which the Tory Party has
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been mounting for two years now in Scotland, but I would not be prepared to do it. I give them this credit—it has to some extent been successful. There is no doubt that all taxes are unpopular but that the Selective Employment Tax has been unpopular beyond all reasonable expectation.
I cannot help feeling that the dogged campaign of misrepresentation which has gone on for a very long time, and which on one or two important points has still been going on tonight, has contributed to the cumulative great unpopularity of the Measure. The Treasury Minister who opened the debate was right to remind us why we have a Selective Employment Tax. It is not an unpleasant whim made the more unpleasant because various Opposition spokesmen suspect it is a formula foisted on to the Government by, of all things, a foreigner. It is first and foremost a method of raising revenue.
I was surprised to hear the hon. Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis) refer to the expense of collecting it. I and a large number of other people, including The Times, have commented on just how cheap it is to collect. One reason for that is that it uses existing machinery, which may be one of the reasons for some of the anomalies which have been so heavily criticised. As I remember the figures, the first full year produced £190 million and administration cost only £2 million, just over one per cent., which, by current taxation practice, makes it an extremely economical tax. It is fair to say that S.E.T. raises revenue and raises it cheaply.
I agree with the Government spokesman on the Front Bench that it is a sensible and useful way of broadening the basis of the indirect taxation system. Many people will remember the then Chancellor's speech when he introduced the tax in May, 1966. I have just reread it. I was impressed then and I still am impressed by the force of the argument that if it is necessary to raise this money, then one should look at a sector, the service sector, which has been very lightly treated in terms of indirect taxation. Of the £6,000 million on which Purchase Tax and Excise duties are eligible, 40 per cent. goes in this way. Of the £7,000 million spent by the public

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on services, only 1 per cent. is claimed by the Exchequer in indirect taxation. If it is accepted that there is a need to raise taxation, and if particularly the Tory Party is so obsessively opposed to the raising of direct taxation, then there is an obvious case for looking at the service industries and deciding to tax them in this way.
It may be that back in May, 1966, there was an argument, although it was not one of which I heard a great deal, that the Chancellor had his sums wrong and we did not need to raise so much money. But when we came to the last Budget and the jacking up of the S.E.T. level, I do not think there was a big quarrel between the Front Benches about the total sum that the Chancellor was taking out of the economy.
This is something that has been said many times in the House, but it is worth emphasising because I do not think the Conservatives have explained to my satisfaction how they get out of the logic of their own arguments. If they are to abolish S.E.T., if they are to increase defence spending or at least slow down the cuts that the present Government have introduced, if we follow the Shadow Chancellor in saying that we should not have indirect taxes which push up industrial costs and if we want him to reduce direct taxation, as the Tories have pledged themselves to do, it is difficult to see how they will reach the global sum that they have agreed is largely right and must be found. In that context there is a clear prima facie case in the total economic situation for supporting the Government in the imposition of some form of Selective Employment Tax.
I agree with the hon. Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis) that it would be a sad measure of the inflexibility of the Government's fiscal ideas if they said there cannot be a differential taxation system for England and Scotland. But that is exactly what we have done. He may not like the way in which we have differentiated, but the Minister of State gave figures which prove conclusively that the whole S.E.T.-R.E.P. tax complex has been so heavily weighted in favour of Scotland and in favour of the development areas in general. Even a nationalist striving ultimately for complete political separation might still think there is a
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case for Selective Employment Tax suitably varied, for if it is the right prescription for the rest of the United Kingdom it will benefit Scotland in the sense that we will always be dependent economically on an expanding and buoyant English economy. England will always be our major market whether we are within or without the framework of the United Kingdom.
I have always been sceptical about the arguments in relation to the shift of workers from the service to the manufacturing sectors. I know that a large number of people do not share my scepticism. The Chancellor suggested in his last Budget that this had taken place and it was suggested again this evening from the Government Front Bench.
Shortly after the last Budget I remember reading an article in The Times, one sentence of which gives the keynote:
"Some evidence now suggests that the tax is achieving its purpose and that a real shake-out of employees in service industries is under way."
The article went on to argue that employment in the service industries was dropping and, though in the manufacturing industries it was dropping faster, this still suggested that for the first time there was some response to direct Government policy and the economic cycle from the employment pattern in the service industries.
I am still sceptical about this. If it is happening, it is happening very slowly. I did not like that argument at the time, and I accept some of the points made by the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) when he used the White Paper on the Scottish Economy as his text, but I maintain that in terms of the general economic strategy and as a means of raising revenue cheaply and efficiently, there is a lot to be said for the Selective Employment Tax.
The real question is how Scotland comes out of the sums, if it comes out well or badly and how we should after the situation if at all. A rather strange thing, it seems to me, has happened. When Conservatives talk about Scotland and the Selective Employment Tax, they do not mean Scotland at all. They mean the Highlands, the North-East or the Border. We see again and again this obsession which was not evident during their years

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in office but which suddenly bulks so large in their minds.
I agree that there are special problems in these areas. If one takes the Standard Industrial Classification categories III to VI—that is, the premium earning categories—it is true that in the North-East of Scotland only 25 per cent. of the employed population are in these industries, and only 10 per cent. in the Highlands. There are parts of Scotland with very real problems. In the same way, it is only 14 per cent. in the South-West Development District of England and in other parts of the United Kingdom. Taking Scotland as a whole, it is not true that Scotland is heavily dependent upon service industries. In fact, our proportion of service to manufacturing industries almost exactly corresponds with that of the United Kingdom as a whole.
I was told in answer to a Written Question that I put down on 2nd July that the net yield from the tax-bearing sector after deducting the neutral repayment section, was in Scotland £45 million but that England and Wales contributed £443 million to the Exchequer which is almost exactly what one might expect on a strict per capita basis, emphasising that the break down of manufacturing and service industries is very similar north and south of the Border.
But we get the weighting that I talked about earlier, and it is a massive weighting. I am told that the additional selective employment payment to manufacturers, now only found in the development districts, gives £10 million to Scotland and £15 million to England, and the R.E.P. ploughs into Scotland £40 million and into England £60 million.
If one takes account of the premiums going back to manufacturers and the additional R.E.P. premiums I have just mentioned, the net yield to the Exchequer in England is £368 million. In Scotland, we have a balance—a profit, in fact, of £5 million. There is a massive differential, and it is quite wrong to say that the Selective Employment Tax has been in some way designed uniquely to victimise Scotland.
One could argue with some justification that it may not be the best way of using the money which is ploughed into Scotland. It may be said that it would
1146
be better to double expenditure on roads. It may be argued that the infrastructure is more important than investment grants. There are a number of very far-reaching and important arguments which ought to be examined of this type. But one should never over simplify and merely say that S.E.T. is bad for Scotland. It is there to help Scotland and it does give Scotland a real financial advantage. It may be bad for Scotland in the same sense that growth point policy may be bad for Scotland, or the Tory Front Bench might say that spreading the jam thinly over the whole of Scotland is a mistake for Scotland, but one should not say that S.E.T. is not trying to help and is not making a very significant contribution.
The trouble is not that the Conservative spokesmen on S.E.T. are getting the wrong answers but that they ask basically the wrong questions.
Mr. Higgins: That is what the hon. Gentleman did when he put down his set of Questions. We were told originally that R.E.P. would be self-financing. If that had not been the case his Question would have been right. But as it is financed out of other taxation he must make allowance for the taxation Scotsmen pay to finance the £40 million R.E.P.
Mr. Dewar: I see that, and there may be some validity in the point. It is a nice financial calculation which is beyond me, and I suggest that it is beyond the hon. Gentleman without the aid of the Treasury. But even when one has made every possible allowance, I think the hon. Gentleman would agree, there is a very heavy favourable weighting in the system.
I said that there are areas in England as well as in Scotland where we are at a very considerable disadvantage. I want to say a word about this, and refer particularly to the tourist industry in my part of the country. It is one of the most distressing and aggravating features of the Labour Government that they often manage to get the worst of every world. It is incredible when one looks at the number of sizeable concessions that they have made to various interest groups in Scotland and other parts which have boomeranged upon them so that they have ended more unpopular than they were to begin with. I hope that my right

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hon. Friends do not think I am too uncharitable, but I think that this is a prime example of it.
We had a massive concession originally. The British Hotel and Travel Association said that Schedule 17 would have exempted one hotel in four in Britain, and the Scottish figures undoubtedly would have been higher. But we got no credit and were driven to make changes which I believe are considerable improvements, but which ought to have been made at the beginning.
We do not have an anti-tourist Government or Administration. The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire quoted the recent Report of the Scottish Tourist Board. He will have noted that the new investment grant scheme which was announced in a recent White Paper has been warmly welcomed by the Board, which has described this decision as
"the most encouraging in at least 20 years."
There is, I am convinced, a very good appreciation of the importance of the tourist industry. It is sad that we should have got all the abuse and opposition and partly because it was so badly presented, without a sufficiently decisive and final form.
The worst thing from my point of view is that anomalies still exist. I recognise that there is an enormous advantage in administrative terms in neat lines. At the moment cities are excluded and the rural areas are not. Here is a nice hard and fast situation which everyone can appreciate. But originally Schedule 17 was drawn out in hard and fast lines also. There was the great principle that one could not sub-divide employment exchange areas, that it was not administratively possible and that it offended against the good canons of orthodox administration. But ultimately the Government decided that they could take this step, and they have sub-divided the areas and drawn much more sensible lines in terms of their original definition of "rural areas".
I should like to see them go a little further and look flexibly at the situation in other individual parts of Scotland and even in Scottish cities. With regard to Aberdeen, I now probably understand and appreciate, if I may make an admission, the very real feeling of someone
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who is placed just outside a development district—Edinburgh, say—looking in.
The situation developing in Aberdeen in the tourist industry has brought home to me the strength of feeling that this kind of position inevitably generates. Our tourist industry is immensely important. Of all Scottish cities, Aberdeen is the most heavily dependent on it. Edinburgh is, of course, a great centre, but of a different kind. It has other justifications and existences outside tourism. We are mainly a service centre for an agricultural hinterland. Aberdeen has but one other major industry—fishing—and that has an uncertain future and cannot be described as an obvious growth industry.
While I accept that this is purely special pleading, I hope that, at some point, my right hon. Friend will be prepared to look again at the boundaries he has drawn because otherwise there will be real hardship. The tourist industry in Aberdeen is going through a difficult transitional phase, since traditional trade and traffic patterns—for example, the Glasgow Fair—are declining. We are trying to adjust ourselves to the new touring traffic. There may well be real hardship among smaller hoteliers in my area if the Government are not prepared to look at this matter again.
The Motion on the Order Paper is extremely difficult to comprehend. The Opposition are deploring the effect of the Selective Employment Tax upon the Scottish economy. I suppose it depends on what one's criteria are for judging the situation. But in almost every field and by almost every standard the Government have done extremely well in the last few years. Public expenditure in 1962–63 was £240 million. In 1966–67 it was going well above the £400 million mark. In every department of public spending, such as roads and housing, the figure is up, with completions at a record level.
Admittedly, unemployment is still 150 per cent. of the United Kingdom level but even in my short career I can remember the days when it was commonplace and accepted that the Scottish figure should be above the 200 per cent. mark in relation to the United Kingdom total. Scotland was always, but no longer is, the Cinderella of the regions—with one of the worst ratios in relation to the rest

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of the country. I believe the dreary certainty of depression in the Scottish economy is no more. We do not now have to look forward to large unemployment and low investment.
One of the sadnesses and paradoxes is that an Administration which has presided over the biggest ever public expenditure boom in Scotland has still ended up as electorally unpopular, at least temporarily. I hope, as the results become more apparent to the electorate, this attitude will change, but it is an ironic and strange situation.
Even if we take the case of the shops —and the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) has been reading public notices in the Glasgow Herald—there has been a real consumer boom in Scotland. I will quote a witness which is not often quoted on the Labour side—the annual reports of the House of Fraser. The last annual report produced record figures. The House of Fraser did well, too, in 1966–67, despite the fact that it had five months S.E.T. to pay. It did well specifically because the Scottish and northern stores had been particularly prosperous. The financial editor of The Times remarked that Scotland had come to the aid of Fraser and added that it looked as if a mass exodus to the North was called for. It was underlined that the northern stores had done particularly well. It may be that there are difficulties in the centres of certain cities and it may be that experiments with sites away from city centre complexes will have to be made, as the House of Fraser itself is making them.
All in all, the Conservative case does not hold up. The Opposition have proved that they do not like the S.E.T. and they are joined in that view by many people in Scotland. I can certainly accept that the tax needs further refinement and that it can be improved and changed, but I am not prepared to give my vote tonight to a sweeping condemnation or to countenance such an attack. This kind of over-simplification, this kind of denial of the facts, this attempt which in financial terms is important to hide the real effort being made to help the Scottish economy, can only encourage the disgruntled air which is abroad in Scotland, and in doing that we benefit and help no one.
9.1 p.m.
Mr. Russell Johnston: I should love to tangle with the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar), because he has the marvellous flair of the born orator of generalising an argument to such an extent that at any given moment one is very impressed with what he says, although, when one tries to string it together as a coherent pattern of argument, it seems to fall down. However, I agree with him that this has not been exactly a firecracker of a debate.
At this time of the evening, the House is usually fairly crowded, but tonight only a very few hon. Members are present. The reason is probably simply that it is almost impossible to have a debate of this sort without a great deal of repetition, because all the ground has already been covered many times. I am reminded of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. James Davidson), who related to me the other day how he had been addressing a public meeting at which there were many Conservatives. In a tempting mood, which is dangerous on any occasion, he asked whether there was any Conservative present who could say what constructive proposals his party had put forward while in opposition. One quavering hand went up and a voice said, "We would abolish Selective Employment Tax". It is all very fine and dandy, but, although I go along with many of the strictures made in the debate, I would have preferred a debate on the alternatives which, as the Minister of State rightly said, one has to discuss if one engages in negative criticism. I do not propose to add much by way of stricture, not because I oppose the tax less, but because it has already been effectively said by others.
Despite the regional employment premium—and I fully appreciated the point which the hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) neatly inserted into the speech of the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North—Selective Employment Tax has not encouraged the development of those parts of the United Kingdom which most need development. The Midlands flourish while Scotland, like Northern Ireland and the South-West—for this does not apply only to Scotland—suffer by comparison.

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I quote an interesting regional analysis made by two gentlemen of the teaching staff of London University, Mr. Rawstron and Mr. Lewis. Taking the index of tax payments by service industries with the United Kingdom as 100, they say that Scotland is almost the same, at 101, whereas in the Midlands the Yorkshire and Humberside area is 85, the East Midlands, 82, and the West Midlands, 75. On the other side of the picture, the index of premium receipts by manufacturers, with the United Kingdom average as 100, in Scotland is 90·1, while in the West Midlands it is 140·1. In other words, in the area which requires help least, the greatest help is given.
Secondly, within Scotland itself the tax has a retarding effect on the development of those parts of Scotland which most need development—this is an extension of the same argument. The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) has quoted figures of money going out of the Highlands area, and I do not want to repeat that argument. The original estimate was produced by a Question asked by the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) a long time ago and it was between £2½ million and £3 million. This seems to be contradictory. It is also true to a certain extent of the South-West and the Borders.
Although I am not a taxation expert —and I can easily put my hand on my heart to say that—I have always believed that at least an attempt should be made not to make taxation anomalous, not to make it unfair as between one lot and another, and there is no doubt that this tax is grossly anomalous in many ways. One could quote many examples, but I shall quote only one. We welcome the concessions for hotels in development areas, but what is the logic of saying, for example, that the Station Hotel m Inverness, which is a splendid hotel, is to get the rebate, and a wee restaurant next door which is doing the same job shall not get anything? This is anomalous, and makes people think that the tax is unreasonable. Most people think that all tax is unreasonable, but if they get a grudge against taxation that is bad.
The Minister fairly asked what one can do instead. If there is one good thing that S.E.T. has done for us it is probably
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that in future we shall be forced to develop more and better co-ordinating machinery for assessing the regional and local effects of any change. Already there has been much comment that the tax has changed a great deal since it came into existence. I do not think that it is a good way of legislating, to quote the splendid and very appropriate words of one hon. Member, to be driven in disorganised fashion to make improvements. But I very much accept the hon. Gentleman's other point that we have not yet developed the right kind of machinery', and in many ways it ill behoves the Conservative Party to criticise the Government on that basis. The Government have had very little time to develop it.
The Minister said that there was no really flexible alternative to S.E.T., and he spoke rather disparagingly about the concept of the payroll tax, which the Liberals have advocated for some time and of which there has been considerable experience on the Continent. I believe that it is more flexible than the S.E.T. It is not necessarily involved in the rather artificial distinction between manufacturing and service. It can be varied according to employment; to assist export industries, despite G.A.T.T.; and it can be remitted for charities, part-time workers, the disabled and so on.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Dr. Winstanley) said in June, 1966:
"A varied tax could be introduced immediately in the following terms to raise the £240 million per year which the Chief Secretary is so anxious to acquire. First, the West Midlands and the South-East would pay 7s. per employee per week. Secondly, Yorkshire, Humberside, the North-West, the East Midlands and East Anglia would pay 3s. per employee per week. Thirdly, the Northern Region, in terms of the Department of Economic Affairs, the South West, all Scotland and all Wales would pay no tax.
The rates would be 7s. 3d. and no shillings, and it would realise precisely the £240 million which the Chancellor is so anxious to get with none of the troubles, arguments and special inquiries about who is to count because of these arrangements in industry …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd June, 1966; Vol. 730, c. 1012–13.]
Do we want regional dispersal or not? I admit that it would be very sweeping.
Finally, and briefly, because I am very conscious of the pressure of time, I do not think that I have ever really accepted, though I remember often arguing

1153
about it with the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), for example, when he was Minister of State, the distinction between service and manufacturing, and what it effectively means. It is very artificial, and I am not at all satisfied that it is a good way of encouraging manufacturing industry to pay extra premiums according to the number of people it employs. We should be much more concerned with the more efficient deployment of manpower than anything else.
There has not been much reference to a value-added tax in the debate, and it is rather late to start developing that theme. The evidence shows that it is a tax against inefficiency, and, indeed, in the long term, would be better than a payroll tax and would replace it.
I said that I thought the Motion was negative, but it is often true that negative things require to be said many times on some occasions.
9.10 p.m.
Mr. George Lawson: I apologise for not having heard all the debate, but we have heard about this subject endlessly since the introduction of Selective Employment Tax. Hon. Members from Scottish constituencies have been particularly virile in their attacks on the Government on this matter. Although I have not heard all that has been said this evening, I am sure that I have heard it on other occasions. It is very unlikely that anything new has been said tonight.
I remember, when we were in opposition, the initial payroll tax being suggested by the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd). At that time we had criticism about its implications, but the scheme did not go ahead. When we think in terms of the Selective Employment Tax that we now have and why it was introduced in its present form, we recall that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer candidly stated that this was a means of raising revenue. My right hon. Friend said that if it were not done this way it would have to be done another way.
Everyone is crying out for more and more public spending, even hon. Gentlemen opposite, yet at the same time they cry out against it. But this was a means
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of raising revenue. The choice was between more direct taxation—and we have been told again and again that we have virtually reached the limit in terms of direct taxation so we could not raise more revenue there—and indirect taxation. The area for an extension of indirect taxation was pretty limited. It is not perhaps appreciated by many people that one great area that remains for an extension of indirect taxation, unlike most other countries, concerns food. We subsidise food rather than tax it, apart from "sweeties", ice cream and commodities of that kind. If one were to think in terms of the easiest way to raise money, this undoubtedly would be the easy way to go about it. But this was something alien to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he pointed to services which at that time were not taxed. For example, if a man goes into a barber's shop and has a haircut, it is difficult to argue why he should not pay a tax related to the service of having his hair cut, whereas if he buys a razor or razor blades he pays a tax.
It was appreciated at the time that imposing this tax might, for example, injure certain sections of our industry. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer had in mind our export trade. Great emphasis was placed on the selective character of the tax. My right hon. Friend said that he wanted to raise a large amount of revenue, but in a manner which would be least injurious to our export trade. He argued that the manufacturing industries were more important for exports than any other. He did not say that the services of the tourist industry or the hotels were not important, but that they were trying to be selective and to do least harm to the export trade and that to single out manufacturing industry for a repayment with a premium was one way of doing so.
It is enormously difficult to produce a tax of this kind without anomalies. If the Government deserve blame at all, it is, perhaps, because they have been too concerned to meet objections and arguments. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have cried out about how the hotels, particularly in Scotland, were being injured —although the trade has been rising over this period—almost as though there were no other part of the United Kingdom than Scotland. I sometimes wonder

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where this place Scotland is. How important it is as a part of the United Kingdom! We hear so much about it.
Then, a scheme was brought forward to help the hotels and immediately there was a greater outcry than ever because some were being helped and not others. If I were being critical, I might say that it would be better not to bother about the hotels and to get "all your thanks in the one dish". The Government have had no thanks at all for what they have been doing.
The S.E.T. is only one aspect of a selective tax system. I and many of my hon. Friends used to argue in Opposition for some modification of taxation to help the development areas, and not just Scotland. We had no answer; we were not taxation experts and did not have the Liberals behind us to tell us what to do, but we urged some selectivity in taxation to help these areas. And now we have it. This is of far more help than I ever dreamed. In my wildest imaginings, I never dreamed that there could be so much discrimination in a taxation system in favour of the development areas as there is in the S.E.T. and the R.E.P.
My constituency would have lost an important factory but for the regional employment premium and the money which goes back to manufacturing industries in our areas. Although I have nothing against the Highlands of Scotland—it is a very nice place to visit occasionally— that is not where the people of Scotland are to be found. They are in the industrial areas, and Scotland is a highly industrialised country. In this sense, Scotland reaps great benefit from the R.E.P.—
Mr. Gordon Campbell (Moray and Nairn): Is the hon. Gentleman discounting and writing off all the North of Scotland?
Mr. Lawson: No, since my hon. Friends and I have been pressing for efforts to develop Scotland. My right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), who is present, piloted through the Bill which brought into being the Highlands and Islands Development Board, which has been doing much more for Scotland than has been done for a very long time. I would say to the hon.
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Gentleman who represents the lairds and gentry that if Scotland has suffered, the Highlands particularly, it is because of the absent gentry, the folk who have turned the Highlands into a deer forest. They are the people who depopulated Scotland. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman need not laugh. My ancestors were just as involved as ever were his, but that is not what I am arguing about.
Mr. James Davidson (Aberdeenshire, West): I am not arguing with the hon. Gentleman's argument he is now putting forward, but I thought I heard him say a little earlier that people in the North and in the Highlands are people. Where do people start to be people?
Mr. Lawson: It is people we want to see. I am sure the hon. Gentleman the Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston), although he has left the Chamber now, wants to see in his area more than tourism and wants to see industry there. So do I. Measures of this kind are measures which will develop our country. By all means let us have some holiday folk and tourism, but let us have industry, and it is this type of measure which will help Scotland, not the greeting and girning we get from hon. Gentlemen opposite. I can assure my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State who spoke from our Front Bench that he has the full support of his Scottish colleagues.
We have had two subjects debated today. When we on this side were the Opposition we always put aside two Supply days for Scotland and we always, among other things, debated industry and employment in Scotland. We have not had a debate on that subject this Session. Why? Instead we get a niggling little subject like this Selective Employment Tax—not even as it affects the United Kingdom, but as it affects Scotland. This is the kind of thing which discredits Scotland. I should like to see hon. Gentlemen opposite becoming a little bigger in their approach to matters of this kind.
Meantime, this is something about which my hon. and right hon. Friends on the Front Bench need not worry. My only fear is that in trying to meet hon. Gentlemen opposite they may have gone too far.
9.23 p.m.
Mr. Patrick Wolrige-Gordon (Aberdeenshire, East): After due reflection I do not think I will follow the hon. Gentleman the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson). I hope he will excuse me. He came to the aid of his party in noble fashion.
I have detected during the debate a certain amount of complaint from him and from other hon. Gentlemen opposite at the fact that we should raise this matter again. They say, quite fairly, that this matter has been discussed many times already. That is absolutely true. What I think they fail to recognise is that a Government who think even the act of listening is granting a concession may have to be told 20 times even before they really begin to absorb the fact that a solid, serious case is being presented to which they should pay the most urgent attention. It is not our fault we have to raise the matter again; it is the fault of the Government.
Of course, all taxation is indefensible, considered in isolation. It becomes only even remotely bearable when we consider what can be achieved with the money which is raised by the taxation. In this case the Government produced a lot of talk about overheating of the economy, translation of resources, raising revenue, a lot of talk which does not mean much to anybody but themselves— and, as the carrot at the end of the stick, the R.E.P., the regional employment premium.
I am opposed to the whole of the Selective Employment Tax, R.E.P. and all, and I am concerned that manufacturers in Scotland find in the regional employment premium the sort of artificial carrot which may have little relation to the reality of their economic circumstances and which may place them in very real difficulties as and when it is removed. In my view the whole concept of the Selective Employment Tax is arrant nonsense, and even if the Government can afford to be led up the garden path the ordinary people cannot. We will therefore abolish the tax as and when we get the chance.
"But," say hon. Members opposite, "what taxation will you raise instead?" "Nothing," we say. "Ah," they say with a great gleam, "what then will you cut?" "Nothing," we will say, and the last
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glimmer of interest disappears. They really cannot imagine that anyone else can run the country's affairs better than they can.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar) said that he could not understand why this tax was so particularly unpopular. I should like quite briefly to enlighten him, and as he left the Chamber some time ago I have no doubt that he will read my speech. The Selective Employment Tax was introduced shortly after an election when our people were still basking in the euphoria of statements by the newly-elected Government that no further increases in taxation were necessary.
That was the first point. The next is the basic discrimination between the service industries and the manufacturing industries which many of our people felt to be highly insulting, apart from being extremely unfair in its effects on the economic structure of their lives. There are many smaller examples that could be given, but the discrimination between hotels and restaurants is that which has come out most often and most obviously in this debate.
Then there was the way in which the whole business was handled. First, we had agriculture. After a great struggle it was decided that those in agriculture could have the money back: "Let's find a few more civil servants to take the money in and more of them to pay it back." Then there was fish processing, then bakehouses. The latest event in this chronicle of decision, reconsideration, changes of mind and panic all round is the exemption of various hotels in Scotland from the Selective Employment Tax. If the Government are to handle their taxation affairs in this way they cannot tackle any potential exporters, or anyone else, about their way of handling their affairs. That is the reason for the unpopularity of this tax.
9.28 p.m.
Mr. William Hannan (Glasgow, Maryhill): We now know from the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Wolrige-Gordon) the Opposition's programme for the next election. The two answers he gave on behalf of his party were in the negative—"nothing", "nothing"—and I expect that that will be the result of any policies that the

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Opposition have to offer in the next election.
The debate has centred round the principle of the Selective Employment Tax, and it seems that some hon. Members opposite did not listen to what my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Treasury, was saying. He pointed out that nationally the S.E.T. has yielded much more than was anticipated in the Budget in 1966 when the tax was introduced, but that Scotland had benefited to the extent of £5 million net. I should have thought that that was something of which Scottish hon. Members would be appreciative, in the sense, particularly, that along with the other statements made, it shows that out of these moneys which are coming in, the big industrial change which the Government are trying to bring about in the development areas and in Scotland is succeeding—too slowly for some, perhaps, but at least the results are coming through. Hon. Members opposite ought to think of the other side of the coin. They forget the new growth industries which are coming to Scotland in the East, particularly the biggest electronics complex in the world outside the United States. This is something we ought to be proud of.
Is it not also a fact that only recently in a Press statement in the very area which so many hon. Members opposite represent, the Chairman of the Highlands and Islands Development Board was reported as saying that for the first time in 100 years depopulation in the Highlands had been brought to a standstill and forecast that in three or four years the population in the Highlands would increase? Because of the activities of such agencies as the Highlands and Islands Development Board, assisted by income from the Selective Employment Tax and resources provided by the Government, Scotland's fortunes are on the turn. Hon Members opposite would do better in the present state of mind in Scotland if instead of always crying "Woe, woe"—
Mr. Michael Noble (Argyll): For three years on every single thing that the Government have done for the Highlands, or any other part of Scotland, I have congratulated them. For the two and half years before that, whatever was done for Scotland—although the hon. Member
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for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) may have been an exception—his hon. Friends did exactly the opposite.
Mr. Hannan: I should love to follow that point. There has not been any exception of myself. The point we made in those days of opposition was that the Government were not using the opportunities laid before them to do precisely that which the present Government are now doing. The right hon. Gentleman knows that in certain circumstances in regard to the pulp mill and the rest, hon. Members opposite were prepared to hand out public money for private enterprise, but the present Government are ensuring that the money is used in the proper way.
Mr. Lawson: The right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) may recall that a number of his hon. Friends and I attended a meeting at the pulp mill at which I had much to say in support of what the Government were doing when he was Secretary of State for Scotland.
Mr. Hannan: I recognise that I am infringing the arrangements made through the usual channels. I have no wish to pursue the matter, much as I should like to, but I ask hon. Members of the Opposition to recognise in the present climate the result of some of the actions they are pursuing.
9.34 p.m.
Mr. Terence L. Higgins (Worthing): It is very appropriate indeed that we should be debating this subject this evening. No one can deny that the debate has been lively and controversial. It is particularly appropriate to have the time of this Supply day to debate this subject because the House was deprived of any opportunity of debating the Selective Employment Tax when we were concerned with the Finance Bill, either on recommittal or Report. Therefore, because the whole basis of Supply days is that taxation should not take place without grievances being redressed, it is right and proper that the Opposition should be giving time to debate this very important subject. We can only deplore that the Government, by taking the Finance Bill's Committee stage in Standing Committee and by the imposition of the Guillotine, did not give us the opportunity to do so in Government time. We regard both the

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Selective Employment Tax and, in particular, its effect on Scotland as very important.
Much reference has been made to Schedule 17 of the Finance Bill, which was not debated at all during the proceedings on that Bill and which had not been discussed until we reached this debate this evening. The general condemnation of S.E.T. was summed up in the C.B.I.'s reference to that tax this year in its report on the Budget:
"S.E.T. has proved ineffective in its operation, inequitable in its incidence and cumbersome to collect. As an instrument to encourage productive effort by penalising the allegedly less productive use of manpower, it has been a failure, and it has made the tax system more arbitrary by substantially enlarging the area of Ministerial discretion."
This tax is universally condemned, and I believe for very good reasons. Both sides of the House say that they recognise the need to adopt a policy towards those regions which suffer normally from high levels of unemployment which will increase employment there and thus enable us to Operate the entire economy at a higher level, because those areas suffer very much in times of depressed demand and do not become as prosperous as they might when demand is increased.
It is worth referring to the analysis carried out by the National Institute's Economic Review for May, 1966, at the time that S.E.T. was introduced. It made a serious of calculations designed to show a comparison between S.E.T. and a straight poll tax which did not differentiate in the way in which S.E.T. differentiates. It transpired from these calculations that the area which gained most was the West Midlands with a coefficient of plus 14·7 per cent. Areas in the North West of England had a coefficient of plus 8·3 per cent. and the North of England of plus 07 per cent. But a Scotland it was minus 22 per cent. It was clear at that time that the tax penalised Scotland. It continues to do so— indeed, it penalises Scotland even more following the increase of S.E.T. by 50 per cent. in the last Budget.
I want to take up a point mentioned by the Minister of State in his opening speech and mentioned, too, by his hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar). I refer to the assertion that the tax somehow benefits Scotland to the extent of £5 million per annum.
1162
The Minister based his assertion on a Question put down by his hon. Friend suggesting that the net yield of the tax-bearing sector of the economy through S.E.T. was £45 million. The premiums paid out were £10 million and the regional employment premiums were £40 million. I see that the Minister nods his head. Had he been here when his hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South made that point, he would know that I then intervened and pointed out that the calculation was incomplete. The calculation would have been valid had the regional employment premium proved self-financing as the Government said it would. In fact it has not; the regional employment premium is costing us about £100 million a year, which is paid out of taxation, much of it imposed on Scotland. That is in addition to the calculations made in the Answer. It is, therefore, not true that the net advantage of the tax to Scotland is £5 million. In fact it has a very adverse effect on the Scottish economy.
Reference has been made to the manufacturing premium and to the service industries, and I want to speak briefly about both subjects. Dealing, first, with the manufacturing premium, we do not believe that the right approach to the problem is to give a hand-out to manufacturing industry. Many of my hon. Friends have indicated that the right answer is a reduction in direct taxation rather than a system of collecting taxation and then redistributing it in the form of hand-outs in whichever way the man in Whitehall thinks right. Surely the right approach is to try to give incentives to people to make profits and not to impose further taxation on them. This is what the giving of the premium does, because it adds to the amount of revenue which needs to be raised otherwise.
In the short time available I want to make one or two points about the hotel industry because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bute and North Ayrshire (Sir F- Maclean) said during the Third Reading debate on the Finance Bill— though he got no reply from the Minister on that occasion—and as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart) said this evening, the tax as it now stands discriminates in a quite absurd way between different areas of

1163
Scotland. We believe that it ought to be abolished for the entire hotel industry, but to discriminate between one area and another across arbitrary lines is quite absurd.
I hope that the Minister will answer the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) about whether, even after all the adjustments which were made in the Budget, the net effect of the Budget is to increase the revenue raised from hotels in Scotland by £150,000 in a full year. We believe that the hotel industry is vital for exports or, more accurately, for earnings from abroad, because it makes a considerable contribution to our balance of payments.
It is no use the Minister of State, Treasury, as he did in his opening speech, quoting lots of figures about visible earnings because, as he knows, this country depends very largely at the margin for its invisible earnings to get us into a balance of payments surplus. Therefore the rôle played by the hotel industry, not only in this or that employment area in Scotland, but also in those areas of Scotland which do not get the S.E.T. refund, is very important. The hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) seemed to be under the impression that hotels get the premium. All that is happening under the so-called concession is that some hotels in Scotland will not have the tax increased.
I do not want to cover the general case against S.E.T. as the Minister of State did in his opening speech, but I feel bound to say that though he said he was going to give the figures for Scotland which he gave for the United Kingdom as a whole, he did not do so, and we shall be interested to know what are the appropriate figures which he did not quote. If they are not available, this surely is significant, because the statistics on Scotland as we now have them are inadequate.
I turn, now, to the question of the anomalies. It is true that all the anomalies which exist in the country as a whole exist also in Scotland in the S.E.T. context. But I believe that there are many others which exist only in Scotland. I shall mention only one or two. They all arise from the absurd proposi-
1164
tion in the S.E.T. that somehow the line has to be drawn somewhere, and that it is possible to get away from arbitrary decisions if one does that. I do not believe that that is so, and I want to quote one case, the absurd division between saying whether a thing is or is not a service industry. There is the celebrated case of Mr. McTavish's kitchen in Oban. As is well known, because one of the restaurants in that area, McTavish as against Archibald, is said to be a manufacturing industry while the other is a service industry, one of these restaurants pays the tax, and the other does not. As a result there are considerable variations in the prices which these establishments can charge. This is grossly unfair, and is typical of the difficulties which arise when one tries to draw the line between one establishment and another. The difficulty was brought out—and I am sorry that I do not have more time to expand it—very clearly in one of the Sunday newspapers a short time ago.
This tax creates anomaly after anomaly, and, as in the United Kingdom, it is particularly unfair on the low-paid workers. As in the United Kingdom, it has an adverse effect on nursing homes and hospitals outside the National Health Service, though these make an important contribution. As in the United Kingdom, it is unfair on the construction industry, on pensioners, and on the Co-ops, as was mentioned by one hon. Gentleman opposite. Here again we have good reason for believing that this tax ought to be abolished.
We have heard a great deal about the Reddaway Report. It would be a mistake for hon. Members, on either side, to have too great hopes of the Reddaway Report, because its terms of reference are narrowly drawn. It is concerned only with the effect of the S.E.T. on prices, margins and productivity in industry on which the tax falls as a net burden, not the other industries which may in one way or another be affected by it.
We are, therefore, firmly convinced that this tax is adverse for the economy. It is not that the tax was specifically designed to penalise Scotland—we do not think that, as some hon. Members opposite have suggested. We believe that its effect has been to penalise Scotland in particular because Scotland depends so

1165
much on the hotel and tourist industry and for the other reasons which have been mentioned during the debate.
There is no point in refining or trying to improve this tax. The fact is that it has an effect on the country as a whole which is adverse and on Scotland in particular which is adverse. The only answer is to do as we on this side are pledged to do: to abolish it at the earliest possible moment.
9.46 p.m.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Dr. J. Dickson Mabon): I am disappointed with the contribution by the hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins), because I thought that he would give us in more official terms the kind of arguments that we had gracefully and effectively from the hon. Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis). I know that the swashbuckling efforts of the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Wolrige-Gordon) do not reflect the true spirit of the Tory Party in this regard.
The hon. Member for Galloway argued a case for a payroll tax. The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur), who opened the debate, was at one time a Whip of the Tory Party when on the Floor of the House they first suggested a payroll tax. Admittedly, they did not proceed with it. The opposition to an all-round payroll tax was far too heavy even for them, with the hon. Member whipping effectively as he did, to sustain for some time. I accept the compliment, if it is the case, that the Opposition at that time drove the Government of the day not to carry on with their foolishness. This is to our credit and I accept the compliment.
Some hon. Members among the party opposite certainly dissented from an all-round payroll tax. Certainly, the so-called peripheral areas—although I resent the word "peripheral"—such as the North-East did not like the suggestion of a payroll tax. The hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston)—I am surprised that he is in such bad company tonight—did not come down in favour of a payroll tax but dignified it with the wording "differential payroll tax ". I am sorry that I was not present to hear him utter those disgraceful words.
If a differential payroll tax were to be applied, it should be noted how expensive
1166
it would be and what anomalies there would be in its application. I understand that the party opposite are thinking about replacing S.E.T. with some other tax-not, as the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East said was their policy, replacing it with nothing, but replacing it with something. No party could possibly seek to replace the revenue yielded by S.E.T. with nothing. Hon. Members opposite are deceiving themselves and the electorate if they pretend that. I know that the more responsible among them do not believe it.
Therefore, the choice, I understand— the hon. Member for Galloway mentioned the two tonight—is between a differential payroll tax or an added-value tax such as is applied in the Common Market countries. I am disappointed with the hon. Member for Worthing for not telling us which it is to be and for not telling us of all the anomalies that its application would involve; they may be less or they may be more than are thrown up by the operation of the S.E.T. in this country and in Scotland in particular.
The hon. Member for Worthing, as an ex-professor of economics—how many professors there are on the benches opposite, I do not know—also disappointed me in not appreciating the distinction between the argument of the economists and the argument of the financiers in relation to the self-financing rôle of the Selective Employment Tax with the regional employment premium.
I ask the hon. Member for Worthing to note that the quotation which he gave from the National Institute Economic Review Bulletin was written before the operation of the R.E.P. If he does his calculation again, he will appreciate, as my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Treasury argued successfully tonight, that Scotland comes out of S.E.T. and R.E.P. with a bonus. Therefore, he cannot maintain that this does harm to Scotland. That is why I congratulate him on this, for he is circumspect in this regard, that he did not devalue hyperbole by using the debating language of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Perth and East Perthshire. He described it as rather important. He did not describe it as disgraceful, outrageous and wretched.
Mr. Higgins: The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong about this. I realise that

1167
the figures I acquired from the National Institute are before R.E.P., but I answer this point, as I did in the intervention earlier, by saying that if one is to allow for the cost of S.E.T. and R.E.P., allowance must be made for the fact that this is not the distinction between financial and economic. The Government said that R.E.P. would be self-financing. It is quite clear now that it is not being so, as can be seen by examining the accounts and the tax revenue for Scotland. Allowance must be made for the burden on Scotland as a whole.
Dr. Mabon: Time does not allow me to pursue this. If we were to divert the £40 million without the self-financing procedure of S.E.T. and R.E.P. to extra expenditure on roads or some other infrastructure expenditure, that would be an additional demand on resources. It would thus involve raising direct taxation, which is exactly what the hon. Gentleman said we ought not to do. We ought to seek by different ways to achieve what we are trying to achieve in manufacturing industry.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) is on record—and I take it that this vote tonight is also on record—as being in opposition to R.E.P. as well as S.E.T. This is fundamental to our argument.
Public investment in Scotland is proportionately substantially higher than it is in England, and the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire will confirm this. He has the figures, and, as a good Scotsman should be putting it about widely that public investment on roads and housing is, quite properly, higher in proportion in Scotland than it is in England. These are the circumstances in which we are having this debate on the effects of S.E.T.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Galloway tried to argue a point here about the construction industry, but the construction industry is being helped by having the stimulation of industrialisation. It is one of the industries which has been growing under the Government and in 1967 it achieved the highest figures in Scotland in the history of house building, and a record year in 1968 is still to come. While I accept that the cost of housing
1168
in Scotland is appreciably higher than the cost of housing in England, his party did nothing about it. We at least have asked for a full investigation and the real breakdown not of the additional £90 attributable to S.E.T. but of the £400 to £500 that represents the difference in the cost of construction.
May I now turn to points raised tonight in relation to Edinburgh and hotels. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) emphasised that present in the House tonight are hon. Members from the North-East, Tayside and so on, but not from the central belt. Why? Because, as the hon. Gentleman readily confessed when he congratulated us on giving the concession—and I am grateful for that part of his speech—the central belt is benefiting from S.E.T. and R.E.P. But four-fifths of us live in the central belt and, while I do not take the view that the other one-fifth should be neglected, it would be no exaggeration to say that the central belt balances out any disadvantages that there may be in the Highlands. The figure on loans and grants to industry in the Highlands to June 1968 stands at £3·2 million. He cannot possibly argue a case that this is to the detriment of the Highlands, when all this investment is going to the Highlands alongside the S.E.T. and R.E.P.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar) for quoting page 4 of the Report of the Scottish Tourist Board. We are told by the hon. Gentleman opposite and by the hon. Member for Worthing that the hotel industry is in chaos in Scotland, and that the service industries are collapsing. In a reference to the White Paper on hotel development incentives which has recently been published by the President of the Board of Trade we find this courteous compliment from the Scottish Tourist Board in its report for 1967–68:
"The decision of the present Government, announced prior to publication of this Report, to stimulate the modernisation of the industry by providing incentive grants for a period of four years from March 1968 to encourage the expansion of existing hotels and the construction of new ones to meet present and potential demand, is warmly welcomed by the Board. This decision, the most encouraging in at least 20 year …".
That is one in the eye for the 13 years under right hon. and hon. Gentlemen

1169
opposite. [Interruption.] This Government's policies, for instance the commissioning of the Edinburgh Accommodation Survey, will be of advantage to Edinburgh as such. In addition, the Hunt Committee will be considering the position of Edinburgh in relation to development area status.
Mr. George Younger: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman not to refer to S.E.T. in his speech, which is what the debate is about?
Dr. Mabon: I am only sorry that we do not have more time at our disposal; otherwise I would be glad to deal with the hon. Gentleman's interruptions. We have been denied a debate on an important matter by having spent the greater part of the day debating something much less significant—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I hope that Scotland will note that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite seem to think a regiment more important than thousands of jobs in Scotland.
In the three years in which we have been in power, we have provided 22 per cent. more jobs than right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite did. That is a direct result of R.E.P. and the other financial incentives adopted by the Government.
Taking the three years referred to by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart) and giving him the whole of 1964, the number of jobs projected under his fiscal policies from 1962 to was 40,000. Taking the three years for which we have been responsible, to 1967, 63,000 jobs are projected. There has been a 50 per cent. Increase in the number of jobs, in other words. It cannot follow from that that S.E.T. is ruinous and that R.E.P. is damaging Scotland's economy. It is rubbish to suggest that it can.
Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite have not allowed a full debate on this subject. They want only to be abusive, and so obscure the main argument. We want to provide the best possible form of fiscal instrument to attract development and industry in Scotland.
Mr. Stodart: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I made a very good speech on the subject. The hon. Gentleman has said that he would deal with it. He has not mentioned it.
Dr. Mabon: The hon. Gentleman does me a grave discourtesy. All the references that I made to the Edinburgh Accommodation Survey and the Hunt Committee and so on were made in 90 seconds flat, and this was done for his benefit. I would have been delighted to have gone further into the subject had time allowed.
This debate has boomeranged on the Opposition. The setting of the various figures one against the other has shown a net gain for Scotland.
The hon. Member for Worthing might have been in a better position if he had been debating England or the South-East. He might have had a case then. But the present Government are dedicated to regional policies to try and help Scotland, Wales, the North-East, Northern Ireland and the south-west of England and, at the same time, to ask the Midlands, the South-East and other prosperous parts of the country to help us in that development. It is in character for right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite to seek to reverse that policy, as they did over 13 years.
Question put:—
That this House deplores the effects of the Selective Employment Tax on industry and employment in Scotland.
The House divided: Ayes 252, Noes 295.

Division No. 280.]

AYES

[9.59 p.m.

Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

Biffen, John

Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

Biggs-Davison, John

Bruce-Gardyne, J.

Astor, John

Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel

Bryan, Paul

Atkins, Humphrey (M't'n & M'd'n)

Black, Sir Cyril

Buchanan-Smith,Alick(Angus,N&M)

Awdry, Daniel

Blaker, Peter

Buck, Antony (Colchester)

Baker, Kenneth (Acton)

Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)

Bullus, Sir Eric

Balniel, Lord

Body, Richard

Burden, F. A.

Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony

Bossom, Sir Clive

Campbell, B. (Oldham, W.)

Batsford, Brian

Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward

Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Nairn)

Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton

Braine, Bernard

Carlisle, Mark

Bell, Ronald

Brewis, John

Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert

Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)

Brinton, Sir Tatton

Cary, Sir Robert

Berry, Hn. Anthony

Bromtey-Davenport.Lt.-Col.SirWalter

Channon, H. P. G.

Chichester-Clark, R.

Howell, David (Guildford)

Pike, Miss Mervyn

Clark, Henry

Hunt, John

Pink, R. Bornier

Clegg, Walter

Hutchison, Michael Clark

Pounder, Rafton

Cooke, Robert

Iremonger, T. L.

Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch

Corfield, F. V.

Irvine, Bryant Codman (Rye)

Price, David (Eastleigh)

Costain, A. P.

Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)

Prior, J. M. L.

Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)

Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

Pym, Francis

Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver

Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)

Quennell, Miss J. M.

Crouch, David

Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James

Crowder, F. P.

Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)

Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter

Cunningham, Sir Knox

Jopling, Michael

Rees-Davies, W. R.

Currie, G. B. H.

Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith

Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David

Dalkeith, Earl of

Kaberry, Sir Donald

Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

Dance, James

Kerby, Capt. Henry

Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

Davidson,James(Aberdeenshire,W.)

Kershaw, Anthony

Ridsdale, Julian

d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry

Kimball, Marcus

Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey

Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)

King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

Robson Brown, Sir William

Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)

Kitson, Timothy

Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)

Digby, Simon Wingfield

Knight, Mrs. Jill

Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

Dodds-Parker, Douglas

Lambton, Viscount

Royle, Anthony

Doughty, Charles

Lancaster, Col. C. G.

Russell, Sir Ronald

Douglas-Home, Rt. Hn. Sir Alec

Lane, David

St. John-Stevas, Norman

Drayson, G. B.

Langford-Holt, Sir John

Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.

du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward

Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry

Scott, Nicholas

Eden, Sir John

Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

Scott-Hopkins, James

Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

Lloyd,Rt.Hn.Geoffrey(Sut'nC'dfield)

Sharples, Richard

Emory, Peter

LIoyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)

Shaw, Micheal(Sc'bgh & whitby)

Errington, Sir Eric

LIoyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)

Silvester, Frederick

Eyre, Reginald

Longden, Gilbert

Sinclair, Sir George

Farr, John

Loveys, W. H.

Smith, Dudley (W'wick & L'mington)

Fisher, Nigel

Lubbock, Eric

Speed, Keith

Flectcher-Cooke, Charles

Mcadden, Sir Stephen

Steel, David (Roxburgh)

Forstescue, Tim

MacArthur, Ian

Stodart, Anthony

Foster, Sir John

Mackenzie, Alsdair (Ross & Crom'ty)

Stoddart, Anthony

Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford & Stone)

Maclean, Sir Fitzroy

Stoddart-Scott Col. Sir M. (Ripon)

Galbraith, Hn. T. G.

McMaster, Stanley

Summer, Sir Spencer

Giles, Rear-Adm. Morgan

Macmillian, Maurice (Frnham)

Tapsell, Peter

Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)

Maddan, Martin

Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)

Maginnis, John E.

Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)

Marples, Rt. Hn. Reginald

Glover, Sir Douglas

Marten NeiI

Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)

Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.

Maude, Angus

Teeling, Sir William

Goodhart, Philip

Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald

Temple, John M.

Goodhew, Victor

Mawby, Ray

Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret

Cower, Raymond

Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.

Thorpe, Rt Hn. Jeremy

Grant, Anthony

Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.

Tilney, John

Gresham Cooke, R.

Mills, Peter (Torrington)

Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.

Grieve, Percy

Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)

van Straubenzee, W. R.

Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)

Miscampbell Norman

Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John

Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.

Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

Vickers, Dame Joan

Gurden, Harold

Monro Hector

Waddington, David

Hall, John (Wycombe)

Montgomery, Fergus

Walker, Peter (Worcester)

Hall-Davies, A. G. F.

Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)

Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek

Hamilton, Lord (Fermanagh)

Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

Walls, Patrich

Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles

Walters, Dennis

Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)

Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

Ward, Dame lrene

Harrison, Brian (Maldon)

Murton, Oscar

Weatherill, Bernard

Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)

Nabarro, Sir Gerald

Well, John (Maidtone)

Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere

Neave, Airey

Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William

Harvie Anderson, Miss

Nicholls, Sir Harmar

Williams Donad (Dudley)

Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

Hastings, Stephen

Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael

Wilson, Geofferey (Turto)

Hawkins, Paul

Nott, John

w instansley, Dr. M. P.

Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel

Onslow, Cranley

wolrige Gordon Patrick

Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward

Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

wood, Rt. Hn. Richard

Heseltine, Michael

Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian

woodnutt, Mark

Higgins, Terence L.

Osborn, John (Hallam)

worslev, Marcus

Hiley, Joseph

Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)

Wylie, N. R.

Hill, J. E. B.

Page, Graham (Crosby)

younger, Hn. George

Hirst, Geoffrey

Page, John (Harrow, W.)

Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin

Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Holland, Philip

Peel, John

Mr. R. W. Elliott and

Hordern, Peter

Percival, Ian

Mr. Jasper More.

Hornby, Richard

Peyton, John

NOES

Abse, Leo

Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)

Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)

Albu, Austen

Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice

Bidwell, Sydney

Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

Bagier, Gordon A. T.

Bishop, E. S.

Alldritt, Walter

Barnes, Michael

Blackburn, F.

Allen, Scholefield

Barnett, Joel

Blenkinsop, Arthur

Anderson, Donald

Beaney, Alan

Boardman, H. (Leigh)

Archer, Peter

Bence, Cyril

Booth, Albert

Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)

Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood

Boston, Terence

1172

1173

Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur

Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)

Boyden, James

Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith

Molloy, William

Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

Haseldine, Norman

Moonman, Eric

Bradley, Tom

Hattersley, Roy

Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)

Bray, Dr. Jeremy

Hazell, Bert

Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis

Morris, John (Aberavon)

Brown, Rt Hn. George (Belper)

Heffer, Eric S.

Moyle, Roland

Brown, Hush D. (G'gow, Provan)

Henig, Stanley

Murray, Albert

Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)

Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret

Neal, Harold

Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch & F'bury)

Hilton, W. S.

Newens, Stan

Buchan Norman

Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)

Noel-Baker, Francis (Swlndon)

Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)

Hooley, Frank

Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Phllip (Derby, S.)

Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

Horner, John

Norwood, Christopher

Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James

Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas

Oakes, Gordon

Cant, R. B.

Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)

O'Malley, Brian

Carmichael, Neil

Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)

Oram, AIbert E.

Carter-Jones Lewis

Howell, Denis (Small Heath)

Orbach, Maurice

Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara

Howie, W.

Orme, Stanley

Chapman, Donald

Hoy, James

Oswald, Thomas

Coe Denis

Huckfield, Leslie

Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)

Concannon, J. D.

Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)

Page, Derek (King's Lynn)

Conlan, Bernard

Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)

Paget, R. T.

Corbet, Mrs. Freda

Hunter, Adam

Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles

Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

Hynd, John

Park, Trevor

Crawshaw Richard

Irvine, Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)

Parker, John (Dagenham)

Cronin John

Jackson, Colin (B'h'se & Spenb'gh)

Parkin, Ben (Paddington, N.)

Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony

Jackson, Peter M. (High Peak)

Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)

Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard

Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas

Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)

Cullen Mrs. Alice

Jeger, George (Goole)

Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred

Dalyell Tam

Jeger, Mrs. Lena (H'b'n&St.P'cras, S.)

Pentland, Norman

Darling, Rt. Hn. George

Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)

Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)

Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)

Perry, George H.(Nottingham, S.)

Daves, Ednyfed Hudson (Conway)

Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)

Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E.

Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)

Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

Price, Christopher (Perry Barr)

Davies, Ifor (Gower)

Judd, Frank

Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)

de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey

Kelley, Richard

Probert, Arthur

Delargy, Hugh

Kenyon, Clifford

Pursey, Cmdr. Harry

Dell, Edmund

Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &Chatham)

Randall, Harry

Dempsey, James

Kerr, Russell (Feltham)

Rankin, John

Dewar, Donald

Lawson, George

Reynolds, Rt. Hn. G. W.

Diamond, Rt. Hn. John

Leadbitter, Ted

Richard, Ivor

Dickens, James

Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)

Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

Dobson, Ray

Lee. Rt. Hn. Jennie (Cannock)

Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)

Doig, Peter

Lee, John (Reading)

Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.)

Dunn, James A.

Lestor Miss Joan

Robertson, John (Paisley)

Dunnett, Jack

Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St.P'c'as)

Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)

Lever, Harold (Cheetham)

Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.)

Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th & C'b'e)

Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)

Rodgers, William (Stockton)

Eadie, Alex

Lipton, Marcus

Roebuck, Roy

Edelman, Maurice

Lomas Kenneth

Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

Ellis, John

Loughlln, Charles

Ross, Rt. Hn. William

English, Michael

Luard, Evan

Ryan, John

Ennals, David

Lyon, Alexander W. (York)

Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)

Ensor, David

Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)

Sheldon, Robert

Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)

Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

Shinwell, Rt. Hn. E.

Evans, loan L. (Blrm'h'm, Yardley)

McBride, Neil

Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)

Faulds, Andrew

McCann, John

Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)

Fernyhough, E.

MacColl, James

Short, Mrs.Renée (W'hampton, N. E.)

Fitch, Alan (Wigan)

MacDermot, Niall

Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)

Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)

Macdonald, A. H.

Silverman, Julius

Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

McGuire, Michael

Skeffington, Arthur

Foley, Maurice

McKay, Mrs. Margaret

Slater, Joseph

Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)

Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)

Small, William

Ford, Ben

Mackle, John

Snow, Julian

Forrester, John

Mackintosh, John P.

Spriggs, Leslie

Fowler, Gerry

Maclennan, Robert

Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)

Fraser, John (Norwood)

McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)

Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael

Freeson, Reginald

McNamara, J. Kevin

Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John

Galpern, Sir Myer

Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)

Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.

Gardner, Tony

Mahon, Simon (Bootle)

Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley

Ginsburg, David

Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

Swain, Thomas

Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.

Mal1alieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)

Swlngler, Stephen

Gourlay, Harry

Manuel, Archie

Symonds, J. B.

Gray, Dr. Hugh (Yarmouth)

Marks, Kenneth

Taverne, Dick

Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony

Marquand, David

Thomas, Rt. Hn. George

Gregory, Arnold

Marsh, Rt. Hn. Richard

Thomson, Rt. Hn. George

Grey, Charles (Durham)

Maxwell, Robert

Thornton, Ernest

Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

Mayhew, Christopher

Tinn, James

Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)

Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert

Tuck, Raphael

Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanclly)

Mendelson, J. J.

Urwin, T. W.

Griffiths, Will (Exchange)

Mikardo, Ian

Varley, Eric G.

Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

Millan, Bruce

Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)

Hamling, William

Miller, Dr. M. S.

Wallace, George

Hannan, William

Milne, Edward (Blyth)

Watkins, David (Consett)

1174

1175

Watkins, Tudor (Brecon & Radnor)

Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick

Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.

Weitzman, David

Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)

Woof, Robert

Wellbeloved, James

Willliams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)

Wyatt, Woodrow

Wells, William (Walsall. N.)

Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)

Yates, Victor

Whitaker, Ben

Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)

White, Mrs, Eirene

Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Whitlock, William

Winnick, David

Mr. Joseph Harper and

Mr. Ernest Armstrong.

SOUTHERN RHODESIA (UNITED NATIONS SANCTIONS) ORDER
10.12 p.m.
The Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. George Thomson):I beg to move,
That the Southern Rhodesia (United Nations Sanctions) (No. 2) Order 1968 (S.I., 1968, No. 1020), dated 28th June 1968, made by Her Majesty in Council under the Southern Rhodesia Act 1965, a copy of which was laid before this House on 2nd July, be approved.
This Order in Council is, apart from some necessary technical changes, in the same terms as the Order which was passed in this House by a majority of 76 on 17th June and rejected by a majority of nine in another place. Its reintro-duction in its present form is essential so that Her Majesty's Government remain in a position to carry out their international obligation without interruption.
The contents of the Order were fully explained in the debate on 17th June, and I hope that it will be to the convenience of the House if I take up no more of the time of hon. Members at this stage. With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, 1 shall be glad to reply to any points raised when I wind up the debate. I ask the House to approve the Order.
Mr. Speaker: I remind the House that this debate can last only one hour and 30 minutes.
10.15 p.m.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The changes made in the new Order compared with that which came before us a short time ago are no doubt sufficient to meet the Parliamentary rules, but as the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs has said, it has not materially altered the substance of the previous proposals. The Order defines the actions which the British Government propose to take in response to the requirements of the mandatory clauses of the United Nations resolution applying sanctions to Rhodesia. In our opinion, they add up to a complete boycott of investment, trade and contacts between people. Therefore, it is idle to pretend that they are not designed to force a political settlement by breaking the Rhodesian economy. It is to that
1178
aspect of sanctions that we on this side of the House have consistently objected, and therefore we shall vote against this Order, as we voted against the last.
If we persevere in the debate, it is for two reasons. First, from time to time we have succeeded in our debates in modifying certain injustices. Second, we still have our eye on the main chance— [Interruption]—perhaps hon. Gentlemen opposite will allow me to say, the main chance of achieving a negotiated settlement.
Under the first heading of modifying injustices, there now exists—and this would not have happened but for our debates, to which all parties contributed —the Advisory Committee on Passports under Mr. Justice Cairns, which reviews cases of passports already refused under the Government policy of 1966, and re-examines the cases in which the Commonwealth Secretary has given his decision. The approach can be made either by the individual or the right hon. Gentleman himself. I have a letter from the Commonwealth Secretary dealing with an individual case with which I shall not bother the House. I understand that as a result of our debate dual passport holders are no longer required to make a declaration of political intent when they apply for a passport. That is a complete vindication of our previous debates and an example of how, all hon. Members having contributed to this, the Executive can be influenced by debates in the House.
The passport system and its operation are complicated by the United Nations resolution. There is no doubt of that, for otherwise we should not have had the case the other day of the Cape Coloured teacher, Mr. Jack Jenkins, who was refused a passport. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can say how such a mistake can occur. Does it occur because there is confusion over what I have previously described as a black list?
One cannot pursue the passport matter, except as it is related to the Order, but another casualty of the resolution, and therefore to some extent of the Order, is Zambia. I called attention to this in our last debate. She is not exempted from applying the resolution in full. The Prime Minister said in the House

1179
on an earlier occasion that the resolution specially recognised Zambia and other land-locked countries. The implication was that in some way the sanctions could be avoided, but that is not so. It is true that the resolution provides for special assistance to Zambia and other land-locked countries, but the right hon. Gentleman knows very well that it cannot begin to touch Zambia's financial problems, such as that of the revenues earned by the disposal of her copper by means of the transport routes through Rhodesia. Therefore, there is only one answer for Zambia, and that is to go on trading through Rhodesia. What becomes of the sanctions policy when there is the large hole of South Africa, and Zambia and other countries, in order to keep themselves alive and their economies going concerns, are compelled to go on trading?
Again—and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would give his attention to this—what is the position now of British businessmen who are connected with companies operating in Rhodesia? My right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) has had certain correspondence on this matter and he has given me leave to quote from a letter which the right hon. Gentleman wrote to him:
"Taking the example used in your letter, if he"—
the businessman—
"imports raw materials for the purposes of his business (or, as a director, manager or secretary of a company, assists in or connives at such importation) he will be guilty of an offence against the Southern Rhodesia (United Nations Sanctions) (No. 2) Order 1968."
The right hon. Gentleman goes on to say that
"there is nothing in the Order to stop businesses sending members of their staff from this country to take up positions with their Rhodesian subsidiaries".
In other words, the chairman of a company can send staff out to run the business in Rhodesia but, if they try to import the materials on which the business runs or if they try to export the product which the business manufactures and thus could keep itself alive, they are guilty of an offence. Can the right hon. Gentleman clarify this further? It would be the product of a mad-house and really laughable if it was not so serious, because
1180
this attaches a penalty now under the law.
Therefore, what is a business to do? [Interruption.] We must have clarification when a businessman is in danger of breaking the law. Apparently a businessman can freely send people out to Rhodesia to manage and run a business, but the moment he imports materials on which the factory's life depends he is guilty of an offence under the law. If that is so, let the right hon. Gentleman confirm it. But I can only repeat that this would be the politics of a mad-house and would be laughable.
Finally, I turn to what I have described as the main chance in which we are interested. There have been certain political developments in Rhodesia. They could, and I think they should, lead to renewed contact between the right hon. Gentleman and Mr. Smith. It is notoriously difficult to measure the internal political stresses in another country. It is bad enough here, but to try to do it in any other country is even more difficult. But there have been— and this is a serious point—significant and deep-running differences between, for example, Mr. Harper and Mr. Smith. I cannot tell whether Mr. Smith has now definitely concluded that he and his Cabinet would support a blocking quarter of African votes so that the Africans have unimpeded access to a common rôle with the European, access that cannot be eroded. That is the distilled essence of the matter; that is what the real dispute between Her Majesty's Government and Mr. Smith's Administration is about.
However, I am sure that Mr. Smith is in complete control of his party. There is new evidence of that today. He has quarrelled with a leading member of his Government and that member has had to leave the Government. There must, therefore, be a considerable difference between Mr. Smith and that member. Therefore, I think the time is now ripe for the right hon. Gentleman to take time by the forelock and find out whether Mr. Smith is now ready to approach a new agreement with the right hon. Gentleman and Her Majesty's Government based broadly on the "Tiger" approach and on the proposals which I brought back from Mr. Smith to the Prime Minister not very long ago—[Interruption.]
Mr. John Lee: Will the right hon. Gentleman now disclose the contents of those proposals?
Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I have already explained that if there is to be a successful negotiation it is better that the terms should not be disclosed piecemeal. If the right hon. Gentleman can use those proposals—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. Noise, from either side, is not argument.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home: If the right hon. Gentleman can use those proposals at some future time, well and good. I think that now there may be a new opportunity to get back to a settlement something on the lines of "Tiger". Some hon. Members below the Gangway opposite did not like that settlement. I thought that it was fair. The right hon. Gentleman should cease to pursue the sterile and negative policies which have been a feature of the Government's approach during the last few months and should have another try at negotiation.
10.26 p.m.
Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: As I listened to the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home), I felt a deep misgiving about the line which he has taken. I remember that three years ago the party opposite, by its speeches and its votes, was committed to the policy of sanctions. It seems to me that since then the Smith Administration—it cannot be called a Government—has moved far along the road towards apartheid. Yet as I listened this evening to the right hon. Gentleman, it seemed to me that his party had abandoned sanctions and had reverted to its traditional rôle of appeasing racialist dictators. That is plainly what Mr. Smith and his colleagues have become.
By giving their encouragement and support to those dangerous men, the Opposition are proving very poor friends to the European settlers in Rhodesia. The Europeans there are now faced by a double threat, which grows more serious every day. There is the threat of which the word "insurgency" is used. I need not say that I deplore the use of armed force in any international or inter-racial dispute if there is any hope
1182
whatever of a peaceful settlement. But we are this year celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to the principles of which all parties and all Governments in this country have been committed since 1948. A week or two ago, the Leader of the Opposition went to make a speech across the road to celebrate this anniversary.
The third paragraph of the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads as follows:
"… it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law".
The point I am making is that that Declaration, to which everybody is committed, comes very near to recognising a human right of armed revolt. The exercise of the right has often proved to be mistaken.
Perhaps the freedom fighters in Rhodesia are mistaken, but the grim fact is that the human rights of Africans in Rhodesia have been savagely repressed and the result, the foreseeable result, the result foreseen in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has been that the freedom fighters have taken up arms. Let no hon. Member underestimate the menace of the freedom fighters—
Mr. Speaker: Order. With respect, we cannot discuss the freedom fighters on the Order, which is concerned with certain specific sanctions.
Mr. Noel-Baker: With great respect, Mr. Speaker, my argument is that the danger of bloodshed in Rhodesia is so great unless economic sanctions succeed that it is vital that this House, this Government and this nation should do everything in their power to make the economic sanctions succeed.
If I may finish what I have to say-it is only one more word—about the question of insurgency and freedom fighters, it is that unless I am misinformed, the freedom fighters have begun to secure the support of the African population of Rhodesia. Let hon. Members read the article in the Guardian this morning, and study the map which shows the territories which are now held

1183
permanently by the freedom fighters and the places where actions with the freedom fighters have taken place.
I remember the last words spoken to me by Field Marshal Smuts, when I had the honour to hold the office of Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations. It was a few months after his defeat in his last general election, and the Nationalists had begun their drive towards apartheid. He said to me, as I left him, "If they go on like this it will end in bloodshed, and if there is bloodshed it will not be the blacks who will leave Africa." This is the fact which faces the Europeans in Rhodesia today.
That is why I argue that the best hope of avoiding bloodshed is to make the United Nations economic sanctions so effective that the Smith régime comes crashing down. The party opposite, eager for appeasement, suspicious of international institutions, constantly repeats that sanctions have been tried and failed. I reply that only now are real sanctions beginning to be applied. I wish that total mandatory sanctions which are now in force had been applied in 1965. I believe that the whole matter might have been liquidated long ago.
But even the partial sanctions, tardily adopted, have produced a very great effect. In June, U Thant gave us some figures based on reports which he had had from the Governments who had been consulted. He gave the figures of Rhodesian exports and imports in 1967, when he compared them with the figures for 1965. In 1965, before sanctions took effect, exports from Rhodesia were £137 million. Last year, they were £16 million, a cut of £121 million—more than 80 per cent. In 1965, imports into Rhodesia were £77·8 million. In 1967, they were £22 million, a cut of 70 per cent. So heavy was the loss of the Rhodesian farmers on the tobacco market that last year the United States exported £35 million worth more of tobacco than they had done before. The farmers are those who are suffering the worst. And, in consequence, there is facing Mr. Smith the very grave problem of the African unemployed.
The Financial Times last week had an article which said that, if present trends continued, within a period of time, the unemployment problem would
1184
amount to ½ million Africans for whom Mr. Smith could find no work. The businessmen are beginning to be very anxious. In April, the Financial Times printed an article which had the headline, "No anxiety about sanctions". Last week its article had the headline, "Rhodesia's winter of discontent". Let hon. Members read that article and see how, item after item, on the short-term and the long-term prospects, the businessmen now are feeling anxiety about the future.
Sanctions have not failed. Even partial sanctions have produced a great effect. I believe that the Government should persevere, and that if they pursue the policy of securing other Governments' help they will in the end, perhaps not so very far hence, bring Smith down. I would urge on the House and on right hon. and hon. Members opposite that they should listen to their former colleague, Lord Alport, who came back and reported not long ago: "I know it's no use talking to Smith". Sanctions must succeed, and I trust that the Government will persevere in their present course.
10.35 p.m.
Mr. Eric Lubbock: Let us be clear about one thing, and that is why we are having this debate. It is because the Tory peers, egged on by the Tory Front Bench in this Chamber were led to vote against the previous Order, which was supported by the vast majority of the people—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. This is the place where we hear quietly things with which we disagree.
Mr. Lubbock: The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maud-ling) declined to answer when I asked him last time we debated this matter whether the Tory Front Bench had put the Tory peers up to vote against the Order. I can only deduce from his silence that that was the case, and that all that has happened in the last few weeks is the result of a secret meeting— [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will come to this Order.
Mr. Lubbock: I was saying that the reason why this Order is being debated at all this evening is because

1185
of the action of the Tory peers, and this is a despicable manoeuvre on the part of the Tory Party which the Leader of the Opposition, although he may now giggle and smirk on the Front Bench, will live to regret.
Neither on the last occasion nor on this has the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) said what the Tory alternative policy is. It has been spelled out precisely in many debates what policies this country might follow. We could either continue the present sanctions, which have been proved, I think that it will be admitted on both sides, ineffective; we could intervene with military force in Rhodesia, as the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) would probably like—
Mr. Andrew Faulds: Hear, hear.
Mr. Lubbock: —we could capitulate to the racialist régime, or we can have the present Order.
What I should like to ask the Tories is to say plainly to the people before the end of this debate what they would like. We all know that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) would give in to the illegal régime tomorrow, but I always understood that this was not the official Conservative view. When, in past debates we have discussed sanctions, the Tories have gone with the Government to the extent that these measures had to be taken to bring Smith to his senses. They have altered their tune under pressure from their Right wing. I ask the Leader of the Opposition whether he will condescend to make it plain to the House what his policy is today, because the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire has not told us that tonight—[Interruption.]
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. When hon. and right hon. Members are seeking to intervene, the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) must decide whether or not he will give way.
Mr. Lubbock: I have decided, Mr. Speaker. If the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition wishes to intervene—[Interruption.] I am not fussy—
1186
or the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire or the right hon. Member for Barnet, I shall be happy to give way—
Mr. Speaker: Order. We will now come back to the Order, I think.
Mr. Lubbock: We will come back to the debate, which is really about what is the real policy of the Tory Party. The right hon. Gentleman has said this evening that he has an eye to the main chance, but if he thinks that what he has said represents the majority opinion in the country he is grossly mistaken. The people will not be held up to ransom by a small racist clique—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. The Chair wants to hear the debate. Mr. Lubbock.
Mr. Lubbock: —a small racist clique of individuals such as Mr. Harper, who, I am glad to see, has now been dismissed. But let not the right hon. Gentleman delude himself into thinking that because of the dismissal of Mr. Harper the Rhodesian régime has suddenly become a group of people with whom we can properly negotiate. This is only the beginning of the road if Mr. Smith really wishes to show an earnest of his intentions. He could long ago have introduced a constitution based on the six principles. If Mr. Smith had done that we would have been in a position, as the right hon. Gentleman says we are, to begin negotiations today, but I am not convinced, and I do not think that anyone who has studied the ques-tion can be convinced, that merely because of the dismissal of Mr. Harper Mr. Smith has put himself into a position in which we can discuss alternatives—
Mr. Raymond Gower: Will the hon. Member give way?
Mr. Lubbock: No, I have already said that I will not give way.
The right hon. Gentleman may shed crocodile tears, as he did on the last occasion. He is not concerned about the Zambian people, or his hon. Friends would not have opposed aid to the people of Zambia. He knows perfectly well that in the United Nations resolution, for which I am proud that this

1187
country voted, we have provided for increased aid to Zambia, not only by Great Britain but all those who want to bring the Smith régime down.
Mr. Sandys: How many are going to give aid?
Mr. Lubbock: If the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) wishes to intervene, I will give way to him. I was hoping that later he would give us the benefit of his opinion.
Mr. Faulds: He has not prepared a statement. Give him time.
Mr. Speaker: Order. We are wandering away from the debate into personalities. Mr. Lubbock.
Mr. Lubbock: I am grateful for your protection, Mr. Speaker, but these little pinpricks do not worry me at all. The right hon. Gentleman is free to intervene any time he likes.
I should like the Conservative Party to make its position plain on where it stands on aid to Zambia. I heard hon. Members of the Opposition say that they do not wish to increase aid to Zambia to help her to improve her position.
Mr. Sandys Mr. Sandys rose—
Hon. Members: Sit down.
Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Sandys.
Mr. Sandys: The hon. Member asks about aid to Zambia. In my view we ought to give no aid to Zambia so long as they take part in organising and tolerating and condoning infiltration of murderers and saboteurs into Rhodesia.
Mr. Lubbock: The right hon. Gentleman's intervention is most instructive, I am glad that I gave way to him, because he has put to the House a point of view exactly opposite to that of the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire, whose judgment I more respect on this issue.
Sir Harmar Nicholls: On a point of order. The hon. Member so far has made quite a long speech without one reference to the Order or any part of it. Is that in order?
Mr. Speaker: Order. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Peterborough
1188
(Sir Harmar Nicholls). He must, however, leave the Chair to decide what is in order. Mr. Lubbock.
Mr. Lubbock: The views of the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire on aid to Zambia are infinitely preferable to those of the right hon. Member for Streatham. If we are to make sanctions effective, aid to Zambia has to be increased. It cannot come from Great Britain alone; she must be supported in this task by those other members of the United Nations who have voted for and supported us on the resolution presented there.
I have said what I want to say, and I conclude by asking right hon. Gentlemen of the Conservative Party to state clearly, before we end the debate, what is their policy. I sat through and listened carefully to the debate on the last occasion and at the end of it I was as much at a loss to know their views as I had been at the beginning. The only purpose of this, the second debate on precisely the same Order, is for the people of this country to know what the Tory Party believes on this issue
10.46 p.m.
Mr. R. T. Paget: This Motion is the result of a reference to the United Nations which I believed to be so wrong that I resigned the Whip in order to vote against it. It is an Order presented to us by the Government, but not because it is their policy. Indeed they confess that they do not like a good deal of it. We are asked to accept it because they put themselves into a position in which they had to accept policies from somebody else.
Clause 13 contains a statement which is construed—and was put there so that it could be construed—by the Afro-Asians as support of the United Nations for violence and murder. That is why Clause 13 was put there. It was put there in sufficiently ambiguous terms so that we could say that it did not mean that, while they could say that it did mean that. I do not think that that is a happy position for us to find ourselves in. I was opposed to this because I believe it to be illegal and a misuse of the United Nations—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The clause to which the hon. and learned Gentleman refers is not in the Order which we are

1189
discussing. He must come to the sanctions dealt with in the Order.
Mr. Paget: It is in the United Nations resolution.
Mr. Speaker: We are not debating the United Nations resolution. We are debating the sanctions which the hon. Member has before him.
Mr. Paget: With great respect, in introducing the Order on the last occasion the Minister said that it would implement a resolution of the United Nations. Surely that entitles me to look at that resolution, which is all that I want to do.
I oppose the Order because it implements a resolution of the United Nations which I believe to be illegal and most injurious to the United Nations. In support of that belief, I quote Mr. Dean Acheson, Secretary of State to Mr. Roosevelt, and Mr. Truman, and one of the founding fathers of the United Nations. He was one of the three men fundamentally responsible for the Charter and he is probably the most distinguished living international lawyer. He said:
"The central issue involved in the assault by the United Nations and the United Kingdom against Rhodesia is a patent illegality despite a layer of bland sanctimony."
In my opinion, that sums the position up accurately.
It is illegal for a large number of reasons. First, it is illegal because it was not supported by the concurring votes of the permanent members—which was not only a requirement in the original Charter, but a requirement reconfirmed by amendment of Article XXIII as late as 1953. It is illegal because either this is a colonial rebellion, in which case it is excluded from the responsibility of the United Nations by Chapter 2(7)— after all, the United Nations is not a Holy Alliance whereby colonial Powers band themselves together to repress colonial rebellion; that was not the idea of Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Stalin—or it is an international dispute, and it is only in an international dispute that the United Nations has jurisdiction. That involves the recognition of Rhodesia as being an independent non-member State. Only on those conditions has it any jurisdiction and then a right of hearing is required by Article XXXII before action is taken.
1190
Again, when one comes to the threat of international peace, which again is the foundation for this, what is the threat? The domestic policy of Rhodesia is not acceptable to some of its neighbours. These are precisely the grounds which Hitler gave for Czechoslovakia and Poland being invaded. When, on television the other night, it was proposed to call evidence to support the United Nations respect for law, the only evidence came from a man whose experience was with war crimes trials where the victors sat in judgment on the vanquished for a crime whose first ingredient was being on the losing side.
I also object because I believe that this use of the United Nations is entirely mischievous. In a speech which I made in the House more than 20 years ago I pointed out that the position was not the position of the League of Nations where the many were much stronger and there could have been effective coercion if the many had stuck together. That was never the position under the United Nations. Great nuclear Powers emerged from the war and no majority could coerce and, therefore, the United Nations was organised really as the secretariat of a great-Power concert to make the decisions of the great Powers compulsory as far as the rest of the world was concerned. This depended on the veto, because unless there was great-Power concert there was nothing on which it could act.
Mr. Stanley Henig: On a point of order. I understood that we were discussing the implementation of an Order against Southern Rhodesia. The hon. and learned Member is giving his interpretation of what the United Nations is about. If it is in order for him to do that, will it be in order later for others to put him right on what this is really all about?
Mr. Speaker: I recognise the threat in the hon. Member's point of order. We are discussing sanctions, and I have already suggested that the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) might come to the Order.
Mr. Paget: I was concluding by saying that this departure from the veto is represented by this officious and impotent meddling, which is what we are doing

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here. We have this agreement. The Afro-Asians wanted war so long as somebody else fought it, and they wanted action against South Africa—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The war we are talking about is sanctions. The hon. and learned Member must address himself to the sanctions.
Mr. Paget: I shall endeavour to do so, Mr. Speaker.
When the House originally, I think most mistakenly, consented to sanctions, we were told that their object was to promote negotiations. All other objects were excluded. Now the pretence that they are to promote negotiations has been abandoned. The next thing was that they were to promote a return to legality or to topple Smith. Whatever else they may succeed in doing, it is not that. Instead, we are resorting to a petulant attempt to punish where we cannot correct.
It is the black Africans of Rhodesia who suffer primarily. As my right hon. Friend has pointed out, this will mean perhaps half a million African unemployed, and for an African on a subsistence diet unemployment and famine come very close together. That is what we are seeking to do in this attack on the economy. But the Rhodesian economy will unquestionably remain viable, though perhaps at a lower level. The idea of areas being held by infiltration fighters is the most utter nonsense. The Rhodesians' power to maintain order is underwritten by South Africa. They have the full might of South Africa behind them in that.
The cost to our balance of payments continues. For three years I have been able to tell the House with complete accuracy what the effect of our actions was in Rhodesia, and what would happen there. I read in the New Statesman an article by Mr. Hatch of quite astonishing nonsense, in which he said that these increased sanctions have led to this dismissal of Mr. Harper. That is exactly the opposite to the truth. There is a split in Rhodesia: Mr. Smith and his friends still value the British connection and want a link here, and Mr. Harper and his friends want a republic and a close link with South Africa.
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That is the issue, and by everything we do that makes the link with Britain seem less attractive, by everything we do that makes it less likely that terms with Britain, which Mr. Smith wants, are available, by that much we weaken his position and strengthen Mr. Harper's. That is really the reason why all this time Smith has had to move to the right, to demand more and more, because we have steadily been making the link with Britain less and less attractive.
Now we come to a situation in which Mr. Smith has been able to take action against Mr. Harper. That is not because of strengthened sanctions. It is the reverse; it is because the Rhodesians, rightly or wrongly, have taken the House of Lords vote as a commitment by the Conservative Party to recognise Rhodesia and come to terms. That action made it appear in Rhodesia, probably rightly, that the link with Britain and terms with Britain would be available. They at least take the view, possibly rightly, possibly wrongly, that Mr. Smith is far more likely to remain a Prime Minister two years hence than the present Prime Minister of Britain.
Hon. Members: Shame.
Mr. Speaker: Order. There is too much interruption from the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends.
Mr. Paget: The hon. Gentleman shouts "Shame". Does he really believe that the Rhodesians do not think that Mr. Smith is likely to last longer than—
Mr. Faulds: What office did you want?
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) must learn to behave in the House. I must remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that this debate is for an hour and a half; he has had one-sixth of that time.
Mr. Faulds: On a point of order. I had never understood, Sir, that in this House manners were more important than opinions. I do not apologise for my manners, and I have every intention of stating what I feel in the House.
Mr. Speaker: This is an interesting confession of faith. It has nothing to do with the rules of the House.
Mr. Paget: The hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) asked me what

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office I wanted. I am very glad I did not get it. But let us leave that aside and come back to the debate.
The real tragedy is that the United Nations has been diverted to this matter and, because it is in this state, nobody even suggests that it might do something about Czechoslovakia where there is a real threat to peace. It is irrelevant there. We know that the Russians would tell the Security Council where to put it.
Again, we have the tragedy of Nigeria; massacre and slaughter on a Hitlerian scale. There we have the power. We could open Port Harcourt. A marine commando could establish and impose a cease-fire. This tragedy could be stopped, it is within our power, and it is something which we could do which would be of value. Instead, we simply divert ourselves and the United Nations to upset an economy, when we cannot upset a régime; we make its government more difficult when we have no alternative government, no means of government, no change that we can establish. It is a shocking policy and a shocking mess in which to find the United Nations.
11.4 p.m.
Sir Cyril Osborne: At the beginning of this year I spent a few days in Rhodesia, and hon. Members may like to hear what the ordinary people in Rhodesia will think of the Order. The test for them and for this House should be simply this: will the Order help to bring peace, or not? If it helps to bring understanding and a peaceful settlement, then I would support it, but because I think that it will do the opposite—and I will tell hon. Members why I think it will do the opposite—I will vote against it.
I believe that the Order will fail in the objective the Prime Minister has set out to achieve, and that the ordinary Rhodesian people to whom I talked will never surrender or negotiate under duress, and this is duress. The Rhodesians said to me at great length that they were the same breed as we are ourselves and, just as we would not submit to the horrors of Hitler, they will not submit to the horrors we want to impose on them. They are not prepared to be browbeaten by sanctions any more than we were prepared to be brow-beaten by Hitler. For this reason I am convinced
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that these additional sanctions will make a settlement more difficult, if not impossible, and I think the policy is wrong.
The Prime Minister's policy, I remind hon. Members opposite, is that he hopes to produce or induce a more moderate element in Rhodesia that would accept his policy either inside the Smith régime or as an alternative to it. These sanctions will make it impossible for a more moderate element to take charge of affairs in Rhodesia and, therefore, to co-operate with the Commonwealth Secretary and the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister says—and his hon. Friends support him—that Mr. Smith is the prisoner of his own Right-wing extremists. They said to me in Rhodesia that our Prime Minister is the prisoner of his own Left-wing extremists, and it is those members who are trying to make the Prime Minister stick narrowly to the Nibma policy that makes a settlement all the more difficult. This is why this Order is such a tragedy.
The tobacco farmers who are suffering greatly and feeling sanctions severely —I stayed for a weekend on a tobacco farm—said they believed that at the very best the British Government were prepared to risk imposing a second Mau Mau upon them or at the worst to turn their country into a second Congo. [Interruption.] I am reporting to the House what was said to me out there, what people really believe. [An HON. MEMBER: "What did the coloured people say?"] Because they genuinely believe this I am convinced that the ordinary moderate decent people in Rhodesia will never submit to these sanctions and this Order. That is why I think it is such a tragedy that the Government are trying to impose this on them.
I make a practical suggestion. I saw many of the business and trade people, and most of the Ministers, too.
Mr. J. J. Mendelson: Will the hon. Gentleman allow me?
Sir C. Osborne: No. I promised to take only five minutes.
Mr. Mendelson Mr. Mendelson rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Louth (Sir C. Osborne) is not giving way.
Sir C. Osborne: Not in five minutes.
Mr. Mendelson Mr. Mendelson rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Louth is not giving way.
Sir C. Osborne: The Rhodesian people made this suggestion.
Mr. Mendelson Mr. Mendelson rose—
Sir C. Osborne: For God's sake, sit down man.
Mr. Kevin McNamara Mr. Kevin McNamara (Kingston-upon-Hull, North) On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As you had sat down, was that the sort of reference to be made to you?
Mr. Speaker: Sir Cyril Osborne.
Sir C. Osborne Sir C. Osborne rose—
An Hon. Member: Go and play with your toys.
Sir C. Osborne: I am trying to report to the House what I discovered, and I thought hon. Members would like to hear it. The majority of Rhodesians have very high regard and respect for the Commonwealth Secretary and he is a man they would trust. The Rhodesians suggested to me that if only he could go out there again with the Lord Chancellor, who also created a great impression out there, there would be a chance—I believe there is still—of a settlement.
I cannot believe that any one on either side of the House would prefer war to peace, but there will be no peace through this Order. It is because I believe this so deeply that I beg the Government not to force this through but to have one more look at the situation and try to secure a peaceful settlement, and it is because of that that I feel compelled to vote against the Order.
11.10 p.m.
Mr. Frank Judd: I find myself among those who give a cautious welcome to this second edition of the Statutory Instrument. The real tragedy to many of us must be that Instruments of this kind were not introduced immediately after U.D.I. I believe that we have to look at the Instrument in the context of the U.N. resolution, the provisions of which it is intended to make effective. On the one hand, I am certain that we can welcome the speedy response
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on the mandatory clauses of the resolution. On the other, I am certain that we all share some misgivings about the ambiguities in the Government's position towards those clauses urging positive action in support of the liberation movement and freedom struggle of Southern Africa.
I believe that there are two weaknesses in the international background to this Order. In the first place, there is to be no independent international investigatory machinery and, in the second place, there is to be no international enforcement machinery. When we embark upon the quite expensive operation involved in this Instrument, I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to reassure us that, if enforcement action becomes necessary, the Government are willing to contemplate appropriate ways in which it can be undertaken.
The next point on which I believe we need some reassurance is what the action of the Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Secretaries will be if there is a deliberate attempt by the Governments of South Africa and Portugal to undermine the provisions of the resolution. But while it may be one thing to say that, at this stage, we cannot envisage a headlong confrontation in economic terms with South Africa, it is another thing to say, as is being said by some members of the Government, that we hold as one of our highest priorities the expansion of trade with South Africa. There seems to be a contradiction here which is essentially relevant to this Instrument.
There are two other specific weaknesses in the Instrument. First, it is well known that businessmen in Britain not infrequently pay visits to Rhodesia without their passports being stamped. Why is it that the Government have felt unable to recommend that, save on humanitarian grounds or grounds of emergency, visits to Rhodesia should be prohibited unless undertaken with prior Governmental approval? Next, we should like to know why the Government have felt unable at this stage, when trying to bring home the gravity of the situation, to undertake action in terms of an embargo on postal and telecommunications?
The next point on which we should like some comment from my right hon. Friend concerns our attitude towards Zambia as the consequences of this new

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measure become known, because no country has paid a higher price for the international action following U.D.I. than Zambia. We are frequently told that £24 million has already been subscribed by Britain towards Zambia, but this is not good enough because the distortion of the Zambian economy continues and we have a lasting obligation to Zambia.
The next point in relation to Zambia is that, at this juncture, as international action is intensified, she becomes still more vulnerable in defence terms, and if we really mean business in the context of the Instrument we should be told what the Government intend to do in fulfilling our defence commitments to Zambia as well.
The real value of the Instrument is that, even if it does not secure the immediate downfall of the régime in Rhodesia, it will deny it the fruits of victory and will thereby help to keep the issue alive. The significance of the measures being taken is that they will enable the freedom struggle on the spot to continue. There are some extraordinary misconceptions in the House about the freedom struggle. There should be no illusions about the freedom fighters. Freedom fighting has obviously come to stay It is obviously going to pass into the leadership of increasingly militant people. The failure by this House and this country to demonstrate beyond doubt our commitment to the interests of the majority in Southern Africa will ensure that the situation deteriorates into an ugly racial confrontation with untold cost in terms of human suffering.
11.16 p.m.
Sir Frederic Bennett: Fortunately, Mr. Speaker, I managed to catch your eye in the first debate after U.D.I. was declared. I remember that on that occasion I condemned, as I still condemn, U.D.I. as being both wrong and foolish. At the same time, I then said that in my view sanctions in Rhodesia, as my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Sir C. Osborne) said a few moments ago, would be more likely to prevent a political settlement than to attain one. All I would say is that it is worth considering now who has been proved right in that proposition.
As I understand it, having listened to every debate on this subject, the position
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of the Government is that even after what has taken place, it is still the duty of this Parliament to continue to enforce sanctions even though, in the words of Ministers in the past, it is admitted that they are bound in the first place, and probably in the second place, to hurt innocent people. This was confirmed by the Secretary of State. We all know that it is always the poorer sections of the community who get hurt first, whereas the better-off White Rhodesians can, in the present boom conditions in South Africa, always manage to get alternative means of improving their economic position.
We are told that even though we are bound to hurt innocent people it is still our job to keep on enforcing these sanctions. We are told that it is right to continue enforcing the sanctions even though they are very expensive to our balance of payments at this critical time in our economic history. The reason, we are told, is that this is such a great moral issue that it transcends all other matters, including our balance of payments.
I have never been convinced by this argument since the Prime Minister said that this great moral issue could not be extended to cover the case of an economic confrontation with Portugal or South Africa. A great moral issue which can be measured in terms of hard currency that one needs to earn hardly amounts to a great moral issue at all. There is no great moral issue involved if we say that we can afford to have a battle with Rhodesia but not if it means real damage to our economy through confrontation with South Africa or with Portugal.
We are told that we must support these sanctions even though they have been proved ineffective so far in obtaining a political settlement. The Secretary of State himself—I do not say that he was trapped—was frank enough to say recently that, so far, they had had the effect of strengthening the régime in Salisbury and not weakening it. We are told that even though it has not proved successful up to now in attaining a political settlement, nevertheless, we must go blindly along this path.
I wish to put three alternative propositions to the Government. First, in any form of retaliation or sanctions we

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should be guided by the fact that if they are going to hurt anybody, they should be calculated to hurt the régime in Salisbury and not the people. Second, we should have due regard to our economic position, our balance of payments and the realities of the situation. Third, our efforts in the matter of sanctions—or of ending them—should not hinder a negotiated settlement. Those are the three propositions.
Are not those three conditions exactly, almost in his own words, what the right hon. Gentleman told the people of Gibraltar when he was last on the Rock, when they recently asked for retaliation against Spain? That, word for word, is what he told the people of Gibraltar— that the policies should hurt the Spanish Government, but not the Spanish people; that they should have due regard to our economic position, because we could not afford an economic fight with Spain over a moral issue; and, thirdly, that they should not stand in the way of a negotiated political settlement with Spain.
Perhaps we can be told tonight why one set of rules applies in one case, but not in the other. How many more months and years are we to go on with this sterile policy which is not getting us anywhere? Is the Secretary of State to come here again in one, two, three, or four years, if the Government are still in office, and tell us that all he has to say is that we must go on with the sanctions because we have nothing else? Is there no point at which the Government will realise that this policy has failed and review it fundamentally and from start to finish?
11.21 p.m.
Mr. Ivor Richard: Like the hon. Member for Torquay (Sir F. Bennett), I have listened to and taken part in most of the debates on Rhodesia since the days of U.D.I. in 1965. Going back to those debates, it is distressing to see the movement in the views of the Conservative Party. I hope that the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) will accept it from me that I say this with no great pleasure and that it is most distressing to men of good will on both sides of the House and outside it to see either of the two great parties of State giving in to its extremists. The Conservative Party has given in to its extremists, and the right
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hon. Gentleman was put up to try to justify an unjustifiable case.
What did we get from the right hon. Gentleman as opposed to what we have had from his so-called supporters? There has been no disavowal from the Conservative Front Bench of the whole policy of sanctions, nothing resembling what the hon. Member for Torquay has said, that they have been against sanctions since 1965, that the policy has totally failed and should be scrapped. We have had none of that exercise.
First, the right hon. Gentleman patted himself on the back for persuading the Government slightly to amend their policy on passports and, secondly, he shed a few crocodile tears about Zambia, and I found that extraordinarily distasteful. Thirdly, he said that, in view of the slight political change which has taken place in Salisbury, there should be a fresh attempt at negotiation.
That is what the Front Bench has said, but that is not what the back benchers have said and it is high time in the interests not only of the House of Commons, but of the country and the whole world, that the Conservative Party made crystal clear where it stands. Over the weekend, the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition said, I believe, that the Conservative Party had to be led from the centre. Whether it has to be led from the left, from the centre, or from the right, it is time that it was led.
There are three simple questions which we all have to ask about this Order. The first is whether the general policy of sanctions which the House and the country have followed since U.D.I. is broadly right. At one stage, the Opposition Front Bench agreed that it was right and there was the famous debate about oil sanctions when the Opposition Front Bench supported the sanctions and when 30 or 40 of the Conservative Right wing went into one Lobby and some of its Left wing went into the other. Is that the position now? Does the Conservative Party still support the general policy of sanctions? Does it believe that the imposition of economic sanctions is the right way to deal with the whole Rhodesia problem?
Until this debate, I had always believed that that was the policy of the Conservative Party. Some of us on this

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side of the House who, in November, 1965, had the greatest misgivings about whether the policy of economic sanctions was right, nevertheless went along with it. Certainly, having gone along with it at that time, when three years later it looks as though it is now having some economic effect in Rhodesia, this is not the time to go back on it.
Secondly, should we continue that policy? I was interested in one illuminating flash that came from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire when he said that we should make a fresh attempt to negotiate. Why should we make a fresh attempt to negotiate? Because, said the right hon. Gentleman, there has been a change in the political situation in Salisbury.
I ask again: because or in spite of sanctions? Is it because over the period of three to four years the Rhodesian Government, and Mr. Smith in particular, have realised that this country is not prepared to hand over the permanent government of 4 million black Africans to the entrenched white minority rule of 200,000 Europeans? If that has sunk home in Salisbury that might account for the change. If that is the reason, that is a very strong reason not only for continuing with the policy of sanctions, but for trying to intensify it.
The third question is whether, by this Order, we make the general policy of sanctions more or less effective. Obviously, sanctions will be more effective. They will be more effective for two reasons. First, they will apply to a larger quantity of goods, and, secondly, they will be enforced by a larger number of nations. For those two reasons, I believe that this policy of applying mandatory sanctions will make the general economic strains on Rhodesia that much greater. If the policy of sanctions was not going to be effective we would not have had the speeches that we have had from the back benches opposite. If hon. Gentlemen opposite believed that this policy was an ineffective gesture, I do not think that the hon. Member for Torquay would have made the speech that he did. Nor do I believe that some hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway would have been howling and giggling as much as they have.
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Therefore, I conclude that the three questions that have to be answered are: first, do we accept the general policy; secondly, do we continue with that general policy; and, thirdly, does this Order make that policy more effective? The answer from this side of the House is yes, and it is time the right hon. Gentleman gave a clear answer for his side of the House.
11.27 p.m.
Sir Charles Mott-Radclyffe: I had not intended to intervene, but for the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, South (Mr. Philip Noel-Baker). Who would have thought, 18 months or two years ago, that a former Secretary of State would have almost revelled in the statement that there were 500,000 Africans unemployed and very substantial hardship amongst Rhodesian farmers?
Most of us in this House originally voted for sanctions on the basis that they were not vindictive. We have moved a long way from those days. The Government know perfectly well that the more the incidence of sanctions is screwed down the less enforceable they are and that, if sanctions are not enforceable they achieve at once the worst of every known world. They drive all moderate opinion straight into the arms of the more extreme. If anybody suggests now that the present government of Rhodesia are more moderate than it was in the days of Sir Roy Welensky or Mr. Field, the answer is that it is not. We have heard some right hon. and hon. Gentlemen talking in retrospect as though if Sir Roy Welensky were still in power he would be somewhere to the left of Mr. Gladstone. This is what happens if we go on with sanctions which are not enforceable.
I have never understood the double thinking of the Labour Party about the limitation of power. In other parts of the world—the Far East, the Persian Gulf, and elsewhere—it almost revels in the limitation of power to which it has brought to this country. We have to get out of the Persian Gulf and the Far East by 1970 because we have neither the power to stay nor influence to exert in that part of the world. But in some curious way, in Rhodesia, the Government will not accept any limitation of

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power. I am all for the six principles— [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—in spite of the jeers. There are only two ways of getting the six principles, or anything like them. Either we negotiate about them, or we enforce them. If the Government cannot enforce them, they have to negotiate.
There are some hon. Members opposite who wish to enforce them. Let me say straight away that quite apart from other reasons, logistically any idea of using force is out. It is a complete nonsense. Therefore, if the Government cannot enforce them, they have got to negotiate. The longer they put off negotiations, the more difficult they become and the less likely they are to get what they want.
The sanctions boat is so full of water before it leaves port, and is shipping water so badly, that it is not seaworthy. That is what happens when we have the United Nations mandatory sanctions, which are not enforceable and when half the members of the United Nations are laughing at us behind our backs. I beg right hon. Gentleman opposite to take time by the forelock and negotiate before it is too late and final disaster settles upon them.
11.31 p.m.
Mr. George Thomson: The only comment that I would like to make on the remark of the hon. Member for Windsor (Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe) that he and his party are all for the six principles is that these days they seem to be all for the six principles in principle so long as they are not asked to put them in any way into practice.
The general issues which have been raised in this short debate about the United Nations and other wider matters were thoroughly thrashed out in the long debate that we had on 17th June. At the end of that debate, the Opposition suffered a decisive defeat in the House and a moral defeat in another place, where all those of both the great independent groups of opinion who voted voted with the Government and against the Conservative Opposition. I therefore want to confine myself, in the few minutes at my disposal, to answering some of the points which have been raised during tonight's debate.
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The right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home), who opened the debate for the Opposition, asked about the position of British firms and their directors in Rhodesia. Perhaps I might put the matter on record since it is, I know, of great concern to many business undertakings. The Rhodesian subsidiaries of British registered companies are within the scope of the Southern Rhodesia (United Nations Sanctions) (No. 2) Order that we are discussing.
If a subsidiary's activities are among those which are forbidden by the Order, the subsidiary commits an offence, but the directors, whether or not they are resident in Rhodesia, do not necessarily share in the company's criminal liability. They are liable only if they assist in, consent to or connive at that offence or if it is attributable to any neglect on their part.
The right hon. Gentleman quoted from a letter which I had sent to his right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) and he poked a little gentle fun at some of the terms of that letter, in which I had said that British business men could still travel to Rhodesia. The right hon. Gentleman did not quote the letter fully, and perhaps I might now do so. I said:
" We are not prohibiting travel to Rhodesia."
I would like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman is urging that we should prohibit travel to Rhodesia. I would say to my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, West (Mr. Judd) that we have deliberately kept communications open, because we think that this is important in terms of influencing opinion in Rhodesia and bringing about the settlement which we all seek.
I went on in the letter to say, however, that
"There is nothing in the Order to stop businesses sending members of their staff from this country to take up positions with their Rhodesian subsidiaries. There are a variety of reasons for sending staff to Rhodesia and many need not, in fact, involve the persons concerned in any sanctions-breaking activity."
That was the point which the right hon. Gentleman omitted.
"But if someone working in Rhodesia contravenes the provisions of our sanctions legislation he will be rendering himself liable to prosecution."

