Sitting of 5 December 1973

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

PRIVATE BUSINESS
CLYDE PORT AUTHORITY (HUNTERSTON ORE TERMINAL) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL (By Order).
Order for Second Reading read.
To be read a Second time upon Tuesday next at Seven o'clock.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  ENVIRONMENT

    Heavy Lorries
    Mr. Fowlerasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what fresh representations he has received about heavy lorries using minor roads; and whether he will make a statement.
    The Minister for Transport Industries (Mr. John Peyton): I receive frequent representations, and make even more frequent statements on this subject.
    Mr. Fowler: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Will he give a firm assurance that in the roads programme the first priority will be given to new roads which would take heavy traffic off the roads which are totally unsuitable for such traffic? Does he agree that there is no point in providing new roads unless there are adequate powers to ensure that juggernauts use them?
    Mr. Peyton: The Government have all the powers they require in this connection, but we are still a bit short of roads.
    Mr. Molloy: Will the Minister consider issuing a circular to local authorities' planning departments drawing attention to these powers, particularly in cases in
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    which planning departments are dealing with planning applications for warehouses in residential areas?
    Mr. Peyton: My Department is in the habit of giving advice very regularly. We recently issued Circular 57/73 entitled "Lorries and the Environment" and Circular 128/73 entitled "Heavy Lorries". There has also been a report by Mr. Pettit. These documents were all made available to local authorities, which are not short of advice.
    Mr. Sydney Chapman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the problem of heavy lorries using minor roads will be alleviated by the implementation of the Heavy Commercial Vehicles (Controls and Regulations) Act 1973 which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes)?
    Mr. Peyton: I quite agree. There is no doubt that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) has made a useful contribution to this problem.
    Mr. Austick: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the timetable in the legislation which has just been mentioned is far too slow? Will he press the local authorities and the new county authorities to initiate surveys immediately, and will he take emergency steps to allow existing local authorities to reroute heavy traffic away from rural towns and villages?
    Mr. Peyton: No, Sir. The timetable proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East in his Act showed great realism, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will follow his example.

    Rating
    Mr. Loughlinasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will introduce legislation to recast the rating system.
    The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): I would refer the hon. Member to the provisions of Part II of the Local Government Bill.
    Mr. Loughlin: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that his answer is about as useful as a door-knocker on a gravestone? His answer does not in any way relate to the Question. Is he aware that

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    next year every householder will once more be faced with substantial increases in rates and that there will still be 9 million adults who pay no rates at all? Is it not time that we got away from the existing ridiculous notional rent system and began to deal with rates on an equitable basis?
    Mr. Page: The hon. Gentleman's Question was whether the Government would recast the rating system. He thinks that Part II of the Local Government Bill is useless. Does he remember that it deals with statutory deductions, improvements, disabled persons, public utilities and rate rebates all recasting the rating system? The Government have decided that rates should be the main source of income for local authorities. That does not rule out any supplementary finance which may be useful in future.
    Mr. Denis Howell: Does not the Minister agree that my hon. Friend is quite right in that Part II of the Bill perpetuates a rating system which gives offence to many people? Is he aware that the essence of the matter is that new authorities are being set up in local government, with duplication of administration and tremendous inflation? Can he tell us whether, in the rate support grant negotiations, he will ensure that there is sufficient money available for local authorities to set up new administrations and improve their services without additional mammoth increases on the rates?
    Mr. Page: Account is taken of that in the rate support grant negotiations with the local authority associations. My right hon. and learned Friend will be announcing the amounts agreed with the local authorities as quickly as possible. The hon. Gentleman criticises the rating system but offers no alternative solution.
    Mr. Loughlin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I shall seek leave to raise this matter on the Adjournment at the earliest opportunity.

    Manchester Underground Railway Link
    Mr. Alfred Morrisasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he is yet able to make a further statement on the Manchester Piccadilly-Victoria underground railway scheme.
    Mr. Hattonasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will now make a statement regarding Government grant towards the proposed Manchester Piccadilly-Victoria underground.
    Mr. Sheldonasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will now make a further statement on his decision on the Manchester Piccadilly-Victoria scheme.
    Mr. Peyton: I will, with permission answer Question No. 4 and Questions Nos. 11 and 12 together.
    Mr. Charles R. Morris: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Has the Minister indicated that he wishes to associate Question No. 61 with this group of Questions?
    Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter of order. It is a matter for the Minister.
    Mr. Peyton: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I always understood that to go too far down into the recesses of the Order Paper exposed the Minister concerned to the displeasure of the Chair, which I would never wish to incur.
    I will, with permission, answer Question No. 4 and Questions Nos. 11 and 12 together.
    No, but I have promised a decision on the merits of the project by the end of the year.
    Mr. Alfred Morris: Is the Minister aware that it would be difficult to overstate the urgency of the need for an early decision on this project? Does he agree that the present petrol situation, which many of us would call a shambles, re-emphasises the vital importance of this project? Is he aware that every wasted day compounds the problems of millions of people in the Manchester area, regardless of party?
    Mr. Peyton: I am aware of the need for a decision, but I believe it is desirable that the decision should be a sensible one.
    Mr. Hatton: Is the Minister aware that, as the days progress and while the great city of Manchester is waiting for this decision, there is widespread support from all representative bodies in commerce and industry and united support from all political parties in the area

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    and from civic and community groups? Is he further aware that this support is evident in letters and editorials in the Press? Will he take all these matters into consideration?
    Mr. Peyton: I am in the happy position of having been made the recipient of many views on this subject. I spent some time in Manchester and had the opportunity to realise just how much importance was attached to the project by many people. On the other hand, it is a costly undertaking and it is important for the country and the citizens of Manchester, who under the new system may be faced with a major part of the bill, that we should take the right decision.
    Mr. Redmond: When my right hon. Friend makes up his mind on this vitally important project, will he ensure that unemployment is not created in the Lancashire area as a result of increased demand for steel and other raw materials which are already in short supply and which could be used by other industries? Is he further aware that that does not override the importance of the project in the eyes of the people of Lancashire?
    Mr. Peyton: I have noted all that my hon. Friend has said.
    Mr. Sheldon: While I fully endorse all that has been said by my hon. Friends about the strong feeling in the Manchester area, may I ask the Minister in reaching a decision to bear in mind that, if it is decided to carry on with Maplin at a cost of £1,000 million in the South-East and with the Channel Tunnel at a cost of £1,000 million, again in the South-East, there will be a great deal of trouble if the spending of £75 million on crucial transport developments in the North-West is not given the go-ahead?
    Mr. Peyton: It is nice to find the hon. Gentleman in favour of a tunnel somewhere. I shall bear in mind what he says.
    Mr. Charles R. Morris: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the SELNEC area generally there is a crisis of confidence about the Government's intentions towards the Piccadilly—Victoria line proposals of the SELNECPTA? Is he further aware that this crisis of confidence is as to whether the
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    Government are serious in encouraging people to leave their private cars at home and use public transport? When will he resolve this crisis of confidence and give the authority and grant needed for the infrastructure proposal?
    Mr. Peyton: My experience of crises of confidence is that they are usually created by those who talk most about them.
    Mr. Mulley: While I welcome the Minister's intention to make a further statement before the end of the year, may I ask him to bear in mind that this proposal is exactly in line with Government thinking about the transfer of urban road building resources to the railways, as announced last week, because the alternatives would be a substantial road-building programme which the local authorities in the area, wisely in my view, have turned down? Is it not the case that at every stage in the development of these plans the officials and councillors involved have worked hand in hand with the Department? Would it not be an enormous let-down if the Minister were to say "No" at this stage?
    Mr. Peyton: Of course there has been constant consultation, as is only right and sensible. The right hon. Gentleman has much experience in these matters. The scheme is now estimated to cost not far short of £100 million. It is important to ensure that the money is well spent and that the citizens of Manchester and the large, important areas around it get a sizeable benefit from such expenditure.

    Maplin
    Mr. Douglasasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement regarding when he expects to receive a report from the National Ports Council on its appraisal of the Maplin seaport project.
    Mr. Peyton: I have nothing to add to the answer I gave the hon. Member on 14th November.—[Vol. 864, c. 486–7.]
    Mr. Douglas: Would the Minister care to explain the position to the House? Is his Under-Secretary, when he makes speeches on this issue, in favour of any seaport or of a specific seaport? Do the Government have any idea what kind

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    of seaport they want at Maplin, or are they simply playing ducks and drakes with this issue?
    Mr. Peyton: The hon. Gentleman is wrong about this. The point is that I have not yet received firm proposals from the Port of London Authority. As soon as I do, I shall be obliged to consult the National Ports Council upon them and I will do so without delay.
    Mr. Holland: Would my right hon. Friend accept that certain little local difficulties, that appear to arise in part currently from our shortage of deep-water berths, underline the importance of this project? In view of this, will he use all means at his disposal to expedite the processes necessary to ensure the project's completion?
    Mr. Peyton: I have no doubt whatever that the Chairman of the Port of London Authority will read with great interest what my hon. Friend has said.
    Mr. Heffer: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many of us who come from great seaports other than those in the South-East of England are very much opposed to the development of this new port because there is under-utilisation in areas such as Merseyside and elsewhere? Will he bear in mind that what we should be doing is utilising our ports to the maximum advantage in geographical areas such as the Northwest instead of building new white elephants in the South-East?
    Mr. Peyton: I entirely agree with what the hon. Gentleman has said about making full use of our ports in the North-West. No one knows better than he the obstacles there are to making good use of the new Seaforth Dock in Liverpool.
    Mr. Adleyasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list those groups, companies and individuals whom he intends to invite to give evidence to the committee he is setting up to review the Maplin project; and how many have already been invited.
    The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Geoffrey Rippon): It is open to anybody who wishes to express views to
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    let us have his comments at any time, and my Department will be glad to receive them. The Act itself specified that consultation shall take place with certain specific bodies including the Civil Aviation Authority, the British Airports Authority, the Port of London Authority and other appropriate bodies, and this will take place as the study proceeds.
    Mr. Adley: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for that answer, but is he not aware that the Government have been given the opportunity by the House to delay, vary or desist from Maplin in accordance with the wording of the clause that was inserted in the Bill on Report in this House? Those of us who have doubts about the project are relying upon my right hon. and learned Friend and his Department for a genuine, thorough and honest reappraisal of the project before it comes back to the House. Rather than simply say that people may make representations, will he make a positive effort by asking bodies like British Airways and Rolls-Royce, which have valuable new information, to submit accurate and up-to-date documents to him so that, when he returns to the House in a few months' time seeking approval, those of us who have these doubts may be reassured that a thorough job has been done?
    Mr. Rippon: There appears to be no dispute between us about the purpose of the report and the way in which it should be presented. I cannot imagine bodies such as those referred to by my hon. Friend being in any doubt about the inquiries that are going on, and I am sure they will offer their observations in due course.
    Mr. Spearing: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman, as I suspect, regard the new town as part of the Maplin project? If he does, will he approach the Greater London Council in addition to the bodies he has already mentioned for consultation about that matter?
    Mr. Rippon: Yes, I think that is so. It would be unthinkable to go ahead with the project for the new town, which is part of the South-Eastern Area Strategic Study, and to carry out the proposals in that study without consulting all the local authorities concerned.

    Road Surfaces
    Mr. Kinseyasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he is able to report any progress in the development of quieter road surfaces, arising from his Department's research or from other interested sources.
    The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Keith Speed): The noise levels of all types of surfaces are currently being reviewed. Reduction of tyre noise has to be balanced against conflicting requirements such as skid resistance at high speeds and durability.
    Mr. Kinsey: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. I hope he will ensure that his Department makes all speed on this project, because the amount of wheel noise which my constituents in Perry Barr have to suffer is tremendous. I take into consideration—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must ask a question.
    Mr. Kinsey: Will my hon. Friend see that some advance is made by his Department, keeping in mind the speed factor, to cut down noise?
    Mr. Speed: I can tell my hon. Friend that we hope to have the results of the review within two or three months, and next spring we will be carrying out extensive field trials of a new surface which is very encouraging.
    Mr. Trew: Can my hon. Friend say whether any conclusion has yet been reached about the relevant noise generating qualities of concrete roads as opposed to tar roads?
    Mr. Speed: This is being looked at in the context of the review and of the problem which I know is worrying my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey). I hope that we will be able to make real progress on that in the near future.

    Petrol Additives
    Mr. Whiteheadasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he is satisfied with the present regulations concerning lead additives in petrol.
    Mr. Peyton: Powers to make regulations are included in the Protection of the Environment Bill.
    Mr. Whitehead: Is it a fact, as some newspapers have reported, that the regulations are being relaxed because of the petrol shortage? Would not this be regrettable in view of the alarming statistics which are now coming forward about lead levels in the blood of people living near urban motorways, particularly at Gravelly Hill in Birmingham where the levels have doubled? Is it also a fact that automobile engines do not need lead in petrol if the petrol is properly refined? Ought we not now to be urging the manufacturers to make petrol safer, and not simply assume that in present circumstances any petrol is good petrol?
    Mr. Peyton: I will certainly bear in mind the very important issues which the hon. Gentleman has raised.
    Mr. Rost: Does my right hon. Friend appreciate that the public are less concerned about whether petrol has lead in it and would much prefer the Government to take speedy action to sort out the chaos in the distribution system so that it becomes fairer?
    Mr. Peyton: I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will take note of what my hon. Friend has said.

    Metropolitan Green Belt
    Mr. Goodhewasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what new action he is proposing to take to protect the metropolitan green belt.
    Mr. Rippon: No new action is required: it is already our policy to preserve an effective green belt around London.
    Mr. Goodhew: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that there is grave concern in Hertfordshire at the erosion of the green belt by his action in allowing appeals against the advice of planning authorities and of his own inspectors? If there has to be some sacrifice of green belt for building houses, is it not better to have a planned policy than the present piecemeal approach?
    Mr. Rippon: Green belt status has never imposed an absolute ban on development. I quite agree that every case must be very carefully considered.

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    As my hon. Friend knows, I have suggested that we should look at the metropolitan green belt and consider whether parts of it—perhaps up to 2,000 acres—might be suitable for housing. But this is out of an approved total of 610,000 acres and a proposed 725,000 acres, so I do not think there is any question of an attack upon the principles of the green belt.
    Mr. Spearing: While agreeing with the Minister that there may be marginal cases, particularly where the green belt is not green, may I ask whether he agrees that it is high time he took legislative powers, which were promised by his predecessor, to do something about the pressure on space in London caused by office blocks? Is he aware that a year ago there was 9 million square feet of empty office accommodation or space for which building permission had been given? Is it not time that he did something about this pressure on resources?
    Mr. Rippon: I promise not to put it in the green belt.

    Land Prices
    Mr. Horamasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what has been the percentage increase in the average price of an acre of building land since June 1970.
    The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. Paul Channon): For transactions reported to the Inland Revenue during the first half of this year, 185 per cent. Sir.
    Mr. Horam: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that even the appalling figure of 185 per cent. is an underestimate because of the time lag in the recording of figures and that the true increase is now well over 200 per cent. since the last General Election? Does not this appalling set of figures lie at the root of many of our urban housing problems? Is it not fair to say that we will get nowhere in solving them until we have a radical land policy, which the Minister has totally failed to provide?
    Mr. Channon: I cannot accept what the hon. Member has said, and for this reason. It is perfectly true, as I told the House on an earlier occasion, that the figures which I give to the House on this matter are considerably out of date.
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    There is, however, considerable evidence at the present time that land prices are falling.
    Mr. Allason: Can my hon. Friend tell us whether the latest developments in the release of land have had any effect on the price of land?
    Mr. Channon: As I told the House a moment ago, present evidence is that within the past four months or so the measures which the Government have taken have had the effect of reducing the price of land. I have some very substantial examples in front of me.
    Mr. Freeson: On the last occasion when this matter was raised in the House, the Minister said that there was no foundation for the suggestion that there had been an increase of about 200 per cent. in land prices since 1970. Is he continuing with this complacent attitude, because his latest answer is that there has been a quite considerable drop in land prices? Can he give us evidence of a fall in land prices rather than a fall in the rate of increase?
    Mr. Channon: I do not have a copy of HANSARD in front of me, but from memory I think that on the last occasion the hon. Member alleged that land prices had risen by 250 per cent., which is very different from 185 per cent. I have given the latest official figures to the House, but they relate to transactions that are many months out of date. I have in front of me details of a case in Staffordshire showing that prices have gone down by very nearly £12,000 an acre since July, compared with the first half of this year.

    British Railways
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he intends to produce his statement on the future of British Railways.
    Mr. Peyton: I did so on 28th November.
    Mr. Hamilton: Does the Minister recollect that in that statement he made no specific reference to the situation in Scotland? Can he now take the opportunity of spelling out exactly the investment programme improvements for Scotland? In particular, will he give assurances that there will be increased electrification in the central belt and on the main line to Inverness and Aberdeen, in

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    view of the very great increase in freight traffic which is likely to result from the acceleration of the North Sea oil programme?
    Mr. Peyton: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has any ground for suggesting that Scotland is being badly treated. Indeed, he did not do so. The investment figures which I announced the other day were global figures and it will be for British Rail to split them up. Substantial work is going on in Scotland, and I have a note that the Hamilton loopline is now being electrified. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will take full credit for that.
    Mr. J. H. Osborn: Will my right hon. Friend indicate when he will publish a White Paper on transport policy, including the future of British Rail? Will he indicate in that White Paper the work of the British Rail Research Station at Derby and of the Transport and Road Research Station at Bracknell on new transportation systems to take the traffic off the roads and put it on the tracks of existing railways?
    Mr. Peyton: I hope that the White Paper will be ready before the end of the year. I should like to have a look at the other matters which my hon. Friend has raised.
    Mr. Mulley: Can the Minister now tell us when he expects that British Rail will publish a breakdown of the details contained in his global statement of last week? Secondly, can he indicate when the Bill will be published to give statutory effect to the proposed financial changes in the structure of British Rail?
    Mr. Peyton: The first part of the right hon. Gentleman's question is a matter for British Rail. As regards the second part, I hope that the Bill will be published before the House rises for Christmas.

    Council Housing (Cost)
    Mr. Frank Allaunasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what is the total cost of a council house costing £8,000, including land, after interest has been paid on the loan for the usual borrowing period of 60 years at the current Public Works Loan Board rate for long-term loans of 11⅝ per cent.; what is its economic rent, excluding repairs and rates; and if he will estimate the effect
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    of the 13 per cent. bank rate on such a cost and rent.
    The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Reginald Eyre): The total payments would be about £56,000; but local authorities pool their loans, which make it unrealistic to estimate the effect of current interest rates. At a typical pool rate of 9 per cent. the total payments would be about £43,500.
    Fair rents are charged, not economic rents, but the cost to the council of £8,000 at 9 per cent. is about £14 a week.
    Mr. Allaun: While pooling may reduce the rent of the house in the example quoted, will it not increase the rents of all the other houses? Secondly, is the hon. Gentleman aware that the economic rent of that house will be £17·95 a week plus rates and repairs, or approximately £20 a week? Will the Government either reduce the interest burden, which will go up with the higher bank rate, or finance housing out of revenue? If they can build a battleship or a motorway without paying a single penny of interest, why cannot they do the same with council houses?
    Mr. Eyre: The hon. Gentleman overlooks the fact that authorities will have the benefit of pooled loans raised in earlier periods when rates were lower. The hon. Gentleman misunderstands the benefit of the operation of the Housing Finance Act, which means that the tenant will pay only a fair rent.
    Mr. Hardy: Will the Minister tell us whether any council houses are being built at a cost in excess of £8,000? Are not some now being built costing £10,000, and is not this one of the reasons for the decline in the public sector, which I am sure he deplores?
    Mr. Eyre: I shall have to write to the hon. Member about any specific figures of the cost of new housing. However, I emphasise that new subsidies under the Housing Finance Act will meet at least 75 per cent., and this year 85 per cent., of the loan charges on admissible expenditure on new housing schemes for all authorities with a deficit in their housing revenue account.
    Mr. Freeson: Is not the Minister somewhat complacent? Does not the kind of

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    information elucidated by the Question show the need for a radical reappraisal of the way in which money is being used and housing financed? Will he take on board the point which arises from his last reply that large areas of expenditure by local authorities are not covered by the reckonable expenditure element due for subsidy? I am getting a stream of complaints from local authorities about this, and I am sure he must be, too.
    Mr. Eyre: May I reply to the principle raised by the hon. Member? The building of municipal housing out of revenue, which is the implication of the question, would be prohibitively expensive for ratepayers and taxpayers alike, and successive Governments have thought it right for the cost of revenue-earning assets to be spread broadly over their expected life.

    Motor Vehicles (Safety Equipment)
    Mr. John Hannamasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will require car manufacturers to provide in all new vehicles, as standard equipment, first-aid kits and fire extinguishers.
    Mr. Peyton: Not at present, but I am reviewing the need for first-aid kits.
    Mr. Hannam: I thank my right hon. Friend for that encouraging reply. Will he accept that, in view of the increasing number of serious crashes on motorways and other fast roads, the provision of such safety equipment could possibly save a great number of lives?
    Mr. Peyton: Yes, I entirely agree that there is a lot in what my hon. Friend says and I hope that people will be persuaded to provide such equipment. However, to make the matter compulsory is to raise once again the very difficult question of enforcement. Moreover, there is always the danger, when first-aid kits have happily not had to be used before, that when they are opened for the first time they are found to be totally unservicable.

    Rent Scrutiny Boards
    Mr. Hugh Jenkinsasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will arrange for rent scrutiny boards to meet in public.
    Mr. Eyre: No, Sir. It would be inappropriate to the task of the boards.
    Mr. Jenkins: That is a most disappointing answer. Is the Minister aware that it is quite disgraceful that these non-elected boards should have the power to override the decisions of elected councils? If they are to continue until their abolition by the Labour Government which will come to power after the next General Election, will he give instructions that in future they are to do their dirty work in public?
    Mr. Eyre: The hon. Member should remember that the Housing Finance Act has given council tenants for the first time the statutory right to make representations to their landlord, the local authority, about their rent and the local authority must consider those representations. Moreover, should a rent scrutiny board disagree with an authority's assessment of fair rents, we have advised local authorities to consult their tenants before making their representations to the board.
    Mr. McNamara: Will the Minister reconsider this matter? In the East Riding of Yorkshire the Beverley council and the Holderness council have both had their rents increased by the rent scrutiny boards against the recommendations of the local councillors, and we fear for what will happen in Kingston upon Hull. Will he also consider whether to reveal how many members of these panels either live in council accommodation or have had experience of living in it? Although the Minister's Department is not prepared to give that information, the Secretary of State for Wales is prepared to give it for the Principality.
    Mr. Eyre: The hon. Member should remember that if the rent scrutiny board in its report disagrees with the recommendations of the local authority—and that would apply in the cases he mentioned—the local authority has two months in which to make representations to the board. My Department has recommended local authorities to consult tenants before doing so, and I hope that the local authorities will do so in the case mentioned by the hon. Member. As for membership of the boards, of course there must be an appropriate degree of expert knowledge, but I can assure the hon.

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    Member that members of the boards come from all walks of life.
    Mr. Jenkins: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I give notice that I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment.

    Rural Roads
    Mr. Fryasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will consider seeking powers to ensure that rural roads with traffic flows exceeding 3,000 passenger-carrying units per day have edge markings.
    Mr. Speed: No, Sir.
    Mr. Fry: I regard that as a most unsatisfactory—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must ask a question.
    Mr. Fry: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the answer given by my hon. Friend, may I point out to him—
    Mr. Speaker: No. The hon. Member must question him.
    Mr. Fry: May I point out the large number of accidents that occur on rural roads in comparison, for example, with motorways? Is there not an ideal opportunity, with the Road Traffic Bill now going through the House of Lords, to remedy this defect, since at present it is not mandatory on local authorities to supply such markings?
    Mr. Speed: We must be flexible about this. There are other criteria. This is a question of 3,000 passenger units per day and flows. We are carrying out research at the Transport and Road Research Laboratory which will allow us to progress on this matter, but at the moment I prefer to leave the flexibility with the local authority.

    Bristol
    Mr. Roy Hughesasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will pay an official visit to Bristol.
    Mr. Rippon: I have at present no plans to do so.
    Mr. Hughes: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the West Dock scheme was originally estimated to cost just over £13 million and is now
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    costing over £20 million? Is this yet another attempt by the Prime Minister to cut prices at a stroke? Was not the decision to authorise this scheme politically motivated from the start? Should not the investment have gone to the South Wales ports, which over the last decade have enjoyed the best profit record of ports in the British Isles?
    Mr. Rippon: I realise that there were criticisms of this scheme in South Wales political circles. I do not think I need go to Bristol in order to ascertain that.
    Mr. Robert Cooke: Will my right hon. Friend resist this belly-aching from South Wales and judge on its merits any scheme that Bristol cares to submit?
    Mr. Rippon: Yes, Sir.

    House Prices
    Mr. Skinnerasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what are the latest figures for home prices, new and second-hand; and what are the comparative figures for June 1970.
    Mr. Channon: Figures for 1970 are available as usual in Housing and Construction Statistics in the Library. The most recent average figure relates to the third quarter of 1973. For existing houses it is £10,461 and for new houses £10,423.
    Mr. Skinner: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, while he and his Department have recently been getting out figures which suggest that there has been a relative tapering off of house prices in the past few months, there will almost certainly be a massive fall in house building this year? Does he accept that market forces will make prices shoot up once again? While he is at it, will he look at the answer given to my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun) by the Under-Secretary of State when he used the Labour Government's system of pooling to defend the high interest rates now prevailing? If that is right, why did he and his hon. Friends bring in the Housing Finance Act?
    Mr. Channon: The hon. Member has asked me a great many questions. I shall naturally study what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary had to say. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's analysis of the likely movement of house prices. The

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    rise in house prices has slowed down considerably. Indeed, on the figures which I have given recently—
    Mr. Ron Lewis: Not in Carlisle.
    Mr. Channon: There will always be exceptions. I am not prepared to comment on Carlisle. I have many bits of evidence reaching me which lead me to the view that in many parts of the country the price of houses is stabilising or in many cases falling.
    Mr. Tebbit: Will my hon. Friend do something to prevent local authorities from giving in and getting developers off the hook when they have bid too high for land and have built houses which are too expensive to sell? Such developers are now pushing off houses on to local authorities so that they can take a profit and go and do it again. Will my hon. Friend stop local authorities buying at such prices?
    Mr. Channon: I shall be concerned if I find that local authorities are paying expensive prices for houses in the manner which my hon. Friend suggests. If he can give me some information, I shall consider it.
    Mr. Robert C. Brown: Does not the Minister think that the figures he has quoted are disgraceful? Does he realise that there are many thousands of young people who are having to do moonlighting—namely, taking second and third jobs—and labouring at weekends to pay such prices? That applies particularly to teachers. Is this part of the "better tomorrow" that the Prime Minister promised the British people?
    Mr. Channon: I think that all of us regret any increase in the price of houses. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman welcomes the fact, as I do, that prices are stabilising in many parts of the country.

    Housing Land
    Mr. Redmondasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he is satisfied with the rate at which land is being released for housing development and that all local authorities are following his policy of giving priority to the claims of house developers over other plans; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Rippon: The indications are that local authorities generally are responding, but I would like to see them make further efforts wherever possible. They are expected to apply the new guidelines set out in Circular No. 122/73 in determining planning applications for housing.
    Mr. Redmond: Has my right hon and learned Friend seen the complaints which I have sent to his Department, which have been put to me by my constituents, that some Labour-controlled local authorities are objecting to planning applications and putting in plans of their own with the political motive of preventing housing starts? Will he accept that I do not include the Bolton County Council in my strictures?
    Mr. Rippon: I accept my hon. Friend's reservation. I have no doubt that some criticisms are made. My colleagues will consider them on their merits. Generally, I think that local authorities are responding. They know that the way to bring down the price of land for housing is to make it more generally available.
    Mr. Fernyhough: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman consider that it is unfair of his hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Redmond) to exclude his own constituency and then not have the guts to name the councils against which he is making inferences?
    Mr. Rippon: I am not responsible for that. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West complies with all the usual courtesies in dealing with other hon. Members in this House and would not refer to their constituencies without giving them notice.
    Mr. Idris Owen: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that it is essential to reduce the price of building land by ensuring that supply considerably exceeds demand? Does he accept that we will never get the situation right unless there are far more acres chasing fewer buyers? Is he aware that local authorities are not responding as he has been encouraged to believe? Far too many local authorities are being pressurised by their local representatives as a result of pressure being put upon them by people who have—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. That is a statement and not a question. The hon. Gentleman must put a question.
    Mr. Owen: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware—[Interruption.] Is it not a fact—[HON. MEMBERS: "It is a confession"]—that in many of the peripheral areas of the stress areas there is a considerable amount of land available which is not being released when in the town centres building is taking place with pocket-handkerchief gardens?
    Mr. Rippon: I do not dissent from my hon. Friend's general proposition about the need to make land available. The chairman of the Labour Government's Land Commission said that the only way to bring down the price of building land was to make more land available for building. That is true. It may be that some local authorities are not responding as well as we might wish. We will continue to bring some pressure upon them. As I have said, I hope that they will make further efforts.
    Mr. Molloy: Is not the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the answer lies in having the nerve to accept the Labour Party's policy of taking building land into public ownership? If he will not do that, will he be good enough to talk to his noble Friend the Secretary of State for Defence and find out how much land he can release in many of the London boroughs? Does he accept that that is a way of trying to deal with the grievous problem of homelessness as well as the massive housing problem?
    Mr. Rippon: I realise that the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) has a nerve. I do not think I can accept his proposition.

    New Dwellings
    Mr. John Fraserasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish the most recent figures for the completion of new dwellings in 1973 and a comparison with figures for the same period in 1969.
    Mr. Channon: The latest housing figures were published on 28th November. The figures requested for the first 10 months of the years in question are 245,000 and 301,000 in Great Britain. In the first nine months of 1973, 342,000 improvement grants were approved compared with 91,000 in the same period of 1969.
    Mr. Fraser: Does not the Minister feel ashamed of the new housing figures? Is he aware that the feeling is increasing that the Tories do not understand the problem of working-class people who are condemned to live year after year in rotten housing which is not being helped by improvement grants? I invite him to come to my borough. He knows that in my borough, despite any number of improvement grants, the number of houses available for ordinary working-class people is decreasing. We know that there are new buildings but they are not in Lambeth. There is not enough land in Lambeth.
    Mr. Channon: I cannot accept that rotten homes are not being improved by improvement grants. Many of our older houses which do not have basic amenities are being improved by means of improvement grants.
    Mr. Stallard: You know that that is not true.
    Mr. Channon: It is true. I thought that that was the reason for the Labour Party bringing in the Housing Act 1969. The fact remains that, when we consider the new homes and the improved homes which are being provided by the Government, the figures are extremely good.
    Mr. Winterton: Will my hon. Friend tell the House how much of the building problem, which I concede is undoubtedly with us, is due to the shortage of building materials? Does he agree that the national housing position could be improved if the smaller builders were allowed to buy some of the building land instead of allowing it to be bought up by many of the national developers, who hold on to it to give themselves several years of building ahead?
    Mr. Channon: I agree that it is important that the smaller builders should have enough land. Builders who build fewer than 10 houses a year are building more than one-third of Britain's houses. I agree that that is right. There have been difficulties regarding building materials. I believe that the situation is now easing. If hon. Members have particular points of difficulty. I shall be grateful if they will send them to me.
    Mr. Stallard: Does the Minister accept, as he dares to hide behind the improvement grant figures lo excuse the

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    appalling housing record of his Government, that in inner London improvement grants have not had the effect intended in the 1969 or 1949 Acts by Labour Governments? For instance, in my constituency improvement grants have had the effect of taking hundreds of homes out of the rented sector. Those homes are now being sold at fabulous profits. Is the Minister aware that houses which have been converted with public money are being sold at very high prices? In my constituency a one-bedroom flat is for sale for £14,000. Does the Minister think that the worker or controlled tenant who used to live in that property could now go back into it?
    Mr. Channon: If the hon. Gentleman's borough is giving improvement grants in these conditions, it is one of the most scandalous condemnations of the Labour-controlled borough of Camden that I have ever heard.
    Mr. Evelyn King: Is my hon. Friend aware that completions are being seriously delayed by delays in planning consent? It now takes on average, according to his own figures, 67 weeks to hear an appeal against a planning consent. When one adds to that the time it takes to get the planning application in, a house can be delayed for as much as two years. This is a serious and constructive point and it must have an effect on the figures if urgent action is not taken.
    Mr. Channon: I entirely agree that delays in giving planning consent are worrying. This is one of the reasons why my right hon. and learned Friend recently announced the inquiry by Mr. George Dobry, and he hopes to have an interim report from the committee very soon.
    Mrs. Castle: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in Blackburn a considerable number of houses are currently being scheduled as unfit? In view of his first reply, do I take it that he is only too anxious to continue the payment of improvement grants at 75 per cent., the rate for intermediate areas, for the improvement of such areas?
    Mr. Channon: Of course, unfit houses should be cleared. If there are slums, I hope that Blackburn will press ahead with its slum clearance programme.

    Manchester (Public Transport)
    Mr. Marksasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if, when he announces his decision, he will also publish his Department's analysis of cost-benefit of the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Scheme.
    Mr. Peyton: The cost-benefit analysis was carried out by the SELNEC Passenger Transport Executive.
    Mr. Marks: Ministers have criticised the viability of the scheme on cost-benefit grounds. When the right hon. Gentleman announces his decision, should he not make a detailed statement of why he disagrees with the scheme? Will he take the scheme as a whole and not only parts of it in giving his decision? Will he also announce his decision before the rising of the House for Christmas and not on New Year's Eve?
    Mr. Peyton: I have not said that I either agree or disagree. I will bear in mind what the hon. Gentleman has said, and naturally I would announce the reasons for my decision, whatever it was.
    Mr. Bray: Will my right hon. Friend tell us whether he has received statistics from SELNEC authorities showing the income they expect from the scheme and the cost of operating it on the basis of amortisation of the capital involved?
    Mr. Peyton: Yes, that is true. I think that on the whole it is admitted that the financial return is on the low side. But that is not the whole story. What is important is that in assessing the project generally there should be a really substantial benefit to those who will have to pay.

    M65, Prospect Hill—Blackburn
    Mrs. Castleasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he is now in a position to publish his proposed line of route for the Prospect Hill to Blackburn stretch of the M65 motorway.
    Mr. Speed: No. As the right hon. Lady knows, doubts have arisen locally about the environmental effect of the line being considered. This makes it more than ever necessary to arrange an opportunity for public consultation at which alternative proposals may be examined.
    Mrs. Castle: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that of course I am in favour of local consultation but that this can only take place on the basis of two things? One of them is a clear statement of the Government's proposed line of route, and the other is the Government's commitment that they will go ahead with the M65 motorway. Is the hon. Gentleman further aware that the continuing delay in announcing the Government's plan is leaving my constituents who are affected in a misery of uncertainty and is casting doubt on whether the Government are not using this argument about the line of route as an excuse for axing the whole project, and that we resist?
    Mr. Speed: The right hon. Lady has it wrong on both counts. There is no question of axing the route. The new public participation procedures announced by my right hon. Friend last July mean that her constituents at an early stage will have the opportunity to comment upon several lines of route, and these procedures will be published, I hope, in the late spring of next year.
    Mr. Waddington: Is my hon. Friend aware that, if the local newspaper is right, a great deal of mischievous nonsense seems to have been falling from the lips of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) in recent weeks, to the effect that she knew the whole of this project was to be axed? In these circumstances, will my hon. Friend recognise how glad I am that he has yet another opportunity to reaffirm today the Government's commitment to this project, which is so important to the economy of North-East Lancashire?
    Mr. Speed: I can confirm that the other two parts of the scheme, from Whitebirk to Burnley and the principal road scheme between Burnley and Colne, will be the subject of a public inquiry in February, and, subject to satisfactory completion of the procedures, I hope that work will start on these schemes by the end of 1975.

    Car Seat Belts
    Mr. Loveridgeasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to introduce legislation to make compulsory the wearing of seat belts in the front seats of cars licensed in Great Britain.
    Mr. David Stoddartasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will introduce legislation to make the wearing of seat belts compulsory for drivers and front seat passengers of motor cars.
    Mr. Peyton: I hope to make a statement before the Christmas Recess.
    Mr. Loveridge: I am glad to hear that reply. Is my right hon. Friend aware of the lower death and injury rates in Australia since legislation was introduced there? Will he take similar measures to save life and limb as soon as possible in Britain?
    Mr. Peyton: I certainly take account of experience elsewhere.
    Mr. Stoddart: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I am pleased to hear that he will be making a statement? I hope that it will be a positive statement and will not be a continuation of the equivocation we have had on the issue up to now. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that lives are being lost while he is equivocating and people are under the impression that if they wear seat belts on motorways they are safe and they do not bother to wear them in towns, where 75 per cent. of accidents take place? I look forward to a good statement from the right hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. Peyton: The hon. Gentleman can certainly look forward to a good statement with every confidence. He says that I am equivocating. What the Government are doing is giving new thought and entering into extensive consultations to find out what other people think about a serious matter. The potential saving of life is fully realised.

    Horse Racing and Football
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what he estimates were the total amounts of public money in the financial years 1971–72 and 1972–73 by which horse racing and association football respectively benefited.
    The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths): Amateur association football received £26,816 in 1971–72 and £34,404 in 1972–73 from central Government funds. Horse racing received nothing. Local authorities

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    may also have assisted both sports, but I have no details of any such assistance.
    Mr. Dalyell: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, on top of the value added tax and the financial burden of having to modernise grounds to comply with crowd safety regulations, a real financial problem faces many clubs, particularly since floodlighting is now banned and they have to play matches before smaller crowds? Are we sure, in relation to the saving of electricity involved, that it is really sensible to ban floodlighting?
    Mr. Griffiths: I hope to have discussions shortly with representatives of the football clubs on the question of crowd safety. The House will have a full opportunity when it considers the Bill very soon.
    Mr. Denis Howell: Since the Government do not think it right and proper to interfere with theatres and concert halls, which also depend upon electricity for their performances, why are the sporting public being discriminated against by stopping the playing of football matches at appropriate times? Will the hon. Gentleman look again at the decision concerning foodlighting, which is having a terrible effect on football finances and is a blatant discrimination against working people who follow soccer?
    Mr. Griffiths: There is no question of discrimination. I must reject as quite misleading the suggestion that football belongs to one section of our community and theatres belong to the remainder. They belong to us all as a nation. As I have said, I hope to have discussions with the football authorities very shortly.
    Mr. Howell: Whomever football belongs to, it certainly does not belong to the Prime Minister. How can the Government possibly say that it is wrong to use electricity to floodlight football matches during the crisis when there is no interference with performances at theatres and concert halls? That cannot be right. Will the Minister please talk to his right hon. Friend and see whether football matches can be treated in the same way as theatres and concert halls?
    Mr. Griffiths: I can only repeat that the hon. Gentleman is anticipating things. This is a matter upon which I shall
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    shortly be having discussions with football authorities.
    Mr. Ridsdale: Is it not clear that the question asked by the hon. Gentleman should have been directed to his hon. Friends in the miners' unions rather than to the Government?
    Mr. Ashton: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I beg to give notice that I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment.

FUEL SUPPLIES
The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Walker): On 26th October I announced controls on oil exports. On 14th November, orders were made under the Emergency Regulations curbing electricity demand by restricting electric space heating in certain premises and prohibiting display and advertising lighting. I announced on 19th November measures of oil allocation to secure a 10 per cent. reduction in last year's consumption. Hoarding of petrol in cans has been prohibited. Contingency planning against the need to introduce petrol rationing has been brought to a state of readiness with the precautionary issue of petrol coupons. The Government have stressed the urgent need for voluntary economies by everyone.
In general, oil stocks are holding up and deliveries of crude oil to the United Kingdom in November were equal to the deliveries anticipated before the crisis. But, as the House knows, I had yesterday to announce the diversion of additional supplies of fuel oil to the power stations. This was made necessary by the shortfall of coal production as a result of the industrial action in the mines. This decision will provide greater insurance for electricity supply. But it must cause concern for fuel oil stocks in the future, and demand even greater economy in the use of electricity.
The Government have decided on a series of further economy measures. There will be new restrictions on the level of heating in all commercial premises and offices by any fuel. An order regulating temperature will be laid. The existing restrictions on space heating by electricity

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will continue. Lighting in shops and commercial premises will also be controlled. Further savings will be achieved by switching off a proportion of lights on all highways and streets, except where reduced lighting could lead to an unacceptable risk of increases in accidents. The aim is to reduce lighting by 50 per cent. Local authorities and others will be asked to achieve further economy in the use of fuel in less essential services.
Substantial savings have been made in the use of oil for shipping and aviation. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping will be making a statement later this week on specific measures on aviation including private flying.
A 50 mph speed limit will be imposed by order on all roads, including motorways, except where a lower limit already applies.
If the best use is to be made of available petrol supplies, car sharing will have to be the accepted practice for the bulk of motoring, for journeys to work especially. All motor insurance policies now cover owners and drivers against liabilities for death of, or bodily injury to. passengers. Drivers therefore need not hesitate to offer lifts. Motor insurers have said that payments made by passengers merely as a contribution towards the cost of petrol used in a journey would not constitute use for hire and therefore would not infringe the conditions of normal car insurance policies. Additionally, the Government are examining the possibility of exercising powers to allow motorists to accept contributions from regular passengers towards the cost of lifts without the need to comply with public service vehicle licensing requirements. This facility would be consistent with the provisions of the Road Traffic Bill now before Parliament and would be of considerable help in rural areas.
Various Government Departments will be approaching distributors to ensure the greatest economy in the use of petrol for commercial deliveries. Useful savings can be made by those involved in regular deliveries of goods by reducing the frequency of these deliveries and various Government Departments concerned with the distributors involved will be approach-
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ing them to discuss what economies can be achieved.
In most parts of the country there have been no serious difficulties in the period since the cuts were introduced. With a combination of both the compulsory and voluntary efforts that are made, a reduction of supplies to the present levels should cause no serious problems.
The South-East in particular has created its own problem. Two factors emerge. There are adequate supplies of petrol available if people will make limited cuts in their motoring. The panic filling up of petrol tanks whereby many people have queued for ages and then bought only small quantities of petrol has created unnecessary problems for filling stations.
The Oil Industry Emergency Committee is now operating with its own control centre. Its task is to balance demand against available supply. The committee assures me that deliveries to petrol stations have been and will continue to be maintained to 90 per cent. of last year's figures. Action is being taken to see that petrol stations spread their opening hours so that petrol is available from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. A mutual aid scheme is operaing. Appeals because of hardship, growth or from new garages are dealt with fairly. Over 1,100 appeals have already been settled. Directions and arrangements for the supply of product where major shortages are proved is now operating.
If motorists will show moderation, the discomfort of queues and the difficulties of obtaining petrol should be greatly reduced. These problems are nothing compared with the personal difficulties which will arise for large sections of the population if rationing has to be introduced. Our reserve position does nothing to suggest that the Government should now take action to ration petrol. It is vital that all concerned should continue to exercise the maximum economy in the use of all our energy resources.
Mr. Benn: Is the Secretary of State aware that his statement and the measures contained in it will do little to reassure the people, who seem to be much more aware of the gravity of the oil crisis than he is?

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Will he please answer these questions? Do the Government know about, and control, all oil shipments leaving this country made by oil companies, and has he power to stop them? Are oil and petrol still being exported without control to the EEC either directly or by juggernaut lorries topping up before they leave the country?
Are independent garages, which report cuts well above the 10 per cent. to 13 per cent., being squeezed out by the oil companies? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of any hoarding of petrol by either companies or garages in the hope of price increases, as this might be contributing towards the present difficulties? How can the disabled and other categories of people be protected without direct rationing measures?
What cutbacks does the Minister expect in industrial production as a result of the oil situation and what will be the effect on the rate of growth—or does he stick to his forecasts of steady expansion in 1974? Will there be further economy measures by tax changes or in other ways to control inflation?
Is it true that today a Department of Trade and Industry mission is leaving for Japan to promise the Japanese a share in North Sea oil if they are prepared to make an investment in it now?
Mr. Walker: On the question of shipments, the right hon. Gentleman knows that I took control over exports immediately the crisis arose. That control is effective. I hope that the House realises that, basically, we act as the refiners for a number of European countries, and likewise a number of European countries act as the refiners for this country. Last month's figures showed that exports and imports between the Common Market countries and ourselves were in balance.
If I had stopped all exports to Common Market countries and they had stopped all exports to us, there would have been a considerable deterioration in the supply position of several important fuel commodities. I am perfectly satisfied that the control in this sphere is working well and will continue to work well.
It is important to realise that the oil and fuel distribution system was operated on a European basis long before the Common Market was set up, and it will continue to be so operated. Obviously,
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we shall keep firm control of exports in future. There will be a deterioration in our import position as a result of the difficulties in Rotterdam, but that is a point to consider in future months if the embargo on Rotterdam continues.
On the question of the independents, it would be natural in such circumstances that a number of these independent firms which buy their oil in various markets, including Rotterdam, and which have been under-pricing the sales of the major oil companies, should now find themselves in considerable difficulties. It would also be natural if some of the major oil companies were not too sorry about this situation. But I am pleased to say that the major companies have agreed to a pooling system, and independents which have run short of oil are now receiving supplies from the major oil companies, and an overall distribution system will be preserved.
On the question of companies hoarding to await price increases, I appreciate that there have been such suggestions. But, in practice, if we look at the nature of deliveries to garages, which take place at regular intervals, it would mean that if anyone pursued that type of policy, he would have to stop his sales and would obtain no further deliveries and would suffer considerable loss of turnover. Therefore, in practice there is little need for concern in that respect.
On the question of the disabled—and the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) earlier raised the question of the disabled, as well as the situation of doctors and social workers—a directive has been sent by the oil companies to suppliers asking them to make a special issue available when they are approached by a doctor or by a particular grade of social worker or a disabled person. This will enable those people to pick up their petrol at a time mutually convenient to both parties, without the sort of problems which have been created in London in the last few days. If any doctor or other person in the categories I have mentioned finds any problem in these arrangements, if he informs the local DTI regional office we will take up the individual case. I repeat that the oil companies have sent out a directive to all distributors and it will be met.
I should like to deal with the question of industrial production and the overall

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position mentioned by the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn). In November the supplies were as anticipated. As for December on past projections which I have obtained from the oil companies it looks as though in total our oil supplies could fall short of what was anticipated by as much as 15 per cent. That figure is four and a half days' stocks, and this should be compared with the size of stocks in this country.
In terms of industrial production and the pattern of mobility of labour that operates in this country, particularly with the motorway system, the fact is that at the moment, with the cuts which have taken place, there is little report from industry that people are not able to get to work and carry on with industrial production. Under most rationing systems there would be difficulties of this nature.
Mr. Charles Morrison: As a further means of saving petrol and preventing waste, will my right hon. Friend consider banning the Sunday opening of petrol-filling stations? Judging by last Sunday's events, it was clear that many people used a gallon or more of petrol to enable them to go out and pick up a further two gallons.
Mr. Walker: I am considering this matter, but there would then be problems involving emergency cases with doctors, social workers and so on. Arrangements would have to be made in that respect, and, therefore, there is some complexity in that suggestion.
Mr. Pavitt: I welcome the Secretary of State's half-way step. However, does he not agree that he should go much further if local authorities and social services, which have a statutory rôle, are to be able to get on with their work? Is he aware that the shortage of petrol in the interim period has hit the mentally subnormal, the disabled—and particularly the disabled who work in sheltered workshops? Is he aware that in my borough there are 120 mentally subnormal people who may be unable to go about their business for two days each week because of lack of petrol supplies? Will he take immediate steps, first, to ensure that his suggestions are carried out by issuing
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immediately to local authorities and to petrol stations in their areas a special permit enabling these people to obtain petrol supplies? Secondly, is he aware that the present regulations, which date from 1959, and which in respect of Form CP1 exclude social service departments of local authorities and mental welfare officers, put at risk the emergency mental health services which operate after 5 p.m. and will he rectify this situation?
Mr. Walker: I should look into the last point made by the hon. Gentleman. I hope that the oil companies, in conjunction with the regional offices, will clear the hon. Gentleman's second point. If that does not happen, we could bring in a further measure to set up special depots in which such petrol could be acquired for certain categories of people, but I do not think that that will prove to be necessary.
Mr. Ridsdale: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many people are concerned about the situation in our ports and the effects on our exports? United Kingdom ports have been given fuelling facilities under Form 1984, but what they are much more concerned about at the moment is that when transport leaves the ports there are no facilities to refuel them, either on the way to get whisky back from Scotland to the Continent or to bring other vital commodities from the Continent to United Kingdom industries? Will he take steps to ensure that transport is given proper refuelling facilities from the ports so that the free flow of our exports and necessary imports will be allowed to continue?
Mr. Walker: I am discussing with the oil companies specific problems at a number of ports. This by no means applies to all ports. Some regular users who have their own pumps and fuel their own lorries from their stores are keeping their stores and are endeavouring to obtain supplies from other stations and depots. This is causing problems in a number of areas. This difficulty is gradually being eliminated because they cannot take further deliveries if they continue on that course.
Mr. Leadbitter: What observations can the right hon. Gentleman make on stories in the Press today that about 25 per cent. of our petrol is going to Holland?

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Secondly, will he comment on the situation in Hartlepool, where a ship is standing in the port taking on board 5,000 to 6,000 tons of diesel oil without, I am informed, any restrictions from the Department of Trade and Industry. Will he, finally, comment on the fact that the Hartlepool Steel Corporation asserts that it has suffered a 25 per cent. cut in its output because of a 30 per cent. cut in fuel resources in the past three weeks? Is he aware that I object very much to this?
Mr. Walker: On the latter point raised by the hon. Member for The Hartlepools, I have just heard that it has been denied by the management concerned. On the question of exports, I cannot talk about any specific shipment. I repeat what I said earlier, that we are operating a control on exports. We have been given information in terms of past consignments, and we have been told by all the oil companies that these matters are being monitored day to day. Finally, I know of no special cargo going to Holland.
Mr. Skeet: I thank my right hon. Friend for his most constructive proposals. Is he aware that in tonight's Press Sheikh Yamani has made new threats of further cuts in oil supplies in general and of probable increases in oil prices? Will my right hon. Friend seriously consider the prospect of accelerating the introduction of rationing?
Mr. Walker: I do not think my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) would expect me to comment on a report in this evening's newspapers in relation to what a particular sheikh is supposed to have said. I repeat that stocks in this country are at a reasonably high level and that deliveries here have not so far been shut off. When my hon. Friend speaks of rationing, I believe that he and other people should realise that petrol comprises only about 15 per cent. of our energy supplies. I do not believe that people have given enough thought to the unfairness and difficulties that any rationing system would create.
Mr. Cyril Smith: Is the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry seriously asking the House to believe that there are at present no serious problems? May I ask whether he realises that in some parts of the country the cuts made in
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supplies to garages are 40 to 45 per cent. and not 10 per cent? I am prepared to provide figures to prove that statment. Is he aware that in my constituency this week—and I sent him the details of the case on Monday longdistance lorry drivers are being laid off because of the inability of transport firms to obtain diesel oil to carry essential cargoes to the docks? Does he not think, in the light of these circumstances, that there is a case for the immediate introduction of rationing of petrol and diesel fuel?
Mr. Walker: I do not. Dealing with garages, it may be that in the early stages of these cuts before the oil companies were able to re-organise the distribution of supplies, certain specific garages were affected more than others. At the beginning, for example, it may be that some of the independents were getting no supplies at all. However, these problems are being dealt with efficiently by the industry itself.
As for supplies of diesel, there has been a difficulty created by the fact that a number of firms which would normally fill their lorries from their own diesel supplies decided to retain them and go elsewhere. This created an extra burden. However, that will become less of an influence on the scene because they will not be able to take further deliveries of diesel until they start to use their stocks. Already there has been an improvement.
It is very easy to say that it would be better to introduce rationing. I ask the hon. Gentleman to think of his constituency and the number of people who now travel quite long distances to work. The only system of rationing which would not have an enormous effect on production would be a system whereby everyone's ration was tailor-made, and that would be impossible to do for 13 million motorists. We shall have to introduce rationing if the situation deteriorates, but it will not solve all the problems.
Mr. Normanton: While I welcome my right hon. Friend's decision to present to this House the proposals which he has just listed, may I ask him to consult his right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment about the urgent need for detailed proposals concerning the introduction of very much

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higher standards of thermal insulation in all future construction projects, whether they be in industry or in private or public works?
Mr. Walker: I know that my right hon. and learned Friend is considering the building regulations and the contribution which they can make to this problem.
Mr. Jay: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, although there may still be plenty of petrol in official cars, in London the Government's failure to introduce petrol rationing is leading not merely to chaos but to outright profiteering and fraud? Is it true that the Government's refusal to introduce rationing is based on the fact that they are unable at present rates of pay to recruit sufficient clerical staff to work a rationing system?
Mr. Walker: The latter comment is quite untrue. I said that I was bringing forward the distribution of petrol coupons. That is taking place quite smoothly, as is the recruitment of the staff necessary for making supplementary allowances. There is no difficulty.
The right hon. Gentleman refers to a black market, and so on. He will recognise from his previous experience in days gone by that rationing schemes do not eliminate black markets or profiteering. These are aspects which apply whether we ration or do not ration. As a result of the introduction of the voluntary 50 m.p.h. speed limit and the restraint upon Sunday motoring—this was reported not by the Government but by the AA and the RAC—the reductions created by these measures were far greater outside the South-East than in the South-East. The fact is that the South-East can cure this situation itself.
Mr. Maude: Is my right hon. Friend aware that most people in the rural areas well appreciate that any conceivable scheme of rationing would cause very serious inconvenience to those who rely on their cars to get to work where there is no public transport? Is he also aware that they would consider it a very serious matter if rationing were introduced simply because of the selfish and hysterical behaviour of motorists in London and the South-East?
Mr. Walker: My hon. Friend is right when he says that any rationing scheme would of necessity create considerable difficulties in the rural areas. He will be aware that the announcements which I have made about public vehicle licensing can, if quickly applied, help considerably in some of the problems of the rural areas.
Mr. Elystan Morgan: Although the Secretary of State made a very fair point about the need for car owners, especially in rural areas, to give lifts, does he appreciate that the courts would not be bound by any agreement between himself and the insurance companies? There could be very fine points of definition. In view of that, will he consult the Law Officers on the advisability of bringing in a short Bill to clear up the matter?
Mr. Walker: If any such measure were needed, I should not hesitate to do so. But I am advised that the receipt of payments as contributions towards petrol costs will not be taken amiss by the insurance companies. Certainly lifts without payment are totally safe.
Mr. Tapsell: While appreciating the serious problems facing the multinational oil companies in the present situation, does my right hon. Friend recognise that there will be strong support in this House and in the country for any action that the Government may feel it necessary to take to ensure, particularly with those companies which have British directors on their boards, that the fruits of British diplomacy in the Middle East in recent years are not frustrated by them?
Mr. Walker: There have been advantages from British diplomacy affecting the delivery position to this country in November and the continued possibilities of our oil supply. In both the problems created by the reduction that I had to bring in a few weeks ago and the problems of distribution of certain grades of fuel oil, I have received considerable cooperation from the companies.
Mr. Carter: Being aware that approximately one in five of those engaged in British industry works in or is associated with the car industry, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in view of the very serious implications in his statement for employment in the industry, he will enter into a series of talks with

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the industry to ensure its long-term future?
Mr. Walker: We have regular meetings with the major British companies to discuss all aspects of both the short-term and the long-term problem. There is virtually a monthly meeting with British Leyland, and one of the topics being discussed is the implications of the present energy position.
Mr. Kimball: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the steps that he has announced today, including the 50 mph limit, have wholehearted support since we know that one thing which would be grossly unfair is any Socialist system of rationing?
Mr. Walker: On the basis of present levels of stocks and the supply position, certainly there are considerable advantages in avoiding any rationing system. Should it become necessary because supplies drop further or if the total energy situation deteriorates further, we shall be able to take action as a result of having distributed coupons. But I repeat that it is impossible to create a system of rationing which will not cause individual hardship.
Mr. Harold Wilson: First, may we have a debate in Government time?
Secondly, in view of the complacency in the right hon. Gentleman's statement that in most parts of the country there have been no serious difficulties will he comment on the report broadcast by the BBC at one o'clock that on the M6 from North Lancashire to the Midlands there were no diesel supplies at all and that the same had been true last weekend?
Thirdly, we are grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for what he has just said about the multi-national companies. However, will he clear up the situation a little more? A couple of weeks ago the Government were putting out the view that the multi-national companies were to blame for the situation. Then there was an apology from the Government. Today the Government are peddling the story that the multi-national companies are at fault. May we know whether they are or whether they are not?
Finally, will the Secretary of State represent to the Prime Minister that since the situation is completely out of the
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Prime Minister's control, his right hon. Friend should appoint a Minister of Cabinet rank to be responsible for oil and energy?
Mr. Walker: In terms of complacency, the right hon. Gentleman's contribution to trying to assist the energy problem has been noted for being not just complacent but positively unhelpful.
The matter of a debate on this subject is for my right hon. Friend, but I will mention it to him. I should certainly welcome one.
We shall obviously look into the specific case of diesel supplies on a particular motorway. I have already stated that there are some immediate diesel shortages, but nothing compared with the difficulty that would arise if, as seemingly the right hon. Gentleman wishes, on the basis of no drop in our supplies in November and a 15 per cent. drop in December, we were to ration all forms of fuel, including diesel. Presumably that is the right hon. Gentleman's view about not being complacent.
I did not today say that there was any criticism of the multi-national companies. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman must have misheard me. I said that they have collaborated and cooperated with us in many spheres. We have no criticisms of them in this country.
On the question of a separate Ministry, I should point out to the right hon. Gentleman that in developing our energy policy there are a whole range of activities—for example, the application of the Industry Act to the rapid development of resources in North Sea oil and international relationships—and there are considerable advantages in dealing with that range of problems in one Department.
Mr. Hugh Fraser: Will my right hon. Friend and the Government as a whole get down to the root of this question, which is the Arab denial of supplies to the West? I am sure that this is the problem that we must face. Surely my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will agree that our main interest is to remain close to the Americans and Europe on this subject. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister seriously consider in this situation, which is almost

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certain to deteriorate, the elision from the Department of Trade and Industry of the old Ministry of Fuel and Power which was eaten up in 1969 by the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn)? There seems to be a clear case for the establishment of a separate Ministry dealing with fuel, power and energy independent of the DTI.
Mr. Walker: If my right hon. Friend feels strongly on that matter, I suggest that he studies some of the successes of the old Ministry of Fuel and Power.
Several hon. Members Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. Questions on this subject cannot go on for much longer.
Mr. Eadie: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his statement today characterises many of the statements that he has made in the past on fuel and power—that is, the attempt to apportion some responsibility to the miners?
Secondly, does he agree that there is a need for an immediate investigation into allegations that hoarding is taking place on the expectation by some companies that they will make a killing by increased prices of petrol and oil? Is it not his responsibility to carry out an immediate investigation and to report back to the House?
Mr. Walker: There is no doubt that the miners' dispute is having a considerable impact on supplies of fuel oil. Without commenting on the dispute, I suggest that it is having a considerable impact.
The hon. Gentleman will have noticed in the legislation that is currently going through the House the special powers that the Government are taking to control prices in every sphere, at retailers' and other levels. Those powers will be used to make sure that nobody exploits the present situation.
Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: My right hon. Friend will recall that the North-West was the first and at one time the only area that was observing the voluntary 50 mph speed limit. People in that area will be glad that others, particularly in the South-East, will now be obliged to follow their example.
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Will my right hon. Friend accept that his great concern for the problems of rural areas will be much appreciated? May I ask him to assure the House on two matters: first, that diesel oil that is available for tractors is evenly distributed throughout the country so that vital farming operations are not held up; and, secondly, that petrol is made available for farm implements that are run or started on petrol, such as the old-fashioned TVO tractors, band saws, and so on?
Mr. Walker: If, after consultation, the normal distributor cannot guarantee reasonable delivery the people concerned should contact the regional office of my Department and we shall see what can be done.
Mr. Benn: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the questions that I put to him on three matters? First, will he confirm that there is a DTI mission going to Japan to offer the Japanese a share of the North Sea? Secondly, will he tell us the date on which he expects to make up his mind and to make a statement about rationing? Thirdly, will he tell us when we may expect economic measures to deal with this situation?
Finally, since right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House are clearly anxious, will he add his weight to our demand for an early debate so that we can go into the matter in greater detail?
Mr. Walker: We had a debate on energy only a short time ago, but I am always willing, if both sides of the House wish, to try to find further time for a debate.
I hope that I shall never have to make a statement on rationing, but if the time comes when I must do so, I shall make it at that time.
There is no intention of the mission to Japan selling part of the North Sea to the Japanese.
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: We must get on.
Mr. David James: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I recognise that you have had a great deal of difficulty in calling all hon. Members who wish to put questions on this matter, but is there time for a

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question about the bunkering of overseas merchant ships?
Mr. Speaker: This is a matter for my discretion. There is no time for that question.

EEC MINISTERIAL MEETINGS
4.7 p.m.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Davies): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement about matters considered in the Council of the European Communities since I last reported to the House on 24th October.
There have been six meetings—the Foreign Ministers met twice, the Finance Ministers twice, and the Ministers of Agriculture and Transport once each.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture has already reported to the House on the meeting of Agriculture Ministers on 19th and 20th November.
At the meeting of Transport Ministers on 22nd November there was a preliminary exchange of views on the Commission's recent document on the development of the common transport policy, which was the main item on the agenda.
For the rest, agreement was reached on the substance of a measure of liberalisation in internatinal road haulage, on a small change in consultation procedures, and on the need for uniform enforcement of the rules restricting lorry drivers' hours.
Lorry weights and dimensions and the increase in the new member countries' share of the Community quota for road haulage were further discussed without conclusions being reached.
The Foreign Ministers met on 5th and 6th November and discussed a wide range of subjects affecting the Community's relations with almost all other parts of the world. These subjects were further discussed at the Foreign Ministers meeting on 3rd and 4th December.
Ministers have now agreed on the content of trade agreements to be concluded with Brazil and with India.
The Council made progress on agreeing improvements for 1974 on the generalised scheme of preferences which it offers to imports from developing countries and on its offer of tariff concessions to third
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countries under the GATT as a consequence of the enlargement of the Community.
Further discussion took place on the mandate for the Commission to negotiate agreements with certain Mediterranean countries. In the expectation that such agreements are unlikely to be concluded by the year end, a satisfactory understanding was reached on the handling of interim arrangements.
There was a detailed discussion of the main aspects of the Regional Development Fund to be set up by 1st January 1974 as provided for in last year's Summit meeting in Paris. This resulted in a clarification of the position of the various member States which should help in finalising the arrangements to be concluded by the year end.
At their meeting on 9th November the Finance Ministers discussed the progress of the Community's anti-inflation programme and the move to a second stage of economic and monetary union.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week the Finance Ministers agreed a resolution on short-term action against inflation. They also made useful progress in further consideration of economic and monetary union and agreed to resume the discussion on 17th December.
Opportunity was taken of the meetings yesterday and the day before to have an extensive exchange of views on the Community's current energy problems.
It was recognised that the united approach to a political solution in the Middle East still constituted the primary field for Community action.
It was also agreed that the consultative arrangements instituted at meetings in November should be maintained.
Mr. Peter Shore: After that pathetic catalogue of non-agreement, will the right hon. Gentleman agree that it adds up not exactly to the kind of astonishing progress that he told us about last week, but indeed, that it is evidence that the Community has virtually ground to a stop?
On the first of many major matters about which we need to ask him, I refer to the question of oil supplies in the EEC. The right hon. Gentleman will have seen a statement by the managing

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director of Royal Dutch Shell, Mr. Wagner, that supplies are being allocated between Community countries regardless of the particular views of the individual companies involved. What the House wishes to know is whether the right hon. Gentleman knows about these arrangements and is simply accepting them; whether he approves of the action of the Royal Dutch Shell Company in allocating supplies and behaving like a good European company, or whether he disapproves of that action and thinks that the company should be stopped and rebuked. [HON. MEMBERS: "What is your view?"] My view is that the consumer nations of the West should get together as consumer nations—
Mr. Speaker: Order. This is not the time for the right hon. Gentleman to give his views. He should be ascertaining the Minister's views.
Mr. Shore: Does the Minister at any rate think that it is virtually irrelevant to what short-term measures the vulnerable Community of nine decided to take together in dealing with this strong and immediate threat?
My next question concerns regional policy—[Interruption.] The Minister dealt with regional policy and it is a matter of some importance to hon. Members on both sides. Can the Chancellor of the Duchy confirm that the Government proposed that there should be a regional fund, larger than that about which we heard before, of about 3,000 million units of account? If that is so, will he say what reactions came from the other eight member countries of the EEC?
Can he say whether it has now been decided by others that the agreemeent on the regional development fund should be linked with simultaneous agreement on the imposition of rules over State regional aids in the so-called peripheral areas? Is the regional policy free from the other agreement that it would come into effect only if and when the second stage of economic and monetary union was agreed?
On economic and monetary union—[Interruption.] Mr. Speaker, I have some sympathy for the House, but if I may make this observation to you, we have
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heard a statement, seven pages long, covering not only matters of fuel policy, not only regional policy, not only the second stage of economic and monetary union and the pooling of currency reserves and so on, but, in addition, matters of common transport policies and the whole future relations of the Third World with the general preference scheme of this country.
Mr. Speaker: Order. My only comment would be my fear lest the right hon. Gentleman should take up so much time that he may prevent some of his hon. Friends from being heard.
Mr. Shore: I am bound in duty to make some comment on these matters and particularly before the Government come forward with, it is hoped, more sensible proposals so that this House can discuss European affairs in a more orderly and considered way.
My last question—it will be the last because of the sentiments expressed, Mr. Speaker—is whether the right hon. Gentleman will now undertake, since one cannot even ask him sufficient questions on his long statement, since so many matters are coming up for decision by 1st January and since those decisions will not be able to be altered by the House, to come before the House on all those separate matters with precise proposals to get our comments, advice and approval before he signs on the dotted line in Brussels?
Mr. Davies: The whole House will be grateful to the right hon. Member for finally having ground to a standstill.
Hon. Members: Disgraceful.
Mr. Speaker: Order. One thing which does perplex me about the House sometimes is that those who are not very backward in making criticisms of other people seem to resent similar criticism of themselves.
Mr. Davies: The right hon. Gentleman asked me in the first place whether it was the case that there was a diversion of supplies by the major oil companies to European markets. The major oil companies, in my understanding, are obliged to—and do—strictly observe the injunction given to them by the Arab States

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about oil destinations. There is no question of the diversion to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.
The right hon. Gentleman asked me about my attitude to the international companies, having regard to remarks made by Mr. Wagner, of the Royal Dutch Shell Group of Companies. I do not know what the attitude of those companies may be. It is not my business. But I imagine that he would agree with me that most international companies would regard their primary responsibility as being to respect their contracts. I am sure that that is what the companies are doing. They would naturally be obliged to comply with instructions given them, which were legally binding upon them, so that they would have to do that, but in other terms they would certainly comply with their contracts. I hope that both sides of the House would regard that as being the normal and moral attitude of British business.
I was asked about regional policy. I proposed that it would be right for the regional development fund, which is proposed to be set up on 1st January 1974, to provide for the sum of 3,000 million units of account over a three-year period. That proposal did not receive instant agreement in the Council of Ministers. However, there was a considerable body of support for my proposals, as there was a certain body of antagonism to them. But these matters remain for further discussion and negotiation. It is impossible for me now to reply to the right hon. Gentleman's question about the relationship of the setting up of the regional development fund with that of the controlling of national aids. The matter is still under discussion and, therefore, I cannot tell the right hon. Gentleman of any such decision.
As for setting up the regional development fund and its relationship to the second stage of economic and monetary union, it is confidently believed that both of these recommendations of last year's Summit meeting in Paris will be brought to effect by 1st January 1974.
When the right hon. Gentleman makes reproaches on the subject of how these matters are handled in this House, my mind goes back to the time when the Select Committee, on which I believe the right hon. Gentleman served with distinc-
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tion, was not able for a long time to get down to its business through the actions of the Opposition. It has not been the case that the Government have been dilatory in handling these matters. By and large, the right hon. Gentleman's general strictures, which we have grown accustomed to hearing and have at times become rather tired of hearing, wear very thin.
Mr. Peter Rees: Since my right hon. Friend told the House that no conclusion has been reached on certain transport matters, could he reassure us that the Minister for Transport Industries and he are battling robustly on behalf of the interests of my constituents to prevent an increase in the weight of lorries passing through the port of Dover, to which my constituents are implacably opposed?
Mr. Davies: My right hon. Friend, who is sitting beside me, is of course pursuing the very lines of policy about which he has formerly spoken to the House and from which, I am certain, he will not easily be distracted.
Mr. Russell Johnston: In the discussion of regional policy, were the Government in favour of the Italian and Irish suggestion of special provision for particular priority areas within the Commission's proposals?
Mr. Davies: It is true that both the Italian and Irish representatives in the Council of Ministers drew attention to the need, as they saw it, for some effort to be made in respect of areas which have suffered a particular intensity of regional decline or disarray. While, again, no decision was taken on this matter, a good deal of sympathy was expressed for these views within the Council, and, within the framework of realistic possibilities, I gather that the Council would wish to find some way of meeting these requirements.
Mr. Marten: I am sure that all hon. Members who take these matters seriously must deplore, in the kindest way, the fact that there is only one statement covering six ministerial meetings. I should like to register my strong disapproval of that. Would my right hon. Friend give an assurance that this will not be a precedent for the future presentation of reports of Council of Ministers' meetings? It has

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been reported in the Press that the economic and monetary union project has now been postponed until July. I did not quite understand what my right hon. Friend said about that. In the anti-inflation programme, what is new for this country, and to what extent shall we agree to it, or go ahead with it? Is it mandatory or not?
Mr. Davies: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kindest of reproaches. The fact is that if I come to the House more regularly than I do now, there is the kind of reception which I received from the right hon. Member for Stepney (Mr. Shore)—[Interruption.] I am told that this is a pathetic statement—
Mr. English: On a point of order. Have you, Mr. Speaker, ever before heard a Minister protest that he should not come to the House more frequently because of the reception he gets?
Mr. Speaker: It is certainly not a point of order.
Mr. Davies: It is clear that there is a real problem. I am anxious to ensure my regular attendance, and I want to ensure that the House has an opportunity to question me on these matters. On the other hand, it would take up a great deal of time of the House if I were to comply with the kind of suggestions that the right hon. Gentleman makes—
Mr. English: Is it important?
Mr. Davies: Am I to infer that the hon. Member thinks that it is unimportant? In that case, why is he raising the matter?
My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) asked me about subjects under the heading of anti-inflation, which were dealt with by the Council of Finance Ministers. There was nothing in the various matters covered by that meeting which broke new ground in terms of the line of action that this Government have been taking, but it was a useful review among those Ministers to see the ways in which individual member countries were handling the problems and to try to get some concerted action in this field. He also asked me about economic and monetary union and wondered whether the introduction of the second phase was likely to be delayed
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to 1st July. No, that is not my understanding; the date will be 1st January, I understand.
Mr. Joel Barnett: Does the right hon. Gentleman understand that one does not have to be an anti-Marketeer to believe that it is a nonsense to come to the House with a statement covering so many subjects? Would he accept that we are likely to get the worst of all possible worlds if we pretend that we can get an economic and monetary union as quickly as he is suggesting until individual nations stop making national interests their paramount interest?
Mr. Davies: I am not sure that I fully follow the hon. Member, in the sense that he says that I am setting an earlier date for the introduction of economic and monetary union. That was not my intention. I simply referred to the progress being made, and I believe that some progress is being made. I do not take his point at all.
Mr. Rost: Referring to the discussions on the energy crisis, was the question of co-ordinating a pricing policy discussed? Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a strong suspicion that oil supplies are being diverted from this country to one or two of our European partners because they are prepared to pay a higher price? If we are to prevent a free-for-all and get some harmonisation, should not this matter be looked into?
Mr. Davies: All these aspects of the problems of energy supply, particularly oil supply, to the Community countries were raised. As I said in my statement, it is the conclusion of that meeting that we should continue the relatively close consultative process which we already have, which covers this and other items.
Mr. Frederick Lee: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that among redundant steel workers there is still considerable apprehension, especially among those at the Irlam works, where redundancy came early, as to what they are entitled to expect under the EEC arrangements? Could he issue any statement which would help to elucidate this problem?
Mr. Davies: These matters are of course carefully detailed. If there are members of the industry who are in any

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doubt in this matter, if they would consult either their own managements or their unions, I think they would be well informed of the provisions made by the Community for help in this connection.
Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: My right hon. Friend has reminded the House that the Finance Ministers have twice identified the curbing of inflation as the Community's first priority. In what way will a large regional fund such as he has suggested, or any regional fund, contribute to the achievement of this objective?
Mr. Davies: It would contribute in this way, I think—that one of the features of regional imbalance is, of course, to procure a degree of over-heating in some areas which is the counterpart of a degree of deflation and inadequate industrial activity in others. If the regional fund could bring about what it is intended that it should bring about—a greater parity of prosperity within the whole Community—that would be a substantial contribution to the improvement of inflationary tendencies.
Mr. Sillars: Is the right hon. Gentleman convinced that a regional fund of 3,000 million units of account over three years is adequate to the task of creating a better balance in a Community of Nine? Is he not aware that many people—pro-Market and anti-Market—regard that sum as a derisory funding of an adequate regional fund?
Mr. Davies: I would ask the hon. Gentleman to remember that this fund, like the whole policy that surrounds it, is a new venture for the Community. It is very important that this new venture should be of a growing character. That is the most important thing, not only that it should be substantial but also that it should be capable of growth and should be seen to be growing. I am sure that in the end this is the right way of introducing it—at a level which by all means must be regarded as substantial but which none the less has the capacity for growth and continued development.
Mr. Adam Butler: Referring to transport, can my right hon. Friend say more about the question of general licence quotas for road hauliers? Would he not agree that the present United Kingdom allocation is grossly unfair and restrict-
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tive? Will he ensure that in the coming year we get our fair share of allocations?
Mr. Davies: Yes, I agree that we all think that the quota which we have hitherto managed to procure is quite inadequate. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries, who is here, and I will certainly be acting as hard as we can to try to secure an improvement.
Mr. Deakins: Can the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that the Asian Commonwealth countries will be in no worse a trading position with the enlarged Community on 1st January 1974 than they are at present?
Mr. Davies: I should like to be able to give an entirely unqualified answer, but I obviously cannot, and for very sensible reasons—that, although agreement has now been concluded, for instance, with India, there is still an outstanding arrangement to be concluded with Bangladesh, which I believe will be satisfactory from their point of view.
It is also true that, although, to a large degree, improvements in the Community arrangements under the generalised preference scheme have been finalised, there are still elements to be completed. If that were done, I could unqualifiably say that the arrangements in relation to the Community as a whole for the countries in Southern Asia would not be subject to criticism and would not be anything but an improvement in total on the arrangements which they currently have.
Mr. Bitten: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that it was concluded by Her Majesty's Government that British national interests would be served by a Community regional fund 20 per cent. to 30 per cent. higher than that recommended by Commissioner Thomson? Further, can my right hon. Friend say which countries were most evident in the Council of Ministers in opposing the view that he put forward?
Mr. Davies: I do not think that it would be proper for me to give an account of the attitude of the representatives of individual countries. My reply to my hon. Friend's first question is that I sincerely believe that a fund of the size that I have recommended, coupled with other arrangements that will need to be

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defined in terms of the apportionment of the fund, will prove to be to the advantage of this country.
Mr. Judd: In view of the far-reaching implications of the current discussions in Brussels about a relationship between the Community and the Third World, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consult his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and ensure that there is an opportunity for the House to debate all these aspects of policy in some depth—which it has not done so far—before any irrevocable decisions are reached?
Mr. Davies: I am aware of the hon. Gentleman's motion on this subject. All I can say is that my right hon. Friend is listening to the discussion. These are matters of great importance. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about that. It is right to say that the House has received full information about them. The House has been told how things are proceeding. The matter of time for a debate is for my right hon. Friend and not for me.
Sir Harmar Nicholls: Whether the reaction to the omnibus nature of my right hon. Friend's statement is real or stimulated, ought not the Leader of the House to consider coming to some arrangement by which proper priority can be given to the various subjects that have to be reported upon? I hold views different from those of my right hon. Friend about general policy connected with the Treaty of Rome, but I feel that now that we are in the Community it should be discussed sensibly. The sourness of the exchanges every time we have a statement can only detract from that and is not in the best interests of the eventual outcome or of the House.
Mr. Davies: I applaud my hon. Friend's fair and reasonable statement. It will, I hope, prove to be an improvement to our general arrangements when a response is made by the Government to the Select Committee's proposals, and I know that my right hon. Friend intends to afford time for a debate on the matter before Christmas.
Mr. Lawson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, together with a small group of my hon. Friends from this side of the House, I recently visited Brussels
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and was very much impressed with the obvious intelligence and dedication of the British team there, both the civil servants and those employed by the Commission? Almost universally we found the team dedicated to the work of the Community but, equally, we found continuing doubt and disappointment that the building up of the parliamentary side of the European institutions had lagged so far behind. Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to do all that he can both to build up what exists there and to persuade some of my right hon. and hon. Friends that they, too, should participate in these institutions?
Mr. Davies: I think that the hon. Gentleman is right, and I am grateful to him for saying what he said about the officials in Brussels. They have an extremely onerous task to perform, and they discharge their duties with admirable competence.
With regard to the parliamentary aspects of the problem, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that certain measures are now being considered for improving the position and strengthening the powers of the European Parliament, and I favour the extension of the improvements as fast and as far as possible.
Mr. Shore: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider carefully the suggestion that has been made about the frequency and orderliness of his reports back to the House? If we sound slightly angry at times during the exchanges, very often it is due to, or at any rate is helped by, the frustration that we feel at receiving such enormously lengthy statements and not being able to get at them in the way that we feel we have a duty to do. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will give that further consideration.
Finally, will the right hon. Gentleman give us a firm promise that, as far as it lies within his power, because of the timetable to which we are working, and because so many of these matters have to be resolved and come into effect by 1st January 1974, he will do all that he can to ensure that we get proper time to consider and probe these matters?
Mr. Davies: I think that the situation will be helped by any steps which it is decided should be taken as a result of the Select Committee's report, and I shall welcome the changes that will take place.

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The right hon. Gentleman referred to the length of my statement running into seven pages. Perhaps I may tell him that they are fairly short pages consisting of rather large type. It was not a very long statement.
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: If I may make a comment, I wish that this statement had been made on a day when there was not another statement to the House. We have been going for one hour and five minutes since the end of Question Time. There are important matters to be debated, and I cannot allow any more time of the House to be taken up by questions on the statement.
Dr. Dickson Mabon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I recognise your difficulty, but between now and 14th December there is to be a series of meetings, all of which in themselves merit statements to the House. I have every sympathy with both Front Benches, but I hope that you, as the protector of backbench Members will impress upon the usual channels that the situation that has arisen today should not be allowed to recur.
Mr. Speaker: I have expressed my view.

WELFARE SERVICES (PETROL)
Mr. Pavitt: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration; namely,
"the breakdown of many services for the mentally handicapped, disabled and welfare groups served by local authorities and voluntary organisations through failure to get petrol for the vehicles used."
I do not do this lightly. I have been in the House since 1959, and this is the first occasion on which I have sought to have a debate under Standing Order No. 9. The matter is factual and specific because what has happened is that, because of the cut in petrol supplies,
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people who need to be conveyed to sheltered workshops are able to go to work for only three days a week instead of five. Those who are disabled and in open employment are having extreme difficulty in getting to work, and this affects not only the disabled themselves but also their families and the arrangements that are necessary for the care of these people.
The matter is important because of the effect that this is having on the livelihood and health of these unfortunate citizens. One accepts that the disabled and mentally handicapped are a minority of the community, but it is the responsibility of this House to protect their interests.
I am seeking leave to move the Adjournment of the House because, although I was grateful for what the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said today about trying to provide special facilities as speedily as possible, it is my view that that will be impossible unless the House has an opportunity to consider all the factors involved.
There are many different points that need to be considered in relation to the mentally handicapped, the disabled and those who need help from the social services, and in particular the emergency services which are statutory under the Mental Health Act. After 5 p.m. and at weekends mental health officers must be able to act quickly and get to where their help is needed. I therefore ask that this democratic assembly should have the opportunity to grapple with these problems at the earliest possible opportunity.
Mr. Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving me notice of his intention to make this application.
I have listened carefully to what the hon. Member said, and I have had regard to what took place earlier this afternoon at Question Time. I appreciate the anxieties and problems involved, but I cannot allow a debate under Standing Order No. 9.

COMPLAINT OF PRIVILEGE
Mr. Speaker: Now, at length, I come to my ruling on the matter of privilege.
Yesterday the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) drew attention to a speech made by the Lord Chancellor at the Junior Carlton Club on Monday last. The right hon. Gentleman based his complaint on a Press handout from the Lord Chancellor's Office, House of Lords, and a report of the speech in The Times, together with a judicial process signed and witnessed by the Lord Chancellor.
I have carefully considered all these documents and the other points made in the submission to the House yesterday. It is, of course, the duty of the House to deal with reflections upon the Chair or upon Members which may tend to undermine public respect for the House as an institution. It is my duty as Speaker, after considering the precedents, to decide whether I should give the matter priority over the Orders of the Day to allow an immediate debate this afternoon.
I have looked at those precedents very carefully, and, in particular, I have considered the case raised on 23rd March 1964, on which the Committee of Privileges reported on 16th June of the same year. It is my view that I would not be justified, on those precedents, in giving priority to a debate this afternoon.
Having said that, I in no way wish to prejudice or prejudge an further action the right hon. Gentleman may want to take.
Mr. C. Pannell: Thank you very much for your ruling, Mr. Speaker. I know the extreme difficulty you are in when you are commenting on matters arising from a speech made by the Speaker of the other House. That is the difficulty I face. We are dealing with the Speaker of the House of Lords, with the Lord Chancellor. We are really dealing with a judge in his own right.
Consequently, the Leader of the House will have to consider the matter, because you cannot, Mr. Speaker, give a prima facie ruling which goes back only to 1934—[An HON MEMBER: "It was 1964."] It is to 1934 that the prima facie business goes back. The hon. Gentleman
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should do his homework. You cannot give a prima facie case which goes back only to 1934. Mr. Speaker, as would have been the case if it had been any other Member.
It will not have escaped your notice, Mr. Speaker, although I did not make too much of the matter yesterday, that apart from the insult to you and your authority the Lord Chancellor threatened those about to take part in the debate by calling on the
"voters of the country to note the identity of the Members concerned, to note the party to which they belong, to sound the alarm, and ask the moderates and constitutionalists of every party and of none to stand together against any constitutional innovation of this kind."
It was not a constitutional innovation.
The Lord Chancellor's speech was not made in a post-prandial fit of exuberance but had been released to the Press earlier in the day, embargoed for nine o'clock. It was a threat to Members of this House with malice aforethought, and was repeated on television.
Another point I ask you to note, Mr. Speaker—
Mr. Speaker: Order. If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me for interrupting, may I say that I think he knows already, with his great experience, that when I have given my ruling he is not entitled to make the kind of speech he would make if a motion he had put down were given time for discussion.
Mr. Pannell: I am only making a further submission to you, Mr. Speaker.
When we ask you to consider a matter for 24 hours, most of us hold our peace. I had no idea what you would say today. But the Lord Chancellor has not held his peace. He went on television again last night. How long will this go on?
Since yesterday the matter has been sub judice. A judge of the High Court should have recognised the decencies between the Speaker of one House and the Speaker of another, but they have not prevented the Lord Chancellor from doing what he has done.
The Lord Chancellor referred to the conduct of hon. Members as not decent, which is an insult in itself. When asked whether it was for the Commons to

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determine whether or not he was acting properly, he said:
"It is not for the Commons; it is for my conscience to say."
The Lord Chancellor sets himself up against you, Mr. Speaker, against the House and everybody.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I cannot give you just the polite thanks that I should like to give you, because the offence has been perpetuated. The Lord Chancellor sets himself up against this place, and goes on like that.
I understand the situation with regard to the timetable this afternoon, but the Commons will be forced to return to the matter. The decencies of the House will force the Leader of the House to move the motion which is appropriate in this case, That the evidence be collected and submitted to their Lordships' House.
Mr. Michael Foot: Further to the point of order raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), Mr. Speaker, may I make a further submission to you?
Although we understand that you have ruled on the narrow question of the prima facie contempt of the House as it was raised yesterday, it seems to me that allied with the submission made yesterday, and emphasised by your ruling today, is the fact that the proceedings of the House will be gravely injured by the Lord Chancellor's remarks if nothing further is done about them and if you give no further ruling.
It appears that we have a Lord Chancellor who makes up the rule of law and the rules as he goes along to suit his own convenience, and who can make speeches about the affairs of this House and cast reflections on Members of this House in any way he wishes.
If the Lord Chancellor is entitled to do that, in the House of Lords or anywhere else, Members of this House must surely be relieved of the convention, which we have always respected, that we should not cast reflections upon Members of the other House. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I submit that it is your business to rule again on the matter tomorrow, to tell us whether the rules and conventions which have always prevailed between Members of different Houses are now suspended, and whether we are entitled to comment
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on the antics of the Lord Chancellor in the same offensive language as he has used about us.
Sir Harmar Nicholls: You should be under no illusion, Mr. Speaker, that the submission carries with it the view of the majority of Members of this House, it is clearly simulated. The Lord Chancellor is a Member of Parliament; the Lords is part of Parliament. As a senior Minister, the Lord Chancellor has a duty to warn the nation if he thinks that it should be warned. He has not infringed the rules of either House. He did not make the statement in the other place. He would be running away from his duty if he remained silent in the face of what is happening on our Order Paper.
Mr. English: We all accept your ruling, Mr. Speaker, upon what was a narrow point, the matter of priority. But we wish an opportunity to try to explain to his Lordship, the Speaker of another place, that what our ancestors did in 1688 was to transfer the possibility of dismissal from the Crown to this Parliament.
I suggest with all humility that his Lordship, who is regarded as rather conservative in his views, should not cast aspersions on this House, well knowing if he does so that his own House has regarded privilege as defunct since the latter part of the eighteenth century, so that he cannot be challenged in his own House because its Members regard such a challenge as archaic.
Mr. Orme: When you were considering the evidence presented to you, Mr. Speaker, did you consider that the matter might be sent to a Joint Committee of Privileges, which I understand would have to be a Joint Committee of the Lords and Commons? The matter could then be examined in some detail. Secondly, have representations been made to you by the Leader of the House? Many of us feel that it is his duty to defend hon. Members, and he has not done so in this case. We are entitled to an explanation.
Mr. William Hamilton: Did your ruling take into account what the Lord Chancellor said on television last night, Mr. Speaker? Clearly, that must influence your decision one way or the other. If the Lord Chancellor has compounded what we think was a grave

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error of judgment, we shall regard him, and say so in the House, as just a rather expensive party-political hack.
Sir. S. McAdden: There are some of us in the House, Mr. Speaker, who believe that the original motion which appeared on the Order Paper signed by a large number of Members, which has given rise to the subsequent discussion, is worthy of comment. Some of us believe that this matter should be debated in the House. It seems that the original motion was put down in the optimistic hope of its being regarded as an expression of opinion without its giving rise to a debate. There are some of us who believe that it should be debated and refuted at the earliest possible opportunity.
Mr. Jay: Whether or not we debate this matter, Mr. Speaker, will you give us guidance as to what is the proper constitutional procedure for the House if the Lord Chancellor is guilty of a breach of constitutional practice and the rule of law?
Mr. Speaker: I shall try to deal with these points so far as I think that it is appropriate for me to do so.
First, I do not think that I myself have used the prima facie formula. I have regarded my duty to say whether or not I will give priority to the matter. I think that if one says that one accepts a case as being a prima facie case, it implies a judgment on my part on the merits. I have always looked on the duty of the Chair as being to decide whether to give priority to the matter raised. I have said nothing about the wisdom or otherwise of its being debated on another day.
With regard to the position of the Chair on matters of order, I will not accept orders on that from anyone. That has been the position of the Chair of this House for centuries now, whether the orders have come from the Crown, from another place or from anyone. Matters of order are entirely for me, and what I say with regard to matters of order goes, until the House reverses my decision. That is where I stand.
With regard to matters of taste and the wisdom of people saying what they say in a speech or a Question or an Answer, I have tried to be very careful
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throughout my time in the Chair not to be drawn into commenting. That is why I have not commented at all on what has been said by anyone during this particular controversy.
Concerning the position between this House and a Member of the House of Lords, I think that it is stated in Eskine May that an imputation should not be made to the conduct or character of a Member of the other place except upon a motion. I say with great respect to those who have edited, or indeed, written that paragraph of Eskine May that I do not think that that passage is altogether clear. But I construe it as really meaning that imputations of a personal nature should not be made as to the conduct or character of a Member of another place except upon a motion. Upon a motion they certainly can be made.
Mr. Foot: Thank you very much for that statement, Mr. Speaker, which we greatly welcome. We were sure, Mr. Speaker that you would say that you would accept orders from no one about what goes on the Order Paper of this House. We hope that that statement from you, Mr. Speaker, will be properly observed henceforth by the Lord Chancellor of this country.
May I comment on your second remark, Mr. Speaker, about imputations being able to be made only by substantive motion? Does not that apply in the other place, as it applies here? If the Lord Chancellor wishes to make imputations against Members of the House of Commons, let him put forward his motion in another place, or wherever it may be. But certainly if we are to be bound by any such rule, the Lord Chancellor also will have to be bound by such a rule. We submit, Mr. Speaker, that the Lord Chancellor, in his statement, has broken the convention which has prevailed between our two Houses, and that if that convention is to be sustained here any longer there will have to be some form of apology from the Lord Chancellor for what he has done.
Mr. Speaker: I have quite enough trouble in trying to keep this House in order. I shall not be drawn into further comment.
Mr. Ashton: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask for your

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advice on a final matter? Would it be in order for hon. Members of this House to put down a motion on the Order Paper criticising the Lord Chancellor's comments?
Mr. Speaker: It is unwise of me to rule on any particular motion until I see the motion. I come back to Erskine May, which says that an imputation may not be made against a Member of another place except by a motion. It is implied from that, that a Member of another place can be criticised by motion. Whether the motion would be accepted would depend on the terms of the motion.
I would be advised by the Table upon that matter, and would deal with it exactly as I would with any other motion presented.

BILL PRESENTED
  PROTECTION OF SHAREHOLDERS BILL
  Sir Brandon Rhys Williams presented a Bill to require certain companies to appoint non-executive directors; to require such directors to make an annual statement to the shareholders; and for purposes connected therewith: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 8th March and to be printed [Bill 44].

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to the Standing Order (Statutory Instruments).
That the Customs Duties and Drawbacks (Revenue Duties) Order 1973 (S.I, 1973, No. 1946) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments.—[Mr. Prior.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to the Standing Order (Statutory Instruments).
That the Customs Duties and Drawbacks (Revenue Duties) (Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey) Order 1973 (S.I, 1973, No. 1947) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments.—[Mr. Prior.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to the Standing Order (Statutory Instruments).
That the Hydrocarbon Oil (Customs Duties) Order 1973 (S.I., 1973, No. 1948) be referred
1298
to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments.—[Mr. Prior.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to the Standing Order (Statutory Instruments).
That the draft Air Corporations (Dissolution) Order 1973 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments.—[Mr. Prior.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to the Standing Order (Statutory Instruments)
That the draft Farm and Horticulture Development Regulations 1973 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments.—[Mr. Prior.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to the Standing Order (Statutory Instruments)
That the Horticulture Capital Grants Scheme 1973 (S.I, 1973, No. 1945) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments —[Mr. Prior.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to the Standing Order (Statutory Instruments)
That the draft Horticulture Improvement (Amendment) Scheme 1973 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments—[Mr. Prior.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to the Standing Order (Statutory Instruments)
That the Farm Capital Grant Scheme (S.I, 1973, No. 1965) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments.—[Mr. Prior.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to the Standing Order (Statutory Instruments)
That the draft Valuation (Statutory Deductions) Order 1973 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments.—[Mr. Prior.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to the Standing Order (Statutory Instruments)
That the draft Transport Boards (Adjustment of Payments) Order 1973 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments.—[Mr. Prior.]
Question agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  CHANNEL TUNNEL BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Mr. Speaker: Before I call the Minister to move the Second Reading, I have to inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) and the names of his right hon. and hon. Friends.
  The Minister for Transport Industries (Mr. John Peyton): I have it in Command from the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Bill, has consented to place her interest, so far as it is affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
  4.55 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Keith Speed): I beg to move. That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The House has debated the Channel tunnel on a number of occasions in recent weeks and months, but since we last discussed it, during the passage of what is now the Channel Tunnel (Initial Finance) Act, there have been major developments. Agreement No. 2 and the Anglo-French treaty have been signed and published, the main contracts for the initial works have been let, and phase 2 is under way.
  The Bill now before the House will provide the powers needed to enable the project to go forward in Britain on the lines agreed. With the treaty and Agreement No. 2 it puts flesh on the bones of the proposals set out in the White Paper, and provides for the construction and operation of the tunnel system.
  I have no wish to go over again in detail the ground covered in our previous debates. Our reasons for believing that it would be right to go ahead with the project were set out in the White Paper and have already been expounded at length from these benches on a number of occasions. Briefly, the project is technically feasible within known technology; it will be financially viable, indeed profitable; it will enable us to
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  provide for our growing cross-Channel traffic both more efficiently and more cheaply than by relying solely on the development of sea and air services; it will provide major opportunities for British Railways to develop through long-haul services, for both passengers and freight, from many points in this country to main centres on the Continent. This will ensure that the project is on balance helpful to our regional policy and certainly less damaging to the environment of Kent and the country as a whole than the alternative ways of providing for the traffic.
  I am glad to learn that the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) now accepts that a rail-only tunnel without provision for vehicle ferry trains would not make sense. I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is absent through sickness today. We all wish him a very speedy recovery from his illness. I think he will now carry many of his right hon. and hon. Friends with him in this further step down the road to Damascus. I should like to make it clear that, although we reject a rail-only tunnel, any practical suggestions for how we can do more to encourage the maximum commercial development of the through rail services to which both the Government and British Railways are deeply committed would be welcome.
  I must say something about the present energy situation. The deliberate policies by the oil supplying countries which may limit supplies and increase prices in advance of the longer-term problems of resource shortages may have two implications for the Channel Tunnel, if sustained over the next few years. Firstly, they may change the balance between the advantages of road and rail—and rail and air—in general. This should have little effect overall on the profitability of the tunnel, which would get more net revenue from through traffic if less than forecast from the ferry service, but any reduction in the ferry traffic flows below the estimates might call for some review of the scale of initial investment in ferry rolling stock and platform construction at the terminals.
  Secondly, any change in the average rate of economic development throughout Europe over the next seven years would affect the growth of cross-Channel traffic of all kinds.

  1301
  These are complex questions, depending on new uncertainties which have arisen in very recent days, and, of course, when the tunnel is open we shall have the major benefit of our own oil from our coasts. All these problems will be examined further during phase 2, in the light of developments. But the general position is clear—the prospect of oil supply difficulties increases the need for the tunnel.
  Against this general background, the Bill makes provision for the powers needed to implement the proposals outlined in the White Paper and set out in the treaty and the agreements. It should be read and considered in the light of them. Some of the vital provisions, for instance that of the 50-50 sharing of obligations and profits between the two Governments, are implicit, not explicit, in the Bill, which could not bind a foreign Government. The Bill is, however, not restricted to the terms of the arrangements so far made, and is in form rather wider in certain respects.
  Perhaps I may now try to lead the House through the rather complex maze of the Bill, avoiding, I hope, any potholes and landmines on the way.
  Part I, together with Schedules 1, 2 and 3, provides the land and works powers needed for the construction of the tunnel. This covers not only the permanent works but certain essential ancillary works and temporary working sites, such as the sidings in the area of Dollands Moor refuse tip needed to make it possible to move all the main tunnel spoil by rail for disposal on the terminal site. Those directly affected can, of course, petition, and their interests will be subject to detailed examination before the Select Committee, but there are a number of general points to which I would like to draw attention.
  The powers to construct the tunnel system are, under Clause 1, conferred on "nominated constructors". As subsection (2) makes clear, these are, in the first place, the British and French Channel Tunnel companies with whom the two Governments have entered into Agreement No. 2. But the definition does leave open the possibility that some other persons might be nominated to carry on the project, for instance if the companies abandoned it. I shall refer to this possibility later in connection with Clauses 33 and 34.
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  The provision in Clause 2 for vesting in the Secretary of State the tunnel under the sea up to the frontier should be read with Clause 24 which provides for its incorporation in the United Kingdom and the definition of the frontier. Clause 3 provides for the acquisition of the land needed for the construction of the tunnel. This is one of the places where the Bill cannot be fully understood without reference to the agreements. The intention is that my right hon. and learned Friend should acquire the land needed for the project. He will make it available to the nominated constructors, who will reimburse him fully under paragraph 8.2.3 of Agreement No. 2, and will when the tunnel is completed pass it on to the British board under Clause 13. The nominated constructors will have no powers of compulsory acquisition, nor will land so acquired ever pass into their ownership, as opposed to use.
  Most of the supplementary provisions in Clauses 3 and 4 and Schedule 2 are in standard form, but I would draw attention particularly to subsections (5) and (6) of Clause 4. These make it plain that those adversely affected by disturbance from the works can turn to the Secretary of State for compensation under the Land Compensation Act 1973, and specifically apply to these works the provision of Section 26 of the Act. This will give us power to buy properties the enjoyment of which is seriously affected by the works even if none of the land is actually required for them.
  I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson) and other hon. Members are worried about the position of the rail link. I should add that the Bill does not cover the rail link, for which British Railways will introduce a Bill next Session, but I confirm that the Land Compensation Act will naturally apply to that, too.
  Lastly, in this part of the Bill, Clause 5 deals with planning permission. Under Class XII of the General Development Order deemed planning permission is conferred on works authorised under a local Act. That provision would not bite on this Bill, but it is clearly right that works specifically authorised by Parliament should be allowed to go

  1303
  ahead. Clause 5 therefore makes provision for deemed planning permission for the works. It is, however, clear that the local planning authorities have a very real interest in the layout of the terminal area—the landscaping, parking areas, design of the terminal areas, and so on. So provision is made in subsection (3) for the local planning authorities' approval of the detailed plans and specifications.
  Part II of the Bill provides the powers to implement the financial arrangements now agreed. The general principles were established by the previous administration following the accord reached with the French Government in 1966. The arrangements themselves are summarised in Chapter 11 of the White Paper and set out in the agreements and treaty in great detail.
  Clause 6 is the main provision authorising the giving of guarantees and providing for the sharing of any consequent liabilities with the French Government. Its provisions and those of Clause 7 are similar to those in the Initial Finance Act. The need for the guarantees has been a familiar theme in recent debates, and I hope to remove any misunderstanding.
  If this Bill is passed, the money for the tunnel would be raised from private sources. At least 10 per cent., or about £85 million, would be risk money; the remainder would attract Government guarantees. It is not expected that the guarantees would ever be called, and it is not expected that any net direct public expenditure will be incurred on the tunnel, although there will be public expenditure on the associated rail link. Extensive studies have shown that the tunnel is likely to be a worth while and profitable investment, even on pessimistic assumptions. In recent debates, some hon. Members have taken the line that if this is to be a profitable venture the Governments should not have to back it with guarantees. This shows a misunderstanding of the position. The guarantees are the direct demonstration, in financial terms, that the two Governments are prepared to stand behind the project. No project of this magnitude and character could be successful without the backing of the two Governments concerned. Any sensible investor will
  1304
  know this. And if the Governments are, in fact, to stand behind the project, it is in the general interest for them to provide formal guarantees, because this will allow cheaper financing and, in the end, greater returns to the public purse ensuring that the Governments get the lion's share of the profits.
  Mr. Robert Sheldon: The hon. Gentleman has just made a remarkable statement. He has now said, for the first time, that the reason for the guarantee is to show the Government's interest. The Government could have shown their interest in many more simple ways, the most obvious of which is taking a share of the equity. Why are they trying to hide behind this particular device?
  Mr. Speed: We are not trying to hide behind any particular device. In terms of public expenditure, the sums for the tunnel are being raised, as I have said, in private forms subject to guarantees This seems to us—as it appeared in general terms to the previous administration—to be a sensible way to ensure that at the end of the day the taxpayers—that is, the hon. Gentleman and myself—receive handsome awards from the tunnel while at the same time people who are prepared to put money into the tunnel, as risk capital or guarantee capital, will get a reasonable return.
  Mr. Frederick Mulley: I hope to make a small contribution to the debate later. However, the hon. Gentleman has referred several times to the financial provisions having been agreed under the previous administration with the then French Government. The agreement that was made was only on the outline principle. No agreement was made to build a tunnel, because the evidence was not then available. The previous administration—and I was the last Minister of Transport of that administration—did not agree to any basis of the terms, or the division of the out-turn between private and public funds, and no detailed agreement of figures was made by the previous administration
  Mr. Speed: I would not challenge that. I was talking about the general principles. If the right hon. Gentleman looks at what his right hon. Friend, who was then Prime Minister, and the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) were

  1305
  saying at the time, particularly in 1966, he will certainly see—even accepting that the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson) occasionally puts a point of view which one has to look into carefully to see the precise meaning—that after discussions with the French Government the position was fairly clear. I accept that detailed arrangements for financial measures had not been reached at that time, but I think that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the broad principles and the general method of financing had been agreed.
  Under Clause 6(2) there is a limit of £800 million on the total commitment in respect of guarantees. This sum may be increased by order to £1,000 million, which by virtue of Clause 7(3) must be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. These figures represent the total sums to be guaranteed by the two Governments. But, although these figures have to be spelt out, it is not credible that nugatory expenditure of this size, £400 million to £500 million by each of the two Governments, would ever be incurred. This scale of liability could arise only if the tunnel was built, or nearly built, and then totally abandoned.
  Any earlier abandonment would cost less, depending on how much had been spent at the time, and the scheme has been carefully designed to include one formal break-point in 1975, and to permit any one of the parties to get out at any time. We do not expect anything to go wrong. The tunnel project has been exceptionally well researched. There is no new technology involved. The estimated cost has included provision for contingencies.
  Economically as well as environmentally, the tunnel is the best way of dealing with an escalating traffic problem. Large profits will accrue to the public purse, and these guarantees should be regarded not as potential penalties but as our investment in a worthwhile project.
  Clause 8 would enable the Secretary of State to meet any expenditure incurred in respect of his rights or obligations under the agreements. The obligations relate to the conditions under which the work could come to be abandoned. The rights include the Secretary of State's option to purchase the interests of the nominated constructors if he wishes to pursue the construction of a tunnel after the project has
  1306
  been abandoned and his right under paragraph 4.3.5. of Agreement No. 2 to take up shares in the British and French companies, provided the joint holdings of both Governments in either company do not exceed 33 per cent. of its issued capital.
  The obligations which would arise on abandonment will vary both with the circumstances of the abandonment and with the stage reached in the project. In the event of abandonment by the companies or by the Governments and companies jointly, the Governments would have to meet the outstanding guarantees under Clause 6, but no expenditure would have to be made under Clause 8 except for the obligations in a joint abandonment to purchase the companies' interests at net cost plus interest if the Governments decide to build a rail tunnel without them, or relevant parts of their interests if they proceed with another form of tunnel. This is in paragraph 6.2.5. of Agreement No. 2. Half price would be paid in the event of the Governments proceeding after a companies' abandonment, and for the option to purchase those interests following a joint abandonment whether or not they go ahead. This is in paragraph 6.2.7.
  The arrangements which would apply it the project were abandoned by the Governments during phase 3 are set out in paragraph 6.2.9(ii) of Agreement No. 2. Briefly, the Governments would have to purchase the companies' shares at a price depending on the amount of risk capital raised, the amount raised as shares, and the time at which abandonment occurred.
  Agreement No. 2 also provides, in paragraph 6.2.10, for the possibility that the project might be "abandoned" by the Governments during the remuneration period, on terms set out in paragraph 6.2.10 of Agreement No. 2 based on the market value of the shares as there defined.
  Clause 9 provides for the funds for the acquisition of land and the payment of compensation to be defrayed out of moneys provided by Parliament, and for the corresponding sums reimbursed from the tunnel project funds to be paid into the Consolidated Fund.
  Articles 8 and 9 of the treaty provide for unified control of the management and operation of the tunnel to be exercised by a Channel Tunnel Authority

  1307
  whose members will be drawn from both countries. To avoid certain legal difficulties and complications that would have been involved in setting up a bi-national corporation for this purpose, the device adopted is to establish two national corporations, the British Board and the French Board, whose members, acting together, constitute the authority. The authority acts through the national boards, and the latter are required to comply with the directions given them by the authority. The boards will, each in its own country, represent the authority for legal purposes. This is in Clause 12(2).
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: May I ask, as a matter of curiosity, whether, when this decision about management structure was taken, there were any discussions with the British Aircraft Corporation and others who have had to do with the management of the Concorde project? The Minister will understand that there are interesting issues of management structure in this project.
  Mr. Speed: I cannot say whether there were specific consultations with the British Aircraft Corporation. Certainly many of the workings and international arrangements between Britain and France on Concorde and other issues dating back to the Concorde agreement were taken fully into account in looking at this project since both countries are again involved in a similar joint project. It is fair to say that we have learned certain lessons from Concorde.
  The authority will act through the national boards, and they will be required to comply with the directions given to them.
  Part III of the Bill—
  Mr. Peter Rees: Can my hon. Friend explain one point? He said that the authority will act through the boards. The authority constituted by the boards is almost a Trinitarian concept—two in one and one in two. Is it the case that the boards will have executive functions and will go their separate ways after joint meetings?
  Mr. Speed: "Trinity" is really the word. The authority will act as the head and the boards as the hands in their respective countries. That is perhaps the
  1308
  easiest way of describing it. It is the boards, and I will have more to say about them in a moment, which will be the entities with which the ordinary person will be dealing legally—the British Board for those in this country, the French Board for those in France.
  Part III establishes the British Board, defines its general powers and duties and contains provisions of an administrative and financial nature with respect to the board. The general provisions relating to the board are closely based on those establishing other nationalised transport boards, with due allowance for the bi-national nature of the project, and the minority participation of the private interest. I would, however, draw particular attention to two provisions.
  First, Clause 13, together with the provisions of the agreements on "handover", provides for the transfer to the board of the completed tunnel. In addition, however, subsection (4) of Clause 13 provides that after the transfer any third party suffering personal injury or damage will be able to sue the board, without having to establish which of the various parties involved in the construction of the tunnel was responsible. The board, however, can under subsection (5) recover its costs from whoever was in fact responsible. This should be a real protection to third parties in a situation of considerable complexity.
  Dr. Alan Glyn: I am not quite clear. When the boards have been established, will they be able to decide certain matters? Supposing it is decided, in the interests of both communities, that there should be a much larger electricity line or oil line. Is it within their power to do this or do they have to seek additional powers?
  Mr. Speed: We are coming to this. The British Board is essentially like any other nationalised transport board. From that point of view the boards have the powers, laid out in the Bill in fairly standard form, to do anything which appears to be appropriate or reasonable to them. Coming back to the "head" point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees), they cannot act unilaterally. They should come together under the authority and act in each of the individual countries. If they decided there were certain things that

  1309
  would be appropriate to be done, individually or jointly, this would be possible. There is also overriding control. The Governments have an interest in this, and the authority has to give reports to the Governments and account for them for what it is doing.
  Clause 17 deals with the vital question of the British Government's share of the profits.
  Part IV of the Bill includes a number of miscellaneous and consequential provisions of which perhaps the most notable are Clause 24, providing for the incorporation in the United Kingdom of the tunnel between the three-mile limit and the frontier, and for certain problems of jurisdiction, and Clause 25 dealing with policing, frontier controls, and so on; Clause 29, dealing with railway safety, on which I should perhaps say that the Railways Inspectorate of my Department has been, and will be in close touch throughout with the design and proposed operation of the tunnel; Clause 32, which deals with the taxation of the British Board's share of the receipts of the authority; Clause 38 and Schedule 5, which deal with provisions for protecting the interests of certain affected undertakings; and Clauses 33 and 34, to which I should like to refer in rather greater detail.
  As the House will be aware, the present arrangements can be abandoned at any time by any party. It is possible that the companies might abandon, either deliberately, or through a failure to meet their obligations, in circumstances in which the two Governments wished to continue, either on their own or with new private partners. If the Bill were tied directly to the present arrangements, work would have to come to a dead stop while new arrangements were made and new powers sought. This would greatly increase the cost and difficulty of completing the tunnel. So Clauses 33 and 34 provide a mechanism whereby the project could be kept going in such circumstances, provided an order were laid before the House, and provided that, if the Secretary of State were continuing construction with public money, a further order were laid every six months, unless or until further substantive powers were obtained. These provisions are a safety net which, like all safety nets, we hope and believe will not be needed, but which would be invaluable if it were needed.
  I thank the House for the patience with which it has listened to me on a very complex matter. As I said, this Bill has to be read with the treaty and with Agreement No. 2. But this is a major Bill. The petitions will be fully examined in the Select Committee and the Bill as a whole in Standing Committee. Without it the treaty cannot be ratified, Agreement No. 3 signed or the project carried beyond the present phase.
  Generations have talked about the tunnel, dreamed about the tunnel, argued about the tunnel. There comes a time when the talking has to stop and the aspirations have to be turned into achievements. This Bill is a significant step in doing just that.
  5.22 p.m.
  Mr. Frederick Mulley: The House has had the subject of the proposed Channel Tunnel before it three times within a very limited period of parliamentary time, and it is perhaps inevitable that we should go over some of the old ground again. However, that is in sharp contrast to the extremely limited parliamentary opportunity to discuss the matter before firm decisions were taken, because this Bill is carrying us—as I accept it inevitably must—very much further than the decisions which we took on any of the previous occasions.
  Indeed, in the first—and, in many ways, the most decisive—debate on the White Paper the Secretary of State said that he was really inviting the House only to approve a tunnel in principle. The Channel Tunnel (Initial Finance) Act that followed was limited to endorsement of phase 2—we seem unable to escape this phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3 terminology, which appears to be fashionable in parliamentary draftsmen's circles—and authorised the expenditure of £30 on the necessary exploratory investigation. I apologise for my mistake, because I should have said £30 million. I should be very much happier if the correct figure were £30, but I appreciate that that would be rather too much to ask.
  That tempts me to tell a story which the House may already have heard. When the project was first talked about many years ago, a miner called at the Ministry and offered his services to construct the tunnel. He was asked how he would go about it, and he replied "I