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I must ask the Opposition whether they support or oppose us on this, because there is no difference of principle in what we are doing from what we have been doing.
"The position as described above",
as I said in my letter to the right hon. Member for Barnet,
"has, of course, applied for a long time to transactions involving the goods and commodities that were covered by the previous Security Council resolution of 16th November, 1966."
What is happening here is that the matter is being applied more extensively, but there is no difference of principle. We carried the Opposition with us in the past, and I do not begin to understand how the Opposition now manage to justify the adoption of their present opposition to the Order.
The right hon. Gentleman also asked me about the case of Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, coloured citizens from Rhodesia who arrived in a liner from South Africa a few days ago. He raised once again the bogey: is there a black list? I have tried to be very frank with the House about this and to make the matter as plain as possible. Of course, the situation in which Mr, and Mrs. Jenkins found themselves was that they arrived in this country with travel documents issued by the illegal Rhodesian régime. These come under the United Nations resolution and this Order, but since they started from Rhodesia before the Order was made we allowed them to come into this country, although that is not allowed once the Order is in full operation.
It was then discovered that their legal position was confused because they did not have proper legal entitlement to be considered pre-I.D.I. Rhodesian citizens, and it seemed they might be South African citizens. We provided them with documentation, with certificates of identity, on which they could continue their journey, and resolve their own status when they got back to their own country.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, West and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) all raised the special position of Zambia and also that of some of the other countries in a similar situation, and I would like in reply
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to them, to say that we have always recognised that those countries, Zambia and Botswana and other countries, have a special position, and have done what they can to free themselves from dependence on Rhodesia for goods and services. We have certainly done much to help them, but I know that great difficulty still remains for Zambia and other countries.
That is why the Government suggested, in the course of the discussions in New York, that the difficulties of these landlocked States should be specifically recognised in the United Nations resolution. That proposal did not meet with general approval and we did not press it, but the United Nations Charter, as the House will know, does contain provisions protecting the position of countries like these, and that position, of course, remains.
My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, West raised the question of contingency aid for Zambia, and so did the hon. Member for Orpington. As the House knows, President Kaunda is due to arrive in this country tomorrow for talks with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. We are very glad to welcome him here, and I am sure that the question of economic sanctions will be an important topic amongst others which will be discussed. For our part, we have given altogether so far £24 million in special contingency aid related to the situation created by I.D.I., and the Zambian Government know that further support of this kind cannot be supplied by the Government in present conditions.
We have, however, a substantial continuing aid programme for Zambia in various other fields such as technical assistance, and we hope that one of the results of the United Nations resolution will be to persuade other members of the United Nations, as the hon. Member for Orpington said, to do what we have been seeking to do during the last two years, and to match the kind of aid which we have given so far.
A number of hon. Members, and especially the right hon. Gentleman, have pointed out that, since we last debated Rhodesia, on 17th June, there has been a good deal of political activity in Salisbury. In particular, there has been the announcement on 4th July of Mr. Harper's resignation. It is still too early

1207
to assess the consequences of this resignation, but I think that we should be careful not to rate them too high. The House will know that the Rhodesia Front Party executive has been meeting in Salisbury today and that a large majority has supported Mr. Smith.
We will, of course, watch carefully for any signs of a more liberal attitude on the part of the rôgime. If we had good reason on other grounds to believe that the rôgime were ready to return towards an acceptance of our six principles, then the dismissal of Mr. Harper will help to increase confidence in the prospects for an honourable settlement. But, so far, there has been no sign from Salisbury that Mr. Smith has abandoned his reservations about majority rule, or his belief in the need to retain provisions which would allow retrogressive amendment of the constitution.
Indeed, one can only record that if Mr. Smith is to the left of Mr. Harper there is no evidence that he is to the left of his own Whaley Commission— indeed, rather the contrary. And the Whaley aim of ultimate parity between the races at some unspecified time in the future is patently inconsistent with the six principles that the right hon. Gentleman laid down first of all and that we have carried on. Since 17th June, Mr. Smith has failed to respond either to our suggestion in that debate that he should publish the proposals he made to the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire so that public opinion in both countries could make its own judgment about them, or to the challenge to declare that he was ready to accept a real blocking mechanism.
It is, as it always has been, our object to work for an honourable settlement consistent with our principles and pledges, as soon as the right conditions exist. Though any lessening of extreme Right-wing influence in Salisbury is to be welcomed, we shall need more evidence of the elimination of this influence and more proof that the régime is ready to return to the principles laid down by successive Governments. I can, however, assure the House that once we do see hope of making some real progress we will not be slow to follow it up. Meantime, the best hope, in my view, of making progress is to make an international reality of the new United Nations resolution. The Rhodesian leaders are most likely to be ready for a settlement acceptable to the international community when they become convinced that the alternative is an endless political and economic isolation.
The hon. Member for Torquay (Sir F. Bennett) talked about morality. The difference between South Africa and Rhodesia is that we have a direct responsibility for Rhodesia. I do not understand the position of hon. Members opposite on this issue, but if they are not prepared to take their stand with us on the morality of the responsibility for about 93 per cent.—the African population in Rhodesia—let me put British interests to them, because in seeking to turn down this Order tonight they are refusing to face the businessmen and exporters of other countries with the same sort of burdens that they are prepared to see our businessmen continue to carry.
Question put:—
The House divided: Ayes 298, Noes 242.

Division No. 281.]

AYES

[11.42 p.m.

Abse, Leo

Bishop, E. S.

Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)

Albu, Austen

Blackburn, F.

Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James

Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

Blenkinsop, Arthur

Cant, R. B.

Alldritt, Walter

Boardman, H. (Leigh)

Carmichael, Neil

Allen, Scholefield

Booth, Albert

Carter-Jones, Lewis

Anderson, Donald

Boston, Terence

Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara

Archer, Peter

Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur

Chapman, Donald

Armstrong, Ernest

Boyden, James

Coe, Denis

Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)

Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

Conian, Bernard

Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)

Bradley, Tom

Corbet, Mrs. Freda

Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice

Bray, Dr. Jeremy

Crawshaw, Richard

Bagier, Gordon A. T.

Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

Cronin, John

Barnes, Michael

Brown, Rt Hn. George (Belper)

Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony

Barnett, Joel

Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)

Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard

Bence, Cyril

Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)

Cullen, Mrs. Alice

Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood

Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch & F'bury)

Dalyell, Tam

Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)

Buchan, Norman

Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)

Bidwell, Sydney

Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)

Davies, Ednyfed Hudson (Conway)

Binns, John

Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)

Davies, Ifor (Gower)

Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechtord)

Parker, John (Dagenham)

de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey

Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)

Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)

Delargy, Hugh

Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

Pavitt, Laurence

Dell, Edmund

Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)

Dempsey, James

Judd, Frank

Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred

Dewar, Donald

Kelley, Richard

Pentland, Norman

Diamond, Rt. Hn. John

Kenyon, Clifford

Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)

Dickens, James

Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter & Chatham)

Perry, George H. (Nottingham S.)

Dobson, Ray

Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)

Prentice, Rt. Mn. R. E.

Doig, Peter

Kerr, Russell (Feltham)

Price, Christopher (Perry Barr)

Dunn, James A.

Lawson George

Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)

Dunnett, Jack

Leadbitter, Ted

Probert, Arthur

Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)

Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)

Rankin, John

Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th & C'b'e)

Lee, Rt. Hn. Jennie (Cannock)

Reynolds Rt Hn G. W.

Eadie, Alex

Lee, John (Reading)

Richard, Ivor

Edelman, Maurice

Lester, Miss John

Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

Edwards, Robert (Bilston)

Lever Harold (Cheetham)

Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy

Ellis, John

Lewis' Ron (Carllsle)

Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire S.)

English, Michael

Lipton, Marcus

Robertson, John (Paisley)

Ennals, David

Lomas Keneth

Robinson,,Rt.Hn.Kenneth(St.P'c'as)

Ensor, David

Loughlin, Charles

Robinson,, W.O.J. (Walth'stow,E.)

Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

Luard, Evan

Rodgers, William (Stockton)

FAULDS, ANDREW

Lubbock Eric

Roebuck, Roy

Fernyhough, E.

Alexander W. (York)

Ross, Rt. Hn. William

Fletcher, Ted (Dartington)

McBride, Neil

Sheldon, Robert

Foley, Maurice

McCann, John

Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)

Foot, Rt. Hn. Sir Dingle (Ipswich)

MacColl, James

Short,Rt.Hn.Edward(N'c'tle-u-Tyne)

Foot, Michael (Ebbw vale)

MacDermot, Niall

Short.Mrs.Renée (W'hampton.N.E.)

Ford, Ben

Macdonald, A. H.

Silkln, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)

Forrester, John

McGuire, Michael

Silverman, Julius

Fowler, Gerry

McKay, Mrs. Margaret

Skeffington, Arthur

Fraser, John (Norwood)

Mackenzle,Alasdair(Ross&Crom'ty)

Slater, Joseph

Freeson, Reginald

Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)

Small, William

Galpern, Sir Myer

Mackie, John

Snow, Julian

Gardner, Tony

Mackintosh, John P.

Spriggs, Leslie

Ginsburg, David

Maclennan, Robert

Steel, David (Roxburgh)

Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.

McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)

Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)

Gourlay, Harry

McNamara, J. Kevin

Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael

Gray, Dr. Hugh (Yarmouth)

Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)

Storehouse, Rt. Hn. John

Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony

Mahon, Simon (Bootle)

Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.

Gregory, Arnold

Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley

Grey, Charles (Durham)

Mallalieu,J.P.W.(Huddersfield,E.)

Swain, Thomas

Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

Manuel, Archie

Swingler, Stephen

Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)

Marks, Kenneth

Taverne Dick

Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanelly)

Marquand, David

Thomas,' Rt. Hn. George

Griffiths, Will (Exchange)

Maxwell, Robert

Thomson, Rt. Hn. George

Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.

Mayhew, Christopher

Thornton Ernest

Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert

Thorpe Rt Hn Jeremy

Hamling, William

Mendeleon, J. J.

Tinn, James

Hannan, William

Mikardo, Ian

Tuck, Rapheal

Harper, Joseph

MilIan, Bruce

Urwin T. W.

Harrison. Walter (Wakefield)

Miller, Dr. M. S.

Varley Eric G.

Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith

Milne, Edward (Blyth)

Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)

Haseldine, Norman

Mitchell, R. c. (S'th'pton, Test)

Wallace George

Hatterslev, Roy

Molly, William

Watkins, David (Consett)

Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis

Moonman, Eric

Watkins Tudor (Brecon & Radnor)

Heffer, Eric S.

Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)

Weitsman David

Henig, Stanley

Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

Wellbeloved, James

Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret

Morr,s Charle. R (Openshaw)

Wells, William (Walsall)

Hilton, W. S.

Morris, John (Aberavon)

Whitaker Ben

Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)

Moyle, Roland

White, Mrs, Erene

Hootey, Frank

Murray, Albert

Whitlock, William

Horner, John

Neal, Harold

Willev Rt. Hn. Frederick

Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas

Newens, Stan

Williams Alan (Swansea, W.)

Howarth, Harry (Wellingborought)

Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)

Williams Alan Lee (Hornchurch)

Howarth, Robert (Bolton E.)

Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip (Derby, S.)

Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)

Howell,, Denis (Small Heath)

Norwood, Christopher

Williams, W. T. (Warrington)

Howie, W.

Oakes, Gordon

Willis, Rt. H. George

Hoy, James

O' Malley, Brain

Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)

Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)

Orbach, Maurice

Wilson William (Coventry, S.)

Hunter, Adam

Orme, Stanley

Winnick, David

Hynd, John

Oswald, Thomas

Winstanley, Dr. M.P.

Irvine, Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)

Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)

Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.

Jackson, Colin (B'h'se & Spenb'gh)

Owen, Will (Morpeth)

Woof, Robert

Jackson, Peter M. (High Peak)

Page, Derek (King's Lynn)

Wyatt, Woodrow

Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas

Palmer, Arthur

Yates, Victor

Jeger,Mrs.Lena(H'b'n&St.P'cras,S.)

Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

Park, Trevor

Mr. J. D. Concannon and

Mr. loan L. Evans.

1210

1211

NOES

Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

Cower, Raymond

Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael

Allason, James (Hemel Hempatead)

Grant, Anthony

Nott, John

Astor, John

Grieve, Percy

Onslow, Cranley

Atkins, Humphrey (M't'n & M'd'n)

Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)

Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

Awdry, Daniel

Gurden, Harold

Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian

Baker, Kenneth (Acton)

Hall, John (Wycombe)

Osborn, John (Hallam)

Balniel, Lord

Hall-Davies, A. G. F.

Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)

Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony

Hamilton, Lord (Fermanagh)

Page, Graham (Crosby)

Batsford, Brian

Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

Page, John (Harrow, W.)

Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton

Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)

Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)

Bell, Ronald

Harrison, Brian (Maldon)

Peel, John

Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)

Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)

Percival, Ian

Berry, Hn. Anthony

Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere

Peyton, John

Biffen, John

Harvie Anderson, Miss

Pike, Miss Mervyn

Biggs-Davison, John

Hastings, Stephen

Pink, R. Bonner

Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel

Hawkins, Paul

Pounder, Rafton

Black, Sir Cyril

Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel

Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch

Blaker, Peter

Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward

Price, David (Eastleigh)

Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)

Heseltine, Michael

Prior, J. M. L.

Body, Richard

Higgins, Terence L.

Pym, Francis

Bossom, Sir Clive

Hiley, Joseph

Quennell, Miss J. M.

Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward

Hill, J. E. B.

Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James

Braine, Bernard

Hirst, Geoffrey

Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter

Brewis, John

Holland, Philip

Rees-Davies, W. R.

Brinton, Sir Tatton

Hordern, Peter

Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David

Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. SirWalter

Hornby, Richard

Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

Howell, David (Guildlord)

Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

Bruce-Gardyne, J.

Hunt, John

Ridsdale, Julian

Bryan, Paul

Hutchison, Michael Clark

Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey

Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus,N & M)

Iremonger, T. L.

Robson Brown, Sir William

Buck, Antony (Colchester)

Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)

Bullus, Sir Eric

Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)

Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

Burden, F. A.

Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

Royle, Anthony

Campbell, B. (Oldham, W.)

Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)

Russell, Sir Ronald

Campbell, Cordon (Moray & Nairn)

Jones, Arthur (Normants, S.)

St. John-Stevas, Norman

Carlisle, Mark

Jopling, Michael

Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.

Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert

Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith

Scott, Nicholas

Cary, Sir Robert

Kaberry, Sir Donald

Scott-Hopkins, James

Channon, H. P. G.

Kerby, Capt. Henry

Sharpies, Richard

Chichester-Clark, R.

Kershaw, Anthony

Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh & Whitby)

Clark, Henry

Kimball, Marcus

Silvester, Frederick

Clegg, Walter

King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

Sinclair, Sir George

Cooke, Robert

Kitson, Timothy

Smith, Dudley (W'wick & L'mington)

Cordle, John

Knight, Mrs. Jill

Speed, Keith

Corfield, F. V.

Lambton, Viscount

Stainton, Keith

Costain, A. P.

Lancaster, Col. C. G.

Stodart, Anthony

Craddock, Sir Berestord (Spelthorne)

Lane, David

Stoddart-Scott Col. Sir M. (Ripon)

Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver

Langford-Holt, Sir John

Summers, Sir Spencer

Crouch, David

Legge-Bourite, Sir Harry

Tapsell, Peter

Crowder, F. P.

Lloyd,Rt.Hn,Geoffrey(Sut'nC'dfield)

Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

Cunningham, Sir Knox

Lloyd, Ian (p'tsm'th, Langstone)

Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)

Currie, G. B. H.

Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)

Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)

Dalkeith, Earl of

Longden, Gilbert

Teeling, Sir William

Dance, James

Loveye, W. H.

Temple, John M.

d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry

McAdden, Sir Stephen

Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret

Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)

MacArthur, Ian

Tllney, John

Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)

Maclean, Sir Fitzroy

Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.

Digby, Simon Wlngfield

McMaster, Stanley

van strauhenzee, W. R.

Dodds-Parker, Douglas

Macmillan, Maurice (Famham)

vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John

Doughty, Charles

Maddan, Martin

Vickers, Dame Joan

Douglas-Home, Rt. Hn. Sir Alec

Maginnis, John E.

Waddington, David

Drayson, G. B.

Marples, Rt Hn. Ernest

Walker, Peter (Worcester)

du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward

Marten, Neil

Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek

Eden, Sir John

Maude, Angus

Wall, Patrick

Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald

Walters, Dennis

Emery, Peter

Mawby, Ray

Ward, Dame Irene

Errington, Sir Eric

Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.

Weatherill, Bernard

Eyre, Reginald

Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.

Wells, John (Maidstone)

Farr, John

Mills, Peter (Torrington)

Whltelaw, Rt. Hn. William

Fisher, Nigel

Mill, Stratton (Belfast, N.)

Williams, Donald (Dudley)

Fletcher-Cooke, Charles

Miscampbell, Norman

Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

Fortescue, Tim

Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

Foster, Sir John

Monro, Hector

Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

Fraser,Rt.Hn.Hugh(St'fford & Stone)

Montgomery, Fergus

Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard

Calbraith, Hn. T. G.

Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)

Woodnutt, Mark

Giles, Rear-Adm. Morgan

Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

Worsley, Marcus

Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)

Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles

Wylie, N. R.

Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)

Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

Younger, Hn. George

Clover, Sir Douglas

Murton, Oscar

Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.

Nabarro, Sir Gerald

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Goodhart, Philip

Neave, Airey

Mr. R. W. Elliott and

Goodhew, Victor

Nicholls, Sir Harmar

Mr. Jasper More.

Resolved,
That the Southern Rhodesia (United Nations Sanctions) (No. 2) Order 1968 (S.I., 1968, No. 1020), dated 28th June, 1968, made by Her Majesty in Council under the Southern Rhodesia Act 1965, a copy of which was laid before this House on 2nd July, be approved.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Harper.]

OVERSEAS CIVIL SERVICE
11.54 p.m.
Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine: It is not very often that we have an opportunity of discussing the problems of the small territories—
Mr. Speaker: Order. Will hon. Members not taking part in the debate leave the Chamber if they do not wish to hear it.
Mr. Godman Irvine: —and on this occasion I think it would not be inappropriate if I took the opportunity of saying how much we in this House appreciate the service which is given by those serving in these small territories. Although we do not have many opportunities of discussing their conditions, or the work they do, I know that many Members greatly appreciate their work.
It came as a surprise to me that the Plowden Report made no reference to Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service. I was under the impression that once the Plowden Report had been accepted all those who were serving in the two different branches of Her Majesty's Service would be enabled to serve in any of the others, but it appears that it was never possible for those who were serving in Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service to transfer to the Home Civil Service, to the Commonwealth Relations Office, or to the Diplomatic Service.
On 27th July, 1967, the Minister made it clear in his reply to one of my Questions that it was not possible for these officers to transfer to the Diplomatic Service, and went on to say that there was a supplementary competition, but the limiting factor about the supplementary competition is that those who are successful in transferring as a result of it receive appointments which are roughly equivalent to those of the people who
1214
have just come down from the universities, and this means that those who are, shall we say, aged 35, or are experienced district officers, do not find that a suitable opening for them.
The problem to which I wish to refer tonight is of interest to those who are serving not only throughout the South Pacific, which contains the territories to which I particularly wish to refer, but the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides. I understand that the arrangement with the Fiji Overseas Service ends in December, so this will be a matter of interest to those in Fiji, too. It is, in fact, a matter of interest to those who are serving throughout the world. It is not only a matter for the South Pacific.
It is from my own observations that the points I want to put to the Minister tonight have arisen, because, owing to the loyalty and the inhibitions of the service I have found that those who are working in different parts of Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service are particularly silent about the conditions under which they work.
I have put down a series of four Questions to successive Ministers, the first in June, 1967, the last in April, 1968. In the last answer which I received reference was made to the position then being such that there was a breathing space, and the Minister said that very shortly he hoped that he would be able to discuss further proposals with those who were serving abroad. But representations had been made to the Commonwealth Office in August, 1966, and it is 15 months since a staffing mission went to the Solomon Islands to discuss these matters.
I hope, therefore, that tonight the Minister is in a position to give us, if not a complete answer to the problem, at least a definite date when he will be able to bring forward some proposals to deal with the matter. It is important that there should be a definite answer to these problems, because the officers serving abroad want to know what their long-term future is.
It is vital not only to them. It is vital to the territories in which they are serving, and the staffing of these territories. It is vital because some of these people at least feel that there is a

1215
lack of interest here in what they are doing, and in their future. Finally, it is vital because there is a loss of first-class men from the service because of this uncertainty which they feel is surrounding them.
There are four difficulties, in particular, to which I should like the Minister to direct his attention. First, officers in the permanent and pensionable Service no longer have any prospect of promotion on transfer to other territories. They see colleagues who happen to have been serving in territories which have received independence getting substantial compensation for loss of their careers and also quick promotion under the new Governments they are serving.
The second difficulty is that there are very limited opportunities for advancement in the territories in which they are still serving. These officers feel considerable aggravation that senior officers come on transfer from other parts of the Commonwealth by appointment on contract to senior posts. Those officers have already been compensated for loss of career. Sometimes other officers come from the home Civil Service and are put in a position superior to some of those in Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service.
The third point is that they face stagnation in their own posts and grave curtailment of their pension prospects, not only because they have no prospect of being promoted or improving their position, but also because of the salary scales available in the smaller and poorer and less advanced territories.
The fourth difficulty is that the officers are immobilised from seeking alternative careers by the loss of pension rights on resignation. They feel that they must, therefore, go on serving where they are, whereas the contract officer not only gets a gratuity about equal to the capitalisation of the former's putative pension which is earned by the same amount of service, but also qualifies for it over a relatively very short contract period, and therefore retains his mobility.
There was a considerable increase in the salary scales in April, 1967, and I am sure that those who are serving are suitably appreciative. But the officers feel that they should be able to opt for a compensation scheme comparable to
1216
those which have been introduced where internal self-government has been granted, with appropriate modification. There are three things I should like to say about that.
First, the members of the Service already face an effective loss of career by stagnation. Their compensation will be based on their final salary, and, therefore, they have not got a very rosy future.
Second, internal self-government is not a prerequisite under the Overseas Service Aid Scheme for introducing a compensation scheme. Therefore, under that ordinance, the Minister could introduce such a scheme if he were so minded.
Finally, the compensation scheme is an established machinery. It is eminently suited to the problem, and should be introduced. If the Minister feels that in some way this would mean that a political inference was to be read into it, it should be introduced in some other guise, so that that difficulty would not arise.
There are four objectives that the Minister might—
Sir George Sinclair: Would my hon. Friend say that the arrangements of the Overseas Services Resettlement Bureau in this country need to be maintained and strengthened while there are people in the difficulties that he has very eloquently described, because it has been able to help to redeploy this very good resource of talent and experience into other occupations in this country?
Mr. Godman Irvine: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, but the problem to which I am asking the House to direct its mind is the problem of keeping the first-class men in the jobs where they are now serving. In the small territories it is necessary that those who are already serving and who have the experience should stay there, and if the Minister can say something tonight to encourage them to stay there that will be preferable to getting them a good job at home.
I will refer briefly to four objections I can see to my suggestion. The first is that the standard of compensation might be regarded by the Minister as far too generous. Should the Minister feel that, it would be quite simple to

1217
introduce a modifying factor of, say 0·50, or 0·75 as an incentive to retain the experienced officer. If that were done I feel confident that those who are serving the Commonwealth in these territories would wish to remain there. It would enable them to continue in the work which they are doing and which they find satisfactory, and would increase tremendously the morale of the service.
The second objection might be that the terms and conditions of service are a matter for the territorial Government. I ask the Minister to bear in mind that when the service was set up in 1954 those who entered were told that this matter would be closely studied and vigilantly watched, and this would, therefore, be a very weak argument for the Minister to use.
The third objection is that it is the luck of the draw. It might be said that one doctor or barrister does better than another because he is fortunate enough to be serving in the right place at the light time. That is an argument which is not analogous to my proposal. A similar analogy might be that the Minister would say that all those who were serving in the Army up to the rank of major would be the regular chaps, but those serving in the senior ranks were to be short service officers, retired officers or even officers from another army.
The last objection is that this is a novel suggestion. On 9th April, 1967, the Minister admitted in answer to a Question I put down that the officers' career prospects have suffered. If it is a novel suggestion, it is so because this problem has not arisen before.
I ask the Minister, first, to give a definite date when he will be able to do something to enable officers serving abroad to plan for the future, and, secondly, to make quite certain that there is a long-term future for those who are serving in Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service.
12.9 a.m.
Mr. Brian Harrison: I and other hon. Members are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rye (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine) for bringing up this matter. I have had the privilege of visiting the Pacific territories as often as any hon. Member and I hope to be there again during the next few weeks.
1218
In fact some records put me still as being in Fiji.
Those of us who have seen the dedicated way in which officers are serving, with no long-term career prospects must be filled with admiration for them. Whilst I think that the pay structure is right, or at least very much better now, it is the actual career structure and the future of these dedicated officers that ought to engage our attention.
I hope that the Minister will find it possible to do as my hon. Friend recommends and either put forward a scheme now or name a date when he will do so.
12.10 a.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. William Whitlock): Dissatisfaction undoubtedly exists among the officers who have been championed by the hon. Members for Rye (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine) and Maldon (Mr. Brian Harrison) tonight. That dissatisfaction is completely understandable.
The main cause is that Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service officers joined at a time when they had reasonable career expectations and could assume that they would not spend their whole career in the Western Pacific. Rapid decolonisation has meant that the opportunities for transfer out of the Western Pacific, in particular, have dwindled, and many of these officers who came to the Western Pacific in the expectation that they would not have to serve there for longer than the normal period of seven years have now served longer.
I find that today more than four out of five H.M.O.C.S. officers have been in the Western Pacific for more than seven years, and, however important their work is, the limitations of the often lonely environment in which they work must affect their morale. These officers feel that serving in these remote areas they have been forgotten men in the Service and that they have, in consequence, suffered not only as regards career prospects, but also as regards salaries and suchlike benefits.
There have been those two forms of dissatisfaction. The first is the one that arose out of the introduction of the Overseas Service Aid Scheme in 1961, and, since the Pacific territories are poor, overseas service aid benefits tended to be kept

1219
low so as not to create an excessive gap between the expatriate and local earnings. This was bearable as long as officers could look forward to transfer out of the Pacific. Today, this is scarcely possible, and in recognition of this fact new levels of O.S.A.S. benefits were approved as from April, 1967, to make service in the Pacific comparable with service elsewhere, and I think it can now be said that dissatisfaction on that score at any rate has been dispelled.
The second form of dissatisfaction arises out of the discrepancy between H.M.O.C.S. officers receiving O.S.A.S. benefits and home Civil Service secondment terms, the latter being more generous. The reason for the difference is that the H.M.O.C.S. officers have opted for a career overseas while the home civil servants have uprooted themselves for one tour or possible two tours in the course of a home-based career.
The hon. Member for Rye was particularly concerned with the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. The representations of the Designated Permanent and Pensionable Officers Association were investigated by a staffing mission from the Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Overseas Development in April, 1967, and in reply to the hon. Gentleman on 9th April I informed him that as a result the level of the expatriate officers' emoluments there was substantially increased from April, 1967, and that, in addition, we were working on measures to improve conditions of service in the longer term to retain the experienced staff as necessary to keep the administration going while meeting their reasonable claim for recognition that their career prospects had suffered.
The problem in the Protectorate, which also exists in the New Hebrides and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, is probably the most acute example of the staff problem created by the process of decolonisation, to which I referred. All serving H.M.O.C.S. officers in dependent territories face the fact that the career prospects which they had originally envisaged when they joined the service have in some measure diminished. In a territory like Hong Kong, where about 1,200 officers serve, the problem can be mitigated by the size and salary levels of the
1220
local public service. But in the Western Pacific the curtailment of career prospects has hit the individual particularly hard.
As I have said, we recognise this problem and we believe that the longer term measures which are under consideration will restore the morale of the officers serving in the Pacific and also take account of the frustration of their career expectations, especially as these cannot be restored so far as the overseas service is concerned. I hope that these measures will be discussed with the Governments and staffs concerned later this year. Beyond saying that, I cannot give hon. Gentlemen satisfaction on the date as to when something specific may come forward, but the discussions will go on.
Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine: But the hon. Gentleman has made no progress since 9th April, 1968, when he said that these matters would be discussed shortly.
Mr. Whitlock: Some progress has been made and, as I have said, these things will continue to be discussed and later this year it may be possible for me to make an announcement. But at this stage I cannot go further.
We continue to recruit large numbers of people on behalf of the overseas countries. In general, this is on short-term contract and carries no guarantee of continued employment since, as local staffs gain experience, recruitment from overseas is bound to decline. In the case, however, of the Western Pacific High Commission territories, although it is no longer possible to offer a lifetime career, and consequently membership of the H.M.O.C.S., in order to bridge the gap until local officers become available, the territorial Governments are engaging professional staff in certain fields, particularly administrative cadets on long term contracts of 10 years' duration. So the pattern is inevitably changing. But whatever the measures devised they cannot restore the days when the unified colonial services provided a career for a lifetime.
Far from decrying the achievements of the Colonial Service or of serving members of the H.M.O.C.S., these developments—and the disadvantages which they brought to some of these officers— serves to emphasise how much they have achieved and are still achieving in carrying on under great difficulty their

1221
task of leading the peoples of the dependent territories towards self-government and independence. In recognition of the special position of H.M.O.C.S. officers who are employed on pensionable terms as servants of the Governments of British dependent territories, a new post of Staff Liaison Officer for that service has been created in the Ministry of Overseas Development. Sir John Field, K.B.E., C.B.E., retiring Governor of St. Helena, has been appointed to the post and has assumed his duties today. He will be responsible primarily for supervising the interests of and maintaining contact with all permanent and pensionable officers of H.M.O.C.S. He will also advise on general questions in connection with the employment of expatriate officers, both pensionable and contract. He will be visiting these territories at intervals to keep in touch with the
1222
Governors and the staffs there about personnel matters.
I hope, therefore, from what I have said that hon. Gentlemen will see that we are very much aware of the problem they have spotlighted and are doing our best to overcome it. I know that the hon. Member for Rye, in particular, will continue to watch over the interests of these officers, who are doing such a worthwhile job in extremely trying circumstances, and I hope that, at a later stage, we will be able to make a further announcement about the results of the discussions we are conducting that will be pleasing to some of the people he has spoken so well for tonight.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes past Twelve o'clock.

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Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Lincoln.

BIAFRA: UNITED NATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL AID
2.35 p.m.
LORD ROWLEY: 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 take the initiative and instruct their representative on the Security Council to propose that an international operation be organised to supply food and drugs to the starving population of Biafra.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD CHALFONT): My Lords, I do not think it would be appropriate to initiate a proposal of this kind in the Security Council which, under the Charter, is concerned with the maintenance of international peace and security, not with the relief of suffering. It is the Specialised Agencies of the United Nations which are particularly concerned with relief work. In this connection the United Nations Secretary-General, U Thant, announced in
2
Geneva on July 10 that he had already assured the Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, through which he considered all international relief to Nigeria should be channelled, of his fullest co-operation. U Thant had already had useful discussions with the heads of some of the Specialised United Nations Agencies involved in this humanitarian work and undertook to pursue the matter further with the whole family of United Nations agencies on his return to New York on July 13.
LORD ROWLEY: My Lords, in view of the objections of Colonel Ojukwu to British participation in this relief work, should not an international operation be organised which could be operated by the International Red Cross but be under the ægis of the United Nations? Secondly, to meet the objections of the Prime Minister of Nigeria, General Gowon, could not arrangements be made for all relief planes to be inspected by representatives of the International Red Cross and a representative of General Gowon before taking off for Biafran territory?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords. to the first part of my noble friend's question I would answer that the International Red Cross are doing what they can to impress on Colonel Ojukwu the fact that the relief operation is a purely humanitarian effort designed to save lives, and I they are trying to persuade him to agree to a land route to make safe corridors for this relief to get into the Ibo part of Nigeria. I must make it quite clear that we are in no position to force Colonel Ojukwu or to force this issue at all, and

3
we can only call on those who have influence with him that now is the time to use it in the interests of relieving the suffering in Nigeria as a whole.
On the point about air supplies, here again, as I said, the main co-ordinating agency must be the International Red Cross and we hope that the discussions between them and General Gowon and the Federal authorities which are going on it the moment will find ways of getting he relief supplies where they are so badly needed. I should also say that Lord Hunt is in touch with the Red Cross and the Federal authorities. I again make the point which has been made previously by my noble friend: that to get the large quantities of food needed to make any impression on the problem, air supply will not be enough; we must have land corridors.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, however admirable the international organisations for relief are—and they are indeed admirable—they simply cannot have the same authority as the United Nations between one side and another in a civil war of this nature. Disregarding the legalistic side of it, is this not above all the sort of occasion where the United Nations should intervene, and intervene beneficially?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, as I said, we are in no position to force this issue, and I believe it would be inappropriate for us to suggest forcing it in that way. I agree that this is a terrible problem and one upon which international relief organisations have so far failed to make very much impression. I believe we should give them time to do it. I know time is short; I am not suggesting there is any lack of urgency, but it is a matter for the Specialised Agencies of the United Nations and I do not think there would be much profit in trying to force the issue beyond that.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he realises that this has now become a human calamity which overrides political considerations? Might not the United Nations contribute in two ways? First, could not the Security Council instruct U Thant to invite urgently all member States to participate in a vast relief
4
project by air and land, guaranteeing to both sides neutrality of the conditions of relief? And, secondly, could it not carry a resolution calling for immediate cease fire and negotiations for a settlement, either through the Commonwealth or through the Organisation for African Unity'? Has not this become a human disaster which demands that we should break through the legalistic barriers which now prevent relief to 3,000 children dying every day and a million in a month?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, of course I am aware that this is a vast and terrible human problem. I do not suppose there is any Member of your Lordships' House who is not as well aware of it as is my noble friend. I can only say to him that we understand that the Secretary-General, who is, after all, the key figure in the whole of this matter, is urgently considering the whole question. I can say no more about that at this moment except to say that if he can devise some sort of solution to or some sort of contribution to solving the problem, Her Majesty's Government will gladly support any arrangements he is able to make with the Federal Government to help with relief operations. There are two problems here. One is the one my noble friend mentioned, the need to bring the war to an end, to achieve a cease fire and solve what problems lie beneath the civil war. But the more immediate problem is to try to relieve the suffering caused by the civil war. This must be done through the Specialised Agencies of the United Nations, and the Secretary-General is working very hard on this problem.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, I am sure, quite by chance, he is giving the impression that he is more worried about the form in which things are being done than about what is being done? Surely this is an occasion when the United Nations, which represents all nations, should be able to do something constructive and useful, and surely the Government representing us should be pressing them to do it.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, of course I am not more interested in the form than the substance of the problem. I am surprised that the noble Lord should

5
suggest that, and if I have given that impression I apologise to him and to the House. We are gravely concerned about the substance of the problem. We believe that for the moment the best way to move towards a solution is to allow U Thant, the Secretary General, to continue with the work and with the consultations that he is holding. I would point out to my noble friend—and this has been said often enough from his side of the House —that we do not control the United Nations; we are only members of it. I believe that we may soon hear some signs of progress from the Secretary General, and I beg your Lordships to allow him to complete his consultations before doing anything to force this issue further.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, I should like to ask two brief questions of the noble Lord, if I may. The first is this. In this emergency do Her Majesty's Government accept the need for immediate action, through the International Red Cross or though the United Nations, or unilaterally by this country, against the wishes of the authorities, both in Lagos and in Biafra, should such a step become necessary? The second question that I want to ask is whether Her Majesty's Government accept the fact that the moral case for a ban on the export of arms to Nigeria is now unanswerable?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot go all the way with the noble Lord on either of his questions. I would have grave reservations about saying that Her Majesty's Government would support action taken in defiance of the wishes of a Sovereign State. I would also take issue with him about the unquestionable nature of the moral case against supplying arms to the Federal Government. 'He is well aware of the arguments behind the fact that we continue to supply arms to the Federal Government of Nigeria, which we regard as the legal Government. As I say, this is a Sovereign State, and I should be quite reluctant to associate the Government with any suggestion that we should do something against its express wishes.
LORD BOOTHBY: It remains a scandal!
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend two
6
questions. He has told the House that there were certain legal implications which prevented us taking the initiative in the Security Council. Can he say whether there is any precedent for invoking the moral law? That is my first question. Secondly, are we, every day or every week, still sending arms to Nigeria?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, the second part of my noble friend's question I think I have answered by implication. We have not changed our policy of supplying arms, as we did in the past, to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
LORD BOOTHBY: Shame!
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, so far as the first part of my noble friend's question is concerned, I did not actually say that there were legal difficulties, or legalistic difficulties about this. The fact is that the Charter of the United Nations lays down that the Security Council is concerned with the maintenance of international peace and security. All we have said is that the Security Council is not the proper agency for solving this problem; the proper agencies are the Specialised Agencies through which we, Lord Hunt, and the Secretary General of the United Nations are working.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, on the question of arms supply, is it the fact that we are supplying the bulk of the automatic and small arms which are causing the casualties, and if we are, is it not absolutely wicked?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, while I agree that the supply of arms to the Federal Government is a matter of great importance and gravity, it is outside the framework of the orginal Question, and I must ask the noble Lord to put down another Question.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, as the original Question concerns relief, may I ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware that the continuance of the supply of arms to Nigeria is proving a hindrance to the acceptance of relief by starving people in the Biafran territory? Does not that humanitarian consideration of a desperate kind call for a reconsideration of Her Majesty's Government's policy concerning arms?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I am aware of the deep feeling that exists in the House about this particular problem of the supply of arms to the Federal Government. I can only say that, having experienced the depth of that feeling and taken the sense of your Lordships' House, I will see that it is brought to the attention of my right honourable friend.
LORD ROWLEY: My Lords, in view of the statement by my noble friend that U Thant is making or is expected to make a statement this afternoon, may I ask my noble friend whether he will undertake to make a Statement to this House tomorrow based on the statement of the Secretary General?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I think I should correct a misapprehension which may be my fault. I did not say that U Thant was about to make a statement this afternoon. I said that I hoped that we would be hearing something from him soon. I am not aware of the exact time or date of any statement; but if a statement is made, I will try, through the usual channels, to bring it to the attention of your Lordships' House.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend one further question? Is it not the case that the holding up of relief is due to the fact that there is a difference between the Lagos Government and the Biafran Administration regarding the supervision of that relief? Is he aware that many of us have urged, both on General Gowan and Colonel Ojukwu, that they should accept International Red Cross supervision of the relief that is provided? Would not my noble friend also agree that, so long as Her Majesty's Government are providing arms to one side, it would be very difficult indeed to get the Biafran Government to agree to the conditions of cooperation for that relief?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, so far as the question of the supply of arms is concerned I have, as I said, appreciated the deep feeling that exists in your Lordships' House. I can do no more than to say that I will bring it to the attention of my right honourable friend. I can make no other promise at this time in your Lordships' House.
I think I have answered the other part of my noble friend's question. We
8
are hopeful that the discussions that are going on now between the Red Cross and the Federal Government, and between Lord Hunt and the Federal Government and the Red Cross, will result in some effective system of control and inspection being implemented. But I cannot promise any further than that.
BARONESS ASQUITH OF YARNBURY: My Lords, I understand that the Government base their case for supplying arms to Nigeria on the fact that the Government of Nigeria is the legal Government. Do not the Government recognise the right of secession in some cases, and the exercise of secession? It happened, after all, with this country in the case of Ireland; and, surely, it would have been thoroughly justified if some part of Germany had seceded from Hitler.
THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, we have had a quarter of an hour on this Question. I recognise that this is a matter of great concern to the House, but it is also my duty to draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that we really ought to be going on to another Question.

GIBRALTAR: USE OF MALTESE LABOUR
2.51 p.m.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government:

1. Whether they have consulted with the Maltese Government as to the possibility of supplying Maltese labour to Gibraltar should the Spanish problems increase; and

2. Whether, in view of the shortage of housing accommodation in Gibraltar, it would be possible to make use of one or two obsolescent liners for the time being.]

LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, at the Gibraltar Government's request we asked the Maltese authorities about the possibilities of attracting Maltese labour to Gibraltar. We were advised that the

9
prospects of success of such a project were small. I understand that nevertheless the Gibraltar Government has a limited scheme of this nature under urgent consideration. In answer to the second part of the noble Lady's question, I can assure her that the practicability of stationing a liner at Gibraltar to serve as a hostel for workers has already been closely examined. Expert opinion was that the cost of it would be disproportionately large. Furthermore, the shortage of housing accommodation in Gibraltar is not as acute now as it was. Under their development plan the Gibraltar Government are providing housing not only for Gibraltarians but also for immigrant labour which they wish to attract to Gibraltar for permanent settlement.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the full answer he has given. Is he aware that I was in Malta last week and I was left with the impression that this matter had not recently been discussed? I stand corrected if the Minister says it has been. Would the Minister agree that if we could get the Gibraltese and the Maltese to work together to solve their mutual problems is would he of very great help to both sides?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I agree that it would be a great help. We are now considering this whole problem with the Government of Gibraltar—especially the problem of attracting labour from Malta to Gibraltar—a.nd if there appears to be any prospect of success when those consultations are complete we will, of course, approach the Government of Malta again.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, as Her Majesty's Government have decided, and quite rightly so, to send a manpower mission to Gibraltar—and I would congratulate them on their choice of members of this mission—I presume they will be looking at this question in view of the terms of reference of this manpower mission. May I ask the noble Lord whether their findings and recommendations will be made available to Parliament? With regard to the terms of reference, could the noble Lord say what is specifically meant by "future developments" in this context?
LORD CHALFONT: I am grateful for what the noble Lord has said about this mission and its composition. As the House will know, Lord Beeching has agreed to head the mission and my noble friend Lord Delacourt-Smith has agreed to be the other member. The terms of reference, as announced last Thursday, are to review Gibraltar's manpower requirements, taking into account future developments. I cannot go into any more detail about those terms of reference, nor can I give at the moment an undertaking about how the report will be dealt with when it is received, but perhaps if the noble Lord will revert to the question a little later we may be able to give him an answer.
LORD GRIDLEY: My Lords, could the Minister say anything more about housing in Gibraltar? When I was there about ten days ago I asked what the situation was regarding housing and I was given the answer that it was extremely difficult for Gibraltarians to obtain property in which to live. In answer to my noble friend the noble Lord, he has said that the Gibraltar Government were attempting to redress the balance in that respect.
LORD CHALFONT: I cannot give any great details about this. There is a housing development scheme under way in Gibraltar. I understand it has gore some way to relieving the severe housing shortage to such an extent that the Gibraltar Government are now setting aside fifty flats a year—it does not sound much—for the housing of immigrant workers alone under their immigration policy. So I think it is true to say the situation is better than it was.
LORD IRONSIDE: My Lords, would the noble Lord say whether there is any redundancy among dockyard workers in Malta? That is the type of work that would be required in Gibraltar in certain circumstances.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, that is another question. The redundancy of Maltese labour is outside the framework of the original Question, but perhaps, if my noble Leader would allow me, I could say that the situation in Malta is much better than it was in respect to unemployment and redundancy. It is for that reason that there is some difficulty in getting people to go to Gibraltar.

BUSINESS
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, despite what may have been said in other means of communication, dinner will be served this evening from 7.0 to 8.30 p.m. I also understand it will be similarly available on Thursday.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
2.56 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That, until the House rises for the Summer Recess, Standing Orders No. 35 (Arrangement of the Order Paper) and 41 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be suspended, and that Government business do have, except with the consent of the Government, precedence over other business during the same period.—(Lord Shackleton.)
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord, the Leader of the House, can tell us when the House is going to rise for the Summer Recess. Can he confirm or deny the rumours that we shall be sitting for one week after the House of Commons have gone to their summer holidays—and they will not even be sitting after lunch?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am not sure that that matter arises on this particular Motion. It is customary to announce simultaneously in both Houses the Recesses and the rising of Parliament. I think the noble Lord perhaps has a point in suggesting that if we are going to sit this length of time there is no need for us to make the simultaneous announcement. On the other hand, if we are going to sit later there is an argument that we should make the announcement later. I think it is possible, from internal evidence on the Order Paper, to see that we shall be sitting until the end of this month, assuming that those Orders are fulfilled. But it would not be appropriate for me to comment on the intentions of another place.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, could the noble Lord give us something a little
12
more definite, because we all have our arrangements to make, and it is very difficult, and sometimes very expensive, to make arrangements at the last moment.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I appreciate the importance of this matter to individual Members. I should not like to suggest that I am prepared to give personal advice to any noble Lord in difficulty, but clearly it is hoped that an early announcement will be made.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.

INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND BILL
2.58 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Bill is deceptively short. It is in fact one of the most hopeful and important measures ever to come before your Lordships' House. It is about paper gold. Gold has always had a fascination for mankind. It is an irrational thing, if you like, because of course the practical uses of gold are limited. Before the First World War gold was the universal money, used both internally and externally. Though before 1914 it was necessary to supplement gold by the issue of notes, even in those days the notes were freely exchangeable for gold. Nowadays there is no country in the world in which gold coin is the basis of the currency as it was in those days. For internal purposes, everywhere we have "managed" currencies.
In international affairs, however, we have not moved so far. We no longer have the gold standard in its old form, but gold still is, in an important sense, the basic element in the international monetary system. It accounts for about 40 billion dollars out of the world's total of about 70 billion dollars of international reserves. And because the belief in gold is still strong, it will continue to play an important part for many years to come. But this means that for an

13
important part of its international reserves the world is dependent on the rate at which the metal can be dug out of the ground. What we need is a means of creating international reserves on the basis of a rational and collective judgment about the world's needs.
It is many years now since Lord Keynes put forward proposals in his plan for "Bancor", a new form of international money, proposals which caught the imagination of many people. His ideas were too Far-reaching for his time, but they were an important stage in the evolution of opinion to the point at which we are at least able to establish a genuinely international paper asset, resting on the agreement of the nations of the world to uphold its value. The S.D.R. scheme tray seem to many people a very modest beginning, but in the long history of the development of international monetary affairs, it is a new departure of great importance.
The essence of S.D.Rs. is that they will he created by the I.M.F. without any subscription of gold or currency by countries which take part in the scheme. This is the most important difference between S.D.Rs. and existing drawing rights in the Fund. It does not of course mean that the S.D.R. scheme is an unconditional licence to print money on an international scale. S.D.Rs. will be allocated in proportion to Fund quotas, and the amount to be created at any one time and the rate at which they will be allocated, will be matters for the Fund to decide collectively. In any decision of the Fund about the amount of S.D.Rs. to be created and allocated, a crucial factor will be the judgment of the Fund about the world's total need for new liquidity.
It follows, of course, that S.D.Rs. cannot be called into being simply to solve a situation of payments imbalance. It is fundamental to the scheme, and indeed a precondition of its activation, that participating countries should take positive measures towards restoring equilibrium to their own balance of payments.
The S.D.R. scheme will stand on the foundation of the existing world monetary system and we have got to make sure that that is a stable foundation. The measures which we have taken to correct our balance of payments and the
14
measures the Americans are now taking are a major contribution to that stability. That is why the signatories of the March Washington communiqué expressed the view that, with the prospective coming into force of the S.D.R. scheme, existing stocks of monetary gold were adequate. In this sense the description of S.D.Rs as "paper gold" is apt. The value of S.D.Rs will be related to a given weight of gold. Their acceptability will be based on the fact that they will be backed by participating countries' existing holdings of gold and currency, for which they will be exchangeable on certain conditions. This means that they will be effectively as good as gold or currency, and we have stated our intention to include any United Kingdom holdings of S.D.Rs as an addition to our reserves.
My Lords, I have dealt in general terms with the nature and purpose of S.D.Rs. A more thorough explanation is in the White Paper (Cmnd. 3662) which I would urge noble Lords to study, if they have not already done co. As the White Paper makes clear, the legal framework of the scheme is being provided by amendments to the Articles of Agreement of the I.M.F. These amendments have been approved by an overwhelming majority of the Governors of the Fund—in a postal vote which ended on May 31—and on the basis of this approval the Fund is now seeking formal confirmation from member Governments that they accept the amendments The process of enactment will be complete as soon as the Fund has received acceptance from three-fifths of the members having four-fifths of the voting power. In common with many other member countries the United Kingdom Government could not participate in the S.D.R. scheme without new statutory powers. We are therefore asking Parliament by means of this Bill to equip us with the necessary new powers before notifying the Fund that we accept the amendments to the Articles embodying the S.D.R. scheme.
The purpose of the Bill can be quite simply stated. It is to extend the existing powers of the Treasury in relation to the Exchange Equalisation Account to engage in all transactions in S.D.Rs, under the amendments. The Appendix to the White Paper, containing the amendments, is essentially a companion document to the Bill, since the powers

15
under the Bill are determined by the amendments. A similar procedure was used for the Bretton Woods Agreement Act of 1945. The choice of the Exchange Equalisation Account as the agent and depository for all the Government's dealing in S.D.Rs was a natural one.
There is one footnote which I ought to add to the Bill and the White Paper, in the interests of clarity. I have been talking as if the Bill and White Paper were concerned exclusively with the Special Drawing Rights scheme. A number of other amendments to the Fund's Articles of Agreement are proposed besides those which embody the S.D.R. scheme. The most important relate to the voting procedures in the Fund. They involve changes in the weighted majorities required for certain decisions under the Fund's Articles. These other amendments are described in pages 15 to 20 of the Appendix to the White Paper. There are one or two minor and highly technical consequences for certain transactions with the I.M.F. involving the E.E.A. My Lords, the major objective at the outset must be to get the machinery for creating S.D.R.s to run smoothly, and to gain acceptability for the new asset as a medium of international settlement. I ask your Lordships' House to give a Second Reading to the present Bill in the confident hope that we shall see the achievement of this objective well within the lifetime of the present Parliament.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(Lord Beswick.)
3.7 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, this Bill asks Parliament to give its consent to an international scheme to which Her Majesty's Government have agreed. Any criticisms which any of your Lordships may have to make of the scheme are not necessarily or primarily criticisms of Her Majesty's Government. We all know that in order to get an international agreement at all on a matter of this kind the United Kingdom Government may be compelled to accept a great deal less than they would have liked. I am afraid that I cannot agree with the noble Lord's description of the scheme which this Bill asks us to approve as a great advance in the control of world currency. I am deeply disappointed that the recent conferences at Rio and Stockholm have
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produced nothing more than this pitiful little mouse which we are now asked to welcome. I always like to be kind to small animals, but nothing could be more untrue than to describe this scheme as a great advance, still less as a novel movement. It is really nothing more than a very under-sized and rather crippled imitation of the plan which the late Lord Keynes first proposed at Bretton Woods 25 years ago but which proved unacceptable to our allies.
I do not want to trouble your Lordship with many figures, but it has been calculated in the International Monetary Fund publication, International Financial Statistics, that for the two pre-war years the total amount of world monetary reserves (at that time they were over 90 per cent. gold), including convertible currency held as reserves by the central banks, was greater than the annual amount of world imports: to be exact 107 per cent. of the total amount of world imports. Now, in the 1960s, the total amount of world reserves including everything—the gold tranche and the currency reserves held by the International Monetary Fund, and all the reserve funds held by all the central banks—is, I believe, not more than 45 per cent. of the average annual imports of all trading countries added together.
In 1937–38 the total amount of world imports was, I think, about 27,000 million dollars, and the total amount of world reserves was about 29,000 million dollars—substantially more. Now, in the 1960s, the latest figure of imports I have seen, which is probably a year or two out of date, was 160,000 million dollars, and the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, has just given us the figure for the total amount of reserve currencies of 70.000 million dollars, of which 40,000 million is gold and 30,000 million is paper currency. That is a great deal less than half of the total amount of world trade arrived at by adding together everybody's imports.
There you have the reason why there is so much difficulty among trading nations in preserving any kind of convertibility in their currencies. They are operating on such a very thin shoestring of reserves of international credit money that they cannot carry on successfully for more than a year or two, without finding themselves with such a large trade deficit

17
that they have to take un-neighbourly steps to prevent other people getting any of their currency and to keep out other people's imports.
Twenty-five years ago at Bretton Woods, Keynes' original plan for a clearing union would immediately have increased, in the form of international paper currency, the total amount of world credit reserves by no less than 25,000 million dollars, which might have been right for that time. In the event, the International Monetary Fund, which Keynes was compelled to accept as a very poor second best, started off at its inception with just over 8,000 million dollars-worth of currency reserves. Since then the two increases which have taken place—the 50 per cent. increase in 1959, and then the 25 per cent. increase at Tokyo in 1964 —have been nothing like commensurate with the growth of world trade. The Tokyo increase amounted in absolute figures to the sum of 4,000 million dollars.
The best estimate that we can get from the Government, which was given in another place a week or two ago, of the additional amount of monetary reserves which will be added to the world's stock by this scheme, is that in the first five years after it has been activated—and remember, my Lords, that it is not likely to be activated until 1970—it will be somewhere between 1,000 million dollars and 5,000 million dollars. There you have the measure of the hopeless inadequacy of this scheme to deal with the world's greatest economic problem.
I should like to compliment the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, on the clarity with which he introduced the Bill. He advised us to read the Government's White Paper (Cmnd. 3662), which I have no doubt many of your Lordships have attempted to do. The first six pages of it contain the Government's own explanation and are, I think, very good and are clearly expressed, as was the noble Lord's own speech. But I am afraid I cannot say the same for the next 46 pages, which contain the Report by the Executive Directors of the International Monetary Fund. I think this is a very good example of what the late Lord Keynes used to describe by the word "Cherokee", which he invented, and which meant the translation of English into incomprehensible jargon.
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I have often been told that international bankers do this quite deliberately, because they do not think it is good for politicians to understand what they are trying to do, being afraid that the politicians, who know even less about it than they, may interfere if they get to know what they are up to. That is supposed to be the reason why the bankers often clothe their reports or proposals in language of such impenetrable obscurity that it cannot be understood, even by the most intelligent member of the United States Congress, so that neither that legislative assembly nor any other is likely to interfere.
That is why they have to describe what I think is really a very simple change in the rules governing the purchase of gold tranches by saying this:
" By permitting the exclusion of purchases under the compensatory financing facility and the holdings of currency acquired by the Fund as a result of those purchases, the definition in Article XIX(j) will make it possible for the Fund to continue the present practice of treating the compensatory financing facility as separate for the purpose of applying the Fund's policies on the use of its resources."
I should not object to this obscurity —in fact, I should welcome it—if only it covered something substantial and interesting. But it is a little hard to read through it and then to realise that it covers only a possible 1½ per cent. increase, or, at the best, a 6 or 6½ per cent. increase in the present world reserves of which there is such a pitiful shortage at the present time.
The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, told us something about gold, and the reason why we should not go on with &old as the chief credit base, and a good deal was said about that question when this Bill was introduced into another place. In the Government's White Paper, which gives a clear explanation of what they are trying to do, they deal with this point in paragraph 7, where they say:
" It is sometimes suggested that the problem could be solved by increasing the price of gold, but Her Majesty's Government, in common with most other Governments, believe that this would do more harm than good, and would mark a retreat from the concept of rational management of the world monetary system."
I do not know exactly how you retreat from a concept, but this sentence would

19
be very true if only it could read that it
" would do more harm than good, because it would mark a retreat from the reality of rational management of the world monetary system."
The position is that we do not have the reality; and what is the use of talking about not wanting a retreat from a concept, when there seems to be no immediate prospect of ever having the reality?
The noble Lord gave us the proportion —40,000 million dollars of gold reserves, compared with only 30,000 million dollars of paper. Of course, what we ought to have, and what Lord Keynes said we ought to have 25 years ago, is what he called a quantum of international credit, not determined in an unpredictable and irrelevant manner such as the production of gold, but governed by the actual requirements of world commerce. That, my Lords, is precisely what we have not got. We have got world reserves, a world monetary system which is still mainly governed by the price of gold; but by holding down artificially the price of gold to perhaps half of what it would have been if it had moved in step with other commodities we have immensely reduced the value of these gold reserves. We are getting the worst of both worlds: we have halved the usefulness of such gold as we have and we have not provided anything like enough paper currency to make up the difference—and that is the root of all our difficulties.
Of course, if we could have enough special drawing rights to create another 70,000 million dollars, perhaps, of reserve currency, then we might be able to get on without gold at all, and the price would not matter. But surely it is reasonable to point out—and it is a most tragic irony, really—that if there had never been any International Monetary Fund at all, if we had had no international monetary organisation after the war and if gold had been allowed to find its true market value, we should have far more world reserves than we have now and we should all be in a better position than we are now. That, of course, is the real practical argument in favour of the French Government's contention that we ought to go back to the gold standard, which is theoretically quite indefensible.
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But if you have got in practice to have more than half your world reserves in the shape of gold, then why not have its true value, which would immensely increase the usefulness to the world of these gold reserves?
My Lords, I am afraid there is a great disposition among both bankers and other people, too, to fall into the fallacy of thinking that national balances and deficits are comparable to the balances and deficits of the income and expenditure of a private individual, a firm or a business—which of course they are not. You cannot carry on world trade without somebody having a deficit, because the total amount of deficits and surpluses in international trading accountancy must balance, and the purpose of having reserves is to enable world economic growth to go on over a considerable period while some countries have an inevitable deficit on their trading account. In the case of businesses or companies, it is perfectly possible for every single tradesman, every company, every business, to make a profit, and provided that some of that profit goes into investment, new capital, then everybody will get richer and everybody's prosperity will increase.
The question of whether, say, the county of Kent or the county of Surrey has a favourable or unfavourable balance with the other does not matter to the economy of the country. It simply means that if, say, in the year 1968, Kent has a favourable balance, the people of Kent have then acquired more claims in Surrey on the national pool of money than the people of Surrey have done in Kent. And if the world had a unified system of commerce and currency then, of course, the question of whether Britain or France or Belgium or the United States had a deficit or a surplus would not matter any more than that. But what has happened nationally is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, told us, every great trading country now, whether it is a free country or a totalitarian country, has a managed internal currency. Even those countries which use gold to a large extent have a managed currency; and although they have not all managed it perfectly, or even well, they have on the whole managed it a good deal better than if it had been left to the blind forces of gold which it used to be forty years ago. But that has not happened with world

21
international currency. For world international currency we have failed to have a sensible managed plan, and the international credit resources which we have created are pitifully inadequate to finance the growing international commerce of the modern world.
My Lords, we must of course accept this Bill for what it is worth, but do not let us represent it as a giant stride forwards in world economic affairs. It is not. The agreement to which this Bill gives assent is in fact more than twenty years too late and nearly twenty times too little; and that is the only thing I can say about it. If you try to make out that it is anything better you will only create disappointment later on and, what is worse, you may prevent everybody from trying to do something better than is done in this agreement.
3.27 p.m.
LORD CARRON: My Lords, as an engineer just touching on politics and banking very marginally indeed, I do not know that I should want to accept particularly any of the strictures that might be implied in the noble Earl's observations. I must say that all of us appreciate his disappointment that we have not been able to go further in this field. At the same time, we have to realise the background against which the negotiations were set. I think it causes many of us massive surprise that we have been able to advance even so far as we have gone, having regard to the intransigence of many of our international—shall I say? —friends. From the attitudes that have been displayed in certain quarters in the last two or three years I should have thought it almost impossible to have reached the stage we have reached now.
This Bill does not attract the interest and spectacular treatment accorded to many Bills discussed in recent times in your Lordships' House and another place. Neither has it the dimensions of many other Bills. However, it can be stated with truth that few have possessed the potentiality for medium-term and longterm impact upon the fortunes of nations as that contained within the subject-matter of this Bill. We are invited to approve a course of action which is designed to remove a very real threat to international trade and consequently a threat to the wellbeing of nations, especially our own, and to provide a means to
22
stimulate world trade to the increasing benefit of nations. If success is achieved by the adoption of the S.D.R. scheme, the future prospects of the developing nations will be very considerably enhanced.
As has been said, the White Paper [Cmnd. 3662] explains in detail the provisions of the S.D.R. scheme in the explanatory note and in the appendix. It is unfortunate, but I suppose inevitable, that more often than not there is misunderstanding of international financial operations resulting in quite wrong assessments of the realities. I hope your Lordships will agree that it would not be amiss to spend a few moments in having r look at the reasons for the initiation of the S.D.R. scheme and at what is involved, in rather simpler terms than those of the White Paper. It should be emphasised that the S.D.R. scheme is generally said to represent the first step—and I underscore "first"—towards a solution of the serious problem of international liquidity. I think it would be useful to consider briefly the nature of the problem.
As your Lordships are aware, international liquidity is the supply of means of payment available to official holders for international settlements. For practical purposes, this means gold and currencies, principally United States dollars and sterling, to which is usually added reserve positions in the I.M.F.: that is, the amount which countries can draw from the Fund virtually on demand. It is important to remember that although gold is only one element in the total supply, the remaining elements derive their acceptability in part from the fact that, directly or indirectly, they are exchangeable for gold. Gold is therefore the basis of the international monetary system. In recent years a number of disturbing trends have emerged. First, the total supply of international liquidity has expanded much less rapidly than international trade. In very broad terms this means that the cushion available to meet fluctuations in international trade has been shrinking, relatively speaking. The risk that countries might, as a result, have to restrict international trade has grown commensurately. At the same time, not only has the proportion of gold in total reserves been falling, but so, too, has the absolute level.
This situation will not correct itself autonomously. Indeed, the chances are

23
that if nothing is done, it will get worse. It is not possible to increase the rate of gold production; indeed, this is likely to decline in the years ahead; and both this country and the United States have adopted policies designed to bring about surpluses in their balance of payments which will restrict the amount of reserve currencies available for international settlements.
This is the problem which the S.D.R. system is designed to help solve. It will provide a means of making controlled additions to world liquidity in a rational manner. The supply of international liquidity will then be less dependent on the United States' or the United Kingdom's balance-of-payments deficits (which are unacceptable domestically as well as internationally) and on the vagaries of gold production and sales. The new scheme will give the international community a chance to ensure that the world's productive capacity is not grossly underemployed for want of international reserves or, indeed, grossly over-employed as a result of the superfluity of them—because S.D.Rs. can be cancelled as well as created. Moreover, the distribution of the new reserve asset will not, like gold, depend on the accident of geography but will be made to all members of the I.M.F. which wish to participate, in proportion to their existing quotas.
I would emphasise strongly, and I hope it is clear from what I have said, that the S.D.R. scheme is not designed either to provide a solution to our balance-of-payments problem or to obviate the need to find a solution. Indeed, the Scheme will not come into operation until there is convincing evidence of progress towards a better balance-of-payments equilibrium in the world. Nor must the Scheme be regarded as a panacea for all the economic ills of the world. It is, as I mentioned earlier, a first step and is, therefore, a point of departure rather than a point of arrival. Doubtless there will be a long road to travel before the world has developed an international monetary system which is fully adequate to ensure the continued expansion of world trade and the continued growth of prosperity. But let no-one doubt the profound importance of the fact that this first step is now being taken.
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My Lords, may I spend a few moments in presenting in such simple terms as I understand, how the scheme will operate? S.D.Rs. will be activated on the initiative of the Managing Director of the I.M.F. as and when the world balance of payments is seen to be in better equilibrium and the need for an increase in liquidity is generally agreed to exist. In practice, for the first activation a substantial reduction (but not the complete elimination) of the U.S. deficit will probably be necessary. To activate the Scheme will require an 85 per cent. majority of the voting power of I.M.F. members. The significance of this is that if all the E.E.C. countries vote together they can prevent activation, their combined voting power being 16·5 per cent.; the U.S.A., 22 per cent. and the United Kingdom, 10·4 per cent. A decision will normally be taken to make annual allocations over a five-year period with the possibility of varying the annual rate within the period should the situation warrant it.
There has been little discussion over the amounts likely to be dispersed, but, informally, it is generally agreed that, for the first allocation, a total of 1,000 million dollars a year is the most probable. Out of this total, every country will receive an allocation in proportion to its I.M.F. quota. Since total official reserves are around 70 billion dollars, we may expect the new scheme to add some 1½ per cent. a year. The United Kingdom would get about 100 million dollars a year and the United States about 200 million dollars.
The form that the facility will take will be a Special Drawing Right in an affiliate account of the I.M.F. Some countries, for example, France, claim that this indicates that what is being created is simply a new form of credit, not a new reserve asset. It is true that the United States and the United Kingdom, together with a number of other countries, would have preferred the facility to take the form of a unit, to emphasise its asset-like qualities, but the distinction is largely a verbal one. The outline scheme states plainly that what is envisaged is a supplement to existing reserve assets. The S.D.R. will be available to a country to purchase convertible currency unconditionally; there will be no question of having to submit to a

25
judgment by other countries on prospects of policies, as with an I.M.F. credit tranche. Moreover, most countries will be including their S.D.Rs. in their official published reserves.
It is true that a number of rules for the transfer of Drawing Rights have been laid down. Broadly, countries are expected to use S.D.Rs. only when their total reserves are failing and not simply to change the composition of their reserves. There is a limit (three times the quota) to the amount of S.D.Rs. which a country is obliged to accept. Moreover, there is to be some obligation to "reconstitute" S.D.Rs. This is a complicated and technical matter which has been the subject of prolonged debate in the Group of Ten meetings. The formula which has emerged is that over any five-year period a member's net average use of the new facility should not exceed 70 per cent. of its allocation. This means, if we assume that for the United Kingdom the first distribution will be 100 million dollars a year, that during the first five years the United Kingdom will be able to make net purchases of 350 million dollars of foreign currencies with her S.D.Rs.
But the timing of the use of the facility is left entirely to the country concerned. Provided the balance-of-payments position justified it, a country could use all its allocation for the first three-and-a-half years and then hold intact its allocation for the last one-and-a-half years. Alternatively, it could use 70 per cent. each year. If in one year it was a net receiver of S.D.Rs. from other countries, providing them with corresponding amounts of currency, then this excess over its allocation would be taken into account and would enable it to use its Drawing Rights more fully in subsequent years.
My Lords, on the whole question of "reconstitution" it is perhaps worth emphasising that this will not mean repayment of anything in the normal sense. Since most countries will include S.D.R.s in their reserves, reconstitution of these rights, that is, the sale of some dollars to purchase some Drawing Rights, will not affect the total of a country's reserves, only its composition. Although it will be possible for countries to make bilateral deals with one another to exchange Drawing Rights for currency, all
26
the accounting will be done by the I.M.F. staff and in many sales and purchases of S.D.Rs. they will provide guidance and help as to which countries might most appropriately take part—very much as they do now on the question of which currencies are to be involved in an I.M.F. drawing.
The various rules governing the use of S.D.Rs. should be seen less as restrictions on individual countries' freedom to use the new facility than an arrangement to ensure credibility and status of the facility itself. Since the facility is to be genuinely "created out of nothing" and to have no backing in the normal, sense of currencies of gold, it is necessary, at least at the outset, to have some rules which will ensure that it is not abused; that it will circulate among all countries and will not end up in unduly large quantities in the holdings of one or two countries. It is to be hoped, and indeed expected, that as we gain experience with the use of the new facility, the need for strict rules will gradually diminish until it becomes fully comparable with gold or the reserve currencies.
As I mentioned and as your Lordships are aware, the precise technical details are contained in the White Paper. May I also commend to your Lordships a perusal of the article by Mr. L. P. Thompson-McCausland in the June issue of the Bank of England Bulletin—if I may say so, one of the most, if not the most, informative publication in the United Kingdom. I have tried to present in simple terms an interpretation of the S.D.R. project held by myself and many others. I should be grateful if, in his reply, my noble friend, speaking for the Government, would correct any erroneous impression I may have gained. Necessarily a project of this kind requires legislation by the Governments concerned which is, of course, the reason why this Bill is before Parliament. Your Lordships will, I am sure, not only give a Second Reading to the Bill but also welcome the subject matter as one of the most far-reaching international projects initiated for a considerable time. It is vitally necessary, however, to realise the limitations of the Scheme and not o confuse its operation with other items of international finance in which we as a country are at this time so critically involved.

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In conclusion, I think it fitting that tribute should be paid to the work performed in Rio de Janeiro last year by my right honourable friend the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and also the personnel from the United Kingdom who, by their strenuous efforts, expertise and patience, have, in the various discussions which have taken place, including those at Stockholm, made an invaluable contribution to this project of such worldwide importance.
3.42 p.m.
VISCOUNT HALL: My Lords, I find myself, happily, almost in agreement with nearly everything said by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, except that I think that he has been a little harsh about the efforts and the work of the Group of Ten. They have now been working for four years and have produced a scheme which he referred to as a "mouse". That was hardly complimentary about the efforts which these gentlemen have put in, particularly when the noble Earl went on to say that there is not much hope for the continuation of this scheme.
I have had the privilege of being a member of your Lordships' House for only a brief span of years, but this piece of paper, the International Monetary Fund Bill, is to my mind the most vital and the most momentous Bill which has come before this House in that time. As the culmination of years of thought, intensive negotiation and foresight, it is insignificant, in size, alongside the massive legislative terms that we have seen before us of late. But I venture to predict that before the turn of the century—probably years before—this tiny Bill will be regarded as a breakthrough comparable only with that of Rutherford in 1904 in generating a power to do things that had long needed to be done.
My Lords, we all well remember the early days of the I.D.R.D., with its staff of about eleven. Little support was given to it after Bretton Woods, and not for some years, until the advent of people like Mr. Eugene Black, were World Bank bonds really acceptable on the market. To-day, nobody would deny that the World Bank and the I.M.F. have done some pretty useful work in the past twenty-one years. To my mind, the I.M.F. arrangement for S.D.Rs. is a concept of a new philosophy of attack upon
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the post-war problem of limited liquidity in the rapidly expanding role of world trade. This philosophy gives us a future progressive and logical order of money events in place of the fortuitous happenings of the immediate past.
The point the noble Earl has missed, I think, is that the purpose of this scheme is to give the international community an ability to control world reserves, rather than what has happened in the past, when the fluctuation in world reserves has dictated to the international community. They now have three pieces of useful arm amentarium. They have the old armaments of gold and reserve currency balances, but the S.D.R. scheme will allow them to fluctuate between all three and thus gradually eliminate the short-term disturbances which have bedevilled us for years. Perhaps, too, it will shortly lead to the fulfilment of the noble Earl's wish—in which I join—for a realistic value of gold.
Internationally, my Lords, this scheme means one more cornerstone in the structure of a lasting world peace; a weakening of the viciousness of the balance-of-payments problems; improvement in both the quality and the quantity of development aid programmes, and closer ties within the Commonwealth itself. And the sooner the scheme starts, the better. I did not take it from the opening speech of my noble friend that he had an idea of when the scheme would commence. Perhaps in his reply he could give us some indication of when he anticipates that the first allocation of the S.D.R.s will be made.
I subscribe to the views of my noble friend that the unconditional liquidity produced by this new philosophy does not have any direct bearing on the role of sterling, as such, in this country but it certainly means that over the years to come the money we produce here will become infinitely more secure from the vagaries of uncontrolled events. We shall still, however, have to earn our keep in even greater measure, and it must be made quite clear that this Bill does not produce a formula for any slackening of effort by anyone here at home. It is for us alone to put flesh on this backbone—and I hope a little fat as well. My Lords, I welcome this Bill. My thanks go out to the deputies of the Group of Ten for all their efforts in bringing

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it about, and not least to the leading efforts of this Government, with all their tribulations, for bringing to fulfilment the aspirations of many years.
3.50 p.m.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, I shall be brief. I am afraid that I cannot altogether share what I regard as the somewhat wild optimism of the noble Viscount who has just sat down and who seems to think that we have now turned the corner and seen the light. I doubt whether that has happened. But I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, on the lucidity and clarity of his speech. The only thing I cannot quite understand is why he commended to our attention the nonsensical mumbo-jumbo of the White Paper. This is, of course, a typical product of the international bankers and economists who are now concerned with making everything they write quite incomprehensible, in order to disguise their own total failure to provide us with an adequate international monetary system since the war.
One thing pleased me enormously about the noble Lord's speech. He put gold in its proper place. He said, as is true, that it has been the basis of international credit for thousands of years. I think that it will remain the basis of international credit for thousands of years to come, because it is the only medium of international exchange that commands universal and total confidence throughout the world. It has always been so, and it always will be so. It may be said that it is irrational. I cannot help that. It may be irrational, but it is a fact.
Gold is of extreme importance and I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, who said that all our problems would have been enormously diminished if gold had been allowed to find its proper value for itself, which it was prevented from doing by that wretched Bretton Woods Agreement. It is sometimes forgotten that President Franklin Roosevelt, when he first became President, hauled the world out of the greatest depression it has ever known—in defiance of all the international bankers and economists—by increasing the dollar price of gold. From that moment recovery began, and we did not look back.
Then at Bretton Woods a gentleman called Harry Dexter White got command
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of the situation, beat Maynard Keynes, and insisted on fixing the price of gold at a wholly artificially low price, though gold remained the basis of credit; and refused to accede to Keynes's attempt to supplement gold with an international currency, which he called "Banco"!. I never thought it a very happy name. That was defeated. Ever since Eretton Woods we have been all struggling more or less against this shortage of international liquidity. That is at the root of many of our problems. As the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, has truly said, if we had allowed gold to find its proper place and price along with other commodities in the world, we should not have been beset with all the troubles we have been having for the last twenty years. These S.D.Rs. will do nothing to solve the incessant balance-of-payments problems.
I would describe this Bill, not in the glowing, almost heroic, terms employed by the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, but as a halting first step—I agree in the right direction—muddled up with a lot of verbiage which nobody can understand. But if one wades through the White Paper and gets to the gist of it, one sees that it is in fact a haltir g first step in the right direction. The full story is still to be told, and I hope to unfold it to your Lordships on Wednesday next.
3.56 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I listened with great interest, as I always do, to what the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, said on this Bill. I am sorry he thought that this was such a modest effort, and. I am sorry he has the support of the noble Lord, Lord Boothby. With respect to both, I think they are mistaken in their assessment of this Bill. I think they underestimate its potential. The noble Earl complained about the volume of new liquidity which would be created in this way, and that despite all the labours of these various authorities they had brought forth only a small animal. But it is the growth potential of that animal that matters. In view of the fact that the animal is now born, and therefore capable of growth, I think that we, have cause for some optimism.
I think that the noble Earl was mistaken in his arithmetic about tie first five years. Some of the figures were

31
given in another place, but he talked about the volume of liquidity to be created initially, whereas the range of figures which were given were for an annual creation, not for a five-year period. As my noble friend Lord Carron said, this is an annual addition to international liquidity.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I should like to get this clear. I think I am entitled to quote something the Minister said in another place. He said that he did not go beyond saying that the figures which have been talked about
"range between one billion dollars and five billion dollars as a first creation issued over the first one to five years of the scheme."
I did not read that as going on accumulatively increasing each year.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, it may appear that my right honourable friend in another place said one to five billion dollars in one to five years, but the fact of the matter is that it will be an annual increase. It will depend on the circumstances at the time, and the confidence which is vested in these S.D.Rs. if confidence grows then the amount to be created in this way will grow.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: It will grow to more than one billion a year?
LORD BESWICK: Certainly, my Lords. I do not propose to get involved with the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, about the question of gold. Maybe his optimism about this practically useless metal is justified, but I doubt it. Just in the same way as we phased out—as I tried to say in the speech which the noble Lord praised for its clarity—this particular metal from our national currency system, so I think, over the years, we shall phase out gold from the international scene. For the time being, however, these S.D.Rs. are an addition to gold and other reserve currencies.
My noble friend Lord Carron asked whether I would correct any erroneous impressions he might have received, either from the Bill, or from the White Paper. I am pleased to tell him that I have nothing to correct at all. Indeed, both he and I would have been very surprised had I tried to correct those impressions, because of the source from
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which he obtained them, and I think that he put the mechanics of the scheme very clearly indeed. My noble friend Lord Hall asked about the timing of the scheme and about its coming into operation. It is expected that the various Governments will be able to ratify the Amendments by the beginning of next year. To some extent it depends upon the French, but I would expect that we should see the first allocation during the course of 1969. I am glad that, despite his reservations, the noble Earl said that he had no intention of criticising the Government or opposing the Bill. I hope, therefore, that we shall now be able to agree to its Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

RACE RELATIONS BILL
4.0 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time. I do so in the confident belief that your Lordships will give a lead to the country by unanimously supporting the principle enshrined in the Bill. That principle is effective and indisputable equality of opportunity and treatment for all our citizens, irrespective of colour, race or national origin. It is on that principle that Britain must base its hopes of building a genuine and successful multi-racial society.
This Bill has nothing to do with keeping immigrants out or sending them home. The immigrants are here. They must be integrated into our national life or we shall suffer in Britain the tragic consequences of racial discrimination that we have witnessed in other parts of the world. We cannot change people's hearts or attitudes by legislation but we can alter their behaviour. We cannot legislate against prejudice, but we can use the law to destroy discrimination, which is a manifestation of prejudice; and when discrimination has gone prejudice will find it harder to flourish. This Bill will make it impossible for the "Alf Garnetts" in our midst to claim they are a respectable minority; it will diminish the possibility of domination by the ignorant or of rule by instant rabble.

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It is an esssential part, although only a part, of our great task of educating public opinion to acceptance of non-discrimination as an automatic and essential part of the British way of life. The 1965 Race Relations Act pointed the way. It was a radical innovation but, within its limitations it has proved not only that legislation on race relations is effective, but that the key to success lies in conciliation and settlement. We have now decided that the time has come to apply those principles over a much wider area and to strengthen the position of the Race Relations Board.
So, my Lords, we have designed this Bill to wipe out the main disadvantages from which some of our citizens suffer in their daily lives as a result of discrimination against them on racial grounds. We are concerned with equal rights and equal responsibilities but not with privileges. Nor it is our purpose to impose penal sanctions. Naturally, as a last resort, sanctions are necessary to enforce the law against those who are determined to give expression to their prejudices and are not amenable to conciliation; but At would be wrong to impose this sanction by making discrimination a criminal offence. Any necessary enforcement will therefore be by civil process.
For purposes of greater clarity, we have accepted proposals that the Bill should define discrimination more closely than the 1965 Act, and Clause 1 makes clear that to discriminate means to treat someone less favourably than other people because of his colour, race, ethnic or national origin. The Government have also decided that this Bill must extend to a much wider range of public places than is covered by the present Act, and also to the provision of insurance and credit facilities, to employment and to housing. These are the areas in which discrimination is most significant and legislation most needed. Part I of the Bill sets them out in detail and defines the circumstances in which discrimination in them will be unlawful.
It is not merely a question of access to public places; it is the whole range of the provision of goods, facilities and services. This is where people meet for the common exchanges of ordinary living, in shops and public parks, in hotels, pubs and boarding-houses, in the cinema and the holiday camp, in buses
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and trains, in confrontations with their bank managers, in negotiations with estate agents, as applicants for insurance policies or for mortgages to buy their homes. This is where people must be treated on their merits as human beings and not by grading according to the colour of their skins. Equally, the Bill is not designed to give any group an advantage and nothing in it is intended to inhibit the exercise of proper commercial judgment in, for example, the assessment of insurance premiums or consideration of individual credit worthiness.
The second main area covered by the Bill is housing, and Clause 5 makes it unlawful to discriminate in the disposal of housing accommodation and business and other premises. Legislation to prevent discrimination in housing is fundamental to the development of good race relations in this country. We must reverse the present trend towards the creation of ghetto areas in which coloured people are confined both by their economic inability to break out and by the refusal of society to make readily available to them accommodation which they can afford. Legislation, properly applied, can help to prevent the concentration of coloured people in substandard housing and the creation of social tensions. I believe this cannot be disputed. What is at issue is the scope of a provision dealing with housing.
First, I think it is essential, as the Bill provides, that local authority housing should be covered. I know of the great efforts which many local authorities are making to deal with the difficulties in areas where large numbers of immigrants have made their homes. These efforts will be much strengthened by the support of the law which will make it easier for them to carry out their duties as Lousing authorities. In this connection, I warmly welcome the report of the General Purposes Committee of the City of Birmingham which was published last week, and the comments of two of its leading members. Alderman Beaumont Dark, Chairman of the Housing Committee, said:
"We shall have no special houses for immigrants and no special areas either. So far as I am concerned they are Birmingham citizens and will be treated as such."
He added that immigrants 'had shown they were very good ratepayers, and could

35
make wonderful homes out of the most appalling slums.
The report adds up to a massive attack on the immigrant ghetto problem, but again Alderman Griffin, leader of the Conservative controlled council, struck the right note when he said:
"We are not specifically doing anything in relation to immigration and housing. We do not discriminate. It will just happen that when we get around to certain districts there will be a big move of coloured people."
Unfortunately, according to the Press, this equality of treatment is worrying some members of the council. Alderman Charles Collett, leader of the Right Wing of the Conservative Group, is reported as saying:
"The needs of Birmingham born families must be met first".
If he was correctly reported, he was advocating discrimination, and that would be unlawful under this Bill.
For a number of reasons, however, the majority of immigrants do not look to local authorities for their housing, and nearly three-quarters of the available accommodation in this country is privately owned. This has made it essential to bring private housing within the scope of the Bill. I know this is a controversial issue, on which even the authors of the Street Report were unable to reach a unanimous recommendation. Clearly, individuals must be free to decide to whom they will sell their houses, and we cannot compel a person disposing of his house to sell or let it to a particular individual. Thus purely private sales between individuals are outside the Bill. But it is a different matter to refuse to sell a house on grounds of racial prejudice and to deny anyone the right to buy the home of his choice on those grounds alone.
Clause 5 is therefore drafted in broad terms to cover all those concerned with both private and local authority housing. To do less would be to shirk a major responsibility. Even so, although the sanction of the courts will be available to those who have to administer this provision, it is not a field in which the ultimate power of the law will be an appropriate weapon in any but the most flagrant and objectionable cases. So the Bill makes a firm declaration of principle, and within its terms there is scope
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for the Board to use their conciliation procedures to secure equality of treatment for all who are seeking decent homes for themselves and their families.
Clause 7 provides certain exceptions to the housing provisions which will, I think, be generally accepted. The principle of exception is that where there is a personal relationship clearly going beyond the commercial relationship of landlord and tenant, the law should not intervene. We have taken certain criteria as justifying exclusion. First, the accommodation must be in premises in which either the owner or one of his relatives lives. Second, apart from the accommodation in which the owner or his relative live there are no more than two other households. Or in the case of a boarding or lodging house, exemption will apply only to houses where, for the first two years after the passing of the Bill there are no more than twelve residents and thereafter no more than six residents. The third criterion for exclusion is that some of the accommodation, other than the means of access, must be used in common by the owner or the relative concerned and any of the tenants, boarders or lodgers. In short, we exclude from the housing discrimination provitsions the person who lets part of his house to not more than two other households or has not more than a small number of lodgers, and shares part or parts of it with any of his tenants or lodgers. But this applies only to small-scale lettings because the Bill makes discrimination unlawful for people letting accommodation on a larger scale even when there is some sharing of facilities with tenants. Similarly, people who let the houses in which they live, in, say, three or more small units, such as bedsitters, also come within the scope of the Bill; they are not excluded.
I believe this provides a reasonable basis to meet the generally accepted view that where a person shares the family home with others, his freedom of choice of tenants should not be restricted. By relating a large part of the exception to the number of households it will be easy to identify the status of many premises, particularly those of the type in which immigrants frequently make their homes. If it is established that there are more than three households on the premises they will not be excepted under the Bill

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and no further inquiries will be necessary to establish relationships or who shares what facilities with whom.
I turn now to employment. There are encouraging signs that coloured people are being accepted in industry on their merits; but it is equally true that there is still a great deal of discrimination against them and that many of them are becoming identified with unskilled and menial tasks because they do not get the promotion to more responsible posts to which their qualifications entitle them. There is evidence that coloured youngsters leaving school are not getting the jobs for which they are qualified on the same terms as their white contemporaries. These children, my Lords, are the product of our own educational system, brought up in our own traditions. There are obvious and great dangers to our society if they find themselves on the labour market as second-class citizens.
I know that there is a great deal of good will among many employers and trade unions who try to ensure that discrimination does not occur, but their efforts will be strengthened if they are backed by comprehensive legislation. Clause 3 therefore makes discrimination unlawful in recruitment, dismissal, training, promotion and conditions of service, and is designed to ensure equality of treatment in all aspects of employment so that men and women will not be handicapped in achieving their full potential by any considerations of colour or race. Clause 4 will ensure similar equality in membership of trade unions and employers' and trade associations. As with housing, there are some exceptions to the employment provisions. The first is domestic employment; the second, where ships' crews share living accommodation. In neither instance would in be right, in the Government's view, given the personal nature of the relationshhips involved, to place obligations under the Bill on the individuals concerned.
One exception from the Bill can make a positive contribution to the processes of integration. This is the provision which protects an employer who is genuinely concerned to create or preserve a racially balanced labour force. This has been criticised on the grounds that, because it gives recognition to a form of discrimination, it is objectionable. This is not so. It was my experience as an
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employer that my Jamaicans and Nigerians could not work peaceably together. The only alternative to sacking one group or the other was to keep them apart. This worked, but it would not be practicable in all businesses. There are circumstances in which an over-rigid insistence on the general employment provisions of the Bill could have the effect, not of furthering the process of integration, but of hindering it. Certain industries, and certain menial jobs, are becoming identified with newly arrived coloured labour and this is just as undesirable as the refusal to admit qualified coloured people to an industry or to a business which is at present all white. It is right, therefore, to protect from an allegation of discrimination an employer who wishes to Prevent this sort of situation from arising and is genuinely seeking to promote good race relations in his labour force.
It is supremely important, however, to protect those of the second generation who are no more newly arrived immigrants than the rest of us, and, in what I regard as perhaps its most important provision, the Bill insists that everyone who has been wholly or mainly educated in Great Britain shall be treated as belonging to the same racial group. My Lords, you cannot he an immigrant if you were horn here. There will thus be no opportunity for employers to differentiate between those who belong to this country in every sense of the word because some of then are coloured: and the Bill also makes it clear that in determining whether an employer is behaving reasonably the extent to which he already employs people of different racial groups and accepts the principle of not discriminating will be taken into account. I hope that in time, particularly when the second generation makes up an increasing part of our labour force, its racial composition will be of no consequence whatsoever, and there is a provision in the Bill for the repeal of the relevant subsections when it seems expedient to do so.
These employment provisions will not apply during the first two years to employers with not more than twenty-five employees, and in the next two years to employers with not more than ten employees. This is a precaution to ensure that the administrative procedures

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under the Bill are not overwhelmed in the first few years of its operation. Thus, Part I covers the main areas of human activity in which discrimination has been shown to occur and where it is most significant.
Part II contains the provisions for the investigation and settlement of complaints and for enforcement in the courts. It provides that, as under the 1965 Act, the legislation will be administered by a Race Relations Board. The present Board, to whose work over the last two and a half years I would pay a warm tribute, consists of only three members. The new Board, faced with a much larger field of operation, will consist of not more than twelve members, including the Chairman. With a Board of this size it will be possible to select members who can command the confidence of all those with whom they will have to deal. The Home Secretary has already announced that one of the members of the Board will be Sir Roy Wilson, the President of the Industrial Court, who has agreed to serve on the new Board and to place his unrivalled knowledge at their disposal. In addition, the Home Secretary intends to appoint two other members to the Board with special knowledge of industry. My right honourable friend proposes also to appoint one member of the Board with special knowledge of local authority housing. Other members will be selected on as wide a basis as possible, including, of course, members of the immigrant communities. The Board will also have powers to appoint assessors who can bring special knowledge and experience to bear on any particular type of case.
Clause 13 provides that the Race Relations Board shall discharge their functions in accordance with arrangements approved by the Home Secretary. This will ensure that the administrative and procedural arrangements to be established by the Board will be more readily understood and accepted by public opinion. For example, there is a provision that the Board may appoint certain of their members to deal with particular classes of complaints; and in approving their arrangements the Home Secretary intends to require the Board to set up a sub-committee which will include the two members of the Board
40
with special knowledge of industry, and with Sir Roy Wilson as its first Chairman to deal with complaints about employment.
The Bill provides for the continuation of the system of conciliation committees. Experience has shown that committees on the existing pattern provide the best means of settling cases. In appointing members of these committees the Board will have regard to their new responsibilities, particularly in housing and employment, and will ensure that the members of the committees are fully competent to deal with the various cases which come before them. Conciliation committees will also have power to appoint assessors. It will continue to be the first duty of the Board and their committees to attempt to settle cases by conciliation, because this is the key to success in legislation, the main purpose of which is to secure the settlement of disputes by agreement. But existing arrangements will be much strengthened by the new power given to the Board to investigate complaints themselves.
There is an important provision in Clause 14, excluding from the normal procedures of the Board and their committees complaints relating to discrimination in employment, trade unions and employers' organisations. This fulfils the Government's undertaking, given last July, that in relation to employment, the new legislation would provide the fullest opportunity for industry to use its own machinery for conciliation. This acknowleged the strong feeling on both sides of industry that complaints or racial discrimination in industry are best left to be settled by industry's own well established procedures. Although the Government do not accept that complaints about employment can be left entirely to industry, the Bill provides full scope for industry to use its own machinery to settle complaints. Only where it has been unable to do so does the question of resort to other methods arise. The fairly elaborate procedures in the Bill in relation to employment give as much guidance as possible, and we cannot be certain that they will prove appropriate in every detail. Clause 15(2) has therefore been included to enable the Home Secretary to amend them by regulation.
There is an important provision in Clause 16 which empowers the Board

41
to make investigations where no specific complaint has been received or a complaint has been withdrawn. I regard this as a necessary extension of the Board's powers. There will certainly be occasions when the Board have every reason to believe that discrimination is taking place but do not have a specific allegation on which to proceed. I see it as part of the public duty of the Board that in these circumstances they should be able to seek assurances that discrimination is not being or will not continue to be practised.
I turn now to Clauses 18 to 22 which provide for enforcement. These have been criticised because they do not give powers of enforcement to the Race Relations Board themselves or enable the Board to summon witnesses or demand the production of documents. This criticism is based on a misconception of the proper functions of the Board. Their essential task is to settle cases of discrimination by conciliation and it would be inconsistent with this to give the Board judicial authority or compulsory powers. It would be necessary to provide sanctions against those who refused to comply with the instructions of the Board, and these could only be criminal sanctions which would run counter to the whole philosophy of the Bill. The possibility of court proceedings will always be in the background as an encouragement to co-operation, and this will be reinforced by the fact that the Board, and not the Attorney General as under the present Act, will be empowered to bring proceedings to the courts.
The Government have considered whether individuals should also be free to take proceedings. In so far as this would provide a form of appeal against the Board and preserve the individual's freedom of action, it has some attraction; but the Board also have a public duty to perform in preventing baseless or deliberately vexatious complaints from reaching the courts and innocent parties being put to unwarranted inconvenience and expense. A balance has to be struck between securing the confidence of minority groups and making the enforcement procedures fair and acceptable to the community at large. I think that the provisions in the Bill have got this balance about right.
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Although it would seem desirable and consistent with accepted legal procedures in this country that it should be the courts which enforce the law, the Government take the view that it is better for the courts which deal with cases under the Bill to be specially constituted. Clause 18, therefore, provides that proceedings for enforcement in England and Wales will be brought in specially designated county courts to be appointed by the Lord Chancellor. These courts will sit with two assessors having special knowledge and experience of problems connected with race and communit3 relations. In this way we shall maintain the principle that the enforcement of the law rests with the courts and at the same time bring special expertise to bear on the type of cases which may arise under this new legislation.
The present Act provides for the enforcement of the law by injunction and we believe that this should continue to be the main sanction in the future. Where it appears that someone has engaged in a course of conduct which is unlawful under the Bill and is likely, unless restrained by order of the court, to continue that conduct in the future, the Board may apply for an injunction to restrain him from doing so. There may be occasions on which a single act of discrimination has been committed in circumstances where there is also adequate supporting evidence to indicate that such an act is part of a course of conduct within the meaning of the Bill. In those circumstances it will be open to the Board to proceed to the courts for an injunction if they think fit.
The Board will also be empowered to seek damages either separately or together with an injunction. Damages provide an appropriate remedy against single acts of discrimination which have resulted in an individual suffering material loss. We have considered carefully whether the Bill should provide for exemplary damages or damages by way of compensation for mental anguish or humiliation and have concluded that on balance such a provision would be inappropriate. The Bill is founded on the principle of conciliation and the power to award punitive damages would be inconsistent with this. But we think it right that compensation for loss should be payable, and the Bill provides not only for payment for actual

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expenses incurred, but also for what is described as "loss of opportunity", that is, the loss of any benefit which a person might have expected to receive but for an act of discrimination; for example, the opportunity to buy a particular house in a particular locality when nothing comparable is available, or the opportunity of a particular post when no similar employment is available. I think this is as far as the provision for damages should go. The Bill also provides that the Board may seek a declaratory judgment that an act is unlawful. This provides a useful method of placing society's disapproval of discrimination on record in circumstances when other remedies are not available.
In Part III of the Bill, Clause 23 constitutes a statutory Commission to be known as the Community Relations Commission and sets out its terms of reference. This Commission will replace the present National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants which was appointed in 1965. The functions of the Commission will be broadly the same as those of the existing Committee which has done so much over the last three years to foster good race relations in this country; but with the Committee's agreement we have taken the opportunity of altering its name and revising its terms of reference to take account of the changing social situation in this country. Until now the Committee has been concerned primarily with newly arrived immigrants. In the future it will be more concerned with the problems of the second generation, those born and brought up in this country who are distinguishable from the rest of us only by the colour of their skin.
The new terms of reference, therefore, direct the work of the Community Relations Commission to the more general question of community relations in a multi-racial society. The Government have never underestimated the importance of voluntary effort in the field of race relations and we hope that by creating this new body on a statutory basis we shall give added point and emphasis to its work. The Home Secretary has given an undertaking that three members of the new Commission will be appointed from among those actively concerned in work at the local level.
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The Bill also provides that the new legislation shall bind the Crown. The public service has an exemplary record of non-discrimination; a rough check last year showed that there are at least 16,500 coloured civil servants, of whom 4,500 are in professional posts, middle management or above; but the Government consider that, in order to give a lead to the country as a whole, it is important that the Crown should be bound by the provisions of the Bill. It will, I think, be generally accepted, however, that the Crown must retain discretion to apply nationality rules to employment in the Civil Service, the Armed Forces and the Diplomatic Service, and this is provided for.
This Bill, then, has three main purposes. First, it is declaratory and puts the attitude of the Government and the nation to discrimination beyond doubt. Second, it provides machinery for conciliation between those who have suffered discrimination and those who have chosen to practice it, and also establishes a statutory body charged with the duty of fostering good community relations. Third, it provides a sanction for those cases, which I believe will be few, where conciliation has failed.
I believe that, with the support of legislation on this basis, we can so influence public opinion and conduct that we shall establish a pattern of civilised behaviour in time to avoid the tragic consequences which could so easily result from present social tensions if we lacked the courage to deal with them. We must demonstrate by our actions, not only to immigrants and their children but to all our other citizens and to the world at large, that in this country we live and act by the doctrine of equality of treatment and opportunity, irrespective of race or colour. It is because I believe that legislation has an essential part to play in achieving this that I commend the Bill to the House. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(Lord Stonham.)
4.34 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, this Bill was materially amended on Report in another place only last week, and eventually received its Third Reading there at 4.50 a.m. on Wednesday morning. I think that a great many of your Lordships wish that the Government

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would so arrange their business that your Lordships' House could have a rather longer time than that to consider a Bill of this far-reaching importance. I should also have expected that the Government would consider this Bill sufficiently important to make it the first and only business of the day in your Lordships' House, whereas, in spite of there being 29 names on the list of speakers, we were not enabled to start the Second Reading debate until 4 o'clock.
For my part, I deeply regret that a position has been reached where a Bill of this sort is thought to be needed. Up to three years ago, the concept of race did not enter into English law. All persons lawfully resident within Britain were alike in the eyes of the law; and that, I say, is as it should be. The use of threatening or abusive or insulting language or behaviour was an offence if it was likely to lead to a breach of the peace. It still is. That is right, and it is enforceable, because the police are trained to be keepers of order; they are not trained to be censors of speech. Then the 1965 Race Relations Act was passed, which made such language or behaviour an offence if it was likely to stir up racial hatred. This was, of course, a limitation on freedom of speech, a right which hitherto we had maintained with determination because we in this country, regardless of Party, cared passionately about freedom of speech even when other men said things which were hateful to us personally. Now we have this Bill, with its major enlargement of racial legislation. The Government think that it will relax racial tensions. Some others think, equally sincerely, that in certain contexts it may worsen them. I should like—indeed I am sure we should all like —to thank the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for having taken so much trouble, not only to state the main aims and principles of the Bill but to go through its provisions in some detail. I felt that he, was looking at the Bill and its probable effects through rose-coloured spectacles, but that does not lessen my indebtedness to him for his speech.
What will be the effect of the Bill? Will the Government be right, or will those who are opposed to such legislation be right? Where is the truth going to lie? For this is the only test of the Bill that matters. The fact is that nobody
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can yet be certain. With a Bill like this we are in deep and mysterious waters, because it impinges sharply on human nature and human emotions, and no one can be altogether certain what the reactions will be.
Time after time I have said, in Parliament and outside, that the greatest social problem of the next half-century in this country is going to be the problem we have created for ourselves in the last fifteen years by the huge in numbers of immigrants which successive Governments have admitted. Thirty or forty years ago, the most intractable social problem was unemployment. Nov it is immigration, and in particular the relationship, the whole complex of relationships, between the newcomers and the British-born population. I welcome the more, therefore, the effort and the spirit underlying that Birmingham Report published last week to which the noble Lord referred.
At last, all this is being recognised and approached as a real and vast problem confronting us all. For far too long it was being evaded or played down. Press and Parliament alike seemed to some of us to want to sweep the realities of it under the carpet, and sometimes even to brand as a racialist anyone who dared to take it out and look at it squarely. That is the simple reason why a great number of our people showed by their reactions that they welcomed what they thought Mr. Enoch Powell was driving at in that recent speech of his, not his dangerously provocative language about the Tiber flowing with blood and so forth, but what they thought was his candour in facing a problem to which they believed, rightly or wrongly, that nearly all the politicians were turning a blind eye.
Throughout the larger part of Britain all this is still no problem at all. In the County of Wiltshire, where I live, it hardly exists, outside one town. If the million or more immigrants were spread evenly throughout the country there would be no serious problem anywhere. At the moment they form only 2 per cent. of the whole population. The problem exists, and the arguments for and against this Bill arise, because of the concentration in particular towns and cities. If one or two families from overseas came