  1311
  will start at one end and my son will start at the other end". They then said to him "Ah, yes. But suppose you do not meet in the middle." He replied, "Well, that is really our worry. You should not worry at all, because if that happened you would get two tunnels for the price of one." So perhaps in those days the tunnel could be thought of in rather smaller terms.
  Today we are asked to take decisions, and, in a sense, we are taking the decision to go on to the final and definitive stage of the construction of the tunnel, because that is the subject matter of the Bill which we are now considering. As the Under-Secretary very fairly said, if this Bill is passed the treaty will be ratified, and, while on the one hand, theoretically, we are committed only to the end of phase 2 in the middle of 1975, I should have thought that if the whole apparatus involved in this Bill were set into operation it would be extremely difficult, no matter what may be the out-turn of the considerations in phase 2, to go back on the completion of the whole enterprise, which I gather from the concluding words of the Under-Secretary is what the Government have in mind. However, we are extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the painstaking and full account of the various clauses of the Bill.
  But I must say why the Opposition cannot support the Bill, and why I shall invite my right hon. and hon. Friends to support the reasoned amendment, if it is moved, and why, if that is not carried, I shall invite them to vote against the Second Reading of the Bill. We shall do so, quite simply, because we are not satisfied that the case has been made out for this tunnel. We are not any more debating the desirability of a Channel Tunnel—if we ever were. We are asked to approve the particular variant set out in very great detail in the White Paper, and now supplemented in further detail by the provisions of the Bill now before us.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) set out in his speech on 25th October the broad philosophy which brings the Opposition to their point of view. I would say on his behalf that he will be extremely grateful for the kind remarks made about his
  1312
  health by the Under-Secretary. I understand that he is making good progress and hopes to be back in the House next week. Certainly, but for his indisposition he would be here for this debate today
  Mr. Peyton: As I understand it, the right hon. Gentleman is saying that he and those who sit with him are not against the tunnel in principle; they are simply against the arrangements which have been made for the tunnel. Is that correct?
  Mr. Mulley: I would put it the other way round. I am saying—because that is the question to which we are asked to address ourselves—that I am against the arrangements which we are called upon to approve. I do not know whether there is any profit in going back to 1966, when the desirability of exploring the possibility of a tunnel was discussed, but once the decision was taken I naturally supported it. But any subsequent decision must depend upon the nature of the scheme that one is asked to approve. Perhaps the Opposition would have taken a different view if the motion put down by the Government on 25th October had been framed in different terms, but it asked us not merely to support a tunnel but to support everything in the White Paper, which I was surprised the Minister himself could do. Certainly, I was surprised that a large number of hon. Members from Kent found themselves able to accept everything in it. But that was the issue before the House. The issue before us today goes much beyond that, because we shall be voting in principle for all that is in this Bill. However, I shall come to that in a moment.
  Mr. Peter Rees: Since the right hon. Gentleman has referred to the Kent Members, and since I have the honour to be one, will he spell out in detail for the benefit of the House, for the benefit of myself and for the benefit of my constituents, so that we may know exactly what are the alternatives before us in Kent, particularly in my constituency, what alternative a Labour administration would propose?
  Mr. Mulley: If the hon. and learned Gentleman will do me the courtesy of listening to what I have to say he will realise that I am concerned not only with the particular form of tunnel but with

  1313
  the priority accorded to the expenditure of the large capital sums involved in the project. We are concerned about the possibility of using that money to provide other things elsewhere in the country. I am not attracted to alternative forms of construction. What we are saying is that in spite of the public relations effort by the Government we are satisfied that this is in essence a "rolling motorway". That is how the White Paper describes it.
  Also, we are by no means convinced that the Government's figures, the whole foundation on which they have made their decision, are sound. We are even more sceptical about the figures because the Government have been unwilling to expose them to public examination. We are also extremely worried about the preemption of resources and the environmental aspects of the project as they affect the people of Kent.
  Before I develop my points, however, there are one or two questions which I should like answered. Assuming that the Bill goes through in the present Session, how is it intended to operate phases 2 and 3 of the scheme? May we have a clear undertaking from the Government that no powers conferred by the Bill will be used to acquire land or to advance the project until the House has taken a firm decision to move from phase 2 to phase 3? Surely the greater part of the powers to be conferred by the Bill will apply only to the actual construction of the tunnel or to the operation of the authority which is to be established. Will the Government continue to acquire land and create environmental problems in preparation for phase 3 without the House having approved the transition to that phase?
  We understand that the British Railways Board will be introducing a Private Bill for its part of the operation. Is that to be presented in the next parliamentary Session of 1974–75, or will it be introduced in the current Session some time next year? As I understood the right hon. Gentleman's statement last week, some railway expenditure will be made in the present parliamentary Session next year before the Bill is introduced. What will be the nature of that expenditure which will be incurred before the Bill has been presented to and
  1314
  approved by Parliament? Will the railway Bill be presented by the Railways Board or will it be a Hybrid Bill similar in character to the one now before us?
  The detailed provisions admirably explained by the Under-Secretary are more appropriate for discussion in Committee, if it is reached, than on Second Reading. We feel obliged to amplify why we feel unable to support the Bill today. We welcome that the project will help the railways, but it will not provide nearly as much help as the ministerial public relations exercise suggests. The revenue forecasts are based on the project being a "rolling motorway" as described in the White Paper. That brings me to the figures on which the Government base their case. Practically every financial commentator has said that if the figures are right there is no need for a Government guarantee, or that, if the guarantee is to be given, the division of profit between private capital and the Government should be changed. In this respect the previous administration made no arrangements about the detailed financing of the project.
  We are led to understand that the final information on which a decision was based became available only a few months ago. Our administration could not possibly have formed a view in 1970 about the viability of the project. Many of these studies had only just begun, and some had not even reached that stage. Although in my time as Minister discussions were proceeding with various financial interests, no scheme was produced and we gave no approval of any basic division between loans and equity or about the basis on which the scheme is now presented. The final financial details were agreed only recently. I make that point to rebut any suggestion that we as an administration gave our approval.
  Anyone with even a modest knowledge of business knows that an agreement in principle to explore the possibility of partnership is one thing and that no such venture is undertaken without knowing not only the basis of that undertaking but how the capital contributions will be shared and how the profits will be divided between the partners. Without answers to those questions any discussion about a partnership would be academic.
  Mr. Peyton: I should like to be clear about what the right hon. Member is

  1315
  saying. Is he suggesting that the present arrangements did not flow naturally from the situation inherited by the Government from the previous administration?
  Mr. Mulley: The principle that the project should be based on capital raised outside the Government certainly flows directly from that. I do not quarrel on that score. We are concerned with private capital and not public expenditure. My argument is that if the Government's figures are correct there is no need to give both the proposed return to private capital and the Government guarantee. That point of view is supported by many commentators. The only conclusion to be drawn, as the Economist and other newspapers have said, is that if private capital is reluctant to go in other than on the terms offered by the Government, it, too, must be dissatisfied with the Government's figures. That is why we doubt the whole basis upon which we are expected to take a decision.
  Already inflation has put certain aspects of the calculations at doubt. Rates of interest have risen enormously, and I doubt whether anyone will predict that they will come down in the period of construction. The rates have risen since the calculations were made, and since then another problem has arisen. I doubt whether anyone took account of the oil difficulties, not only in terms of supply and quantity but also in terms of price. Since the studies were carried out the price of a barrel of oil has increased from one dollar to over three dollars. Those learned in these matters suggest on television that the price might rise to 10 dollars a barrel while construction of the tunnel is in progress. I accept that this does not mean that the same factor has to be applied to the cost of diesel oil or petrol, because, apart from the high costs involved in distribution and refining, a substantial tax element is involved. But I do not think that anyone will deny that the days of plentiful and cheap oil are gone.
  Most people will now take a different view about the number of people who might be sending their goods by road to the Continent in 1980 or who will be going on such a journey by car. There should be at least a few question marks put against the Government's certainty. They ask the House—and their supporters
  1316
  dutifully oblige—for a complete blessing of everything in the White Paper. That was the motion which was passed. Presumably the Government will tell us that the House has made a decision.
  It is wrong that there has been no opportunity to challenge the figures. My right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby put the matter extremely well and showed that some people were concerned in the early days when he said on 25th October:
  "The whole project seems to assume that we shall never want to economise on oil or face a serious shortage of it. In other words, it is based on the economics of five years ago, and not on the likely economics of 10 years hence."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th October 1973; Vol. 861, c. 1511.]
  Nevertheless, the House rejected my right hon. Friend's advice. It was prepared to accept all the details in the White Paper, including the fact that the authority will not be able to discriminate between rail and road users in the event of a conflict arising.
  A letter in today's Financial Times from a gentleman called Mr. Cornish refers to some discussions which that gentleman had with the advisers who drew up the transport cost-benefit study. It seems from that letter that it never occurred to them to test by the usual ways the basis of the revenue forecasts. The four-minute frequency and the one-hour block time of traffic through the tunnel is an exacting target. It seems from the letter that if it is wrong, quite apart from the other doubts which I have raised about inflation, interest rates and the price of oil, the revenues on which we are all gaily going forward will be extremely wrong.
  The Government have suggested that the quantity of literature which has been available and which is so many feet high is adequate. We were laughed out of court when we suggested that it would not have been a bad idea to have had a public inquiry or Select Committee investigation of the substantial evidence which has been compiled. I suggested at the time of Maplin, and I suggest again, that that could well have been achieved by going back to the earlier processes of a Hybrid Bill.
  Prior to 1948 every Hybrid Bill had to go through the complete process of a Private Bill as well as all the stages of

  1317
  a Public Bill. That meant that the Government were treated in the same way as any private promoter, local authority or public board. They had to prove their case to a Select Committee. In other words, they had to prove the sense and the expediency of what they were proposing. In 1948 the then Labour Government thought that that was perhaps an excessive requirement for every Hybrid Bill. A substantial number was going through at that time. A substantial number has come through since. There have been a number of key issues, such as the public ownership of industry. That would be a matter which would be decided by the House rather than by all sorts of people turning up to give evidence before a Select Committee. It was proposed that only in some cases would the promoter—namely, the Government—have to prove their case.
  The then Conservative Opposition voted against the proposition. They said that every Hybrid Bill should be subjected to the test of examination. They said that people should have the opportunity to present their case before a Select Committee and that the Government should have to prove their case like any other promoter. That is why I asked whether the British Rail Bill would be a Hybrid Bill or a Private Bill. I do not think that British Rail should be put through a different hoop from that which the Government are put through. If they are, will it be open to people to test the whole argument of whether we should have a tunnel when the Bill goes through at a later stage? The Government's motion does not give any opportunity for anyone to contest the basic figures. That is made clear in the White Paper, "The Channel Tunnel". In paragraph 13.4 in page 36 of the White Paper it is said:
  "Provided that the Money Bill is passed,"—
  and it has been—
  "the powers required for the construction and operation of the Channel Tunnel will be sought by means of a hybrid Bill which will be brought before Parliament in November this year. This will allow those affected by the construction of the Tunnel to be heard by a Select Committee, as well as providing the normal scope for a full examination of the 'public' provisions of the Bill in both Houses."
  That seems to be a generous gesture on the part of the Government, but they have no alternative. They could not
  1318
  possibly get the Bill through except as a Hybrid Bill. Under the Hybrid Bill procedure those who are affected directly by having works on land which they own or in proximity to where they live will be able to petition against the Bill. However, the substantial body of people concerned with the viability of the project, the nature of the tunnel and the share in the project for British Rail will not be able to test the substantial amount of figures which have been put to us by the usual way of appearing before a committee, the committee having the right to cross-examine and people appearing before it being able to produce witnesses.
  In a matter of this sort it seems only right that the Government should be willing to submit their case to such scrutiny and cross-examination. That will give people an opportunity to test the evidence on which the British public will have to agree to a substantial devotion of resources. The cost of the tunnel will not, unless things go wrong, be borne by public expenditure. However, it will lead to the use of substantial resources during the period of construction. In the next few years, possibly as a result of the oil problem or for other reasons such as a substantial recession, we could have substantial regional problems. The injection of the kind of capital about which we are now talking could make an enormous difference to the well-being and development of certain regions.
  It will be said, as it was said about Concorde, that we are committed and with such a level of resource use we cannot possibly agree to certain proposals. In the light of that argument, and in the light of environmental problems, my right hon. and hon. Friends have grave doubts about whether it is right to agree to take a further step from what has already been done.
  I am not clear about what will happen during the planning procedures. I understand that if an Act is passed the projects under it will be deemed to have planning permission. I understand the Under-Secretary of State to say that the normal planning procedures will apply to the details of the scheme. What is the situation if there is a conflict, if local authorities will not agree to any of the Government's schemes?
  Mr. Speed: I presume the right hon. Gentleman is referring to matters such as

  1319
  terminals and parking. If there is conflict, it falls to the Secretary of State to determine, and it might lead to a public inquiry.
  Mr. Mulley: So the Secretary of State, who is the promoter, will also decide, in the event of local authorities not being willing to go along with detailed plans that he wants.
  Mr. Speed: The right hon. Gentleman knows better than that. This is exactly the same situation as applied in the case of road schemes when he was Minister of Transport. There is an independent inspector, but at the end of the day someone has to take a decision and answer to Parliament.
  Mr. Mulley: We might as well be straight about this. In fact, the local authority's rôle will be largely advisory, in the same way as the Government accept the responsibility for a road scheme. If a local authority does not like a scheme, it may well go to public inquiry and object, but the Secretary of State has to take the responsibility. It would not be the first time, of course, if the report of an inspector at a local planning inquiry were not accepted by the Secretary of State. It has certainly happened under the present Government. I am not sure whether it happened under the Labour Government, but it could well have done. I want to get it clear that the say, both on the principle and in detail, will be that of the Secretary of State, and, while we are right to involve the local authorities, we should not suggest that they are really taking any part in the planning procedures.
  Mr. Peyton: The right hon. Gentleman is—I am sure not willingly or intentionally—misleading the House, and is perhaps tying himself into knots. There is nothing sinister about this. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has pointed out, the normal planning procedures will be followed if there is a public inquiry. To say that the Secretary of State is judge and jury in his own case is wrong.
  Mr. Mulley: But this case is rather different from the normal planning problems because the Secretary of State is the promoter—if not directly, then
  1320
  through the agency of the constructors. This is certainly a matter we shall want to explore very fully when we reach Part III of the Bill in Committee. It may well be that we shall learn a good deal from the hon. Members representing constituencies in the area. I imagine that they will seek to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker. I would not base our objections on the details of the Bill, because they are very complicated and will need careful study. I hope that the details will receive careful scrutiny by the Select Committee—I expect that it will receive petitions—and then the Standing Committee will be responsible for examining them.
  We base our objection on the nature of the scheme and the pre-emption of resources which it represents at a time when it has to be looked at against the background of the oil dispute, which I suspect—I hope I am wrong—is not just a short-term but a long-term problem. We have to ask whether this is the kind of thing we should rush on with as though nothing had happened since these studies were begun back in 1966.
  Mr. A. P. Costain: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the very proper point put by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees)? When is the right hon. Gentleman going to give the Labour Party's advice to Kent?
  Mr. Mulley: I explained this in our previous debate. The hon. Member must accept responsibility for what he does here for his own constituency. He must not seek to push the blame on the Labour Party. I am here only to explain our attitude to a proposal put by the Government. It is a matter for the Government, and if the hon. and learned Gentleman votes with the Government, as is his normal practice and intention, it is no use his trying to push responsibility on to the Labour Party and saying that it was all to do with something said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) in 1966.
  Mr. Peter Rees: I can make up my own mind on how to vote, but it would assist me to know what the alternatives are. This is an important question to my constituents, but I am left in total doubt

  1321
  about what the Labour Party's intentions would be when it was responsible, as the Government, for the Channel Tunnel. Although the right hon. Gentleman has made criticisms, justified or otherwise, of the tunnel which the present Government are supporting, we are left in total doubt as to what kind of tunnel he would be supporting if he were Minister now. It is a question of what alternatives there would be. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken in general terms about the tunnel, but has left us in doubt as to what kind of tunnel the Opposition would support.
  Mr. Mulley: I can put the issue clearly. If I were now in a position to take this kind of decision, I should not be recommending to the Government and the House that we proceed with the present tunnel plan as composed, or at this moment in time with any tunnel plan at all.
  5.57 p.m.
  Mr. Alexander Fletcher: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to address the House for the first time. I appreciate very much the warm welcome I have received from hon. Members on both sides of the House and from those who have no particular side to sit on.
  I have received a great deal of advice. The House may be interested in one letter which came my way from a former very distinguished Member of the House, who gave me the following advice:
  "It is very hard to be a good Member of Parliament. There are no rules and all the helpful advice is bad. It is bad to be too independent and worse to be too subservient. But which is what?"
  Perhaps when I learn the answer to that question I may be able to address the House on a future occasion.
  I want at once to pay tribute to my predecessor, now the Duke of Buccleuch, still better known as Johnnie Dalkeith. He has a great sense of duty and is regarded with great affection in the constituency, as I am sure he is by this House. In recent years, his example of courage was not just a demonstration of those qualities which his friends knew he possessed. It was an example to all of us. He gives great encouragement to thousands of people whom he has never met. He was a very honourable Mem-
  1322
  ber of this House, and he is a very honourable man.
  North Edinburgh was once reputedly a lawyers' constituency, but I hope we are moving away from the idea of pocket burghs, whether for lawyers or for those who belong to other trade unions. I am a citizen, but not a native, of Edinburgh. I am from the West of Scotland. But I went to Edinburgh, as to here, as a capital city. That is Edinburgh's greatness. It is a capital, and it is a European city in which there is a rich diversification of Scottish experience in law and commerce, banking and insurance, in brewing and in whisky and in government. Edinburgh is a financial centre in its own right. It is investing in North Sea oil, which is bringing great benefit to Scotland, as it will to Britain—and, clearly, the sooner the better.
  It may seem rather strange that a Scottish Member should open his parliamentary account on a Bill about South-East England, but, although we Scots rightly demand investment in Scotland, we recognise also the strength of the Union and the benefit it brings to our economy and to our culture. The importance and significance of this were reaffirmed recently by the Kilbrandon Commission on the Constitution, and, of course, the Scottish representation in this House constitutes, to a figure of 97 per cent., those who, like myself, were elected on a United Kingdom ticket.
  But this Bill is just as important to Scotland as it is to South-East England. It would, of course, be better still if the link were from Leith to Hamburg, but I am a realist and I can accept the physical constraints, although I shall attempt to argue the regional case. It is accepted as a matter of general principle that projects such as the Channel Tunnel, Maplin or the railway network cannot be considered in isolation. They form part of a national transport policy which should, for example, pay as much attention to Scotland's links with Europe as to a third London airport.
  Not surprisingly, it is the regional implications of the Bill that are my particular interest, for regional policy and the location of industry are much influenced by the availability of good communications. I look to the Channel Tunnel as a contribution to regional

  1323
  policy; so, too, does the Scottish Association for Public Transport, which has issued a statement to this effect. If we can make it substantially easier to travel between all parts of Britain and Europe we shall, in effect, bring Scotland, Wales and the northern regions of England closer to the centre of economic and social activity. That could ease many of the problems, both real and imagined, that are part of the feeling of being on the periphery, of being out on a limb and remote from the centres of decision. This is not an EEC matter, for with or without the Common Market our regional policies should aim at the time when subsidies and special incentives become unnecessary, as distances and economic differences diminish through good communications. Last week's announcement by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries on the future of British Rail was an important contribution to our national transport policy, and the Channel Tunnel is another.
  Airport policy is equally important, and in this respect the September White Paper, "The Channel Tunnel", may already be out of date. In paragraph 10.3 there is a brief reference to Maplin and the tunnel:
  "The development of Maplin will have no appreciable effect on the traffic forecast for the tunnel since the Maplin traffic would otherwise pass through other London airports."
  There are two points here. First, the fuel crisis has put even greater emphasis on rail travel, and, as these services develop, shorthaul air journeys are likely to prove less attractive. Secondly, many people now prefer rail for journeys of up to 200 miles, and with the Channel Tunnel and improved rail services many people may prefer rail for journeys of 400 miles or more. That would bring Glasgow, Edinburgh and many European cities within a few hours' rail journey of London, with a consequent reduction in the number of aircraft using the London airports system. It seems, therefore, that the construction of the tunnel, the improvement of rail services and the need to conserve fuel could have a considerable effect on the air traffic forecasts mentioned in the White Paper Maplin may still be required as an environmental alternative to Heathrow, but that is a matter for debate at another time.
  1324
  I was surprised that in considering the regional implications of the tunnel the White Paper did not refer to provincial airports, for, if the Channel Tunnel and a revitalised rail network affect the volume of air traffic in London, airports in other parts of the country may be similarly affected. The truth is that we have too many provincial airports, with the result that few provide an adequate service other than to London. In considering a national transport policy we should remedy this by moving from a policy of city airports to one of regional airports. That is particularly necessary in central Scotland, where Prestwick, Abbotsinch and Turnhouse compete un-economically for domestic and international air services.
  The White Paper estimates that the tunnel should be completed by 1980. That gives British Rail only six years to provide fast through services from Scotland and the north of England to Europe. What we must not have is the usual situation in which direct services will start from London in 1980, from Manchester about five years later and from Scotland 10 years after that. It is as a significant contribution to regional policy that the Bill matters, and British Rail has to prove, and prove quickly, that it can rise to the challenge that the Bill presents. Perhaps another way in which my right hon. Friend could make clear that the tunnel will benefit the whole country is in Part III, which deals with the setting up of a British Channel Tunnel Board. It is important that the board should right from the start represent regional interests, and I hope that in winding up my right hon. Friend will show his willingness to do that. The same considerations apply to the consultative committee, whose interests should extend beyond South-East England.
  The project will bring its own environmental problems, and I hope that my right hon. Friends will make sure that any public inquiries which are held will be more than just exercises in public participation. It is terribly important that when an inspector supports the views of objectors following a public inquiry those findings should not be overturned by the responsible Minister unless he makes it abundantly clear that no possible alternative exists.

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  It is generally accepted that in terms of technology and engineering the Channel Tunnel is within proved experience and does not require the courage and faith that were necessary for some of the great engineering projects of the last century. The Caledonian Canal, the Forth Bridge and Brunei's Thames Tunnel stretched the technology of their time, but that is not the case here. Of course there are many difficult technical problems, but if modern technology can extract oil from the North Sea in extremely difficult conditions it can build a Channel Tunnel.
  The project that is presented in the Bill has been with us for a long time—almost as long as has the Irish question. I noticed in a recent issue of New Scientist a reference to this:
  "We are of the opinion that it is not an unreasonable proposition to drive a tunnel under the Channel, but that in some measure it must be a venture."
  The New Scientist points out that that is a quotation from the magazine Nature of 20th January 1870. The caution that we have shown by waiting more than a hundred years to make the plunge is evidence of our desire not to rush our courtship with Europe, but at least we can claim that the physical union has not preceded the marriage, as that ceremony took place in Brussels some time ago.
  Although I am a newcomer to Parliament, I am not a newcomer to London and London attitudes. I know that the average person in this part of the world considers that parochialism is a disease that starts north of Watford. Sometimes I think that the opposite view may be more appropriate, and that is why I have tried to stress the importance of the regional implications and the effect of the Bill on regional policies.
  6.8 p.m.
  Mr. Graham Tope: I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
  "this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which provides for substantial public expenditure and guarantees at a time when such large-scale projects should be reconsidered, which contains provisions that will exacerbate the long-term nature of the energy crisis, and which will cause widespread environmental disruption to South-East England."
  1326
  I am pleased to have the opportunity of congratulating the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Alexander Fletcher) on his maiden speech. It is still less than a year since I made my maiden speech, so I know only too well, and better than many hon. Members, how he must feel to have it behind him. Speaking as a London Member who does not take such a parochial attitude I am very much in agreement with the hon. Gentleman's remarks about a national transport policy and public inquiries. Perhaps there is some measure of agreement between us although we are on different sides of the House, and I look forward to hearing his words of wisdom on other occasions.
  In the debate on the White Paper on 25th October I said that the Liberal Party supported in principle the concept of a Channel tunnel. As the Liberal Party has long advocated closer and better links with Europe I could hardly do otherwise. I also said that the Liberal Party could not accept particular proposals detailed in the Bill and that we favoured what has come to be known as the rail-only link. I gave the reasons in that debate and, inevitably, as the right hon. Member for Sheffield Park (Mr. Mulley) said, to some extent we are bound to repeat ourselves today. It is the concept of the "rolling motorway" to which we Liberals object. I appreciate that this concept comprises only part of the proposals, but it is the part to which we most object. Nothing that has come forward in the last six weeks has caused us to change our minds on this proposal and, indeed, subsequent events have confirmed this view.
  The Liberal amendment details our three major objections to this Bill. The first relates to financial guarantees. In the debate on the Channel Tunnel White Paper in October hon. Members on both sides of the House questioned the need for such guarantees. The Minister for Transport Industries made no reference to this point when he replied to that debate. Therefore, I was grateful to the hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary of State for today spelling out the Government's reasons for providing these guarantees. However, I am still not entirely convinced. If the figures produced by the economic consultants in terms of the high profit levels expected are correct, then there should be no need for guarantees.

  1327
  Surely the Government can declare their good faith without committing the taxpayer to a possible expenditure of as much as £500 million.
  I wonder why there is any need for these guarantees. If the tunnel is expected to make such a profit why do we have to guarantee this investment? The project has been presented as a commercial investment. That is fair enough, and we have no objection to commercial interests being involved nor to their building the Channel Tunnel nor to their making a profit, provided that the profit is reasonable—but if the companies are to enter into this activity as a commercial matter, surely they should bear the risks involved.
  If the Channel Tunnel were presented to us on social and environmental grounds—and those grounds exist—then there would be a justifiable argument for pro viding guarantees, but the case has not been made out on those grounds but on commercial grounds. We do not believe that at present those guarantees should be made to fall upon the taxpayer. Either the private forecasts which have been put forward are right, in which case there is no need for the guarantees, or those forecasts are wrong. If they are wrong we should be told in what way they are wrong.
  It is misleading to suggest that at some time in the future we can withdraw from this project. Once the guarantees have been made they are just as binding as any clause in any treaty, and huge sums will have been committed. At a time when we are talking about cuts in public expenditure, we should consider the situation carefully before we embark on a scheme which will cost the taxpayer a considerable amount of money.
  I turn to the energy question—which at present is exercising everybody's mind. It seems to me remarkable that it is only in the last two months that the Government have come even to consider the energy question in relation to this project, and to other projects which we are not debating today. This problem has been accentuated by recent events, but it existed earlier and did not just happen. It is not a problem which necessarily will be solved in a period of 10 years; it is a
  1328
  long-term problem and should be looked at on a long-term basis.
  The profitability of the project depends entirely on the high diversion rate of accompanied-passenger traffic from the ports to the tunnel. The forecasts are unrealistic in the first place because they did not take proper account of the continuing competition from sea ferries. Nevertheless, the calculations were based on the assumption that oil and petrol would continue to be cheap and plentiful—an assumption which today nobody would make.
  Mr. Dalyell: I am a little confused by the hon. Gentleman's argument. He said that energy is a long-term problem. If that is so, is there not a powerful argument for a rail tunnel?
  Mr. Tope: Indeed, and that is the main reason why we are in favour of a rail-only tunnel and not a tunnel which will increase the amount of traffic using petrol and oil. It is the reason why we object to the present proposals. We know without doubt that in future oil will not be cheap or plentiful, as any London Member of Parliament will know at present.
  In the last debate on this subject I questioned whether, if petrol were to cost, say, £2 a gallon, holidaymakers would still be prepared to take their cars to the Continent for touring holidays rather than to take, say, package holidays in Majorca. Six weeks ago people might have thought that remark somewhat unrealistic, but I wonder how many people today would be prepared to say that by the time the tunnel is built petrol will not cost as much as £2 a gallon. People are already talking about petrol costing £1 a gallon in the New Year. If fuel is to be so expensive, will people still be prepared to take their cars on holiday with them, or will holiday traffic still remain of the same nature? Will so much freight still be carried by road? These are important factors which the Government must note and to which they must give urgent consideration.
  An energy commission should have been established to review energy resources and to evaluate large-scale projects such as the Channel Tunnel, Maplin and so on. It is vital that we should begin to look for other sources of energy

  1329
  and ensure that they are developed. We cannot continue to rely on diminishing fossil fuels. This might be the time at which to resurrect all the research carried out on the feasibility of a Channel dam. I am not advocating this idea in this debate, and I do not think that this is the time to go into details. I am only saying that considerable research has already been done into the feasibility of a Channel dam. Recent estimates have shown that the electricity generating capacity of tidal flow in the Channel would provide enough electricity to power, light and heat the whole of Europe. This is the sort of imaginative thinking—perhaps this is not the time to debate it—which we must adopt if we are to get to grips with the continuing energy problem.
  Mr. Dalyell: It is all very well for the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Tope) to float ideas for Channel dams and similar ideas. If he had joined the team which visited the barrage at Brest two years ago, he might well have taken the same view as that taken by some hon. Members, namely, that such operations on the coast are exceedingly expensive. To suggest that the making of a Channel dam will reduce public expenditure is no way out of the situation.
  Mr. Tope: I am not anxious in this debate to pursue the argument about a Channel dam. I merely say that estimates have been made that the cost of a Channel dam would be £1,000 million to £1,500 million. We should consider the return created by such a project in the generation of electricity. However, I do not think we should spend too much time pursuing that topic. I was merely using it as an illustration of the sort of imaginative thinking which we should now be using.
  I turn to the question of environmental disruption in the whole of South-East England, particularly in Kent. I am aware that a number of Kent Members are present in the Chamber. If our idea of a rail-only system is accepted the Cheriton terminal could be dispensed with. The Cheriton terminal and its associated works must cause severe intrusions on the landscape. However carefully the landscaping is done the terminal will be an intrusion on the landscape, and it must be remembered
  1330
  that this is a designated area of outstanding beauty. However well it is done, inevitably it will cause disruption to the landscape and the environment of the area.
  We accept that some road improvements are necessary in Kent. Many are overdue, as I am sure all hon. Members representing Kent constituencies will agree. But the Government have now accepted that the emphasis should be on transferring freight from road to rail as much as possible, and we all accept that emphasis. However, the Cheriton terminal will mean a considerable increase in freight traffic on Kent roads, and already we have it reported that the M20 will require to be doubled in size to cope with the increased traffic. What is more, it is not just traffic which will be generated on the main roads but that which will be generated on side roads as well.
  We see already beginning a large increase in the number of depots, warehouses and other industrial developments taking place in Kent, all bringing more traffic. If this development takes place off the main roads, the traffic has to go from the development to the main roads. Already developers are moving into Kent. I quote from an item which appeared in The Times on 8th October:
  "The South-East, in what might be called the Channel Tunnel sphere of influence, is proving attractive to industrial developers. For instance Property Security Investment Trust has gained planning permission to build about 100.000 sq. ft. of warehouses and industrial units giving on to the A20."
  In view of this, what real assurances can we possibly have that planning controls will be effective? If development in Kent can be controlled, one is tempted to ask why it is not being controlled?
  Mr. John Wells: May I point out to the hon. Gentleman that the bulk of this development around the M20 and linking it to the M20 is there already and that, whether or not the Chunnel comes, if this Bill falls, the increased lorry traffic is there already? The Channel ports are already bogged down. Of course we want the M20 improved and doubled in size. It is only a two-track road now, and we want it turned into a three-track or four-track road.
  However, the main point which I wish to put to the hon. Gentleman is that the

  1331
  most unattractive, ill-planned item of this development is the personal property of Mr. Stanley Blow, my former Liberal opponent, and therefore, a very large financial contributor to the hon. Gentleman's party.
  Mr. Tope: I am interested to hear that he is a considerable financial contributor to my party. I was not aware that we had any.
  I accept, of course, that freight traffic is increasing. What I am saying is that it will increase still further if the terminal at Cheriton is built. We are saying that a rail-only link would help not to reduce the amount of freight traffic necessarily but certainly to slow down the inevitable increase in this freight traffic.
  I return to the point that I was making before that rather lengthy intervention. It seems to us that for environmental, economic and numerous other reasons a rail-only link is the best alternative. We think that it can be seen as part of a national transport policy to which the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North referred and as an excellent opportunity for reinvigorating the British Railways system, which I believe the Minister now favours.
  Finally, I turn to another point made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North. We believe that there should be the fullest possible public participation in the planning of this scheme, and I stress the word "public". When I last spoke on this subject a number of Government supporters insisted that there had been considerable consultation, participation and so on. Since that debate numerous people have written to me from Kent—not all of them Liberals—saying that there has been little public consultation in the planning of the scheme and that they have found it extremely difficult to get information in terms which they can understand. I am told that they have had very little opportunity to make known their views and to question the assumptions being made and the figures being produced. I am not convinced that this problem will be dealt with adequately by the Select Committee which the Government have appointed. It will accept objections from people directly affected by the scheme, but it will give no opportunity to people not directly affected by it to express their views and reservations
  1332
  and to question all the assumptions and figures produced by the Government. For that reason I still believe that an independent inquiry is necessary.
  When we last debated the matter, I recall the Minister saying that he felt this to be unnecessary and not in the national interest. Perhaps the Minister is guilty of equating the national interest with the Governments' interest. They are not the same.
  For all these reasons, my colleagues and I and, I am pleased to hear, Opposition Members will be going into the Division Lobby tonight to decline to give the Bill a Second Reading.
  6.25 p.m.
  Mr. A. P. Costain: This is the first occasion on which I have seen the Liberal Party in this House sitting in a posture which would warrant a photograph—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Any question of photography is completely out of order.
  Mr. Costain: I take your correction at once, Mr. Speaker. You will notice that they have all disappeared now. Obviously they had not realised that you would not allow a photograph to be taken of them.
  We have debated this matter on two occasions recently and I had imagined the purpose of today's debate to be to discuss this Bill which is really the nuts and bolts of the project. However, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Tope) has reopened a question which very much affects my own constituency. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's care for and attention to my constituency, but I can assure him that I have been in close touch with one of his Liberal friends living there and that I have been able to give him the information for which he asked.
  At one time the Liberals suggested having a terminal at Dungeness, so saving Cheriton. I have had an exchange of correspondence with Mr. Henderson, the person concerned, and I have been able to prove to him that that is not a practical proposition. I have had detailed geological survey plans produced. If Mr. Henderson is still not satisfied I can supply further information to the effect that if he really wants to ruin my constituency he should propose going ahead with the idea of building a terminal at

  1333
  Dungeness since it would completely spoil Romney Marsh.
  There is considerable appeal in the argument that we should have a rail-only tunnel. To those who have studied the matter, as I have for more than nine years, it is an attractive idea. It is suggested that all that we have to do is build a rail tunnel and our traffic problems in Kent are over. I only wish they were. A survey in depth which I have done indicates that a rail-only tunnel is the worst of both worlds. Road traffic will continue to increase, and it will go by ferry.
  One of the most powerful arguments for building a tunnel from Folkestone and Dover is the effect that there will be on the two towns if we do not find some way of bypassing them. If we are to get the expected increase in traffic, doubling by 1980 and quadrupling by 1990, the effect on the two towns will be worse and worse, as anyone who lives there will know. We already have juggernauts crashing down the hills. There has been another incident since we last discussed the matter. This is one reason for not worrying solely about the amenities of Cheriton itself. The worst disruption to amenity would be to have the towns divided. We would have to pull down a number of houses in the town and build new houses elsewhere. The obvious place to build them would be on the Cheriton terminal site. It seems to make little sense from an amenity point of view to drive a motorway through the town, to pull down houses to make way for it, and build new houses on the Cheriton terminal site. We do not overcome the amenity aspect by hiding behind the fact that we save the Cheriton terminal.
  Since the last debate on the Channel Tunnel we have had a fuel crisis. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam referred to oil going up to £2 a gallon. He asked whether any hon. Member was prepared to say that this would not happen. No one spoke. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman calculated the cost of fares if oil goes up to £2 a gallon. One of the greatest costs of air transport is hydrocarbon fuel. If oil were to go up to £2 a gallon the need for a fast link to the Continent would be much greater. Surely that would reinforce the argument in favour of the tunnel.
  1334
  The hon. Gentleman said that if oil and diesel fuels went up to such a price the cost of shipping would be tremendous, and that it would therefore be more attractive to transport goods by rail by electric power, which we have ways of producing other than by oil. Therefore, again, the tunnel is an attractive project if we are to pay higher prices for fuel. I suggest that the arguments developed by the hon. Gentleman today are in favour of, not against, the tunnel.
  Mr. Tope: I said that I was in favour of the tunnel in principle. The hon. Gentleman is putting forward the arguments that I would adduce in favour of a rail-only tunnel. If the cost of fuel goes up to these high levels more people will want to travel by rail and more freight will be sent by rail. For those reasons the Liberal Party is in favour of a rail-only tunnel.
  Mr. Costain: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making the situation clear. Of course, with the usual Liberal attitude, he has forgotten to reply to the argument that a rail-only tunnel would not be the most practicable way of proceeding.
  A rail-only tunnel still has to be drilled. It may not be of the same diameter, but we still have to drill it. One advantage, or one of the least disadvantages from Folkestone's point of view, is that having the Cheriton terminal immediately at the beginning of the tunnel gives excellent opportunity for the spoil from the tunnel to be deposited on the terminal site. There is plenty of space for that spoil to be deposited without having to transport it great distances by road.
  A number of proposals in the Bill will have a serious effect on my constituency. Schedule 2 refers to Dolland's Moor being used as a siding. I should like an assurance from my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries that this siding is to deal with the chalk spoil coming from the Dover workings of the terminal and will be used primarily for transferring the spoil to this terminal site till such time as it can be brought from the tunnel. There is great fear in that part of Kent that a marshalling yard will be planned, and that we do not want. If the whole object of the siding is to get the chalk spoil off the road

  1335
  we welcome it and congratulate the Minister on finding the only rubbish tip for miles around on which to put the siding and do the least damage to the area.
  I thank my right hon. Friend for keeping his promise that the local authority would have some planning control inside the terminal site. This is greatly appreciated. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) seemed to have some doubt about that matter and about the ultimate power of the Secretary of State. With any planning control there has to be some ultimate responsibility.
  Clause 3 and Schedule 2 deal with compulsory purchasing powers. I welcome the fact that in the compulsory purchasing powers provision is made for those affected to get full compensation for removal, but there could be a tricky situation between now and when the Bill becomes law.
  A number of people living in the area, particularly in the village of Newington, which has had much publicity, have to move for personal reasons. I have visited the village. People in three houses have very good reasons for moving, but the moment they put up their houses for sale no one will buy them. I have written to the RTZ organisation asking whether it will buy them because it will obviously need property. RTZ is considering the situation.
  It seems extraordinary that with all that is likely to take place, and these houses not being very desirable places in which to live while the tunnel is being built, at the end of the day, when the whole project is finished and the tunnel is operating, if the Shepway Council decides to build a station quite close to Newington those houses, in perhaps 10 years, will be most attractive propositions. Imagine having a house within one hour's travelling time of London with a five minutes' walk to the station—there cannot be many such places in the country like it—and within one and a half hours' travelling time of Paris.
  Therefore, it seems wrong that my constituents should suffer because their houses, which have little value at the moment unless the Government come to their assistance, will have to be sold a
  1336
  below cost. It will be no surprise that German estate agents are touting round these houses with the object of purchasing them. I do not object to the Germans purchasing houses. Indeed, to further international trade every nation should purchase land in other countries. My objection is that because the procedure of Parliament prevents the Bill from becoming an Act for some months my constituents should suffer. I ask my right hon. Friend to give some thought to how we can overcome this problem. I believe there are powers under the old Transport Act which could give my constituents some help.
  Mr. Dalyell: Perhaps I may indulge my curiosity with the hon. Gentleman, as he represents one of the great construction firms in this country. Would he care to put any figure on the proposition by the Liberal spokesman that we should consider a dam in the Channel? Would his firm undertake this project for £1,000 million, apart from considerations such as objections from the ports of Hamburg, Rotterdam and Bremen that they would have to send their ships round by Scappa Flow?
  Mr. Costain: It is no longer my company. I left it on retirement two years ago.
  When I heard the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam put his proposal my mind went back to another suggestion: "Why build a tunnel or a bridge? Why not build a canal?" If one is to have a causeway one might as well build a canal. Of course the idea is quite impracticable.
  I suggest that the hon. Member reads the history of the building of Dover Harbour and that he should go to the Institution of Civil Engineers and read the documentation of the difficulties encountered in its building. The harbour penetrates 200 or 300 yards into the English Channel. I suggest that the hon. Member sits on the beach in a Force 8 gale to see how the shingle moves, that he should go to Dungeness where the terminal is to be placed and study the contract being let to a firm for perpetuity to dig the shingle and move one part of the beach to another part because the shingle is moving so often. No, that idea is not even a starter.
  Mr. Tope: I was not putting forward on behalf of the Liberal Party or myself firm proposals for a dam. What I was saying was that it was an instance of the kind of imaginative thinking that we should be having on the problems. I am sure that the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) is aware of the considerable amount of research which has been done by people who are far greater technical experts than he or I, and which has shown why such a dam is technically possible. It is possible to have locks which would let shipping through. That is one example which could be used.
  Mr. Costain: The idea is becoming more and more incredible. Now we are to have locks in the busiest shipping lane in the world. One of the causes of greatest concern is ship collisions in the Channel and now we are to have locks.
  The point I want to make is serious. It is the one item in the Bill that gives me concern. I have spent a morning with the Borough Engineer of Folkestone discussing the proposal that the drainage from the terminal site should go into one of the small streams in Folkestone. A lagoon would be produced on the site. The surface water would go into the flow tank—six acres of pond. I suggest my hon. Friends should secure the trout fishing rights. It will then go into a stream which runs beside Horn Street, not into the sea but into the Royal Military Canal. It will be used as a feeder.
  I asked the borough engineer to work out the figures for me. He was on the telephone to me this morning. When he discussed the matter with the Department it suggested that it could allow for a 30-year storm. I have been in Folkestone for 15 years. In that time we have had two 30-year storms and one 100-year storm. One of those completely flooded the main street. I need assurances about this prospect of dealing with the surface water of 300 acres—a golf course which has virtually to be covered with an impervious material. The borough engineer has worked out a figure of 3½ million gallons of water an hour.
  The Library has been good enough to give me an idea of what a river of 3½ million cubic feet an hour is and the House will be as surprised as I am. It says that the following rivers have a mean
  1338
  flow of approximately 3½ million gallons per hour—the Itchin, the Lea, the Cam, the Medway, the Tamar and the Derwent. It would be impracticable to expect such a vast quantity of water to go into the Royal Military Canal.
  Serious consideration must be given to directing the water into a separate outlet into the sea. Equally, there should be further engineering considerations about whether to build a Channel tunnel which goes towards the sea and whether the drainage should not go down the tunnel before spilling out into the sea.
  I have taken longer than I intended, but I hope I have been able to make the points which affect my constituents to a great degree. I hope that the House will not accept the Liberal Party's idea of building a causeway, or, indeed, accept its amendment, because that would only set back the project. That would mean that we should have to endure a build-up of traffic en route which would make life intolerable in my area.
  6.46 p.m.
  Mr. Tom Ellis: I am sure that the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) will not object if I say how refreshing it was to me, as a "young pup" of an engineer, to listen to such practicalities from an hon. Member who has clearly had long experience of the technicalities of engineering.
  I have the rather dubious pleasure of claiming for my constituency the distinction of having located within it the site of the registered office of the first Channel Tunnel company registered in this country. As the Minister said, the Channel Tunnel project has a long history. The first proposals came from one Albert Matthieu around 1802. But by 1867, one William Lowe, who lived in my constituency, conceived the grandiose idea of having a Britain-India railway, the first part of which necessitated a Channel tunnel. He registered his company and his office in Wrexham. In view of that one might have supposed that I should be in favour of that proposal and support it on Second Reading. But for a number of reasons I cannot do so.
  There are all kinds of arguments—we have entered into many of them over the last few weeks and months—by which this project can be viewed and questioned. Examples are its effect on Kentish roads,

  1339
  the question of the practicalities of the project, the sheer technical engineering feasibility, its financing, the effect on our ports, and so on. But the one issue on which to judge the tunnel would be that which the hon. Member for Edinburgh North (Mr. Alexander Fletcher) touched on, in what I thought was an admirable maiden speech, namely, the tunnel's effect on regional development.
  I want to look closely at this problem because it does not seem to have received the consideration that it deserves. The Bill mentions it not at all. The issue of our regional economic disabilities is one of the fundamental key issues, not only for Britain but for the whole economy of Europe.
  When the Green Paper was introduced earlier this year the Government pointed out that there would be several intermediate decision points built into the project. It is to be seriously questioned whether anything like the necessary study of the economics of the tunnel—by that, I mean economics in its widest sense—has been undertaken in the period between publication of the Green Paper and publication of the Bill.
  In May of this year, I asked the Prime Minister whether,
  "In view of the paramount need to eliminate regional economic disparities across Europe and in view of the failure of all Governments so far to reverse the centripetal pull to the central golden triangle",
  he would ask the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and the Environment
  "to assess the effect of the Channel Tunnel upon the Welsh and Scottish economies, not in absolute terms but relative to its effect on the South-East, and to couple that with an assessment of proposals to improve direct sea and air communications between the peripheral regions of Europe."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st May, 1973; Vol. 855, c. 987.]
  As a result of that question, the Prime Minister kindly wrote me a letter to elaborate on some of the points that he had mentioned in his reply. In the letter, he said:
  "… it may not be possible completely to isolate and quantify the effects of the Channel Tunnel on particular parts of the United Kingdom."
  There may be some sense in that. Despite all the techniques that have been available to economic forecasting, it is obviously no easy matter to make reasonably accurate forecasts.
  1340
  I do not want to claim that I know for certain what the effect of the tunnel will be on the regional economic disparities in this country, but the Prime Minister went on to say that the tunnel
  "would not offer a major incentive for relocation of industry in the South-East".
  With the greatest respect, I simply do not believe him. The facts of geography, history and economics speak to the contrary. More and more trade will be "chunnel-led"—I suppose that is the word-through the South-East and the influence of that trade on the South-East of England and the North-East of France will be enormous.
  It is not for nothing that the population of London at the beginning of the 18th century was 2 million and that of the next largest town in Britain—Bristol—was only 30,000. That gives a measure of the centripetal pull. I know that the Industrial Revolution, with its emphasis on mineral deposits, changed that situation, but now that industry is not based so much on minerals, these old geographical and economic centripetal pulls are reasserting themselves and the tunnel will add to this effect.
  The next words of the Prime Minister's letter were staggeringly complacent:
  "… planning controls, and particularly the IDC system, would ensure that any pressures for new development in the South-East would be consistent with local and overall regional policy."
  No one would claim either here or in any other European country that regional development policies, energetic and powerful though some of them have been—tantamount in some cases to the direction of industry—have wholly overcome, to the benefit of the regions, these natural economic pulls towards the central golden triangle.
  Yet the Bill does not even acknowledge the need to find out a rough estimate of the effects of the tunnel on this crucial economic issue of regional disparities. I do not want to go into a long economic lecture, even if I could, but most people will probably accept that this is one of the key economic issues in Europe.
  All this is not to argue against improving and increasing travelling facilities between Britain and the mainland. I suppose that most of us are all for that. But there may be better ways of doing that in terms

  1341
  of overall economic and social benefits than a Channel tunnel from Dover to Calais. I should like to see studied, for example, the effect for South Wales and for Britain of an improvement of the South Wales ports and the services sailing from those ports and of similar improvements at Glamorgan Airport.
  I was struck by the suggestion of the non. Member for Edinburgh, North about the need for regional airports. This kind of thing should be considered along with the whole question of the tunnel's economic effect. Until that study is made, we simply do not know. Recent work carried out jointly between Newcastle University Systems Dynamics Group and IBM (UK) Scientific Centre is very promising, I believe, in showing the potential of new techniques in the study of influences on regional economic disparities. A complete new methodology is being developed. Indeed, I would say that it has been developed; certainly it is in its pilot stage. It is known as systems dynamics methodology.
  I shall not bore the House with an account of the technique—again, I am not sure that I could—but until this kind of work is done and this kind of provision is written into the Bill, we must give attention to the need for such a study so that the fundamental importance of the tunnel's effect on our key economic problems can be quantified before the next built-in decision point is reached. However, I am inclined to agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) that these built-in decision points will at the end of the day probably be far more theoretical than practical.
  6.56 p.m.
  Sir Douglas Dodds-Parker: When the hon. Member for Wrexham (Mr. Ellis) rose, I hoped that we were going to head a clarion call from a railwayman on behalf of the Channel Tunnel, but it seems that many of these colleagues of his are now at the other end of the building, and I was disappointed.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Alexander Fletcher) made a graceful maiden speech, particularly in his reference to Johnnie Dalkeith, who is no longer in the House. Most by-elections arise for reasons that the House regrets—in this case particu-
  1342
  larly so. This is my first chance to say how much we welcome my hon. Friend. I hope he will take part in many debates like this, stressing the regional nature of Scotland, from which he comes. As a Sassenach, one has to be careful about referring to Scotland as a region, as one does at the European Parliament, when it is part of the United Kingdom.
  My hon. Friend may have noticed, during Question Time this afternoon, an example of how those who live in South-East England—I suppose I do most of the time—are a bit egocentric at times. We were discussing the rush around for petrol which other parts of the country, I understand, are not suffering. I hope that this regional point will be taken up, because this is one of the ways in which we might spread the load rather than concentrate it, as has been happening in the century and a half by the drift to the South-East.
  Even following the explanation of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Tope), the Liberal amendment seems an astonishing document. It is self-contradictory. It talks of the tunnel exacerbating the long-term nature of the energy crisis. I do not see how that can be argued, since it seems that exactly the opposite will happen. The tunnel will replace road transport, which is dependent on oil, with electric traction, which has the advantage that electricity can be generated by nuclear power. It will also be pollution-free.
  The motion also says that the tunnel will cause widespread environmental disruption to South-East England. Planning powers exist to control such a situation. Contrary to the amendment, I believe that the traffic loading can be spread by using the rail between the coast and its sources in Edinburgh and even beyond, The increase in road traffic over the last few years is, every day, causing ever-greater environmental disruption in South-East England. By proper physical planning and the use of rail transport it should be possible to achieve the desired effect. As things are, every day we are faced with a growing density of traffic and an increase in air pollution, and this traffic is concentrated on the port area. I hope, therefore, that the House will decisively reject the Liberal amendment.
  I was a little surprised to hear what the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Park

  1343
  (Mr. Mulley) said. He was a very helpful Minister of Transport, and on occasions I discussed this project with him. The right hon. Gentleman is right in saying that it is for the Government to put forward proposals, but I think that the House is entitled to know the better alternatives that might be proposed. There has been the extraordinary suggestion from the Liberal benches about the building of a dam, but that is a non-starter. Equally, the construction of a bridge is a non-starter. I hope that, if not now then on a later occasion, the right hon. Gentleman will tell us what he believes are the possible alternatives.
  Mr. Mulley: Supporting the Liberal amendment does not mean supporting the speech that introduced it. We take the amendment as it is. I am in difficulties about possible alternatives. In other circumstances, if it suited their purpose people would say that I voted against the White Paper and against the Bill, and that if the Opposition had won in the Division Lobby there would not have been a Channel Tunnel. I have to accept that that would be the situation.
  Sir. D. Dodds-Parker: I am still not quite clear what the better alternatives might be. I think I had better get on and leave the right hon. Gentleman to make the point later.
  I support the Second Reading of the Bill with the greatest possible enthusiasm. I regret that when I last spoke on this subject I did not exhibit the full enthusiasm for the tunnel that I might have shown. We had been urged by the Chair to cut our speeches short, and I reckoned, wrongly as it turned out, that, having for some time been joint chairman with the hon. Member for Glasgow, Woodside (Mr. Carmichael) of the all-party Channel Tunnel Committee, it would be assumed that I was enthusiastically in favour of the project.
  It is difficult to find out how far back the committee goes. I am not sure that it is as far back as 1802, which the hon. Member for Wrexham mentioned. There are some good pictures of a coach-and-four going through a tunnel at that time. The committee goes back to the nineteenth century, and it was originally set up to stop the tunnel from being built, for defence reasons.
  1344
  As I say, I wrongly took it for granted on the last occasion that I was recognised as being an enthusiastic supporter of the Channel Tunnel. This is one of the most exciting projects that I have had anything to do with, in the smallest connection, during the last few years. It was probably a similar lack of knowledge which prevented any member of the committee from being invited to the signing of the treaty some weeks ago.
  It is nearly 17 years since I first became concerned with this project and entered the Ministry of Transport to discuss it. I spent a great deal of time trying to help the professionals—of which I am not one—both engineers and financiers. I do not believe that any project has been so well researched, under both Governments, as this one. One hears it suggested that the Government should consider the construction of a bridge, or something like that. I believe that all the various suggestions have been considered in the greatest detail and that we have now come to the point at which we must make up our minds either to go ahead or not to do so.
  I repeat, as I did last time, in case there is any doubt, that I have no commercial interest in, or technical knowledge about, the Channel Tunnel, but if I could scrape up a mite or two I might invest it here, because if someone puts money into a project he is much more likely to press on with getting it into a profitable state than might otherwise be the case. I should be prepared to do that to back my belief in the value of a Channel Tunnel.
  Historians will have to search the records to find why there has been this long delay in recent years. It has been increasingly apparent, even to laymen, that this project is technically possible, economically viable and necessary, and here one comes to the oil crisis which underlines the need, long felt by many people, for a high-speed link between the Midlands of this country and the middle of Europe, and that link can be powered by two nuclear power stations.
  The link will not be just from London to the South-East. So much of the debate in the House has centred around points affecting the South-East: sometimes those who live in other areas think that the problems of the South-East take up a disproportionate amount of time of the House.