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and settled in the village where I live, I do not for a moment believe that there would be any tension, any complaints of discrimination, or anything else. But if there were a great influx so as to change the whole character of the village, to make it almost impossible for the newly married couple to find a home, tension would rise, and it would be wrong to condemn the tension as prejudice.
The root of the problem, my Lords, is not prejudice, not colour, but numbers. The tensions would be there just the same if the newcomers swamping that hypothetical village were not Indian or African, but Italian or Spanish. I believe that the British people are by nature most wonderfully tolerant, but there is bound to be resentment if children's schooling is held back because the local school becomes over-crowded with incoming children who have little English; or if women who have grown up in the place find that they cannot have their babies in hospital because all the maternity beds are needed for the newcomers whose homes are so overcrowded that they cannot have their babies at home. All this has to be weighed in the balance against the natural, intense resentment of the newcomers if they find house agents who are against them and landladies who are against them, and employers who will not give them a fair chance.
What I am trying to do is, in a few words, to give a balanced account of the background to this Bill, which I venture to think not enough people have been fair-minded enough to do. There are those who say that a Bill like this should he rejected on principle because personal liberty entails a right to discriminate. Then there are those who say that everyone who questions the need for such a Bill must ipso facto be prejudiced, racialist, un-Christian. Both groups are wrong. Both are stopping their thinking too soon. I am sure that Parliament's duty is to probe more deeply, and to try to understand, to understand equally, the feeling of humiliation in the immigrant who is refused a job or a lodging, and the converse feeling among many British people in the high immigration areas, that on top of the fact that the life of their home towns has been altered out of all recognition and against their wishes by Government policies, Parliament now
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wants to legislate still further in support of the newcomers.
I do not think that any political Party can take much credit for the part it has played in the past in allowing this situation to arise. In the years of unrestricted Commonwealth entry, when the greatest numbers of immigrant workers were arriving, the social and educational problems which unrestricted immigration was bound to bring were culpably ignored by almost everybody. In common, I hope and believe, with all your Lordships, I am deeply anxious that this should be a country of peace and good will, where there is equal opportunity for all, and where tolerance reigns and prejudices are educated out of the silly heads of the people who suffer from them. We are not there yet; and, frankly, I set rather more store by educating people to grasp even the fringe of that ideal than by enlarging and sharpening the legal sanctions against those who are too stupid or too selfish to do that.
It is seldom that application of sanctions makes people more tolerant, more understanding, more willing to love their neighbour. We shall be able to see whether it does in this case, because this Bill is certainly going to become law. I would not vote against it myself, and I respectfully hope that none of your Lordships will do so, though I could not myself vote for it as it stands at present. I see how to make a case for it, and I see how to make a case against it. One who takes for granted the case in favour of it may be greeted as a Christian but by those who forget that the command that ye love one another was never to be made enforceable by law. One who sets forth the arguments against it will get dismissed as a racialist by those who seem opposed to bringing this tremendous human problem of race and colour up out of the depths, and looking at it quietly and reasonably. Both these views are superficial.
I think there is no doubt that there is a minority of people who are practising discrimination in this country to an extent which cannot be ignored or glossed over. The P.E.P. Report, published in April of last year, seems to me to establish that. To some people what I am going to say now may sound strange, but for my part I feel less worried about the grown men who have themselves

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chosen to come ever the seas and live in this country and now complain that they are discriminated against. If I choose to leave England and go to live and work in France or Italy or Jamaica or Ghana or India or where you will (assuming, of course, that the authorities allowed me to work there), I should not expect to be treated by everybody exactly as if I were a native of the country; and if I did not like the way I was treated, I should still have the choice—I could go home. I had come voluntarily, and I could go voluntarily, and I should have no strong grounds for complaint. I deplore the sort of questionnaires which some well-meaning societies try to hand out to immigrants, encouraging them to report in detail any incident of believed discrimination against them. That does no good to anyone.
But with the children of immigrant families, born and brought up in the new country, the case is different. They have had no choice. The new country is the only country they remember, wherever their parents came from and whatever the colour of their skins. Far and away the strongest argument in favour of this Bill is that, without it, the present signs are that many of those children, when they come to leave school, might not get equal opportunity of securing jobs that measure up to their capacities. That would be the way of doom for Britain: a generation could grow up having full right to look to Britain as their country—for they would have known no other —yet under-privileged on any fair comparison. The cancer of bitterness would grow and there would be no cure then. If this Bill can prevent that it must carry the fervent hopes of us all with it.
I do not propose to discuss its details. I bear in mind that there are 29 noble Lords who have indicated their wish to speak on Second Reading, and we shall have time to pursue the details in Committee. Let me only say that the new Clause 1, moved in on Report in another place looks to me at first sight a doubtful improvement on the original Bill. I welcome the fact that the Bill employs the conciliation rather than the criminal procedure, a fundamental change on which I am sure the Government were wise to yield to the Opposition during the debates on the earlier Race Relations Bill in 1965. I, too, should like to
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express appreciation to the members of the Race Relations Board and their staff for what they have done. I was disappointed to hear that the noble Lord, when describing the enlargement of the Race Relations Board for their new and wider duties, did not mention the necessity for appointing a woman to the Board. I should have thought that that was very important. I hope that we shall be able to make sure that this Bill does not, in practice, outlaw discrimination between one person and another which is otherwise justified, and is not eased on colour, race, or ethnic or national origin. I am anxious too that the Bill should leave the balance scrupulously fair, and in seeking to add weight to the balance in favour of the one shall not he at risk in overweighting it against the other.
For my part I trust that when the Bill becomes law, as it will, all differences will be sunk in the common effort to promote, with or without its help, true racial harmony. Everyone lawfully in this country should have fair and equal treatment with everyone else, and that is up to each one of us. I have said that if the Bill can prevent a conviction of underprivilege from spreading and crystallising among the immigrant community, it must have the hopes and wishes of us all behind it. Equally strongly it needs to have behind it the acceptance and support of the native-born British population. Personally, I am certain that it will not retain that if Governments allow immigration to continue at the present high rate. The first step to deal with that is to stop the unconditional entry of dependants between 13 and 16 years old, those of an age who, on arrival, will go a most straight into the labour market without having had, like all other children here, a British education.
My Lords, it is education alone which, in the long run, can save the situation, on both sides. No underprivilege for the newcomer: no disregard for the British way of life which the British nation has created and wants to see developed and enriched but not altered out of recognition. Parliament owes an equally compelling duty to uphold both those gliding principles. It may be held that legislation is a form of education: possibly it is, but it is not a substitute for education. On the education of everybody the

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future depends, and one great aim of education always is to bring people to understand other points of view without acrimony or anger. Another great aim of education is to help people to learn not to turn aside from realities, but to recognise them for what they are and seek to mould them towards the greater happiness of everybody—and I repeat, "everybody". This, my Lords, is the spirit in which I hope we shall all examine this difficult Bill throughout its coming stages, and beg that compassion and understanding for all concerned, whether native British or immigrant, will be uppermost in our speeches and our minds.
4.54 p.m.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, I join with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, in regretting that a Bill on race should be necessary. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, this Bill is not just about race; it is about equality of opportunity and about equal rights. Therefore, on behalf of my colleagues in the Liberal Party, I want to welcome the measure wholeheartedly, although I hope to see it further strengthened during its passage through this House.
This subject is, of course, an emotive one. There is no denying the fact that there is a great deal of prejudice in this country against coloured people. With all respect to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, I do not think it is just a question of numbers; there is a colour reaction underlying all this. The reaction to Mr. Enoch Powell's speech showed it—the reaction in particular of the dockers and even in circles which ought to know better. There is a mental revulsion which many of us find quite deplorable; but in fact there is too much prejudice in this country at the moment for any of us to ignore it. There is a great deal of ignorance. Many people honestly believe that, given the same education and surroundings as the white man, the coloured person will still be inferior. In my view there is absolutely no proof of this and it has certainly not been my experience in other parts of the world and in this country.
There is a great deal of ignorance to be dispelled about coloured people and their demands on the State. A quick
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glance at the recent Facts Paper produced by the Institute of Race Relations will put into perspective many of the allegations levelled against the coloured community. This type of education is needed. Those of us who read the article in the Sunday paper, I think it was the Observer, on Wolverhampton will recognise how much ignorance and prejudice we have to combat. We are in no possible danger of having the country overrun by immigrants, for out of our total population they number less than 2 per cent., and during the past three years the number of voucher holders entering the country has dropped by almost two-thirds.
Contrary to the belief that immigrants and their dependants are a drain on our health and social security services, in fact two-thirds of all coloured Commonwealth immigrants are economically active and constitute 8 per cent. of Britain's total labour force. Between September, 1964, and January, 1968, unemployment among their numbers never rose above 3 per cent. They contribute more to, and take less from, social security than the general public. Expenditure per capita for the migrant is £48 7s., compared with £62 4s. for the rest of the population. Only in the field of education and child care is slightly more per head spent on the coloured child, and surely this is money well spent, for in the classroom or the nursery school children work and play together almost unaware of the differences in skin colouring, and it is this early integration which, I believe, is undoubtedly the most important factor for ensuring that we get true integration later on.
But these facts have got to be put over day and night if we are to overcome the ignorance and the prejudice which we can see all around us. There is, in my view, far too little appreciation of the contribution which the coloured immigrants make and the decent homes they can provide and make for themselves when they are given a fair chance to do so, as so seldom they are. But above all there is too little appreciation of the problems which, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said—and I think this is the crux of what we are dealing with here—are building up now and will build up to greater dimensions over the next few

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years if we allow ourselves to tolerate intolerance and discrimination. That is why the action of the so-called "rebel Conservatives" in opposing the Bill in another place has, in my view, done a great deal of damage to the cause of racial harmony. They have, as Mr Powell did in his speech, provided a rallying point for race prejudice and ignorance. They have afforded a veneer of semi-respectibility, however slight and however nauseating, to those who think and act in terms of racial discrimination. The fact that some of them did not intend this to happen is neither here nor there. This is a fact which will be with us for many months to come.
I think the basic problem is how best to ensure that coloured boys and girls—many of them born here, some of them never having left this country—are given an equal chance with the white children with whom they are at school when it comes to jobs, housing, services, and so on. How, in fact, do we ensure that because of their colour they do not become second-class citizens? If they do, there will be even more bitter frustrations which will find their own outlets, and those outlets will be violent ones. We should not forget that many of the coloured children going through our educational system axe not just looking for jobs; they are rightly searching for careers, and they are entitled to have them. At present they are not getting a fair deal. It is difficult for them to find white collar jobs. Some firms maintain a polite but firm colour bar, as the P.E.P. Report shows. How often do we find banks, big stores, insurance companies offering a real career to a coloured school-leaver?
The colour problem is the problem of a minority. Our traditions of personal freedom demand that we solve it. I do not accept the argument that this legislation gives an unfair advantage to a minority. It does nothing of the sort. It does something to ensure that the minority does not suffer unduly through the ingrained prejudices of some of our people. Just as the trade unions, in the last century and the beginning of this century, got the protection which is due to a minority, so we ought to give protection where we can to the coloured people in this country.
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To the argument, "Why legislate?", I give three answers. The best American observers tell us, without doubt, that a background of legislation is essential to give confidence to the coloured people that discrimination will not be tolerated by law. Secondly, the people of this country are fundamentally law-a siding and will tend to obey the law when it is laid down in clear terms. Thirdly, legislation stiffens the backbone of the relatively spineless. No longer is there the excuse that, "Discrimination has nothing to do with me", or "Personally, I have every sympathy, but a number of my staff would object", and so on. That sort of attitude has been holding up integration in quite a big way, and with legislation there is some hope that we can overcome it. We have to make sure that non-discrimination becomes the rule and not the exception, and we must accelerate, if we can, the speed with which ignorance and prejudice can be dispelled. It is not easy. I know that you cannot legislate to make people good, but you can legislate to make people realise that the State considers prejudice and discrimination to be wrong.
My Lords, on the Bill itself, I want to make the following points. I am considerably mystified, as was the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, by the new definition of "discrimination" the Bill. Of course we ought to have a definition, but the way I read it it could be interpreted to mean that separate but equal treatment falls outside the scope of the law. If this is so, it world be lawful for a factory to provide separate lavatory facilities, provided that they were of an equal standard; it would be lawful for a licensee to practise apartheid by providing different bars for different races, provided that the fittings, the prices and the facilities were just as good in one as in the other. I do not like that sort of thing. I hope that we shall be told that this is wrong, but it will take a good lawyer to prove to me that this would not be "equal" treatment.
I suggest that we adopt the adaptation of the definition of discrimination given in Article 1 of the United Nations International Convention on the Elimitation of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. This reads as follows:
"For the purposes of this Act discrimination means any distinction, exclusion, restriction or

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preference based on race, colour or national or ethnic origins and references to discrimination shall be construed accordingly."
Not only is this a clear statement, but I join with those who hope that the use of phrasing similar to that to be found in the United Nations Convention would help to provide an opportunity for Parliament to ratify the Convention itself. My friends and I propose to put down an Amendment on this matter and to seek support for it. Discrimination is a difficult problem. It used to be said of General Eisenhower that his success in building up a harmonious multi-national headquarters in the war was because he let it be known that he did not mind his staff calling one another, "a son of a bitch", but if they referred to "an American son of a bitch" or "a British son of a bitch", they were going to be fired on the spot. This shows how important it is to have some backing for what one is doing.
I believe that the Bill is weakest in the protection and redress which it affords to the complainant. As the Bill stands, neither the Board nor their committees will be able to ensure that the complainant gets back a job which he has lost because of discrimination, or accommodation of which he has been deprived because of discrimination. The remedy provided in the Bill is a purely negative injunction, which merely prevents the discriminator from repeating the offence. I do not think it is a question of providing criminal sanctions at this stage, but the damages included in the Bill are not worth very much. The man who was refused a labouring job and who then came to the Board to complain that he had suffered from discrimination would be told that to investigate and to settle the complaint would unquestionably take some weeks, and that in the meantime he should try to get another job as soon as possible. The damages which he would be awarded might be as little as the loss of one day's pay or, at the most, the difference between unemployment benefit and what he would have earned on the job.
It is for this reason that I believe there is a strong case to be made for giving the Race Relations Court power to issue positive orders. This was asked for by the Board in paragraph 56 of their second Annual Report, that for 1967–68,
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and it is argued at length in Chapter 18 of the Street Report. The kind of orders which the Street Report had in mind are, for instance, that the court could order a firm found to have practised discrimination to report on the measures which it had taken to comply with the Court's orders. The Board could also perhaps require a respondent in the field of housing to offer the next available accommodation to the complainant. These are not criminal sanctions, but things which could be done as part of the civil procedure. The Court could require an employer to offer the next vacancy to a complainant; or require a union or trade association to admit a person or withdraw a decision to exclude a person from membership.
The Government should think again on this matter. If we do not get into this Bill some such provision as this, then I am sure that something of the kind will have to go into the next measure that comes along in this field. The basis of the Bill is largely conciliation, but the American experience indicates that only if there is seen to be efficient enforcement does legislation really have the desired effect in changing social behaviour. I believe that the Board must be seen to be a powerful agency, able and willing to protect a minority and to demonstrate that active racial prejudice has no place in our modern society. This is the case which we make for the Bill, and this is why we are going to support it.
I suggested to the Leader of the House immediately after this measure was introduced in another place that if it was the intention of the Home Secretary to appoint a Select Comittee to monitor this Bill, to see how it was going on, this might be a good opportunity to make such a Committee into a Joint Committee of the two Houses of Parliament. I believe that this need no longer be a controversial measure. This House has a great deal to contribute. It has a great deal of experience in these matters in all parts of the House, and I hope that the Home Secretary will give consideration to the idea that the first committee of this kind on race relations might be a joint one.
5.8 p.m.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, I welcome this Bill because I am impressed by the evidence that a bit of legislation helps in a task

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of this kind. I want also to say how wholeheartedly I welcome and agree with the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, that tits Bill—be it as some of us believe a good Bill, or be it, as he suspects, perhaps not quite so good a Bill—is but one item in a far greater process: the process of education, and indeed the process of dealing comprehensively with all the practical problems of community relations in this country. I believe that the Bill is necessary, but I see it only as an item.
I should like to say a word or two about that larger context within which I see the Bill as an item. Centuries hence our successors may be astonished at this phase in human history, that there was so much trouble arid discussion about the colour of human skin. If one looks at the matter in that way, it is altogether astonishing. Why should the colour of human skin be such a tremendous issue, any more than the difference between blue eyes and brown eyes and grey eyes, or between the different colours of hair? But we know that it is not just the colour of skin; it is the colour problem intermingled with a legion of other problems concerning culture and ways of life, and whether people have always lived in a place or are new arrivals. A whole tangle of social and economic problems develops, and, as well as the frank colour prejudice which certainly exists, there are the prejudicial troubles caused when colour becomes a symbol for things more complex than itself. That, I believe, is part of our contemporary tragedy in this country.
I see the Bill as a necessary item in the immense efforts that we need to be making to get good community relations, which have been described as "equal opportunity accompanied by cultural diversity in an atmosphere of tolerance". If that is to be, it calls for a delicate balance between the readiness of newcomers in any community to adapt themselves to that community and the readiness of those already in the community to accept differences of outlook and to be very sympathetic and tolerant. In the past three years I have seen something of the efforts made by many voluntary bodies in the sphere of community relations, through the part which I have in the work of the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants. I should like to commend the Report of that
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Committee for 1967, as it gives a full and fascinating picture of work done in community relations in many parts of the country; and, indeed, it describes vividly something of this human scene which is the context of the Bill.
The N.C.C.I. now has 64 voluntary liaison committees working in different parts of the country. The term "committee" here is very significant, because there is an immense variety of bodies in the country dealing with community relations, and those bodies are of very different sorts. They range from militant groups which exist for the purpose of protesting and making a noise about grievances to groups of white citizens, right at the other end of the scale, trying very hard to do good but being rather paternalistic and sometimes rather surprised when they do not quite meet the feelings of immigrant communities or communities of people of other races. But the best work is, I believe, done when you get a group of citizens, including persons of different races, working together in a common understanding, realising that the problems are common to both of them and doing their best to help with them in practical ways.
The work of the N.C.C.I. has included specialist panels whose researches have been able to give the Government information and advice about the needs of particular localities. It has also included training courses for professional people whose work increasingly involves them in matters of race relations, though their professional training may not have specially prepared them for those problems. The police officer, the magistrate, the school teacher, the educationist in other spheres, and many kinds of social worker, have not necessarily been trained in race relations matters and they, perhaps, find themselves suddenly involved in them. The N.C.C.I. has been giving help by skilled educational courses, warmly welcomed by professional people, about the racial problems which they encounter in their work. In this present month of July there are taking place some 30 classes for talks of this character in different parts of the country. Of course, the work of education includes helping the immigrant communities to understand things about this country which they badly need to know and understand, and also helping our community generally to

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know what is the contribution that some immigrant communities have been giving to our economy and our culture.
Before I leave the work of the N.C.C.I. I would mention one very interesting activity; that is, the provision of preschool age playing groups for children. Playgrounds are provided where children, before they have quite reached the age for going to school, can play together and get to know one another, which of course they usually do without any inhibition about the colour of one another's skin. The provision of these playgrounds has been found to help greatly when children go on to school, and the difficulties of school problems can be very much lessened by them.
I welcome greatly the fact that the N.C.C.I. is now to give place to a new body called the Community Relations Commission, because the work will now be not with those correctly called "immigrants" but with the second or third generations who are now our fellow citizens. I hope that the new Commission will have in its membership men and women with really scientific knowledge of the problems to be tackled. I hope it will have a chairman, not who cares more about these matters than I do—because one will not be found—but who will be able to give a great deal more time to what will be an immensely growing work than I have been able to give to the work of the N.C.C.I. I hope, also, that the Government will realise that £200,000 is a small budget for these immensely important operations. If this work is to grow as it should grow, it will cost more; and I am sure the Government know they must face that.
It is in the context of all this that I see the present Bill as designed to help, and I believe that it will help. But I want to make three criticisms of it. My first criticism is with regard to the definition of "discrimination" in Clause 1. I am glad that on the Report stage in another place the definition was enlarged, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, that it is a great pity that the definition was not carried further still. Is it possible to improve upon the words used in the International Convention document of 1965:
"any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour or national or ethnic origin"?
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Those words make it clear that discrimination may include not only the provision of unequal services, but also the provision of services in separation.
The Home Secretary, when tackled about this, gave personal assurances (OFFICIAL REPORT, 8/7/68, col. 240) that of course he entirely agreed that it was inconceivable that separation could slip in without being banned as discrimination. He said that his advice was that there was no loophole in the new clause, and that it was inconceivable that the Race Relations Board could take a different view. But if that is so, is it not possible to make it quite clear in the definition of discrimination that there is no loophole, especially, as we have been told so often that the purpose of this first clause is not only to make the law but also to enunciate a principle for all to understand? May I put the matter thus? When the Government spokesman replies, will he tell us whether it would be bad law or impossible law to use the words:
"any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour or national or ethnic origin"?
My second criticism is about the powers of the Race Relations Board. Together with a good many other people, I regret that the Board are not given power, when they deal with a complaint, to compel the presence of witnesses and to require the production of papers and statistics. I think that the lack of those powers by the Board may mean two things. The first is that complaints may just cause irritation and be inconclusive if the information for dealing with them is not available. I think that it may also mean that matters might find themselves going to the courts when they need not otherwise do so just because recourse to the courts is the only way of getting the necessary information. I do not think that to give these powers to the Board turns them from being a conciliatory body into a judicial body. I should have judged, rather, that the lack of these powers weakens the Board's capacity to do the very thing that they are meant to do; namely, conciliation.
In this discussion, again and again dental language has been used: it has been discussed whether there are enough teeth or too many teeth in the Bill. I would see the matter rather as where

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teeth are to be located. Courts always have teeth, and we do not want too many matters going to the courts for the teeth of the courts to bite on. I believe that in this particular matter, if the Race Relations Board have just these few more teeth they would do their conciliatory work better and the teeth of the courts would be less likely to be employed in a serious matter of where there was a complaint and yet the information was not available.
My third criticism concerns racial groups in employment. I feel a bit uneasy about this kind of situation. A well-qualified man applies for a job, but it has to be said to him: "Mr. X, we are sorry. You are the best qualified applicant for this post, but we cannot give it to you because the quota requires that we should give the post to another racial group." These are matters about which perhaps the Government may even now have, I will not say second but third or fourth thoughts. But for all these criticisms I welcome the Bill, believing that it will be a help in the great ongoing work of education in community relations.
My Lords, it is not only a matter of how in this country we can get the most just and peaceful arrangements for our own community. It is also a matter of what contribution this country can be making to what indeed is a world crisis. Race relations are a crisis in the world: whether in the world as a whole there is to be racial conflict or racial harmony. And what happens in any one country can have immense effects for good or for ill upon other countries—far more than we commonly realise. I believe that the help which this Bill gives to the building up of good community relations in this country will be a contribution which our country can make to racial harmony in the world at large.
5.26 p.m.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, I count it a great privilege to follow the most reverend Primate, who speaks with such great authority on these questions. I may shorten my speech by saying that I agree with every word that the most reverend Primate has said; and I say with satisfaction that some of the points which he has made occurred also in the notes which I may now discard.
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I believe that the most reverend Primate's words will be echoed in the Church to which I have the privilege to belong. I heard from a noble friend who is very well acquainted with the subject that the poorest members of the Roman Catholic community have been the persons most sympathetic and kindly to the newly-arrived immigrants. If that be the case, it gives me very great satisfaction. It does not give me surprise. There is a line of a Roman poet which may be translated:
"Myself, not ignorant of evil times,
I have learned to succour those who are oppressed".
It is not so very long ago, after all, that notices went up on factory gates, "Hands wanted—No Irish need apply". The age which was grimly referred to in Liverpool as "The Stone Age" is not prehistoric. Is it not good news, then, that Liverpool has distinguished itself above other cities for harmonious relations with the immigrant community?
My Lords, the Irish community is today adequately integrated into our society. It has been a long and difficult struggle. Much is owed to those who, both in high positions and in much lower positions, acted as the leaders of that community. What undoubtedly is most needed in to-day's situation is the development of good leadership among the various immigrant communities and the extension of confidence to those leaders by the British Government and the Ministries. Every effort must therefore be made to encourage wise leadership among people who have not always found the most prudent leadership in past years. It is with the hope that that necessary factor of leadership will appear that I would conclude my remarks.
5.30 p.m.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I must start with an apology to the House. At this moment I should be in the West Country fulfilling a long-standing engagement of an official nature, and I am afraid that I shall be unable to remain until the end of the debate. But I certainly look forward to reading with great interest what other noble Lords have to say.
My Lords, I think we all agree that racial discrimination is, in fact, a disease of society and that it is a disease based

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very largely on ignorance and fear. It may be natural for a child to be afraid of the dark but it certainly cannot be maintained that it is the mark of a civilised man to be afraid of a dark skin. If I am right in my contention that forms of racial discrimination as we see them in this country to-day are, in fact, a disease, they must then be treated as a disease and, what is more, as a disease which affects not solely the patient but society as a whole. In the past we have suffered from many such diseases, physical, epidemic and endemic. In the old days we had the Black Death, bubonic plague and smallpox. More recently we have had epidemic typhoid fever and tuberculosis as an endemic disease of society. These diseases have now been largely conquered; and I think we can learn something by looking back at how they were conquered and why they are no longer the plague of the society in which we live. This can give us a clue as to how we should treat this present evil disease of society.
First, it is essential that we should recognise that racial discrimination is a pathological state. It is not an act of God about which we can do nothing; it is something where, if we are wise enough and brave enough, action can be taken to better the situation if not entirely to cure it. In this respect, if not in some others, I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, when he says that there is a growing danger in the tendency to-day towards sweeping all these unpleasant things under the carpet—just as, in the old days, so many physical diseases were pushed to one side because people did not like to face the fact that they were suffering from, say, cancer. So we must recognise, as we are recognising, that this is a pathological condition.
Secondly, the physical diseases which I have mentioned have been dealt with by laws, by laws which enforce public health, by laws of hygiene, by laws against the; defiling of water, against spitting in public places and so forth, about which we have now almost forgotten. What are needed now are laws against defiling our society with the excrement of diseased minds as well as bodies and laws; against spitting foul words in the atmosphere as well as
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against spitting germ-laden sputum into the atmosphere to infect other people with those horrible diseases. This Bill sets out to do that. It follows a previous Act and it is a great advance on that.
I am sure that it is right—and I am glad that my noble friend Lord Stonham stressed this—that the emphasis should be on conciliation. That is the theme which runs through the Bill and it is right that it should. But I am afraid that this Bill carries the desire to conciliate too far. The most reverend Primate was absolutely right when he spoke of the need for the Race Relations Board to have powers to subpoena witnesses, to bring them before the Board themselves, to demand the production of documents—because without that power there will be great scope for those who wish to obstruct, to delay the process and, possibly, to force the Board to go to a court of law—simply in order to produce the documents which, had they been able to have them beforehand, would have made conciliation that much easier. I therefore support the plea that the powers of the Race Relations Board should be strengthened in this respect.
I agree also with other noble Lords who have condemned Clause 8, the racial balance clause. The object of this Bill is, by means of conciliation, to make people forget about race, to bring them to judge their fellow human beings as human beings and not as members of a particular race or ethnic group. By allowing, even in a fairly modest form, a clause such as this (which deals with the racial balance in certain small firms) to become law is defeating the general purpose of the Bill. It is underlining the fact that different races exist; it is bringing that into the ambit of the law. I hope that before this Bill becomes an Act it will be improved in that respect.
But my Lords, although the physical diseases to which I have referred—tuberculosis, typhoid and the rest—needed legislation in order to conquer them, they were not conquered solely by legislation. It was not solely a question of ensuring by law that, for example, milk, water and food supplies should be clean. There was also needed a great deal of basic and applied research. There was needed positive action to build up positive health, and there were needed good living conditions and, in the widest sense of the word,

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a great educational programme. Those things are needed also to deal with racial prejudice.
To deal first with research, much good research is being done at present and has been done over the past years. I am proud to be associated with one of the bodies responsible, the Institute of Race Relations, which was started some ten years ago very largely through the efforts of a far-seeing man, its present Director, Philip Mason. Under the auspices of the Institute of Race Relations, and collaborating with it, is the Survey of Race Relations in Britain, sponsored and made possible by a generous grant from the Nuffield Trust and ably carried out by Mr. Jim Ross, Mr. Nicholas Deakin and their colleagues. That survey has now come to an end—not because they have finished the task, not because they know all the answers, but solely because the money has now run out. Much useful work has been done, and the report, when it is published some time during the course of this year, will, I am sure, provide those who are interested and concerned with this problem with a great deal of basic information which is necessary; just as we needed basic information on the causative elements of these diseases, typhoid, tuberculosis and their carriers, and the conditions in which they spread.
This research has been carried on, and will be carried on and should be carried on, not only by the Institute of Race Relations but also by the universities who, I am happy to say, are showing a greatly increasing interest in this subject. People are now beginning to realise—and this is a healthy and a hopeful sign—that research into these matters is not merely the province of the intellectuals, possibly "do-gooders", people who want to find out solely for academic interest; but is becoming of interest to those who realise that it is of practical importance to the everyday lives of everyday people and to the everyday profits of everyday business.
Clause 24, my Lords, makes it possible for the Government to make money available for research, and I am happy to note this. It is very important that it should be done. But I press the Government on this point, and I hope that when the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor replies he may be able to give some specific assurances
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about what form of assistance is to be given and how soon we may expect to hear what that assistance is going to be.
Clause 24 makes it possible for the Home Office to carry out research. I hope that my noble friend Lord Stonham will not take it wrongly if I say that I hope sincerely that the Home Office will not carry out research. I do not believe that a Government Department which is interested in so many aspects of law enforcement, and in the other side of this whole problem, is a suitable Department to carry out research; any more than I believe that the Ministry of Health is a suitable body to carry out basic research into matters of public health and medicine. By all means make the money available, but I hope that it will be made available to bodies less directly and, if I may say so, less subjectively concerned in this matter.
I turn now to an aspect that has been mentioned by other speakers, the importance of good living conditions. No matter how much we may enforce the law; no matter how much we may find out by research what are the causes of bad race relations, so long as coloured ghettoes continue; so long as certain sections of the community are, Air one reason or another, forced to live in substandard houses, crowded together in bad conditions, worse than the average run for other people, so long is there bound to be a colour problem. The article in the Observer yesterday, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, makes terrifying reading, but it is very important reading for anybody who takes an interest in this subject, and I wish those who do not take an interest in it would also read the article.
We come next to education—by, which I mean education of the ordinary, decent-minded people in this country who are so sadly ignorant of what are the true facts concerning immigration and what are the feelings of immigrants. I say it with the greatest respect but I think that some remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, showed how much in need he is of education in this matter. The noble Lord mentioned that he saw no difference between himself going to Pakistan or Jamaica or a Pakistani or Jamaican coming to this country; that he would not expect

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different treatment, why should they—and so on.
I do not want to misquote the noble Lord, but I would point out to him, and to many others who say the same sort of thing, that, speaking in purely human terms, there is all the difference in the world between someone from a great and rich country, with all the security of that country behind him, going to some place which has at one time been a Colony and has only recently emerged from being a Colony, and some poor person, with a low level of education, coming from that former colonial territory, to this great, rich, busy, frightening country of the United Kingdom. To compare the two shows a complete and fundamental misunderstanding, or ignorance, of the whole problem.
The noble Lord, Lord Byers, very helpfully quoted some figures about which people should know far more than they do; some of the basic facts about immigrants; how they are made up, and what sort of people they are. For instance, to add a few to the figures which the noble Lord has already given, 43 per cent. of the junior doctors in our National Health Service are immigrants from one country or another, as are 30 per cent. of the pupil nurses. There are many other figures of that kind which show to those who have eyes to see, and who are not already blinded by their own prejudices, that this country would be a poorer place to-day were it not for the immigrants who have come here; and it is not the immigrants who are taking wealth out of this country.
It is much against my nature and instincts ever to incite any one section of the community to take action against another, or to incite any one part of the community to strike against the rest. But I must say that when the dockers and the Smithfield meat workers were marching upon Westminster in a protest against coloured workers I wondered to myself what would have happened if every coloured worker in the country had decided to down tools for one day or for one week, and what effect that would have had on the lives of those people.
My Lords, Clause 23 allows the sum of £200,000 for this general dissemination of information, if one may call it that and for helping local authorities
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to face the various serious problems which confront them. That is a lamentably small amount. I hope that it is not an indication of the seriousness with which Her Majesty's Government regard this problem. Surely we have only to look to the recent history of the United States to see, far too clearly for comfort, what would happen if we failed to act now, and if we failed to act wisely.
Looking at this in purely financial terms, and simply from the hard-headed business point of view, and disregarding all the human aspects of the question, it would pay this country, it would be good business for this country, to make £5 million available in order to solve the problem of race relations and prevent the kind of losses which took place in a few short days in Chicago only a year ago. It would be a very sound investment indeed. I hope that the Government do not look on this £200,000 as the limit to what they can give. I wish it were £200 million, but I am being more realistic than to put that figure forward. Nevertheless, I hope that before long, when the money is used up, as it should be very speedily, the Government will make at least £1 million a year available for research, for education and for the provision of actual, practical help to local authorities in solving the real and physical problems, because it would bring back a quick and a great return.
I welcome this Bill. We see that it is a big step forward, if we look back only three or four years and see where we were standing then. It will go some way towards meeting these pressing problems, particularly if Clause 1 is modified as the most reverend Primate and the noble Lord, Lord Byers, have suggested. I hope that it will be, or that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor will make it clear that there can be no risk of misinterpretation as the clause stands. I believe we can say that when this Bill becomes law we shall have made a significant step forward along the path of creating a better society in this land.
5.51 p.m.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, I am not a racialist—and I am sure that my many Commonwealth friends all over the world would bear me out on this—but I am not very happy about this Bill. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Byers, should have considered

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it necessary to label anybody who is against this Bill and votes against it as a racialist because that is totally untrue.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, would the noble Baroness like to withdraw that? I said nothing of the sort.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, I will certainly withdraw it, if that is not what the noble Lord said. I am not happy about this Bill. Though I am not a professional lawyer, parts of it do not appear to me to make good law. I would quote the words of the right honourable Member for Ashford, who said in another place:
"We are passing a vote of no confidence on our own people."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 23/4/67, col. 90.]
We have so far in our history absorbed Romans, Danes, Saxons, Dutch, Huguenots, Belgians and Poles—I hope I have got them in the right historical sequence —and we have had no need for legislation of the kind that we have before us to-day, which picks out a special group. If we have to make a declaration, like the honourable Member for Marylebone in another place, I should like to rest our new regulations on the Declaration of Human Rights as embodied in the Charter. May I remind your Lordships of the actual words:
"…encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion."
As it is, we have lifted out a certain section of the community for special protection. I doubt very much whether this is wise and whether in the long run it will not create more ill-feeling than it endeavours to assuage. The giving to the Race Relations Board of powers to assess damages, which will be extraordinarily difficult to establish, appears to me also to be fraught with hideous legal complications. But I am no lawyer and I prefer to lease that matter to the experts. I should like to echo the question of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, who asked, referring to the Board, whether any woman has or is going to be appointed to it.
Where I think there is a misconception of the public attitude towards our coloured neighbours is this. Our people, who I think are among the kindest people in the world, are never averse to helping
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strangers within their gates—with one proviso, that they are not swamped by numbers. This is the fear which at the present moment is stalking our country. I am sure that if it was not for this fear, we should not have anything like the troubles that people are anticipating. We are a heavily populated island already. We have to look forward to a rapid natural increase. We are warrnd that in some thirty years' time we may be a 100 million people. How and where are we going to house, school and hospitalise this number? Already this question of excess population has occupied the weekend papers and political speeches. I am sure that these facts of our over-population must be made known to the people of those other countries who are still thinking of us as an open refuge, as a land of golden opportunity. I am certain that on the Indian continent the problem of our over-population has not sunk in and is not fully realised.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Baroness realises that over the last few years more people have left this country than have come into it. The immigration—emigration balance is in favour of immigration. In view of that, is the noble Baroness still oppressed by our over-population?
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: Yes, my Lords, because the natural increase is going to be very rapid and we cannot count on people emigrating. They may or may not do so. I am sure that without panic measures—and I really look on this Bill as a panic measure—so long as the continuous stream of immigration was arrested, we should in time absorb the immigrants who have already settled here. In fact the Report of the Race Relations Board says that there has been a distinct decrease in overt discrimination.
It is interesting to note that three-quarters of the cases of discrimination take place in clubs or pubs. Is this not really very natural? We all know that even in our own village pub if a stranger arrives, if only from a town or village a few miles away, he is regarded with a certain amount of suspicion until people have got used to him, whatever the colour of his face. I remember during the war when I was canteening troops on the South Coast, we had both coloured

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and white U.S.A. troops. My canteenists preferred the coloured troops, and it took quite a long time to get used to both, until we realised, of course, that both were fighting for us.
My reason for speaking in this debate and for criticising this Bill is a special one. It may not be a very popular one. I am not making a sentimental appeal. I want to be purely factual. The noble Lord, Lord Byers, told us that 2 per cent. of the population of our country is coloured. But there is another set of people in our country, forming more than half the population, against whom there is far greater discrimination than there is against the coloured population. I am speaking about British women. I would repeat, without fear of contradiction from anybody: there is more discrimination against women in this country.
The Home Secretary has stated:
"But there will be growing tension if coloured youngsters leaving school in the next few years cannot readily get jobs for which they are qualified on the same terms as their white contemporaries."—[OFFICIAL REPORT (Commons), 23/4/68; col. 57.]
What about the British qualified woman bus driver, against whom there was discrimination by her male colleagues just a few weeks ago? What about the difficulties British women have in getting into medical schools? If they could go into medical schools in increasing numbers, we should not be so dependent on foreigners. What about equal pay? Are the African males to be protected and not our own womenfolk? Women have been very patient and through the last fifty years of their political emancipation they have relied on persuasion and justification through their achievements, against tremendous odds, gradually to grow out of their status as second-class citizens.
But, my Lords, this Bill may put ideas into women's heads. I have seen great advances in my forty years and more of political life. I voted against my own Party on the L.C.C. when they refused to employ married women teachers in the 'twenties. And look how the wheel has turned. I could give your Lordships many examples in my life of discrimination against me, but I will not bother your Lordships with personal reminis-
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cences. To give the devil his due (if the Prime Minister does not mind my using a colloquialism), he has given very much more recognition to women in politics than my Party have done in past years. But I would draw his attention to the dangers that this Bill may unleash so far as the women's societies in this country are concerned.
I should like to counsel our coloured and immigrant friends to be patient; to conform to the traditions and even the prejudices of the British; to try to live as nearly in custom and law as their immediate neighbours, and they will win through as communication, understanding and education grow: because as I said earlier, ours is a kindly race, if slow to make approaches. I believe that good communications are needed more than legislation. If we can stick to the Declaration of Human Rights we shall never go very far wrong. As it is, I am uneasy about this partial emasculation of the Declaration and fear that, like all half measures, it can create more trouble than it will solve.
6.2 p.m.
BARONESS ASQUITH OF YARNBURY: My Lords, I am sorry to have to differ from the noble Baroness who has just sat down in regarding this Bill as a panic measure. On the contrary, I regard it as an urgently necessary measure for the safeguarding of those very human rights in which she believes. And I think the more ideas that are put into our heads the better. My own head is always open to ideas as I am often short of them.
I am sure we should all agree that the issue with which this Bill is concerned is not a Party issue. Nor is it solely a national issue. To my mind, it is, above all else, a human issue, it is a moral issue, and an international issue which to-day is convulsing many parts of the world. It is convulsing a highly developed, sophisticated and civilised society in the United States of America. It is an explosive force in Africa among more primitive societies. It is, as we all know, the cause of all our troubles with Rhodesia, of our estrangement from South Africa and of the ferment which is to-day at work throughout the whole of that vast and stormy continent. It cannot, therefore, be denied that it is a threat to peace.

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The manner in which we deal with this problem of race relations here in our own country may well have world-wide repercussions. Hence the vital importance, national and international, of the Bill we are discussing this afternoon. I know that there are many in this House who contend that legislation will do more harm than good—that is a phrase that I hear on all sides. I can only suppose that what they mean is that those who are practising discrimination will be so incensed if they are prevented from so doing that their racial prejudice will be increased by any obstacle which is placed in their way. Are we then, in order to placate them, to allow them to indulge in discrimination to their heart's content, quite regardless of the injustice towards their victims? That is surely the only alternative if conciliation (and remember that conciliation is the first purpose of this Bill) has failed.
Let us learn something from the experience of the United States; and let us remember that in the United States it is the delay in legislating that has done harm rather than good; and further, that no human rights legislation passed there has been repealed. On the contrary, their reaction to their present difficulties has been to widen the scope of Federal Law.
Many laws which protect the public are, I find, very unpopular. For instance, breathalysers are very unpopular with dangerous drivers. But we cannot deny that they have acted as a deterrent and saved many lives. This law will, I am sure, act as a protection and a civilising force. I think that this legislation is well summed up in four sentences from the First Report of the Race Relations Board, and if your Lordships would allow me, I should like to read them, because they are more concise than anything I can say.

"(1) A law is an unequivocal declaration of national policy.

(2) A law gives support to those who do not wish to discriminate, but who feel compelled to do so by social pressures.

(3) A law gives protection and redress to minority groups.

(4) A law reduces prejudice by discouraging behaviour in which prejudice finds expression."

In other words, although, as we are constantly reminded, and even re-reminded this afternoon, laws cannot change our hearts, laws can and do
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change our habits, and a habit may well become a second nature.
I think that we have all read the very fine debate in another placed, marred only by the unseemly insults hurled at Mr. Quintin Hogg because he had the courage to speak his mind and to speak it brilliantly. There was one feature of that debate which surprised me. Throughout all its stages—Second Reading, Committee and Report—the position of the victims of discrimination was hardly discussed at all. Anxiety was almost entirely concentrated on the possible hardship of potential discriminators. Yet surely we must all agree that to be discriminated against is a very unpleasant experience and a very genuine grievance for which there must be summary redress, and that discrimination is humanly and socially undesirable, and, incidentally, economically wasteful.
Once more American experience has proved that some sanction is necessary. I know that there are perfectionists on the Left—and perhaps I am one of them —and there are wreckers on the Right who both maintain that this Bill is unworkable. But may I remind them, myself and your Lordships that under the 1965 Act—and that was a much weaker one than the present Bill—no 1ess than 94 per cent. of the cases dealt with by the Race Relations Board were settled by conciliation alone. But such conciliation could never have been achieved, and could never have had a chance of being successful, if it had not had the backing of some form of sanction. I therefore welcome the fact that the present Bill strengthens those sanctions, and that it is going to cover the vital fields of housing and unemployment. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, that overcrowding and slum conditions are in many places the villains of the piece, and that race has been made the scapegoat.
May I add one word to those who appear to regard persons of minority groups in our midst as an unnecessary and unmitigated nuisance. May I remind them that the presence of these groups in this country stems directly from our imperial past. And yet, by a strange irony, it is often those who are most proud of this past and who hanker most nostalgically after its old glories, who are most ready to forget our responsibilities

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to these people, who are an integral part of it, and the obligations which we owe them.
My Lords, I realise that this problem should be approached so far as possible with judicial calm and not overloaded with emotion. Yet there are two quite unrelated incidents which I cannot banish from my heart and mind. One was the report I read in The Times last week of a meeting somewhere in Wales addressed by Mr. Enoch Powell, at which a schoolmaster, a Mr. Karl Francis, is reported to have said that the lives of the coloured children he was teaching had been almost destroyed by Mr. Powell's speech. And Mr. Powell is reported to have replied:
"If I could wish it"—
that is his speech—
"and all that has followed from it out of existence I would never, never do so."
What that schoolmaster describes as the destruction or the near destruction of the lives of these innocent coloured children, the loss of their faith in us, perhaps worse still the loss of their faith in themselves, aroused no compunction, no regret, no remorse in the man who caused it. He would not undo it even if he could. Here we have the credo of a racialist, naked and unashamed, not of some poor benighted, unlettered, ignorant man, but of an intellectual of the first water, the eminent professor of a great university, a distinguished Member of another place.
The other incident is one which many of your Lordships I think must have shared with me. It was the scene outside the House of Commons when the Kenyan High Commissioner was insulted by an unruly mob of Mr. Powell's followers from the docks, simply because his face happened to be of a different colour from their own. Such happenings seem incredible, except that, alas!, we know they happened. They are a negation of every tradition, of every principle this country has stood for, practised and honoured throughout the centuries and throughout the world. We have always had a proud tradition of tolerance and hospitality to those in need; we have always opened wide our doors, as the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet, mentioned, to the citizens of other countries who were the victims of persecution or of oppression. We have
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taken in Flemish weavers; we have taken in Huguenots; we have taken in the Jewish victims of Hitler's Terror. And we have been repaid for it: we have been repaid by their loyalty and by the skills which many of them have taught us.
But here we have our own fellow-citizens of our own Commonwealth, not strangers outside our gates, who want to come here and find a home with us and to live amongst us and work with us and for us. It is these who, although they have been admitted to this country after passing stringent tests, are now rejected. I think it is a terrible blot upon our escutcheon and it is one which we must erase as soon as we possibly can. To my mind, it is a disgrace that we are obliged to-day to invoke the law in order to protect our own fellow-citizens from insult and injustice. I agree that legislation is a tragic necessity, and I think it is an indictment of our civilisation. But we have no option but to take this action and to take it with both hands.
This Bill may have many flaws and imperfections—some of them have been mentioned this afternoon. Some may be amended here in Committee; and some may be improved in the light of experience when it comes into action. It may even be that its mere existence will make its application unnecessary. But one thing is essential—and that is that it should be passed.
6.16 p.m.
LORD HIRSHFIELD: My Lords, I believe that I echo the feelings of all your Lordships in this House if I say how pleasing it always is for all of us to listen to the words of the noble Baroness who has just resumed her seat. On the other hand, I must say, speaking personally, that I find it an awesome experience to follow immediately upon a great Lady with such a wealth of experience. But it is an interesting thing for me because, if I may reminisce for just a few seconds, I occupied her father's desk at school. I remember how he carved his name in that desk. I thought his carving with a penknife was rotten, but, my goodness!, the speaking ability of his daughter is much better than I could ever hope to emulate.
The noble Baroness, certainly for the first time in your Lordships' House, and

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possibly for the first time if one includes the debate in the other place, mentioned the waves of Jewish immigrants into this country. Because she has mentioned that I might also say that a board in the same school where her father was indicated that the Rothschild who was there was the first Jew to be allowed to take his seat in the Commons; and indeed it was his son who was the first person to be elevated to the Peerage by Mr. Gladstone. I personally am happy to see that there are one or two more of his flock in your Lordships' House these days.
My Lords, I believe this Bill is a necessary and urgent piece of legislation. There can be no doubt, after the abundant evidence which has been produced on the subject recently, that racial discrimination in housing, in employment and in various consumer services does exist on a serious and, at the moment, mounting scale. Equally, there can be no doubt that, while legislation of this kind does not banish discrimination, it is—as the United States and most Western European countries have found—a necessary foundation for building racial harmony. To my mind, these points cannot be disputed. I have therefore been surprised and concerned at the opposition which this Bill has aroused, and I believe it is this opposition which demands our fullest consideration to-day. The opposition has come broadly from two sources: first, from those who may be called the anti-legislators; those who believe it is fundamentally wrong to legislate on these matters, or to provide legal protection against discrimination for our immigrant community. Secondly, the opposition is from those who believe legislation is needed but that this particular Bill does not go far enough.
Let me deal with the anti-legislators first. Essentially they argue from the standpoint of the individual. It is wrong, they claim, for the law to curb the freedom of the individual to sell his house or the insurance organisation to offer its policy to whomever they wish, and that it is wrong to restrict the freedom of an employer to employ whomever he wishes. Anyone, if he wishes to discriminate—so they claim—should be free to do so. The weakness in that argument is that it ignores completely the wider social and community problems which are created
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by such individual decisions. Freedom of this kind for individuals in a community faced with the kind of problems we have is bound not merely to sustain but to strengthen racial prejudice. Wherever a minority is denied the rights and the freedoms of the rest of the community, it is bound to grow more resentful and more antagonistic towards the rest of the community, and that, in turn, will create a more hostile and a more tense society.
We have seen in recent years in the United States of America the enormous price which a society has to pay if it ignores the rights of a minority. To-day, despite the fact that it is the richest society the world has ever seen, America is a tense and divided society. Its citizens, for all their material wealth, often appear to lack a sense of security and wellbeing. What we are in danger of doing if we deny the need for this legislation is not merely allowing injustice and prejudice to grow but threatening the whole quality of our community life in the years ahead. I cannot believe that we shall do this.
The second form of opposition lo the Bill comes from those who argue that it does not go far enough in preventing racial discrimination. Here I believe we should acknowledge the validity of some of those criticisms, and I must say I accept some of the criticisms that we have heard from a few of those who have spoken in your Lordships' House this afternoon. For example, I cannot see at the moment how the employment provisions in the Bill can be interpreted in any other way than giving the employer the right to continue racial discrimination—under the pretext of maintaining a fair balance in the composition of his labour force. I can more easily accept that there is a problem with employers who possess very small staffs, but the Bill provides for that situation and I feel it does so fairly and reasonably.
During the debate on this Bill in another place my right honourable friend, the Home Secretary, explained effectively why the Race Relations Board will be primarily a conciliatory body and why they are denied certain powers of enforcement. There was strength in his argument and I hope experience will prove him right. Nevertheless, it is

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understandable for many to consider that unless the Race Relations Board are given sufficient powers to carry out the Act—which in some important respects they do not appear to have under the provisions of this Bill—there is a serious danger that they will be unable to carry out their work adequately. Therefore, like some other noble Lords, I would suggest that the Government look once again at some of these aspects of the Bill. It would be a tragedy if, having taken the decision that legislation is necessary, the Government then, through a misguided attempt to gain approval and support in the more reactionary sectors of industry and the community, destroyed any real effect and benefit which the Bill might have had.
It would also be a tragedy if it were felt that the Bill was in itself sufficient to meet the challenge posed by racial discrimination in our society. Fortunately, the Government have already done a good deal more. The special educational and other social needs of the immigrant community have been recognised in the new local government grant structure which was introduced last year. There still remains much more to be done in the recognition and provision of services for these special social needs, but I welcome the start which has been made.
But what is also needed, as we look at the problem of race relations in the years ahead, is not simply legislative or social policy solutions but a comprehensive domestic and international approach. We need a continuing commitment by successive British Governments to the principles of racial equality and harmony in all spheres of public life, domestic and international. And this must involve, above all else, a fresh concern for our relations with the underdeveloped countries. The gap between rich and poor countries in the world is increasing, and it is increasingly a racial as well as a material gap. What we must recognise is the attitude which we now take to our overseas aid and foreign economic policies will not only influence the size of the gap but also the whole quality of life in the international community and at home. A world of rich white nations and poor black ones will be a tense, divided and explosive world. In such a world we should be on the defensive, fear-
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ful of what might happen, and it would be fear and insecurity more than anything else which would breed in our society intolerance and hatred and do irreparable harm to the kind of ideals and aims which lay behind the Bill we are considering to-day.
This Bill is about race and colour. Prima facie, therefore, it is not about religious discrimination, which it is well to remember. It is also important to realise that a question all too often still asked in this enlightened State which has offered peace and asylum to so many over the long years is, "Is he English or is he a Jew?". Noble Lords certainly do not have to be reminded that one who is a Jew by religion can be as British and proud of it as anyone else. The Jew is especially interested in a debate on coloured immigration because he has often experienced the problem from the inside. He has been the victim down the ages of propaganda of the pattern which—alas!—is now heard here, and which has been affecting the most fair-minded citizens. So it is a time for the Jew to stand up fearlessly and give an example of humanity towards another minority group.
There is one more reason why no Jew can sit back and allow racialism to grow. If he is true to his religious upbringing he recognises that man was created in the image of God—not white man, nor black man, but man, every man. As Abraham Heschel has put it:
"God is every man's pedigree. He is either the Father of all men or of no man. The image of God is either in every man or in no man."
I should only hope that this Bill will pass your Lordships' House "nem con". I urge the widest possible support for it, and I would just add these few remarks, because it is known to some of your Lordships that I carry out certain work in the sociological fields and aspects of rapid technological change. Let us not overlook on the one hand that this nation needs rapid technological change; otherwise, by comparison with its competitors abroad it will have more unemployment more quickly. Let us also realise, however, that with the introduction of rapid technological change it is the coloured people who will first be inclined to lose their jobs but for this kind of Bill. I should like to leave your Lordships with those words and sentiments.
6.30 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, opened our debate this afternoon with a speech, I thought, of admirable clarity in which he explained the provisions and intentions of this Bill. I take, frankly, a far less optimistic view of this Bill than he does. I can, however, greatly shorten what I have to say because I agreed so emphatically with nearly everything said in the admirable speech of my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, who opened on this side.
Both the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and the Home Secretary in another place pointed out, at the outset of their speeches, that we must carefully distinguish between the questions of the numbers of immigrants whom we admit and the way we treat those lawfully here. With that I find it all the easier to agree because I made the same point myself nearly four years ago when I first spoke on this particular topic in this House on December 1, 1964. If, to justify the position I am going to adopt this afternoon, I do not deal with the argument in great detail, it is because anybody who takes the least interest in my own attitude to these problems can find it in that speech and in subsequent speeches, on March 10, 1965, and November 3, 1966.
Although the questions, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham said, are distinct, yet they have a close relationship; and the relationship was pointed out by my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor. Unless the most careful restriction is placed on the numbers of our immigrants there is no chance whatsoever that this Bill will bring about the results which Her Majesty's Government desire. I said nearly four years ago what I have said ever since, and what I now repeat. I think that on this question of the numbers of immigrants whom we can profitably admit to our shores the great masses of the public have throughout shown much more wisdom than the politicians.
Equal and humane treatment for all our citizens lawfully here, whatever their colour, is I think the aim of every one of us, no matter to what Party he belongs and irrespective of whether he thinks this a good Bill or a bad Bill. But the fact that we are in favour of equal and humane treatment for all our citizens does not in itself mean that any
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legislation is necessary. All our citizens at present enjoy equality before the law. The case for this Bill must be that a new law is required, and in a moment I will come to my reasons for thinking that this is probably right.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, before the noble Lord finally leaves this aspect, would he bear in mind that he has committed himself to the view that unless there is strict control of entry of immigrants, on the lines suggested by his noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, this legislation will fail? The only new restriction, so far as I am aware, suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, was that we should exclude children between the ages of 13 and 16, a comparatively small number of the dependant immigrants now coming in. Does the noble Lord think that the exclusion of that small number will make this absolutely right?
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I hesitate to make this a triangular intervention, but what I said was that that was the first obvious step to take.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I really do not want to enter into great detail, because I do not wish to make my speech too long. What I am saying is that, while I agree with the Home Secretary and the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that we must consider separately the questions of the numbers we admit and the way we treat our citizens, of all colours, lawfully here, the questions are interconnected; because unless we maintain—and even, I think, make conditions more stringent—the control of the entry of further immigrants I believe that this Bill will fail in its objects. I may be right or I may be wrong, but it is not very wicked to take that view.
I was saying that to achieve that aim of equality of treatment does not necessarily require new legislation of the type that is now before us—or, indeed, new legislation at all. As my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor pointed out, when you seek and are eager to immigrate into another country, you do not demand that it shall change its laws. That is a simple fact which I think should be generally recognised. The great desire to enter this country is still exhibited by innumerable would-be immigrants who are not, as a condition of coming to

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this country, demanding any change in our law.
Nevertheless, let me go on to say why I do not for that reason propose to oppose this Bill. Though it is, I think, clearly established that the mere desire for equality of treatment of the immigrants does not necessitate legislation, nevertheless it is a fact, I think, that the P.E.P. Report and other careful reports which have come before us strongly suggest that some changes are necessary if equal and humane treatment is to be fully enjoyed by the immigrant people. Even more important than its being enjoyed by the immigrant people, is that it shall be enjoyed by their children who are born here and have never seen any other country. Therefore I come to the conclusion that certain reforms are required to bring about the desired result, and some of those reforms may well be changes in the law.
What I hope will be appreciated is the very great difficulty of the legislation that is necessary if we are to bring about the result we desire, and the real danger that such legislation can do more harm than good, unless it is wise and carefully considered. On the question of the merits of the legislation there are real, genuine and honest differences of opinion, inside the Parties, between the Parties in this House and in the other House, and it is really no good describing any opinion from which you happen to differ as prejudice. I said in my first speech on this subject in your Lordships' House that I did not think I was prejudiced on racial matters but that I did not know, because I did not think that a prejudiced man is ever aware of the fact. I simply do not know how one finds out if one is prejudiced. I even reminded the House of that admirable statement of the late Lord Hewart:
"The only impartiality possible to the human mind is that which arises from understanding neither side of the case."
The noble Lord, Lord Byers, who made a most strenuous and somewhat violent speech, attacked the Conservative Members in another place who voted against this Bill. But the reason they voted against this Bill was that they thought it was a bad Bill. There again they may have been right or they may have been wrong. But if you happen to think a
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Bill is a bad Bill you are not really wicked in voting against it. The noble Lord, Lord Byers, seemed to assume that the only possible grounds for opposition to this Bill would be some unworthy grounds. Let me make it quite clear that I do not think that people who wish to preserve the environment in which they and their fathers and grandfathers have lived, who wish to preserve that environment as what our history has made it, and do not wish it to be utterly transformed by alien immigrants are wholly unworthy people. I do not think there is anything necessarily wrong with that desire. People sometimes say, "Ah, but we must have a multiracial society". Of course we must have a multiracial world. Of course, we must have, so long as we have a Commonwealth, a multi-racial Commonwealth. But are we quite sure that we want every little bit of it to be multiracial? I personally do not desire that in the least, and I quoted in previous debates, not some reactionary such as noble Lords may think me, but Don Salvador de Madariaga a great Liberal, and I read what he had said on this subject.
My Lords, if we are to legislate (I agree with the Government in thinking that there is a case for legislation) to improve the lot of some of these immigrants, and even more so of their children born here, who have never known any other country, what are the requirements of the difficult law we have to devise? First of all, I think that the law should be clear and simple. It should involve the minimum interference with the ordinary lives of decent people. It should not contain provisions which strike the native population as oppressive or unfair; and, finally, it should not itself give rise to greater evils than it seeks to cure. In all that I think perhaps Ministers may agree with me. They may differ from me when I say that I do not think that all those requirements have been met in the provisions of this Bill; but that is my view. I could give many examples. I think the Bill contains some strange provisions. It says that you may sell your own private house to anybody you like, but that if you want to sell to a member of a particular class in the community, or a particular nationality, you must not employ a house agent for the purpose. Is that right? I think it needs rather careful consideration.

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What rather worries me are some of the strange legal provisions in this Bill, which even the Minister who moved the Third Reading in another place got wrong. Let me quote his words. He was referring to the night when the Bill got its Third Reading as an historic occasion. He said:
"I believe that it will be an historic occasion when this Parliament declares that discrimination in all fields covered by this Bill is not only morally wrong, but an offence in law".—[0FFICIAL REPORT, Commons; 9/7/68, col. 446.]
"An offence in law" strongly suggests that he thought that a criminal offence was being created; but of course it was not. I do not want to make too much of that, because it may have been merely a slip of the tongue. But it is rather remarkable that that statement should have been made by the Minister who was moving the Third Reading.
One of the things that troubles me, as a lawyer, is the strangeness of the legal provisions. The prohibitions do not create a crime; they create a new type of quasi-tort or civil wrong. But they do not allow the injured party to sue on his own behalf; the Race Relations Board initiate the proceedings. Nor will the trial take place before a judge alone, but before a judge with the assessors referred to in Clause 18(7). All these are novel provisions. Let me say at once to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack that I admit that they are not necessarily wrong just because they are novel. The Government are embarking on legislation in a rather new field, and it is difficult. I hope that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will think that these provisions are sufficiently novel, and that we are departing so much from well-established tradition and well-tried legal provisions—both the traditions of the criminal law and the traditions of the law of tort—that it will be most desirable carefully to consider these provisions in detail in Committee.
In fairness to the Government, I say at once that I am not saying that these provisions are necessarily wrong, but I am saying that they require the closest examination. In saying that I have not overlooked what was said in the interesting speech of the Attorney General at the concluding stages of the Report stage in another place. I fear that some of
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these novel legal provisions, and particularly what is said about damages, may cause great difficulty in carrying out the provisions of this Bill and may give both parties a sense of injustice, both the man who seeks the damages and the man from whom the damages are being sought. If I may mention one other clause which worries me, it is Clause 22, which, unless we take great care, may be capable of causing some danger of blackmailing threats. This is the clause which deals with privileged communications and seems to make it possible that any person, whether he has a real grievance or a purely invented grievance, can communicate with the Race Relations Board, and nothing that he says can ever be disclosed to anyone. He is, therefore, if he chooses to lie or to make the most injurious falsehoods about the people about whom he complains, capable, it seems to me, of creating trouble and injustice without being liable himself for any of the consequences.
Some provisions in the Bill seem to me to be unnecessary. I think that there are some evils which the Government see and against which they have attempted to provide in the Bill but against which there might be very real remedies without legislation at all. Let me take the example of insurance. I suppose it is conceivable that some insurance company might ask some coloured man for a higher premium than the risk really justified, but if that happened generally I should have thought it was virtually certain that there would be other insurance companies who would come in to cover the risk. The noble Lord who immediately preceded me made me wonder whether my memory was correct, but I believe there was a time in the history of this country when it was suspected that the Jews were being discriminated against in the matter of insurance. I may be wrong, but I believe—and it is an interesting fact if my memory is right—that one of the results was the formation of one of our greatest insurance companies, the Alliance. If that is correct, it seems to me to indicate how wrong we are, if we wish to deal with discrimination, in believing that it is always necessary to deal with it by legislation.
My Lords, I confess that I dislike this Bill because I believe it will have

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almost the opposite effect to that which I recognise the Government genuinely and sincerely seek. I think it may cause ill-will that could well be avoided. Nevertheless, there are in the Bill provisions which have been carefully considered and which I think we must now be willing to try. I am sure it will get an unopposed Second Reading in this House, but then I hope we shall subject it in Committee to very careful consideration, to see whether we can exclude some provisions that are unwise and improve the form in certain respects.
There is one other thing which I would say. The 1965 Act has been mentioned here this afternoon and in another place last week, and it was said that when that Act was introduced as a Bill some people made equally pessimistic prognostications about its effect. I was glad to hear—I think from one or two of the noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon—that that Bill had in their view done a considerable amount of good. Curiously enough, they attribute that good to something that was not in the Bill at all when they introduced it but was introduced by Amendments of the Conservative Party.
My Lords, I do not think that Act has had wholly desirable results. There have been some undesirable results. I think my noble friend, Lord Elton, who is to speak later in the debate, has had the experience—I know other friends of mine, both in this House and elsewhere, have had the experience—of people who have had something really important to say about race relations, the position in their town and their street, and who are frightened of even giving their names because they think that free speech on this subject has been virtually abolished by that Act. That view is not diminished by a recent prosecution under the Act at Lewes Assizes, although I am glad to say that the accused on that occasion were well defended and the jury acquitted them all. My Lords, I apologise if I have occupied the House too long. I think that this legislation, in part, may be required, but it requires the most searching examination.
6.57 p.m.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I must, first of all, offer an apology to the Lord Chancellor and the House that when I have finished, or shortly after-
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wards, I shall have to leave the House and thus not be able to listen to the other speeches, including the concluding one, but I am due this evening to speak in my own district to a number of immigrants from various communities; therefore I am at least fulfilling the conciliatory purpose of the Bill if I am absent from further proceedings in this House.
The noble Lord who has just sat down gave us a very interesting speech, and I rather gather that he is in favour of the Bill but wishes to improve it. I am sure he will do his best to see that that is done when the Committee stage is reached. Meanwhile, may I say that I was interested when he confessed he was not quite sure whether he was prejudiced, and I can advise him to apply one little test, which is to turn to the pages of the Observer, if he has not read them already, and carefully read those pages regarding the opinions of certain citizens in a certain town in the Midlands of this country. If, after reading those opinions, he is complacent and indifferent and unconcerned, I would say that he can rightly conclude he is prejudiced against the coloured immigrants of this country.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I just say that I have no doubt one can find out that one is prejudiced. What I was wondering was how one finds out that one is not prejudiced.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I would say myself if, on reading those pages, you feel yourself morally concerned, then you are not prejudiced against the coloured immigrants, but are prejudiced in favour of certain moral values. I offer that to the noble Lord and I am sure he will gain by it.
To return to the Bill, may I say that it naturally concerns me, as it does a number of other Members of this House, because I am the descendant of an immigrant. My name obviously comes from that element from abroad which has richly increased the British stock. I am referring not only to Canute, of course, but to those later immigrants, including a noble lady who married one of our monarchs, and my own grandfather, who came at the same time from that country but not on the same boat. There are other Members of this House, I know,

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who can trace back their ancestors who were immigrants from various countries to a much greater length than I can, some even going back to the days of William the Conqueror, I understand, who was a kind of aggressive immigrant.
It has been remarked to me that we ourselves are a very mixed community. I remember Miss Rathbone startling the other House one day by saying that we were a mongrel race. Personally I should never use that kind of language but when it comes from a lady, and a very elegant lady at that, no doubt it was suitably translated. It is true that we are all more or less of immigrant stock. In fact those who are English are immigrants, for before they came there were the British, and even those were not of the original stock. This applies to most countries of the world. Even India, which I know fairly well, has mainly an immigrant population. The Indians themselves were by no means the original race. There were the Dravidians, and before them there were the aboriginals of India. The same is true of any other country one may name. There is not a pure stock in the world; they are all mixtures.
We are perturbed in this country because recently we have had a number of immigrants from abroad whose pigmentation happens to be darker than our own. But we are all coloured. We constantly use the word "coloured" as if it were synonymous with sable or dark, whereas we are pinkish or pasty-faced, as the case may be, and the spectrum proceeds from one extreme to the other. We are all coloured. Unfortunately, although the majority of human beings in the world are dark-coloured brown or black and then through the various shades, we in this country with our 55 million people are mostly pale. Because there has been an influx of immigrants whose distinctiveness from ours is more obvious, we are concerned lest this is a threat to our national characteristics. In trying to analyse the cause of the undoubted prejudice that exists in this country against certain types of immigrants, I have come to the conclusion that the reaction is due to what I call the gregarious fear of intrusion or invasion from another community. This is very unwise and takes many forms. Sometimes it takes the form of fear of the intrusion of different theological or
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religious ideas; sometimes it takes the form of fear of intrusion of different political or ideological ideas; and sometimes it takes the form of fear of the intrusion of some other sub-race of the human family.
We should appreciate that our problem in this country regarding immigration is not peculiar to ourselves. The whole world has the same problem in one way or the other. In India fix centuries there has been a caste system, although legal action has been taken with some beneficial effects regarding the untouchables. It has been interesting to see that legislation can assist in educating a community, but nevertheless the feeling still exists in that country that there are certain people who must be avoided because they belong to a particular community. Equally in Africa there are certain tribes who assume that they are superior to other tribes, who believe they must not mix and that in some magical way they are distinctive.
Do not let us assume that our own problem here is peculiar or singular to ourselves. It occurs in one form or another in many other parts of the world. Nevertheless, we have to grapple with our own problem. I am glad indeed that in this House at least this P ill is receiving overwhelming support, in contrast with the divisions which existed in the other place. It is quite true that just as wars begin in the minds of men so does prejudice begin in men's minds; one cannot eradicate it. If people want to be stupid and foolish, if they want to be conditioned to assume that their group, community or gang is superior and that all others are inferior, one can do nothing about it except to try to instil in them a little enlightenment.
One remembers again the article which occupied two whole pages in the Sunday Press describing the reactions of people in a certain area. I hope that the Members of Parliament for that area, no matter to what Party they belong, will take an opportunity to appear together on some public platform and say: "We may agree or disagree regarding the curb on further immigration, but we, members of all Parties, are unite d in feeling that the people of this town should see to it that they treat one another with decency and respect" I appeal to those Members who live in

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that area and who belong to another place to do that. If they did that, especially in regard to one of great scholarly eminence, it would have a profound psychological effect, not only on that district, but on the whole of the country.
Although one cannot change the minds of men if they are cemented in prejudice, one can prevent the expression of their prejudice. When I leave this House to go to my own district to speak to these diverse immigrants, I obey the law and observe the traffic lights. But if there were no traffic lights, I might be disposed to obey my impulse and go at 50 or 60 miles an hour, knocking people down in the process. I do not do so, partly because the traffic lights exist to remind me of the law and partly, I hope, because I try to be a decent, law-abiding driver. So it is with this menace of racial prejudice. It is irrational, but people are irrational. They live very often by irrational impulses, by emotion, instincts and conditioned reflexes—things which often dominate men's behaviour. Nevertheless, in respect of other matters because of legislation their impulses have been checked; and because of that checking they themselves gradually come to have a more enlightened view of mankind and its values.
I wish to say this before I conclude, because it is unfair to speak for as long as some Members of the House have found it necessary to speak. We in this House ourselves suffer from prejudices and disabilities. The time has now passed when the fact that one was a Peer of the Realm brought instant obsequiousness and the touching of the lock. Unfortunately, we have now become in some ways figures of fun. I am not so much thinking of that side of the matter, but the fact that we suffer from the disability that we are not as free as other citizens may be. We cannot vote. Let us imagine that the Lords Temporal or the Lords Spiritual suffered not merely that disability but others, and because of growing prejudice against them, when they wanted a room in London or Blackpool, or wherever it may be, they were asked: "Have you ever been to prison?"—"No."; "Have you ever been in a mental hospital?"—
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"No."; Have you ever been a Member of the House of Lords?"—"Yes.", and it were then said: "Then I am sorry, the room is already let." If such a reaction, frivolous and facetious as it may seem, were to take place, we should all join together and say, "It is absurd that we should allow such a prejudice to exist in that way". We would take action to see that the prejudice was not expressed. We should see to it that no Peer, Spiritual or Temporal, was unable to take a job, to insure properly, or to get accommodation which was available for other people, merely because he happened to be a Lord Spiritual or Temporal. Of course, that would be ludicrous.
Therefore, I plead for all to realise that, just as we would not tolerate such stupid prejudice against men and women in this House because they happen to be Peers of the Realm, so also we should apply the same principle to those whose only difference happens to be a darker pigmentation of their skin. I am not saying that there are not other factors, for there are, and one knows what they are. But I say that the mere factor of the obvious difference in pigmentation is the thing that is uppermost in the minds of many people and leads them to react with even blinder prejudice than to other immigrants. This applies particularly to the poorer people of this country. This does not apply to those who are better off and who perhaps have friends in this House who have comfortable mansions where they can go and stay as friends. It is the poorer folk who have to bear the burden.
For that reason I trust that this Bill will be passed into law, although we must recognise that we still have a tremendous job to do in educating the minds and spirits of people so that they shall be enlightened and civilised. Let us also realise that, if this Bill is passed, it can check the expression of those stupid impulses, and help us to transcend our natural inheritance of dislike of those who are not like us and to understand the inner meaning of a text which, in one way or another, is in not only the Christian Bible, but all the scriptures of the world:
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
7.11 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I was very sorry when the noble Lord, Lord Sorensen, left the Front Bench, but I am rather pleased this evening because his move seems to have liberated him. May I also say, as a matter of interest, that I believe the inhabitants of the Western Hebrides are descended from the first people who occupied those machar lands after they became habitable from the ocean, so that they, at least, are perhaps aboriginals. I should also like to say that I found it much more difficult to get a job as a Peer than if I had not been a Peer.
Old men find that making new friends is not a very easy or a very common experience, so I was greatly pleased when the other day I met a man of very high character, a Tamil from Ceylon. During that meeting, when we approved of one another, I told hilt that making friends with him gave me added pleasure because he and his race had been very unfairly discriminated against by the Socialist Government in 1946. That was before the Socialists "saw the light".
It has always seemed to me that this matter of discrimination is principally a question of good manners. I sympathise very greatly with all that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, but I think he is going the wrong way about solving the problem. Gentleness is often very much better than force, and my differences with Her Majesty's Government today arise principally from that fact. If the Government had taken a gentler way with Rhodesia, we should have been in a better position than we are in as a result of their taking the hard way. That has always been my view; and not only on the question of Rhodesia. I think that this Bill will do harm, because it will make the situation worse (and I shall give some reasons for saying that), and in two years' time the situation will have deteriorated. But in looking back then we shall forget the situation as it is to-day, and we shall say that the Bill was, after all, needed. That is the way in which bad legislation is apt to seem to justify itself.
One of my objections to this Bill is that when it becomes an Act it will not be applied indiscriminately as between all men. It has been argued here as if
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it were applying merely to relations with coloured people, and as if that were the only discrimination. But of course there are any number of other discriminations. As the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, pointed out, at one time there were firms which would not employ Irishmen, and I believe that even to-day there are arms that will not employ Scotsmen or Welshmen. But we laugh at it, and dc not care.
There is a provincial firm which I admire very much and which does a very fine job. It is run by Jews who Jo a lot of export work and, naturally, they bring us exchange. They also raise our reputation, because their work is so excellent. They give very good terms to their employees, but their Christian employees complained to me that, while they get good wages and conditions of work, none of them ever gets promotion. All the promotion in the firm goes to the Jews. Now if the Jews are a race—and, with great deference, I feel that people who have been customarily subjected to inbreeding for 15 centuries must be called a race—then I think they come under the condemnation of this Bill. But I am perfectly certain that the Race Relations Board will never attack those people for that; and even if they did they could not get very far, because they could easily centre their business on one of their branches abroad, and we should then lose the headquarters of a very flourishing and profitable business.
There are many other examples. There are all these Indian restaurants scattered around London. I have never been into one, but I am perfectly certain that they employ Indian immigrants for their staff; and they must do so, because they want to make their fellows feel at home. It is exactly what the Huguenots did when they came to this country. I am quite certain that this Bill will not be put into operation against people of that sort, and it would be a great misfortune if it were, because I think those activities are perfectly justified.
I should like to refer to subsection (1) of Clause 12 which says:
"Anything done by a person in the course of his employment shall be treated for the purposes of this Act as done by his employer as well as by him, whether or not it was done with the employer's knowledge or approval."

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We have just had the Press and people of this country crying out in indignation because a Miss Sweet was held to be guilty of some offence against the drugs law of which she neither knew nor could have prevented. But this clause gives a discontented employee or workman a chance of taking revenge on his employer, who may know absolutely nothing about what is going on and be no party to it. That seems extremely unjust.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the difference between this Bill and the case the noble Lord mentioned is that there is a defence provided in the Bill. If he will look further down the clause, he will see that. This is not an offence of absolute responsibility.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I shall withdraw that.
I now come to Part II, which settles the position of the Race Relations Board. I am perfectly certain that if the Board are to be composed of people of the highest possible character and of very great ability, whose duty is to accept complaints and inquire about them, those inquiries will have to very minute, because, obviously, after this Bill becomes law nobody will discriminate. There will always be some other reason given, which may be true or false. After all, we are really legislating about what a person thinks. The Board will have to make their inquiry and come to a decision. Their position will be very much that of the Holy Office of the Spanish Inquisition when it was first introduced into Spain.
It has always been a shock to me, when reading Spanish history, to realise what a very fine character Torquemada was. None the less, the Spanish Inquisition had a very grievous effect upon the history of Spain; and while I do not anticipate that the Race Relations Board will have such a dire effect on us, I think that a body constituted like this, with these powers of inquiry, is a danger. When they come to their conclusions we must remember that those conclusions may be wrong or may be right, but if they are wrong it will produce a very deep sense of injustice in the people who are aggrieved, and that will make matters far worse.
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My Lords, I shall not divide against this Bill, but one of my reasons for distrusting it is its place in the context of the Government's whole position—previous legislation which has been passed and recent declarations by Ministers of the Government about the population, saying that people with large families are a menace to the country and are taking unfair advantage of their neighbours.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord?
LORD SALTOUN: Certainly.
LORD STONHAM: The noble Lord has just made a statement about families, saying that it was Government policy. There has been no statement of Government policy on that subject at all. It is not Government policy.
LORD SALTOUN: It was very unfortunate, as I think it is going to have an effect on racial prejudice, because it will be heard only by what you may call the educated classes in Britain. The others will all disregard it; and it will very much tend to add to racial prejudice. I certainly should not vote against this Bill, but I very much fear that it may have consequences which are contrary to those for which the Government hope.
7.23 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I have listened with great interest, as always, to the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, but I must disagree with him by saying that I accept and welcome this Bill. I know it may have one or two defects, but it is on the right lines and a step in the right direction. I think the position has become much more serious and grave than the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, appears to imagine. It is not just a question of good manners, but needs considerably more encouragement if we are to get the full integration that we require.
The Bill has been generally welcomed on this side of the House and, with certain qualifications, on the other side. As the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, has reminded us, the Conservative Party in the other place voted against the Bill. I have tried to find out, with some difficulty, what the policy of the Conservative Party is over this matter. Here we are, my Lords: we are faced with a situation

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where there are nearly one million coloured immigrants, 2 per cent. of the population of this country, and it seems to me that there are three alternatives. One is that one could do nothing. One could adopt the traditional policy of laissez-faire: one could forget all about it. Secondly, one could encourage the immigrants to return in large numbers to their countries of origin, but I should not have thought that that was practical on economic grounds, and certainly it would not be acceptable on moral grounds. Therefore, the only acceptable alternative is the third one, which is to encourage integration.
It is no good bringing in red herrings by saying that the whole problem would be solved if we did not permit any more immigrants to come here. As my noble friend Lord Stonham said, it would be quite wrong to prohibit children from joining their relatives and parents; but even if that were done, we should still have one million coloured people in this country. That is something we have to face, and it is no good pulling these red herrings along and trying to pretend that the whole problem would be solved if we stopped further immigration. That is why I welcome this Bill. It covers a wider field than the previous Act; and, furthermore, it now lays down that discrimination is wrong in principle. It also strengthens the machinery for conciliation. It should give support to everybody who is trying to eliminate racial discrimination in many fields. It should make all of us face things and think again about our attitudes to this question—perhaps the most important question of our time, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has said.
Several noble Lords have referred to the P.E.P. investigation into this subject. It appears from this—and I have also studied it—that there is considerable racial discrimination everywhere, but particularly, as my noble friend the Minister reminded us, in the fields of housing and employment. The Report also makes clear that the coloured immigrants, and particularly those from the West Indies, are the ones who suffer most. This investigation made tests, and it was clear that there was far less discrimination where the colour was not different, particularly in the case of people from Cyprus or from Hungary. Therefore this
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is a situation which must be faced, and the integration of these large numbers of coloured people is important. I cannot agree that it will solve itself in time. Indeed, I am informed that the problem will become even more acute as the years go by. When the bad housing districts, the slums, are cleared, many of the immigrants living in them will have to be transferred to other housing, mainly council houses. That is already happening in Birmingham—and I welcome the report which was contained in The Times of July 13. I think, if I may say so, that Birmingham is tackling this problem in a most admirable way.
There is also the question of the children. Many of the children of these immigrants will have been born here and educated here. Some of them will have gained excellent qualifications at sc tool. They are not going to be content to do the lowest-paid jobs; and yet I understand that at present discrimination is worst against those with qualifications. I am not talking here about professional people but about skilled labour, craftsmen and applicants for office jobs. There is therefore the utmost need for every encouragement to mix and integrate and for these immigrants to be accepted by the whole community. The alternative will be the gravest social problems and unrest, as we dare witnessing to-day in the United States. I think that all of us who know the United States and Harlem and some of the worst slums of Chicago must realise that that kind of situation could arise in this country one day if s something is not done.
I should like to ask about three clauses in the Bill. First, Clause 2, which refers to facilities and services. I wander whether this includes clubs. Many clubs do not practice discrimination, but some do. Reference has been made in this debate to people of the Jewish faith. I believe that certain golf clubs practice discrimination against Jews, which I think is absolutely disgraceful. I should like to know from the Government whether that kind of attitude will be covered by the Bill. Then there is Clause 6, the definition of advertisements. I am not sure whether this is wide enough. It is very less wide than the definition of advertisements contained in, say, the Trade Descriptions Act or the Gaming

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Bill at present in Committee. I should like to know whether the Government are quite sure that this clause will catch circulars and other forms of advertising.
I welcome Clause 24 which deals with research. I agree with everything that my noble friend Lord Walston said about this. Much more research into this question is urgently needed, and I hope that the Government will arrange for this to be encouraged. I agree with Lord Walston that it is probably better for it to be undertaken not by the Home Office but by the universities or official bodies. I am very concerned with what my noble friend told us about the lack of funds and how this important research has had to come to an end. I am glad that the Government are now undertaking responsibility for this matter because we know far too little about the reasons and the irrational fears behind so much of this prejudice.
As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, says we are now in deep and mysterious waters, but what we do know is that racial prejudice is almost non-existent in children if they are left alone. I was interested in what the most reverend Primate said about the establishment in certain areas of pre-school playgrounds, so that white and coloured children could play together. Prejudice is much less frequent among young people. I think young people are much more sensible about these things as they are about so much else. It is rarely found among artists and creative people. Artists generally are more interested in a person's talent than in his origin. It is not so frequently found in the professions or in sport, or, indeed, wherever there is a common interest or purpose. I should like, therefore, to ask the Government what they intend by this research, so that this very important field can be extended. In conclusion, I welcome this Bill which I regard as an important support for all those who are striving for racial tolerance.
7.34 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, as often happens, this debate has shown that there is a great deal of thinking on both sides of the House which is not at all hostile. My purpose in speaking is to declare my support for the views expressed in another place by Mr. Hogg and for those expressed to-day
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by my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, who, if I may say so, made what I thought was a first-class speech. Lord Brooke and Mr. Hogg have given a lead to my Party which I strongly support. I hope very much that their words will be heard well above the clamour of the less desirable speeches that have been made from time to time by members of my Party. I am quite sure that they represent what the Conservative Party stands for in this matter. I agreed with almost everything that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said. He asked, "What does the Conservative Party stand for?" My answer is: We stand for what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said to-day and for what Mr. Hogg said in the winding-up speech he made in another place. That, I think, is the real answer to the noble Lord; and I hope it is an answer which he will feel is a satisfactory one.
My Lords, we are faced with a desperately difficult problem and one which is becoming more acute. That is why, in spite of the difficulties of legislation, it is right that there should be a Bill. I am not a lawyer. I could not follow all that my noble friend Lord Conesford said about the different clauses in the Bill, and therefore I cannot judge the merits of this Bill from the legal point of view; but until it is tried out in practice it will be difficult to see whether it does all that we hope it will do—which is to stop any form of discrimination against immigrants into this country.
This is not, of course, a new problem. Anyone who has had anything to do with Parliamentary responsibility in another place for any of the great ports of this country, or for any of the great Midlands cities, will know that we have always had strangers in our midst. Up to now—I think as a result of tactful handling of the situation—we have managed to avoid any of the worst manifestations of prejudice. That is not to say that these might not appear to-day. I think that we are wise in taking steps to prevent them, and I hope that the Bill will have the desired results.
There is one thing which we have avoided in the past and which I hope we shall continue to avoid in the future. It is the stirring up of prejudice on many subjects which have lain dormant. My mind goes back to my own experiences

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when associated for 35 years with a constituency in Glasgow where there was always prejudice which one was most anxious not to stir up. These were not race prejudices; they were religious prejudices. One did not go to an Orange Lodge and talk about the Roman Catholics; neither did one go to the Roman Catholics and talk about what was going on in the Orange Lodges. One avoided this; and by avoiding those stirring-up speeches of that kind one avoided arousing those prejudices. For many generations there were serious religious prejudices. To-day there is tolerance, largely because, very wisely, everybody carefully avoids raising these problems in public. I think the same could be said to some extent with regard to race relations.
I should like to say one or two things about my personal experiences with this particular problem. They have been happier experiences than one would sometimes think from reading newspaper articles. About two years ago, or a little longer, I went on a tour in the Midlands. I was taken over one of the large Yorkshire wool-spinning mills. It was an enormous place. There I saw a great number of coloured workers at the looms. I asked the management whether they had difficulties in regard to the immigrants. They said that they did not; that the immigrants there worked happily with the ordinary inhabitants and were quite satisfactory. Then I inquired about social welfare arrangements and about education; and discovered, as I thought I should, that the education authority was providing good schools and that the social welfare arrangements of the local city council were excellent.
I also had an agreeable experience when setting up the office which I have recently left. We had to find, from all over London, people who would come to work in it. We took people irrespective of whether they were inhabitants of London or immigrants, and we built up a small but exceedingly happy staff in which there were quite a few coloured and immigrant young people. The only test we imposed was whether they were able to do the job that we wanted them to do. I know that these are only two small experiences but I believe that they could be multiplied in the same way as could
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the bad experiences about which one hears.
It seems, therefore—and this has come out in Press articles—that one of the great obstacles to integration and doing sway with race prejudice is simply material things; the fact that there are not enough schools or school teachers or the housing is bad or that local authorities are not on top of the problem. Knowing how terribly dangerous is this problem, I should have thought it was worth everything to provide the necessary material things for schooling and for housing as urgently as possible.
I remember how we used to improvise during the war years in respect of matters like the evacuation of people. That experience is very vivid in my mind. We put as much material help behind our efforts as we could, because we realised that if it was to succeed, the material conditions under which people were to live had to be as good as possible. I should like to suggest that Government and local authorities put behind the provision of material things the same drive that we put behind our effort during the war years. I am sure that this would prove an enormous help. It would not, of course, do away with prejudice, which is a horrible thing and difficult to remove; but if we can provide conditions in which prejudice cannot flourish then we shall be moving in the right direction.
Of course, my Lords, the immigrants can help enormously. I have told of two experiences of successful integration, and I can tell your Lordships of an unsuccessful attempt of which I have knowledge. We had a request to the Carnegie Trustees for a grant to provide a community centre in a Midland town particularly for immigrants. We gave a grant for three years. The committee running the centre was composed mainly of immigrants, with a few local people who went to help. The difficulty was not between the residents and the immigrants but between the immigrants themselves. The venture collapsed because there were too many different races and too many different religions among the immigrants who came to the centre. This was very unfortunate, but it had nothing to do with the fact that the local inhabitants were trying to help or that the money had been given for the centre. The different sets of people could not get on with each other.

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That might happen anywhere in any part of the country, but it certainly added to the difficulties in an area where people were trying to do their best, with good will, to bring about integration.
I believe that, as politicians and citizens, our job is to try to smooth over the difficulties and not to cry them from the house-tops or the political platforms. That is madness and only adds to the difficulties. As has been said by other speakers, people coming to this country should be given the same treatment and opportunities as are afforded to our own people. They have difficulties which we in this country do not have. They are faced with the difficulties of language and custom, and they have to become accustomed to the kind of food which they find in this country but which they do not find anywhere else. These difficulties add to their complications. Then they have to compete against our own people.
It would be a tragic day for Britain, who has set an example of tolerance throughout the ages, if we found ourselves locked in a vice of prejudice and facing problems such as our friends across the Atlantic are trying so hard to overcome. No doubt the Bill has faults and no doubt it may be improved by lawyers once they can get at it, but I think that, if it does nothing else, it will encourage people to behave with tolerance and kindness. I hope that it will be a spur to local authorities to deal with the material shortages, because then it will have done something to help to stop troubles while they are still in their infancy, and we may have an opportunity to get the integrated society which we all await.
7.46 p.m.
LORD ELTON: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, went into an interesting discursion on the possible sources of colour prejudice in various classes of persons and said, I think, that at any rate children, and possibly only children, were completely immune. I am not sure that I would not go further than that, because I think, although this may seem paradoxical to your Lordships, that the great majority of the British people are largely immune from colour prejudice when it is a question only of a relationship with an individual coloured person. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of
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Cumnor, said in his magnificent speech, it is numbers and not colour which is the problem.
I cannot help repeating to your Lordships an illustration of this from my personal experience which I think I mentioned in your Lordships' House, probably seven or eight years ago. On several occasions my wife and I have entertained black immigrants from the Caribbean in our home. Wherever we took then in our village they were received with open arms. It was perfectly obvious that their colour was a recommendation. But more or less the same was said by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, if 500 of them had descended on the village and totally transformed its character within a couple of years, of course there would be tensions of course there would be prejudice. But from my experience in the Army and among the immigrants and in my own village, I do not believe that the British people are prejudiced against colour as such, unless through the ineptitude of successive Governments they get too much of it.
My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, sat down, I thought that I would not speak because he had said practically everything I wanted to say and he said it very much better than I could. In my eyes the great merit, or one of the great merits, of his speech was that, unlike some speakers, he looked at the problem in the round. He emphasised the consequences of the Bill not only to the immigrants but to our native population. After all, my Lords, this is a Bill of twofold operation. It will have consequences for the native population and for the immigrants, and those two consequences must interlock. Neither will be successful unless the other is successful. I think that too many speeches have assumed that if we can pass the right legislation for immigrants it will not really matter what is the consequence to, or the reaction of, the native population. I think that reaction and those consequences will, in the long run, be just as important for the immigrants as the direct action of the Bill itself.
I do not think that I should have got up to speak if I had not been especially interested in this problem of immigration, probably for longer than some of your Lordships. It was in 1956 that I moved

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a Motion drawing attention to the intractable social problems likely to arise if we admitted too many immigrants too quickly; and I said then, as I have said many times since, that the problem was not the colour of the immigrants but their numbers; and that when admitted here, they must be treated like any other British citizens. I think that that twofold view now commends itself to more than 90 per cent. of the population, though it did not receive so much support in 1956.
What I ask myself with regard to this Bill is: Is it going to make it easier for the immigrant and his descendants, and the native population and its descendants, to live together in equality and harmony? And do not let us forget all that the ever-tolerant British public has already done to promote the ends we are anxious to see. It is all very well for a newspaper to quote a great many selected passages of the nasty things said in a Midland town; but the British people as a whole are tolerant. Where there are tensions, they have been born primarily of the inevitable and undeniable social evils which have been produced by unplanned mass immigration; and perhaps even more by the fears of ordinary people—in Wolverhampton and Bradford, not in the Cotswolds and on the Yorkshire moors—and by their sense of having become mere flotsam and jetsam on a roaring river of change, as to which they have never been consulted and of which they have never approved.
We cannot get away from the fact that it is numbers that bedevil the whole problem. If there were a quarter of a million immigrants they would have been welcomed with open arms, and nobody would have needed or thought of this Bill.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, how does the noble Lord explain then the reaction of the dockers to the Kenya High Commissioner? That was not numbers; that was colour prejudice.
LORD ELTON: My Lords, the dockers are living in contact with mass immigration and they have their grievances. It was not right of them, but I know nothing about this incident or about the High Commissioner—
LORD BYERS: My Lords, does it matter whether he was the High Commissioner or not? The point is that he was coloured.
LORD ELTON: My Lords, of course excited men will do rude things. Many insults and unjust words and horrible behaviour have been recorded. I should think that this particular one was not worse than others that have happened. But it is all primarily due to numbers. I am sure that if the dockers had one coloured person in their street, and that was all, they would invite him to tea and take him out in their cars.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, when the noble Lord is talking about the numbers of immigrants, does he include the Irish immigrants, too?
LORD ELTON: My Lords, I am talking at the moment about those with whom this Bill is concerned.
When I look at the Bill, the first thing that strikes me—and I do not thins: that this point has been mentioned much, if at all, this evening—is the closeness with which it seems to be modelled on American legislation. I cannot he p recalling a conversation I had last week with an American friend, who is now president of one of the most distinguished places of education in America but during the War was a naval lieutenant in charge of promoting good relations between 5,000 Negroes and their fellow Servicemen in the Deep South. He told me that in the early days of his assignment, before the passage of any civil rights legislation, he would some times have a talk with leading local citizens. They would say that they were in sympathy with what he was trying to do but that he must realise that they dare not come out into the open. When the first civil rights legislation was passed, the same men did come out in the open and supported what he was trying to do.
It was the noble Baroness, Lady Asquith of Yarnbury, who said that probably one of the results of this Bill would be that, having passed it, we should find it was not really necessary, because its mere existence would produce the necessary results. If and in so far as that is the result of this Bill, I can only wish it well. But we have to remember that at the time and in the place of which

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my American friend was speaking the Negroes were still virtually deprived of all political and legal rights, whereas immigrants here enjoy full political and legal rights as soon as they arrive. We have to remember, too, that we differ from America in our history, traditions and psychology.
I think that it is owing to the closeness of its following the American model that this Bill is too comprehensive and too unimaginative. It is so comprehensive that it goes further than the recommendations of the P.E.P. and similar inquiries, and it is so unimaginative that it often seems to ignore the possible reactions of our own people, many of whom are very conscious that they have suffered as much as, or more than, the immigrants themselves from the results of immigration. The danger of the Bill seems to me to be lest it should, in the name of promoting social equality, create a permanently privileged minority.
To put it at its crudest and simplest, when the Bill is passed, will not almost any employer who has to make an appointment, or any seller who sells a house within the restricted categories, know that if he prefers a native to an immigrant he may feel the lash of the law, whereas if he prefers an immigrant to a native he certainly will not? In other words, are we not, with the laudable intention of preventing the balance tilting one way, proceeding to tilt it the other? Are we not, in order to promote social equality, setting up legal inequality?
The danger of this is that it may create a lingering resentment among our own people in which racial prejudice may flourish instead of diminish, and (what I think is even more dangerous) it might perpetuate among the immigrants the sense of being an alien minority, necessarily protected by law because imperfectly absorbed into a semi-hostile environment. Which is precisely the mentality we do not want to produce. The danger of the Bill is that it may become a perpetual reminder that there are elements in our society for whom the normal laws and institutions of the country do not suffice, and thereby may prolong a sort of hyper-consciousness about race which would indefinitely delay the growth of that easier, more natural and
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open attitude to it which is the prerequisite of any satisfactory racial assimilation.
There are several things in the Bill that puzzle me, and I will mention two, quite briefly. The first is that it seems to me that, however lawyers or drafters define "discrimination", it is going to be extremely difficult for the man in the street to know when he is breaking the law. Your Lordships may have noticed that about a week ago there was a report that a tenants' association in a place called Warley, in Worcestershire, claimed (with what accuracy, I do not know), after two or three years of inquiry, that there must be something like 500 polygamous immigrants in their neighbourhood. They went on to ask, "Where does this take us in relation to the Race Relations Bill?" If somebody discriminates against a possible neighbour on the ground that he is polygamous, is he discriminating against him on the ground of ethnic origin or only on an ethnic characteristic? I do not know the answer, but I can imagine a number of situations in which it would test the wisdom of a Solomon to distinguish between ethnic characteristics and ethnic origins, perhaps particularly when it comes to Indians discriminating against West Indians, or West Indians discriminating against Pakistanis, as they certainly will. I presume that this also will be covered by the Bill.
I am a little puzzled by the provision for prosecution under the civil law by the Race Relations Board. I noticed that not only the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, but also the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, welcomed this, and treated it as something which would be much less formidable a deterrent than criminal procedure. But here again I come back to the point I made before: that the Bill is closely modelled on the American example. Those of your Lordships who have followed American writings on this subject will have noticed that the American authorities and experts are very explicit: first, that coercion is an essential part of conciliations; and secondly, that the civil law must be preferred to procedure under the criminal law because it is so much more formidable a deterrent. They point out that damages are likely to be much heavier than a fine would be, and may even encourage complainants.

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And, of course, quite apart from the expense of defending a civil case, there is the possibility not only of heavy damages, but of heavy costs, whereas the complainant's case has been handed over lock, stock and barrel to the Race Relations Board, which can draw upon the unlimited financial resources of the State. I cannot think that many defendants will be likely to face a civil trial with those possibilities.
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and the Home Secretary, when moving the Second Reading, both said (I ought to have mentioned this) that this is only a last-resort procedure, intended for most blatant and prolonged offenders. I can only hope that they are right, and that it will be used very seldom: because if it were used much. I can see it producing an atmosphere of resentment in which again race relations may deteriorate instead of improve.
Finally, my Lords, my main complaint of the Bill is that it is modelled too closely on the situation and the legislation of another country, neither of which answers to our conditions; and that it does not think enough of our own people, their manifold distresses, their long record of tolerance, and all the minorities whom they have absorbed in the past, all the more readily, perhaps, because there was no legislation. However, like everybody else, I want this Bill to succeed. When it goes through, I shall wish it well. I have listened as optimistically as I could to the various prophecies of success, but I could not help remembering that a good many of those who made them so confidently had equally confidently denounced the Act of 1962, which I do not suppose one in a thousand of the electorate would wish to see repealed now. Nevertheless, the object of the Bill is racial harmony and equality, which we all want to see, and when it is passed I can only hope that my forbodings may prove to have been unjustified.
8.6 p.m.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, as the sixteenth speaker in this long debate it is difficult for me to find some original arguments, but following the noble Lord, Lord Elton, if I cannot produce any original arguments, I can certainly produce some diverse ones. I may say (and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will allow me to make a joke on
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this serious subject) that whenever the noble Lord speaks on immigration or race I regard him as (shall I say?) my bête-noire or my bête-blanche. I really find that I could not disagree with the noble Lord more.
Let me take just a few of the points. The noble Lord talks about the fact that it is the number which is the difficulty and the problem about immigrants. What he means—and he should "come clean" about this—is the number of coloured immigrants. He does not include the Irish, as I have asked him, or the Hungarians, or the Italians, or the Maltese, or the Cypriots.
LORD ELTON: I should certainly have included them if a similar number had arrived in so short a space of time and they were the subject that we are discussing this evening.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: I must say that 2 per cent. of the population is not a figure that we need dread; and neither is it a figure that has any grave consequences for the native population of this country. In fact, when one speaks about all the disabilities of the British in this country—the disabilities that they suffer on account of these coloured immigrants —I think it is most unfair not to take into account the fact that we require them here; that they are needed here f or the jobs that British people do not want. I think that the meanest myth that is being propagated to-day is the myth that these immigrants, by this Bill, are to become a privileged section of the community, when we know that they have the worst housing, they suffer the worst education, and they have disabilities of all kinds. It is this Bill which is going to try to put some of these things right.
This debate to-day is on one of the greatest moral issues in the world—race prejudice—and it has really been going on in this country for the last three years. But it has come to a head in the last few months. It is not a problem that need be approached on Party lines. As I see from the Tory Election Manifesto of 1966:
"We must ensure that all immigrants living in Britain are treated in all respects as equal citizens and without discrimination".
That is from the Tory Party Manifesto of 1966. I take that in complete good faith.