  1345
  About eighteen months ago I helped in an extremely good television programme in the Midlands on this project. I produced some of the background detail, the company worked out the programme and it gave rise to a great deal of interest in the area. It was regarded largely as a means for getting to London and on to Calais rather more quickly than is possible now. There is a great deal of interest in this project in the provinces.
  British Railways were unable openly to support this project until the Government had made up their mind whether to go ahead with it. That was understandable, but now that the decision has been taken I hope that British Railways will consider some of the matters that have been suggested.
  The project is even more attractive to those who come from the Midlands, from Sheffield, which was my ancestral part of the world many centuries ago, from the North and from Wales. It provides the opportunity for through passenger and freight traffic. There seems to be some magic in the figure of 170 miles. Up to that distance it is better to send freight by road but beyond that it is better to send it by rail. If that is accepted, the existence of a fixed link in the tunnel will enormously increase the capability of the British rail system; while considerable developments are taking place in the rail system on the Continent, with trans-European expresses, freight trains, and so on.
  High speed is important, but I do not believe that it is as important as through overnight services. If after work one day somebody can load freight or put himself on a train at Edinburgh and be in Western Europe at breakfast time the following morning, the future will provide great benefits for both passengers and freight.
  Mr. David Crouch: My hon. Friend is talking about a through connection from the Midlands to the Continent. He is thinking only of a rail connection, and the carriage of freight and passengers by rail. The fact, however, is that the Government are planning a 350-acre loading site at Cheriton, and that is not principally for loading motor cars but, I suggest, for loading hundreds of thousands of juggernauts that will pass through Kent before joining a
  1346
  train not in the Midlands or in London but at Cheriton. That is my disappointment with this proposal.
  Sir. D. Dodds-Parker: I shall come to that in a moment. If the Channel Tunnel were not built, the probability is that 3,800 acres would be needed to cater for the people crowding into the Channel ports and trying to put vehicles on the cross-Channel ferries. At the worst, electric traction on rail from areas north and west of London will take a substantial part of the traffic that would otherwise have to go by road.
  After going into the matter for a number of years, I feel that there will be room for all types of traffic. The airports—Maplin, Heathrow and others-will be needed for intercontinental traffic and freight. Freight traffic is increasing, as anyone who visits the air freight port at Heathrow will know, for it is now the second biggest port in the country. The ships will be needed for traffic from the Midlands, to Ireland and south-west to the Continent. There will be a considerable use of ships from other than the Kent ports. The roads have an important part to play in feeder services, with the liner trains coming into their own when they are operated by British Rail as a through service to the Continent.
  The point has rightly been made that there must be an overall transport system with co-ordination of rail and road. The matter is being considered by the Transport Committee of the European Parliament and the European Commission. I am not a member of the committee, but I see many of its papers. I believe that both road and rail have a vital part to play.
  In the meantime, we must make the best possible use of the existing and future facilities of the railway, which has access to city centres that no road system has. That is the first point in developing the railway system.
  The second is to spread the load by loading at various centres along the main railway lines. Here I come to the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch). With through freight, speed is important, but the saving of double handling and avoiding delays in crossing the Channel are particularly important. With some expensive

  1347
  or perishable freight they may make the difference between carrying out the operation profitably or not.
  The tunnel should take many of the juggernauts off our congested roads. Some may ask "How?". I got into trouble 18 months ago in one of the European debates by talking about differential freight rates. I am told that they are contrary to the European agreements. But motorail and freight liners, by offering through freights from where the goods are made to where they will be sold, and by properly adjusted rates, can solve many of the problems worrying my hon. Friend and those who live in the South-East. We could also make much better use of manpower if one through train replaced 60 to 100 individual units on the road.
  I have no particular information on the matter, but such a policy must be under consideration by British Rail now that the Government have decided in principle to go ahead with the tunnel. If the policy is carried out along the lines I have suggested, we can overcome many of the legitimate fears of the conservationists, particularly in Kent, which we all agree is a beautiful part of the country, second only to the Cotswolds. With modern electronic control, it is easy to load at off-city-centre points near the sources of the traffic, as is done, for instance, in Castle Bromwich, where traffic is loaded to go to Scotland overnight on the motorail service.
  I support my right hon. Friend's proposals for a Government half share in the profits, which are estimated to be as much as £100 million to £200 million a year by 1990. That is not so very long ahead, only as many years ahead as 1973 was when we had the last oil crisis in 1956. This is a good commercial opportunity for the country to take in return for the guarantee and the concession.
  I agree that the oil shortage is here to stay for quite a long time. Whatever the outcome of the present negotiations and difficulties, the tunnel can help to alleviate that shortage by the end of the decade. It can also reduce road congestion, if proper use is made of planning powers. Much can be done to deal with pollution and protect the environment, such as using
  1348
  electric traction and spreading loading along the main railway routes.
  The tunnel is long overdue. My right hon. Friend's proposals are fair both economically and financially to the company and the country. I hope that the House will support them.
  7.15 p.m.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: Perhaps I should declare a very remote indirect interest, in that I work for the New Scientist, and a great deal of work has been done by that paper on the Channel Tunnel, although none of the editorials or other matter has been written by me.
  I echo what the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Sir D. Dodds-Parker) said about the importance of air freight. Those of us whose constituents are affected by the various problems of London Airport—and, to be fair to London Airport, of other airports—know exactly the point the hon. Gentleman was making. It is extremely important to get fast freight through to the Continent. The air freight of the world is already clogged, and if there is to be a reduction in the supply of aero-engine fuel it will naturally become worse. As a Scot, I see that as one of many reasons for having a rail tunnel.
  As a fellow Scot, I want to refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Alexander Fletcher), against whom I campaigned very hard. I welcome him here as a very clean battler in an election. I was glad that he referred to his predecessor, the Duke of Buccleuch, whom we knew as Lord Dalkeith. Those of us who saw it will not forget Lord Dalkeith on several occasions coming in here in his wheelchair in obvious pain, fighting manfully against the injury that dogged him. Regardless of politics, all of us on the Opposition side in the Scottish Group had the highest admiration for the personal qualities and courage of the former hon. Member for Edinburgh, North.
  In the absence of the new Member I should also like to say that he certainly has a challenge. His constituency is perhaps the first planned new town anywhere in the world, and there is a great job to be done in preserving it.
  I support the view of the Scottish Association for Public Transport, which has welcomed the tunnel, on condition that it

  1349
  is basically a rail link. Most Scots are keen to see it go ahead on that condition. The truth is that, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North said, short-haul air journeys will become markedly more expensive. As advanced traffic develops on the east coast line, which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Ronald King Murray) and I use quite a lot, the easy 200-mile journey can become a 400-mile journey to important places on the Continent. With the reduction in air travel that will occur that will become more and more attractive. The overnight journey to Paris, Brussels or Frankfurt has great attractions for many Scots.
  If I have been nice about the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North, I have nothing but contempt for the preposterous speech from the Liberal benches. I did not give the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Tope) notice that I would mention him, because I thought that, having made such a speech, he, or at least one member of his party, whould be present for the rest of the debate. [Interruption.] He may be a new Member, but he is, after all, his party's spokesman today and his party is always taunting us, saying how the Liberals will obtain more and more votes.
  As the spokesman of one's party, one does not come along here with undigested propositions. For hon. Members who were not present at the time, let me say that the proposition was that the Liberals thought that it would be sensible to construct—hon. Members who were not present will not believe it—a Channel dam. It was a Channel dam on the cheap, because no firm would undertake such a project for under £1,500 million. I leave to the imagination the reactions of the mayor of Rotterdam or the mayor of Hamburg to the prospect of international European shipping on its way from the Middle East being diverted round by the Pentland Firth. It sounds absurd, but that is what came from the Liberal Party spokesman.
  I happen to believe that hon. Members who are voted in at by-elections should be mainly responsible for the drivel that they talk. It is on the sort of level of the Danish second party now, which apparently has reached the second position in the Danish Parliament on the basis of paying no income tax. Those
  1350
  of us who represent major parties know that we are mutually unpopular in many sectors of our society, but we resent people coming along with harebrained ideas acting as spokesmen for their parties, and then saying, "We did not really mean it; it was just an idea that we were throwing out."
  As one who sees part of his rôle in this place, perhaps, as being to put forward unlikely and often eccentric ideas, I resent being branded with this sort of preposterous idea. It brings hon. Members and the whole of Parliament into disrepute to put forward such a silly idea. Those ideas, which may be open to doubt but which, nevertheless, have a kernel of common sense about them, are brought into disrepute by the kind of silliness which we have heard. Although I have made some fairly silly speeches, I have not made any at that level.
  I should like to go on record as saying that those of us who attended the briefing meeting which the Minister gave, some months ago, to the all-party group and my colleagues on the New Scientist, are grateful for the amount of information that has been available. I give credit where credit is due.
  I want to ask, first, about the management structure. I listened carefully to the Under-Secretary's opening speech. I have read the Bill. I have some doubt whether it is really sensible to have a British board and a French board. Being critical for a moment, I was rather alarmed that the Under-Secretary did not know the basic fact whether discussions had taken place with BAC and others involved in the Concorde project. There may be nothing in common between Concorde and the Channel Tunnel. In many spheres the comparison would be absurd. But, on the other hand, there are common problems of project management. It is on the issue of project management that I am particularly interested in expressing doubt whether it it is sensible to have two separate executive units.
  If I have misunderstood the position, no doubt I shall be told, either now or when the Minister concludes the debate. But the Government ought also to look at the project management undertaking based at Munich, of the MRCA project. These international projects are exceedingly difficult to manage. The scope for

  1351
  misunderstanding is great. Whereas there will inevitably be some misunderstandings, it is our job to make sure that at least the framework is the one that is likely to create the least amount of misunderstanding.
  Mr. Peyton: The point here is that the project management, so far as Britain is concerned, is being undertaken by RTZ; in France it is being undertaken by Situmer. I have asked the question often, and I am assured that relationships are both close and friendly and that there is a really close, detailed working understanding. I have no reason to doubt this. It is certainly a point on which I shall continue to take a very friendly interest. The hon. Gentleman is perfectly right in saying that in international projects there is always the element of prestige, and so on, which tends to make bad friends on occasions, and to have a disruptive effect. The hon. Gentleman is right, but I think that on this occasion, at least so far, there are no grounds for undue apprehension. Certainly the point has been noted.
  Mr. Dalyell: I reply to that with an abbreviated version of a story. The first ministerial statement that I heard upon becoming a Member of the House was made by the then right hon. Member for Preston, North, now a Minister of State at the Foreign Office, announcing a project on the creation of an Anglo-French supersonic jet airliner. He was asked at the time the very same question, and he replied in almost identical terms. I am not saying that it was untrue, because at that time relations seemed to be very close. The difficulty is that in this kind of inter-country relationship there are strains and stresses and, inevitably, personality clashes. I continue to doubt whether these two separate units, which may be full of friendship at present, will maintain such a degree of friendship over all the difficulties that will arise.
  Although I wish the project well, I should have thought that the Minister would, as he says, be wise to keep a very close eye on what actually happens during the first two years, and before it is too late, if there seem to be signs of dissension, to change the organisation structure and say to RTZ, "You must
  1352
  alter it and have only one management unit". As one who is interested in project management, I have doubts on this subject.
  Mr. Peyton: One of the great attractions of having RTZ involved is that it has a world-wide reputation for getting projects done on time and within the estimates that it has made. It is very conscious of all the dangers to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. But I certainly would not wish to give the hon. Gentleman any impression of complacency on my part.
  Mr. Dalyell: I do not want to nag on this subject. I turn to the next matter—the question of assets and the capital market.
  Supposing that there is only a rail project, as has been argued, I am not quite clear why the private capital market has to be brought into it. Perhaps I may be allowed to check some facts. Is it true, following the report of 10th October—which was leaked to the Conservation Society—that in the initial stages a rail project would cost 30 per cent. less to operate than the rolling motorway, and 85 per cent. less over a period of years? Is that anything like a correct figure? Is it true that a rail-only tunnel is likely to make a profit from the first year?
  Mr. Peyton: The hon. Gentleman is perfectly right in saying that a rail-only tunnel would cost 30 per cent. less. This was not a leak. This is a fact—or, at least, it is a fact to the extent that any of these figures could be called facts. The figure of 30 per cent. less is thought to be completely reliable. But, on the other hand, it is thought unlikely, and virtually certain, that the project would not make a profit for the first 10 years, and certainly not in its early stages.
  Mr. Dalyell: Is the Minister in a position to say to what the 85 per cent. figure mentioned in the report refers? Perhaps he will inquire into this matter and answer that question later.
  Do we not have a situation in which the rolling motorway is required to make a profit for private investors which would not be needed if we built a rail-only tunnel? This question is still vague in the minds of some people. Perhaps it can be dealt with when the Minister replies.

  1353
  I wish to ask a question regarding Clause 8 (2) of the Bill, which says that
  "The obligations or rights in respect of which expenditure shall be so defrayed may relate to the construction of the tunnel system or the abandonment of its construction or to its management, operation, maintenance or development and may include any obligation or right to acquire securities of a body corporate."
  I sat through the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon)—who cannot be present at the moment—when he proposed that we ought to have a monitoring system, through, perhaps, a Select Committee device.
  Am I right in thinking that Clause 8 gives carte blanche public expenditure? How shall we monitor this kind of expenditure? I may be told that to do so would be unnecessary. The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) says "Hear, hear". In other spheres I know his work. He is to be taken seriously, as I hope I am, on this subject. Clause 8 would mean that public funds would be handed out in a way that makes some of us shudder, especially when the Prime Minister, not a fortnight ago, told us that over the relevant period public expenditure was to be reduced. I shall believe that when I see it.
  The Minister is on record as saying, over a fortnight ago, that there is not much sign that recent costs of petrol would make people less likely to use their cars. Has this judgment changed? I am not making a debating point, but in recent days there have been happenings that might change matters.
  If one argues in favour of a rail-only tunnel the question arises of the powering of the railway, not only through the tunnel but on both sides of it and on the approaches to it. Does not this tie in, because of the period we are talking about, with the whole question of nuclear energy policy? Granted that transmission lines are a problem and that a considerable amount of energy would be needed, what is the Government's thinking in relation to extending the making of electricity at Dungeness? Sooner or later a decision must be made, through the Nuclear Power Board, on what kind of reactor system we choose?
  If we believe that the bugs in the advanced gas-cooled system can be ironed
  1354
  out there is a strong argument for having Dungeness C and D. This type of decision is intimately related to the production of power for the use of the tunnel. I do not want to be told that this relates to another Minister's Department. The Government have surely thought what ought to be done about it. It may be that if we come down against the advanced gas-cooled reactor system there are other questions.
  I shall be in a group which tomorrow will be going to see the steam-generating heavy water reactor at Winfrith. Some of us think that this system is very much linked up in the south of England—even though I am a Scotsman talking about it—with the geography of the existing power stations. If we decided on the Magnox system a number of consequences would flow. If, on the other hand, the talks which the Government have had with Dr. Lorne Gray, of Atomic Energy, Canada, on the possibility of marrying the working of Cando—the Canadian system—with our own steam-generating heavy water reactor technology being developed at Winfrith, then that is relevant to the argument.
  These are complex, difficult matters. If I have abbreviated them it may be because this type of technical argument is not suited to the Floor of the House. I beg the Minister to believe that it is extremely relevant and extremely important.
  Within a matter of weeks we shall hear the decisions of the Nuclear Power Board. I should like to have a view, from the board or from the Government—as appropriate—on the way in which it is thought that the powering of vehicular action in the Channel Tunnel should be connected with the nuclear power programme.
  I do not apologise for taking up so much time, because this is an important topic and I should like to hear something about it, if only an interim statement.
  7.35 p.m.
  Mr. John Wells: I am glad to be able to follow the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) in his very interesting speech. I support him particularly on his financial remarks about the monitoring of Clause 8. This is a matter of great importance. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, as I represent a Kent constituency, if I do not

  1355
  follow him in all the details which he mentioned.
  I welcome in the warmest terms the proposal to build a Channel tunnel. Opponents of the proposal and of the Bill have put forward many bogus arguments. We should bear in mind the fundamental realities of the problems affecting the Channel ports and the problems of the environment of our county as it is today. It is said that if the tunnel was not built Folkestone and Dover would be jammed solid in a few years. But these towns are almost jammed solid already.
  It must be remembered that the surface traffic at present travelling via the ports would concentrate in South-East Kent. Fifty-five per cent. of all vehicles and trailers go through Kent, not by Harwich and Tilbury and other ports. Last year there was an increase of 43 per cent. in freight lorries in Dover compared with the previous year. This rate of increase is making conditions intolerable in that port. Opponents of the tunnel consistently neglect the current situation.
  In a debate in the other place on 13th November Baroness Young made a remark:
  "We must, and we will, do everything in close association with the local authorities to reduce these difficulties to a minimum and to ensure that those affected are treated generously."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 13th November 1973; Vol. 346, c. 569.]
  Baroness Young was dealing with the environmental problems of those people who will be adversely affected by the "Chunnel" works.
  Can my right hon. Friend spell out, in rather more detail, what Baroness Young and other Ministers who have spoken on this particular matter mean by the phrase "treated generously"? We all know that the words of Ministers, however well intended, carry no force of law. Ministers can say the most generous-minded things, especially in Committee, but when the courts or Department of the Environment inspectors come to interpret the law the result is a miserable district valuer's valuation—or possibly not even that.
  The main line approaching the Channel Tunnel passes right across the Weald of Kent, through my constituency and the
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  constituencies of some of my right hon. and hon. Friends. We are anxious for the well-being of our constituents. We accept the honourable assurances which are given but we want them spelled out in great detail.
  A number of people are agitating against the tunnel project. There is a bogus noble Lady. Her husband is not a lord, but she calls herself "Lady Haliburton". She and her husband are bogus people. She sits on the county council, as a Liberal. My point is simply that many of the opponents of the tunnel are going about by stealth and deceit.
  A hand-out sent to me this morning, and, I dare say, to other hon. Members, dated 3rd December from the Conservation Society quotes from the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) during the debate on 25th October and implies that my right hon. Friend is against the tunnel. It takes out a "mini" passage from my right hon. Friend's long, thoughtful and careful speech. The words it ascribes to him were uttered by him, but it is a misquote, a mis-placement of the words. What worries me is that the opponents of the tunnel go on endlessly like this. They quote the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). I am sorry that I have not warned him that I would refer to him. The hon. Member is well known for his interest in the seamen's cause and is an honest opponent of the tunnel. Again, words are taken from his perfectly reasonable and thoughtful speech and misquoted. It is misrepresenting the total spirit of the hon. Gentleman's speech.
  I hope that the Government will go out of their way to try to allay the fears of people like my constituents and others who are genuinely anxious but whose fears are exacerbated and stirred up by, frankly, dishonest grumblings. We have heard today from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Tope). We are now missing the Liberal Party. I am sorry to have to speak about the hon. Member in his absence but he has made his speech and left. He said, among other ridiculous things, that he saw no cause for guarantees. Surely it is widely understood that unless there is a Government guarantee it will be impossible to raise the loans overseas because of the rules of the stock exchanges or bourses

  1357
  or Government regulations overseas. If we are to get foreign as well as British capital to finance these loans the Government must give guarantees. I am confident that the guarantees will never be called upon but it is only reasonable and right that they should be provided.
  Not only have we to see the effect of the tunnel on our county but we must try to look at it through private eyes and think of the advantages to the nation as a whole. There has been the inevitable scaremongering that the price of petrol will rise to a huge figure. If it did the tunnel could be used primarily as a rail tunnel. Advocates of a rail-only tunnel seem to forget that once the tunnel is built it could perfectly reasonably be used primarily as a rail tunnel. It would be said that the vehicle marshalling yards and so on would be useless, but there would always be a considerable volume of road traffic whatever the price of fuel. It is my firm belief that we have to put forward the tunnel system, which is most likely to be an economic one at present.
  The Government are quite right to go forward in providing the tunnel which would appear to measure up to that requirement. If we went bald-headed for a rail-only tunnel the forecasts are clear—it would not pay nearly so soon, if ever. If we are entering an era of slower growth—we have seen an anticipated zero growth in Germany for the coming year—there is likely to be a reduction in commercial traffic. But the holiday traffic will still go on, and it may become rail holiday traffic. The businessman is likely to prefer to go by tunnel rather than from Heathrow, with its attendant foggy winter nights.
  Our hon. and right hon. colleagues who attend the European Parliament would surely rather travel in comparative comfort and speed through a rail tunnel than spend long hours hanging about at Heathrow waiting for aircraft with uncertain departure times. Whether we are speaking of freight or holidays, political or commercial passenger usage, the fact remains that the tunnel will help the nation. Provided it is dealt with sympathetically, I believe it will help our country, which at the moment is overrun with lorries.
  One of the greater follies in the speech of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam came when he complained that
  1358
  the Channel Tunnel would put more lorries on the by-ways of Kent. Surely the by-ways of Kent are filled with lorries at the moment because of his friend, my former Liberal opponent, who has put down a great freight depot on a small country lane. It may be said that this was negligent planning on the part of the county council, and that may have been so in the past, but the fact remains that the depot is there and is causing the damage to our county now. It has nothing to do with the tunnel. I deplore this completely bogus attitude, taken not only by the Liberal Party but by nearly all opponents of the tunnel.
  7.47 p.m.
  Mr. William Edwards: I commiserate with the hon. Member for Maidstone (Mr. John Wells) in having such particularly nasty and difficult political opponents.
  I refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Tope) only to say that I find his approach as confusing as that taken by my party. His speech was presumably on behalf of the Liberal Party. On the one hand he says that he cannot understand why guarantees are necessary and on the other he wishes to reduce the financial viability of the Bill, thereby making those guarantees even more necessary. Of course, guarantees would be necessary for the kind of financial structure the Government have in mind. It is obvious to anyone who is aware of the risks of making long-term assessments of an expensive business venture that this kind of guarantee would be necessary.
  The approach of my party to this is somewhat confused and hesitant. In that I am disappointed. I do not support this kind of Bill but I congratulate the Government for producing their Bill. It is the kind of Bill that a Tory Government would produce for this kind of venture. It relies heavily on two private firms and uses Government money to guarantee those firms. It lacks that kind of control and direction of what I consider to be an important national project that we would get from only complete State participation and control. It is unfortunate that we should be lagging behind the views of British Rail or the National Union of Railwaymen on a project of major national importance.

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  This is a matter upon which we could give a lead. I find it strange that we, committed to further nationalisation, have not sufficient confidence in the future of the railways to make us want to strengthen them and make them more viable and better equipped to deal with future problems and to develop as a modern railway should, and could, in the light of this important link with the Continent.
  Presumably, I shall be attacked in my constituency for making this speech, because it is now fashionable to relate expenditure on a project of this kind to parochial matters. There is a fashionable political doctrine which says that any money that is spent elsewhere could, by some magic, have been spent in one's own constituency: if an airport is not built at Maplin, the money can therefore be spent on improving the paving stones in Blaenau Ffestiniog. I do not accept that doctrine. I believe that there are certain national investments which we should make. One of the most serious aspects of our politics today is not that we have doubts about the nuts and bolts of this Bill but that we have doubts about our own capacity as a nation to carry on with an important project of this type. I was surprised to hear my hon. Friend and colleague the Member for Wrexham (Mr. Ellis), for whom I have great respect, doubting that we have the technical abilities to produce a tunnel of this kind. That is a staggering proposition, and it shows what is wrong with our industry today when these doubts can be raised about the technical capacity of our engineering industry.
  Also, I find it strange that we as a party have no clear picture of the kind of improvement that such a link could bring about in our railway system. We have to face the fact that not every nationalised industry is popular at the present time. One of my party's major problems in selling a programme of further nationalisation is the unpopularity in consumer terms of existing nationalised industries. Although I have been in dispute with British Rail about the preservation of railway lines in my constituency, I must say that the operation of the railway system in this
  1360
  country is something of which we can be proud. It is one of the successful nationalised industries. The people of this country, particularly if they travel on the Continent, recognise that we have a first-class rail sysem which should be improved.
  A statement in support of the aims, aspirations and development of the railway system by providing this important link is to be expected from a party such as mine which is committed to nationalisation, but I do not accept the Government's structure for doing this job as outlined in this Bill. As I said, I believe that it should be part and parcel of a State railway system, and we should be committed to a rail-only tunnel which is State-financed and State-run.
  There will be great concern in two areas about this proposal. There will be concern in the regions about a polarisation of development in the South-East. That is inevitable in this case, and I accept that. There will also be concern about the environment in the area where the tunnel will be built and where the marshalling yards, and so on, are to go. I hope that the control over the development project which is being underaken by Rio Tinto-Zinc will be very close indeed.
  I would not accept a development being done by RTZ. A development of this importance should be done by the State. I have some experience of RTZ in a development operation. The company was proposing to mine in my constituency, in the middle of a national park. I also have practical experience of dealing with the Shell Oil Company in Anglesey. If I had to choose between their operations—despite all the criticism of Shell Oil, a great deal of it unfair, in the Sunday Times—I would much prefer to deal with Shell Oil as a development organisation than RTZ. The statements that I personally had from RTZ, and the statements that were made to the Press about the company's intentions, varied in accordance with the state of public opinion, and I do not have the confidence which the Minister obviously has in the responsibility of RTZ in dealing with a matter of this kind, which has very important environmental considerations. If I were a member for any of the constituencies that could be affected by RTZ's operations I should be very

  1361
  careful indeed about any undertakings that I had from RTZ.
  The building of this tunnel is an important step, not only in enabling this nation to show confidence in its ability to carry out a major imaginative project, but also in cementing the relationship which should be developing between this country and the Continent of Europe. It will play a major part in improving trade, and in improving the railways within this country. It will also play a major part in the easier handling of goods, particularly between this country and France. I shall not enter into the problems that arise in the handling of goods between this country and France. If we have a rail-only link it will also play a major part in improving the competition costs, not only for freight but for people who wish to cross to Europe. It will make the cross-Channel boats more competitive. I must declare an interest here. I am a small shareholder in European Ferries, and I became a shareholder in order to gain the advantage of being able to take a car across the Channel at cut rates.
  Mr. Eric Ogden: A practical man.
  Mr. Edwards: I always have to be a practical man. That is why I view some nationalisation proposals with some scepticism.
  Our experience of the operation of cross-Channel ferries, which is a mishmash operation with European Ferries and British Rail sharing a monopoly, has not been a happy one. I do not think that the kind of operation which the Government have in mind for this tunnel, with general operation of the tunnel being under private ownership and operation through the tunnel being done by British Rail, will be a happy experience either.
  This tunnel could provide a very important boost for British Rail, and it could have an immensely beneficial effect upon the environment, which is now being adversely affected by heavy and increasing road traffic. I also believe that it will have an effect upon the self-confidence of this nation, and that it will cement relations between this country and continental Europe. It is because I have those beliefs that I am extremely disappointed that my party does not
  1362
  have a clearer line upon this very important project.
  I accept that it does not have to accept the Government's Bill, and that there are shortcomings in the structure which the Government are proposing. I do not accept the structure which the Government have outlined, but I accept the principle. I congratulate the Government upon being positive in bringing forward their proposal, and I am extremely sorry that my own party has been unable to take a definite line, and say which way it thinks this important link should be carried out. It has not acted with the confidence, either in the country or in the nationalised railway system, with which I feel it should have done at this stage.
  8.0 p.m.
  Mr. John Sutcliffe: I consider it somewhat facile of my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Mr. John Wells) to dismiss those who are genuinely worried about the project as "bogus opponents", as I think he did. I try to be constructive; nevertheless I find the Bill controversial and I therefore cannot agree as much as I would have liked with all that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Alexander Fletcher) said. I very much enjoyed listening to his speech, however, and I join with those on both sides of the House who have congratulated him on it.
  The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) said that we on this side of the House were complacent. That surprised me because I sat through the Committee and remaining stages of the initial finance Bill and the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) battled in splendid isolation on the Opposition side. He did not even have the support of his own Front Bench. The Opposition benches were completely deserted except for him. That showed a remarkable lack of concern about the whole project.
  Since we last debated the matter two events of significance, already mentioned in the debate, have occurred. One is the oil situation, which is becoming more serious, and the other is the prospect of a lower rate of economic growth. These are complex questions, as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said in opening the debate, and they require further

  1363
  examination. As he also indicated, traffic predictions affecting the profitability of the tunnel are based on forecasts that take neither of these factors into account.
  In spite of what my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) said, I firmly believe that holi-daymakers touring Europe in their cars, from whom over 50 per cent. of the tunnel revenue is expected to accrue, constitute the type of traffic which is most vulnerable of all to petrol restrictions and economic recession. In view of the outlook for the economy and for petrol supplies, and in view of the recent welcome shift of emphasis by the Government from road to rail what becomes all-important is whether in passing the Bill we commit ourselves to the shuttle-ferry tunnel. It is not clear from Clause 2 which defines the tunnel system, whether the Bill, coupled with Article 3 of the treaty, commits us to a specific design of tunnel. I would very much welcome elucidation from the Minister on that point. Article 3 refers to the design of railway installations and fixed and movable railway equipment, including ferry wagons. It says that these matters are still to be settled between the companies, the railways and the Governments. It goes on to say that the matter is still open and in default of an agreement the final decision is to be made by the Governments.
  I hope that the passage of the Bill will not settle the matter and that it is possible under its provisions for the conventional Berne gauge system to be substituted for the rolling shuttle-ferry service. The sponsors of the project have estimated that this would save 30 per cent. of the expected construction costs—some £300 million. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary no doubt knows of the French kangaroo system, which is, I believe, the equivalent of our freightliner service, and which is capable of taking all road traffic, including heavy lorries, on the Berne gauge system. Does my hon. Friend also know of the system operated by the German Federal Railways? My hon and learned Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees) asked earlier what were the alternatives, and I have no doubt—
  Mr. Peter Rees: May I correct a small misconception? I did not ask what were
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  the alternatives. I asked what altertives the Labour Party was offering us.
  Mr. Sutcliffe: I accept that correction. Unfortunately, the Labour Party was unable today to offer any alternative, which surprised me since it is opposing this project. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) is undoubtedly worried, as are other Kent Members, about what is to happen. If my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover were to ask me rather than the Opposition about the alternatives, I would say that there is an alternative. I shall now try briefly to expatiate upon it. But I have no doubt that Ministers know about it, and surely they will tell me why such an alternative has been dismissed.
  The German railways operate a rolling highway system which carries lorries. It runs from Cologne to Ludwigsburg, which is near Stuttgart, and also from Cologne to Verona in Italy. The basis of this system is a specially designed low-loading rail wagon with wheels of 30 cms. diameter, which is about 1 ft. The design enables most normal lorries to be carried on the wagons and to pass through the standard Berne gauge tunnels, especially on the route into Italy, where the tunnels are smaller than in Germany. The maximum size of lorry which can be carried is 3.6 m. high, about 12 ft., and the maximum width is 2.5 m., which is just over 8 ft. That dimension would be compatible with regulations in the United Kingdom. I understand that there are no special weight constraints.
  If the Channel Tunnel were to adopt the Berne gauge system it would make possible a shuttle service as is now contemplated for road vehicles but not just from Folkestone to Calais but from, for instance London to Lille and beyond. That would obviate all the environmental problems of the South-East at a stroke, and, more to the point, it would effect the saving which I mentioned earlier of between, I gather, £300 million and £500 million on the design as at present proposed. Unless there is some explanation for the Governments rejecting this system, it would appear that we are spending that amount to carry a few lorries—and they are a few—of between 11.8 ft. and 13.12 ft. in height. The expenditure works out at about £20

  1365
  million per inch of extra lorry height. I have here a piece of string which shows the extra height which would fail to get through the tunnel. Such lorries would be only a fraction of the 15 per cent. which would be the proportion of the total tunnel traffic which would be heavy commercial vehicles. By spending a fraction of £20 million, and by converting sections of the old Great Western Railway to the Berne gauge, it should be possible to have lorry shuttle service terminals in, for example, Bristol, Merseyside or Teesside instead of taking all vehicle traffic through Kent and along the roads into Kent.
  I shall be grateful if my right hon. Friend will tell me why, on consideration, the Berne gauge design and system has not been favoured.
  I return briefly to the points which I made at the beginning of my remarks. There are new factors—namely, the oil situation and the emphasis which the Government are now giving to rail instead of road. The principle which Article 5 of the treaty lays down—namely, nondiscrimination between road and rail—needs to be overridden in the Bill. There should be power to discriminate in favour of rail traffic.
  In Clause 14(5) of the Bill which we are now discussing, the British Board is given power to borrow, with the sanction of the Secretary of State, up to £100 million. The fact that that provision enables borrowing by the board to meet losses again raises the whole question of tunnel profitability. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State knows well my concern to see a fixed ratio between the moneys raised under Government guarantee and the moneys raised as risk capital.
  In reply to my amendment to the Channel Tunnel (Initial Finance) Bill my right hon. Friend recognised the point which I was making. He said that it would amount to a wrecking amendment in the context of the Bill because Agreement No. 2 could not be signed if the amendment were carried. All I ask in the context of the Bill is that my right hon. Friend devise an amendment—my right hon. Friend cannot make the objection on this occasion that he made to my proposition on the last occasion—which would set a limit on the Government guarantee in the proportion of nine to
  1366
  one, so that 10 per cent. risk capital would need to be raised before the 90 per cent. guarantee applied in full. That is not asking a great deal.
  The Government guarantees will be 100 per cent. on any overrun expenditure beyond £846 million. Already the Bill forecasts the cost of the project as £1,000 million. No one can forecast the effect of inflation or of delay on the final cost. Only the other day the Financial Times pointed to the paralysis suffered by the French construction industry because of a strike of French workers. Hon. Members will know that cement will line the French part of the tunnel. We cannot possibly be sure of the extent of overrun cost where risk capital will not be applicable.
  The Government are, clearly, not sure of raising a 10 per cent. element of true risk capital because private interests under this legislation are to be entitled to seats on the British Board if—and I emphasise "if"—and in the event that they raise the 10 per cent. That demonstrates that there is uncertainty.
  Many of my hon. Friends and a good many Labour hon. Members can be counted amongst those who are unhappy about the Bill on two major grounds. First, they are unhappy that there is to be a shuttle service rather than a conventional rail system. Second, they are unhappy that the forecast profitability will not even be put to the minimum test of the capital market. I agree to this extent with the document which the Conservation Society has sent to many hon. Members, which says:
  "This is not the time to commit the country to a long-term and inflexible financial arrangement which depends for its profits on road transport."
  I agree with the society about that, and I ask my right hon. Friend for reassurance.
  8.17 p.m.
  Mr. Eric Ogden: I am not certain whether the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, West (Mr. Sutcliffe) was conducting a rearguard action or whether he was in some danger of committing what I am told is the cardinal sin of the Conservative Party. Conservatives should always fight up to the last ditch but not in it. The hon. Gentleman is in some danger of falling into the ditch. I am not certain whether the hon. Member was trying to defeat

  1367
  the Bill, or to amend it. He appeared to be fighting the old battles of weeks or months ago. There will be a tunnel.
  Mr. Sutcliffe: Obviously, it must be accepted at some stage, and it must be accepted now, that there will be a tunnel barring some dramatic event. I am anxious to see that it is the right kind of tunnel and that it is funded in the right kind of way.
  Mr. Ogden: The hon. Gentleman has cleared my mind. He fought up to the last ditch but not in it. From the state of the benches it does not seem that any dramatic event will take place at 10 o'clock which might defeat the Bill.
  I believe that there will be a Channel tunnel and that it will be a rail tunnel. We must have a tunnel as soon as possible. I wish we had one now. The fact is that we have not, but the sooner we get one the better I shall be pleased.
  The Bill is the only Bill available, and and it is the only Bill to provide for a Channel tunnel of any form. The Labour Government progressed the Channel tunnel project, and if that Government had been returned in 1970 we may have brought forward at roughly this time a Channel Tunnel Bill. It would not, of course, have been this Bill. However, there would have been a Bill to provide the means of providing the tunnel.
  The choice which we have at this date is this Bill and this tunnel or no Bill and no tunnel. It is no secret that I support the Bill. Of course, my support must be limited to verbal support. It cannot be carried into the Conservative Lobby. The result of the last Division on the Channel Tunnel shows that the Government do not need my help in the Lobby. I hope that the Bill will be given a Second Reading.
  From the list of speakers and from the speeches which I have been able to hear, it seems that there are not so many hon. Members today who do not accept the tunnel as there were on another occasion in October. There are not so many Luddites around as there were on 25th October. Some hon. Members have accepted the point of view put forward by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, West. There comes a time when, one having opposed a project,
  1368
  it must be accepted that the project will be carried by a majority. When that stage is reached efforts must be made to improve the Bill, the facilities it offers and the way it goes through. That seems now to be accepted by the Labour Front Bench and by many back benchers on both sides of the House.
  The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, West referred to my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) and his contribution to the Committee proceedings on the Channel Tunnel (Initial Finance) Bill. My hon. Friend certainly took a great deal of the time of the House in those debates, but the Opposition benches were not entirely deserted. I remember making at least two interventions criticising him and supporting the Government. He was not completely alone all the time.
  I turn now to what I presume is still the Liberal Party's bench in all its empty glory. It seems that the more Liberals there are the less space they take. The Liberal intervention last time—on 25th October—was directed more towards the Hove by-election than to the question of the Channel Tunnel. Now the Liberals find themselves in a particular position and they have to carry that through. But their absent support for their amendment at 20 minutes past eight is my impression of what they must think about it.
  I said harsh things about the Opposition amendment on 25th October, but the Liberal Party's amendment today is a great deal worse. At least one thing can be said about the Liberal Party. If the Labour Party can make a mess, the Liberal Party can make an even worse mess. Any amendment which uses the word "exacerbate" is automatically out for me. If one cannot use plain words, then it is better to put down nothing at all. Wherever the Liberals are marching tonight, it is not towards the sound of gunfire or the Channel Tunnel.
  I will not return the compliment which the Minister paid to me in October. I shall not try to embarrass him in any way. But he must be feeling that he has trodden the road of Channel Tunnel debates before and that it might be nice if he could turn to something else.
  Mr. Peyton: If the hon. Gentleman would follow my example and say

  1369
  something polite to me, I should not be in the least embarrassed.
  Mr. Ogden: I have criticised the right hon. Gentleman, but I do not think I have ever been impolite to him. I have sometimes said, as an aside, that compliments from him were not always helpful.
  I have three points to put to the right hon. Gentleman. The first concerns those who are to be employed on construction. I hope that he will seek the advice and help of other members of the Government, particularly the Secretary of State for Employment, to see whether some of those who work on the construction and all that it entails can be recruited in the regions. I do not want this project to be one involving large numbers of people having to move away permanently from regions of high unemployment, but there are in the regions young men of skill, including men with families, who could for perhaps two or three years, with accommodation available, come to the South-East and take part in the project, later returning to the regions with the skills they have learnt not only in tunnelling but in other construction works. I would not want this great project to provide opportunities only for those areas where high unemployment already exists. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take this point up and at least make it known in the regions that some of the work is available to them.
  The second point concerns the control of expenditure. I do not think that the stockbroker belt of London is really in the Channel Tunnel construction area, although no doubt the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) will tell me that it extends down there. It is no secret that when there are Government money and Government contracts, somewhere or other control of expenditure on the project is not always as tight as we would wish. It is perhaps a slander and a myth to say that half the kitchens in the world are constructed with Polaris steel; it is also not true that the whole Bristol area has seats which should have been provided for Concorde. But that kind of thing is not unknown. The Channel Tunnel project will, in effect, be a Government contract, using the taxpayers' money, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to say more about cost control, purchasing and so
  1370
  on. It would be fair to the company and to the contractors to let it be known at once that Government Departments are going to flood the place with inspectors from time to time, and that the Government will be watching expenditure all the time so that there will be as little waste of public money as possible.
  My third point concerns reports and information. Any company, authority or board puts out its annual report and progress reports. I hope that many people will be interested in the beginning of the construction and in the extent of the progress. But I do not think the right hon. Gentleman should leave it merely to hon. Members to get their information from outside the House. Nor should he leave it just to Questions or the occasional statement. I hope that he will find a way, perhaps annually or half-yearly, depending on progress, of telling the House how the project is going, enabling us to question him and perhaps to hold a debate from time to time. We are, after all, deeply involved in this project and it is right that the right hon. Gentleman should go out of his way to provide information to the House of Commons.
  With these three points, which I do not think will provide the right hon. Gentleman with difficulty, I hope the Bill will go through, and I look forward to when he will be there to see the opening of the tunnel in his rôle then as shadow Transport Minister.
  8.26 p.m.
  Mr. Roger Moate: I agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden) when he says that there will be a Channel Tunnel Act, but I do not think I agree when he says so positively that there will be a Channel tunnel. Whatever happens to this Bill, I feel that the project has a touch of doom about it and that in 170 years' time the House of Commons may be looking back at the efforts of the 1970s and 1980s, finding perhaps a slightly larger hole than the Victorians left.
  On the Second Reading of the Channel Tunnel (Initial Finance) Bill, my right hon. Friend said that if no one would clear up the mess if the project did not come to fruition he would be prepared to go down with his dustpan and brush and clear it up himself. He should keep his dustpan and brush handy, because I have

  1371
  a feeling that we have not heard the end of this question for a long time to come.
  I agree also with the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby that this is very much an issue of "this Bill and this tunnel or no Bill and no tunnel". That is a matter of regret, because many of us who go along a great deal with the principle of a Channel tunnel link feel that there are alternatives that should be more exhaustively examined. To this extent, I go a great deal of the way with the amendment moved by the Liberal Party. Whatever tunnel we eventually dig under the Channel—if we dig one—one thing obvious tonight is that the position of the Liberal Party's spokesman on transport affairs has been undermined considerably. Indeed, the whole foundations of the Liberal Party seem to have been so damaged that they have disappeared from sight altogether. But if the Liberals put down an amendment which is effectively the basis of a large part of a debate, they might have the courtesy to stay and listen to the arguments about it.
  I support some of the arguments put forward in favour of the railway-only tunnel. Reference has been made to the projection of costs put forward by the Channel Tunnel Company and published in a pamphlet issued by the Conservation Society. My right hon. Friend said that it was unlikely that a railway-only tunnel would be profitable for the first 10 years. That statement is slightly at variance with the published figures, and I should appreciate his elaboration of this.
  The figures deserve far more study than has been given to them. They show that it would cost 30 per cent. less to build the railway-only tunnel—£584 million against £846 million. It shows that in the first year the operating costs of the railway-only tunnel would be £3 million, compared with operating costs for the Government's projected tunnel of £17 million. Ten years later the operating costs would be £5 million for the railway-only tunnel, compared with £34 million. The operating costs largely reflect the cost of the energy consumed, so those figures are even more striking bearing in mind our present anxiety about energy supplies.
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  The pamphlet shows also that in 1981, after paying all debt service and operating costs, the net receipts—or the profits—should be £500,000, rising to £20 million in 1985 and £50 million in 1990. Those figures show that the project is viable and profitable after servicing all the capital.
  We must consider the railway-only tunnel in the context of the railway system, and I welcome the recent and enlightened statement made by my right hon. Friend that the Government are prepared to spend considerable sums of money on subsidising our railway system as far ahead as we can see. A railway-only tunnel would contribute a net profit to the railway system and the Government owe it to us to give far greater consideration to this idea.
  The trouble is that the railway-only tunnel has come to the House of Commons far too late for consideration. We have been presented with a fait accompli in terms of the project itself. Those of us who are putting forward alternatives are probably wasting our time. Many worthy bodies and organisations throughout the country have put forward ideas for a railway-only tunnel, bridges, and so on, but there is no prospect of persuading the Government to look again at the principles of the project. It is this tunnel or no tunnel. They have no room for manœuvre and they cannot at this stage say that they will cut out the rolling motorway concept. We have signed a treaty agreeing to go ahead with it. It would be hard for the Government to go back over the ground they have already covered in conjunction with the commercial interests and the French. My right hon. Friend said:
  "… it is difficult if not impossible to go on re-examining projects of this kind. In this case, it has taken many years of preparation to get it to the stage that it has now reached. It has also cost a great deal of money. To go back over that ground again, to spend money on similar researches, would be to indulge in that habit which seems to have grown up in this country of longing to pore over projects, to look at them again, and somehow or other to dredge up some excuse by which we might avoid any decision."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th November 1973; Vol. 864, c. 190.]
  I understand that point of view, and there is a strong practical argument for it, but it implies that it is a waste of time and money to put forward alternative schemes.
  Mr. Ogden: The question of an alternative has been discussed many times. Does it not boil down to the fact that those who were in favour of an underground, undersea rail-only tunnel were prepared to put some money behind their proposal? Any other proposal considered during the last 170 years was not backed by anyone prepared to put money into it. The opportunities were there, but no one would back his words with cash.
  Mr. Moate: I agree with the hon. Gentleman to a certain extent. It is a considerable achievement to have brought forward a proposition to this point. It is the result of something that started as a simple commercial exercise. It grew to such an extent that it became clear that it could not be done without Government participation, so we are faced with this one practical proposition. That does not necessarily mean that it is the best proposition, and I believe that there is a strong case now for the railway-only tunnel.
  The finances of such a scheme are fat more attractive than the Government admit. If they started from first principles now and examined the railway only project they might themselves be bringing it before the House, and it would be welcomed with great enthusiasm by both sides. If there is anything in that proposition, is it not wise to pause and to take an extra six months, or a year, to examine it to see whether it is worth while?
  I was prepared to go along with the Channel Tunnel (Initial Finance) Bill. I thought it was sensible to go ahead with the exploratory tunnel, the preparation and the geological surveys, because that would not preclude the possibility of later moving to a railway-only tunnel. Unfortunately, my right hon. Friend has poured cold water on every suggestion, even the suggestion for a proper examination of the study, and I am disappointed. There should have been a Select Committee report or a public inquiry. Both processes could have been conducted at the same time as the exploratory work continued on phase 1.
  It is a tragedy that a project of this nature, which has exciting implications for linking the railway systems of Britain and Europe, should be received in so many quarters either with apathy or hostility. That is because the Government,
  1374
  regrettably, have failed to achieve sufficient public participation. It is not too late, unless the Government say that it is quite impossible to alter any of the principles on which the project is based. If they say that, those of us who feel that the project as presently conceived would inflict major environmental damage on our area—which I argue is avoidable if the railway-only project is accepted—have no choice but to oppose the legislation, although that is against my personal instinct, as I believe that there are great opportunities in the railway-only principle.
  On finance, we are entitled to more answers from the Government than we have had. It is surely a subject that is worthy of Select Committee examination. The Bill involves Government expenditure of £400 million before we effectively have a chance to look again at the project. I am pleased to say that before Government expenditure goes up to £500 million we shall have the chance of approving an order, but that is not much consolation. It would be odd at that stage if, having built half the tunnel, we did not vote more money—
  Mr. Ogden: We have to build only half the tunnel.
  Mr. Moate: Well, if we had built one-third of the tunnel and more money were refused it would be leaving the tunnel—if I may use the phrase—in mid-air. Even when we have reached the £500 million we shall have to vote more funds if the Government want more. We shall be creating a white elephant, or digging a grave for the greatest white elephant of all time.
  The figures are misleading. The figure that we have been given is £846 million, but what is the inflation rate? Is it 4·9 per cent.? Between the first figures and the second figures the rise was 11·2 per cent. Are we saying that inflation in the next two years will be 5 per cent.? Probably 10 per cent. would be nearer the mark. Are we saying that the interest charges on which the projection is based are likely to remain the same as they were a year ago? They have probably already risen by 50 per cent. Those two items carry the £846 million nearer to £1,200 million or £1,300 million.

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  Why are the Government so confident that the guarantees will not be called upon? As soon as there is any delay in the project—which could add between £80 million and £100 million in interest charges for every year—those guarantees will be called upon and the question of a reasonable return on the project will fall into doubt. The guarantees are not just a nice fall-back position that will never be called upon.
  In the country there has been great misunderstanding about the project. People do not understand the difference between the rolling motorway project and the railway-only tunnel that many people are now proposing.
  Many people still think that all the heavy lorries—the juggernauts—will board trains at regional centres. They have not grasped the fact that this project is designed to attract cars and lorries to drive all the way on the Kent roads down to the Cheriton terminal. This is the greatest failing and disappointment in the Bill. If people understood that this would involve 4 million cars and several hundred thousand lorries being put on the roads to the Kent coast, they would have considerable misgivings.
  Mr. Speed: Let us get the position quite clear. Is my hon. Friend saying that if there is a railway-only tunnel he will expect the present Government, or any Government, to take power to forbid lorries or cars wishing to go to the Continent to drive on the roads of Kent or to use the shipping and ferry services from Folkestone?
  Mr. Moate: I do not think that that will arise. If a railway-only tunnel were constructed there would be heavy lorry traffic on the roads to the seaports, but if we created a rail-only tunnel with the right freight fare structure it would offer a major incentive to our exporters in regional centres to use the rail facilities. That should be our objective. I accept that there will be a large amount of freight travelling on the roads to the Kent ports. That is likely to happen in the next 10 years, until the tunnel is operating. Therefore, up until 1980 or even as late as 1983 there will be an enormous build-up of heavy lorry traffic to these ports. That is not a pleasant prospect. It will continue even after
  1376
  that period, although some of this traffic will be diverted to other Kent roads. All we shall be doing in the present proposals is to spread the lorry traffic across Kent on different routes. On the other hand, we have the opportunity to create a railway system and a fare structure that will encourage industrialists to put their freight on the railways from the north of England to the Continent. We shall miss a great opportunity if we do not take some action on these lines.
  I hope that in his reply the Minister will deal with one real problem. The Bill's supporters believe that a vast proportion of the cross-Channel traffic will be attracted to the new tunnel. They are projecting an enormous build-up by 1980. Do they expect the present ferry operators to invest funds in new ships and new equipment at the ports? It will surely be unreasonable to expect them to do so. In future we may be faced with grossly inadequate investment in new ships, and this could result in the most appalling congestion for lorry operators and hauliers and, indeed, for passengers who want to get across the Channel in the period up to 1980. In that period there will be a blight on the situation. Before long the Government will need to address themselves to this problem.
  It is with much regret that I find myself unable to support the Second Reading of the Bill. I would support the Bill gladly if the Minister were able to say that, because of the environmental impact on the county of Kent, there would be greater public participation by way of a public inquiry, or that a Select Committee of this House would be set up to examine the project and thereby exercise some future control over the rate of public spending. I would also gladly support the Bill if the Minister were to say, this evening, that the Government will give proper consideration to the railway-only tunnel—a proposal which has in it far more merit than the Government have yet conceded. Unless I receive those assurances, I shall be unable to support the Bill at this or any other stage.
  8.44 p.m.
  Mr. Peter Rees: Since this is the fourth debate on the Channel Tunnel in a period of about six months, it is inevitable that not many new points are likely to be made. I take up however the

  1377
  points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate). The basis of my perhaps reluctant support of the tunnel is that it will concentrate traffic on to two main arteries, the M20 and the M2.
  I am not privileged to speak on behalf of the Dover Harbour Board, but I have asked for and been given an assurance from the Minister for Transport Industries that he will look kindly on projects put to him by the board and will not demand that they should be amortised before 1980. I am sure that the Dover Harbour Board will robustly respond to the challenge presented to it by the Channel Tunnel. Having talked to the ferry operators, I know that they will not allow their trade to wither away in anticipation of any competition which the tunnel may afford to them.
  Two new factors have been introduced into the debate since the matter was last before the House. The first is the situation presented to the country by the fuel crisis. This has served to emphasise the fact that we need, and shall continue to need, a first-class rail service. The second factor is that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries has now promised the railways sufficient money to modernise themselves and to take advantage of the opportunities which are offered to them. I can only say that I shall watch with interest the progress of the railways. I hope, as do no doubt those who work in that great industry, that the railways will rise to the challenge and will make an important contribution over the next 25 or 30 years.
  I turn now to the speech of the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley). I do not challenge his right to criticise the project. After all, Lord Randolph Churchill said that it was the duty of an Opposition to oppose. I merely put this point to the right hon. Gentleman. Despite the two opportunities that he was generous enough to offer me during his speech, he did not appear to grasp the point of my interventions. It was that there are people in East Kent who want to know what the position would be if the right hon. Gentleman were fortunate enough once again to occupy the distinguished office that he did until June 1970. I hope that he will not take it amiss that I think it unlikely that he will do so in any space of time, But,
  1378
  after all, the electorate is interested in such matters, and there are people in my constituency who do not feel any great sympathy towards the tunnel and would be interested to know what the right hon. Gentleman would offer the House were he given an opportunity to take charge of this project.
  We know that in broad outline the right hon. Gentleman viewed the tunnel with some sympathy until 1970. It is a pity that he did not develop his thoughts on the kind of tunnel that he would support, but I acknowledge his generosity in allowing me to intervene twice during his speech. I regret only that he has still left us in some doubt. This is not the first time that this kind of situation has arisen in the present Parliament. Too often we have had great issues to debate, when the representatives of the Labour Party have said, "In principle we are in favour but not this particular project". We had it over the Common Market. Now we have it over the Channel Tunnel. It leaves the electorate a little confused and unhappy. The electorate likes to know what the Opposition have to offer on these great issues.
  Mr. Mulley: The short point is that the Government could well say that the logic of our votes on the Channel Tunnel meant that we would not have a Channel tunnel proposal before the House today. If we had succeeded in any of our three votes, the project would have come to an end. It is very difficult for the Opposition to put forward detailed proposals, because we do not have the resources of Government behind us. In any event, when the next General Election comes, the treaty will have been signed, which was not the case when we debated the White Paper. As a new Government, we should have to pick up the situation as it was then and consider it then. It is impossible to answer a great many hypothetical questions. We were not the Government on 15th November, which was the deadline. If we had been, we should have given our answer.
  Mr. Rees: If I understand that aright, the right hon. Gentleman is saying that if a Labour Government were to be elected before the project really got under way he would still recommend his right hon. and hon. Friends to honour their obligations under the treaty. That is an honourable and straightforward point of

  1379
  view, and I have no doubt that it will be noted in East Kent. I recognise that the right hon. Gentleman may not be able to meet the technical points, because he has not the resources of Government behind him, but it would be interesting to know what he would do. All that he is saying now is that it may be a good idea, but not at present. He is leaving the project in the air. He is saying, "Yes, a tunnel. But not in 1974."
  Mr. Moate: Is it not possible that had a Labour Government been in office on 15th November they would have signed the treaty?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu): Order. I do not think that that is a greatly important question to be discussing—in the minds, at any rate, of those who wish to speak after the hon and learned Gentleman.
  Mr. Rees: It is always interesting to respond to my hon. Friend's interventions, but it is difficult for me to speculate what a hypothetical Labour Government might have done in a hypothetical situation in 1973 or at any subsequent period.
  I turn now briefly to what was said by the absent hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Tope). Having assumed the onerous responsibility of his shadow portfolio for the Environment, the hon. Gentleman has taken Kent and the South-East under his wing. I did not observe the hon. Gentleman at the various meetings that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries had with the elected representatives who represent Kent in this Chamber and those who represent Kent at Maidstone. Therefore, he is not privileged to know the extreme care with which my right hon. Friend listened to our numerous anxieties and representations. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman be better employed representing the interests of Sutton and Cheam. He should leave Kent to those who represent that county in this Chamber. I hope that I do not speak too hardly about the hon. Gentleman in his absence. I am certain that the Dover Harbour Board and the Trinity House pilots will view with interest his suggestion of a Channel dam. On another occasion I should like to explore
  1380
  the extraordinary implications of that preposterous suggestion.
  Having acknowledged the care with which my right hon. Friend has attempted to allay the anxieties felt by people in East Kent, I should point out that there will be, and are, points that will be thrown up by this great project on which we shall continue to require reassurance.
  I was particularly happy that on the last occasion that we debated this great question my right hon. Friend assured us that he personally would come down to East Kent from time to time—to chair some kind of ad hoc committee—so that the problems which will inevitably arise can be anticipated and sorted out on the spot. To the people in East Kent that was a great reassurance.
  I should like to give one example of a problem which has arisen on which my right hon. Friend's intervention and good offices might provide some reassurance to my constituents. Anticipating the course of the Bill, parliamentary agents acting for the Channel Tunnel consortium have served on various residents in Hougham and Capel-le-Ferne certain documents, presumably connected with the proposed compulsory acquisition of some of their interests in land. A lawyer looking at the fine print can detect that it is only the rights in the subsoil that are acquired, because the Channel Tunnel will pass under Hougham and Capel-le-Ferne at a depth of 300 ft. But many of my constituents living in those two parishes are not lawyers and have developed an anxiety about the situation. They wonder whether their homes and gardens are at risk. I am endeavouring to sort out the matter with the parliamentary agents. No doubt between us we shall be able to offer the reassurance that is needed.
  Through my right hon. Friend I should like to suggest to the Channel Tunnel consortium, that this kind of problem which may arise in future could with intelligent anticipation be avoided. It could have sent the documents to which I have referred with a covering letter explaining in layman's English exactly what was proposed. I suggest, and have suggested by letter, that it could write to the Hougham and Capel-le-Ferne parish councils explaining what it has in mind and thereby put the minds of residents at rest. It comes as a great shock if people receive through the post an intimation that

  1381
  some part of their bits of East Kent are to be acquired for this project. There is always the lurking suspicion that an air vent will be sited in their gardens. I suggest to my right hon. Friend, so that he may transmit it to those who will be engaged on the project, that they should with intelligent anticipation avoid this kind of situation in the future.
  I move to the letter of 17th November this year, which accompanied the treaty signed between France and England. Signed by M. Billecocq, it contains an interesting passage headed "Roads". It says:
  "Each Government shall provide road infrastructure described in Agreements No. 2 on the terms set out in those Agreements.
  Each Government shall ensure that road users of the Tunnel will have access to its general highways system without having to pay any toll."
  That is a great point of reassurance, because it means that on arriving in France we shall not be compelled to pay a toll to join the motorway system.
  The letter goes on to say, about the Governments of the two countries:
  "Having regard to the need for the rail and road links with the Tunnel to be adequate to meet the requirements of Tunnel traffic, the Governments shall maintain regular contact and to this end shall set up appropriate machinery …".
  My question for my right hon. Friend is: what kind of appropriate machinery does he have in mind, and will local interests be represented in the matter?
  My right hon. Friend has told us at great length of the great projects and developments that he has in mind for the M20. He has given a decision on the eastern bypass to Dover harbour, for which we are suitably grateful. But there will be other road projects which will inevitably become necessary as the tunnel develops. There will have to be lateral roads to enable transport to switch from the A2 to the A20. I have in mind the road from the A2 which passes through the village of Denton to Folkestone. Will that kind of road, which could well be developed, be under the aegis of the appropriate machinery—if appropriate machinery can have an aegis—and taken away from the Kent County Council? What subsidies might be available for developing this kind of road network?
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  We in Dover are concerned that the town, and particularly the port, should have an appropriate fast rail link to the rail links of the tunnel itself. After all, Dunkirk, which to some extent is in competition with Dover, will have a fast rail link to the tunnel. Will this facility be offered to Dover? It is extremely important that Dover should be able to compete on level terms. I have voiced this worry to my right hon. Friend before. He has given assurances, but this is a practical instance where his intervention would be of great assistance.
  I have paid tribute to my right hon. Friend's sensitivity in the past. I hope that he will, tonight and subsequently, continue to be sensitive to the interests of the people of East Kent. We are after all being asked to bear the environmental and commercial brunt of this great project.
  8.58 p.m.
  Sir Richard Thompson: At this late hour I shall not attempt to make the speech which I had prepared for the occasion. I agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden). It looks as though we are probably to get a Channel tunnel by some terms or another. Those hon. Members who have argued against it—I hope cogently—must try to concentrate their efforts on improving the Bill.
  I do not believe that the Department has considered how it will contain the ferry terminal at Cheriton within the 250 acres, or whatever total it was. Such a vast interchange station is bound to attract warehousing, hotels, amusements and every conceivable kind of development, which must be exceedingly unwelcome in that part of Kent and will serve to perpetuate the present traffic pattern, which is grossly distorted and which this project presented a marvellous opportunity to change.
  Secondly, at the start of his remarks the Under-Secretary said some encouraging things about compensation. I hope he will follow these up. My constituents, who will be so affected by the line when it breaks surface near South Croydon and ploughs its way through a densely built-up residential area, are desperately worried about this. They have been in this state of mind since the "Panorama" programme in June, nearly six months ago.

  1383
  When I raised the point earlier on, I was told by my hon. Friend that until this House at least gave its general assent to the project it was quite idle, and indeed would be improper, for British Rail to pursue the subject of compensation.
  The House has now done all that, although I believe that there is a British Rail Bill to come. But my constituents have already been waiting nearly six months. They have seen the value of their houses diminish during this time, and in the ordinary course of events they could expect to wait many months more before notices to treat were served. I hope that the Minister will ensure that that period is shortened as much as possible.
  The best solution would be to return to my favourite theme of having those two or three miles of rail, from South Croydon on, still underground. This is technically feasible, and it would probably be cheaper than buying out my unfortunate constituents who are on the top.
  In the last debate that we had on this subject, I raised with my right hon. Friend, not for the first time, what I took to be the technical nonsense of believing that we could drive high-speed trains at speeds of up to 150 mph through long tunnels. In answering me, he made a remarkable admission:
  "The answer is that there will be a 100 mph maximum speed limit in the tunnel."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th November 1973; Vol. 863, c. 1239.]
  I welcome that very much, but it is a different figure from the one which has been commonly and widely quoted in all the earlier documentation.
  If there is now to be such a limit, the economic forecasts of the revenue from the tunnel and the frequency of the trains and so on must be wholly revised, and revised downwards. This lends fuel to the arguments of those of us who think that the returns from the tunnel have been grossly overestimated already.
  I leave my right hon. Friend with that thought. He should check those figures again, because if the original ones are wrong many of us will want to do a lot more probing in Committee about some of the other figures as well. I hope that he will be able to reassure me about those three points.
  9.2 p.m.
  Mr. Leslie Huckfield: The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson) has obviously been reading through the fascinating correspondence in The Times about the ins and outs of trains going through a tunnel at 100 mph. What he did not mention was the loud whine that they are supposed to make at either end and the whirlwind that they are supposed to create. We have had some of the symptoms of a whirlwind going through the Chamber each time we have had a debate on the Channel Tunnel, particularly from some of the benches on this side—and I am not talking about those occupied by my party.
  I do not wish to return to some of the old arguments about the Channel Tunnel. The only thing that seems incredible now is that the present Minister still thinks that he can get away with it. We have now had before the House the lessons of Concorde, the London motorway box and the third London airport at Maplin. It still seems that the Minister and the Government just blunder on through, as though everyone had to be assumed to be in favour.
  Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman is learning from the example of his French counterpart, who, I believe, openly goes about boasting that all he had to do to build the third Paris airport was compensate seven farmers. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman believes that the Channel Tunnel can be built on the same basis. Perhaps it is the fact that, once the words "national prestige" are mentioned, the Prime Minister automatically assumes that we do not need to talk about it—that no debate can be allowed because everyone has to be agreed. We do not share those beliefs.
  It is particularly regrettable that this Minister, who has a great respect for the traditions of the House, still thinks that he can get through this kind of procedure in this kind of atmosphere.
  Even the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Alexander Fletcher), who made his maiden speech this afternoon—and I am sure that the whole House congratulates him on it—recognised the importance of the procedures of the House and the way in which we process things. Because of the conciseness of his remarks, his depth of feeling, and his

  1385
  contribution as a whole, we look forward to many more speeches by the hon. Gentleman on debates such as this.
  I hope the Minister recognises that the opinion expressed by his hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North is shared by those who do not feel too keenly about this project, and that with that in mind he will realise that this project has never had the benefit of a full study of the range of possible alternatives. This project is in the same category as Stansted, Maplin and the London motorway box. All progress on the tunnel project has been on the assumption that we need not even study the alternatives. Had there been a full study of all the alternatives, including that of augmenting the ferry services and some of the air services, and an allowance for some of the technical innovations that we are bound to see in the shipping scene over the next 10–20 years, different conclusions might have been arrived at.
  Instead, we have had to debate this project without having the necessary documents before us. We are in the position that the Government are committing themselves to guarantees before putting them to the House for approval. Even now, before there has been a full policy statement, we are expected to come to conclusions about the rôle of the railways in using the tunnel. All this is happening despite the fact that for the last two or three years we have been pressing for such a statement. All that we have had from the Minister is a statement which, quite frankly, could be interpreted either way.
  It is true that there was a Green Paper—one of the greenest of Green Papers that I have seen since coming to the House. It was an extremely scantily-clad document. The Government updated that with a White Paper. That was followed by some of the forecasts put up by Cooper Brothers, which once more updated the White Paper. This afternoon we had the Under-Secretary of State suggesting that we might have to reconsider some of the estimates of the number of vehicles needed to carry cars through the tunnel.
  I go so far as to suggest that, despite the appearance of the White Paper as recently as September, there is a need for another White Paper, because we have reached the stage at which the Minister must recognise that the oil and energy
  1386
  crisis will alter all the calculations, that the European Union of Railways is already talking about 4,000 miles of track to carry 180 mph trains, and that the aviation fuel surcharge is adding £4 or £5 to the cost of package holidays. All those factors must alter some of the calculations on which the Minister has been basing his thinking about the tunnel.
  The hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) said that with the present rate of inflation and the leaps and bounds upwards of interest rates, the figure of £846 million was already out of date. If the right hon. Gentleman really fancies boring a tunnel through this kind of sand, I suggest that walking across might be safer, but I do not think that even he would presume to do that.
  The only full and frank discussion that has taken place on this subject has been within the Labour Party. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Merioneth (Mr. William Edwards) told the House that he is a shareholder in European Ferries. That explains some of the things that he said. Whereas the NUR and ASLEF appear to be fairly committed to a tunnel, the T and GWU has some hesitation about the degree of commitment which the Government appear to have made.
  There are divergences of opinion in the Labour Party about the matter. But that does not worry me half as much as the so-called independence of the studies on which the Government appear to have based their whole reasoning. All the studies the Government have so far put before the House, except the one on Kent, have been done by the firm of Cooper Brothers. All have been called independent studies.
  I do not wish to question the integrity of Cooper Brothers. I know that it has done very good work in calculating some of the social grant formula upon which the Minister's railways estimate is based. But the firm of Cooper Brothers is the business adviser to the British Channel Tunnel Company and Rio Tinto Zinc Development Enterprise, the project managers, and is the joint auditor, along with Spicer and Pegler, of Rio Tinto Zinc. The joint auditors are paid £500,000 for doing the books.
  One is bound to conclude that the people in Cooper Brothers who do the independent studies of which the Minister

  1387
  speaks must talk to those who do the books for Rio Tinto Zinc and the British Channel Tunnel Company. I have the greatest respect for the integrity of Cooper Brothers, but I cannot see how its independence, its free-willing thoughts on the matter, can be treated as that independent when it has those connections with people much more committed than itself to the project.
  One of our greatest worries concerns the finance proposals in the Bill. The White Paper says that the return on the project will be between 14 per cent. and 17 per cent. If that is so, how is it that the project needs a Government guarantee? It has been said several times today that North Sea oil exploration is considerably riskier than the Channel Tunnel, yet investment in that exploration does not carry a Government guarantee.
  Is it, then, that some of the financing companies which have been associated with the project do not believe the Government when they say that there will be a return of up to 17 per cent.? Do some of them know that when the engineering started on the Mont Blanc tunnel, although it too was supposed to be known technology, the costs escalated by 250 per cent.? Is it because some of the investors know that we may be spending up to £1,000 million just to reduce by 10 per cent. or 20 per cent. the rates for crossing the Channel? Any first-year economics student could have told the Minister that in a situation of 74 per cent. excess capacity what one had to do was not to build another project which increased that excess capacity but to change the pricing policy. The arguments put forward not only by the ferry operators but some of the genuinely independent people who have examined the project have cast doubt on many of the ferry costings. Ferry charges are at present before the Monopolies Commission.
  Because of all that and all the Government guarantees, one is bound to wonder why the companies have to be given the degree of prominence that they have. If they get out of the project before 1975 they have to be compensated by the Government. The Government must meet the guarantees. Even they get
  1388
  out after 1975, the Government must still buy them out. Their fixed capital must be paid off over 25 years.
  In view of the rate at which the companies will receive their return compared with the rate at which the Government receive their return, one is bound to come to the conclusion that everything has been angled to give the companies their maximum profit as quickly as possible. If the companies must have a guarantee because it is a risky venture, why should not they share the same degree of risk, through time, as the Government are being asked to take?
  In addition to that, however, the worrying thing is that if we get an escalation in costs beyond the estimated total of £846 million, to about £2,000 million, shall we have a situation in which the private risk is still that £84·6 million with the Government being asked to give guarantees to £1,915·4 million? If the Government are to guarantee that kind of increase in costs, even if they do not have to meet those guarantees, making provision for meeting them at the kind of interest rates envisaged is a very risky business. All the signals seem to have been at green in this project for the companies. But a great many of the signals for the Government, if not at red, are certainly at double amber.
  The calculations on which the project has been based are worrying. The hon. Member for Faversham mentioned this matter. To think that until 1980 the Government have provided for a rate of inflation of only 4·9 per cent., when they know very well that in the period between the Green Paper and the White Paper the construction costs rose by 11·2 per cent., and to think that the Government can reduce the rate of inflation to 4·9 per cent., is to believe in a fantastic achievement.
  We now have the following situation: if rates of interest do not rise—I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not tell us that—and if the pound stays static, if there are no unforeseen problems in boring the tunnel, if there are no changes in the specification or design and if the Government can bring down the rate of inflation from its present 10 per cent. or 11 per cent. by 0·5 per cent. a year, so that the rate is about 6·5 per cent. by 1980, the cost of this project to 1980,

  1389
  on the present costing, is still £1,020 million.
  In other words, even on the kind of projections that we can make legitimately, based on today's estimates of the rate of inflation and interest rates, the cost of this project has risen by 20 per cent. since the White Paper was published. These are the very shifting sands through which the Minister is attempting to bore his tunnel.
  Someone will have to pay—I think that it will be the Government; they have said that—for the rail link between Cheriton and London. I have prophesied previously that we would be paying 50p for a gallon of petrol before Christmas. Petrol has been on sale in Birmingham today at more than 50p a gallon. I also prophesy that before this year is out, and certainly before the present Government are out—which will not be very long—a Minister will be asking the House for power to increase the order of Government guarantee on this project. The trouble is that my prophecies come true.
  The Opposition are concerned about the people who have got themselves mixed up in this project. The first point on Schedule 4 is the declaration of interest. Those of us who know something about local authorities will know the way that declarations of interest work there. I am not particularly keen on seeing that kind of declaration of interest having to be made for the British board for the authority.
  We then have to look at the people who will have to have some representation. We find, for example, the British Channel Tunnel Company, with a 25 per cent. stake, RTZ with a 20 per cent. stake, and even Kleinwort, Benson Limited, with a 10·5 per cent. stake—and all the fine old names of British banking. We then find the British Railways Board, with a mere 4·7 per cent. What kind of representation on the British board will the British Railways Board have alongside all these companies? If the Minister is trying to say that all these finance companies have a great deal of transport expertise, I can only say that from reading through the list of finance companies it strikes me that these companies know about as much about transport as Brian Clough knows
  1390
  about the procedure of a Trappist monastery.
  The issue of road versus rail has been raised. We are told in the White Paper, and in the Treaty, that the Channel Tunnel Authority will take its instructions from the two boards, and will have to show no discrimination between road and rail, but the Minister knows that all the big money in the project will come from the rolling motorways—from carrying road vehicles on trains. The biggest slice of profit in the project is estimated to come from the 75 per cent. of passengers with cars who are supposed to shift to the rolling motorway. What is the Government's policy on this? Are they trying to tell us that they favour the railways, or are they going to prove the two worst prophecies of the hon. Member for Faversham about even more lorries rolling down through Kent?
  A statement from the Chairman of the British Railways Board—in fact, it was his financial submission to the Government—was based on the assumption that even less freight would be carried on the railway system in 1981 than is being carried now. The railways have only 5 per cent. of the total freight market.
  The right hon. Gentleman, replying to me following his statement, or the bare bones of his statement, on railway policy a week ago admitted that he did not think the railways would be carrying any different commodity share by 1981 than they are carrying now. Do the Government favour the railways and claim that the tunnel will favour the railways, or do the Government know very well that the only way to make big profits out of the tunnel is to increase as much as possible the share of road transport going through the tunnel on trains?
  The Government are a very interested party in the project. They are not only guarantors, they are also the backstop and the referee. The Government will have to implement the recommendations of the Monopolies Commission on ferry prices and negotiate international air fares on behalf of the Civil Aviation Authority. Whatever the Government do they will remain a very interested party in the financial outcome of the tunnel.
  Is the Minister still telling the House that the Government will allow the tunnel authority complete commercial freedom and that they will not lay down any

  1391
  code of practice—I suppose that that is what it would be called—or guidelines—for the tunnel authority to follow? The Minister must be giving some kind of directive to the authority.
  The Minister knows that if he allowed complete freedom between road and rail to the tunnel authority it could work only to the detriment of the railways. On the other hand, if he gives directives in favour of the railways to the authority it could work only to the detriment of the profits and consequently to the interests of the private companies. Apart from that, if he pushes the road interests or takes a neutral line and allows the tunnel authority to discriminate in favour of road interests, as he may be tempted to do, he knows he can increase the profits. On the other hand, if he does what he says he will do as regards fostering the interests of British Railways he can only depress profits and run the risk of invoking the guarantees.
  The Minister occupies a confused rôle in all this. He should come before the House and clarify his own policy and the Government's long-term policy for the operation of the tunnel.
  I have mentioned some of the questions that need accurate answers. The resource and opportunity costs of going ahead with a project of this stature have to be examined. There has been a lot of talk about the financial cost. We are told in in the White Paper that the project will cost £846 million. I believe that we already have to increase the cost by 20 per cent. and shall have to do so by a great deal more by 1980.
  It is the resource and opportunity costs of carrying out a project like this which worry me. The Minister knows that the opportunity cost of implementing the Buchanan Report would have meant having the construction industry not doing anything else for the next 50 years. We are told that Maplin, the Channel Tunnel and the rebuilding of London's dockland will add only 11 per cent. to total construction expenditure in the South-East, and only about 5¼ per cent. to the amount of labour demand on construction projects in the whole of the South-East.
  I can only say, "Tell that to any housing chairman who currently cannot
  1392
  get local authority housing built. Tell that to the National Coal Board, which in many parts of the country, fears that as soon as construction work begins on the tunnel a great deal of its labour force will move to the South-East because these people know that the kind of wages they will get building the tunnel will be better than those being offered currently by the board under phase 3."
  The Minister has told the House that the cost is to be only 0.3 per cent. of our gross national product. If we do not have any increase in GNP it means that, should expenditure increase by 0·3 per cent., it has to come out of something else. Even 0.3 per cent. of GNP, at about £150 million we are told, is a very large sum when we face the real and serious possibility of a zero rate of growth.
  If the Minister does not feel bound to examine the project once more on the lines of some of the cost doubts that we in the Labour Party would like to cast, if he does not feel bound to reexamine the project on the actual balance that it is hoped to strike between road and rail, or because of the independence of the private banking institutions, will he please examine the project once again along the lines of, and because of, the serious energy situation now facing the country?
  The financial success of this project depends upon a large shift of road freight—roll-on/roll-off lorries and passengers accompanying cars—to the rolling motorway. It is estimated that 75 per cent. of passengers with cars will have to make the shift to make this project a success. Does the Minister still believe in the White Paper forecast that the number of cars on our roads will double over 10 years? Does he still believe that the increase in world demand for oil of 7 per cent. a year can be satisfied after some of the things that Sheikh Yamani has been telling European countries this week? Does he honestly believe that North Sea oil will satisfy all of our demands when we have a situation in which the total production of French, Norwegian and British reserves in 1985 could be 150 million tons while the combined European demand in that year could be 1½ billion tons?
  Does he honestly think we can get by and go ahead easily and fluently, thinking of projects like the Channel Tunnel, when

  1393
  we face this kind of crisis situation with our energy supplies? It is time the Government realised that the days of cheap energy are over. It is time they realised that we have to stop planning along the lines, and on a basis, of infinite mobility. We must start reappraising many big projects such as this on the assumption that mobility in future will be a finite commodity. We no longer have the energy resources to go on with projects such as the tunnel.
  The energy crisis facing this country is not just a temporary thing. It is not the sort of thing which, if we sit down with a strong cup of tea, will go away. It will last a long time and this Government ought seriously to start planning for it and to stop putting the blame on to garages, motorists and the oil companies. The Government have to do some planning.
  Having cancelled Maplin—and if he wants a good excuse to cancel Maplin the energy crisis certainly ought to give him that—let him rethink the whole strategy of his Channel Tunnel. He now has enough excuses and reasons. There is now enough doubt cast on the figures that he put forward in his White Paper. There is now enough doubt cast on the kind of projections which have been put forward by the British Channel Tunnel Company. There is now enough doubt cast on the projections which have been put forward by Cooper Brothers.
  Having said that, I can only advise my hon. Friends to oppose the Bill tonight. We do not think that it is a project that can be undertaken along the lines of the Channel Tunnel Bill. We think that it is a project which deserves very serious reexamination, and certainly, as an instant step, this side of the House would like to see an impartial examination of the whole project that we have had outlined by the Government tonight.
  9.31 p.m.
  The Minister for Transport Industries (Mr. John Peyton): I think I am right in congratulating the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield) on his first appearance on the Front Bench opposite. That is always a rather difficult occasion. For success, one has to be very careful of the company one finds oneself in. Nevertheless, we all want to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on making the best use he possible could of a bad
  1394
  case, and on not being too worried about whom he found himself sitting near. In this place, the technique of prophecy is one which is often practised. People throw about all sorts of forecasts, confident in the knowledge that no one will ever bother to pick them up. So one is left with the easy chance of picking up those odd forecasts which have turned out right, and one can remind everyone of them. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to do that. He congratulated himself tonight, and he knows what might happen in the future.
  I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary on a really lucid explanation of a rather complex measure. He did so in the rather difficult atmosphere of almost total peace—that kind of total, absolute and unbroken tranquillity which one can expect at a time when the House of Commons has its fourth bite of a cherry in about four months. On occasions of that sort, no matter how many people may go through the ritual of complaining that they have not been told enough, that they have not had enough paper, at the fourth time of asking the atmosphere is apt to be a little calm.
  The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) really did his very best today. It was very difficult for him, because his heart was not in it, and, despite the fact that he would like to chop off his past, he has a past and, as he was kind enough to say today, the position which we have now reached is one which flow fairly naturally from the position which he occupied when he was in office. He complained that the House had had too little opportunity to discuss this question before decisions were made. But we have had a Green Paper, a White Paper and a little Bill and now we have a big Bill—those four occasions, all of which implied decisions, going reasonably gradually, and that against the background of 170 years of hard thought on the project I cannot accept that we have had too little time to discuss decisions. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to say—
  Mr. Mulley: We had a debate on a Friday on a Green Paper, which was overtaken and cancelled by the White Paper, so it was not worth the paper it was printed on, before a decision was taken.

  1395
  All of these debates, which we particularly enjoy have been after the Government announced their decision and dragooned their supporters through the Lobby to carry it.
  Mr. Peyton: Of course, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Park should never yield to the temptation to intervene—not with points like that, anyhow. The Green Paper, a slender, modest document—never intended to be more—was an attempt to define the position reached when the previous Government left office. If it had a certain paucity about it, that is not something I would wish to press too much now because it would be most embarrassing to the right hon. Gentleman.
  The right hon. Gentleman was not to be drawn about what he did favour. He was not in favour of this particular tunnel. There is something wicked about it. However, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees) did his best to draw the right hon. Gentleman, asking what he was intending to offer the people of Dover. At that point the right hon. Gentleman assumed an air of coyness and chastity, the like of which I have seldom seen.
  I come to three points which the right hon. Gentleman asked me. I can tell him that some negotiations may take place but the powers contained in the Bill will not be substantially used until a further decision has been taken, and that further decision will be the Third Reading of the Bill. He raised the question of the British Railways Bill. It will not come this Session, it will be presented in the next Session of Parliament, and it will be a Private Bill. The third point is whether there would be substantial investment by the railways before that Bill was presented. The answer to that question is "No".
  The right hon. Gentleman then very graciously said that he had no quarrel with the ingredient of private capital in the project but he had a rather predictable complaint about the private interests getting too large a reward. It was a sort of inverse picture of Oliver Twist. The right hon. Gentleman asked that someone else should have less instead of asking for a little more for himself.
  I have been here for only 22 years but I believe it is not an unusual prac-
  1396
  tice for Governments when they go through the deplorable practice of issuing White Papers to ask the House of Commons to approve them. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think there was something strange and wicked about that. On the whole, there are many White Papers, and I say quite impartially that we should have been better off without an awful lot of them. It was necessary to quarry a very long way to find their meaning. They were over-long, and short of information. However, no one can say that of the White Paper which the House so graciously approved only a month or so ago.
  The right hon. Gentleman complained—mark that word—that the House of Commons had had no opportunity to challenge the figures. Here we are today debating the matter for the fourth time, and as far as I can recollect he did not mention in his speech a single one of those figures that he wished to challenge. I find it difficult to take that seriously.
  The right hon. Gentleman raised in a very elegant fashion the fact that before 1948 every Hybrid Bill had to go through certain procedures. I was not sure at the end whether he was in favour of those procedures, because he went on to say then that all sorts of people tamed up with evidence before the Select Committee. Does he favour that process? I was not sure, but in this particular instance I think it not unlikely that we shall follow the example of the Labour Government. The right hon. Gentleman said in a moment of quite unqualified boldness that he was here to explain his party's attitude; but he very wisely refrained from going into any detail.
  I think that almost every right hon. and hon. Member who has spoken has acknowledged the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Alexander Fletcher). I pay a similar tribute. It was an admirable speech. Every hon. Member who was present welcomed his reference to Johnnie Dalkeith, as we knew him, and to the brave way in which he combated great misfortune here. During the course of my hon. Friend's speech he led us all to believe that he would be a worthy successor. We shall all, in the time-honoured phrase, look forward to hearing from him again, and rather more so

  1397
  than to some hon. Member whose names and constituencies I shall not mention. He was witty, to the point, and made a short speech—a remarkable achievement. I assure him that the whole House enjoyed his speech and the way in which he made it, and would wish to join me in my congratulations.
  My right hon. Friend referred movingly to the strength of the Union. He did so at a time when disruption is the dangerous mood with which we are most familiar. He was wise enough to see that by such a project Scotland can be brought closer to the centre of economic activity. I was grateful to him for his welcome of the Government's statement on rail policy. I take his warning that it would be unacceptable—and it is unlikely that I should be responsible for these details—and unwelcome, if the tunnel were to be completed by 1980, that trains should run to the tunnel from London during 1980, from Manchester in 1985 and not until 1990 from Scotland. I warmly agree with my right hon. Friend. I hope that such a thing will not happen. I am sure that it will not.
  My hon. Friend then said that the project was within the boundaries of today's knowledge. That is right, and it indicates that it does not have the perils of some of the so-called high technology projects which have more dangerous ground. He closed his remarks with a moving and marvellous warning to all those who live south of Watford. I hope that everyone who is disgraced by living south of Watford will take note of what he said and change his ways.
  Then we came to a remarkable part of the debate. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Tope) moved an amendment. He is to be congratulated wholeheartedly on the speed with which the Liberal benches were evacuated imediately after he had done so. He would have heard nothing good of it. He had a distinction which none of us has ever had in this House, of having every Member of his party in attendance upon him while he made his speech. Then one of my hon. Friends, whose name and constituency I would prefer to forget, actually went so far as to suggest a photograph of that crowded Liberal bench.
  Well, I was told, in the course of a speech which dredged up some not un-
  1398
  fashionable ground for opposing this project, that the Liberal Party objected to a "rolling motorway", that it would prefer, in other words, to build a tunnel from which, or from the use of which, the bulk of traffic would be withdrawn. I would much like to assure the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Cyril Smith), who has just come in, that there was nothing personal in my last remark.
  We went through these rather familiar arguments about a rail-only tunnel, and then suddenly the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam took off into the realms of what he described as imaginative thinking but what for everyone else was sheeer romance—a Channel dam which was going to cost £1,000 million to £1,500 million. I wish he would tell me where he shops. I think it would be a bargain. I do not know whether he actually added the sort of collateral expenses which would flow, because half, and probably the whole, of Holland and certainly most of East Anglia would be under water.
  Then, astonishingly enough, the hon. Gentleman went on to say that he had heard that the M20 would have to be doubled. The new section of the M20 is a dual three-lane road. I do not know where he gets his information from any more than I know where he shops.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) put three points to me. He referred to Dolland's Moor and was anxious about some permanent development of great horror. Dolland's Moor is to be used as a siding temporarily for railway purposes for the transport of spoil.
  Secondly, my hon. Friend referred to the difficulty of selling houses which have a low value now but would be likely to develop a higher value later. Before my right hon. and learned Friend has any powers in this matter he needs the Bill, but the matter is being discussed with the project managers and we are ascertaining whether there is anything helpful they can do. The problem is recognised.
  My hon. Friend's third question concerned flood water. I understand that it is now being discussed with the Folkestone Borough Council.
  The hon. Member for Wrexham (Mr. Ellis)—I apologise for not being here to hear him, but I heard most of the debate

  1399
  —was worried about inadequate research on regional development. I do not know, but I am sure that he probably read the White Paper very fully but some time ago. If he reads it again, he will find that there is quite a bit in it, and even a substantial annex on the subject, which I commend to his attention.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Sir D. Dodds-Parker), whose return to this matter I welcome warmly, showed the support born of a long conviction for an historic project. He revealed with a shrewd question the customary difficulty experienced by a party which habitually favours what it is doing while it is doing it, but which visits anyone else who is rash enough to tread much the same path with the vinegary disapproval to which we have all become accustomed. My hon. Friend acknowledged that the project is technically possible and economically viable, and that it was not unimportant or unwelcome.
  The hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) made a remarkable speech to which I think the whole House listened with enjoyment and respect—the whole House, that is, minus the Liberal Bench, to which he addressed his earlier remarks. I do not wish to add to the gloom and misery of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, but he would do well to read what the hon. Member for West Lothian said about his speech, and I hope he will.
  The hon. Member for West Lothian also paid a generous tribute to the Duke of Buccleuch and went on to welcome both the tunnel and the rail link. His comments on the management structure and the difficulties that inevitably arise in the management of an international project are, I assure him, taken seriously. What I said in my intervention during his speech was said not in a spirit of complacency but in the knowledge that there is a substantial problem which, being recognised, can be dealt with.
  I dealt with the question that the capital cost of a rail-only tunnel would be 30 per cent. less but that, deprived of the large bulk of its traffic, the tunnel would not make a profit for a long time. Although the operating cost of a railway-only tunnel would be cut by 85 per cent., that would be only a small section of
  1400
  the total annual cost and would take no account of the loss of revenue, which would be far greater.
  The hon. Member for West Lothian considered that Clause 8 offered too much of a carte blanche to my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State, but my right hon. and learned Friend has very limited obligations or rights under the Bill. Clause 8 gives him financial powers only to spend money in pursuance of the minor functions, rights and powers that he has.
  Mr. Dalyell: As so many projects can financially get out of hand, even at this stage would it not be sensible to build into the system a monitoring unit?
  Mr. Peyton: The monitoring unit is already there. An elaborate organisation has been set up to take account of expenditure as we go along.
  The hon. Gentleman went on to raise the question of electricity sources. These are matters of great difficulty and complexity. I must accept what he said, but they are matters for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. I shall call them to my right hon. Friend's attention and ensure that the questions are answered.
  I was particularly impressed by the full-blooded attack launched by my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Mr. John Wells) on the bogus attitude, as he called it—I would not use such language—of those who oppose this project. He asked me to allay the fears of his constituents who will inevitably be affected by the construction of the project. All I should like to say to them, without the lavish use of adjectives, is that we shall do our best to ensure that people are treated fairly and we shall not turn a deaf ear to complaints and to any point of view which he likes to bring to us. He summed up the whole position of the Channel Tunnel vis-à-vis Kent very well by saying that, if dealt with sympathetically, the project will help his county.
  We all enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. William Edwards). We sympathised with the double confusion that he felt inflicted on him by the Liberal Party and also by the attitudes of his own party. I am sorry that his speech was not heard by more of his right hon. and hon. Friends, because they would have learned a great

  1401
  deal from his wise remarks. He would have warned them particularly of the danger of parochial judgments and of the feebleness into which we can easily drift if we allow doubts about our capacity as a nation to take root. He chided those who took that view for their failure to realise where they might have got to had they given strong support to the leadership offered by British Railways or the National Union of Railwaymen, from whom on this issue they seem to have cut themselves off.
  I am sorry that I shall not be able to answer very fully my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, West (Mr. Sutcliffe), but I shall endeavour to satisfy him on the questions he asked. I shall also endeavour to do the same for my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate), although I think it doubtful that I shall be able to secure from him the enthusiastic support for the project I should like.
  The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden) said that the Liberal Party had shown its own opinion of its amendment because the Liberal Members withdrew en masse as soon as they had launched the wretched little thing.
  The hon. Gentleman raised three points. One related to the people employed in this project. I should like to look into that matter. There is no reason why people should not come from the regions if they want to work on the project. In regard to control of expenditure, I referred a little earlier to the
  elaborate procedures which had been set up. I shall certainly look at the need to establish some routine reports to Parliament on progress.
  I repeat to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover what I have said to him previously; namely that we shall look sympathetically at projects for the Dover Harbour. I intend to set up a working, efficient ad hoc committee, over which I or my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will preside, to ensure that complaints are attended to. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson) for the generous way in which he accepted that something which he does not welcome is likely to happen.
  In reply to the remarks made by the hon. Member for Nuneaton, who summed up on behalf of the Opposition, I have already said something about the dangers of drifting too far into the realms of prophecy. The hon. Gentleman seemed to suggest that it was the Government who had somehow got themselves confused. However, the hon. Gentleman in talking about boards and companies seems to have got himself rather muddled. He did a noble job in drawing a veil between the House and the spectacle of the Labour Party, whose members make muddle and confusion their habit.
  Question put, That the amendment be made:—
  The House divided: Ayes 182, Noes 207.

  Division No. 17.]

  AYES

  [10.00 p.m.

  Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Cronin, John

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)

  Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)

  Foot, Michael

  Armstrong, Ernest

  Dalyell, Tam

  Freud, Clement

  Ashton, Joe

  Davidson, Arthur

  Gilbert, Dr. John

  Atkinson, Norman

  Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)

  Gourlay, Harry

  Austick, David

  Davies, Ifor (Gower)

  Grant, George (Morpeth)

  Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

  Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)

  Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.

  Beith, A. J.

  Deakins, Eric

  Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

  Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood

  Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund

  Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)

  Blenkinsop, Arthur

  Dempsey, James

  Hamling, William

  Boardman, H. (Leigh)

  Doig, Peter

  Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)

  Booth, Albert

  Dormand, J. D.

  Hardy, Peter

  Braine, Sir Bernard

  Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)

  Harper, Joseph

  Brown, Robert C. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne, W.)

  Douglas-Mann, Bruce

  Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

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

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith

  Brown, Ronald (Shoredltch & F'bury)

  Dunn, James A.

  Hattersley, Roy

  Buchan, Norman

  Dunnett, Jack

  Hooson, Emlyn

  Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James

  Eadie, Alex

  Horam, John

  Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)

  Edelman, Maurice

  Huckfield, Leslie

  Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)

  Edwards, William (Merioneth)

  Hughes, Mark (Durham)

  Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)

  Ellis, Tom

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Clark, David (Colne Valley)

  Evans, Fred

  Hunter, Adam

  Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)

  Ewing, Harry

  Janner, Greville

  Cohen, Stanley

  Faulds, Andrew

  Jay. Rt. Hn. Douglas

  Concannon, J. D.

  Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.

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

  Conlan, Bernard

  Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'hamLadywood)

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)

  Mitchell, R. C. (S'hampton, Itchen)

  Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)

  Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)

  Molloy, William

  Sillars, James

  Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)

  Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)

  Silverman, Julius

  Judd, Frank

  Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Kaufman, Gerald

  Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

  Small, William

  Kerr, Russell

  Morris, Rt. Hn John (Aberavon)

  Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)

  Lamborn, Harry

  Moyle, Roland

  Stoddart, David (Swindon)

  Lamond, James

  Mudd, David

  Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John

  Lawson, George

  Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Stott, Roger

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Murray, Ronald King

  Strang, Gavin

  Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Orbach, Maurice

  Thomas, Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)

  Leonard, Dick

  Oswald, Thomas

  Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)

  Lomas, Kenneth

  Padley, Walter

  Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy

  Loughlin, Charles

  Palmer, Arthur

  Tinn, James

  Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)

  Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles

  Tope, Graham

  McBride, Neil

  Parker, John (Dagenham)

  Tuck, Raphael

  McCartney, Hugh

  Pavitt, Laurie

  Urwin, T. W.

  MacDonald, Mrs. Margo

  Pendry, Tom

  Varley, Eric G.

  Machin, George

  Perry, Ernest G.

  Wainwright, Edwin

  Mackenzie, Gregor

  Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Mackie, John

  Prescott, John

  Wallace, George

  Mackintosh, John P.

  Price, William (Rugby)

  Watkins, David

  Maclennan, Robert

  Probert, Arthur

  Weitzman, David

  McNamara, J. Kevin

  Reed, D. (Sedgefield)

  Wellbeloved, James

  Marks, Kenneth

  Rees, Merlyn (Leeds, S.)

  Wells, William (Walsall, N.)

  Marquand, David

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)

  Marsden, F.

  Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)

  Whitehead, Phillip

  Marshall, Dr. Edmund

  Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Brc'n&R'dnor)

  Whitlock, William

  Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy

  Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)

  Williams, W. T. (Warrington)

  Mayhew, Christopher

  Roper, John

  Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)

  Meacher, Michael

  Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)

  Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

  Mendelson, John

  Rowlands, Ted

  Woof, Robert

  Mikardo, Ian

  Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)

  Millan, Bruce

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

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Miller, Dr. M. S.

  Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton. N. E.)

  Mr. John Pardoe and

  Milne, Edward

  Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)

  Mr. Cyril Smith.

  NOES

  Adley, Robert

  Dean, Paul

  Howell, David (Guildford)

  Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

  Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.

  Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)

  Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

  Digby, Simon Wingfield

  Hunt, John

  Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian

  Dixon, Piers

  Iremonger, T. L.

  Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)

  Dodds-Parker, Sir Douglas

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Astor, John

  Drayson, Burnaby

  James, David

  Atkins, Humphrey

  du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward

  Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

  Awdry, Daniel

  Dykes, Hugh

  Jopling, Michael

  Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)

  Eden, Rt. Hn. Sir John

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine

  Balniel, Rt. Hn. Lord

  Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  Kershaw, Anthony

  Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

  Kimball, Marcus

  Batsford, Brian

  Elliott, R. W. (N'c'le-upon-Tyne, N.)

  King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

  Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton

  Emery, Peter

  King, Tom (Bridgwater)

  Benyon, W.

  Eyre, Reginald

  Kinsey, J. R.

  Berry, Hn. Anthony

  Fenner, Mrs. Peggy

  Kirk, Peter

  Biggs-Davison, John

  Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)

  Knox, David

  Blaker, Peter

  Fletcher, Alexander (Edinburgh, N.)

  Lamont, Norman

  Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Lane, David

  Boscawen, Hn. Robert

  Fowler, Norman

  Longden, Sir Gilbert

  Bowden, Andrew

  Fox, Marcus

  Loveridge, John

  Braine, Sir Bernard

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

  Luce, R. N.

  Bray, Ronald

  Gardner, Edward

  MacArthur, Ian

  Brewis, John

  Gibson-Watt, David

  McCrindle, R. A.

  Brinton, Sir Tatton

  Goodhart, Philip

  McLaren, Martin

  Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher

  Goodhew, Victor

  Maclean, Sir Fitzroy

  Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

  Gower, Raymond

  McMaster, Stanley

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

  Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)

  Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Maurice (Farnham)

  Butler, Adam (Bosworth)

  Gray, Hamish

  McNair-Wilson, Michael

  Carlisle, Mark

  Grieve, Percy

  McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)

  Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert

  Gummer, J. Selwyn

  Madel, David

  Channon, Paul

  Gurden, Harold

  Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald

  Chapman, Sydney

  Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

  Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.

  Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher

  Hannam, John (Exeter)

  Mills, Peter (Torrington)

  Chichester-Clark, R.

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)

  Churchill, W. S.

  Hastings, Stephen

  Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C.(Aberdeenshire, W)

  Clegg, Walter

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

  Cockeram, Eric

  Hicks, Robert

  Money, Ernie

  Cooke, Robert

  Hiley, Joseph

  Monks, Mrs. Connie

  Coombs, Derek

  Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)

  Monro, Hector

  Cooper, A. E.

  Hill, S. James A. (Southampton, Test)

  More, Jasper

  Cormack, Patrick

  Holland, Philip

  Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.

  Costain, A. P.

  Holt, Miss Mary

  Morrison, Charles

  Critchley, Julian

  Hordern, Peter

  Neave, Alrsy

  Crouch, David

  Hornby, Richard

  Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael

  Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)

  Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia

  Normanton, Tom

  1404

  1405

  Ogden, Eric

  Sainsbury, Tim

  Trafford, Dr. Anthony

  Onslow, Cranley

  Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.

  Trew, Peter

  Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally

  Scott, Nicholas

  Tugendhat, Christopher

  Osborn, John

  Scott-Hopkins, James

  Vickers, Dame Joan

  Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)

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

  Waddington, David

  Page, Rt. Hn. Graham (Crosby)

  Shelton, William (Clapham)

  Walder, David (Clitheroe)

  Page. John (Harrow, W.)

  Shersby, Michael

  Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)

  Parkinson, Cecil

  Simeons, Charles

  Wall, Patrick

  Peel, Sir John

  Sinclair, Sir George

  Ward, Dame Irene

  Percival, Ian

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  Warren, Kenneth

  Peyton, Rt. Hn. John

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

  Weatherill, Bernard

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Speed, Keith

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Pounder, Rafton

  Spence, John

  White, Roger (Gravesend)

  Price, David (Eastleigh)

  Sproat, Iain

  Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William

  Raison, Timothy

  Stainton, Keith

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Wilkinson, John

  Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)

  Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Rees, Peter (Dover)

  Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)

  Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Tapsell, Peter

  Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

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

  Woodnutt, Mark

  Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

  Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)

  Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey

  Tebbit, Norman

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)

  Temple, John M.

  Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

  Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke and

  Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

  Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)

  Mr. A. G. F. Hall-Davis.

  Rost, Peter

  Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Hendon, S.)

  Question accordingly negatived.
  Main Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 39 (Amendment on second or third reading):
  The House divided: Ayes 203, Noes 185.

  Division No. 18.]

  AYES

  (10.12 p. m.

  Adley, Robert

  Dixon, Piers

  Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

  Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

  Dodds-Parker, Sir Douglas

  Jopling, Michael

  Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

  Drayson, Burnaby

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine

  Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian

  du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward

  Kershaw, Anthony

  Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)

  Dykes, Hugh

  Kimball, Marcus

  Astor, John

  Eden, Rt. Hn. Sir John

  King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

  Atkins, Humphrey

  Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  King, Tom (Bridgwater)

  Awdry, Daniel

  Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

  Kinsey, J. R.

  Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)

  Elliott, R. W. (N'c'le-upon-Tyne. N.)

  Kirk, Peter

  Balniel, Rt. Hn. Lord

  Emery, Peter

  Knox, David

  Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Eyre, Reginald

  Lamont, Norman

  Batsford, Brian

  Fenner, Mrs. Peggy

  Lane, David

  Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton

  Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)

  Longden, Sir Gilbert

  Benyon, W.

  Fletcher, Alexander (Edinburgh, N.)

  Loveridge, John

  Berry, Hn. Anthony

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Luce, R. N.

  Biggs-Davison, John

  Fowler, Norman

  MacArthur, Ian

  Blaker, Peter

  Fox, Marcus

  McCrindle, R. A.

  Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)

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

  McLaren, Martin

  Boscawen, Hn. Robert

  Gardner, Edward

  Maclean, Sir Fitzroy

  Bowden, Andrew

  Gibson-Watt, David

  McMaster, Stanley

  Bray, Ronald

  Goodhart, Philip

  Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Maurice (Farnham)

  Brewis, John

  Goodhew, Victor

  McNair-Wilson, Michael

  Brinton, Sir Tatton

  Gower, Raymond

  McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)

  Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher

  Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)

  Madel, David

  Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

  Gray, Hamish

  Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald

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

  Grieve, Percy

  Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.

  Butler, Adam (Bosworth)

  Gummer, J. Selwyn

  Mills, Peter (Torrington)

  Carlisle, Mark

  Gurden, Harold

  Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)

  Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert

  Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

  Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C.(Aberdeenshire, W)

  Channon, Paul

  Hannam, John (Exeter)

  Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

  Chapman, Sydney

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Money, Ernie

  Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher

  Hastings, Stephen

  Monks, Mrs. Connie

  Chichester-Clark, R.

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Monro, Hector

  Churchill, W. S.

  Hicks, Robert

  More, Jasper

  Clegg, Walter

  Hiley, Joseph

  Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.

  Cockeram, Eric

  Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)

  Morrison, Charles

  Cooke, Robert

  Hill, S. James A. (Southampton, Test)

  Neave, Airey

  Coombs, Derek

  Holland, Philip

  Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael

  Cooper, A. E.

  Holt, Miss Mary

  Normanton, Tom

  Cormack, Patrick

  Hordern, Peter

  Onslow, Cranley

  Costain, A. P.

  Hornby, Richard

  Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally

  Critchley, Julian

  Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia

  Osborn, John

  Crouch, David

  Howell, David (Guildford)

  Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)

  Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)

  Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)

  Page, Rt. Hn Graham (Crosby)

  Hunt, John

  Dean, Paul

  Iremonger, T. L.

  Page, John (Harrow. W)

  Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Parkinson, Cecil

  Digby, Simon Wingfield

  James, David

  Peel, Sir John

  1406

  1407

  Percival, Ian

  Shelton, William (Clapham)

  Trew, Peter

  Peyton, Rt. Hn. John

  Shersby, Michael

  Tugendhat, Christopher

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Simeons, Charles

  Vickers, Dame Joan

  Pounder, Rafton

  Sinclair, Sir George

  Waddington, David

  Price, David (Eastleigh)

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  Walder, David (Clitheroe)

  Raison, Timothy

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

  Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)

  Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James

  Speed, Keith

  Wall, Patrick

  Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)

  Spence, John

  Ward, Dame Irene

  Rees, Peter (Dover)

  Sproat, Iain

  Warren, Kenneth

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Stainton, Keith

  Weatherill, Bernard

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

  Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)

  White, Roger (Gravesend)

  Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey

  Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)

  Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William

  Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)

  Tapsell, Peter

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

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

  Wilkinson, John

  Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

  Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Rost, Peter

  Tebbit, Norman

  Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

  Sainsbury, Tim

  Temple, John M.

  Woodnutt, Mark

  Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.

  Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret

  Scott, Nicholas

  Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Scott-Hopkins, James

  Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Hendon, S.)

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke and

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

  Trafford, Dr. Anthony

  Mr. A. G. F. Hall-Davis.

  NOES

  Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Hardy, Peter

  Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)

  Harper, Joseph

  Murray, Ronald King

  Armstrong, Ernest

  Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

  Orbach, Maurice

  Ashton, Joe

  Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith

  Oswald, Thomas

  Atkinson, Norman

  Hattersley, Roy

  Padley, Walter

  Austick, David

  Hooson, Emlyn

  Palmer, Arthur

  Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

  Horam, John

  Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles

  Beith, A. J.

  Huckfield, Leslie

  Pardoe, John

  Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood

  Hughes, Mark (Durham)

  Parker, John (Dagenham)

  Blenkinsop, Arthur

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Pavitt, Laurie

  Booth, Albert

  Hunter, Adam

  Pendry, Tom

  Brown, Robert C. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne, W.)

  Janner, Greville

  Perry, Ernest G.

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

  Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas

  Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch

  Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch & F'bury)

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

  Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.

  Buchan, Norman

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Prescott, John

  Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James

  Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)

  Price, William (Rugby)

  Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)

  Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)

  Probert, Arthur

  Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)

  Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)

  Reed, D. (Sedgefield)

  Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)

  Judd, Frank

  Rees, Merlyn (Leeds, S.)

  Clark, Davis (Colne Valley)

  Kaufman, Gerald

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)

  Kerr, Russell

  Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)

  Cohen, Stanley

  Lamborn, Harry

  Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Brc'n&R'dnor)

  Concannon, J. D.

  Lamond, James

  Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)

  Conlan, Bernard

  Lawson, George

  Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)

  Cronin, John

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Roper, John

  Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)

  Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)

  Dalyell, Tam

  Leonard, Dick

  Rowlands, Ted

  Davidson, Arthur

  Lomas, Kenneth

  Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)

  Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)

  Loughiln, Charles

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

  Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)

  Lyons, Edward (Biadford, E.)

  Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton. N. E.)

  Davies, Ifor (Gower)

  McBride, Neil

  Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)

  Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)

  McCartney, Hugh

  Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)

  Deakins, Eric

  MacDonald, Mrs. Margo

  Sillars, James

  Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund

  Machin, George

  Silverman, Julius

  Dempsey, James

  Mackenzie, Gregor

  Skinner, Dennis

  Doig, Peter

  Mackle, John

  Small, William

  Dormand, J. D.

  Mackintosh, John P.

  Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

  Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)

  Maclennan, Robert

  Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)

  Douglas-Mann, Bruce

  McNamara, J. Kevin

  Stoddart, David (Swindon)

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  Marks, Kenneth

  Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John

  Dunnett, Jack

  Marquand, David

  Stott, Roger

  Eadie, Alex

  Marsden, F.

  Strang, Gavin

  Edelman, Maurice

  Marshall, Dr. Edmund

  Sutcliffe, John

  Edwards, William (Merioneth)

  Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy

  Thomas, Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)

  Ellis, Tom

  Meacher, Michael

  Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)

  Ewing, Harry

  Mendelson, John

  Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy

  Faulds, Andrew

  Mikardo, Ian

  Tinn, James

  Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.

  Millan, Bruce

  Tope, Graham

  Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'ham, Ladywood)

  Miller, Dr. M. S.

  Tuck, Raphael

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  Milne, Edward

  Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin

  Foot, Michael

  Mitchell, R. C. (S'hampton, Itchen)

  Urwin, T. W.

  Freud, Clement

  Moate, Roger

  Varley, Eric G.

  Gilbert, Dr. John

  Molloy, William

  Wainwright, Edwin

  Gourlay, Harry

  Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Grant, George (Morpeth)

  Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

  Wallace, George

  Watkins, David

  Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.

  Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

  Weitzmah, David

  Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)

  Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)

  Wellbeloved, James

  Hamling, William

  Moyle, Roland

  Wells, William (Walsall, N.)

  Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)

  Mudd, David

  White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)

  1408

  1409

  Whitehead, Phillip

  Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Whitlock, William

  Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

  Mr. James Dunn and

  Williams, W. T. (Warrington)

  Woof, Robert

  Mr. James Hamilton.

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Bill read a Second time.
  Ordered,
  That the Motion relating to the committal of the Channel Tunnel Bill to a Select Committee and the Motion relating to Ways and Means may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Jopling.]
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That the Bill be committed to a Select Committee of Eight Members, Four to be nominated by the House and Four by the Committee of Selection:
  That there shall stand referred to the Select Committee—

  (a) any Petition against the Bill presented by being deposited in the Private Bill Office at any time not later than 15th January 1974, and

  (b) any Petition which has been presented by being deposited in the Private Bill Office and in which the Petitioners complain of any amendment as proposed in the filled-up Bill or of any matter which has arisen during the progress of the Bill before the said Committee,

  being a Petition in which the Petitioners pray to be heard by themselves, their Counsel or Agents:
  That if no such Petition as is mentioned in sub-paragraph (a) above is presented, or if all such Petitions are withdrawn before the meeting of the Committee, the order for the committal of the Bill to a Select Committee shall be discharged and the Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee:
  That any Petitioner whose Petition stands referred to the Select Committee shall, subject to the Rules and Orders of the House and to the Prayer of his Petition, be entitled to be heard by himself, his Counsel or Agents upon his Petition provided that it is prepared and signed in conformity with the Rules and Orders of the House, and the Member in charge of the Bill shall be entitled to be heard by his Counsel or Agents in favour of the Bill against that Petition:
  That the Committee have power to report from day to day the Minutes of the Evidence taken before them:
  That Three be the Quorum of the Committee.—[Mr. Peyton.]
  10.24 p.m.
  Mr. Mulley: The Minister for Transport Industries asked me in his speech whether I thought it right that there should be a proper form of Select Committee examination—in other words, that the Government, as promoters, should be asked to prove their case. The short
  1410
  answer is that I do. As the right hon. Gentleman does not permit anyone to intervene in his speeches, I thought I would make that clear now, but I do not wish to hold up consideration of the matter.
  Question put and agreed to.

  CHANNEL TUNNEL [MONEY]
  Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
  Resolved,
  That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to provide for the construction and operation of a railway tunnel system under the English Channel, it is expedient to authorise:
  (1) the payment out of the Consolidated Fund of such sums as may be required for fulfilling guarantees given by the Treasury in relation to money borrowed for the purpose of providing finance for the construction and maintenance of the tunnel system subject to a limit of £1,000 million in so far as the sums are required for the repayment of principal, and the payment into that Fund of sums received in pursuance of arrangements with the French Government towards the fulfilment of guarantees so given;
  (2) the payment out of the Consolidated Fund of such sums as may be required for contributing, in accordance with those arrangements, towards the fulfilment of guarantees given by or on behalf of the French Government in relation to money borrowed for the purpose mentioned in paragraph (1) above subject to a limit of £500 million in so far as the payments are required for the repayment of principal;
  (3) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of sums required to meet expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State:

  (a) in fulfilling any obligations or exercising any rights which are or become his in pursuance of any agreement between the Secretary of State and other persons relating to the construction of the tunnel system;

  (b) in making payments for land vested in or acquired by him under the said Act of the present Session or payments of compensation for loss in connection with the exercise by the Secretary of State of powers of acquiring land under that Act: or

  (c) in carrying on the construction of the tunnel system in the event of the abandonment of the construction of that system by the other persons referred to in sub-paragraph (a) above ;

  (4) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable

  1411
  to that Act in the sums so payable under any other enactment for land so acquired or otherwise by reason of the exercise of any statutory powers in connection with the construction of the tunnel system;
  (5) the payment into the Consolidated Fund of sums received or recovered by the Secretary of State in connection with or arising out of the construction, maintenance or operation of the tunnel system or the acquisition of land for the construction, maintenance or operation of that system or the disposal of land so acquired;
  (6) the payment out of the National Loans Fund of such sums as are necessary to enable the Secretary of State to make loans to the British Channel Tunnel Board constituted by the said Act of the present Session (hereafter referred to as 'the Board'), and the payment into that Fund of sums paid to him by way of repayments of such loans or payment of interest thereon;
  (7) the payment out of the Consolidated Fund of sums required for fulfilling any guarantee given by the Treasury in relation to money lent to the Board by persons other
  1412
  than the Secretary of State, and the payment into that Fund of sums received by the Treasury by way of repayment of sums issued in fulfilment of such guarantees or interest on the sums so issued;
  (8) the payment by the Secretary of State into the Consolidated Fund of sums paid to him by the Board.—[Mr. Speed.]

  WAYS AND MEANS

    CHANNEL TUNNEL
    Resolved,
    That any Act of the present Session providing for the construction and operation of a railway tunnel system under the English Channel may include:—

    (a) provision treating, for the purposes of liability to tax, the discharge of functions in relation to that system as the carrying on of a trade by the British Channel Tunnel Board constituted by that Act; and

    (b) provision affecting the computation of tax on that Board.—[Mr. Speed.]

  COMPANIES (REGISTRATION FEES)
  10.25 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Anthony Grant): I beg to move,
  That the Companies (Fees) Regulations 1973, a draft of which was laid before this House on 29th November, be approved.
  In order to assist the staff of the House to get home tonight, I shall content myself with moving the order formally. I shall be happy to answer any questions.
  10.26 p.m.
  Mr. Bruce Millan: The Opposition approve of the intention and the form of the order. However, I should like to ask one or two questions.
  Will the hon. Gentleman say how much additional money the order is likely to bring in and whether it will put the Companies House registration office in a state of solvency? Related to that is the question of the number of incorporations which are done at the minimum share capital level. What proportion of total registrations is done at the minimum level? On that point, one of the intentions of these regulations is to reduce that number. We shall be able to debate this matter at some length during the proceedings on the Companies Bill later this Session but we support that objective, although I am rather sceptical whether the increases under the order will do that.
  Mr. Grant: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting his questions clearly. I deal, first, with the question of how much additional revenue will come in as a result of these increases in fees. It will depend to some extent on how effective they are, but the best estimate that we can give is that we expect another £1 million or £1½ million to come in. The companies registry is at present solvent—just—but we would expect that, even allowing for the additional costs that will arise, the increased revenue will put it substantially in credit.
  As to the number of new registrations, last year there were about 51,000. The estimate for this year is 63,000, and this contrasts with a figure of about 19,000
  1414
  or 20,000 for 1968. So there has been a very substantial and sudden increase over the years. Of these registrations, approximately 80 per cent., we estimate, are of the minimum paid-up capital. Therefore, the figures for minimum paid-up capital new registrations, if my arithmetic is correct, are about 16,000 in 1968, about 41,000 in 1972 and about 50,000 for this year.
  Mr. David Mitchell: Will my hon. Friend assure the House that this measure is in no way designed to reduce the number of companies being formed and registered and that he is as anxious as are we on the Government side of the House to increase the number of small companies which are being set up?
  Mr. Grant: It is intended, as the Jenkins Committee recommended, to minimise unnecessary, irresponsible and frivolous registrations.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved.
  That the Companies (Fees) Regulations 1973, a draft of which was laid before this House on 29th November, be approved.

  COMPANIES (REGISTRATION FEES)
    ADJOURNMENT
    Motion made, and Question proposed. That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Jopling.]