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What we are arguing about is whether racial discrimination can be eradicated by legislation or what legislation can do to help to alleviate it. Many Conservatives maintain that racial discrimination can be eradicated only by education with the help of voluntary community organisations. In fact, they go on to say that legislation in this field infringes the cherished right of freedom of speech. This is what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said in his most admirable, moderate speech which he made this afternoon, which I greatly admired because I know that he disagrees with the legislation in this Bill. I cannot think, though, that the noble Lord would really stretch this argument so far as to include freedom to discriminate strongly. Freedom to make an insulting remark—we all know about that; but I doubt whether he would really include freedom to discriminate strongly in freedom of speech. There was only one point which I greatly disagreed with in the noble Lord's speech, and that was when he said that he would put a stop to allowing immigrants' children between the ages of 13 and 16 to come and join their parents here. I think he might think again about this.
Personally, I would agree that good race relations are achieved by education, but I contend that legislation is an integral part of social education in this sphere and an essential starting point in this educational process. I do not believe that in tackling racial discrimination it can be left to good intentions, to the good intentions of the individual, or, as the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, said, to good manners. Of course, one does not legislate for morals, but one can legislate for good behaviour, and in this wicked world I would gladly settle for decent behaviour and bypass the human heart. It is true that racial prejudice is universal and may be intractable, but there is one saving grace about it. Opinions on race are flexible and can change. Legislation has an important role to play in setting decent standards of behaviour which, in their turn, can change social attitudes. Most people accept and adjust to new laws and the fact that the law is applied to everyone, as hos been said by several noble Lords
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to-day, is a help in overcoming individual irrational prejudice.
So, my Lords, I welcome and warmly support this Race Relations Bill and regard it as an act of political courage by the Government at this particular time. This Bill has many good features and some weaknesses, as other noble Lords have pointed out. It is widely drawn and retains the conciliatory measures of the 1965 Bill. It provides for an independent Race Relations Board. The Attorney General has no part in it, which means that it has no criminal measures. It is, however, criticised on several counts by those whose support it, as several speakers have already pointed out. The racial balance clause is really rather objectionable, and would make it possible for the prejudiced to discriminate against coloured citizens. This makes an inroad into the objectives of the Bill, and this clause is unnecessary since the true test of application for employment in this Bill is merit. Why bring in colour? Those who criticise this clause suggest that it would have been better if the employment procedures were regulated by the Race Relations Board.
There is much criticism also of the new definition of "discrimination". This is, of course, something for lawyers to worry about, and I should have thought that, with our rich and beautiful English language, a simple and precise definition could be worked out which was not open to misinterpretation by the courts or to suspicion by laymen. It seems to me that the 1965 definition was a better one than the one in this Bill, and I do not know why we did not leave it alone. Of course, the achievement of legislation is not an end in itself; only the beginning of an end.
At this time there is a great deal of loose talk denigrating the activities of Parliament, and a great responsibility falls on politicians for the laws they enact and the speeches they make. We have all heard speeches, and though I did not want to mention Mr. Enoch Powell's name, as his name has been mentioned I will do so, too. I should like to make one or two comments on his speech on the problems of race and immigration. Several noble Lords have said how courageous he was in making this speech; how we have always swept

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these problems under the carpet. I have never been aware that we have swept these problems under the carpet and I regard his speech as a cowardly speech, and I will explain why. His speech exploited the fears both of the privileged and of the underprivileged, of the people who were underprivileged and who were insecure about all sorts of things which had nothing to do with race. I regard that sort of speech as cowardly in this respect. It provided people with a ready-made scapegoat for their emotions. None of them, not his speech nor other speeches of this kind, have ever put forward any solution to the problems in our society. They speak of this country, not as if it were an island surrounded by the sea, but as if it were a castle surrounded by a moat; and all they seek is to haul up the drawbridge continuously and stop people from coming into it. It is the unthinking response to such attitudes that makes legislation absolutely imperative.
I would refer to the arguments of those who argue against the value of the Race Relations Bill. They say it is a bad Bill, comparatively few people will be caught by it and widespread opposition to it will be aroused; they maintain that it is a weak Bill. But if these arguments are so, if it is a weak Bill, why should it engender widespread opposition? Also, some of those who criticise its mildness are the last people in the world who would want a stronger Bill or who would seek to strengthen it. But, my Lords, what moral case can anyone make out for refusing legal equality? We are witnessing the social and economic consequences of generations of racial discrimination in America. Can anyone deny that if there had been legislation against race discrimination years ago much prejudice would by now have been overcome and dealt with? We should learn from the mistakes of our American friends, although, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, the situation or the problems are not the same. This Bill enlarges individual freedoms by extending equal rights to the coloured citizens of this country. This is not to make them a privileged part of this community, but to give them equal rights. Immigration policy must go hand in hand with this Bill, but not a selective one, one on racial
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grounds, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, suggests.
Here I should like to make a comment on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, whom I may say I regard as a friend. It was as if a liberal (with a small "1") were struggling to come out of the image of an English conservative gentleman (with a small "c") and a very conservative English lawyer. I found none of his arguments particularly convincing. The noble Lord asked whether it was a crime for the people of this country to wish to retain their customs, and that sort of thing, and suggested that this was not being racial. Of course it is not. But I wonder whether he has read —and I am prepared to show him—letters such as I have received on occasions when people like the noble Lord make remarks of this kind about immigrants? Perhaps he would be a little surprised to find Colin Jordan grasping at some of the mild statements he has made to-day.
Legislation of the kind contained in this Race Relations Bill are great social measures, and when we tackle one social injustice it is usually a stimulus for tackling others. Here I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amber-ley, that this is really giving the women of this country ideas. I think that as a result of the Race Relations Bill women will try to go forward to get equality of status in this country. It makes people conscious and concerned, and we continue to legislate for different kinds of injustice according to the problems of the day as they arise.
Incidentally, the expansion of tribunals such as the Race Relations Board is an imaginative kind of legislation and a great help in working out a flexible, administrative law. This Bill is farsighted. The Government are aware of the damaging effects of racial discrimination and are taking practical steps to deal with some of the problems by means of social legislation. The Government deserve congratulations for their political courage and for providing the framework within which good will can operate, for there has to be a framework—it cannot just be left to the human heart. The Bill is not opposed by any of the three political Parties.
Finally, my Lords, as a delegate to the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations, I shall be able to hold my head

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high, to point to this Bill with satisfaction and to counter such taunts as, "Yes, you have human rights for white citizens in your country but not equal rights for coloured citizens". By this Bill we make clear to the world that we are really against racial discrimination.
8.24 p.m.
LORD SOPER: My Lords, I want to offer a welcome to this Bill and to hope that it will receive an unopposed Second Reading. I should like immediately to continue, as it were, from where the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell finished her admirable speech. I promise not to talk about immigration, for although it is an ancillary problem it is not particularly germane to this Bill and at this time of night ought to be excluded from any comments which speakers make, purely because of the lack of time and the patience with which this House has already attended to so many speeches.
I shall not go into the morphology of racial intemperance, although I believe that to compute it mathematically is too simplified an answer. I should like to remind the House of the winding up speech of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, who confined his case in another place to four simple questions which are positively answered in this Bill. Those questions were as follows: first, is it necessary?; second, will it do more harm than good or more good than harm?; third, is it practicable?; fourth, is it enough?
To begin with, is it necessary? On two grounds I believe it to be amply justified. It is necessary in the first place, because there is a great evil to be righted; and in the second place it is necessary because if that evil is to be righted then legislation must play its part in the process. Moreover, evidence has been presented of the facts of racial discrimination. I would add that as a social worker in housing and employment I am regularly confronted with problems which at the moment are almost insoluble and yet reflect a large degree of racial intemperance and of racial injustice—the very things which at the moment cannot be treated as they should be treated and which demand moral and practical action.
There is another aspect of this subject which has not been mentioned in
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your Lordships' House to-day, and that is the amount of racial intemperance and racial prejudice that now exists in those ghettoes and among the dark and black people themselves. When we are thinking of housing it would be quite improper to think that the only kind of discrimination which takes place is discrimination against those who are coloured. In many places in Notting Hill to which I could take your Lordships the very opposite is the case: there is real, permanent and growing discrimination.
Secondly, the argument that this can be dealt with without some kind of procedure at law seems to me to be altogether too facile an assumption. I am all for education, and I shall revert to that in a moment or two, but there can be no doubt, surely that some kind of legislation must play its part, not in changing human nature but in making large changes in the pattern of human behaviour, which is as much as social education can ever hope to do.
I wish the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, were here because he, rather incautiously, I thought, ventured into the field of theology when he insisted that from a Christian standpoint loving one's neighbour could not be expressed in legislative terms. If I may refer him to the Sermon on the Mount, which perhaps can be regarded as the ecclesiastical Hansard, he will find in chapter 5 of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, verse 22:
"whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca! shall be in danger of the council".
Now "Raca", as perhaps your Lordships know, is not only a word of insult but of discrimination. It involves, in fact, the very principle that we are talking about to-day, of discrimination, because it assumes that the other man, whom you call "Raca", is an inferior being and can be called as such. Further, in verse 25,
"Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison."
Then, in verse 26:
"Verily I say unto thee. Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing."
It would be most intemperate, in my opinion, for any theologian to insist that

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in the Christian faith we think so lightly of any legislative procedures as to regard them as the "poor relation" of other forms of social action. I believe it is our Christian, as well as our social, duty to seek where we can to provide those social means to assist people to be decent, although we cannot command them to be.
The second question asked by the Home Secretary was whether this particular piece of legislation, if it went through, was likely to do more harm than good, or more good than harm. I should like to draw the only illustration I will take time on to-night, by describing my own experience on a place called Tower Hill, where free speech has been enjoyed (and sometimes mistreated) for a long time now. I was very much concerned in 1965, and indeed before that, at what was happening at Speaker's Corner and on Tower Hill, where free speech was being largely inhibited by a great deal of racialism, and I have found that the passing of the first part of this piece of legislation, the 1965 Act, has materially improved the situation and has increased the facility for free speech, because it is now known that the Government are committed—in principle, at least—to that free speech which cannot be exercised under conditions of racial discrimination. Therefore I would feel it is necessary to complete the process, in the same hope and confidence that what has been achieved in that field can be achieved in the field of housing and employment generally.
Is it practicable? I join with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, in a good deal of apprehension at the prospective change from like treatment to less advantageous treatment, for I am sure that unless we have a more or less neutral definition of what we mean by discrimination—and I heartily agree with the suggestion he made—we are likely to find ourselves involved in subjective inquiries as to what is less favourable, as well as in the very greatly increased danger that in getting rid of discrimination we may create apartheid; that we in fact provide like and equal opporlunities but not desegregated opportunities, in fact segregated opportunities. Therefore, I believe that, unless we are prepared to find a definition at the beginning of our legislation, we shall be in considerable trouble
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in implementing it later. As the hour is late, I will not speak of other matters in this particular field.
I cannot see how anybody can regard this as impracticable in principle. It seems to me to proceed on the right lines. It begins with the kind of conciliatory offices now being exercised and gives them freer play. It provides in the Race Relations Board a conciliatory principle—and here I disagree with some who have criticised their lack of power. I think the less power in itself the Board enjoys, the more likely to attract the confidence of those who are asked, but not required, to appear before it. The third tier is the tier of legislative action, and this would commend itself to me as, I hope, a reasonable person. Were I not already involved in thinking about it, I should regard it as a piece of sensible procedure.
Let me refer to the last question. The Home Secretary asked whether it was enough. Of course it is not. It is not enough because a great many of the problems are problems not only of numbers of black people but numbers of black people in congested places where there are equally large numbers of other coloured people. Of course it is not enough, because we have a social system in which we still regard housing, in some respects at least, as a matter of private enterprise and calculated in terms of profit, whereas it seems to me that it is possible to have an equable society only when housing is regarded in exactly the same light as we now regard teaching, education and the provision of the., welfare services. It is not enough, because we cannot isolate our own islands; we have to see this in a larger context. It is not enough because education is not enough.
The word "education" has been much used to-day. I am well aware, as I am sure your Lordships are, that it does not come from the Latin "educere"—to draw out, but from the Latin "educare" —to nourish. I owe that to the great Dr. Temple. I heard him say it many years ago; it came as a flash of light, and it has remained an illumination ever since. What is the nourishment unless it not only contains the acquisition of facts about the material world, and some expertise in finding one's way around in

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that material world, but the final objectives of life are equally well presented to the one to be educated?
I should not be fair to the collar I wear unless, before finishing, I said this. This particular Bill is an attempt to achieve a measure of social righteousness of which I believe we are all dimly conscious, and of which many people are keenly conscious; and unless it can stimulate us to a more general apprehension of what is our business here on earth, and what is a multiracial society as the family of God, and what is man's relationship to himself and his neighbour and his enemy and his friend; unless it can help in this direction, it will be not merely insufficient but impotent. I venture to hope that if such a measure as this is passed here and becomes law, it will play some part in the juster society to which I am sure all of us, on both sides of this House, desire to move.
8.35 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, when this debate began this afternoon, after I had listened with admiration to the very lucid and fair account of the position by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and then I listened to the brilliant speech from the other side of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, it seemed to me that it would have been a good time to close this debate, because almost everything worth saying had then been said. But I have been sitting here all the afternoon, for some hours, and I have been infected with the idea that there are one or two points which I would still like to emphasise.
To begin with, I do not think it can be too often emphasised that no one questions that all citizens within our boundaries must have the same freedoms and responsibilities; in fact they must enjoy the same general rights of citizenship and the same opportunities. But that applies to all who are here now, without this Bill, and it does not connote a free-for-all attitude towards would-be immigrants from other lands in the future. It must be emphasised, I think, that stringent restrictions, stringent conditions on immigration, should be based on our capacity to absorb; and, not only that, but on the capacity of the immigrants and their willingness to be
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absorbed. We do not want contending and possibly unacceptable customs, habits, ways of life and outlook on life to be intruded extensively on our own people, nor for them to be forced to accept distasteful differences on anything like a permanent basis.
But it is when we give legal sanction to the policy that discrimination on grounds of race, colour, ethnic group or nationality merits penal discouragement that it seems to me we run into difficult and dangerous ground. Personal liberty of choice in all aspects of life is surely a precious possession. I am not a racialist. I have intimate friends, coloured friends, all over the world, and I know them well, both in my own house and elsewhere. But I am a determined believer in personal liberty, qualified only by the rule that my own exercise of it does not unfairly limit the basic rights of other citizens. Nor have I any right to organise mass objection to groups of other citizens who are law-abiding.
I think it is wrong to legislate to make discrimination unlawful, for the simple reason that such a law is unworkable in practice without becoming a tyrannical imposition of the State's will upon reluctant citizens. This Bill will not work in practice unless it represents the wish and the will of the vast majority of the citizens of this country; and if that were the case, the Bill would be quite unnecessary. I do not think that it has that backing; nor do I believe that it can be operated without the practice of the very discrimination which it condemns. There is a further consideration: is this law necessary? Well, we have heard from one or two speakers to-day that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which this country signed, contains all the rights which any accepted citizen of this country need bother about.
My Lords, the reason for my dislike of the Bill is that it is subject to these fundamental defects which do not admit of being improved or extensively altered in Committee. One admits that there are problems, but they are not problems that can be solved by legislation, which is apt only to intensify the resentment that one wishes to avoid. It surely requires lengthy education, not the intrusive encroachment by law on the sphere of personal decision.

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One is bound to ask: would this law really help to diminish discrimination? My reply to that would be, No: I think that it is likely to magnify by centralising resentment to such interference. There are many forms of discrimination. Why select racial discrimination? Life is full of discrimination. The noble Baroness, Lady Emmet, mentioned one in the shape of the discrimination of the sexes in this country; and of course there are religious discriminations and social discriminations. Are we to look forward to an extension of this system, a kind of system of escalating deterrents applied to any exercises of personal preference? It is a horrible prospect.
As the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said at the beginning of his speech, you cannot legislate to alter the hearts of human beings; but you can of course educate and lead them. The process is slow, but it is better surely than reaching for the totalitarian handbook and using force. In my opinion, the answer lies in quite restrictive selection on entry and, after entry and acceptance, help in housing, education and health. Much can be done by voluntary effort of all kinds, but whatever you do, or however you legislate, you cannot enforce tolerance by decree or create good will by force. It all takes time, as we have all learned during our lives. That is why I dislike this present Bill, which I know will pass into law. I regret it, but it is now certain to happen. I do not for a moment question that it is inspired by good intentions, but we all know what famous road is supposed to have a similar pavement.
8.45 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I welcome and support this Bill. Like the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, I do not think we must expect too much from it. It is, of its very nature. a rather negative piece of legislation. But the whole of the criminal law is negative legislation, and it plays an essential part in our legislative system. I agree with him that we shall have to look to education, the constructive side of the shield, so to speak, even more than to this Bill.
I must say that I found the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, who has just resumed his seat, extremely unconvincing. I seem to remember hearing them almost verbatim on the occasion of the previous Bill. Yet this afternoon we
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have heard from the most reverend Primate, who knows more than anybody about the work that has been done under that Act, how successful it has been. I have little doubt that substantial s recess will also be achieved under this Bill when it becomes an Act.
Of course, at this stage in a debate of this kind there are few arguments left which have not been used; indeed, many of them have been deployed more than once. I shall do my best not to keep on dotting i's and crossing t's, an exercise in which I ought to be becoming rather expert by now because I find myself so often in this position. However, I believe that on an occasion of this kind, when an attempt is being made to grapple with a problem which is among the most difficult, complex and dangerous that Parliament has ever had to handle (again I find myself in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke on this), it is one's duty to testify. I use that word on this occasion almost in a religious sense. Equality of citizenship is indeed, I think, a matter of political faith. I am not, of course, talking about politics in the sense of Party politics, but of what one might call a general democratic and humanist faith, which indeed was enshrined by the Chinese many centuries ago in a famous maxim which I think appears in Confucius; that
"Within the four corners of the world all men are brothers".
Not that I would bring any charge of denying the Brotherhood of Man against those who have been opposing this Bill in Parliament—in this House this afternoon in rather sotto voce terms, but in another place a great deal more strenuously, and even bitterly. Certainly, I should not like to bring a charge of racism against them, but I must say that I regard the sizeable vote which was cast against the Third Reading in the Commons as one of the most regrettable events which has ever occurred during the whole of my political lifetime, a really regrettable business altogether.
It is a black, disastrous truth which has come out repeatedly this after-loon, that there are quite a lot of racists in our community. It is to these unfortunate people, who I believe are more neurotic than anything else, that "Powellism", as it has come to be called, can easily make an appeal; and provide a fig-leaf of decency for what is really shameful.

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For it is in "Powellism" that they will find, so to speak, authority for their unfortunate and dangerous outlook. It has lent the prestige of a powerful political figure in the community to a doctrine which I think all of us in this House would regard as a pernicious one. Per contra, of course, it persuades our coloured fellow citizens—and I want to underline the fact that they are fellow citizens, as indeed many other speakers have done to-day, I am glad to say, and who are certainly not in such an emotional state that they can judge these matters in a calm and impartial manner —that an important section of one of our great historical political Parties, led by men who have held high office in the State, are ready to deny them justice; and that is a most unfortunate state of affairs. How can we successfully pursue a policy of racial integration against a background in which such deep feelings have been stirred up, and have been made as bitter as we know them to be?
It was this feeling that the advent of "Powellism" in recent months has basically affected the political climate, I think, that caused Mr. Hogg and the majority of the Conservatives to alter the position that they had taken up on the Second Reading in the Commons—that is, the decision to oppose the passage of the Bill and to agree to the Bill's going through without voting against it. I must say I should like to congratulate them very much on that wise and statesmanlike policy. I admired their good sense, and particularly the eloquent and very well argued speech of Mr. Hogg on that occasion. Although it was no doubt not possible for him, as a matter of practical politics, I think that in logic Mr. Hogg should have gone further and advised his followers to cast an affirmative vote for the Bill.
I myself see no possibility of solving this intractable problem except on the basis of an inter-Party agreement about the proper solution of it. I bitterly regretted that the Conservative Party had taken up a position of opposition to the Bill at the beginning, but I regret just as much that little, if any, really genuine effort was made by my own Party to provide a basis on which an agreed solution of an inter-Party character could be reached. Nor, so far as I could make out, were any very serious steps taken to
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initiate inter-Party discussion on this problem before the Bill was worked out in a fairly finalised sort of form.
I quite agree—and indeed I go further than the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor—about the seriousness of the present position. In my view, the situation is one of a seriousness corresponding to that which brought the Parties together in May, 1940, and led to the formation of a National Government, if we look at the matter from the point of view of the need for a happy and harmonius future for the British people. And I suggest that that is the way this matter ought to be looked at, because unless we can solve this problem there will be no happy and harmonious future for the British people as such. Of course I am not proposing that we should set up a National Government to deal with this matter, but surely we could hammer out a policy which men of good will in all the Parties could accept and determine to make operative.
The Times, in its famous, or shall I describe it as its "infamous" leader of July 6 said this:
"This Bill is concerned with how we should treat our fellow citizens."
That sentence has been re-echoed throughout the debate to-day, and I am very glad that that is so, because surely this is exactly right; and surely it is a sentence which can be accepted not only by us in this place but by all men of good will throughout the community. I do not want to say more about this Times leader, which has aroused so much Conservative anger, except that in a pretty long experience I have always found that the criticisms to which those who were criticised were most sensitive were the criticisms which were in fact the most valid.
The only other point that I wish to make is concerned with this question of liberty, which has been raised by more than one speaker, and which was very much discussed in the debate in another place. It is contended, and has been contended—it was contended a minute or two ago by the noble Lord, Lord Milverton—that the proposed law will be a serious interference with a man's liberty to deal in all sorts of ways, to employ whomsoever he likes, to let his property to whomsover he likes, and in many other ways. There is, of course, an interference of a sort, but "liberty" is a word

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which everyone likes to conjure with and to conjure within his own particular way, and we are all susceptible to this temptation. But at the heart of the matter it seems to me that particularly in politics liberty is a question of balance. Almost every Act of Parliament involves some interference with liberty, greater or less. We restrict a man's freedom, or the freedom of a particular group of people, in the interest of the community as a whole. That is the acid test by which we judge whether the interference is a legitimate one.
I have mentioned the criminal code of the country already in this speech. The criminal code is one long interference with the liberty of the subject, but it is an interference which is absolutely essential if you are to have a civilised community functioning at all. Sometimes, as the noble Baroness, Lady Asquith of Yarnbury, pointed out, as in the case of the "Breathalyser" Act, our interference is so obvious that it takes Parliament quite a long time to pull itself together and determine to take the plunge for an interference of this kind; yet now that we have done it after all these years we are satisfied that it was a very important and valuable interference with the liberties of the subject.
It is noteworthy that the Bill before us does not add any new offence. It is not a criminal Statute at all. It is not relying upon the sanctions of the criminal law in order to enforce the principles on which it is based. It may be that that is a weakness in it. I am not at all sure that we might not, in some respects at any rate, have followed the American plan where they enforce the civil side of this matter in sore important respects by bringing in the crimial law. Indeed, in this respect, this Bill is quite a long way behind our old Common Law. At an early stage it was an indictable crime—it still is, although it is never enforced in practice—for an innkeeper to turn away without good cause a traveller who had come to seek lodgings in his inn, or for a common carrier to refuse transport to a merchant and his goods: that also was an indictable offence at Common Law. These matters are covered by this Bill, but it does not go anywhere like as far as the Common Law went, and used to be enforced, until the beginning of the last century. At Common Law if you carried
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on a public occupation, the law placed a responsibility upon you to carry it out properly. If you provided a service to the public you were to perform that service; you were not to pick and choose the people for whom you would perform it.
The proposals in this Bill seem to me to be based on the same sort of principle as that of the Common Law, and the alleged infractions of the principles of freedom seem to me to be largely illusory. The landlord who makes his income from letting houses to tenants has from early in the present century more and more been controlled both in Iegard to the rents he is allowed to charge and the provision of certain minimum standards of houseworthiness in regard to the premises which he lets. This control has been accepted by all Parties; it has been accepted as much by the Conservative Party and by Conservative Governments over recent years as it has been accepted by the Labour Party. With these considerations in mind, I do not think one can say that such interferences with liberty as there are in the present Bill are not counter-balanced by the social justice which this Bill should help to secure. Therefore, it seems to me that this cry of "Liberty in danger", which is so often raised on this sort of occasion, is altogether a "red herring" and that we ought not to pay any attention to it. For these reasons I support the Bill, and wish it a safe passage to the Statute Book in the near future.
9.3 p.m.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, nobody could quarrel with the aims of this Bill, which are to achieve a noble purpose, and that is to try to do away with racial discrimination in this country, but at the outset I should like to say that it is a pity that Party considerations need enter into matters such as discrimination, abortion, homosexuality, divorce, et cetera. These issues ought to be looked at as a matter of conscience; that is my personal opinion.
A few noble Lords have tried to simplify this question of racial discrimination. They have made it out to be entirely a question of colour. It is my opinion that the average man it this country, from whatever class, does not care what colour a man is, whether he

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is black, brown, yellow or blue—if you can get a blue man. I believe one finds blue people down in the South of Morocco—they call them "blue", but it is only because they wear blue clothes. The real trouble is a question of habit and customs. Every race has its own habits; you cannot blame it for that. I believe that in this country a great deal of the problem of racial dislike is because of over-crowding, although the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, did not agree with that.
We have been told that coloured immigrants in this country amount to only 2 per cent. of total population. I did not think that it was quite as much as that. If they were spread throughout the whole country there would be no trouble at all, but when they are concentrated in two or three cities one is bound to get friction. If you are an ordinary working man who has never travelled out of England and has never mixed with other races, then if you get two families of different races on either side of you, it is natural that there will be friction. We have to take these matters into account. It is all right for those of us who have travelled abroad. I used to have plantations in Jamaica and for 12 years I went out there a great deal. I have had a lot to do with coloured people. I am Chairman of the Victoria League of my area of England; I have a great many Commonwealth people down and I show them round and entertain them. They are people of all races and all colours. It is easy for us not to have any feeling of discrimination, but we have to remember the ordinary person.
There is one thing which I do not quite understand about the Bill. Why has not religion been included? One gets a good deal of discrimination in religion. One remembers the row over the Sikhs in Wolverhampton—I think it was Wolverhampton—because they were not allowed to drive buses wearing their turbans. This was complete and utter nonsense, because turbans are a very attractive form of headgear. I should rather like to be able to wear one myself. It would certainly suit me far better than a hat with one of those horrible brims. That was all to do with religion, which is a matter that is not included in the Bill.
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While I completely support the principles of the Bill, I am rather frightened —and I have said this before in all the other debates on racial questions—that if you legislate against the natural likes and dislikes of men you may accentuate the problems. But that is a danger that we must risk. I have a dog which always chases cats. I beat the hell out of this dog, but it is just his nature to chase cats. It is the same with this question of racial prejudice—and, of course, it is complete prejudice. Its roots go very deep and we have to treat this matter very carefully.
I am not complaining about what we are doing in this Bill, because I think we are right to do it, but we are infringing on the personal liberties of a majority in order to protect the personal liberties of a minority. It is no good saying that we are not infringing, because we are, but it is probably right to do it. This country has a wonderful record of tolerance, but what we are doing is dangerous. Yet we do not want to have a class of second-rate citizens in this country.
We do not want to talk about the rate of immigration, because this Bill has nothing to do with that. But the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, made some remarks about Powellism. So far as I am aware, Mr. Powell did not criticise at all any methods of helping immigrants in this country. He was talking only about the flow of immigrants into this country.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I was not accusing Mr Powell of racism at all. What I was saying was that his attitude was adopted by the racists, and it had a bad result from that point of view.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord for thinking that he was criticising Mr. Powell for being hard on the coloured immigrants already in this country. Perhaps I did not understand him aright. What has been brought out in this debate is that it is the children who are going to be the great problem. Even if we had no more coloured immigrants coming into this country, their natural rate of reproduction is fairly considerable and the problem is going to grow. They are naturally going to increase very greatly through their birthrate. So I am particularly in support of this Bill in

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regard to the children born in this country, who do not know any other home. But with regard to the adult immigrants who come here, I should like to say that if I emigrated to a country I should not expect the law to be altered to suit me. I am not objecting; I am only stating a fact.
The particular clause about which I am rather worried is Clause 3. Clauses 3, 4 and 8 relate to employment, and I fully support Clauses 4 and 8 because I have had a factory and it has been very difficult for employers if shop stewards said, "We are not having any coloureds here, as otherwise we shall strike" So Clause 4 will protect employers from that form of blackmail. But I am a bit worried about Clause 3 and the word "qualifications". A white man and a black man with the same qualifications could apply for a job. I know that to-day we live in a world of qualifications, where character, record and integrity are not taken very much into consideration. We are becoming a nation of robots. Provided you are qualified, you are all right. But the thing I am frightened of, as an employer, is this. In the past, if several white men came to apply for a job and you did not like the look of the face of one of them, you need not employ him. If they all had the same qualifications, you could pick the one you liked best because you liked his personality, his character, or whatever you call it. Perhaps I am wrong here but, as I read this employment clause, if a white man and a black man come for a job and they both have the same qualifications, if you do not employ the black man you will be hauled up before the Board, and so, in order to avoid that embarrassment, you will obviously choose the black man. I am not quite happy about that. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor may be able to say something about it.
Before I leave the question of jobs I should also like to point out—and this applies to all races—that some people have an exaggerated idea of their suitability for a job. I am an employer, unfortunately—J wish to heaven I was not! I wish to heaven we could have a Bill for non-discrimination against employers!I think we really deserve it, because you will soon have no employers
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in this country—at least, no prival e employers. I should just like to make the point that some West Indians and some Africans—and it applies to whites, too —may think they are perfectly suitable for a job whereas they may not be; and, of course, they may get resentful and it will be all very difficult.
May I just draw attention to the insurance clause here?—I think it comes under Clause 2, subsection (2). I have a lot of friends in insurance. Insurance companies keep very good records, and they have certain classes of people who they find, through experience, are worse risks than others. For instance, undergraduates are thought by insurance companies to be a poor risk regarding the driving of cars. It may be very unfair on the sober undergraduates and the careful indergraduates who drive well, but, none the less, insurance companies have these categories. Now in the West Indies I have been a big employer of Jamaicans. I have got on very well with them and I am very fond of them; but they can be very dangerous sometimes when C riving trucks. They are very volatile people, and if they have a tot of rum they may very easily smash the truck up. The insurance companies may find, through their records, that West Indians, Africans, Pakistanis, or whatever the race is, have a bad record; but under this Bill here they cannot do anything about it. I am rather worried about that.
When we come to the housing clause, I am pleased to hear that a private person, if he does not put his house in the hands of an agent and does not advertise—I am not sure about advertising, but certainly if he does not put his house in the hands of an agent—can sell it to whomever he wants. But if you want to sell your house you really must put it in the hands of agents; and this clause appears to be favouring coloured people in the buying of houses. I am not complaining about that: I am merely saying that, to me, this clause appears to be favouring them. Perhaps am wrong, but that is how it appears to me.
The other point—I think two or three noble Lords brought this subject up—concerns the question of the civil courts; that if the matter goes beyond the conciliatory stage and goes to the civil courts, very big damages can be given against you there. I am afraid that

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there may be some complainants who may complain on a trumped up charge in the hope that they will get damages. That could happen, but it would be rather unfair on the defendant, because the Race Relations Board pay all the complainant's costs while the poor defendant has to pay his own costs, and he might get heavy damages against him. You will then find that no landlord or anyone likely to be involved as a defendant in one of these actions will ever go to court. He will think the dice are loaded too much against him.
I would draw your Lordships' attention to Clause 24, which is the research clause. I hope that the Government do great research on this matter, because in this question of race relations the more research we do on it the better. I should like to say that I hope this Bill works when it becomes law. Perhaps in this House we may alter it slightly; but it appears to me to be rather uneven in application according to the law. I am not a lawyer. I see the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is glaring at me; but I should have thought that as drawn it was not very good law. But I am an absolute novice in matters of law.
I would end by saying that I hope the Bill stops racial discrimination, because racial discrimination is a very nasty thing and an extremely unfair thing. I should also like just to say that I hope that the B.B.C. take this Bill to heart; because in my opinion they have been rather inclined sometimes to put on plays that show racial discrimination. I hope that this Bill, when it becomes law, will really stop all that; because racial discrimination is a horrible trait. I do not like it at all.
9.23 p.m.
BARONESS BIRK: My Lords, I found the speech of the noble Viscount who has just spoken an enchanting cliffhanger; I still do not know whether he is for the Bill or against it; but I do wish that he would stop beating hell out of his dog!Two things seem to mark this debate to-day. First there seems to have been a great deal of soft-pedalling on the part of the Opposition. We have heard little of the words that we heard in the Commonwealth Immigra-
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tion debate, and also the numbers are neither as present nor as vocal as they were on the Rhodesian Sanctions debate. Another thing that struck me was that people who have been talking round or about or against the Bill have carefully used the word "immigrants" and have kept off the word "coloured"; whereas what I think we all know and should accept and face frankly is that this Bill is about coloured people. It is not about immigrants as immigrants; it is about people who are coloured, people who are dark—dark in different shades perhaps, but who are not the same colour as white people.
One of the comments which I am afraid shocked me most was that made in the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, when he said that the root of the problem is not prejudice, is not colour, but is numbers. I am shocked, because I accept his sincerity and believe that he means what he says. I do not believe that comment; and I do not think that the evidence we have, the research that has been done and the knowledge that we have of the subject, supports it at all. It is true that a concentration of numbers increases a problem; but the fact is—and it is an unpleasant fact to have to accept—that there are numbers of people in this country who are blindly, automatically, unpleasantly, prejudiced against dark skins. Unless we are prepared to face that, not say it in the way of Enoch Powell, in order to get them "off the hook" and make it respectable, but say it in the way which makes it distasteful, absurd and unrespectable, I do not think we can start talking honestly about the problem at all.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Baroness to say that so far as I was concerned I was talking of immigrants in general, no matter what their colour?
BARONESS BIRK: My Lords, I was not referring to the speech of the noble Baroness; I was referring to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. Also in his speech the noble Lord said that if he were to leave England to go to another country he would not expect to be treated in the same way as the people of that country were treated. I hope the noble Lords will forgive me if that is not an accurate transcript of what the noble

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Lord said, but I think it was the intention of his words. The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, said that when you seek to emigrate to another country you do not normally seek to change the laws of that country. For the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, with his background and education and his status to compare himself with some poor immigrant, uneducated and poverty-stricken, who comes to this country seems to me extremely unfair and an irrelevant analogy. So far as the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, is concerned, one may not seek to change the laws of the country to which one emigrates but surely one does not expect the lack of hospitality amounting to brutal humiliation and deprivation that many coloured people are experiencing in this country.
My Lords, only a few days ago the National Youth. Employment Council published its most recent report on the Youth Employment Service. I will not go over the pouts made by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, and the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, about the difficulty of immigrants, particularly young coloured immigrants, in getting jobs in service industries, especially where they come into contact with people. But in this report reference is made to the P.E.P. Report which found that the more highly qualified met with the greatest discrimination —which again seems to me to be an answer to the theory about numbers. The report goes on to say:
"If this pattern were to be repeated when more qualified young people are leaving school, a serious situation could arise."
In other words as my noble friend Lord Stonham pointed out, young people who were not themselves immigrants, and were born in this country would experience the same sort of discrimination as their parents had experienced or as those who have come to this country are experiencing now.
If one accepts these facts—and they are facts—then it seems to me there can be no argument against the necessity for legislation. I think that this was conclusively indicated, and the best answer to the need for legislation provided by the statement on Race and Racial Prejudice published by UNESCO in September of last year—namely;
"The law is among the most important means of ensuring equality between individuals
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and one of the most effective means of fighting racism."
Of course we know that legislation is not an end or a cure in itself, but it does give a framework in which actions can he controlled and attitudes gradually altered. After all, in the 19th century, when the Factory Acts were first passed, nobody thought that the Industrial Revolution would continue at the same pace if women and children were kept out of the factories. When women finally won the vote it was thought that that would be almost the end of civilisation, but your Lordships have now to endure the presence of a certain number in your own House.
One of the awful results of the present discrimination which we have, and must recognise, is that it creates a vicious circle. We hear complaints: I hear them as a magistrate, sitting in an area where there are a great many coloured immigrants living in crowded conditions. We hear of coloured people exploiting one another; of overcrowding; of none and trouble which they cause and which affects and annoys the people living near them. The exploiters are able to exploit, and the victims are ready to be victimised because they are discriminated against; because the housing available to them is strictly limited. And when one has a situation in which a group of people are treated by a certain number of other people with contempt, ridicule and abuse, it would be most unusual if in some cases contempt did not product contemptible behaviour.
For these reasons, my Lords, I feel that legislation, even with its imperfections, is essential. One of the interesting things about both this debate and all the debates in another place has been that even those who are opposed to this Bill, but who have said that legislation was necessary, have so far not put up any viable alternative. I feel that we should try to make this Bill work, and I should like to mention briefly one or two ways in which I think we could improve the present Bill.
I agree with those noble Lords who do not like the present definition of discrimination, and I also prefer that laid down by the United Nations. I do not like the clause about the labour force because, although my noble friend Lord Stonham pointed out that people born here were no longer immigrants but

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citizens of this country, they will still be regarded as part of a racial group and therefore part of a balancing labour force.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, on this point my noble friend is wrong. The Bill lays down that those who are mainly or wholly educated in this country would be of the same racial group.
BARONESS BIRK: My Lords, I thank my noble friend. I thought that they were going to be in a racial group according to the colour of their skins. I am still a little confused about this, and perhaps when my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor replies he will put me right on this.
I think it is a pity that the disputes with regard to employment go to the Ministry of Productivity and Employment, rather than to the Race Relations Board. I should like to see the Board given power to subpoena witnesses and the right to demand the disclosure of documents. Even more important, I find the time limit of two months far too short. People who come here have difficulty in finding their way around, and I think they need more than two months.
I hope that we shall be able to improve the Bill in Committee. This legislation gives time and opportunity for many matters to be considered again. Those of us who belong to other minority groups realise that people need to meet the reality rather than to indulge in legislation gives time and opportunity referred to an article in yesterday's Observer. One of the most striking things about that article was the number of remarks that were made which were second and third hand, made by people who did not know any coloured people at all. This Bill will encourage people who are fairly neutral in this matter but who do not want to fall out with their neighbours or workpeople to go ahead and not feel at any personal disadvantage. It will also give an opportunity to trigger off Government action in planning housing and education in a much more long-term way.
Finally, this Bill, even with its imperfections, will take this question out of the largely emotive area in which it is at
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the moment and give it some legal substance and some dignity, so that we can fight against prejudice and recognise the contribution that coloured people can make to our society, that they add to our ethos and our culture. If we do not let people in we become a static, sterile society. I think we should remember some of the positive contributions they can make, as well as some the difficulties that arise.
9.35 p.m.
LORD GRIDLEY: My Lords, as I think your Lordships know, I have been a colonial civil servant for the greater part of my life, and I have listened tonight with the greatest interest to all the speeches that have been made. One discards most of what one intended to say at this late hour, but endeavouring as I am to collect my thoughts on what has been said, one would expect that I should be defending up to the hilt the coloured people in this country. When one has associated with them for the length of time that I have, that would be the most natural reaction. And in what I have to say, I am still defending them. But I think there are two sides to this question. This is a British Parliament, this is the House of Lords, and what we are considering is the welfare of our coloured people and the welfare of our own British people. We have to think of this problem in that context.
My Lords, there are many things which have disillusioned me over the years since I have returned to this country. One is the attacks that have been made on our institutions, and everything that we stood for the beliefs which we carried with us abroad, and by which I am still sustained. I was gaoled for four years in the last war for my British beliefs. During that time I was sustained by coloured peoples, who had a great faith and belief in everything that Britain stood for. In the ensuing years since that time, as I have said, there has been much disillusionment.
I think that in part this is due to the attacks that have been made on this country by the coloured peoples themselves. It may well be that this is only a form of reaching adulthood and attacking those with whom one was formerly connected. Nevertheless, there has been a tendency for us to remain silent against

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those attacks, and this is what our British people see outside. This causes fear in our community, and it is something that I think must be taken into account in the situation in this country.
If one is to accept this Bill—and I accept that it is necessary—one must calm the atmosphere and create a climate in which it will work. I cannot say that I am enamoured with the processions which one sees in this country in connection with racialism, and which are followed by counter-processions. This is not a contribution to the furtherance of good race relations. I would suggest to the organisers of processions of this kind that if they want good relations in this country they should abandon these processions altogether. Those are just some of the fears.
There are one or two other things which I should like to say. I feel that there has been an excessive tendency to underline an exaggerated form of liberalism. I do not mean by this that one must not have a liberal outlook, but in connection with the first part of what I have had to say, we have seen our institutions under attack, and if there has been any sort of discrimination, some of the worst discrimination which takes place in the Commonwealth still exists in India, where they have the caste system and where discrimination is practised against the sweepers and people who do menial jobs, who are not allowed to cook food for their masters. I think that many of our people in this country see all this and are greatly worried by what they see.
I want this Bill to succeed. I want the atmosphere to be created in which it can succeed. I shot Id like to see the coloured leaders of the community in this country and British leaders get together; and I should like to see a happy country in which we can preserve the ideals and the greatness of our Commonwealth.
9.41 p.m.
LORD RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, this has been a very remarkable discussion and debate, if I may say so, and the level of the contributions has been quite remarkable. Above all, there has been a very temperate attitude towards this Bill, a Bill which I want vigorously to support. It has its defects; they have been pointed out, and therefore one does not repeat them, but I hope that
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in the wisdom of your Lordships' House we can strengthen the real purpose and meaning of the Bill. However, as it stands it is a contribution which I think is of tremendous importance, as was pointed out by my noble friend Lady Gaitskell, not only to what can he done in this country but to creating a positive effect throughout the world. We shall be seen to be doing justice to tae race problem.
My noble friend Lord Soper quoted my right honourable friend the Home Secretary as saying it is not enough. I think we all agree that it is not enough. It is a very important step forward; it is a meaningful step forward. It is actually putting the brakes on a very slippery slope of degeneration in our relationships with our fellow men and our fellow citizens who are people who happen to be distinguished by colour. As he said, we are not here really talking about discrimination in terms of immigrants or anything else; we are literally, definitely and conspicuously talking about our attitude to people who are a different colour from ourselves, who recognise they are different and who regard themselves in the situation at the present time as victims of circumstances which are not dictated by the numbers in which they are here or any such factor.
I want to illustrate this point. In the 1920's I was a crime reporter in Glasgow. We had there a most terrific problem. We hear a lot about Glasgow today, but the real trouble in Glasgow in the 1920's was a very violent racial problem. We did not have colour, except green and orange—not blue, not led. The troubles there were very much the troubles we have here to-day. In Western Scotland at that time, around 1924, when the first depression was hitting us, the people who were picked on were the Irish. The reason why they were there was the fact that they had been brought in quite deliberately by the farmers and landlords to pick the potatoes; and they stayed on to be the scavengers of Glasgow, doing jobs that no decent Scotsman or Glaswegian would take at that time. But the depression came, and these were the jobs the workless people in Scotland wanted to have, bit they were occupied by the Irish. We had troubles there just as we have them here to-day.