  BSA TRIUMPH MOTOR CYCLES LIMITED
  10.28 p.m.
  Mr. Leslie Huckfield: I am grateful for the opportunity of raising what I consider to be a very important matter which certainly affects large numbers of my constituents, namely, the future of the Triumph Motor cycle factory at Meriden, near Coventry. I begin by saying that I am a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union and that the majority of the workforce are members of the union. Consequently, I have been closely involved with developments at Meriden through the Coventry and district organiser, Mr. Bill Lapworth, and the works convener, Mr. Denis Johnson.
  This is an interest which the Minister knows I have followed closely since he

  1415
  initially made a statement to the House on 19th March announcing that he intended to inject £4·8 million of Government money under the Industry Act to strengthen the British motor cycle industry, as he put it—an industry which, after all, exports 90 per cent. of its output. This was when we at Meriden felt that if any rationalisation were to be done, if there were to be any reorganisation, Meriden would not suffer. We thought Meriden would be the last place to be affected, particularly because we have always been convinced that at Meriden we have a viable, economic motor cycle factory, provided that it was allowed to stand on its own feet and not be weighed down with the overheads of the rest of the BSA group.
  We came to this conclusion but were not alone in doing so, because the recommendations of Cooper Brothers, the independent accountants, also suggested that the best plan for the salvation of the BSA group was to concentrate output and assembly at the Meriden factory. I realise that the Minister may refer to the PSA report, which recommended concentration elsewhere. But the main conclusion on both the PSA and the Cooper Brothers reports was that this is an industry where overheads have to be commensurate with the level of output.
  We have always felt that if we could cut the Meriden overheads to a level commensurate with the Meriden output we would have a viable factory, a going concern. It is true that in the reorganisation of 1971—for which I am not blaming the Minister—when the noble Lord, Lord Shawcross assumed the chairmanship of the company and 3,000 workers were made redundant at the Small Heath works, we felt that some of the overheads were transferred to Meriden, together with some of the office staff from Small Heath, thus adding even more to the burden of BSA overheads at Meriden.
  It has been said that one of the difficulties of the Meriden plant is the high break-even point. I know that figures have been attested by Mr. Dennis Poore that the break-even point of Meriden is high. I have even heard the figure of 44,000 motor cycles quoted. That may be the figure if we take into account the
  1416
  total overheads of the BSA group. We could certainly produce evidence from former managers of the factory that the break-even point is as low as 28,000 motor cycles a year. It is along these lines that Bill Lapworth and the workers and I feel that Meriden can be made viable. It was on this basis that, after the closure had been announced on 14th September, Bill Lapworth and I got a unanimous mandate from the total work force at a mass meeting to negotiate with Mr. Poore for the possible acquisition of the plant and its operation with worker co-operation.
  Our mandate was on behalf of the whole work force and not just from members of the TGWU, our own union. It was to negotiate for the acquisition of the factory. It is worth stressing that, because when the negotiations came down to detail Mr. Poore and the workers' side understood that the detailed negotiations at the plant would always have to be concluded by local trade union officials. The significant thing in the negotiations we conducted—and the Minister understands this full well now—was that the men were determined to keep the plant open.
  I suppose that they had the option of accepting some kind of redundancy pay and perhaps some addition to that. In turning that down they opted to keep the plant open, for two reasons. The first was that they wanted time to be given for the formulation of more precise details about worker participation—and, after all, it was Mr. Poore, in our preliminary negotiations of 7th October, who said that we should need more time to put our proposals forward. Perhaps the main reason why the workers decided to fight to keep the plant open was that they realised that, above all, the American market required continuity.
  In the United States many American dealers in Triumph motor cycles have had reduced supplies for the past two years. Many of them even face law suits now, because they are not able to supply customers with a complete range of parts and services. Above all, they need bikes for their peak sales season, from next January to March. It is because they realised that the name "Triumph" had to be protected, and, in essence, that the whole of the British motor cycle industry's reputation had to be protected, that

  1417
  the men opted to keep the plant going for as long as possible. At the back of their minds, too, was the fact that approximately 225 of the 648 exclusive dealers in the States faced the possiblity of bankruptcy if they were not able to get bikes, because many of them had taken out overdrafts on the strength of receiving bikes. Only a couple of days ago, when I was talking to Washington on the telephone, I received information that one or two dealers have had seriously to consider the possibility of turning their stores into parking lots.
  Though the men were determined to keep the factory open so that we could get the proposals for our co-operative off the ground, and though they wanted guaranteed continuity for the American market, one of the difficulties in the negotiations with Mr. Poore was the fact that we were unable to arrive at a precise understanding about the value of the name "Triumph", and we also had difficulty in getting access to Mr. Poore's company's books, although he himself had said that we would want to see them.
  I think the Minister knows that every bike that Triumph makes can be sold in the States. There is no difficulty about that. The determination of the Triumph dealers was expressed when Mr. Bob Myers, one of the top 10 American dealers, from just outside Washington, came to this country and met the Minister, and Mr. Poore, and was certainly active in some of the earlier negotiations which we had to keep the plant going. In fact, it was with his help that I had been in touch with a very respresentative sample of American dealers from coast to coast, and, on the basis of 20 contacts made by telephone and otherwise, had come back from the United States in the middle of October with orders for about 5,000 bikes for our co-operative and, ultimately, the possibility of well over £500,000 to set up a new dealers' distribution corporation in the United States, which would be headed by Mr. Denis McCormack, who was the first president of the Triumph Corporation in the States and whose name still means a great deal in motor cycling circles in North America. I say this to the Minister as evidence of the fact that there is very a serious market—an almost guaranteed market—for Triumph bikes in the States. What we were certainly keen to prevent was
  1418
  the acquisition of a complete monopoly by Honda and other Japanese dealers, who, as I am sure the Minister already knows, have a quite frightening percentage of the American home market.
  In our proposals for a workers' cooperative we have always had a range of options. At one end of the range we had the possibility of negotiating an operation under which we might manufacture under licence from Mr. Poore, who might handle the distribution. At the other end of the range we envisaged the possibility of the complete acquisition of the factory, originally using some of the workers' redundancy money. As the Minister knows, largely as a result of his intervention we have now been given the chance to pursue at least one of the options, and I hope that we shall have the opportunity to move to the other end of the range.
  We at Meriden are very grateful for the way that the Minister intervened last Friday to call both sides together, and for the great deal of time that he spent in the negotiations at his Ministry between both sides in the issue. I ask him tonight to continue to take the personal interest which he has hitherto taken in this matter. We are very grateful for the interest which he has shown so far. We only hope that he will continue to do that. We also hope that either he or his civil servants or representatives will continue to be present in the negotiations which are still proceeding. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, one of those representatives was certainly present at his office yesterday, when negotiations went on for a long time. We hope that that presence will continue, although, of course, negotiations which have taken place at Kitts Green and Meriden today have been of a somewhat different nature and in those circumstances that presence is not so important.
  At this late stage I ask the Minister not to dismiss completely the possibility of some kind of further monitoring of Norton Villiers Triumph. I hope the right hon. Gentleman has not dismissed entirely the possibility of having a Government director on the board of NVT, and that he and his Department will maintain a watchful eye on what is happening to the £4·8 million which he originally injected.
  The latest information I have is that about 850 workers have already signed

  1419
  on to work in our co-operative and we still want to go ahead on the original proposals, which included the election of representatives and the system being run on a fully democratic basis. I have been unable to discover the latest stage of the negotiations but the Minister knows that the key issue in our talks yesterday was the negotiation of a price at which we would sell our motor cycles from Meriden to Mr. Poore for marketing and distribution.
  I can only say that we want the chance to succeed and we are grateful for having been given a start. We know that Meriden is the place where the legend of Triumph and motor cycling began. We feel that if we can succeed in setting up our co-operative and show that workers can run a factory, and if we can maintain the reputation of Triumph and keep the reputation of the British motor cycle industry to the forefront, we shall not only have preserved the legend of Triumph but shall, perhaps, have erected a milestone in the history of the British working class movement.
  10.43 p.m.
  The Minister for Industrial Development (Mr. Christopher Chataway): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield) for -giving me the opportunity to reply to what he said about the motor cycle industry and the problems of Meriden. It is true that as both a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union and a Member of Parliament, with a large number of constituents employed at the Meriden works, the hon. Member has taken an extremely active and close interest in this matter over the last few months.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mr. Speed) is a member of the Government and, as the House will understand, is therefore not able to play as public a rôle, but he has kept in very close touch with me and has been deeply concerned about the future of the company.
  The hon. Member for Nuneaton recalled that on 19th March I announced that, subject to satisfactory arrangements being made, the Department was prepared to support the merger of the motor cycle interests of BSA with the motor cycle manufacturing subsidiary of
  1420
  Manganese Bronze Holdings—Norton Villiers—in a new company. Our object in doing that and and our purpose in agreeing to inject about £4·8 milion into that company was to secure this country's motor cycle industry—an industry which exports a substantial amount each year.
  Nobody had suggested that it would be easy to reorganise the industry and put it on a viable footing. Following the merger of the new company NVT had three motor cycle factories—the former BSA factories at Small Heath, Birmingham, and at Meriden near Coventry, and the former Norton Villiers factory at Wolverhampton. From 1971 the assembly of Triumph motor cycles had been concentrated by BSA at Meriden, at the cost of major redundancies at Small Heath. As the hon. Gentleman has rightly recalled, there were conflicting reports from different consultants as to which way the concentration should go, but from that time Small Heath made three-cylinder engines for motor cycles assembled at Meriden and a limited number of specialist off-road machines, and did some finishing of parts for Meriden.
  It was clear that if the objectives of strength and competitiveness for a revived British motor cycle industry were to be achieved there would need to be reorganisation and rationalisation. The new board of Norton Villiers Triumph came to the conclusion that it should concentrate motor cycle manufacture at Small Heath and Wolverhampton, and that it had no option but to close the Meriden factory. It came to that conclusion because it believed that there was no other way in which it could produce a viable motor cycle industry.
  In announcing its decision NVT drew attention to the fact that the BSA motor cycle business, as a whole, had suffered a loss of £4 million in the year ended 31st July 1973 and that the losses were continuing. It was understandable that there should have been a strong reaction from the Meriden work force to the announcement. I appreciate that when the earlier announcement of a merger between BSA and Norton Villiers was announced those at Meriden must have felt that their future was secure. I know about the pride which is taken in the Triumph machine by the Meriden work force. That is absolutely right.

  1421
  Unfortunately, as we all know, what ensued from the announcement of an intention to close was a work-in which subsequently became a sit-in. It is a dispute that has gone on for a long time. It is a dispute in which losses have been sustained by both sides—the company and the work force. The company has lost production which could have been sold in the American market. The hundreds of former employees who have gone to find other jobs have done so, as the hon. Gentleman said, without a redundancy settlement being negotiated to supplement basic redundancy pay. All employees have lost wages.
  Like most industrial disputes, this is certainly not one which either side will win. It is no part of my purpose to try to apportion blame for the failure over the past few months to come to an agreement. I know that the hon. Gentleman is as anxious as I am to look to the future and try to ensure that an agreement is reached as soon as is humanly possible.
  The hon. Gentleman referred to the meeting last Friday, to which I invited both sides. That meeting was attended by Mr. Harry Urwin the Assistant General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union. Mr. Urwin played an active and constructive rôle in the talks that took place. At the meeting it became clear that the work force had two objectives. Its first was to try to ensure that as many people as possible should be re-employed. Its second was to have the opportunity to try to purchase the factory and the plant, in due course to find a backer to enable them to do so, and perhaps to continue, once they had purchased it, as a workers' co-operative.
  The management had the objective, first, of securing the completed motor cycles from the Meriden works and finishing off the part-completed ones, and, secondly, of continuing production at Meriden for some time in order to meet the very considerable demand in the American market. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is a possibility of selling large numbers of machines there. Thirdly, the management wanted to secure the jigs and plans which at the moment are inside the Meriden factory, because these are essential to the continuation of work at Small Heath and the development of NVT.
  1422
  There had been discussions between the two parties over the previous weeks. It had become clear to the management that a limited number of people could be employed at the factory at that time, and the major dispute between the two sides when the meeting began was about the number of people who might be brought back into employment.
  The difficulty was the supply of components. About a fortnight before, the management had made an offer to the work force to take back, as a minimum, 250 people, to work for a minimum period of three months. The work force felt that this was an inadequate number. The proposal that therefore emerged during this meeting was one under which, as a short-term measure, a company would be formed on behalf of the work force, the men would go back to work on two-cylinder motor cycles and spares, selling them to NVT, after which the work force, as represented by the new company, would have the option, for a limited period, to purchase the plant and the factory at the end of the interim period.
  The advantage of this to the work force was accepted as being, first and foremost, and immediately, that they could decide how many people there was work for—how many people could profitably go back to work on the machines on the basis of the supplies that were forthcoming. Secondly, it had the advantage of giving the opportunity for the work force fully to explore the possibility of continuing, on some basis, motor cycle production at Meriden.
  For the management, the advantage of this arrangement appeared to be that it would enable the motor cycles and the jigs and plans from Meriden to be released. It would, therefore, enable NVT to continue with its plans for the reorganisation of the motor cycle industry. It would also secure employment in Small Heath, because it has become extremely important that these materials from Meriden should fairly shortly be released for the benefit of NVT as a whole.
  I have hopes, therefore, that the details of this agreement can now be finalised between the two parties. As the hon. Gentleman said, a number of matters are still outstanding. The parties have to agree about the price that will

  1423
  be paid by NVT for the work done in the interim period at Meriden. The importance of reaching agreement will be clear to both sides, and there is not a great deal of time in which to do it. I am sure that there will be a real sense of urgency. On a matter such as this it would be possible to go on negotiating for a long time about the details. There have been losses to both sides as a result of this industrial dispute, and I believe that there is a willingness by both sides to come to an agreement.
  I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the way in which he has spoken about this matter tonight. I know that he will share my hope that we shall shortly see an end to the dispute and progress being made to secure the opportunities available, both at home and abroad, for the motor cycle industry, particularly in the American market.
  1424
  Any assistance that he can give to speed the progress of these talks will be welcomed by all who are concerned in the motor cycle industry.
  10.57 p.m.
  Mr. William Wilson: Representing, as I do, a Coventry constituency, I should like to say how grateful I am to my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huck-field) for the great work that he has done in this matter. Triumph cycles, Triumph motor cycles and Triumph motor cars are synonymous with Coventry, and it would be a tragedy indeed if this great name went out of existence altogether.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Eleven 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 Leicester.

ADVERTISING MATTER AND THE POSTAL SERVICES
THE EARL OF CROMARTIE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the alleged shortage of paper and the heavy burden placed upon the under-staffed Post Office, they will do something to restrict the flood of unsolicited advertising matter which makes up so much of the daily mail deliveries.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY (THE EARL OF LIMERICK): No, my Lords. Her Majesty's Government do not consider the present shortage of paper requires them to intervene in the normal commercial practices of the firms concerned. So far as the Post Office is concerned, I understand that the noble Lord's suggestion would not afford any significant relief, since the postman has to cover the whole of his delivery route whatever the quantity of mail he carries.
THE EARL OF CROMARTIE: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for his reply, which I find entirely unsatisfactory, may I say that we know as a fact that postmen are extremely overloaded at the moment. Are the Government aware that Scotland is lending postmen to England in order to cover duties over the Christmas period? This subject is of great importance to very many people; most of us suffer from this overload of unnecessary paper. One must think of the postmen sometimes.
THE EARL OF LIMERICK: My Lords, the shortage of staff does indeed cause inconvenience—that is well appreciated—but it is a fact that the rebate traffic, which is the means by which this unsolicited advertising matter is sent, is not handled at the peak times. It is further a fact that the Post Office would not welcome any measure which would lead to a permanent loss of their revenue-earning activities.
BARONESS STOCKS: My Lords, do Her Majesty's Government realise that this is not only a question of the Post Office but a very serious question of refuse disposal? Your Lordships would find it hard to realise the tonnage of paper that has to be carried away from my house and disposed of.
THE EARL OF LIMERICK: My Lords, there is indeed some problem in the supply of paper, but the serious problem is in the area of newsprint. There have been very few complaints about other paper supplies; and of course newsprint is not involved in this traffic.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether it is possible to repulp for newspaper work, this mass of paper, which becomes refuse as soon as it arrives?
THE EARL OF LIMERICK: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot without notice, but the suggestion can certainly be looked at.
LORD HALE: My Lords, may I ask for the Government's protection of individual rights? Can arrangements be made by which the individual himself can say that he does not want to receive this matter, and thus protect an old age pensioner like myself from being constantly pestered to spend £200 or £300 on silver and gold plaques? Is there not a simple way of preserving the freedom of the individual, the liberty of communication, and doing away with what is an intolerable nuisance?
THE EARL OF LIMERICK: My Lords, this is a matter that was looked at by the Younger Committee. There are, of course, people who dislike receiving this quantity of unsolicited material. Unfortunately, there is no easy method of communicating the desire of those, like the noble Lord, who feel that way to those who are the originators of the paper.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, may I ask the Government whether they are aware that censorship of this kind is not really a matter for the Post Office; and furthermore that any suggested interference would be an infringement of individual freedom?
THE EARL OF LIMERICK: My Lords, I believe that is in line with the answer I gave.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, would not the noble Earl agree that to stop the circularisation of so many pamphlets and leaflets from the pharmaceutical industry would be in the interests of the nation?
THE EARL OF LIMERICK: My Lords, I think that is something of a different question. There are also problems about the companies which produce these products advertising them in any other way.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, in view of the immense waste of paper and of some of the best creative talent in this country, of which we appear to be slightly short at the moment, will not the Government look at the whole problem again?
THE EARL OF LIMERICK: My Lords, I do not think I can add to the Answer I gave. I do not think it would be appropriate to intervene in the way suggested in the Question. Naturally, one hopes that creative talent is always used to the best advantage.

WEST LONDON AIR TERMINAL: CHECK-IN FACILITIES
2.41 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the views of the Airline Users Committee that the withdrawal of passenger check-in facilities at West London Air Terminal will cause hardship to passengers, and particularly to the elderly; and that the British Airways case for this action on economic grounds has not convinced the Committee, who ask that the Ter-
594
minal shall continue as a check-in point until the expected 1976 underground rail link is opened.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): Yes, my Lords, the Chairman of the Committee, my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter has drawn the attention of my honourable friend the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping to the Committee's views on this matter. I understand that, in response to the Committee's criticisms, the British Airways Board have now given details of the additional action they propose to take to try to ensure that passengers do not suffer hardship after the check-in facilities at the West London Air Terminal are withdrawn at the end of this year. The Board have also offered to co-operate fully with the Committee in monitoring the working of the new arrangements in the early months of next year, so that any hardship that emerges in practice can be quickly detected.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, is the Minister aware that I have read British Airways defence and find it peculiarly unconvincing? Is he also aware that, since I put down my Parliamentary Question, a new situation has arisen which makes quite unacceptable in the broad national interest the closing of the West London Air Terminal? Is it not a fact that the Government are urging fuel economy in every direction, and endeavouring to set an example themselves? Is this not a deliberate encouragement by British Airways to passengers to use their own cars to go to Heathrow, and is not that a travesty of the Government's own policy? To have 60 persons in a coach, and the alternative proposed by British European Airways is 60 individual cars taking those passengers to Heathrow Airport, is surely completely contrary to the Government's urging of economy? If British Airways are not willing to suspend their proposal during this national fuel emergency, is it not necessary for the Government, with the powers that they possess under the Act, to intervene to stop this needless waste of fuel taking place?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, may I say first of all to my noble friend that the British Airways Board are not closing the West London Terminal; what they are doing is withdrawing the check-in

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facilities. This will not necessarily mean—and we shall have to see how it works out in practice—that fewer people will use the West London Terminal. As I understand it, the purpose of the British Airways Board in doing this is to make better use of their buses, to see that they are more full than they are at the present time; and they will do this by running regular services at specified times.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, I am sorry, but that is no answer at all. British Airways themselves say that 20 per cent. of their passengers at present use the Terminal. Twenty per cent. of, say, 10 million is 2 million people using the Terminal. What the British Airways Board are doing, and if the Government do not take steps they are countenancing this action, is to waste fuel, in that they are endeavouring to drive that 20 per cent. into private cars which will use fuel which need not be used if coaches are used in place of individual cars.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the buses are surely used primarily because they are the most convenient way for this 20 per cent. to get to the London Airport, and the probability is that they will be more used as a result of the fuel shortage, and the need will be met by the bus service. At the present time, individual buses are running to meet individual flights, and that is not the best use of the resources of buses available.
LORD MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the closing of the facilities at the West London Air Terminal would deprive over 1 million people of a very great benefit which they have enjoyed, and that those million people will include the old people of Britain and those who cannot afford to take motor transport to Heathrow? It will add to the congestion at Heathrow, and many of us—indeed, I suspect most in this House—support the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, in the fight that they have made to bring some sense into the Government on this particular matter.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, it is of course true that this will transfer the check-in from West London Air Terminal to Heathrow. If I may have
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the indulgence of the House, I will say exactly what the proposals are in Mr. Marking's own words to meet the Committee's needs:
"They would insert a special slip in their tickets, carefully explaining the conditions on which the bus service from West London Air Terminal would be offered from 1 January next and clearly indicating what time passengers should allow for their journey to Heathrow in order to be reasonably certain of catching their flights;

"ii. They would take responsibility for anyone who despite following this advice missed his plane because a bus had been delayed on the M.4, booking him on to the next available flight and, if necessary, meeting the cost of a night's hotel accommodation at Heathrow;

"iii. They would ensure that a supervisor was permanently on duty at Terminal No. 1, who would ensure that porters helped bus passengers through check-in quickly if their bus arrived at Heathrow with little time to spare;

"iv. They would co-operate with the Airline Users Committee in monitoring the system during the first three months of next year, and would then consider carefully what further action could be taken, if despite their expectations, significant difficulties for passengers had arisen."

I would add to that that they are increasing the checking-in facilities at Heathrow, and of course, as noble Lords will be aware, an extra lift is being provided by the British Airports Authority.
LORD HARVEY OF PRESTBURY: My Lords, will my noble friend explain the logic of closing the check-in facilities at Kensington, and at the same time keeping them open at the old B.O.A.C. place at Victoria? If one can be kept open, why not the other, or why can they not be combined?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the conditions are entirely different for long-distance B.O.A.C. services, which will continue to be served by special buses meeting particular planes. In the main, the planes in that case have a much larger capacity.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, could the noble Lord explain why there is such a body as the Airlines Users Committee? Presumably they are asked to make suggestions; but when they do the Government, or the B.A.A. people, completely ignore their recommendations. What is the point of having the Airline Users Committee?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I have tried to make it plain that the

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B.A.A. have not ignored the Committee's recommendations. They have gone as far as they feel possible to meet them.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the whole House feels that they have in fact ignored the feelings of your Lordships, of the public, and of everybody who wants the airlines and the whole situation to succeed? Is he further aware that a slip in one's ticket is not the same as the guarantee of catching a plane?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, we have gone over this ground very often, but a guarantee of catching the plane can mean that the other 80 per cent. who go direct are held up a long time, and that they may miss their connections if they have to fly on further. It is quite impossible to guarantee that in all circumstances a bus will reach an aircraft unless one is prepared to accept substantial delays.
VISCOUNT THURSO: My Lords, is the noble Lord not aware that there are in fact no guarantees, and that flights are frequently held up for long periods for no good reason other than the "technical" reasons which are advanced by the airports? Would the noble Lord not agree that the psychology of the air transport user should be considered in this matter, and that a person considers that he has started his flight at the point where he checks in? This brings us back to the point which he noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, brought up in the first place: does the noble Lord not agree that one should encourage users of air transport—not merely not discourage them, but encourage them—to book in at the nearest central point, so as to save fuel in this emergency? When the Underground route is available, by all means let us make the check-in point at the end of the Underground. But would the noble Lord not agree to look at this matter again?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, so far as delays are concerned, there are of course delays for other reasons, besides the fact that buses may be late. These are mainly related to the safety of the operations of the planes themselves. So far as concerns the second point that the noble Viscount made, I suggest to noble Lords that it has to
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be remembered that this is practically the only service of its kind in the world.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: No!
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, indeed. Secondly, the check-in facilities have already been withdrawn from foreign airlines at West London Air Terminal. That was done at the beginning of October, and no complaints at all have been received so far by the bus operators.
LORD REIGATE: My Lords, could my noble friend amplify his curious remark about the circumstances being different with B.O.A.C. because the aeroplanes are larger? Surely the buses are the same size.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I was considering the occupancy of those buses, the number of people who use them. It is a fact that a great many of the buses leave West London Air Terminal very sparsely occupied.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, could my noble friend say whether there have been any complaints from foreign airlines due to the withdrawal of these technical facilities at Cromwell Road Air Terminal? Further, can he say what is the estimated financial saving for the year 1974 from the withdrawal of these technical facilities, and whether it is worth it?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am advised that there have been no such complaints. Indeed, as the airlines have not got such facilities of their own at those places from which they start, it is hardly surprising, perhaps, that there have been no complaints. I am told that the annual saving is about half a million pounds a year.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, does the noble Lord not agree that the withdrawal of these check-in facilities will prove in themselves to be a false economy? What is to happen to those who are engaged in the service at the present moment? Further, is he aware that, as a Minister at the Dispatch Box, he is the best stone-wailer I have ever met in replying to a question? What about the question which has been asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, about the users' councils? Why did we set them up if

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the recommendations from those users' councils to various Departments of Government are going to be ignored?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I have said already that they have not been ignored, and what I have read out shows the extent to which the British Airways Board are trying to meet their point. The noble Lord in particular will know how these things are done. There has of course had to be a great deal of negotiation with the unions on this matter in order to place people elsewhere and to absorb them elsewhere. It is the belief of the B.A.B. that they will be much better employed and much more efficiently employed elsewhere, and that is one of the reasons for the step which has been taken—to make the best use of our scarce labour resources.
LORD GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, may I ask the Minister, in his unenviable position, whether he is aware that there is limited cause for congratulation in that British Airways have put down what they ought to do anyway? May I add to that the question whether he would not feel that a failure to consider the compromise part of the noble Lord's Question is really a breakdown of management generally—an inability to bridge a gap which will last only a few years?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, it might last only a few years—I think the noble Lord has the completion of the Underground system to London Heathrow in mind—but that is likely to be two and a half to three years, and it is a substantial amount of money which is involved. But this is a compromise solution which is put forward, and no doubt the Airline Users' Committee will be considering the compromise provision as well. I hope that they will co-operate in monitoring it, so as to make further improvements as time goes on.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, in view of the feelings of the House, would my noble friend consider calling upon the Civil Aviation Authority, who have a duty under the Civil Aviation Act—thanks, I may say, to this House —to look after the consumers' interests, to examine whether they should impose a condition on the present licences of B.E.A. affected by these withdrawals of
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service until the consumers' dispute has been settled?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, my noble friend will be well aware that the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority is the chairman of the Airline Users' Committee. And it is not for the Government to dictate to the Civil Aviation Authority how it should act.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I wonder whether I might appeal to the noble Lord the Leader of the House. I have kept out of the exchanges to-day, being a member of the Airline Users' Committee, but I hoped to appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, as Leader of the House, at the end of these exchanges. May I ask him whether he is aware that the grievous disquiet which has been shown by all quarters of the House has now lasted for 19 months? Is he further aware that in the Press release which was made public on November 21 the statement was made, based on material provided by B.E.A., that the number of planes delayed had been one plane every two days over last year and that the percentage of delays was 0·4 per cent.? Now in view of this disquiet—and these details never get into the papers—may I ask the noble Lord the Leader of the House whether he would use his best endeavours to see that a Statement is made in your Lordships' House before Christmas as to what will be the future of the check-in facilities at Gloucester Road after January 1?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Lord replies, I wonder whether I could also rise and ask a question of the noble Lord the Leader of the House on a rather parallel point. There is obviously grave disquiet in the House, and if we had an opportunity to debate this subject and vote it is quite likely that a very firm expression of opinion would emerge. We have not very much time before Christmas. May I ask the noble Lord whether he will consider something along the following lines? First of all, would it be possible to postpone action until the House has had an opportunity to debate this matter? That is something that might be discussed through the usual channels. My noble friend Lady Burton had hoped to have a debate, but there has not been time. We might then hear both sides of the case;

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and I am bound to say, with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, that his answers do not appear to have been very convincing up till now. Would the Leader of the House consider this point? Certainly from the Opposition Benches we should be glad to try to co-operate in any way.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD WINDLESHAM): My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Burton, has already been in touch with the Prime Minister on this question, and she will receive a reply from him which represents the views of the Government as a whole. Further, since she spoke to me about it before the Recess, I have been in touch with the Departmental Ministers concerned and I can tell her that what my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn has said represents the views of those Ministers who are directly concerned—and I know this from my own discussions. As to a debate in this House, we are to discuss the British Airways Board Order quite shortly, and certainly through the usual channels we could see whether that might be the occasion for a wider debate.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, when?
LORD WINDLESHAM: I think probably before Christmas. I should like to pursue that point with the noble Lord and see what the content of the Order is—whether it deals with this particular point. I appreciate the strength of feeling on this matter, but it is also important for the House to appreciate that statutory responsibilities are placed on Ministers and on public authorities, and there is a real difficulty here. I was going to intervene, anyway. We have had 24 minutes of Question Time with one short Question and one very long one. The third Question is from my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye on exactly the same matter, and I think that we ought to move on to that Question.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, would the Leader of the House permit me to put one pedestrian point? If the Government's proposals go through, would the Minister be kind enough to make representations to British Airways that those of us who use the West London Terminal would be greatly helped if we could be
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allowed the facilities to move our own baggage, and not be told that we are not allowed to shift it without employing a porter? In other words, bring it into line with the arrangements at Heathrow. That would be a considerable advantage. I do not ask for a reply to-day, but would the noble Lord be good enough to make that representation?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, my Lords, I will certainly take that up.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I trust that I do not deserve the rebuke from the Leader of the House which seemed to me to be rather implied in his remarks. I think that I am quite entitled to ask this Question. It was not I who took up a long time on supplementary questions, but other noble Lords. Therefore I beg to ask my Question, the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, if British Airways continue their insistence on closing the check-in facilities at West London Terminal, they will advance to British Airways the compromise proposal that coach departures shall be linked to specific flights, thus guaranteeing to terminal departing passengers their air connections.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I understand that the British Airways Board considered this proposal carefully before deciding to take the compromise action I have already described in answering the noble Lord's previous Question.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the compromise proposal will not meet the position which I think should obtain? Will the noble Lord consider the possibility of the Government's making a Statement as and when we have an opportunity further to debate this matter, so that questions raised by noble Lords on all sides of the House can be properly and adequately answered to the satisfaction of the House, which is certainly not satisfied at the present time?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am aware that most of the noble Lords, all but one, who have asked questions have not been satisfied. But there will undoubtedly be an opportunity for noble Lords to put their points when we next have an opportunity to discuss this matter, and I, certainly, shall be forewarned of the sort of points that they will be likely to put and shall deal with them to the best of my ability. The narrow point of this Question is whether we should be able to guarantee that a person who checks in and catches a particular bus will get on to the plane. This is the point. I have dealt with it already, and I must leave it to the House.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, as obviously the Government's desire is to meet the wishes of the travelling public if they can, would the Government invite Members of this House to describe the sufferings they have gone through at foreign airports, almost all of which use the system which British Airways are now about to adopt? Clearly, under the new system it would seem that people must have suffered very much abroad, where they do not enjoy the generous facilities and assurances which British Airways are prepared to offer.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will take into account what the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, has said in making up their minds.

E.E.C. COUNCIL OF MINISTERS MEETING
3.3 p.m.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, with the leave of the House my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a Statement on the recent meeting of the European Economic Community Council of Ministers at a convenient moment after 3.30.
It may be for the convenience of the House if I inform your Lordships that dinners will again be available to-night.

STATUTE LAW (REPEALS) BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to promote the reform of the statute law by the repeal, in accordance with recommendations of the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission, of certain enactments which (except in so far as their effect is preserved) are no longer of practical utility. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

WILD PLANTS PROTECTION BILL [H.L.]
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to provide for the protection of wild plants. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Beaumont of Whitley.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

ENERGY SUPPLIES AND POLICY
3.5 p.m.
LORD KENNET LORD KENNET rose to call attention to the energy crisis; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, since we last debated energy nine months ago, we have seen one of the most vertiginous accelerations in the history of our lifetime. We have, over the last decade, imprudently become more and more dependent on a single group of countries for our energy supplies, while permitting a third country to expand and take more and more of their territories. It is no good huffing and puffing about "blackmail". Whatever the elders of Zion may say, we know perfectly well that every nation in the world would do exactly the same as the Arabs have done. Suppose our own country had been attacked by one of our neighbours, armed with American weapons, and backed by two distant—
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, if I may be forgiven for interrupting the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, could he state precisely—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order!
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will intervene later in the debate—
LORD SEGAL: Could the noble Lord amplify whom he means by "the Elders of Zion"—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order!
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I do not feel inclined to accept an interruption at so early a stage. Suppose, my Lords, our own country had been attacked by one of our neighbours armed with American weapons and backed by two distant and powerful States, and that our enemy had occupied, say, the South-West as far as Bristol. Suppose that all United Nations attempts to rectify that had failed and that again, 11 years later, that country had attacked from their base in the South West, again armed with American weapons, and had driven our Army back to a line, say, from Southampton to Birmingham and that the United Nations had passed a resolution that they should go back where they came from, and they had not. Then suppose that after six years of waiting and hoping we, in desperation, took the law into our own hands and attacked them, for the first time, and that, after hard fighting in which they were again supplied by America, we found that we could not drive them out; and that we were, if anything, a little worse off, even after this third war. Supposing all this, my Lords, can anyone think that we should not then turn to economic sanctions against the countries which were backing our invaders?
What do we think the Arabs are? Do we think that they are men or footstools? Well, my Lords, the world's "under-dog" has at last risen up, and they have imposed on their sole export commodity not a ban but a production cut-back. This cut-back makes for confusion, and confusion makes for losses. I suspect that, even if this or that country, including ourselves, are intended to be exempted by the Arab oil-producing countries from that cut-back we shall continue to lose supplies over some time because of the confusion caused by the general cut-back
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in production. For myself, I believe that it is the price increase which will concern us even more than loss of imports over the long term. I do not believe that we have yet realised, and shall not realise until the ships which even now are at sea come in, what the effect of these price increases will be. It will make our whole economy settle into a different shape. It is very hard to foresee this shape at the present stage. Certain effects we can already foresee. First, Middle East oil ceases now, from this moment, to be the cheapest and most convenient fuel we have. Second, our own North Sea oil and gas becomes thereby an asset far more valuable than we supposed and, it may well be, far more worthy of conservation and long-term management than we supposed. Third, during the remaining lifetime of Middle East oil the money flow into the Middle East countries, which has already surpassed their domestic absorption capacity, will be greatly increased, probably to £50,000 million a year, quite soon.
This increase confronts the Western World with two unfamiliar dangers. The first is that so much of this money will be invested back into the industrial and financial institutions of the West and of Japan as to give the Middle East countries effective control of our economies. The second is that the Soviet Union will greatly benefit from that money flow in a most unwelcome way. Let me explain why. Unlike the United States, which virtually gives arms to Israel, the Russians charge the Arabs hard currency and hard cash for the arms they sell them. This hard currency the Russians then use to buy ever more goods and services from the West, especially capital goods, and this frees Russia's internal economic resources for the gigantic arms build-up we have seen over the last eight years. Neither of these two long-term effects of our dependency on Middle East oil can be welcome to us: neither that we should pay for our oil supplies in reduced sovereignty over our own economy, nor that we should pay for them in increasing Russian weapons levels. We shall need imagination, my Lords, to get out of those dangers.
We need a settlement in the Middle East. It is easy to stand up here and preach that those embattled countries should do one thing or the other. I

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think a long-term lasting settlement must depend on the emergence of a generation—because in Israel and the neighbouring Arab countries who can see, who can envisage, who can imagine the natural symbiosis of advanced Israeli technology and Arab resources and manpower? At the moment this is merely "pie in the sky". It really should not be any harder for them to see it than it was for Germany and France to see the very same vision in the late 1940s. What we await is the emergence of the Adenauer and the Schumann of the Middle East. In the meantime, the least that all of us can do in the highly developed modern world is to try to get a general arms embargo on both sides in order to render less likely the outbreak of a fourth war.
My Lords, the energy problem, viewed over a period of perhaps 100 years, is among one of the most serious challenges mankind has yet had to face—in my view, about equal to that posed by nuclear weapons. Essentially the question is which of two courses civilisation will follow. The first course supposes that new sources of energy are successfully brought into play; for instance, fusion, solar, geothermal and breeder reactors. If our population increase levels off, and if social justice is adopted world wide, our race may then continue well. The second course supposes that no new energy source is found, so that after the period of rapid financial growth, which has been taking place since the Industrial Revolution, energy sources run out and civilisation gradually drops back again, with little possibility of a second chance. So, of course, does population, not by the means we wish but by starvation, war, plunder and so on.
The solution, if it exists, the way to hit the first course, will involve massive technology and very difficult science pursued over many decades. All the short, medium and long term alternatives to oil involve high technology: for example, the use of tar, sand or oil shales; the production of oil from coal, or hydrogen or methane from nuclear energy; the safe use of fission reactors, nuclear fusion, whether magnetic or laser induced; the use of solar energy, geothermal energy, and so on. Therefore I
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submit that the current tendency to play down science and technology in the universities and to reduce Government establishments capable of pursuing long-term work will, if it is persisted in much longer, prove catastrophic, or nearly so.
Whichever way it goes, the favourable course will require a radical change in our sources of energy supply over the next few decades. This will mean that we need highly-trained scientific and industrial staff as well as managers to bring these sources into operation. Since it takes many years to build up such a potential, we have to begin encouraging it straight away by training energy scientists and technologists in the universities and making sure that there are jobs available for them to go to so that they are not lost while we sort this thing out. They must be ready before we even know precisely the right answer.
The timescale for bringing in a new energy source is very long indeed, so long-term planning is needed but allowing for options at each stage. The current Atomic Energy Authority forward look extends up to 2050. Let us look back for a moment. Fission was discovered in 1939, but we do not expect a massive build-up of nuclear energy generation until about 1980, with full effect only by 2000 A.D. That is sixty years. The deuterium-tritium fusion reaction was discovered in the early 1930s, but the A.E.A. currently estimates that fusion reactors will take over, if indeed they are successful, only between 2010 and 2030. That is nearly 100 years. Our national planning machinery is not up to this sort of timescale. It involves closed-door decisions by civil servants and a limited number of advisers chosen by the civil servants. It is a truism that bad science and bad decisions thrive on secrecy. Because the problems are so complex, and the consequences of error so tremendous, there should be a much more open discussion in which all qualified people can take part, so that errors can be more easily detected in advance and so that there is more public understanding of the course adopted and public commitment to it. The United States is rather better at this sort of thing than we are, since the reports of Congressional investigating committees contain certain detailed technical arguments and are freely published. Ours, on the whole, do not

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contain much—they are freely published but they do not contain much technical argument.
To take one familiar British example, we have had three investigating committees on fusion research: one which recommended a cut-back, one which recommended maintaining research at cutback level, and then one which recommended an expansion. None of those reports has been published—at least I assume there have been reports. There have certainly been changes of policy, and they must have been based on something. Some of the planning decisions which have been taken have been obviously wrong. For example, it should have been clear to everybody that a continued switch to oil would put the United Kingdom and Europe, and indeed Japan, in the very dangerous position where we are now. The national strategy should have dictated a much bigger investment in the success of the Magnox reactor stations, since the extra cost to the consumer, compared to the cost of oil, or of coal, or of advanced gas-cooled reactors, or even compared to breeders, was always quite small.
It is said that the C.E.G.B. ground rules require that the cost of the oil and the coal to fuel each new power station throughout its life should be estimated at current prices; that is, prices in the year in which the decision is being taken. This is absurd. If a realistic assumption had been made of the likely rises of oil and coal prices over the current decades, the nuclear power stations would probably always have had the advantage. What happened instead was that the A.E.A. was forced into devoloping a whole series of different designs in order to bring the generating cost down by fractions of a penny, so as to compete on the basis of those ground rules—which they have, in fact, succeeded in doing. But the difference between the various designs, in terms of the cost to the consumer, was very small compared to the inflationary increase in the price of electricity even in one single year. Another unfortunate decision has been the run-down of the Atomic Energy Authority itself by a few per cent. each year in order to diversify an increasing part of its work on to new programmes, on the ground that most of the reactor problems for which the Autho-
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rity was originally set up have been solved and can now safely be left to industry.
First, the rundown has meant that it has been impossible to recruit new young staff, which in turn has reacted back on to the universities, and even to the schools, so that atomic energy is regarded as an old industry even before it has really started. Secondly, the Atomic Energy Authority's Research Group has been forced to concentrate on cash-earning projects in order to remain what is called viable, and has to build up to an income of £5 million a year from its source by about 1975. Naturally, this is an immensely difficult task, and a great deal of management attention has been devoted to it, with some success. But this is at the expense of work on reactor design and on reactor safety. Is this desirable? Here I think we can see the effect of that famous customer/contractor principle, according to which the Government have seen fit to reform the research structure of the country, and which will run us into more and more trouble as we go along.
This brings me, my Lords, to the great question of reactor choice. We have violent public dispute here, and I do not want to get too deeply into it. I am not qualified to sit in judgment on the Report of the House of Commons Select Committee on this matter, but this I do say: it is clear, reasonable and coherent. The Government's comments on it, on the other hand, published last month, are very cagey indeed. They are as empty of reasoning as they are of conclusion. But, still, this is only the beginning of the age of Parliamentary and public contribution to great technological decisions, and perhaps the Government will in due course learn to come cleaner about this sort of thing. I certainly have high hopes of the renewed sessions of that Select Committee this week and next.
My Lords, I had planned to speak about the dangers which are alleged to exist in the light water reactor which it is said we are now contemplating buying from the United States. Perhaps I should touch on it for a moment. This is a new animal, and a very big one—much bigger than anything we have. The trouble about it is that it is inherent in its nature that you cannot put a figure on the risk

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of failure without testing it in a manner which would completely destroy the reactor you tested, which would be many millions of pounds down the drain, and might risk the very disaster the likelihood of which you are trying to assess. This is a difficulty. Now what are we talking about? We are talking about the total melt-down of an L.W.R., and if it were to happen—everybody agrees that the likelihood is extremely small, though we can put no figure on it—it would involve the release of enough radioactivity to kill many hundreds of thousands of our citizens, and would involve the write-off geographically of a whole region for many decades.
Let us look at the insurance situation for a moment, because this, I think, is a good guide in these cases. At present in regard to the Magnox stations the Act requires the licensee—that is, the C.E.G.B. —to cover £5 million of the risk in the open market, and the Government carry the rest—nominally £25 million. That £5 million is paid for at a premium of about 2·7 per cent. a year, or sometimes higher. On the other hand, the Government's guarantee is a hypothetical tax on the people. If, after an accident, payments have to be made exceeding £5 million, the taxpayer forks out.
Now let us consider the light water reactor—several hundred thousand dead, and a region written off; an unknown risk of this happening, although little likelihood. What value should we put on such an accident? Certainly many thousands of millions of pounds. What part of the insurance will fall to the free market? What part will fall to the Government and to the taxpayer? This must be publicly understood and publicly debated. For my part, all my fears about light water reactors would be laid at rest if the Government made the licensees go to the market for the full value of all the risk—absolute liability covered—and confined their attention merely to ensuring that this cover had been obtained. In this field, as in others, such a policy would quickly produce the optimum blend of safety and economy.
In the meantime, my Lords, there seems to be good reason to order one or two more Magnox stations while we carefully consider the future. It is not as
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though we could buy light water reactors at the moment. The Government inspectorate, which has to judge the safety of each new reactor system, has not yet received even a design. It has only a vague idea of what is proposed. It is obvious that when it is received a very long time must be spent in discussion and meditation before the safety all-clear can be given. If it is suggested that the idea of ordering more Magnox stations is putting the clock back, I would only say that some clocks run fast, and those in whose interests it is that this clock should gain are very powerful indeed. I do not know whether last Sunday's Press report is true, but if it is, I would only say that an interest which would allow an American President—any American President—to praise the safety and reliability of a reactor two and a half miles from his home three weeks after it had broken down, would do anything.
It must also be an open question whether civilisation can survive on a fission economy which involves large quantities of plutonium distributed throughout the world so that relatively I any country will be able to make nuclear weapons, together with large quantities of long-period fission products. For this reason, we really ought to have a considerable step-up of fusion work comparable with what is going on in America. Yet again, we do not even know whether fusion itself will prove successful, and therefore a great deal more effort ought to be concentrated on solar and possibly geothermal power. There is little enough of that effort at the moment.
My Lords, after the excitements of oil and nuclear energy it is usually reassuring to get back to our own old domestic friend, coal. Not so at the moment. This is not the time to get into the dispute about the miners' wages. We nearly did that in Monday's debate on the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Bill in this House, and they did it in the other place yesterday.
LORD BLYTON: And we will here to-day!
LORD KENNET: My noble friend is getting into it to-day, but I do not want to do so at the moment. I only want to make two points at this stage. First of all, I hope that the Government will

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remember that coal is nationalised not in order to give them a captive enemy with whom to joust for the control of wages, but because it is so important that the mines should no longer be left in private hands. That is just a thought. My second point is this. Will the Government please keep reviewing the level of foreign investment allowed to the National Coal Board? Is it not perhaps strange that in the new Europe, with free capital movement, there should still be restrictions on investment in this capital industry, which is the largest coal industry in Europe and is now demonstrably the industry of the future?
Lastly, my Lords, to relate all these problems we really do need a National Energy Commission. In the debate in February I was among those who argued for a body with powers. On reflection, I have changed my view about that. I think it would be best to leave the powers where they are, with the Secretary of State, or, as my right honourable friend the Leader of the Opposition said recently, perhaps with a separate Minister of Fuel; but to leave them with the Cabinet. In my view this is right. I think the Commission should have four functions: first, to collect information and to diffuse it; secondly, to co-ordinate existing research and to commission more; thirdly, to carry out cost comparisons within and between the various energy producing sectors, using a wide spectrum of assumptions and interpretations, both those which are enjoined by present law and custom and those which would require statutory and administrative changes; and fourthly, to put to the Government, Parliament and the public from time to time a spectrum of alternative energy policies for discussion, and the adoption of one of them.
Naturally, a corresponding organ of the European Community should be created just as soon as possible thereafter, or perhaps even before. Why wait? If such a thing had been in existence now we might have been spared the absurdity of seeing our brave new Europe saddled with two separation industries instead of the single one we need if we are to cut the painter of dependence on America, with the Anglo-German-Dutch Urenco and the French national Eurodif. Beyond that, we shall have to look to a worldwide
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agency. There is nothing dreamy about this. We already have a world atomic energy agency, and it might be wiser in time perhaps to drop the word "atomic" from the title.
In the meantime, my Lords, I commend to the Government and to all interested parties the document, Energy for the Future, produced a few weeks ago by the Institute of Fuel. It suggests sensible, forthright and equitable solutions to most of our present problems—and if I have not already spoken for too long I should have taken pleasure in making another speech about it. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
4.31 p.m.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has raised a number of interesting and thoughtful suggestions as to how we might cope with the energy crisis, and I particularly liked what he said about the change in his thinking concerning an Energy Commission. I shall return to that later, if I may, but I should now like to deal with one or two other points. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said that if energy resources run out this would be on a very long time-scale, and I think we should disabuse the public of the idea that energy resources are ever going to run out. What we are going to face is the problem of ever-increasing costs, as supplies I become ever more difficult to obtain. This can be seen in the case of oil, where we have already thoroughly exploited those deposits which are most geologically accessible. We are now moving into the waters of the Continental Shelf at depths of up to 100 metres in the North Sea, and companies are speaking of exploring the Continental Slope, going right down to the bed of the ocean. They are telling us that technologies will be available to do this in a few years' time, but at a much enhanced cost. We shall have to pay something in the order of magnitude of 10 dollars a barrel, as compared with the maximum price being charged by the Arab countries at the moment of just over 5 dollars a barrel. So if the increased price doubles again we might be in a position to start talking about the deep sea resources. We should not run out: we should continue to increase the price as those supplies approach exhaustion, and people begin to use less.

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I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, mentioned the connection between the population and energy resources, because this is fundamental to the whole discussion. There are people in the Conservation Society, of which I have the honour to be President, who say that the growth in population is less important in considering the pressure on resources than the growth in the standard of living, particularly of peoples in the Western countries. I think that one should look at both aspects. Obviously, if you have double the number of people enjoying the same standard of living they will consume twice the amount of energy and twice the amount of materials upon which energy depends. So if one is talking about the very long time-scale referred to by the noble Lord at one point in his speech, the population question is vital, and I hope that the current energy crisis will have had an impact on the thinking of the Government in respect of the Report of the Ross Panel.
The noble Lord mentioned nuclear fusion. He quite rightly said that the Atomic Energy Authority are talking about the possibility—and I think it is only a possibility—of this becoming a practical technology some time towards the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. What they in fact say in their current annual report is that although some of the problems relating to the physics of nuclear fusion are not yet understood, when they are there will have to be an extremely large and expensive programme of engineering development, which might possibly lead to a prototype reactor by the end of the century. I think they are being optimistic in saying that commercial versions might be available in 10, 20 or 30 years, because presumably, as with all other major developments of this kind, the prototype would need to be in operation for a considerable number of years before embarking on a commercial programme. However, it emphasises that the timetable for bringing in new energy sources, together with the other ones which the noble Lord mentioned—solar and geo-thermal—is much too long to help us in the present situation, or indeed over perhaps the next 25 or 30 years.
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It is interesting to report that even as recently as September 18, Sir Eric Drake, Chairman of British Petroleum, was saying at a national conference on world energy supplies that the words "energy crisis" ought to be banned from the vocabulary of those involved in the resolution of our present energy problems. The Prime Minister was no wiser on this because he said in reply to a letter which I wrote to him—and this was three weeks before the conflict broke out in the Middle East—in which I drew attention to the dangers and the risks of the Arabs embarking on military adventures against Israel, and also of their use of the oil weapon:
"I am not as pessimistic about our future oil supplies as you appear to be."
Well, my Lords, the crisis is here and it is going to be with us for a long time—in fact I believe until the West adjusts its whole way of life to use far less energy and to reach an equilibrium at far lower levels of consumption than anybody has yet anticipated. As Peter Paterson, the former United States Secretary of Commerce, put it so graphically:
"We've had a happy era of low costs, low risks and high benefits. But Popeye is running out of cheap spinach."
Since the end of the last War, people have been encouraged to believe by politicians, economists, newspapers and in fact all those who influence public opinion, that economic growth will continue virtually ad infinitum and that all kinds of growth are good, but that growth of material consumption is especially good, and that we have to aim at an ever-increasing amount of real disposable income in the hands of individuals. It has been assumed also that the raw materials and energy necessary to sustain these growing levels of consumption will continue to be available at roughly constant prices. The realities of the energy situation call into question the whole of this philosophy, and demands that we should give consideration to an economic policy based on a constant input of primary raw materials and energy. That does not mean to say that nothing is going to change, but that in future products would have to be designed on the basis of greater durability and lower cost in use; that maximum effort should be devoted to the re-cycling of materials (particularly those with a high energy content); that consumers should not be

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insulated from increases in the market price of energy—and I shall come hack to that point later—and that fiscal policies should be aimed at the encouragement of economy in energy use.
I am not going to argue in detail the case for believing that we have a permanent rather than a temporary change in the situation caused by the Middle East War. I think that all that conflict has done has been to accelerate the process already taking place, albeit very gradually. At the beginning of October the OPEC countries raised their prices by an average of 70 per cent., and it would be a naive observer indeed who thought, once the Middle East conflict was resolved and peace restored, that the price increases which have been made would then be rescinded or that production cuts would be restored to the level required to satisfy growing demand. Without increasing their production at all between 1973 and 1974 the revenue of the host Governments in the Middle East will increase from 10 billion dollars in 1973 to 15 billion dollars in 1974. There is no economic reason for the Arab countries to go on increasing their output to match the potential demand of the West when they can get a 50 per cent. "hike" in their income from one year to another, while retaining production at constant levels. In fact, one could see this coming. Let me give your Lordships some earlier figures. In the autumn, 1970, the Libyan Government's take on a barrel of oil was 1·10 dollars: that has increased by October 1, this year, to 2·83 dollars. As it turned out, it would have been more profitable for the Libyans to have left that oil in the ground for the whole of those three years. Indeed, the Sheikhs have discovered, like Mr. Harry Hyams, that unused assets can appreciate faster in value than the revenue which would have been derived from them had they been brought into use—the difference being, of course, that Centre Point is still there intact after 13 years, whereas the Arabs are concerned with a wasting asset.
The total recoverable reserves in the world are pretty well known, and geologists tell us that it is very unlikely that the estimates will be amended very much in future. Mr. H. R. Warman, of B.P., has quoted a figure of 172 billion tons of crude oil available ultimately, of which 37 billion tons have already been used
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over the last 100 years, so we have 135 billion tons of crude oil to play with and we are using it up at the rate of just over 2½ billion tons per annum. He deduces from these figures (I will not give the whole of his reasoning, because it is rather long, but it is extremely well presented in the Financial Times conference, which I warmly recommend noble Lords to read) that projected increases in the Free World demand could not be met after 1978, and that production of conventional oil—
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, would the noble Lord give way? I fear that these estimates are made by people who have a very great interest in minimising the reserves. In fact we know that the estimates of the oil companies were usually one-tenth of the real out-turn in the end. For instance, we know that this happened in the case of the West Pennsylvanian oil field in the last century; it happened in the Texas oil field, and it is happening now in the oil fields under the sea, where the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, who began by quoting 25 million, being very moderate, is now up to 70 million—and no doubt by prodding he will come to 200 million.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I think, the noble Lord is perfectly correct. There has in the past been a substantial degree of underestimation. But the examples he quotes prove the point that this has generally been applicable to the United States producers, and the under-estimation has not been nearly so significant in countries outside the United States. I believe there were very good reasons why there could have been a more substantial degree of under-estimation in the United States than elsewhere in the world. But if we take the North Sea (though I do not want to be diverted on to that), I agree with the noble Lord that estimates have continued to increase—
LORD BALOGH: In Arabia, too.
LORD AVEBURY: I am quite prepared to believe that by 1985 we shall be producing something like 250 million tons a year from the North Sea, a figure which has been quoted by my friend Professor Peter O'Dell, who is known to the noble Lord as a considerable expert on these matters. That figure is a great deal higher than anything the Government have given us so far.

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But even if we could produce 250 million tons a year from the North Sea, that of course includes the Norwegian sector, and it is by no means a foregone conclusion that the Norwegians will bring all their oil ashore in the United Kingdom. They are thinking very carefully about means of bridging the trough so that they can lay pipelines to the Norwegian mainland; and I think the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, will agree that even if they do land it all in this country we have not a pre-emptive right to that oil. It would be perfectly possible for them to export it to other countries. But supposing we could use all of it (and I am sorry for this rather long diversion into which the noble Lord has tempted me), then it might possibly cover the whole consumption of the United Kingdom in the year. But if we are continuing to increase our demand for energy by 5 per cent. per annum, and we have reached the peak of North Sea production, then the trauma of the changeover to other forms of energy and of reducing our consumption according to the decline in production of North Sea oil, will be much more difficult to cope with. I am sorry that the noble Lord diverted me into a long digression on oil, but I wanted to demonstrate to the House that what we are looking at now, partly as a result of the Middle East war, would have happened sooner or later anyway and within the space of a very few years. So people turn to the alternatives. They say, "Let us imagine how we could replace the shortfall of oil from the Middle East or elsewhere by other means of energy production". And the one constantly quoted, of course, is nuclear.
My Lords, I have done some arithmetic on this. I have calculated that if energy demands were to continue increasing by 5 per cent. per annum, and nuclear energy had to meet the whole increase from 1985 onwards, there would have to be a world programme to construct 300,000 megawatts of nuclear power in one year and the cost of that capacity would exceed 150 billion dollars—figures which are so astronomical that I do not think anyone could seriously entertain them. Apart from the enormous sum of money involved, there is the question of the economic and technical capability of industry, which is certainly not up to
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meeting a programme of that size. Nor, incidentally, does it take into account the investment that would be required upstream in mining processing and enrichment; and it ignores the frightening risk of dependence on nuclear technology to which the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, referred.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, would my noble friend give way? Could we not put that in ordinary language: that there is no hope of nuclear energy generation matching the conventional ways of generation before the end of the century or the beginning of next?
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blyton. There is no hope whatever of nuclear energy taking over the whole of the increase in the sort of levels of consumption that have been projected so far.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, mentioned that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is in the process of taking a decision on the next generation of reactors to be installed in the United Kingdom, and there are strong reasons for believing that he is being pressed by the C.E.G.B. and the Electricity Council into embarking on a programme of light water reactors. On this aspect I should like to make four points which I hope the noble Lord who is to reply will consider. First of all, their record of construction time is no better than ours. In Nuclear Engineering International for September, 1973, lead times are given as 8 to 10 years in the United States, as compared with the same period for A.G.Rs now being installed in the United Kingdom.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, mentioned also the case of San Onofre, the light water reactor in the neighbourhood of the President's Western White House, where, although the plant had broken down and was out of operation completely, the President three weeks later quoted this as an example of how splendid the light water reactor programme was. The currently operating plants in the United States are not reaching even their target figure of 75 per cent, utilisation—a figure which has already been well exceeded by the Magnox stations that have been in service in this country for some time. I think there is something in what the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said: that

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one of the alternatives we should consider is the building of more Magnox stations. At least it has been shown that they are safe and reliable. The difficulties we have had with them have now been identified and if we were to build further Magnox stations we should not make the mistake of using mild steel components in a high temperature CO2 environment, which is the reason why their output at present is reduced. There are unresolved doubts, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said, about the safety of light water reactors, and these have been given a hearing at the A.E.C. Bethesda meetings. Transcripts of those proceedings are unobtainable in the United Kingdom—I have actually tried to obtain them. I do not believe that the C.E.G.B. observers who went to the United States earlier this year went into the safety considerations thoroughly enough; and certainly they did not visit the A.E.C.'s Idaho safety facility when they were there.
The fourth point I want to put to the noble Lord is very serious. It follows on what the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said about had science and bad decisions thriving on secrecy. The decision that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is about to take at the end of January or the beginning of February is going to be based on confidential advice given to him by the Nuclear Power Advisory Board. I want to ask whether there is any conceivable reason why that advice should not be published, in the same way as when the C.E.G.B. first made the decision to go for the A.G.R. programme there were comprehensive figures made available to the House—I still have a copy of them at home—showing why they chose A.G.R. in preference to the alternatives that were then available. So we went a step backwards when we changed to a so-called "open Government" which is now refusing to give us the background information on which we can judge whether the decision taken by the Secretary of State is a reasonable one or not.
Some people say, "Let us think about coal as a potential replacement." They forget that it takes ten years to bring a new coalfield into operation. If they talk to the National Coal Board and the Electricity Council they will find that the rich seam which has now been discovered in Yorkshire will probably be
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just about sufficient to counterbalance the pits that will go out of operation during the same period. We shall be extremely luck if we can maintain the output of coal over the next ten years at the level of something like 130 million tons a year. Certainly we should explore with the National Coal Board whether there is any possible means of increasing the output by fresh exploration, subsidised, if necessary, by the Government so as to lessen our dependence on oil.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, could the noble Lord tell me where he is going to get the miners from to produce the coal from the new coalfields?
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I certainly could not tell the noble Lord from where we are going to get the miners under the present conditions. I think we ought carefully to consider whether the maintenance of this country's energy supplies is more or less important than the preservation of the Government's face over Phase 3. In my personal opinion, of the two problems we now face the energy situation is much more serious. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, shakes his head; I was about to give a reason for my assertion. If you do not have the energy, whether it be in the form of oil, coal, gas or electricity, then millions of people are not going to be able to work on production, and we might have, as I have said, a million people out of work by the end of the winter. Then Phase 3 will be of no use to the Government or the people of this country, because there will be a real decline in their standard of living as a result of that shortage of energy. I would think that this was an overriding consideration, and far more important than controlling inflation, vital though that may be.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord thinks, in all honesty, that before he comes to this House and advocates an increase in coal production, and deplores the fact that our production is 100 million tons, he should tell the House what he said on behalf of the Liberal Party on July 18, 1967. Speaking as spokesman for the Liberal Party, he said:
"In so far as it is socially and economically practical the coal industry should be run down as fast as possible."
In order that he may check the reference, it is volume 750, column 1940 of the Commons Hansard.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I am not ashamed to admit to the House and to the country that I have changed my mind.
LORD WIGG: Then the noble Lord should say so. My Lords, I agree any man has a right to change his mind; I have changed mine on occasions, and I have often backed a loser in that way. This House is a platform. What we say here goes out to the country as a whole, and one of the reasons why the Liberal Party are prospering is because they do not tell the truth. They say one thing here and a different thing in every constituency in which their speaker speaks.
LORD AVEBURY: If the noble Lord is still saying the same things that he said six years ago—and I am not surprised if he answers me that he is—that, I would say, is not a very good advertisement for his acumen or flexibility of mind. If we all thought precisely the same to-day as we did in 1967 we should have made no progress since then. I am perfectly happy to admit that the situation we were looking at in 1967 was very different, and that if we had not changed our minds since then we should be culpable. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, does not still think the same on energy policy in 1973 as he did six years ago.
We should, if it is feasible, aim at increasing the coal burning of the Central Electricity Generating Board to the 90 million tons which they have said they could achieve if it was available at the right price, and if they could be certain of delivery.
Oil shales and tar sands have also been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and theoretically there are enormous quantities of these. But the recovery rate would be low, and there are formidable technical problems in getting them out, particularly as I understand that in the case of the shales large quantities of water are required to process them, and they are located unfortunately in arid regions of the United States, such as Colorado. In the case of the tar sands the biggest deposit known is in Athabasco. It has been worked out that to extract 250 million tonnes a year from Athabasco, which is about the same amount we might expect from the North Sea in 1985, would require a work force of 100,000 men to work in the inhospitable wilds of Northern
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Alberta. I am not at all sure that they could be persuaded to go there. It would be a slightly more difficult problem than getting miners and would require an investment of 50 billion dollars.
To sum up, my Lords, it is useless to think of making up any shortfall of crude oil by expanding the other sources of primary energy, and the only sensible policy we can adopt is strict economy in consumption. Whereas in the United States considerable thought has been given to this problem, as exemplified by the Report of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, The Potential for Energy Conservation, which contains a enormous list of things that could be done to reduce consumption in the United States, we in this country are totally unprepared. The reason for that is an organisational one: we have no body charged with the responsibility of looking at the energy scene as a whole and then coming up with recommendations on the lines of the U.S. study to which I have referred. I suggest that we begin to look at the idea of setting up an Energy Commission, along the lines of Lord Kennet's proposal. The idea of such a Commission was in fact put forward by my noble friend Lord Tanlaw in the debate to which the noble Lord, Lord Kennet referred. I suggest that it should be a Royal Commission; and I do so for several reasons. One is the it would be set up immediately by Royal Warrant, and I believe that the matter is of such urgency that we cannot wait for legislation. Secondly, there are precedents for a Royal Commission operating on a semipermanent basis, but if it were thought desirable, then a statutory body could replace it later on.
I know that Royal Commissions have been said to be a device for taking minutes and wasting years, but if in the terms of reference there were a requirement that the Royal Commission should report at regular intervals, then I think that point could be taken care of. Such a Commission would certainly have, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, suggested, adequate professional staff and it would have powers to instigate research by industry, Government research establishments and universities. And the Commission should be, I suggest, independent of any of the fuel industries and of any Government Department, so that

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its advice would not be parti pris, as is much of the advice given to the Government at the moment by the fuel industries themselves.
Lastly, I would suggest that, if agreement could be reached between the Parties, regular debates on the Reports of the Royal Commission on energy could be fitted into the Parliamentary timetable in much the same way as the Defence Estimates and the Agricultural Price Review are at the moment. I make it clear that in suggesting the formula of a Royal Commission I am thinking of a body that will be purely advisory, rather than one having any executive responsibilities; and in this I am at one with the noble Lord, Lord Kennet. I will not go into the suggestions as to how the Commission's terms of reference ought to be drafted, because I have already spoken for long enough; but I hope the House will accept the suggestion which the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and my noble friend Lord Tanlaw have put forward. There seems to be growing support for the idea. If we do nothing else but send out a message from this House that we need a national body to give urgent consideration, not only to the situation we face now but to the long-term difficulties which will persist until the end of the century, then this debate will have been extremely useful.
4.1 p.m.
THE MINISTER OE STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD POLWARTH): My Lords, in recent weeks your Lordships have devoted a considerable amount of time on several occasions to issues in the field of energy, and in the present circumstances that is understandable and absolutely right. We should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for bringing the subject before us to-day crystallised in such succinct wording: his Motion really covers the whole of our problems in a few words. It opens up issues which must be uppermost in the minds of many of us—questions such as: How bad is this winter going to be? What are the implications for the future? Above all, what ought the Government to be doing about the present about the medium-term and about the long-term problems, and what indeed can be done?—which is something we must always bear in mind.
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The two noble Lords who have spoken so thought-provokingly and interestingly so far will forgive me, I hope, if I propose not to deal in detail with the points they have raised, which I know my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn will be doing later in the debate. They have both concentrated, absolutely rightly, on the long-term problems rather than the immediate situation. At the same time, before I come to that your Lordships would probably like me to give an account up to date of our immediate energy position and of the Government's thinking and proposals on the situation we face at the present time. Just to recall what has happened already, it was on October 26 that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry announced controls on oil exports. On November 14 orders were made under the Emergency Regulations curbing electricity demand by restricting space heating in certain premises and prohibiting display and advertising lighting. On November 19 he announced measures of oil allocation to secure a 10 per cent. reduction on last year's consumption; and other similar measures were taken.
In general, oil stocks are holding up and deliveries of crude oil to the United Kingdom in November were equal to the deliveries expected before the crisis. But as the House knows my right honourable friend had yesterday to announce the diversion of additional supplies of fuel oil to the power stations. This was made necessary by the short-fall of coal production as a result of events in the mines. This decision will of course provide greater insurance for electricity supply. But it must cause concern for fuel oil stocks in the future, and demand even greater economy in the use of electricity.
The Government have decided on a series of further economy measures. There will be new restrictions on the level of heating in all commercial premises and offices by any fuel. An Order regulating temperatures will be laid. The existing restrictions on space heating by electricity in commercial premises and offices will continue. Lighting in shops and commercial premises will also be controlled. Further savings will be achieved by switching off a proportion of light on all highways and streets, except where reduced lighting could lead to an unacceptable risk of increased

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accidents. Substantial savings have been made in the use of oil for shipping and aviation. My right honourable friend the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping will be making a Statement later this week on specific measures for aviation, including private flying.
Except when a lower limit already applies, a 50 m.p.h. speed limit will be imposed by Order on all roads including motorways. Various Government Departments will be approaching distributors to ensure the greatest economy in the use of petrol for commercial deliveries. In some areas, garages have been running out of petrol or restricting purchases. This is because some motorists have not made the economies appealed for to match the reductions in deliveries. Indeed, some motorists have increased demand for topping up at every available opportunity. Again, my right honourable friend asked everyone once more to make a special effort to economise and, in particular, not to add to the present difficulties by selfishly trying to keep tanks full to the last drop. This appeal must be heeded to enable garages to look after the needs of essential customers such as doctors, disabled drivers, and those involved in social work. The Government will continue to watch the situation extremely closely. They will take whatever further steps may be needed.
Useful savings can be made by those involved in regular deliveries of goods by reducing the frequency of their deliveries, and Government Departments concerned with distributors will be approaching them to discuss what economies can be achieved. With the present levels of our stocks of motor spirit together with the cut that has taken place of 10 per cent. on last year's consumption figures, there is no need at the present time for rationing to be introduced. In most parts of the country there have been no serious difficulties in the period since the cuts were introduced. And with a combination of both the compulsory and voluntary efforts that are made a reduction of supplies to the present levels should cause no serious problems.
The South-East of the country, in particular, as your Lordships are probably aware, has created a problem. Two fac-
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tors emerge. Adequate supplies of petrol are available, if people will make limited cuts in their motoring and stop panic filling up of their tanks whereby people have queued for ages and then bought only one or two gallons. This has created unnecessary problems for filling stations.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, before my noble friend leaves that point, may I ask whether he is aware that some garages are now getting a delivery of two tankers a week, whereas they were getting in normal circumstances five tankers a week? This is not a reflection on the motorist; this must be a reflection on the distribution system, and it is a little unsatisfactory to say that a 10 per cent. cut is all that is necessary. In fact, garages are having a 60 per cent. cut in the supplies they receive. Might we have an assurance that this is not being done until the price of fuel goes up and the petrol distribution people will make a larger profit?
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for drawing this matter to my attention and I will certainly pass it on to my right honourable friend responsible.
The Oil Industry Emergency Committee are now operating with their own control centre. They have the task of balancing demand against available supply. I suspect it is with this body that my right honourable friend would discuss the kind of problem that has just been raised. The Committee have assured my right honourable friend that deliveries to petrol stations have been, and will continue to be, maintained to 90 per cent. of last year's figures; and action is being taken to see that petrol stations spread their opening hours so that petrol is available from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
LORD HOY: My Lords, I do not want to interrupt, but this is really the point that is at issue and I think this is what the House wants an assurance about—that is, what actual deliveries are taking place?—because some garages are saying that they are being so under-supplied that the problem is not created by them but by lack of petrol.
Loan POLWARTH: My Lords, in the light of what both noble Lords have said about individual cases, I will ensure that this point is brought to the attention of the Committee who have given this assurance about the 90 per cent. overall.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, would the noble Lord give way again for one moment? Would he make an appeal to the Members of your Lordships' House who come here in large cars, and particularly those Members of your Lordships' House, one of whom is present, who caused me to get only 50p worth of petrol? The garage proprietor told me that that particular noble Lord had stowed 200 gallons away in cans and was then reverting to a small car.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I should think that allegations of that kind should be brought to the attention of the proper quarter. All I would say is that I am sure your Lordships are very well aware of the need to set a good example in economy in the use of petrol.
My Lords, if motorists will show moderation, the discomfort of queues and the difficulties of obtaining petrol should be greatly reduced. These problems are nothing compared to the personal difficulties which will arise if rationing has to be introduced. Our reserve position does nothing to suggest that the Government should now take action to ration petrol. It is vital that all concerned should continue to exercise the maximum economy in the use of all our energy resources.
So much for the immediate situation. I should like now just to look at the situation in a wider perspective. Two months ago there was very little reason to expect that we should this winter face the troubles which we are now facing. Compared with the start of previous winters the country was well placed; our stocks of coal and oil were high, coal production was beginning to level out after years of decline, the electricity supply industry was ready to meet the country's needs during the winter. On the more general level the policies of successive Governments and the decisions of consumers over the years had given us a fairly balanced four-fuel economy, with petroleum supplying just under half our needs, coal a little over a third, natural gas just over a tenth, and nuclear and hydro-electricity the remainder. In contrast with, say, 20 years before, when coal supplied nearly 90 per cent. of our energy needs, this represented a fair measure of diversification and, therefore, of security.
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Against this background, I do not think our present situation was to be expected, nor do I think it could reasonably have been avoided. It is essentially the product not of one factor but of a series of adverse factors: the war in the Middle East and the decision of Middle East producers to use oil as a weapon in their political struggles; the simultaneous decision of the miners to ban overtime and challenge our Phase 3 policy—and I totally differ from the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, as to the relative importance of these matters; we consider that the Phase 3 policy is vital—and also the industrial action by the electricity power engineers. Any of these factors on its own would have proved difficult. Taken together their cumulative effect is extremely serious.
Even if one is wise after the event, if one looks back over the events leading up to our present situation it is hard to see what policies could have been followed (short of giving in to the pressures upon us) to protect us more against the difficulties we now face. The alternative to diversity is concentration. But suppose earlier Governments had concentrated much more on a particular fuel, should we be better off? If the chosen fuel had been coal, the oil difficulty would now be less but the effects of the miners' overtime ban would be worse. If we had decided on a large crash programme of nuclear power then, with the difficulties that we know and of which we have heard we should still have problems, so we should not necessarily be better off. We should of course have been considerably exposed on whatever was the chosen fuel.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, will the Minister give way? Is he suggesting that after years of propaganda by the miners to the effect that too much was being put in the "oil basket" the Government are justifying their decisions now that we are being blackmailed and our foreign policy is being dictated by the oil sheikhs?
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, that was not what I was suggesting. I believe that the flexibility and security which have been sought through diversity—and this has not been the policy of only one Government—have been the right objectives. That diversity does not and cannot insure against the consequences of several

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things happening at once. For the same kind of reason, any policy for the future must necessarily leave the country with some degree of vulnerability to pressures of one kind or another. We cannot legislate or plan this fact of life away. What we can and must do is to find our way wisely through the present difficulties, guard against the risks of repetition for the future, and make sure that if difficulties do arise again we shall be able to do everything possible to minimise their impact on our way of life.
I have already dealt with the first half of this task, namely, our present difficulties. I should now like to turn to the future and to begin by considering what our objectives should be. I think the long-term objective of the Government could be stated specifically as follows: to make the best use of the United Kingdom's indigenous resources and, where imports are needed, to do everything possible to ensure that they are obtained on satisfactory terms as to both price and security. Clearly there is a lot to be explained in that, but before I go on to elaborate it—
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to intervene? He has given a definition of the Government's policy which is concerned entirely with supply. Is he saying that the Government's policy still completely ignores the factor of demand and that this need not be taken into account in the long-term future?
LORD POLWARTH: No, my Lords, of course the pattern of demand must and will be taken into account. But may I stress some of the key factors which have to be taken into account in formulating future plans? The most important element is the sheer uncertainty within which we are working. As some of your Lordships have already pointed out, the timescales involved are very long. We could not reasonably be expected to know, two months ago, how things would go: how can we hope to know now what the situation will be 20 years hence? I am not arguing that we should not make forecasts or economic analyses or undertake technological research—far from it; these are essential—but I am pointing out that we must be prepared for the unknown. Before the present difficulties
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arose we were indeed prepared for some contingency of the kind by our policy of diversification, our stock-building and our contingency planning; and just in the same way our decisions for the future must allow us to cope with whatever turns up.
Above all, as has often been pointed out, we must be prepared for the fact that having made our best predictions we shall very likely be proved wrong. That is the lesson of the past. It is not particularly pessimistic and it does not mean, "Do nothing". But it does, I believe, rule out of court the proposals of those who would like us to make nice, neat plans for energy supplies, with fixed targets years ahead and a precise description of how we are going to get there. We probably all long for something of the kind, but in realistic terms it is "not on", as I am sure any of your Lordships know who have experience of planning investment in industry and the great difficulties of forecasting the needs in the long term ahead.
LORD TANLAW: My Lords, will the noble Lord forgive me? In case he is implying that suggestions of this kind in regard to forecasting and predictions have come from these Benches, may I say that that is not true. All we have asked for is that the Government shall consider the establishment of an Energy Commission, and we still ask the Government seriously to consider that and to give us an indication in the course of this debate.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I fully accept what the noble Lord has said and I shall come to that point a little later on. There are those who have been representing that we can deal with this matter by nice fixed plans ahead, but I am not suggesting that it was noble Lords on that Bench.
What, however, is feasible is that we should build as much flexibility as possible into our policy making: flexibility as to the fuels we use and their sources, flexibility as to how we deploy them once we acquire them, flexibility in our decisions and their timing. Policy making in the field of energy must be a continuous, rolling programme which never finishes. There is no point in cutting off options needlessly. The development of our own indigenous resources is central to the Government's policy. Long before the

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present difficulties we had taken great steps to achieve it. In the United Kingdom we are very used to comparing our position with that of other industrial countries and in many fields, and coming to the conclusion that we are worse off than the rest. Whatever the truth of that may be in other things, our position on energy resources certainly does not justify such a comparison. On the contrary, we are considerably better off than most other industrialised countries.
North Sea oil is probably the most dramatic example of that. I ask your Lordships to remember that it is only two years ago that we knew we had oil in commercial quantities and—who knows?—we may still not know the full extent of our good fortune. But the Government are determined to make the most of this very valuable asset. We may regret that the discoveries were not made a few years earlier so that oil was flowing now; nevertheless, the benefits in creating jobs, in saving foreign exchange, in orders for our industry, in revenue to the Exchequer, will be very great.
Secondly, we should not overlook or underestimate the very great technological feat which bringing this oil ashore represents. We sometimes hear North Sea oil being discussed as though all that was needed was to go out to sea with a bucket and haul it up. It is not a bit like that. Getting oil from water of this depth, in these weather conditions, has never been achieved before. I should like to pay tribute to what is being done, not least by those working on rigs 100 miles and more out in the North Sea in Force 10 gales such as we have been experiencing in the last few weeks. This is a vast technological problem, and it is straining our resources to the full, but we are determined that any removable obstacles to the speedy arrival of the oil ashore will be removed. We have asked the companies to let us know of every impediment to the speedy arrival of the oil so that we may do what we can to help them.
There is also North Sea gas. The House knows well what has happened in the short space of 10 years. The reserves are substantial, particularly if we take into acount the British Gas Corporation's agreement to buy gas from the Friggfield. So far as the Norwegian part is concerned, this is still subject to the
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consent of the Norwegian Parliament. Still further finds of gas may be made there, either as a result of the exploration for oil in the North Sea or in the Celtic Sea where exploration has just begun.
May I now refer to the coal industry. I am sure noble Lords will agree that the Government can take considerable credit for what has been achieved as a result of the Coal Industry Act. We have arrested the run-down of the industry; we have made provision for financial reconstruction, for the write-off of past debt, and for grants which are large by any standard. We are now discussing with the National Coal Board the possibilities of obtaining extra output in the light of their exploration programme.
LORD BLYTON: I am obliged to the noble Lord for allowing me to interrupt. In view of the statement he has just made, in which he said the Government were obviating the run-down of the industry, how does the noble Lord square that with the fact that, week by week, manpower has considerably been reduced?
LORD POLWARTH: Of course there are problems and difficulties. We know there are problems over manpower, but the fact remains that the industry is still recruiting effectively, even if the numbers leaving it in recent times have been greater than we would like. I think the noble Lord will be speaking later; he will then have an opportunity to develop his views, so perhaps he will allow me to finish my speech.
Finally, there is the nuclear power position, to which both previous speakers devoted their attention. This is indeed a complicated subject, on which they are both better qualified to speak than I am. This is a very complex field and I do not intend to go into it in detail. I know that later on my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn will deal with some of the specific points raised by the previous speakers. At present, I think nuclear power is providing some 3 per cent. of total energy requirements. It is of great and growing importance to our long-term position. From the mid-1980s on, it will become much more important as a source of energy. I think I will leave it at that for now.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, before my noble friend finishes what he

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has to say on the energy problem, could he tell us anything about hydro-electric power? After all, we are a country surrounded by water, and we have a lot of water in our country. I should have thought it would be possible to harness some of the tidal races that we get around our coasts. I am thinking particularly of the West coast of Scotland, where several tidal races come between two narrow points. There is tremendous free power in these tidal races. Could we not harness that power, and also power from similar waters?
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I am quite sure the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board will be looking at the possibilities for further hydro-electric schemes, although we must remember that water in Scotland can sometimes be scarce as well as plentiful. That we know only too well from last summer. Tidal power is one of the matters on which I am sure research is being done and will be done in future. But I will note my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing's remarks and pass them on to the appropriate quarter.
I have outlined the position on the main fuels which we see meeting our energy demands in the next couple of decades. I have pointed out that in particular we are seeking to make the best use of our indigenous resources, and we are indeed fortunate in the extent of these. But I should not like noble Lords to think that this good fortune leads us into complacency. Like the rest of the world, we must always be looking to the long term. The suggestion of an Energy Commission has been made once more by both previous speakers. One noble Lord suggested that it take the form of a Royal Commission. I was interested to hear the noble Lord's change of view about the nature of such a body, and his present view as to whether it should be advisory rather than executive, a view held by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, as well. This helps to guide us a little more as to what is in people's minds. All I will say now is that we should be interested to hear the views of others in this debate as to the function and form of such a body.
Looking ahead is always extremely difficult, but it is clear enough that the world must face a growing tightness in
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fossil fuels, especially oil. This must be so, even taking into account all the large "unconventional" reserves in the way of oil shales and tar sands which have already been mentioned, and in the deeper waters that are now being explored. Like the rest of the world we shall have to adapt to that situation. It is not one in which energy is running out and the world is running down—I am sure of that.
Beyond the world reserves of fossil fuels, there are, as we have been reminded this afternoon, other sources of energy such as thermal nuclear power which is already being exploited, whatever the difficulties. The fusion process, if it can be made a practical proposition, offers a virtually unlimited energy source. There are "renewable" sources, such as solar and tidal power, which have been mentioned by my noble friend behind me, and geo-thermal energy. Research is being carried on in many quarters, but we do not face an imminent crisis of the exhaustion of reserves. The world has the time and the technological resources to solve the problems of the long term future, but adapting to an energy base that does not include easily available oil is a human and political problem as well as a technological one, and will need much statesmanship. Again, this problem needs time to solve, but we can do it if we set our minds to it. The world is beginning to tackle it now as a result of the current oil difficulties and, with planning, this is something we must always keep firmly in sight.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES COUNCIL MEETINGS
4.28 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD WINDLESHAM): My Lords, I think this may be a convenient moment for me to repeat a Statement that is being made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in another place. The Statement reads as follows:
"With your permission Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement about matters considered in the Council of the European Communities since I last reported to the House on October 24.

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"There have been six meetings—the Foreign Ministers met twice, the Finance Ministers twice, and the Ministers of Agriculture and Transport once each.
"My right honourable friend the Minister for Agriculture has already reported to the House on the meeting of Agriculture Ministers on November 19 and 20.
"At the meeting of Transport Ministers on November 22 there was a preliminary exchange of views on the Commission's recent document on the development of the common transport policy, which was the main item of the agenda.
"For the rest, agreement was reached on the substance of a measure of liberalisation in international road haulage, on a small change in consultation procedures, and on the need for uniform enforcement of the rules restricting lorry drivers' hours.
"Lorry weights and dimensions and the increase in the new member countries' share of the Community quota for road haulage were further discussed without conclusions being reached.
"The Foreign Ministers met on November 5 and 6 and discussed a wide range of subjects affecting the Community's relations with almost all other parts of the world.
"These subjects were further discussed at the Foreign Ministers meeting on December 3 and 4.
"Ministers have now agreed on the content of trade agreements to be concluded with Brazil and with India.
"The Council made progress on agreeing improvements for 1974 on the generalised scheme of preferences which it offers to imports from developing countries, and on its offer of tariff concessions to third countries under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as a consequence of the enlargement of the Community.
"Further discussion took place on the mandate for the Commission to negotiate agreements with certain Mediterranean countries. In the expectation that such agreements are unlikely to be concluded by the yearend, a satisfactory understanding was reached on the handling of interim arrangements.
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There was a detailed discussion of the main aspects of the Regional Development Fund to be set up by January 1, 1974, as provided for in last year's Summit meeting in Paris. This resulted in a clarification of the position of the various Member States which should help in finalising the arrangements to be concluded by the year-end.
At their meeting on November 9 the Finance Ministers discussed the progress of the Community's anti-inflation programme and the move to a second stage of economic and monetary union. On Monday and Tuesday of this week, the Finance Ministers agreed a resolution on short-term action against inflation. They also made useful progress in further consideration of economic and monetary union and agreed to resume the discussion on December 17.
"Opportunity was taken of the meetings yesterday and the day before to have an extensive exchange of views on the Community's current energy problems. It was recognised that the united approach to a political solution in the Middle East still constituted the primary field for Community action. It was also agreed that the consultative arrangements instituted at meetings in November should be maintained."
My Lords, that concludes my right honourable friend's Statement.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I think I must thank the noble Lord the Leader of the House for his good intentions in repeating a Statement which really puts the House in an impossible position. I do not blame him. It simply is not possible, with a Statement full of so many pregnant but totally uninformative expressions, to discuss it at all; and since we have a very lengthy debate ahead of us, with a long list of speakers, I do not propose to attempt to do so.
There were a number of blinding shafts of invisible light which on cross-examination might have given us some answer about what was in the minds of Ministers on this, that and the other subject. I make no criticism of the noble Lord, because I am sure he would agree, as the whole House would agree, that we cannot go on like this, and that

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to-morrow's debate, which is so important for establishing proper Parliamentary concern and, if necessary, influence over what goes on in the Common Market, takes on an even greater importance. Therefore, I will ask the noble Lord no questions at all, but I thank him for his good intentions.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I also thank the Leader for reading out this Statement, which I myself find singularly unilluminating. In spite of the good example set by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, I would ask one question, or perhaps two. What exactly is meant by a "measure of liberalisation in international road haulage"? Cannot he just tell us the sort of thing that is meant by that; and, if they have agreed on this point, tell us what it is? I resist the temptation to ask other questions, but there is one important matter which arises obviously. That is the statement about the possible setting up at the end of this year of a Regional Development Fund and the statement at the end about coming into the second stage of economic and monetary union. Are we to understand that these two matters are linked in any way, or is it still the Government's intention that the Regional Fund must be set up before the agreement on monetary union is forthcoming?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I appreciate that the repeating of Statements in your Lordships' House is often unsatisfactory. It may be particularly so for those who are taking part in a debate, because it interrupts the flow of the debate. To-day I am repeating a Statement made by a Minister who was present at meetings in Brussels and I was not. Therefore what I can tell the House of those meetings is, of course, limited by the information I have been able to obtain in advance of repeating the Statement. However, there has been consistent Parliamentary pressure in both Houses for Ministerial Statements to be made after these meetings of Ministers; and it is in response to this legitimate demand of Parliament that Statements have been made in both Houses. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that the proposal to set up a specialist committee of this House on European
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Community affairs (which we shall be debating to-morrow, on my Motion on the Report of the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King) may go some way to help achieve a more satisfactory situation in the future.
In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, I understand that the further discussions on the Regional Development Fund are likely to take place in Copenhagen when the Heads of State and Heads of Government meet there on December 14 and 15. Finance Ministers will still be working on monetary union, and I believe the House would not want me to enter into any exposition on what is meant by "liberalisation of international road haulage," even if I were in a position to do so.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, before we leave the question of discussions in Brussels, may I say that it is certainly very satisfactory to know that these discussions have been so wide-ranging. May I ask the Government whether we may take it that the functions of O.E.C.D. are still being made use of, seeing that so many of the problems which afflict us—energy, financial, monetary, resources problems—affect the Americans, Canadians, Australians, Japanese and other countries which are in O.E.C.D. but are outside the European Economic Community.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord that we do appreciate the valuable opportunities offered in operating through the machinery of the O.E.C.D.

ENERGY SUPPLIES AND POLICY
4.37 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, may I have the leave of the House to make a Personal Statement? I have been told that in the course of the political argument in my speech just now I inadvertently used a phrase which gave personal offence and distress to Members of your Lordships' House. I did not know that it would; I did not mean it to, and I ask your Lordships to accept my apology for having used that phrase.
LORD ZUCKERMAN: My Lords, we must all be grateful to the noble Lord,

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Lord Kennet, for having introduced this very important subject for debate. I myself prefer to refer to our topic not as a "crisis", but as the present situation with regard to our energy supplies. As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said, what is now a crisis is in fact our abrupt acceleration into a position where all can now read what has long been written on the wall. It is years since people wrote that one day we would need to consider whether the use of oil should be restricted to prime movers, or treated as a chemical raw material, as opposed to a convenient form of space heating or as fuel for generating stations. That was long before the recent war in the Middle East. I myself was guilty of such writing in the mid-'fifties.
I draw several lessons from the present situation. First, nothing will ever be the same as before, whatever happens in the resolution of our immediate difficulties. We cannot rest assured that they will not recur. Whatever happens now, therefore, we have to diversify our energy supplies. That, I think, is the point which the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, was making. The war accelerated our present situation; it did not create it. Regardless of what oil reserves there are—and there has been discussion on this point—until the world is one, we in this country dare not allow irregularity in the distribution of raw materials in the earth's crust to determine the progress and spread of Western civilisation.
Coal powered the Industrial Revolution and the growth of industry in all countries well into this century. In the latter part of our own century we turned from coal to the more convenient fuel represented by crude oil; and the United States of course, as we know full well, to the use of natural gas—natural gas provided so cheaply that it distorted the cost pattern of many products. At about the same time, we started to exploit hydroelectric power; I wish there were more available in this country so as to satisfy the noble Lord who mentioned this subject. More recently we have rested major hopes on the promise of nuclear energy.
We ran down our coal mines, but coal mining now needs to be encouraged. That, as I understand it, is why the Government introduced the 1973 Coal Industry Act, which keeps open the option of
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a large industry for the future. We were over-optimistic in our estimates of both the potential speed at which nuclear power stations can be brought into operation and the cost of nuclear power. To-day we are cautious—perhaps over-cautious. No significant allowance was made for North Sea gas—and I note that the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, who knows a great deal about this subject is to speak later—in the calculations which led up to the 1967 White Paper on Fuel Policy, and which at the time appeared to provide a sound basis for the policies we were then following but which, as has turned out, and because of over-optimism about the nuclear component, expedited the rundown of coal. If anything is to be learnt from the present situation it is that we need to be flexible in our policies for the future. And that, too, was Lord Polwarth's point.
The second lesson that I would draw is that however difficult it is not to abide by conventional discounted cash-flow sums, we cannot approach the problem of investment in energy, and equally in the environment, by accountancy principles which relate to to-day's costs and values. This has also been shown to be true, as we know, of the nation's water resources, land resources, and even of its resources of clean air. We dare not live just for the day, and expect at the same time to deal with matters which affect the conditions of life to-morrow. My third lesson would be that we have paid far too little attention in the past to conservation and the waste of energy—two matters which have not so far been sufficiently emphasised to-day. My fourth point is that, whatever we do in overcoming our immediate problems and in preparing for the decade ahead, we must have the factor of safety in mind, but safety assessed rationally and not in an atmosphere of hysteria.
My Lords, let me now amplify what I have said about my four lessons. In this country we have little opportunity for diversifying our sources of energy. We have been blessed by the discovery of natural gas and oil in the bed of the North Sea, and if all goes well we can be self-sufficient in our demands for these commodities by the mid-1980s. I am one of those who live in that hope. But, in the light of our present difficulties the 'eighties are far away. None the less,

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we have to push on now with further exploration, not only in the North Sea, but as the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, said, in the Irish Sea as well; and, what is more, on our own land mass, in spite of the objections people have raised to the simple process of exploration, a process which causes practically no environmental disturbance at all. I shall not refer to coal; others who are going to speak in this debate are much better qualified than I am to do so. But I must refer, however inexpert my knowledge, to the question of the rational growth of nuclear power, about which there has been so much discussion in recent months, and to which reference was made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, in his opening speech, and also by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. It is a matter about which we understand that the Government are due to make an announcement in the early part of the new year.
Certain figures need to be borne in mind. I do not wish to weary your Lordships with statistics, but let me remind you of the amount of power that the Central Electricity Generating Board commands now. The output capacity of our generating stations at the present moment is about 65,000 megawatts, and the simultaneous maximum load which is met, and maximum potential demand, is 46.000 megawatts. About 20 per cent. of the system is oil-fired. Since stations have to be taken out of service periodically, the C.E.G.B. holds that a plant margin of 20 per cent. is necessary over the whole system. I understand that at the present moment the figure is somewhat higher than 20 per cent., and I also know that there are those who argue that the C.E.G.B. could make do with a lower margin. Whatever the figure is, it is going to determine our investment policy in generating stations. At the present moment, new generating plant equivalent to a further 12,500 megawatts is under construction to make allowances for the growth in demand. It is, however, well known that the estimates made by the C.E.G.B. at the end of the 1960s for future demand were on the generous side, and we also now know that the demand for electric power does not run in parallel with the growth of the G.N.P.
I mention these figures because they determine the urgency with which we
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have to decide about the new nuclear power plants that should be planned to meet our estimates of what will be required. A refinement in forecasting methods is under way. I hope that it is successful. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, that we cannot legislate for Middle East wars, nor can we legislate for industrial unrest. We can regret these things, but they happen. And they show just how frail technological forecasting can be. Until we are satisfied with our estimates of future demand, it is going to be very difficult to challenge the view (and some vast figures have been quoted), that by the year 2000 100,000 megawatts of new plant will be required in this country. We cannot argue about such estimates, simply because we cannot make statements which depend on the unknown variables that may come into future sums, and sometimes make our present sums not worth the paper on which they are written.
I also understand—and I appreciate this fully—that we cannot wait, and that the issue now is that of giving the go-ahead to a definite number of new nuclear plants as soon as possible—recognising that it will take 10 years before any one of them becomes operational. Noble Lords have already referred to different varieties of nuclear reactor. I have followed the debate closely so far and have read a great deal about the subject, but I must immediately admit my total incompetence to discuss the technicalities of this matter. I do not know, for example, what reactor we should go for. I do not know whether it should be the steam generating heavy water reactor (reference has been made to that) or the high temperature gas-cooled reactor, or some other reactor, or the American light water reactor, to which reference has also been made. And may I correct a remark which was made about what President Nixon is reported to have said about an L.W.R. near his provincial White House? He did not say how good it was; he said how safe it was. If, in fact, he said it at a moment when it was shut down, then it must have been very safe.
There are Members of your Lordships' House who are unable to be here to-day and whom I do not see on the Benches on either side, but who are really competent to talk about this question, to tell

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us what is likely to be the best reactor from the technical point of view. What I know—and I know this from many years of discussion of this subject—is that we cannot push technology too hard and too fast in this field. That is something that has to be avoided. At the same time, we cannot go on deferring decisions about new reactors because of arguments which are unlikely to be settled until the plants are actually built. Unlike the United States, we cannot turn to oil shales or tar sands as a major source of oil. Reference has been made to both of these sources. We should, however, satisfy ourselves in this country that there are no reserves of geothermal energy which could be tapped. Noble Lords may be aware that there was recently a chance find of hot water in a borehole under Paris—water which is now used for heating 1,500 living units. That is merely an indication of the present uncertainty. I should therefore like to ask the Government whether or not the Institute of Geological Sciences should be asked as a matter of urgency to investigate the heat flow pattern under the United Kingdom. In counting the cost, we can note that more than 20 bore-holes for such an investigation could be sunk for one that is put down in the North Sea.
Let me now turn to the question of cost—a matter which has already been dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet; and I know that one or two noble Lords who are economists are likely to refer to this matter later in the debate. I appreciate the immense political difficulties of turning away from the normal kind of costing when one discusses large investments, but in looking to the future of our energy supplies it is essential never to forget that we are boxed in to a form of life which demands the liberal use of energy. It is not just our motor cars or our central heating: it is our industry, it is our agriculture, it is the whole of our urbanised civilisation which would break down unless we were assured of energy, regardless of its cost. If our urban water supplies were to become chronically polluted and poisoned, we should have to pay, whatever the cost, to make them pure. The same is true to-day of our future supplies of energy.
Now one word about conservation and waste. I should like to know that
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in whatever research and development programme is started these matters are brought to the attention of the Government institutions concerned. We must learn to follow the right building techniques from the point of view of insulation; this matter should be dealt with more seriously than it has been in the past. Here we are likely to learn something from the Americans. I have just returned from a visit there, where I discussed energy supplies with several people who are well informed, and where I learned that they are likely to embark on a crash R. and D. programme at an estimated cost of 2 billion dollars a year for five years.
Now one word about safety. An enormous amount is being done to satisfy the requirements of safety in nuclear power stations. But we heard some hideous figures from the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, about the thousands and thousands who would be exposed to risk should there be an accident. I should like to say here that in all my experience of public science I know of no subject which has been treated with greater responsibility by the scientists and engineers concerned. They recognise that one major disaster in a nuclear power station—and it would not matter if it was or was not ours; it could be anywhere in the world—would set back nuclear power for years. We cannot live without fuel and energy, and it is no use designing power plants which would destroy us. That is something which is fully recognised by the professionals who are engaged in work on nuclear power. What I therefore hope is that the environmental groups who have been casting doubts on nuclear power on the score of safety do not become too extreme in their demands; so deaf to technically informed opinion that they retard what might be essential in the public interest. As I said, modern society deprived of an assured supply of energy would break down. Environmentalists and ecologists are aware of the fact that any deliberate and sudden change in any single clement in an ecological system could have secondary results which are neither expected nor welcome. We have only to think of D.D.T. for an illustration of that fact. But what environmentalists and ecologists also need to remember is

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that socio-economic systems are no less sensitive to sudden change than those which are called ecological, and that any long-term disruption in our supplies of energy would in fact constitute such a sudden change.
I referred to the R. and D. programme of the United States. It is my firm belief that as we take steps to assure our own energy future, as we overcome our present difficulties, we must pay close attention to what the U.S. does in the hope that she will get out of her difficulties rapidly. The faster she does so the better for us. That emerges from some very simple figures. The total of the U.S. energy requirements in 1972, I understand, was over 1.500 million tons of oil equivalent. Nearly 50 per cent. of this was supplied by oil itself, and 30 per cent. of this oil was imported, 10 per cent. from the Middle East. Our own total energy requirement in 1972 was less than 200 million tons oil equivalent, of which 93 million tons came from imported oil. Theoretically, therefore, a 14 per cent. reduction in oil-burning in the U.S., or a 7 per cent. reduction in her total energy demand, would provide for all our present oil requirements. As is widely recognised now in the United States, natural gas, in a period of euphoria, was all but given away free, thus discouraging investment, either in new R. and D. or in other energy sources, or even in oil exploration, and also encouraging waste.
On my recent visit to the United States I was told that there was a strong likelihood that the United States would become more efficient and more economical in its use of oil and gas, and that it was certainly possible to achieve a 10 per cent. saving in energy. The figures speak for themselves. Per head of population, the United States is now expending exactly twice as much energy as we do. The scope for a reduction of 10 per cent., which would undoubtedly lighten world problems, is certainly on the cards. Furthermore, the United States has enormous resources of untapped energy. It is not just the tar sands or oil shale, to which reference has been made. Reference has also been made, I think, to some coal seams. I was told of one area where there are extensive coal seams immediately beneath the surface, 60 feet
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thick. All that is necessary is the machinery to move this coal; but that, of course, takes time to produce.
We cannot attempt to match the United States in their R. and D. programme, but I am sure that there is a great deal that we could do. The Institute of Fuel Paper, to which the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, referred, lists a number of projects at which we should look. But the question for the moment, as I said, is really one of decision. I do not like the word "crisis": I prefer to regard the present situation as one of challenge. Furthermore, when people now talk about zero economic growth because of a lack of energy, I become disturbed because the term is confused with the concept which is expressed in a book, which I am afraid I did not greatly hold with, called Limits to Growth. We are not up against any limit to growth at the present moment.
Finally, may I refer to a National Energy Commission. I have thought about this, and I wondered really whether it is the right proposal at this moment. On reflection, I am uncertain. The whole of the energy picture has too many repercussions for them all to be dealt with by a Commission which would be concerned only with energy supplies. I personally would therefore prefer to learn what the Government propose to do about the matter before giving my own view about what new machinery is called for.
4.58 p.m.
LORD ENERGLYN: My Lords, it took Aberfan to make us appreciate the disastrous characteristics of colliery tips, and how we might make some use of them. It took the "Torrey Canyon" to make everybody realise that pollution was a real problem, and that we must do something about it. Now it has taken the sheikhs of Arabia to make every country in the world appreciate their dependence upon solid and liquid fuels. In this situation it is therefore to be feared that when it is resolved, as I hope it soon will be, we might sit back again and complacently pay lip service to researches for energy. I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, that we should reach out and diversify, and snatch and make good any possible source of new energy.
My Lords, it seems to me that if we take a rather calm look at the energy pattern at

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the present time it is very encouraging to find that we are only 45·6 per cent. dependent upon petroleum, whereas the figure for Denmark, for example, is 93 per cent. and that for Italy is 79 per cent., and even for France, apparently, it is 68 per cent. On the other hand, when we consider the amount of petroleum we use for generating electricity and consume on the roads we find that we use 19 million tons of oil in generating electricity and apparently 22 million tons on the roads. This is the kind of pattern that I think we should have constantly under review, because it is in judging this pattern that we might be able to gain the time necessary for us to bring the resources of the North Sea and the Celtic Sea into operation. But even when we have reached and achieved these bonanzas we must always be aware that they are wasting assets and that they are providing us only with another measure of time in which to gain further sources of energy.
Within the realm of wasting assets we have to face the fact that the intolerable conditions in the mines will cause human beings to leave. But so long as men are prepared to endure the environment of a mine we should use that time to think ahead and introduce as many forms of machine mining as we can devise. I think, therefore, though many may not agree, that the right note was struck by the science correspondent in the Daily Telegraph in an interview with Professor Thring of Queen Mary College, London, in which the Professor described his concept of a robot miner. He visualises:
"a smallish machine with a caterpillar tread capable of working in confined places and pulling itself up steep inclines. It would reinforce its tunnel against roof collapse and not be perturbed by coal dust, and would be impervious to poisonous gases which drive men out of the mines."
When he was asked about cost, the Professor claimed:
"If £500,000 a year were spent for 10 years I am absolutely certain you could do it."
My Lords, his timing is right and the cost is reasonable, because in 10 years' time at the present rate of wastage the mining population will be in a rather serious plight.
The steel industry, as we all know, is exceedingly sensitive to changes in the supplies of energy. The British Steel Corporation are already cutting down
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on steel supplies for one reason; that is, the shortage of metallurgical coke; because it is not all types of coal which can be converted into coke. I therefore maintain that this critical factor should never again be allowed to interfere with our production of iron and steel provided we can devise some way to make iron and steel without using coke. One solution to this problem would be to convert coal into a liquid condition. I hasten to add that I am not talking about the hydro-generation of coal into oil. In itself that process consumes too much energy. I am talking about the conversion of coal into a liquefied condition, or at worst an emulsified condition. This is now conceivable because in the last decade we have been provided by the instrument makers with new devices which enable us to look into the heart and structure of coal. Now we can see quite clearly what coal really is. It is petroleum fixed by particles of carbon into solidified state. So if we can break what is called the absorption coefficient between the particles of carbon and the coal, the coal will collapse into liquid. This has been done in the laboratory. In itself, this would have an enormous repercussion. It would mean that the mechanical miner, instead of digging coal, would scrape the coal to powder and would transfer the powder to pipes. The powder would be fluidised through the mine up to the surface into the liquefying plant and from there is could be piped again to the centres where it was needed. That would remove enormous overhead costs on the production of this solid fuel. Furthermore, its impact on the iron and steel industry would be that this fluidised material would be pelletised with powdered iron ore and you would have built into every pellet its own source of heat and its own reducing power; and there you would have the perfect direct smelting process. In a normal solid fuel power station with practically no alteration of design it would be possible to pipe this liquid fuel in to replace petroleum. So I suggest with all sincerity that the repercussions of that quite simple experiment on the industry would be profound.
As other noble Lords have said, the centre of our energy pattern as we look at it to-day is atomic power in all its forms. But I share the diffidence of my noble friend Lord Zuckerman. I do not feel competent to comment on this area

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of energy because a little knowledge in this area is exceedingly dangerous and to utter journalistic decisions in this complicated area of energy is, I think, even more dangerous. I therefore pass on to the area of energy that I should like to call the inexhaustible sources of energy, and in particular the use of water, which I am sure will appeal to the noble Lord on the other side of the House who is so engaging in his attitude to everything that I have to say.
At the present moment I am given to understand that only about 10 per cent. of the water resources of the world are being used, and we may take that for what it is worth. But it has also been thought that hydro-electric schemes are feasible only if they are carried out on a large scale. This, on cost analysis, is perfectly true, but if you are looking for sources of energy on an indefinite basis, then the cost parameters are quite different, and in future we shall be forced to look to small hydro-electric stations as being necessary in certain parts of the world. Harnessing the tides has always been an attractive feature in engineering, and I should like to give high praise to the French engineers in the production of the barrage at Rance, where they use the 30-foot tidal surge of the sea. They claim, and I believe their claim will be substantiated, that they are going to generate 50 million kilowatt hours per year. That is some power. This substantial output means to me that we ought to look again at the Bristol Channel where these tidal surges are prevalent.
We also ought to look at the model at Passamaquoddy on the 49th Parallel of the Eastern Seaboard of America where they have two basins in which tidal waters move from one basin to the other and create a continuous flow of indefinite energy. This could be done at several places in the Bristol Channel. Because of the existence of iron and steel centres at Cardiff and Port Talbot, and for no other reason, I suggest that such a two-basin station, a hydro-marine station, could be constructed between Cardiff and Newport, and between Port Talbot and Swansea. Now the creation of these hydro-marine power stations, of course, is always ruled out by the costs in both money and time of making the barrages. But
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now we have had, oddly enough from a most peculiar area of research, the answer to this problem. In the Paper Packaging Research Association they have demonstrated to me how to package anything you like and fill the packet. Now we can conceive of packaging all the coal-tips in the country into polythene bags and using them like sandbags, but with this advantage: that the polythene bag, being water repellant, will sink to the sea floor, and being able to resist the corrosion of the sea will remain there forever. So we can form a barrage now, rid the countryside of these spoilheaps, and create the barrages we are talking about.
Now supposing I am talking pipe dreams, just imagine what this would ultimately mean in terms of a place like South Wales. It would mean that we could completely electrify the manufacture of iron and steel, and at the same time, because we have surplus electricity, consider installing aluminium smelters. By joining the two together, taking the slag from the iron and steel and joining the electrolytic cells of the aluminium smelter you would get a sensible process for producing iron and steel and aluminium. That would be the kind of forward picture that I should have in my mind in setting out these hydro-marine stations in the Bristol Channel.
Then I naturally come to the other source of eternal power, and that is the crust of the earth. It is surprising, really, how much back-up information now exists regarding the geothermal characteristics of the crust. We are all aware of the enormous power of the geysers of Iceland and New Zealand. What I think has not been particularly well publicised is the geothermal power stations at Larderello, in Tuscany, where the Italians have produced 390 megawatts—enough power to run the whole of their electrified railway lines. This massive achievement provides all the technological back-up to making the search for geothermal power energy a realistic proposition. Japan is already producing 23 megawatts, and a 75 megawatt station is being constructed in Mexico. Should we sit back and still ignore the possibilities of there being hot spots in Britain? When the Romans came here, they used the natural artesian hot springs of Bath.

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We still do not know what brings that water to practically the boiling point.
Contrary to popular belief it is not in volcanic areas that hot spots occur. Bath is not within a thousand miles of an active volcano. The geothermal flow of heat is found to be mainly concentrated in those areas of brittle rock whose brittleness is reflected by earthquakes. By that I do not mean violent earthquakes; I mean many successive earthquakes. We have in this country a number of such centres. In the centre of England we have the buried ancient massif of Charnwood Forest, along which the brittle strata is rumbling all the time. It does not cause any damage; but it is there and we feel it. We have never drilled for heat in this country.
The noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, has said the time has come for us to institute a survey for geothermal energy in this country because it is cheap: once you have got it, it will last for ever. Now, oddly enough, the knowledge of geothermal energy has provided, in my opinion, an answer to the use of coalmine shafts. I have mentioned this before in your Lordships' House. There are many dozens of coalmine shafts over a thousand feet deep, down which we could put water and have turbines at the bottom producing cheap electricity almost overnight. The problem is to get rid of the water. The recently published knowledge of geothermal power stations has provided the answer. That answer is that you convert the water that has descended down the shaft into steam. Now I would remind your Lordships that every colliery has two shafts: the downcast and the upcast. So you use the downcast shaft for producing conventional hydro-electricity, and the upcast shaft could be used for a steam turbine, and the excess water distributed as a district heating scheme—"for free" if you like, as is the case in Iceland at the present time. So I suggest, with all seriousness, that the study of geothermal energy has given us an area of diversification which one would not even have thought possible a year ago.
I now turn to the realm of creating electricity without turbines and dynamos—in other words, the role of fuel cells. There is no doubt in my mind that the battery driven motor car is not common-place because of the enormous vested interest in petroleum and the petrol
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industry. If we wish to escape from the petrol engine in our motor cars, then it seems to me that we ought to give unlimited encouragement to the production of fuel cells for motor cars. Just imagine what life would be like with battery driven motor cars. Imagine what London would be like. The roar of the traffic would have gone, and one could walk the streets breathing the fresh air without petrol fumes polluting every breath one takes.
My Lords, I should like to close by saying that I, too, do not regard the present situation as a crisis. In fact, it gives me a certain amount of thrill. There is a challenge here, a challenge which has not emerged as vividly as now since the end of the war. I think this challenge will now unleash the enormous amount of knowledge and expertise in this country. If nothing else comes out of this situation, I hope it will do one thing: that is, as we did during the war, abolish that word "impossible".
5.19 p.m.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, it is a great honour to follow Lord Energlyn in such an outstanding speech, with all the knowledge that he brings to your Lordships' House. I do not think it is always true that our debates often are infinitely better than they are in the other place. They are certainly quieter, and certainly much better informed, as we have seen this afternoon. My Lords, I owe the House one apology, as I shall not be able to stay to the end of the debate. I have at 8 o'clock this evening a previous commitment which I undertook a long time ago. Your Lordships' House is generally so civilised that it is up by 8 o'clock and one can assume, after 20 years of being tied to the House of Commons, that such arrangements can be safely accepted. I realise that in this instance my estimate was wrong. I want to concentrate on one or two ideas. The first is how we might conserve and allocate our existing sources; secondly, how we might increase the rate of development of alternative sources; and lastly, to make an appeal to the Government that they should tell the nation what is happening. At the moment the nation does not understand. It is in a mood to co-operate, and actually is co-operating to the greatest possible extent: but it does not know the why or wherefore.