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Here we have a situation which is now accentuated by the fact that we have, not religious differences which one happens to find out by accident or by going to church; we now have something which is entirely a question of pigment of the skin. We are looking at people and saying, "These are different", and we are looking at them and saying "They are different not only in terms of appearance but they are accepting the jobs which presently we shall want". If any of your Lordships saw the B.B.C. programme last night entitled "Your Witness" you will have seen exactly what will happen. The docker in that programme was defending this attitude on the ground that the coloured people would eventually do him out of a job, and he was talking about it in the same terms as he referred to automation.
We are talking about economic circumstances in a period of change in which, again, there is a very small minority—and we must keep on hammering this; it is a very tiny minority, less than 2 per cent., as has been repeatedly pointed out to-day—which are recognisable and distinguishable. They are taking the jobs that you never knew you wanted and yet one day you might want. It is economic: it is not a question of genetics, anthropology or ethnology; it is a distinguishable and recognisable colour picture of the threat of an economic replacement. You cannot hit out at a machine but you can spit in the face of the coloured fellow in the bus. This is the reality, and by this Bill—which will become an Act, I hope, with the help of your Lordships—we are giving to decent people courage, which they do not possess at the moment, to say, "I will not turn that man out of my pub", or "I will not refuse that man a job: the law says I must not". At the moment, he has not even the courage to say it because he has to face his customers in the saloon bar or talk to his workers. We are giving him the courage to say, "I will not discriminate". My Lords, I hope we are going to make a reality of this Bill.
9.47 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, as the twenty-fourth speaker at a quarter-to-ten at night there is a tremendous temptation
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to "scratch", but as my noble friend Lord Hunt said in the Rhodesian debate, there are occasions when one wants to stand up and be counted, and to-night I claim that right without further apology. Three quite separate problems have been running through the debate to-day, somewhat tangled, and I think it might help to disentangle them. First, there is the question of who shall be allowed into the country and at what rate. That is a problem with which we are not concerned to-day, but it is worth noting, in passing, that it is possible to hold the most impeccable egalitarian views about equal rights of citizens of any colour or race and yet hold very decided views about the rate of immigration, which is in fact the position of the Labour Party to-day.
Secondly, there is the problem of help for new arrivals and how to work them into the community. Thirdly, there is the much more fundamental problem: do we accept those who are here, and their children, and their children's children, as equal partners with ourselves in a multiracial society? That is the question on which all the rest hinges. If the answer to that is "Yes", then any question of discrimination is reprehensible; if the answer is "No", then we want to do as little as we can get away with while at the same time keeping order. Leaving out that with which we are not concerned, we are very much concerned with what happens when they come into the country. Here I think we have done far too little and we need a policy, not of equal rights but of positive discrimination.
I have the honour to be associated with an organisation called "Family Service Units" and I have here some figures from part of their work in London. These figures are interesting. This organisation deals with what are known as "problem families"; that is to say, families who, for one reason or another, fail to stand up to life. In Haringey they dealt with 33 such families, of which there was only one coloured family. Yet what is curious is that the proportion of coloured to white children is 22 per cent. Again, in North Kensington and Chelsea, of 60 families only six were coloured or mixed, but it is thought that the percentage of coloured in the actual area is much higher than that, although the breakdown by districts is not available. These two examples

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suggest to me that the families who come and settle in this country, with all the problems of unfamiliarity which face them, may nevertheless be getting less help than our own failures. I think perhaps the immigrant families who get into trouble stick together and help one another as best they can, but make far too little use of existing services.
Why is this? Why is there not a widespread organisation to seek out people and help them before they come unstuck? When the influx of Hungarian refugees came into this country they were received and helped and found houses and jobs, and the whole affair worked smoothly. Yet there is no planned reception for these people used to conditions so widely different from our own. Here I think that we could learn a good deal from the performance of the Dutch in accepting and settling 300,000 people from Indonesia since the war. Admittedly their problems were different from ours, but the figures are staggering, and would amount to 1¼ million in relation to our population. The Dutch have spent £6million—not £200,000 but £6 million—.a year for the last ten years on this work. This has covered health checks, clothes for a year's need, grants for furniture and equipment, subsidies for rent, insurance and pensions, maintenance in special transit camps, properly staffed old people's homes, and, most important of all, contract boarding houses, of which there were 600 in 1950. Arrivals were thus dispersed in an orderly way.
I do not want to press the analogy too far: there were many quite important differences. Even so, it shows that problems of this kind can be handled better than by leaving the newcomers to shift for themselves. At the least, it seems to me, there should be reception committees to help new arrivals, with someone meeting the aeroplanes and boats, and an office to which families or individuals without proper arrangements could be referred for help. I do not think we in this country should want to adopt quite such a dirigiste attitude as the Dutch, but I have no doubt at all that many people arriving for the first time in a strange, cold and almost certainly rainy country might be very glad indeed to be met by someone who could provide comfort and advice.
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The most reverend Primate's Committee has begun something along these lines, and so has the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants; but I think he would agree they have not yet succeeded in covering the whole of the human problems involved. Clause 23 gives him wide powers. I hope that his Committee (and I am sorry to hear that he is not to continue to be chairman) will give some priority to the second-stage welfare work designed to deal with problems of the transition from one society to another. Sir Roy Wilson's Report recommended that there should be something of this kind, some hind of reception committee at the various points of entry, and at official expense. But it fell to the axe of false economy and has never been implemented. Any policy of equal rights which is to succeed must begin by special discrimination in favour of new arrivals; and this, in my opinion, has been our greatest failure.
May I turn now to the larger moral problem of equal rights in the multiracial society? This subject has already been fairly well mulled over, so I shall not be long. The children and grandchildren of immigrants will have been brought up with the benefits and disadvantages of our educational system and our Welfare State and should be able to take their place by level pegging with their English contemporaries. It is the ideal of all of us in all parts of the House who believe in a multiracial society that this should happen, and to doubt its possibility or desirability seems to us to adopt a frankly racialist attitude, using the word "racialist" in its proper sense —namely, as believing that one ethnic group is fundamentally incapable of reaching the standards set by another, which is what, in my opinion, "racialist" means.
People who hold this view seem, for some reason, to dislike being called racialist—so much so that it is almost impossible to find one in any public place, though I think they thrive in pubs and drawing rooms. It is like the Nazis after the war: suddenly they hid all disappeared. It reminds me of the corporal who was had up by his commanding officer accused of being inimical to the fellaheen, but he said "Sir, it is not true. I am not inimical io the fellaheen, I just can't stand the sight of

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them". I feel that this is the kind of answer that after a good dinner you might get from some of our prominent speakers on this subject, who are so quick to deny that they are racialists in any sense at all. In my sense of it they are.
I may be being unfair, and I do not want to claim that everybody who does not feel as I do is necessarily either a fool or a knave—only that he is wrong. I do not know how many people feel in their hearts consciously superior to coloured people of equivalent education, but I know quite a lot do. Here, I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, still less with the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that colour prejudice is not a big thing in this country but is merely a question of numbers. Numbers, of course, make it one, but I am afraid there is no doubt that there is a quite vicious streak of colour prejudice. I meet it again and again among my friends of all classes, I am sorry to say. I believe there is no getting around it.
The real differences are due not to colour of skin, but to background and upbringing. Two or three generations ago the rich, who were then co-terminous with the upper classes, looked upon what they called "the poor" as a class apart, of a different order from themselves. This did not preclude a relationship of real affection, even love, but it absolutely precluded equality. And in a sense this represented a sort of reality, in that the differences in wealth, comfort, ease, health and education were too wide for the true values of personality to bridge. Of course, if you have been brought up in comfort with an expensive and leisurely education, you will have some quite material advantages over others brought up perhaps in a slum and with little or no schooling. But as slums slowly disappear and public education raises its standards, and Marks and Spencer's dress the girls, the differences are increasingly seen to be differences of environment and not of basic potential.
This will be no surprise to those of your Lordships who breed cows, or employ other people to breed cows, because you will know that 80 per cent. of a cow's performance is the result of management and environment, and less
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than 20 per cent. of heredity. People used to a much simpler way of life and quite different weather, and receiving little or no education, will of course be at a disadvantage in our very different but hideously imperfect society; but their children, brought up under our conditions, good and bad, will have no such drawbacks except those imposed upon them by discrimination, and it is this, in effect, at which this Bill is aimed. So the first thing we want to know is, who opposes the Bill on the grounds that the second generation of immigrants cannot, in general, be the equal of their English counterparts? Because that is the great divide. It seems to me really to be a racialist attitude. It seems to me to be a continuation of the bad biology and bogus philosophy of that renegade Englishman, Houston Chamberlain, which was taken to its disgusting logical conclusion by Rosenberg.
The Germans between the wars were racialist as a nation. They thought coloured people, Jews, Slays, Latins and all the rest, to be inferior races. I suppose we are all a little tainted by racialist feelings, though not necessarily in the same direction. I have certainly never had any doubt since the 'thirties that I much prefer the Jews to the Germans. The very idea that the great Slav culture, the great Chinese culture, the great Indian culture and the great Hebrew culture are in any way inferior to the German version of the European culture is ludicrous.
This is the great divide. I believe more people think they are superior to coloured people than are ready to admit it. I believe that they conceal their own views even from themselves, certainly from me, because when they express the feeling in words it is so arrogant and disagreeable that it shocks them. They confuse it with a cheerful jingoism, the sort of harmless national vanity that thinks foreigners funny, held, I suppose, most strongly by the Chinese but to some degree by every nation worth the name. It is a primitive point of view which will not stand up to examination for a moment; but it is clearly not evil, and it accounts for the readiness of decent people to hold views which to me are so abhorrent. When it is combined with the false and tendentious approach of pseudo-science, there it becomes really

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nasty, and on this point there can be no compromise. Those of us who believe in equal rights, believe it as a direct appreciation of a moral fact which can be supported and strengthened but probably not proved by argument. Over issues of degree, of method, of speed, of effectiveness, we can argue; over the principle we can only fight, and it is that principle which this Bill is designed to support.
10.0 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, when I asked that my name might be included in the list of speakers to-day, I indicated that I should like to have an early place. I find myself as the last speaker from these Benches but perhaps after all there is something appropriate in that allocation. It was my noble friend Lord Sorensen, who spoke earlier, who was the pioneer of legislation against racial discrimination. I am not quite sure how many years ago it was that he first introduced a Pill in another place. I can only claim to have been persistent in this matter.
I cannot fully express the feeling of gratification which I have this evening, not only because of the introduction of this Bill but because of the way it has been received in this House. I say that because as recently as 1951, when I first introduced a Bill in the House of Commons against racial discrimination in public places, the only sponsors that I could find for my Bill were the little group of Left Socialists, Michael Foot, Sydney Silverman, Barbara Castle, and the others who have always seemed to me to be the soul of our Labour Party. And yet, my Lords, when I introduced my Bill nine years later I had the support of representatives from the Front Bench of the Lab our Party, I had the Leader of the Liberal Party, I had Conservative Members, indicating the quite extraordinary change that had taken place in those years. Before the Election our present Prime Minister announced that the Government would be introducing a Bill on those lines. My Lords, I was a happy person then, and am a far happier person to-night.
Last year I introduced a Bill to amend the Race Relations Act so that it would extend to employment, housing, and credits. I am happy to-night because
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the Bill for which the Government have become responsible has so closely followed the Private Member's Bill which I introduced, but I am the more happy because in the debate which has taken place in the House to-day no speaker has said that he would vote against the Bill; and even those who have been critical have expressed the hope that this Bill might reduce racial tensions in our country. That that should happen within the period of 10 or 15 years is one of the most encouraging changes in public opinion that could possibly have occurred in this country.
I recognise at once that racial feeling in this country is not only due to the Enoch Powells. It has also been due to those of us who have opposed the Enoch Powells. Therefore, I want to be very careful to-night not to say one thing that is likely to intensify racial feeling in our country. I have appreciated tremendously the debate in this House, in contrast with the debate in another place, because I do not think that it is likely to intensify racial feeling among our people.
I want to begin by endorsing what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, that we are to-night discussing an issue which is reflected in our own land but which is really a world-wide issue. Those of us who throughout the years have been engaged in trying to bring harmony between the races must be more depressed now than we have ever been because, as the world has grown smaller in technical content, the racial conflicts within it have grown. I recognise at once that this is not a matter of black and white. Unhappily, perhaps the most intense expression of it is in Africa, between Africans and Africans. This was reflected only to-day in this House by the Questions which were put about the terrible conflict in Nigeria and its results. Not one of us who has been working for racial harmony in the world can be other than depressed to-day as we look to Asia, Africa, the United States of America—in fact anywhere in the world—and as we look at the beginning of the problem here in Britain. Nobody who has that sense of what is happening in the world can take a crude or primitive view about racial relations.
To deny that among human beings there is racial prejudice is to deny what has existed through the generations. Of

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course there is racial prejudice. It arises from strangeness in relation to these people with different customs, of a different colour. It has happened between tribe and tribe, between race and race, between nation and nation, between hemisphere and hemisphere, all through history and we shall not overcome it in a few years or by this legislation. When one sees that problem the world over, the problems in our own country become almost small in comparison.
Racial prejudice here, yes; but, stimulated and encouraged by social conditions and by the different standards of life of the coloured immigrants and our British people. But we should remember that for the lower standards of life in the West Indies, in India and in Pakistan, our own colonial administration in the past has a very considerable responsibility, Different habits, yes—sometimes good and sometimes bad—and different cultures. In addition to these distinctions there are problems of social conditions: the housing shortage, the coming of the immigrants to take the houses, their overcrowding, the feeling that they are ousting those who should have an opportunity for houses; problems in the schools, the immigrant children coming in and not knowing the English language, so preventing English children from getting on in their classes; problems in the hospitals, when English women want to go in for the birth of their children, and find immigrant women there.
Those problems are not really the problems of the coloured immigrants: they are the problems of the shortage of housing, of schools, of classes, of teachers, of hospitals, of beds—problems for which we as a nation and the Government, were responsible before the coloured immigrants came in large numbers to this country. The coloured immigrant has been made the scapegoat of our own failure, of our own shortage, of our own inability to build enough houses, schools and hospitals for the people of our own territories.
In addition, there is the fear by our working class of unemployment. It is a little peculiar that in our present situation the areas of unemployment in this country are in fact the areas where there is a very small coloured population. The
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coloured population have naturally gone to their Birminghams, their Londons and their Sloughs, where there is easy employment. There is fear, again, that the coloured immigrants may undercut standards of life in our country. Once again, those are not really problems of coloured immigration, but problems of the failure to deal with our own economic conditions and situations.
Many of us take the view that in the conditions of to-day, with productivity and economic opportunity, fears about unemployment, and even the fear that wages may be cut, are absolutely inconsistent with all the possibilities for production and wealth which now exist. Therefore, my Lords, I am saying that in addition to instinctive, primitive, racial prejudice, racial harmony is being destroyed by social and economic conditions for which the immigrants are not responsible but for which we, over the years, have been responsible, and which is a part of our present economic and social system.
My Lords, if that analysis is in any way true, I think it follows that if we could remove the social and economic causes which stimulate and encourage racial discrimination we should go very far to secure conditions where the experience of different races living together would mean that harmony would develop. Why do I say that? It is because in those strata of society where coloured persons and white persons are living on the basis of equality there is very little racial prejudice or racial discrimination: the students at our universities, the doctors, the artists, the athletes, the cricketers. Cricket is one of my great relaxations—at least, watching it now is. Cricket, that great English sport! Here to-day, we have been debating, in the House of Lords, where the religion, almost, of I suppose nine out of ten of us is cricket, but not a single word has been said because West Indians, Indians and Pakistanis are now taking over first-class cricket in this country and our county clubs. In all these spheres there is no inequality, no discrimination. For "pop" singers there is praise, adoration. It is because of the social and economic differences which I have described, on the top of primitive, historical, racial prejudice, that we have the present situation in this country.

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My Lords, it is for these reasons that I welcome this Bill. It deals with unemployment, with housing, with credits and so on. It will contribute towards removing the causes of dissension and tension which now exist between the races. But I would conclude, my Lords, by saying this: that while I welcome this legislation, I recognise that we are not going to conquer this problem merely
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by legislation. It means education; it means the adjustment of social and economic standards to those in which there will be an opportunity for the races to live together; it means an experience; it means that we need a new ethic that all of us. whatever our colour, whatever our race, belong to the one human family.
10.19 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, this has been a long debate, many speeches have been made and I am full of notes of what everybody has said. It is unusual, perhaps, for so many to be present at the end of a debate. I do not know whether most of your Lordships are really here to hear the Unstarred Question about Australia; but, if not, may I say I think it particularly courteous of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, and the most reverend Primate to have stayed to the end of the debate.
May I start by taking the world setting in which my noble friend Lord Brockway left us? I imagine that if in twenty years' time, somebody looked back and asked: "What is the most important thing that happened during that Government's life?", we should find them referring to something which was reported in the Press; but not much was made of it because it was not a row. I noticed a couple of days ago in a most respectable newspaper that on one page alone there were half a dozen paragraph headings, no fewer than three of which included the word "row". I forget whether it was a row in the Conservative Party or a row in some other Party or an immigration row. But the event to which I was referring could not expect publicity of that kind; for it was not a row. It was only an agreement, the nonproliferation agreement, and what may be regarded as the start of a breakthrough in relation to nuclear armaments, an agreement on which my noble friend Lord Chalfont had done so much for so long—and, of course, my noble friend Lord Caradon. What Lord Caradon is doing here, for he has not spoken to us, I am not quite sure.
But this is all part of the racial problem; because so long as the big Powers go on spending as much of the world's resources as they do on nuclear armaments and on space travel there cannot be the money left for the relief of poverty that there ought to be. And with science as it is, it is only a question of time before the four out of five, the black, yellow or coloured, are not going to put up with their degree of poverty when they see the rate at which the one out of five, the white people, live, spending 80 per cent. to 90 per cent. of the
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whole of the world's income. Therefore this is a general problem, although tonight we are considering it in relation only to this particular country. I hope that we may be in time—because the immigrants are only 2 per cent. of the population; unlike in Rhodesia where the coloured immigrants are 8 per cent. of the population; although, of course, when I say "coloured" in relation to Rhodesia I mean coloured white.
If the description of the state of affairs at Wolverhampton which was reported in the Observer was correct indeed it would be difficult to exaggerate the gravity of the problem. The noble Lord, Lork Brooke, said that it was the greatest social problem of the half century. I would respectfully agree with that view. Tackling it, and what is the right thing to do, is another matter. Some of us have said of this Bill that it goes too far; some that it goes not far enough. I wish that I had the complete confidence of some people that they know the answer to the racial problem.
One of the few things which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said that I did not altogether agree with was that the problem was really one of numbers and not of colour. It is really both, is it not? Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, was right in saying that if a village which had never seen a black man before sees two, then they are very interested in them and do not dislike them at all. That is probably because they know they are leaving the next day. But if you produce 1,000 black men and they are to stay permanently the villagers would feel rather different. It is really two things, numbers and colour. If the article on Wolverhampton was right—it said that the writer had never heard of any complaints at all about 1,000 Italians—is that not really because they cannot see them? Surely the difficulty of putting into a town like Huddersfield within a given period 10,000 fluent English-speaking Norwegians and, on the other band, in the same period, putting in 10,000 Pakistanis is not the same. To draw attention to the fact that it is not the same is not to be racialist; it is to be realistic. Therefore it is not just the problem of numbers; it is also a problem of colour.
I suspect that the only way to deal with this is to do three things. The first

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thing, it seems to me, which one must do is to control the rate of immigration. Surely there must be a maximum rate at which immigrants can possibly be assimilated. If you were to put into Wolverhampton tomorrow, in addition to their present 14,000 coloured immigrants, or whatever it is, another 14,000, plainly there would be an explosion, would there not? Therefore, it seems to me that the first thing one must do is to control the rate of immigration. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, that all Parties were to blame before 1962 because whether it was right to become a multi-racial country or not, no one ever decided. It was just allowed to happen by drift without any conscious decision, and it seems to me to have been wrong. And the situation in 1962 in which a quarter of the whole population of the entire world had the legal right to come here was one which could not possibly be continued.
My Lords, it was a matter of great distress to me recently when so many of my noble friends disagreed with the Government's view that even in relation to those who were the subject of the recent Commonwealth Immigrants Act, we could not allow hundreds of thousands to have the legal right to arrive here tomorrow; and when it was necessary for us to say, "We are not saying that you cannot come in, but you cannot all come tomorrow." Whether that was right or not, we have now at last got real control over the rate of immigration. What we should do may well be a matter of opinion.
The second essential, it seems to me, is education and conciliation, and much the most important part of the Bill. I think, is the provision of the Community Relations Commission. In the end this is not something which can be done by law. It can he done only by a mixture of education and conciliation, and what the conciliation committees do, what the various bodies who are working for race relations do, is I think very much more important than anything in the Bill.
Thirdly, my Lords, I think that we need a law, not because people can be made to behave properly or to think differently or to feel differenty by law, but because the law sets a standard, and because it helps those who are trying to do the
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right thing. I believe that, broadly speaking, most of our people aye by nature tolerant people. This will enable the landlady who does not mind letting to coloured people, but who is afraid of what the neighbours may say, to say, "Well, I cannot help it, it is the law."
The noble Lord, Lord Byers, is one of those who are unhappy about the definition clause. Well, my Lords, no doubt we can consider that. We started with the one of 1965, and this was considered to be an improvement. But the general attitude of the Government throughout, as I have made plain my own is, has been that we are not confident that we have all the answers. Personally, I approach this in a spirit of humility, ready to consider anything. The Convention definition would, I think, create difficulty, partly because it is not a definition of "to discriminate"; it is a definition of "discrimination", and most of the wording of the Act would have to be changed. Of course, Clause l has to be read also with Clause 2, and I do not think that there is any real danger of it being given the construction which has been suggested.
Then the noble Lord, Lord Byers, wanted the Board to have power to make orders; and, of course, there is also the view that the Board should have power to issue subpoenas. Here again is a matter which we can consider. I think the majority of those who have spoken expressed the view that that would be a mistake, though I think the most reverend Primate was rather in favour of subpoenas. I think it difficult to have a body which in effect is going both to punish people and to conciliate at the same time—I think it must be one or the other. The power to subpoena is a power which no one in the country has except a court. Even the police cannot subpoena people, and once you allow somebody other than a court to do that, who is to send them to prison when they do not obey the subpoena? We should have the police and Government Departments making orders to send people to prison. If somebody says that he is not going, what do the Board do? It is not suggested that they have the power to send people to prison. The matter would have to go to the county court. It is not easy for a court to send anyone to prison for not obeying orders that some

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other body has made. This, again, is quite a new principle. The court might not agree with the order. The judge might think that it is impossible to send somebody to prison for not obeying an order which the court thinks ought not to have been made. This is a difficult subject, but it is one we could discuss in Committee.
The most reverend Primate also stressed, as one would expect of him, the importance of conciliation, as do the Government. It is more important, I think, than anything else in the Bill. Ultimately, the relations between communities of different races in England will depend more on education and conciliation than on anything in the Bill, though I think it is important that there should be a law. My noble friend Lord Walston wanted to know what form financial help would take and when it would be available. I am afraid that this is still being worked out. We have not, after all, got the Bill yet.
The noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, was one of the few speakers who seemed to be against the Bill, mainly on the ground, I think, that we were overcrowded already. But, of course, that is not so. At the present time we are losing more than we are gaining. It appears, if she will allow me to say so, that her real object in speaking was to deal with discrimination against women, on which subject she knows that I have considerable sympathy with her, and I quite agree that we should not lose a chance of speaking about it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Asquith of Yarnbury, is a strong supporter of the Bill. I appreciated the point of view from which my noble friend Lord Hirsh-field spoke. The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, wished to stop immigration. Obviously, honest men may differ on the question of to what extent we should continue immigration. Personally I agree with the Government's policy, that apart from what is now a limited number of vouchers, immigration should be limited to the wives and children of those already here. The noble Lord said that this required careful consideration. That is quite appropriate. He said that the legal provisions were novel—they are not necessarily the worse for that. I
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agree that we can look at the question of damages. The noble Lord also referred to Clause 22, dealing with privileged communications. The sole object of this is that people may feel able to speak freely in the course of conciliation proceedings without feeling that what they say is going to be used against them.
My noble friend Lord Sorensen delivered a fine appeal to us that we should all do our part. The noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, hoped that the Board would be sensible. He raised a point on Clause 12(2), but I think he had not taken into account subsection (3), as my noble friend Lord Stonham pointed out at the time. My noble friend Lord Strabolgi raised several points, the first about research. That is still under examination. Then he raised the question of whether a circular would constitute an advertisement. I should think that it would do so. Then he asked about the clubs. Clubs, as such, assuming they are bona fide clubs, are not covered. Of course, there are many places which are masquerading as clubs and which clearly are not. The noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, urged the Government to provide the necessary housing, and so forth. Of course, this is very much part of the whole problem, as I should be the first to agree.
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, was, I thought, treated a little harshly by my noble friend Lady Gaitskell. I have never before agreed with anything the noble Lord has said on this subject, but tonight he said something with which I agree. He said that it is both colour and numbers that we are concerned with. He said—and it is quite true; it is something which has been very much in the mind of the Government—that in considering the whole of this Part of the Bill the difficulty is that it is very easy to do something which will make coloured people feel less against white people, and by exactly the same means make white people feel very much more vicious about black people. This is not difficult to do. You can do things to reduce the ill-feeling which one race has to the other, but they only exacerbate the feeling of the other race. This is one of the difficulties. The noble Lord spoke, I think quite fairly, of tilting the balance and of the prospect of this causing resentment.

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My noble friend Lady Gaitskell was quite right in saying that nobody is seeking by this Bill to put coloured people into a privileged position. That is an idea that we must get out of everybody's mind. And I was glad to hear the reference my noble friend made, as no doubt was my noble friend Lord Caradon, to our being able, as a consequence of all this, to hold up our heads at the United Nations.
The noble Lord, Lord Soper, I always agree with, of course; he always says, I think, everything that is right. He referred to the four points which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary had made in concluding the debate in the other place. The noble Lord, Lord Milverton, did not like the Bill at all. I never thought he would. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, stressed the importance of getting agreement, so far as one could.
The noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, told us the effect which it was having on his dog—well, whether it was the effect his dog was having on the Bill, or the effect the Bill was having on his dog, I am not quite sure. He was a little worried about Clause 3, employment. I do not think he need be. If there is a mass of proceedings, of course, the Bill will have failed. It is essential to have a law here, but all the conciliation side and the Race Relations Board side will obviously have failed if there is a substantial number of proceedings. But if there are cases in the employment field, the onus of proof is on the applicant to satisfy the court that the reason why he was not employed was because of his colour, and not because of something else. So, assuming that the noble Viscount is not a racialist, he will have nothing to worry about.
Then the noble Viscount was worried about insurance. But there is nothing in the Bill which will not enable insurers to consider their insurance experience. I should be very surprised to hear that coloured people have worse driving records than most. I should expect to hear that some were good and some were bad. Certainly from everything that I saw of the Negro drivers in the American Army in the war in Western Europe they were all magnificent drivers. I see the noble Viscount shake his head.
LORD BYERS: They were handpicked.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble Lord, Lord Byers, says that they were hand-picked. But they were very fine truck drivers. I did not very much appreciate the reference to the tot of rum. I do not know whether it hat been the noble Viscount's experience that white people do not have tots of rum. I do not think the noble Viscount need be unhappy about it.
My noble friend Lady Birk brought us back to the fact that it is colour. She is also, I think, unhappy about the definition and as to whether the Board ought not to have more power, and as to whether two months was a sufficient period for a complaint. But she also brought us back, I think quite rightly, to the tremendous contribution which the coloured people have already made to this country. The noble Lord, Lord Gridley, made what I thought IN as a most reasonable speech. I agree with him in that I doubt whether these processions do much good. I was grateful for his cordial approach towards the Bill as a whole.
Then I always appreciate very much whatever my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder says with his great experience from Glasgow onwards. I think he was quite right in stressing the fact that if you are black then you are recognisable. My noble friend Lord Donaldson made what really was so good a winding up speech, I thought, that I felt, "Anything I say after this must be an awful anticlimax". He referred, as I remember I did the last time we were discussing this subject, to what the Dutch had done in this field. I hope that we shall again consider what they have done and whether we cannot usefully take a lesson from them.
As to the author of the Bill, my noble friend Lord Brockway, really I never have any sympathy with him because he has the great advantage, like me, of being pretty old and of having had many, many occasions on which everybody has said, "You are absolutely 'cracked'. You must be mad". Then one went and talked about the matter in the village hall, and one wrote letters to the local papers, and the years went on, and now, in our very old age, in case after case

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we are seeing our dreams come true. One need have no sympathy with somebody who is in that position, because I think, and he knows that I think, that on practically everything he has always been right.
My Lords, if I may come back finally to the importance of the whole subject (I really cannot get Wolverhampton quite out of my mind to-night), I am sure that we must have control over immigration. Exactly how many immigrants we should allow in is a matter of opinion. The real job that must be done is in the field of education and conciliation, but I hope very much that the bodies—and I suspect that there are probably too many different ones—which are helping on race relations will bring in as many of our young people as they can, because I think there is much less racial feeling between young people than with an older generation. The young people are usually more tolerant; they are idealistic, and I am sure that this is what we ought to do. My Lords, I hope that meanwhile—and not expecting it to do more than its proper task—we can feel that this Bill is part of the way ahead, and vote for its Second Reading accordingly.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

IMMIGRATION RIGHTS OF AUSTRALIAN AND NEWZEALAND CITIZENS
10.44 p.m.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will restore to the citizens of Australia and New Zealand the free access to, and right of residence in, this country which they have traditionally enjoyed. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in asking the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper I have first of all an interest to declare. I was born an Australian, and though, rather like a latter-day little Lord Fauntleroy, I came to this country at the age of 12, I returned 23 years later. I have interests there. After coming back to this country, I still continue every three years, approximately, to visit that
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country. I have many New Zealand relations, mainly descended from a younger son of an early generation who, inter alia, when he went out there became the first Speaker of the New Zealand Parliament. So in these triangular visits I combined the two countries, and since my return to this country in 1957 two-thirds of my visitors' book has consisted of visitors from those two countries. That, my Lords, is the reason why I mention those two countries by name, and I have no intention thereby of saying something nasty, by inference, in not mentioning Canada, because many of the arguments which I shall use apply to that country.
It is also because I know—or I think I know—what hard feelings have been caused by our immigration laws as applied to Australians and New Zealanders, that I have raised this subject, and it is because I have had all these visitors, because I have lived there, and because I have received the Press reports. I think the relations between our countries have been bedevilled by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act and by the headlines in the Press of "grilling" by immigration officers. Many of these headlines, I agree, are exaggerated, but that does not alter the basic fact that these laws, as applied to these people, are looked on as downright insulting, humiliating and ungrateful, because in international conferences like those of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the United Nations, and so on, if there are any two countries which have consistently supported this country in the difficult arguments and debates it has been Australia and New Zealand.
Secondly, in the last three wars that this country has fought they have sent thousands of their volunteers—and incidentally, in case people want to turn this, I would like to mention that they were volunteers officered by their own people—to the assistance of this country, whether it was the South African War, the Great War or the Hitler War. En passant one might say that they sent to Europe to assist us when Europe was the danger point: and now that South-East Asia has taken its place, it is not a particularly honourable time to maintain our geographical positions or to indicate that we cannot help them.
On this particular subject, if you go to the little village of Cambridge, in New Zealand, and read the inscription on the war memorial there you will see this inscription:
"Tell England, ye that mark this monument, faithful to her we died, and rest content."
Classical scholars will know whence that inscription has sprung. But the young New Zealand journalist working on a paper in Brighton, whose paternal grandfather came from Oxford, whose mother came from Hastings—no; he cannot stay. Nor can Nigel Wilson, for example —despite his name—in regard to whom I had correspondence with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, the other day. He is employed in a business in which his managing director says that if they cannot continue to employ him they will lose export orders. But no: he is not allowed to stay. It has been traditional, ever since these two countries started, for their young to come to this country on a visit, and most of them, except for the very rich, have to combine their visit with a job. If you come that far, and have to work, what is the use of a stamp on your passport for three or six months? As a result, few ever remain.
Why then do they come? Because they have grown up to look on this as the Mother Country. I know; I grew up there. But what a state we have got into when one of the Agents General now has to warn the young from his State "Do not look on this as the Mother Country. If you want to keep out of trouble think of her as a rather mean stepmother."
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, would the noble Lord say which Agent General made this statement and when.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, I will give the noble Lord the name but I am not going to say it in public.
LORD STONHAM: Why not?
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: Because he said it to me in confidence.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I have myself seen all these Agents General. I have discussed it with them. Is it right
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to say here something that they are ashamed to say in public?
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, if you think I have said anything wrong, may I withdraw it?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, my only point about this is that the relationship between my Department and the High Commissioners' Departments are exceptionally good, and they are exceedingly pleased with the arrangements we make. It is therefore very damaging to have a statement made and then to find either that the noble Lord cannot substantiate it or prefers to withdraw it.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, I do not know what the noble Lord wants me to do, but I will withdraw it and supply him with the name afterwards.
The other attitude, looking at it from the Australian point of view, is the question: who do our rulers think they are, bringing in these rules which put these people in the position in which they find themselves? And it has the effect of causing them to regard it as retrospective legislation; and it is looked on as something fairly arrogant. Perhaps I may illustrate this by a story, which I admit I inflicted on your Lordships about four years ago. It concerns a typist from Melbourne who from the age of 17 to 21 saved up her money for a trip to this country. Eventually she had saved enough. She went to see her parents in the suburbs, and said, "Marge and I are going over to England". Her mother said, "Before you go, dear, do go up to Wogga Wogga and say goodbye to Granny because she is getting on in years". Off the girl went, by plane and train, and other means, and eventually arrived at Wogga Wogga. She said, "Granny I have come to say goodbye". Granny said, "That is very nice of you. And where are you going?" She said, "I am going to England with my friend Marge", and Granny said, "What. You can't go there". "Why not Granny?", asked the girl. And Granny said, "Don't you realise that is where the convicts come from".
My Lords, as applied to these two countries the laws are, I think (though of course I do not expect everyone to agree

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with me), looked on as being rather stupid. However, the administration of the laws has not caused so much trouble, though there were, to begin with, one or two silly cases. I will refer to them in a minute. However—and perhaps I may say this without having to mention the name of the man concerned—one Agent General said to me that since the meeting they had had with the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, the administration had improved considerably. But again perhaps I may quote from someone who said, "It still means that too much depends on the liver of the immigration officer at the time when he is dealing with the subject".
I think that the question of these arguments depends on how you are going to approach the subject. For example, in the Question I asked the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, in November I quoted a letter from a Mr. Everson, who wrote to me:
"As a New Zealander I fought hard for Britain in the last war and lost my brothers who willingly sacrificed themselves for their Mother Country. I find it most embarrassing that, now I am in England visiting a sister who is dying of cancer, I have to beg the Home Office to allow an extention of time."
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, very rightly said that in cases like that an extension is automatically given. That is not my point. My point is that people like these should never have to wonder whether they will be permitted to stay.
If you go to Australia, as I did in 1950, and an Election comes along, you vote in it. If your passport runs out, you straight away go and get another one. There is nothing to worry about. Why? Because you are from this country. When thousands upon thousands from this country (it is going to be 72,000 in this year) are accepted over there why, in Heaven's name, cannot we be reciprocal? Why must we be so niggardly over the few people who would like to stay here longer? The people who want to do that are few and far between, and those who do come do so to the advantage of this country. I myself know of a couple of Generals and a couple of Harley Street specialists, for instance. There is another point. Why treat these people like this when
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you do not control the Southern Irish, who have not always been particularly pro-British? I think the law is not right on this subject. We seem to be going out of our way to penalise our kith and kin—now perhaps a dirty phrase.
Since the publicity at the end of last year, one has learned of a number of cases of irritation caused by the administration. They are small cases. They number only a few, and I should like to mention them. The first and famous one was of the boy, John Brownlie, who was detained for 36 days. I am not interested so much in the details of that case as in the letter that his mother wrote to me afterwards. Instead of being "nasty", and all the rest of it, she was full of gratitude for the kindness of people in this country, for what they had offered to her son, particularly to an officer serving in Germany who had offered him accommodation for as long as he wanted it. In another case, Wayne Watkins was put back on the ship. If the story I heard is true, that is one type of trick which should not be allowed to be played. He was asked whether he liked the country and whether he would work if he was offered a job. He said perhaps he would take it. He was then asked "Where is your work permit?"—and back on the ship he went. That sort of action is silly, if it is true.
There were two sisters who arrived from Melbourne at the same time and in the same circumstances. One had her passport stamped for six months, the other for twelve months. Then, in another case, Mr. Ryan, the Manager of the State Savings Bank of Victoria (these appointments change every three years), filled up all the forms and did everything necessary in Australia. He arrived here, and his passport was stamped for twelve months. Yet his was a three-year appointment.
My Lords, to conclude I should like to make some reference to one or two points in The Times leader on the subject last November. It says:
"There was a degree of humbug in the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962. The purpose of the measure was to restrict the influx of coloured people at a time when the number of incomers seemed to be threatening race relations in Britain. Subsequent events have entirely justified the policy."

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It then goes on later to say—
"But in 1962 neither politicians nor public were ready to acknowledge openly that they were dealing with a colour problem."
My comment on that is that surely now we realise what the problem is.
The article goes on:
"So restrictions were applied to all Commonwealth countries—coloured and white alike.
"As an expression of principle this may have been admirable, but as a practical policy it was nonsense from the beginning. It did not fool the coloured members of the Commonwealth, who knew well enough why the Act was passed. And it angered people from the old white dominions. So much so that the six Australian Agents-General in London have protested to their State Governments about the treatment received by Australian visitors to Britain.
But sooner or later they"—
meaning the Government of Britain,
"will have to face the central question: does it make any sense to stop Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians coming freely to Britain because there is a colour problem?"
I think this article hits the nail on the head. It says further:
"But they"—
the Government—
"would he wiser to reflect that the cause of race relations would be best served at this stage by frank speaking.
Honesty demands that the Race Relations Act should be extended because at the moment it does not cover the most important areas of discrimination. It is little more than a token of good intention. Honesty also demands that members of the White Commonwealth should be restricted in their entry to Britain only if their presence here would he likely to cause difficulties."
My Lords, honesty also demands that we alter this legislation which is insulting to our heretofore best friends. I implore the noble Lord not to be scared of Tariq Ali or someone like that accusing him of being a "racialist". The Government has alienated New Zealand and Australia about the Common Market; it has let them down by scuttling from the Far East; but it has so insulted them in this matter that it has brought relations to the lowest pitch since bodyline bowling, and that is saying something.
11.3 p.m.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, we must thank the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, for having raised this question to-night, and person-
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ally I should like to say at the outset that I give way to no-one in my regard for Australia and New Zealand. Both countries have fought with us in every war in which we have been involved in this century, and there is a special relationship between Britain and "Down-under". That is one of the most priceless assets of this country, and it would be folly indeed to throw it away. As your Lordships know, we on this side of the House criticise the Government for the precipitate withdrawal East of Suez and the abrupt change of policy which preceded that decision, which is now unfortunately highlighted in the latest Defence White Paper. We also believe that Britain should share in the development of Australia's mineral potential, and we much regret that the Government's mishandling of the economy has led to the voluntary curb on investments in Australia.
It cannot be denied that there is in some Australian and New Zealand circles doubt, to put it mildly, as to the future of their bilateral relationships with Britain. However, I am not so certain that the origin of these doubts lies so much in the restrictions on Australians and New Zealanders taking up residence in this country. I recognise that there is considerable resentment, and this I have on the very best authority. However there is no doubt that large numbers of people from Australia and New Zealand still come to Britain as students and on working holidays, and a number of vouchers are available for those who wish to come permanently in order to work in this country. As the noble Lord has said, the existing restrictions were imposed under the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, which was, of course, a Conservative measure—incidentally opposed by the Labour Party at the time.
LORD STONHAM: And supported by the noble Lord, Lord Clifford.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: That is perfectly true. I cannot possibly see how we can put Australians and New Zealanders into a special category exempt from the provisions of this Act, while leaving Canadians, Kenyans and Mauritians subject to it. I do not believe that any responsible Australians and New Zealanders, nor even the noble Lord in his heart of hearts, would expect us to do anything of the sort.

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This is not to say that the existing regulations should not be administered in a humanitarian and sensible way, as I believe they generally are. Each case should be considered on its merits. I believe that my Australian and New Zealand friends accept the position in general. In fact, I believe that there is some good evidence to show that there is less feeling in Australia about the several over-publicised cases of ill-treatment by the British authorities; and I understand that at official level in Australia there has been fairly general agreement that in most cases the trouble would not have arisen if the individuals concerned has taken the trouble to find out the rules. That comes from Australian officials. This is not the only point. What these people resent is being treated as aliens and not being allowed to work. I think that some noble Lords in this House resent this, too. What is happening does not help to preserve our special kith-and-kin relationship with these countries.
I read with great interest the debate on the Adjournment in another place on June 11, and studied carefully the distressing cases which Mr. Wall listed there. I also read the reply by the Under-Secretary for the Home Department, Mr. David Ennals, and I was glad to see that he said that his right honourable friend was always anxious to mitigate difficulties where they arose and to administer the legislation in as humane a manner as he could. But, of course, it is vital that we should keep a close eye on this matter and make certain that our friends from Australasia are treated with courtesy. Great harm can be done by mishandling even one case, and in my view the Government should maintain the utmost vigilance to ensure that Australians and New Zealanders have no cause for complaint.
I am glad to learn that the next Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference is to meet in January, and I hope that on that occasion the whole question of Commonwealth citizenship will be raised. The whole structure of the Commonwealth has now changed and in many respects present legislation can be said to be out of date. I hope very much that the Prime Minister will be successful in getting this subject put on
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the agenda of the Conference, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will convey this hope to his right honourable friends.
Your Lordships will also have learned that my right honourable friend, the Leader of the Opposition in another place, will soon be visiting Australia, and no doubt this is a subject which he, too, will wish to discuss while he is there. At all events, his visit is proof of the Conservative Party's interest in Australasia and the problems which are of mutual concern to us. Noble Lords will no doubt have read what my right honourable friend said only yesterday on the radio in The World This Weekend. He made his views very plain in that broadcast which is reported in to-day's Times. Since, curiously enough, I do not think it has been quoted during the whole of this afternoon and evening, I think I should quote it now:
"I said that I would not support any candidate in the Conservative Party at the last election who issued any policy or declaration which inclined towards racial discrimination. That is still my position. In this country everyone—whatever their race, creed or origin —must be treated in exactly the same way before the law."
That applies to both debates which we have had this evening.
For these reasons, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, for having given me this opportunity of saying what I have said. I cannot personally see that exemption for Australians and New Zealanders is in the present climate of racial relations a practical possibility. But, as I say, I hope that individual cases will be treated as humanely as possible and that the Government will look at this problem again very seriously. It cannot be set aside on purely legalistic grounds, and in some ways it is almost as serious as that which we have been discussing throughout this afternoon and this evening. I therefore much look forward to the noble Lord's reply.
11.11 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, has raised this matter not for the first time. Of course he feels very strongly about it, and I can understand that. I also have a great many friends among Australians and New Zealanders, and

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I admire those two countries enormously. The noble Lord, Lord Clifford, justly paid tribute to the great support that Australia and New Zealand gave us through both World Wars. I myself remember the wonderful work done by the Australian and New Zealand Divisions in the Middle East. I also remember the 5th Indian Division, and all the Africans who enlisted to fight in the Middle East Armies. I can understand the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Clifford, for this special relationship and, like the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, I yield to no one in the affection that I have for the countries of Australia and New Zealand. But I think it is absolutely essential that all countries in the Commonwealth should be treated impartially, and the present Government are supporting what the Conservative Government did in this respect.
But I wonder whether the position is really quite so bad as the noble Lord, Lord Clifford, made out and whether—I think the noble Earl alluded to this—there is really quite so much concern in Australia and New Zealand as he would have use believe. Australians and New Zealanders are able to come to this country in increasing numbers as visitors. Also, many of them come on working holidays. They can stay sometimes for three months, sometimes for six months, sometimes for a year. From what figures I have seen, these numbers seem to increase every year. I am very glad that they do and they are very welcome.
On the other hand, the numbers who seek to come and stay here permanently are very small compared with the numbers from the rest of the Commonwealth, and the numbers who are actually turned back seem to be about 100 a year. So one assumes that most of the people from these two countries wish to come here for short stays or on working holidays, and that there are not these tremendous numbers being held back by an unsympathetic Government and by rude, unsympathetic, difficult and perverse Customs officials, as was suggested by the noble Lord. I hope I am right in this, and, if I am, I shall be very glad if my noble friend the Minister will give us some supporting figures to show that, while the noble Lord, Lord Clifford,
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has every right to feel strongly about this matter he is not really acting with very much justification.
11.15 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, first I must apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that due to the lateness of the hour—in fact, my last train goes in a few moments—I may not be able to stay for his winding-up speech; but I feel particularly strongly about certain aspects of this subject because my ancestry hails partly from New Zealand. Like my noble friend Lord Bessborough, however, I think that perhaps certain terms of the Question have been overstated. I have made inquiries from some of my friends from Australia and New Zealand who are over here, and they have given varying answers as to the stringency of the regulations concerning how long and under what conditions they can stay. One young lady who works as a secretary to one of the well-known London clubs has been fortunate in the fact that she and her husband can stay more or less permanently, but some of her friends suffer from a number of anomalies. As I understand I it, the immigration authorities have rather wide powers over the passports of those in this country when they go on holiday to, say, the Continent and return; and I think there are a number of people who are anxious to know what the regulations here are and what kind of powers the immigration authorities here have.
The other point of importance concerns those in the nursing profession. There are in this country a number of nurses from New Zealand—I know some of them personally. I have raised this question before, but I wonder whether the noble Lord, as I am doing him the discourtesy of leaving before he finishes speaking, could perhaps write to me setting out the situation here, particularly of those who want to stay on after finishing their training. Because no doubt many of them develop a love and respect for this country, and the) do not always want to be subjected to having their passports renewed, and so on. But, having said that, I think that if we are going to have a Commonwealth then broadly we must do all in our power to make sure that so far as those who come to this country are concerned, provided it is on a definite basis

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and for a definite purpose, they receive as equal treatment as possible.
11.18 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I think it is somewhat remarkable that, having debated for seven-and-a-half hours and unanimously agreed that we accept the principle that discrimination should be unlawful, I am immediately afterwards met by a request by the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, that we should start discrimination all over again.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: Discrimination in reverse.
LORD STONHAM: Discrimination in reverse. I am very glad, therefore, that the other noble Lords who have spoken made it perfectly clear that, as the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, said, everyone must be the same before the law. As the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, may not be able to stay until the end because he has to catch a train—and I think this may be the case with others—I would assure him at once that one simple rule that could be followed by our Australian and New Zealand cousins with advantage when they come here is to be as frank and honest as they can possibly be, and then they will not run into any troubles. I shall proceed to demonstrate that the only cases of which I am aware—certainly the only cases cited by the noble Lord, Lord Clifford—are where people have sought by subterfuge to hoodwink and to dodge round the regulations, and where they have been a bit unlucky—and I think they should be unlucky.
I am grateful to the noble Lord for creating this opportunity for debating this important subject and for giving me the chance of stating in more detail what the facts are. So many really unfair and inaccurate statements are made that it is as well to get the facts right. The noble Lord puts his Question in terms of rights which have been traditionally enjoyed. I must begin by confirming that up to 1962 the right of entry into and residence in the United Kingdom was enjoyed by all British subjects from whatever part of the Empire or Commonwealth they came. Our tradition in this matter has always been and still is one of nondiscrimination. There has never been a time when the inhabitants of Australia and New Zealand enjoyed any preferen-
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tial treatment over other citizens of the Commonwealth as regards entry to this country. That tradition the Government steadfastly maintain. So that in demanding preferential treatment for citizens of Australia and New Zealand, it is the noble Lord who is breaking with tradition and the Government who are defending it.
When the first Commonwealth Immigrants Bill was introduced the Government of the day (which as the noble Earl reminded us, was of his Party) drafted it in such a way as to apply immigration control to all Commonwealth citizens except those who had certain specified connections with this country. Again that principle has been preserved, although the Act was amended earlier this year so as to extend the scope of immigration control. The present Government are determined to adhere to the principle of applying the control impartially to citizens of all Commonwealth countries.
What does this mean in practice to Australians and New Zealanders? Many of them, I know, dislike having to apply for admission to what they regard as the "Mother Country" instead of being able to enter as of right. I fully understand and sympathise with this feeling; I can assure the House that we make every allowance for it in the administration of the control, and for the ordinary visitor we try to make the necessary formalities as easy as we can. Indeed, we do so. It is grossly untrue to suggest otherwise, and it is grossly unfair to the immigration officers who have to administer the Act. As my noble friend Lord Strabolgi pointed out, this is borne out by the fact that the existence of immigration control has not prevented our cousins from Australia and New Zealand from travelling to this country in increasing numbers.
My noble friend asked me to give the figures. During last year we admitted 81,915 Australians and 24,787 New Zealanders, apart from 121,914 Canadians. For those old Commonwealth countries the total was 228,616, which figure includes, for the three countries, 34,672 returning residents. Let us take New Zealand. Out of the total who came here last year, some 18,000 were New Zealanders. Only 12 persons were refused admission. Twelve out of 18,000! The noble Lord, Lord Clifford,

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said that it depends on the immigration officers' livers. I think that those figures prove that they have very healthy livers and very good tempers, because they mean that virtually no one was excluded. The great majority of these people come as visitors; comparatively few are immigrants in the true sense of the word, and since the main purpose of the immigration control is to regulate the number of people coming to settle, its existence puts no real obstacle at all in the way of the genuine visitor to this country.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, seems to think that because he is an Australian he is somehow different from me. I have never been able to feel any different from any other Britisher, whether he is living in Australia, New Zealand or the Isle of Man, and I have constantly to tell them so. It is an inability of mine to feel that there is any difference. Sometimes they beat us at cricket and sometimes we beat them; but apart from that I cannot find any differences, and I do not want to make them. The noble Lord said that hard feelings are caused; that it is downright insulting, humiliating and ungrateful; that no countries have more constantly supported this country than Australia and New Zealand. That is very true, my Lords, but I could also say to the noble Lord that those two countries have been consistently supported by the Mother Country, and we do not say a word about their immigration laws; we do not say that they are downright insulting and humiliating, and all that sort of thing, and that they are ungrateful. We leave it to them to please themselves about these things.
Australians and New Zealnders continue to have virtually free access to this country as visitors, students and businessmen. It is true that they have a time limit imposed on their stay and must apply to the Home Office for an extension of their stay if they need it. But on entry the time limit is usually not less than six months, and may be anything up to a year, depending on the individual's intentions and resources. Normally visitors have no difficulty in obtaining an extension of stay for as long as they require. All we are concerned about is ensuring that visitors leave this country after a reasonable period and do not
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seek to convert a temporary stay into permanent residence.
There has long been a tradition that young people from Commonwealth countries, particularly Australia and New Zealand, come to this country to broaden their experience, often travelling around Europe as well; and they seek to eke out their funds by taking temporary employment. Let me assure the noble Lord. Lord Clifford of Chudleigh—and Australian papers, please copy—that these young people are still free to come on their working holidays and to stay for two or three years, which is as long as they normally require.
Cases do arise from time to time where the application of the immigration control runs counter to the wishes and plans of an individual. We try to administer the controls sympathetically and with a reasonable degree of flexibility, but we cannot overlook deliberate attempts to disregard or evade the control. The law has to be enforced. The general principles governing the control must be maintained. In particular, we cannot allow people who have been admitted as visitors or for other temporary purposes to stay on indefinitely in employment. This is the kind of "wangle" that I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Auckland. If we allowed that, we should be depriving other would-be immigrants who have followed the proper procedure and are patiently waiting their turn for an employment voucher.
My Lords, our High Commissions in Australia and New Zealand do all they can to make the requirements of the immigration control known in advance to people in those countries who intend to come to Britain and at the same time to remove unnecessary fears. The British Travel Association, in consultation with the Home Office and our High Commission in Canberra, have recently prepared a leaflet for issue in Australia which should do much to remove misunderstanding, and we have been in touch with the Australian High Commission over some recent cases of difficulty. I gladly acknowledge the helpful and constructive approach of the High Commissioner and his officials to the problems in this field.

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I mentioned a very tiny number of cases but the noble Lord specified some of them. He mentioned the case of Mr. Nigel Wilson and said how disgraceful it was that we should send home a young man who was helping our export effort. It seem not only wrong but daft. Mr. Wilson was admitted to this country in December, 1965, and again admitted on returning from a holiday in Europe in August, 1966. In March, 1967, he was granted an extension of stay until September last year, when he said his return passage to New Zealand was booked. In May, 1967, he asked to be allowed to remain for permanent employment with R.M.A. Limited, a firm of radio management advisers. In August the chairman asked for his stay to be extended, and on the strength of his assurance that he would then go back when his training was finished, his stay was extended. On March 20 of this year he was given a further extension to September 20, 1968, by which time he will have been here for three years and had his training. Now they say that this is a case of a man with special qualifications and he must stay here. I think that we have done him proud. He has been here for three years and had his training here.
The noble Lord quoted the case of Mr. Emerson. He came over as a visitor and his friends' parents were going to support him. He was admitted for three months and we extended that period three times. Eventually he left the country after being here about one year. He had no difficulty at all in obtaining extensions of stay. All he grumbled about was that he had to apply for them. We are very sorry, but we have the 1962 Act, which we still have to administer.
The noble Lord spoke about the case of poor John Brownlie, but the poor lad contributed to his own problems. He was admitted for six months in July, 1966, and more than 12 months later, in October, 1967, he was reported as
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missing. Finally, the police found him in hospital. He admitted that he had knowingly and deliberately overstayed and had not approached the Home Office for fear that he might be required to leave. I am advised that he was told that he should get in touch with the High Commissioner or his relatives. Eventually it had to come out because he had to go before a magistrate.
The noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, asked for an assurance that we treat our Australian cousins humanely. Somehow I resent the word "humanely". We treat them as relatives, as cousins. We treat them just as we should hope they would treat us when we go there—possibly better. But we have to administer the 1962 and 1968 Acts. We are not prepared to depart from the policy of applying the Commonwealth Immigrants Act to all citizens of all Commonwealth countries impartially. But this does not in practice inhibit the access of Australians and New Zealanders to this country as visitors or students, which is the principal way in which they exercise the right of free access which they enjoyed in common with other Commonwealth citizens up to 1962. It does not inhibit them from coming here on working holidays in the way I have described. Except in the few cases where they seek to evade the control or break the law, they are in practice as free to come as ever and certainly as welcome. In spite of what the noble Lord has said, we are maintaining the traditions which are the strongest part of the link between the Mother Country and the other countries of the Commonwealth—and long may that continue!

CHESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL
Reported, with Amendments.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes before midnight.