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My Lords, to start with, one thing one has to say is that the Arabs have brought this crisis to a head. Though we are discussing mainly oil, I do not believe that the lesson will be lost on producers of other commodities, whether they be metals or other essential commodities. I am afraid the Arabs have started what I might call a disease so far as the developed world is concerned, which might well spread. I think that we should be aware of this and consider what steps we should take in the long term.
This of course has been aggravated by the attitude of the coal miners. I happen to believe that the present restrictions in the mines do not represent the will of the majority of the coal miners. I have a feeling that they have been prevailed upon by their Marxist Secretary-General, Mr. Daly, to a much greater extent than the nation understands. I am the first to say, of course, that the miners have a nasty and dangerous job. If there is a limited amount of money available, I am not sure that the greatest sums should not go to the men at the coal face who are actually doing the work, rather than to the clerks who never go underground. Sixty pounds, which is what is now being offered to those at the coal face—a 16½ per cent. increase—seems to me to be fully justified. I am less happy that a 16½ per cent. increase should be given to a young person totally unqualified, who never goes underground and does not work any overtime. It does not seem to me to be a fair arrangement. The skilled workmen, those doing the nasty job—all power to their elbows—the nation should reward. But I am less enthusiastic about the others.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, may I ask what hours a man would have to work, and what shifts, to earn £60 a week at the coal face?
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, I can give the noble Lord the details. At present the offer is £55·38. I acknowledge that this is not typical of all Coal Board employees. It is what could be paid to the man at the coal face working normal shifts with some overtime. And working night shifts only, or more overtime, would increase the value of the offer to him up to £60 a week.
LORD TAYLOR OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, apart from working overtime, under the National Powerloading Agreement the maximum wage is just under £35?
LORD ORR-EWING: Yes. But I do not think maximum statutory wages are realistic. I am quoting figures from the National Coal Board on earnings—wage, plus fringe benefits works, allowing for unsocial hours and productivity agreements. It is in their statutory agreement that a certain amount of overtime should be worked on a shift system. However, I do not want to be drawn into an area in which I realise the noble Lord is a much greater expert than I am. I just say that it is a significant offer, and it is a special offer, with unsocial hours being allowed for. It is twice the percentage increase which is allowed to anybody else under Phase 3.
My Lords, I think that the motoring public are seeing just the tip of the iceberg in the inconvenience which they are now suffering. My noble friend Lord Polwarth, who opened from the Front Bench on this side, was not really informed about what is happening. In my intervention I quoted an instance of a garage where they take five tanker deliveries a week normally and they were cut to two deliveries a week. That is not a 10 per cent. cut; it is a 60 per cent. cut. When I made that intervention, another noble Lord from this side said that he was the owner of a petrol pump, and he had received a circular from British Petroleum saying that on the basis of September deliveries he was only going to have delivered 40 per cent. of his allowance. This again is a 60 per cent. cut. This is not a single instance; it was a circular letter which went to all garages in the area which were getting petrol from British Petroleum. I would urge my noble friend to look into these matters. It is not good enough that this House and the public should not know the facts. The public do not know the facts; and they are completely perplexed when they are told that only 10 per cent. of the fuel supply has been cut off.
I want now to turn my attention to other ways of preserving energy. On February 23 of this year, the noble Lord, Lord Hanworth, and I, together with the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, took part in

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a debate on energy initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, from the Liberal Benches. We drew attention then to the staggering savings which could be made if the Government could stimulate a little more insulation in our domestic houses. Our houses take one-third of all the energy we are using—that is, domestic heating in houses. For an expenditure of about £10 on improved roof insulation, we could save substantial quantities of fuel. I urge the Government once again to look into this. It was put forward in February; it is much more important now. We said that in this country the standards of insulation are totally out of keeping with present day costs of fuel and the difficulty of getting it. It was all right of course in the nineteenth century when we had an abundance of coal at very cheap prices. It is no good when we have to bring valuable oil supplies or limited gas supplies from overseas. I would direct my noble friend's attention to the fact that in Europe the standard of house insulation is two and a half times better than ours. They realise now how important it is—probably because they did not have the plentiful supplies of coal that we had one hundred years ago. At a single stroke, if I may coin a phrase, we could save immense sums of money. It is rather better, I think, to give grants for insulation than it is to give grants for bathrooms which people can receive at present. desirable though that is.
My Lords, I want to speak not just of the motorist or domestic insulation, but particularly about industry. At present the Government say that they do not think that a strict rationing and allocation system is essential. But can they tell us whether plans are being made. In 1951, when there was a crisis under the Government of Mr. Churchill (as he then was), he created "super-priority". I hope that a plan is being worked out so that our essential services and our essential basic industries, of which perhaps steel is the most important, will get priority in the allocation of the fuel oil which is available. I would also make the point that many of our industries (here I speak from experience of a hoard meeting yesterday and the day before) are desperately dependent on their sub-contractors and on the supply of raw materials which come by vehicles. Those vehicles need diesel fuel. We all know
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that the delivery of raw materials and the delivery time of components has been going out and out as our economy has speeded up and the demand has become greater. I know that at the moment we are not getting supplies through and the hauliers and others are pleading that they cannot get the fuel oil to run their lorries; some less scrupulous among them are running their lorries and asking for a premium for delivery. This again will add to the inflation in the country which the Government are so anxious to control.
I now turn, my Lords, to the question of organisation. I was sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, from his great knowledge of Government, did not give us his advice, but rather rested on the view expressed from the Front Bench as to the way it should be done.
LORD ZUCKERMAN: My Lords, I merely indicated that I did not agree that a Royal Commission—or the kind of Commission that I understood the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, to be advocating—could do this job. Furthermore, I do not believe that this problem of energy as a resource can be looked at in isolation, and I trust the Government will not do that.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, I stand corrected and I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, for his intervention. I know how much experience he has had in the scientific field and in Government and I know that the House will take his views very seriously. My own view is that we should perhaps create a Ministry for Energy. I do not believe that it should be a separate Ministry, because our problems are so immediate that I do not want to see a recreation of a Ministry of Fuel and Power. It seems to me that that would create a great deal of turmoil in Whitehall, and we have not the time to set about such a reorganisation. I should like to see a Ministry for Energy created within the Department of Trade and Industry but more or less autonomous and self-sufficient. It was Mr. Churchill who tried the experiment of these enormous Ministries with overlords presiding over them. I do not think they worked then, and I am not at all certain that anyone—not even the right honourable Archangel Gabriel, if he were in charge of the Ministry of Trade and Industry

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with 20,000 civil servants under his control—could administer that efficiently. Every engineer here will know that the momentum of a mass—in this case a Ministry—is dependent upon its size; and the bigger the mass the less likely you are to get quick decisions or quick movements. I believe we need quick decisions, so I should like to see a hiving off, under the D.T.I., of a Ministry for Energy.
I am perfectly prepared to accept the view, suggested by the noble Lord, that we should try to get some scientific brains together to explore all orthodox and unorthodox ways of creating energy. We have to solve this energy equation all over again. Solutions which were arrived at ten years ago must not be accepted in to-day's context. The values have completely changed and the problems, I think, should be re-examined. Too often, as we get older, we accept the solution to something that we worked out twenty years ago, and we forget that some things have now become plentiful which were then scarce, or vice versa. Therefore, through laziness of mind, we do not start to do it all over again. I believe that if we had a Royal Commission, as was suggested, it should be a gathering together of people with scientific knowledge—and I sincerely hope that the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, would be on it—and unorthodox ideas. Please do not let us accept that it is impossible or that it must take a great deal of time. Mulberry Harbour would have been thought utterly impossible at one time, yet it was brought into existence and the first operational prototype worked extremely efficiently after a period of three years. The pipeline under the ocean (PLUTO) would also have been thought utterly impossible at one time. But scientific brains were got together round the Prime Minister of the day, and there was a great desire on the part of the nation to solve the problem—and we did. So if you get great brains together you will get gains all the way.
I happened to sit with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on the Select Committee of Science and Technology which was looking into nuclear power stations, so I have a special interest—and also I took my degree at Oxford in Nuclear Physics, thanks to a very wise professor who led
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me in that direction in the early 1930s. Therefore I am perhaps not entirely objective; but I accept that it will take time to build these power stations—the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said it would take some eight or ten years. If I had to make a choice, I would say: let us go for the proven technology of the Magnox which has been tried in this country, and let us build the improvements which have come out of the Mark I Magnox into a second Mark. In these areas of applied technology the proven instrument is so much better, particularly when time is short. So I would recommend that as a possible approach.
I am also greatly attracted to hydroelectric schemes. I would add my voice to others who have suggested that we should re-examine these schemes, particularly in Scotland and Wales. Do not let us think that we need to have a gigantic scheme which would put 50 miles, or an entire valley under water. There are a number of viable smaller schemes now that can run electricity quite cheaply over grids and these might well help our problem. I am also attracted to pump storage. I can never quite understand why this has not caught on—there must be some factor which I have not discovered. It seems to me an extremely attractive idea to generate electricity during the peak hours when you want it, and to pump the water back over the fall at night when you have surplus electricity from your base stations. As I say, this seems to me to be very attractive. Let us examine again the cost, the time factor and the attractiveness of it. Again, I should like to advocate that we should examine, among other things, tidal power. Like the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, I have also looked at the Severn and other places, and it seems to be a very attractive proposition. The French are doing this— and perhaps I might point out that we constantly say we cannot afford this or that in this country, but you have only to look at what France is doing with a similar population. They are doing about twice as much as we are. If they can afford it, so can we.
Finally, I come to the question of a geological survey. The noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, is a much greater expert than I am on this subject, and I apologise for venturing upon ground on which he is so knowledgeable. Surely modern technological surveys can be undertaken

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more quickly and more accurately than they could of old. Ought we not now to reconsider a modern survey of our country, re-exploring the possibility of raw materials, as well as of energy sources of all types? They were not so important when the survey was done 50 years ago, and I think that skilled manpower is now available. It would not need a vast amount of effort to carry out a really up-to-date survey, using most modern methods. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, was interrupted by the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, who accused him of having changed his mind. I was always comforted, I remember, when we both sat in another place, when Mr. Churchill was interrupted and was accused of having changed his mind. He said then:
"The processes of my mind constantly adjust themselves to the movement of outside events."
I have the feeling that that fully explains why he changed his mind in those days and why we may have to change our minds on the sources of energy which we are going to use.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for giving way. I did not object, of course, to the noble Lord's changing his mind: that is his business. What I object to is the Liberal Party posing up and down the country, and in this House, as the forerunner of opinion, and the failure of the noble Lord to say to the House: "I have changed my mind. I said something in 1967, and the country to-day faces the consequences of what I advocated then. Now I admit that I was wrong, and this is what we now ought to do." This is what I am complaining of, and I will complain about it whether it occurs on this Bench, that Bench or the other Bench.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, I am delighted to say that I entirely agree with what the noble Lord has said in that last intervention.
My last appeal to the Government is: please tell the nation what is happening. It really is no good having Question and Answer periods in another place or in this House. The messages do not go out—I wish they did—from Westminster now. This is one of the reasons why I was a great advocate for the televising of Parliament, because I felt that in an age when the television medium was the
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dominant one we could not opt out of communicating our deliberations and discussions to the public. However, it did not come about—it was defeated by one vote, I believe by Mr. Aidan Crawley, who confessed that he changed his mind—and then he went and ran a television network instead of sitting in the House. So the televising of Parliament has not come about. But I do plead that we should consider asking Ministers now to go on "the box" and explain to the motoring public and to the nation what is happening, why we are short and what the Government are doing to put matters right. I am sure that every noble Lord was very agreeably amazed at the manner in which the motoring public co-operated with the plea to motor at 50 miles an hour. The noble Lord, Lord Wigg, laughs, but I have driven quite a long way on motorways, and I assure noble Lords that I was not passed more than once or twice in every half hour's driving; and the vast majority of people were driving at only 50 miles an hour. I know there are exceptions, though I will not mention the type of chaps they were or the cars they were driving. There are exceptions to every plea, but to-day the public are in a mood to co-operate. They cannot co-operate, however, unless they are told the facts, and I ask the Government to go on "the box" and tell them the facts, tell them what is being done to organise our energy supplies. And let us not dismiss any new ideas that will help solve that problem.
5.40 p.m.
LORD GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, I am sure we are all very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for initiating this debate. We have a great deal of detailed legislation before this House and it is a good thing, I think, to devote ourselves for one afternoon and evening to a subject which in a sense affects everything that we do. I speak with very great diffidence, because even noble Lords who I thought were simply laymen introducing themselves in this way turn out to be professors or graduates with maximum honours in the subject that we are talking about. But I feel that from these Benches occasionally somebody should arise to speak as the plain man, and that is what I do—and I describe it in that way because we all accept that there is no such thing as a plain woman.

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I wish to avoid going in any detail into my own subject of foreign policy and diplomacy because I believe that we should support unreservedly the Prime Minister's exhortation to deal with the present situation in the world with quiet diplomacy. At this particular moment, British foreign policy and British diplomacy are—and I do not think this is an exaggeration—walking every hour on eggs, and the eggs are strewn around a minefield. It would be so easy by one incautious public statement to slow down the process of peace-making or to render ourselves useless in contributing to peacemaking. It is very much better that the traditional processes should work themselves out at least for a little longer.
So, avoiding that, I should like to deal very briefly with three aspects of the present situation which I will call coherence, foresight and, finally, courage—and I do not apologise for using the word "courage", for I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, used the word "courageous" in the February debate about research; and I think that a great deal of courage is involved in this question. If I may come first to coherence, perhaps I may quote a few dates to your Lordships. The Arab-Israeli hostilities began on October 6; on the 17th the representatives of four of the oil producing States, including two of the greatest producers in the world, met in Kuwait. They announced a decision to cut production by 10 per cent., and forecast a possible reduction of 5 per cent. per month. It was then that I read with some surprise in the Government Statement of October 24 the phrase—and I am quoting only part of a sentence, but it is very psychological: "in case we do ever need such a scheme…" that is to say, rationing.
This was followed some three weeks later by the Emergency Statement, and the result of this sequence of events gave a totally false impression. I am sure that something was intended against our own industries by the fact that the emergency seemed to coincide with our difficulties in power and in mining and somehow to detach itself from the oil problem. I do plead—and I here join with the noble Lord who has just spoken so eloquently and encouragingly—for clarity between the different parts of the Gov-
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ernment on this matter, because it is a very puzzling situation for the public who do not know quite where they are or what to do. Certainly, despite the immense complexity of business within the Government, there seems to me a possibility and the necessity for making sure that not only coal but steel, oil and so on should speak with one voice; and it is immensely important that they should do so.
May I add one sentence to what the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, said about rationing? I do wish to float the idea that in a situation of this kind it is possible for a short time to ask the public to do things out of a sense of obligation, to put the public on its honour. But it surely must be understood from previous experience that this cannot be done for very long, because in the end it simply means that the unscrupulous get all the benefits and the conscientious suffer. I think it would not be wise to go on speaking as though this idea were completely excluded, and I hope that, as the noble Lord suggested, we shall have a little clarity on Government policy.
Now I proceed to the question of organisation, on which much has already been said. I should first say that I read with great encouragement what the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, said on Monday about various things individually that the Government are doing. In speaking of setting up new organisations I am perfectly aware that a profusion of bodies does not necessarily remove the confusion of minds. None the less, it seems as though it is time for there to be some high-level body in which all the aspects and elements of energy can be compared, looked into, examined and an initiative launched by people who are familiar with them.
I can imagine that some of the meetings of such a body would be extremely abrasive; but, after all, that is what Government have to contend with. But I think that from both the absolute viewpoint of efficiency and looking ahead this is necessary, and I am even more certain that from the point of view again of the plain man it is what the plain man would like to see. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has changed his mind on this. I am sure that such a body has to be, in the end,

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under the authority of the Minister, not as an indvidual but as a Member of the Cabinet and the Government; and I suggest that perhaps it would be better to call it an Energy Agency or an Energy Board, rather than an Energy Commission. I suggest this because to the general public the word "Commission" suggests an extremely worthy and statesmanlike body which prepares an excellent report and then retires, amid applause, and the report retires similarly into the book-shelf. This should be, of all things, an active body which will carry out what I think the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, described in a previous debate as the liveliness of research and initiativeness into this problem.
Going on with that I would also mention a point which has not so far been mentioned to-day: should there be an attempt to produce an energy plan? I know all the arguments against it and the word "flexibility" gets extremely worn in this discussion. On the other hand, modern management practice tends more and more towards management by objectives, and it is possible that there would be no harm in at least putting forward objectives which the country and its industry would try to live up to. It may be objected that you make a five-year plan and then you are stuck with it. May I just cite the practice which the Government of India adopted in the question of plans when I was there? That was that you did indeed have a five-year plan, but you had a very good look at it each year. Obviously, some reputations diminished and others went up, but you were not stuck with it; there was always the possibility of a revision if you saw that the objectives were wrong or that you had not the resources to pursue quite as big a plan as you contemplated. So I hope that the Government will look favourably on the idea of an Energy Board and will not close their mind to the possibility of that Board's producing an energy policy.
I was afraid that my last point was going to be a difficult one to express, but the noble Lord who has just spoken has fortunately given me a cue. If noble Lords go from the calm and thoughtful atmosphere of your Lordships' House out into the street and talk to almost anybody, whether your Lordships know them or
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not, you will find an almost unanimity of thought that in a very general way this country is not in its best form. I have been trying to think in the context of what we are talking about now why this should be so. I believe it to be partly a matter of the post-imperial psychological reaction that we hear and read so much about how unimportant we have become, and how the things we did were wrong: we have a negative psychology, against which any Government have to work.
In addition to that—and here I will go back to the Russian Revolution—in March 1917 the Russian people overthrew the autocracy. In the interval between that Revolution being accomplished and the country being taken over by the Communist Party there was one slogan which was very important, "The worse, the better". In other words, the more trouble there could be, the more quickly would a complete overturn of everything be brought about. We as a country must face—and the point is gradually surfacing in the media and elsewhere—that there are people dedicated to this proposition in this country. Any Government of any Party will have to carry out this great revolution in energy against a certain amount of pressure in a purely destructive direction. If this fact is realised, admitted and countered, the chance of achieving this technological and power revolution will be that much facilitated.
So I commend to your Lordships once again a coherence in Government utterance, a good look at the organisation we have to deal with energy, including a favourable look at the idea of an Energy Board, and, finally any way we can all think of of substituting a positive attitude for a negative one towards our future. We must now, in the words of that famous quotation once again learn to "Greet the unseen with a cheer."
5.53 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, I was most interested in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, and I shall re-read it with interest and pleasure. He made one statement that captivated my attention when he said that these circumstances are more of challenge than of crisis. I could not help but think that, historically speaking, crises very often precede challenge. The question of energy, and the

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fuels which provide such energy, as has been demonstrated in your Lordships House to-day, is in everybody's mind and on everybody's lips at the moment, not only here in Britain but throughout the world, particularly in the industrialised nations. I think we can say on this problem of energy and fuel that there is no dearth in articulation. The spoken and the written word is in full flow in Parliaments throughout many parts of the world; in the Press, on the radio, on television, and on every platform. Every day people are saying something about this vital question of fuel and energy. Coal and oil are two of the four fuels which in this country contribute the major part to our energy requirements, and the circumstances with which we are confronted here in the energy sphere, I think we should all agree, make this debate in your Lordships' House today both appropriate and timely. Whatever view may be held in any part of your Lordships' House on the question of fuel and energy, whatever mistakes have been made in the past, I am sure we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Kennet for providing the opportunity for this question on fuel and energy to be ventilated and debated here to-day.
With your Lordships' indulgence, I propose to make a few observations about two of our fuels; namely, oil and coal, which at this point in time are the most substantial bases of our energy requirements. Before doing that, may I just ask the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, who is to reply to the debate, whether he will say something about nuclear power. It was referred to in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth. Could the noble Lord tell us the role that nuclear power is likely to play in our energy requirements in the next decade? In 1955—that is, almost twenty years ago—the nuclear energy industry began to expand from experimental power stations to an energy contribution which in 1972 reached the equivalent of 10 million tons of coal. That is twenty years for nuclear energy to supply only that small portion in the form of electrical power, which I understand is about 3 per cent. of our total energy requirements. That is only a drop in the ocean at the moment. I know that there are problems; and maybe the Minister will have something
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to say about them. There are technical problems and financial problems. It would serve this nation well if at this stage we were to spend money on nuclear power to meet our energy requirements, rather than on such subjects as Maplin and the Channel Tunnel. I wonder whether the Minister can indicate to your Lordships what the estimated contribution of nuclear power to our energy requirements, say, ten years hence, is likely to be. In saying that, I suggest that in view of the precariousness of the situation in the energy field, the Government should make up their minds what contribution nuclear power is likely to make in the next ten years to our energy requirements.
In industrial processes and production in industrial societies, not only in Britain but throughout Europe, America, Japan and Russia, with their sophisticated techniques and machinery, the basis of it all is energy. In Britain, for instance, that aplies to every section of our industry and the manufacture of our goods. Even in agriculture, what a transformation there has been in this particular sphere! The land is now ploughed by mechanical tractors. The fruits of the earth are garnered by mechanical processes, and even the cow is milked by electric power. That is the size of the transformation that has taken place in only one of our major and important industries. Almost every household, office, building and shop is lit and heated, and so they should be; and modern technology, in my humble judgment, without the energy which is provided by fuel, could not exist. May I put it this way? Without fuel, whether it be fossil in the form of coal, or marine life in the form of oil, or mineral in the form of uranium for nuclear power, the energy required to run a modern, sophisticated society would not exist. Fuel is priority No. 1 in our modern society, and without it, or if it is restricted in supply, as is evidenced at the present moment, we are really in a crisis.
I now wish to say a few words about the possible and probable reserves of oil and natural gas. Naturally, as a layman with no scientific or technical knowledge, I have to rely upon the knowledgeable experts. My first piece of evidence in this sphere is from a man named Dr. Warman. He is British Petroleum's chief

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geologist. I quote from what was published on November 15, 1973, from Dr. Warman's lips:
"The total recoverable reserves of oil in the world are from 16 to 18 hundred billion barrels, well under half the amount needed by the year 2000 if the demand continues to grow, say at a rate of 7½ per cent. a year; even to satisfy present consumption the world requires a new North Sea every two years."
That is somewhat of a sombre prospect so far as oil as a fuel is concerned—25 years: it is not a long way off, only a couple of decades. And on the evidence I have just quoted the wells by then will have dried up and the bottom of the barrels will have been scraped by the world. The Evening Standard, who published this evidence on the date that I have mentioned, made this comment:
"'Generally speaking, the figures of Dr. Warman are not disputed by the oil experts."
My second and last piece of scientific evidence is from the United Nations Economic Committee. This body recently made this forecast—and I quote:
"By the year 2000, 87 per cent. of all proven, probable and possible reserves of oil will have been consumed; 76 per cent. of natural gas; but only 2 per cent. of our reserves of coal."
Those figures and forecasts, in the light of our existing dependence, and the world's dependence, on oil, are, to put it no higher, a little frightening. They are certainly not reassuring. If I may use a metaphor, they are not like the widow's barrel of meal and the cruse of oil that wasteth not. At this moment 50 per cent. of our energy requirements is being met by oil.
Another point I should like to ask the Minister at this stage is this. I have the figures for our energy requirements up to 1970. At that time they were 328 million tons of coal equivalent, and 300 million was almost equally shared between coal and oil, and the remainder between natural gas and nuclear power. It is estimated—and maybe the Minister will comment upon this—that demand for energy will not only grow but, on the basis of an expanding economy, by 1975 our energy requirements will be in the neighbourhood of 370 million tons of coal equivalent, and with further economic growth by 1980 it is estimated that they could
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be 440 million tons. It is like a motor car, is it not, my Lords?—the faster you go, the more fuel you require. That is why we are having the present restrictions placed upon us.
It is well known, but it is as well to re-state it, that 70 per cent. of our import of oil, which supplies now half our energy requirements, comes from the Middle East. One-tenth reduction, and crisis is upon us. Furthermore, we are informed, as is every other customer obtaining oil from the Middle East, that if care is not exercised respecting relations with Israel further punitive measures will be taken. I recall a speech that I made in another place in 1965 when I said that every post-war Government have put too many eggs in the oil basket; and the Government which I then supported, of the Party which I still support, are as guilty as every other post-war Government. This was done at the expense of our own indigenous fuel beneath our feet, which it is estimated will last for at least 100 years at the present rate of production. The three reasons why I thought in 1965 that we were making a mistake were these—I repeat them to your Lordships now: first, the effect on our balance of payments; second, the long, dangerous haul by sea, which was made longer still after 1965 when the Suez Canal was closed, and, lastly, but not least in importance, that politically the area from which this oil fuel came was dynamite. That has been proved during the last few months, as it was in 1967 and, before that, in 1956.
Speaking as one who has been connected with the coalmining industry I am sure I have no need to apologise for, and your Lordships will understand that I have, a coal bias. Since 1955, when contraction of the industry began, miners' leaders have been warning the country. In the light of the warnings that have been given during the past twenty years, as to the danger of fuel shortages if too great a reliance were placed on imported fuel in the form of oil, do not say that the National Union of Mineworkers is not a responsible body. I will quote just one statement—there are many more—that has been made by successive Secretaries of the National Union of Mineworkers. Arthur Horner, now deceased, troubled as he was in the middle

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'fifties about the contraction of the coal-mining industry, said this:
"As the oil supplying countries raise their living standards they will demand a higher price for their raw material,"—
that was a prophecy that has already come true—
"and any Government would be advised to give priority to the only indigenous fuel we have got. Strategically I think we would be mad to let coal production fall below certain levels."
So far as the coalmining industry is concerned, during the past twenty years a surgical operation has taken place. Sometimes I wonder whether the impact is fully appreciated by the nation. I should like to illustrate it by means of a few statistics. First, let us take manpower: in 1952 there were 708,000 men in the industry; in 1962 there were 551,000; in 1972 there were 281,500. At to the producing collieries, in 1952 there were 880; in 1962 there were 616, and by 1972 that figure had fallen to 289. What about output? The output in 1952 was 211 million tons; in 1962 it was 187 million tons, and in 1972 it was 109 million tons. I know that was the year of the miners' strike, but now it is about 130 million tons. What a transformation in this fuel industry in twenty years! By this process of contraction to such an extent over that period of time that I have mentioned, the immediate and the longer-term future of our nation has been jeopardised.
I recall 65 years ago when, as a pony driver in the pit, I, with others, took the ponies from the stables; we had a flame lamp of not more than a couple of candle power penetrating the darkness, and we used to sing what I suppose would be called a ditty:
"Coal, precious coal
What would the world be without it?
What would become of our ships on the seas
Our railways, our homes and big factories."
Looking back, while thinking of the present and of the last twenty years, "King Coal" has been demoted. At one time it was the only fuel that mattered, but now it looks at though we have to reverse the abdication of that monarch which has been taking place during these past twenty years.
I will conclude this part of my speech with a quotation from the then Vice-
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President of the National Union of Mineworkers at the Trades Union Congress in 1972. I think it is important:
"First, we must change course before it is too late. Our union still contends that coal is still the most important source of energy that we have. What is more important, we know there are reserves which will last for more than a century at present rates of production. For the sake of Britain's economic survival and to reduce our reliance on foreign sources of energy, particularly oil, it is absolutely essential that a more realistic fuel policy be pursued, not only to prevent any further contraction of the industry but to expand in those virgin areas where recent explorations have proved extensive coal deposits."
For twenty years the National Union of Mineworkers have opposed the policies of all Governments who have allowed the catastrophic contraction of the mining industry. The consumption of oil here in the last decade, since 1959, in meeting our energy requirements, has risen from 22 per cent. to 45·5 per cent. For the past twenty years the National Union of Mineworkers have had a responsible approach to the problem of fuel and energy in our country, taking the long view rather than the immediate advantage of what was referred to as a "cheap fuel policy". In 1960, if I may again quote, the previous Secretary of the Union said:
"If you carry on closing collieries and disrupting communities to make the books balance you will certainly make the figures look better, but you will be robbing future generations of the energy they are going to need. It is the future you have got to think about. If the Government squeeze this industry as they are doing, your children will have to pay the price and they won't thank you for it. We want a national fuel policy to replace the present free-for-all based upon Government assessment of the annual fuel requirements of the nation and providing for the coal industry a share of national requirements."
I have spoken for longer than I had intended. I wanted to say something about the present position in the mining industry. I know my noble friend Lord Blyton has something to say about that, so I will make only two comments. With reference to the ban on overtime, it is not illegal for men to give up their leisure time to work overtime. Surely not. Speaking of obeying the law, I am not sure whether there is not ample justification for saying that the amount of overtime that is being worked in the pits at this moment is a breach of the Statute. Perhaps the Minister can tell me. Section

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3 of the principal Act of 1908 reduces the hours of labour underground to eight, with the proviso that not more than 60 days in any calendar year shall be worked as overtime. I know a lot of people who are working long periods of overtime. I will give two examples. The first concerns a friend of mine, who for the last seven years, apart from annual holidays, has worked in the mining industry every Saturday and Sunday. I know of another man, who is a first-class mechanic with a City and Guilds Certificate, who has worked every weekend this year.
That brings me to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, who spoke of wages of £60. Yes; some men are getting that amount of money. But to come to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, how many hours are men working underground to get that amount of money? There is much else I should like to say, but in my humble judgment we are in a serious situation so far as energy requirements are concerned. I hope that the nettle will be grasped by placing greater emphasis on the only indigenous fuel we have at the moment, namely, coal.
My concluding words are these. If present claims continue in the mining industry, in the not too distant future we shall have not a wage crisis but a manpower crisis, because at this moment men are leaving the industry at the rate of 600 a week.
6.25 p.m.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, one of the penalties of a long apprenticeship in the House of Commons is that I cannot and will not read a speech. I learned to debate. That means one has to take into consideration what has been said by previous speakers. The penalty is that one prepares a speech, and then, as speech after speech is made, one goes through the process of learning various things and one's speech alters. Many of the statistics I would have quoted have been quoted already by my noble friend Lord Taylor of Mansfield in his very able speech. Perhaps I may be permitted to come back to the main argument a little later, although I will not weary your Lordships' House by quoting the figures my noble friend has already used.
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I must say that I was a little surprised to have my history rewritten for me by the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth. As might be expected from one who has been a long time in the Foreign Office, he found "the Red under the bed". Those who are responsible for the negative way of life are those who take an opposite view about the organisation of society, and we have to struggle with them. The noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, reminded us of the Russian Revolution and what happened in March, 1917. He then discovered that the Resolution took place in April. It seems to me that autumn came early that year, because I have always thought that the October Revolution was the decisive factor in Russian history. But I dwell on that only because I think there is a great deal in what he said in the latter part of his speech.
He said that one of the problems of our country at present is what he was pleased to call the negative attitude. This he related to the fact that we have declined as a power in the world. What he does not seem to understand—and with his background I can forgive him for that—is that as we move away from the imperial/colonial period, people become ashamed of it. They are ashamed of the shabby, tinselly concept of imperialism so beloved by noble Lords on the other side of the House. But there is another lesson to learn in this, which is that the non-aligned countries of the world have seen through colonialism. For them it has ended.
I come now to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman. He said that we must not see energy in isolation. Of course we must not. What has happened with regard to oil will happen with other commodities. The Arab position on oil is going to be followed by crises in commodity after commodity. The days when the aristocracy in this country built their country houses and lived their pleasant lives has ended, not only for them but for all of us. I can find myself in complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, who said he felt braced by the present crisis. I do. I feel, and have always felt—perhaps it is this which makes me proud of being what I am—that when the people of this country are brought face to face with the realities of the situation, they are

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nine-tenths on the way to solving it. What we are seeing is a Government, elected on a false prospectus, having to eat every single word, regurgitate and eat them again, of the Election promises on which they came to power. Of course, that produces a certain amount of cynicism, but it enables me to pay tribute, as I did yesterday, to the diagnostic power of Mr. Powell. In my view, he plays a role in the modern world which is equivalent to that of John the Baptist. He came out of the wilderness saying, "Repent, the day of judgement is at hand". It is at hand, for the Government and for us.
LORD RHODES: John the Baptist came to a sticky end.
LORD MOYNE: He lost his head.
LORD WIGG: He may have lost his head, but I am not concerned with his end but with the truth which he spoke. The point is that Mr. Powell's diagnosis of the subject we spoke about yesterday, the diagnosis of our economic troubles, stands up; and he has not got to eat his words. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, had to eat his words with little charm. He would not have eaten them if, during the course of his speech, I had not reminded him of what he had said on the earlier occasion. Lord Avebury one can dismiss, as I do, and say he is only a Liberal; you do not expect much from him. But the Prime Minister is in a different category.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves my contribution—and I am most grateful to him for giving way and for reiterating his reminder to me of what I said in 1967, six years ago—I would point out that he quoted a passage from column 1940 in which I said that so far as it was economically and socially practicable the coalmining industry should be run down. That was the sentence he quoted. He did not look at column 1942 where I said that as a planning target for the industry we should have taken 156 million tons for 1970, a target the industry would have been very happy to achieve. Does not the noble Lord realise that since I spoke the industry has declined from 400,000 employees to 250,000, a target which is much below what I was aiming at at that time?
LORD WIGG: My Lords, I am sorry I did not read the whole speech; perhaps I should have learned it by heart. What I was saying was that he then, on the Floor of the House of Commons on behalf of the Liberal Party, advocated running down the coalmining industry as fast as possible; that is indisputable. What the noble Lord does not understand is that if he said "run it down as fast as possible," those were words in support of the Prime Minister, and, if I may, I want to move on to the Prime Minister's part in this business. The Prime Minister, dishonourably, only a few days ago, tried to argue—and it was half done by Lord Polwarth this afternoon, but not quite; a civil servant had obviously edited what he was going to say that the present Government had reversed a process set in motion by the Labour Government, and it was indeed the Conservatives who were putting things right. What did Mr. Heath say in 1967? He said:
"Men are going out of manufacturing and exporting industries and back into coalmining, which is not an exporting industry. In my opinion the closure of pits should move forward as fast as possible, and faster than it has been doing".
That is what he said then. Lord Ave-bury said it in 1967, the Prime Minister said it before, and of course the process has been going on and on.
My approach to this problem is a quite simple one. I am a Socialist, without prefix or suffix, and I look at this in socialist terms. I regret that my noble friend Manny Shinwell is not here to-day because he is ill. I became his P.P.S. and helped him to tackle the problem of a rundown mining industry with a stock position of 11 million tons, and right nobly he did the task, attacked and vilified on every occasion by honourable gentlemen and noble Lords on that side of the House, some of whom were in the House of Commons then and are sitting there now. What was my noble friend's approach? He argued that coal was our only indigenous raw material and you have to move from the gold standard—we were forced off the gold standard—to a coal standard, nationalise the mines, give the miners a square deal, then move on to gas and electricity, and eventually an Act which would bring the three industries together, so that you would use coal not merely to burn in a rather shortsighted way. In fact you

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were destroying a commodity which was capable of application in many fields. The research had then to be done, and the policy continued throughout the life of the first Labour Government.
Then, of course, it was run down. The critical point was reached in 1961 by Mr. Macmillan, a man whom this country highly honours but to whom it owes very little. He betrayed his country in the field of defence by the 1957 White Paper, and he betrayed it in another way; he appointed Lord Robens of Woldingham. It is a characteristic of the Right Wing of all Governments of all countries that they always find their leaders in the dustbin of the Left. They could not find a Tory to do their dirty work for them, to run the industry down. Lord Robens was fetched in to do the job and the coal industry was run down. I remember arguing with one of its economic survivors and saying, "You do this and you will live to regret it, because if you run it down and you make a mistake, you will only discover it at the trough, when you are somewhere near the bottom; and when Humpty Dumpty came off the wall, all the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men are not going to put Humpty Dumpty together again".
It is true, as Lord Taylor said, that there are coal reserves in this country that would last us 100 years, but we have run out of miners. Why are the Government in conflict now? Because the miners are being forced to work overtime on a scale which shows what the shortage in the industry must be. What the Government now ought to do in the face of this shortage is to admit it to the miners and say, "Yes, you have got us over a barrel", in the same way as the seamen had the Labour Government over a barrel in the previous Labour Administration, or they could have put us over the barrel and could have put the country over a barrel in 1945 and 1946, when they were Communist led. Let it be noted that they are Communist led to-day. Here I want to turn to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, who very kindly expressed his regret that he would have to leave. The point was half made again by the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth.
Let us take a look at the record of the Communists in the mining industry. I remember Grimethorpe. What was the
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issue at Grimethorpe, the first crisis after the war? There had been great expenditure on mechanisation at Grimethorpe, and the chaps in the pit thought that if you mechanised it meant they had done their stint and they could come out of the pit, which really meant that you were mechanising in order to give them something. In other words, there had not been sufficient education of the miners in the social and economic consequences of mechanisation, and they had to be faced. There was a dispute which would have been as disastrous to the country as disputes to-day are. Who went down and faced them? Needless to say, my right honourable friend the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell. Who went with him? Arthur Horner. And I went to meeting after meeting in that Yorkshire coalfield, and Arthur Horner stood his corner at every stage.
Let me quote some of the things said by the man who has been vilified to-day. Let me hasten to add that I do not carry a Communist card in my hip pocket, but I want to speak the truth, because the truth is the only antedote to the country's problems. Arthur Horner in 1955 said:
"We say the cheapest form of investment in power in this country is to invest in coal, and this means investing in men as well as machinery ".
In 1959 he said:
"As the oil-supply countries raise their living standards, they will demand a higher price for their raw material…. Any Government would be advised to give priority to the only indigenous fuel we have got. Strategically I think we would be mad to let coal production fall below certain levels."
One could go on quoting from Arthur Horner, quoting from Will Paynter, quoting from Lawrence Daly. These men and other men I could quote are as loyal to society and to the class of which they are a part as any single one of us. But what they know—and again I could quote—is that the Party opposite are nearer to the oil barons, nearer to the sources that would make vast sums out of other men's labour, than they should be, with the result that the policies that are followed are policies which serve big interests and the forces which the Conservative Party exists to serve.
The Socialist remedy here is the only remedy. The Labour Party should be following the example set by Mr. Enoch Powell in saying that the growth policy,

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as conceived by the Government, is economic nonsense. We cannot promote inflation with one hand, and then seek to stop it with the other; this is a piece of economic nonsense which can only mislead.
May I turn to the question of oil? I have no doubt whatever that what I am about to say is going to cause some unpleasantness. I do not mind that. I shall even be charged with being anti-Semitic. I do not mind that. My record is all right, and I would even compare it in service to the Jewish people with some of the ardent Zionists in this House. But I am, above all, a British subject; and here I support to the full the Foreign Secretary and the Government in their efforts to serve the interests of this country and get a settlement in the Middle East. Let me hasten to add that our record is not clean. The record of the Foreign Office and of successive Foreign Secretaries, including Sir Alec Douglas-Home has a lot to answer for. Every single Arab nationalist from Arabi Pasha, Zaghlul Pasha, Mohammed Neguib, and Gamal Abdul Nasser, who wanted to lead the Egyptian people, has served the cause of the British people—and particularly Zaghlul in the First World War—and they found themselves either in prison or cancelled out.
The result of that policy, which stems from the Balfour Declaration, has led to the cancellation of British power in the Middle East. I regret it deeply. I am not an imperialist; I reject imperialism. I am not a colonialist; I reject colonialism. However, I spent many long years of my youth in Iraq, in the forces of occupation in Turkey, in Mosul, in Palestine, in Egypt, in the Sudan—all the unpleasant stations. I was not on a Parliamentary visit, but I spent years there; and not even as an officer but as an other rank. I learnt my knowledge of the problems of the Middle East the hard way.
The description and political analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, this afternoon of the recent Israeli/Arab conflict is right. The fact that noble Lords walked out of the House while he was speaking was completely unjustified. Let me add that he used one phrase that he would have been wiser not to use, and I would suggest to him that he takes
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the course of withdrawing it. But his analysis was right, and the Arabs are going to see that they get justice.
Yesterday, in the course of a supplementary question (which is an inadequate way of handling the problem) I mentioned three points which to my mind would lead Ito a settlement in the Middle East. First, a settlement must be based on justice. It is no good anyone imagining—and I mean particularly the Zionists who find their Zionism urging them on to subscribe but not to return to Palestine—that you can leave generation after generation of Arabs sitting out in those Judaean hills, looking at the houses That their families built on land that their families had occupied for hundreds of years. Remember that Palestine was not liberated by the Hagganah. When British troops crossed into Sinai at Kantara before the first battle of Gaza there were not six Jewish settlements in the whole of Palestine. The power of the Ottoman Empire, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Marmora, to the southernmost tip of the Mediterranean, was broken by the valour of British troops. All over that vast area there are countless graves to mark the price that Britain and her sons paid for the liberty of that area. We have a right to speak up, and our countrymen should realise what is at issue. There must be justice.
One of the troubles is that the Jews have been persecuted for 2.000 years, and the persecution in the lifetime of most of us was of the most shocking and un speakable kind. But they are not persecuted any longer. They have prospered The people who are persecuted today are the Arabs. It is in Palestine under the Israelis that the Arab is treated as a second-class citizen. It is in France that the Algerian is treated as a second-class citizen.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, is The noble Lord aware that the Arabs who are to-day in Israel have helped the Israelis in the war? They have given their blood. Is he aware that even in the territories which are the so-called occupied areas there has been no attack on the Israelis?
LORD WIGG: My Lords, forgive me for saying this, but I understand the power of the Israeli propaganda machine, and I have read the stories about the

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Arabs giving their blood. My own sources of information are good enough for me to know that they are treated as second-class citizens. In certain areas I am quite prepared to believe that that is not so, but basically the Arabs regard themselves as second-class citizens. That is what is going to be put right.
The first point I want to make—and this is what has to be accepted; I go further, and say that the intelligent Israelis, and I would start with the Prime Minister, Mrs. Golda Meir, know this perfectly well—is that there can be no peace in the Middle East unless that first principle of justice is recognised. The noble Lord has done irreparable harm to the cause that he has espoused over the years. Nobody has done more harm to the Israeli cause than the noble Lord, because they take him at face value. I discount it. I make allowance for his enthusiasm and, if I may say so, his ignorance. The fact is that there has to be justice, and all intelligent people who know anything about it know that Israel cannot forever live on her tiptoes. Israel cannot forever live with 25 per cent. of her population mobilised if she is to survive. The problem is that nobody but the noble Lord and his friends believe that Israel is not going to survive. Of course Israel can survive, but she is a small country, and like all small countries she has to recognise how small she is; and David cannot take on Goliath every day in the week. She has to accept that her security will depend on international guarantees.
This moves me to my second point, which is the balance of forces. The Israelis have been lavishly supplied with American equipment. That has been counterbalanced to some extent by Russian equipment on the other side. But the superiority of the Phantoms is now balanced by the Sam 6. What the West has done, what successive Conservative Governments have done and the Conservative forces have done, is to prove to the Arabs the efficacy of a weapon which we refuse to use.
The noble Lord is old enough to remember the League of Nations, which was supposed to outlaw war. What were they going to depend on? My noble friend Lord Davies will remember the arguments we had in Stoke-on-Trent. If the Labour Party faced a difficult situation, they would pass a resolution to send a League
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of Nations force or impose sanctions. We tried to impose sanctions. Is there any noble Lord who now believes, in the light of what has happened, that we could not have stopped Mussolini in Abyssinia? Is there any noble Lord who believes that we could not have stopped Hitler when he went in to the Rhineland? Of course we could, if we had had the will. But the Arabs, under force majeure, have found the will here to prove that the sanction weapon does work.
They have also done something else. They have eliminated with a stroke of the pen Israeli influence right throughout Africa, with one exception—South Africa. They have said to those black countries, the countries which have in fact broken their connections with Israel, "Yes, we will come in with you, on one condition: that when you settle this little lot you will square accounts with Rhodesia and South Africa". That is the new lesson in the modern world, and this is the lesson that the British public have got to learn—that imperialism and colonialism are finished and that what has happened with oil is going to happen to every single raw material. That is the policy of the non-aligned countries—76 of them, which met in Algeria in September. That conference was largely ignored, but it was from that conference that the power was generated that led to the decision of October. That is the lesson that we have to learn.
Now I do not want to keep the House much longer but, if I may, I should like to say a word about the current situation.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, may I ask him why he does not describe it as colonialism when, as he has just mentioned, the Arabs are in a position to dictate me foreign policy of independent African countries?
LORD WIGG: Really, my Lords, I shall have to organise a weekend school for the Liberals and teach them a few politics. Their ignorance is profound, and it really is frightening, because their Poujadism is popular at the moment and they do irreparable harm. But, you see, the Arabs did not use their colonialism. What they did—
THE EARL OF ARRAN: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree—
LORD WIGG: One question at a time.
LORD AVEBURY: May I—
LORD WIGG: One at a time. They did not use their power: they used the power of persuasion. Again, the noble Lord does not listen. In 1956 there were three, only three—Tito, Jawaharial Nehru and Nasser. That was not a popular doctrine, so the Zionist lobby in America moved the arm of Dulles. He wanted to believe it, and support for the Aswan Dam was cut off, just like that. The poor, ill Eden followed suit, so we got Suez. Now the three have grown. At Algiers there were 76 non-aligned countries—
LORD AVEBURY: I am afraid—
LORD WIGG: Let me finish. The noble Lord has asked a question; let me answer it in my own way. The 76 included all the African countries, so they were a party to the action that was taken. Does the noble Lord not see?
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I am afraid the noble Lord is ducking my question, and if he will kindly answer it without any more of the childish abuse to which he is so much given I should be grateful. Will he tell me why, if the Arabs are in a position to dictate the foreign policy of independent African countries by threatening to withhold oil from them if they do not toe the line, that should not be described as colonialism?
LORD WIGG: Colonialism consists of exploitation. This is not exploitation. They are going to say to South Africa sooner or later, as they are saying to Holland. "Unless you abandon your policy of apartheid, then we will cut off your oil supplies." This is not exploitation.
LORD JANNER: Would the noble Lord forgive me? I am obliged to him.
LORD WIGG: I am sorry, but this is becoming—
LORD JANNER: No, it is not becoming. What the noble Lord in fact did was to proclaim himself as deliverer of Israel by suggesting that those who know Israel and her policy well—like myself, I hope—are doing an injury. Would the noble Lord say whether he agrees that the use of the blackmail of oil against the various
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countries in the world is something of which he approves; and, if he does approve, does he not realise that that is an attack on Britain as well as it is on any other country, and is anti-British?
LORD WIGG: I am sorry. Of course I approve. I approve of the action which the Arabs have taken.
LORD JANNER: In Israel?
LORD WIGG: The action they have taken here by agreeing that the State of Israel must continue. They have agreed, and they have said to the Israelis, When you withdraw from those territories which you have occupied"—and they are completely on all fours with the Government in relation to Resolution 242—" "we will restore the oil cuts". That has my full and 100 per cent. support. It has my complete support.
Now I wanted, if I could, just for a moment or two, to deal with something which was said by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, on the question of oil and how it ought to be handled. He told us that he had been on the motorway and that the public at large were obeying the rules because very few cars passed him. When he came over to apologise to me for having to leave, I said, "In that case, you must have been doing a 'ton', if very few cars passed you". If noble Lords do not understand the language of the young, may I say that it means that he must have been going at 100 miles an hour. Because I was on a motorway on Saturday and Sunday and in several periods of ten minutes I was never passed by fewer than a hundred cars. I would say to the Government that one of the things they should do—and I would plead with them to do this—is to impose a speed limit on motorways of 50 miles an hour and authorise the police to prosecute. I have got an old car, but by cutting down my speed to 50 miles an hour or less the benefit to my pocket in miles per gallon was really quite extraordinary. I am therefore sure that the Government are right in saying that we should restrict our speed limits. It is perfectly clear, from the behaviour of people in and around London, particularly in the SouthEast—they behave differently in North Staffordshire—that the Government should invoke the law to protect the majority. That is the first point.

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My second point is this. I listened to the broadcast of Mr. Walker last night. Again, I thought he spoke with extreme clarity and put his case quite strongly, but not strongly enough. He said that he did not believe there was any need for rationing. Neither do I. Again I believe that the Government's policy here is broadly right. If, in a society as complex as ours, we start to ration, we must remember the difficulties of war time and the difficulties of 1956. There were only 4 million cars then; there are 15 million now, and large areas which are not served by any transport at all. I think the Government are completely right in doing what they are doing. But what I think should happen is that Mr. Walker should speak with much greater force than in fact he has spoken.
In an earlier part of this debate I mentioned a noble Lord who, so I learned, had taken away 200 gallons of petrol in tins and had switched over from his big car to his small car. On the other side of the picture, this morning I went to see Mr. Eric Morley, whose background is similar to my own: he is an ex-Regular soldier. He is 53 years of age and the head of a very big firm. I was delighted to learn from him—he has more guts than I have, but then I have never had a Potts fracture—that he has given up his cars and uses a moped, for which I think he needs only half a gallon of petrol at a time. He told me how quickly he got to work in the morning, and he also told me that this had spread throughout his firm. So I am quite sure that if the Government would speak, and speak clearly, they would get a response. Here I join with the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing: they should use the language of people. Just explain to them that they are really behaving not only like sheep but like the Gadarene swine, because they are cutting their own throats. This needs to be said and said clearly. But now let me say a word in defence of the British public. We are served by a media—the B.B.C., the I.T.V. and the Press—who, by their handling of this problem and by exploiting every difficulty that arises, have increased the doubt and fear; and I say that beyond any shadow of doubt. I thought the "Panorama" broadcast was as near political illiteracy as anything one could find.
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My Lords, may I turn to my Labour Party colleages. Here I go full circle on the issue about the position of the Arabs. It is perfectly clear that if Mr. Eric Varley, the spokesman for the Labour Party, had been in charge of our affairs, by this time we should have not only petrol rationing but also we should be in the same position as Holland; because Mr. Varley made a clear anti-Arab speech and one almost suspected that the brief had its origin in the Israeli Embassy. It is perfectly clear, it seems to me, that as a nation we have to face the fact that our difficulties are very great. Provided that we find that facing difficulties, facing a challenge, is a source of strength, I hope—perhaps I may use the word "pray"—that we shall surmount them. But in order to do it, as I have said so many times in this House and I almost apologise for saying it again, we must realise that there is no way out of our difficulties unless we face them ourselves and are prepared ruthlessly, in the way that Mr. Powell does, to speak out and say the truth—even if the truth involves admitting that we have been wrong on previous occasions and that the remedies we put forward are not so palatable as we should like. In the present situation, so grievous is our plight that there is no possible alternative to telling the truth and facing the consequences.
7.2 p.m.
THE EARL. OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, for some 37 minutes your Lordships have had varied and stimulating fare from one whose patriotism we never question; one to whom it is always stimulating, if also provocative, to listen, and one whose stance sometimes takes one by surprise. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, will expect me to pursue the many points of interest which he raised during these 37 minutes, because the hour is already advanced.
My Lords, there are two ways of satisfying wants: either by producing more or desiring less. This is a question of values for our civilisation, and it may well be that the current exercise in restraint on petrol consumption is a healthy exercise in an otherwise selfish age. But that civilisation, selfish or not, is challenged by the OPEC monopoly.

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One cannot help thinking of under-civilised countries with enormous energy bent on the ruin of their more highly civilised neighbours, and to that end ready to bring the Western world to its knees. My Lords, when the Vandals poured out their energy upon the declining civilisation of the Roman Empire living in license and wrapped with soft wings, the sack of Rome followed.
How can we defend ourselves and, in particular, break the OPEC monopoly? It would be tempting to follow Lord Energlyn's fascinating speech about tidal power and its harnessing to steel, iron and aluminium. On tidal power I would only hope that the Government may be inclined to look at the possibilities of Kylesku, on Eddrachillis Bay in the Assynt parish of Sutherland in Scotland. Having said that, I should like to pursue one aspect of the power picture painted by the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn—the aspect of liquid transmission. When the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, so ably and interestingly introduced this debate, and we are much obliged to him, he listed some of the alternative sources of power; but, curiously enough, he did not mention natural gas, although only yesterday Dr. J. Birk, a director of B.P., produced figures at the Financial Times oil conference in London suggesting that the gas industry in Britain might well more than double the natural gas supplies currently received by the end of the decade.
The fact is that natural gas is often flared off and undeveloped for lack of incentive. Here, I must confess that I shall have to read with great care, as in any case I should wish to do, the most interesting speech by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Mansfield. But he quoted United Nations figures suggesting, as I understood him, that 76 per cent. of the world's natural gas resources would run out by the end of the century. This is not the information given to me by other experts, who have suggested that potential Free World natural gas resources may well be sufficient to exceed between 20 and 30 times the current annual crude oil production of the world, and do that for many years to come, perhaps as many as thirty years. The figures I have been given are those published in the Oil and Gas Journal of December, 1972,
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and they show that in the free world, crude oil production per annum is of the order of 2,000 million tons, while proven natural gas reserves in the free world are taken to be the equivalent of more than 1,200 million tons of crude oil a year for thirty years.
These figures may well be exaggerated, but they demand investigation. The Free World countries which have critically large proven natural gas reserves, at the present time largely undeveloped, are in the Caribbean area, with as much natural gas at the moment as would be the equivalent of 75 million tons of crude oil a year perhaps for thirty years; Algeria, where the figure is 105 and Nigeria where the figure is 40. Natural gas can be economically converted to alcohol, so my expert friends tell me and, against the ever-present danger of being engulfed by the holy glow of scientific confusion, may I say shortly this? The operation of converting natural gas to alcohol avoids the heavy capital costs of liquefaction and regasification connected with its transport as L.N.G. It avoids, or partly substitutes for, the heavy capital cost of oil refining. It avoids the inefficiency of converting naphtha to high octane. It offers an environmentally acceptable source of high octane in motor spirit and it offers cheaper transport whether by tanker or pipeline.
My Lords, such an operation, so the experts tell me, could produce alcohol from natural gas at about the overall cost of crude oil refining to acceptable environmental standards; and this would be using a source which is so abundant that it would be equivalent to current crude oil production of something like 20 to 30 times over for thirty years to come. Such an operation on a large enough scale could provide an economic alternative to OPEC crude; such an operation could, it is believed, put a downward pressure on OPEC prices and those of liquid petroleum generally.
My Lords, measurement is knowledge, and an energy policy directed to this end would need to be based on a million calculations which only the computer and a highly competent, complex mathematical model would be able to undertake. Indeed, only such a combination of mechanisms could provide the quantitative data on which long-term and critically flexible policy decisions could be based.

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Is this something that any inter-Departmental Committee, no matter at how high a level, could master and supervise? Can one picture the D.T.I., the D.O.E., the Treasury and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office putting together a Committee which would manipulate such a complex mechanism, so that Ministers could take the right political decisions based on properly balanced scientific and quantitative data? These data have to take account of tile aspects of chemistry, of the aspects of engineering, of the aspects of transport by sea and land, of the political aspects of OPEC, of the prices and costs of alternative energy sources, of new discoveries, of new environmental factors, of the effects on the balance of payments, of the effects of this or that course on our revenue accounts, to say nothing of the effects upon our security.
My Lords, measurement is knowledge. It is just such factors that the Energy Research Unit of Queen Mary College, in London, has spent five years constructing a mathematical model to measure and manage. It is worked, it is guided and criticised, supervised and overseen, by a steering committee on which the motor industry, the petroleum industry, the chemical industry, and the D.T.I.—at a very high level—are all represented. Such is the sort of prototype of an Advisory Energy Board which is still in the minds of many noble Lords in this House who have spoken already this afternoon, or who have spoken in other debates. I personally was much comforted to sense that my noble friend Lord Polwarth, who matched his excellent and well-applauded performance at the oil conference yesterday with an equally distinguished speech this afternoon, was showing an openness to the sorts of ideas that are in noble Lords' minds. One is thinking of an Advisory Board; one is thinking of a Board that can manage the assembly of mathematical models and computer data to provide the relevant quantitative data.
My Lords, predictions are notoriously difficult. As the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, himself said, they are often wrong. I also have found that the more one seeks to speak the truth the more difficult it can become to be precise. Here I seek the indulgence of the House to make an apology which I had thought of making as a personal statement, but
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which seemed to fit naturally into the scope of this debate. I crave the indulgence of the House for the apology I now have to make. On October 25 last year your Lordships' House debated Commons Amendments to the Anglesey Pipeline Terminal Bill, and we were discussing the inclusion or exclusion of words inserted by another place to subject the burying of the pipe in question "so far as is practicable". According to Hansard of that date I said (cols. 2231–2):
"…I think I am in a position to say …that Shell intend absolutely that it shall be under the sea-bed.…I understand absolutely that this is the intention.…"
My Lords, those were my words. In the event, it was found physically almost impossible, and environmentally quite impossible, to do this very thing over about one-tenth of the distance concerned—some 365 out of 3,300 metres. I am sorry if I misled the House. What I said was said entirely in good faith. If I misled the House, it was accidental, it was inadvertent. But I did mislead the House, and I ask the House to exercise its familiar indulgence and accept my apology. I am glad both that the D.T.I. have found that Shell in fact did the right thing, and that the Technical Sub-committee of the Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea—of the report of which the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, was good enough to send me a copy—thought likewise.
Having said that, my Lords, and having craved the indulgence of the House, may I come back to the main point? One thing emerges from all this: predictions are hazardous. They are much needed, none the less, in formulating an energy policy, and just as necessary if that policy has to be flexible as if it has to be rigid. A useful instrument for providing the basic data for a flexible long-term policy, one that can be varied from year to year, is a sophisticated mathematical model used under the direction of a highly sophisticated steering committee embracing civil servants, industry and the world of learning. This, in short, is the way to tackle the possibilities not only of natural gas but of other alternative fuels with a view to breaking the OPEC monopoly. This, at heart, is still the case of those of us who believe that something like an Advisory Enegry Board or Commission is desirable. I hope—and

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having listened to my noble friend Lord Polwarth this afternoon I am encouraged in this belief—that the Government may yet grasp that whatever be the rhetoric used in advancing this cause and this case, it is a rhetoric of beneficence.
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, may I have a moment before the noble Lord, Lord Arwyn, addresses your Lordships? I want to say how much some of us at least appreciate the words of the noble Earl in relation to the Anglesey oil terminal pipeline. His statement in the House last year has been the cause of a good deal of misapprehension and difficulty, and quite frankly has given rise to accusations of bad faith. I think it is most gratifying that the noble Earl should have felt it desirable to make the statement in your Lordships' House. I am sure the people that have been writing to me from Anglesey and other parts of North Wales will feel very much happier now that he has acknowledged his mistake. I am sure that it was entirely in good faith that he did make a mistake.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: I am most grateful to the noble Baroness. May I repeat now what I said on that occasion: she is always irresistible, even at this distance.
7.17 p.m.
LORD ARWYN: My Lords, I should like to associate myself with the suggestion of the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, that there is a need for an advisory board in energy and that it should be established as soon as possible. My Lords, although I am originally a coalmining engineer, and as such would be expected to speak on this problem, I am sure that this subject has been adequately covered, especially by my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, and other speakers. But before I leave the subject I would recommend to Members of your Lordships' House a copy of the Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Mines for 1972. In that Report there is ample evidence to support the claim of the miners that they deserve extra-special treatment away above all other industries if we are to recruit for the future to what has now been admitted to be a vital key industry. The Report is factual, but it does not require any great degree of sympathy to read between the lines. The
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few of us on this side of your Lordships' House who have actually worked in coalmines know that such Reports convey more than part of the miners' story, but they do help those who have never had such an experience to achieve a closer understanding.
I now turn to the main purpose of this speech. In view of the fact that the known reserves of oil have been assessed and reassessed many times, as well as the expansion in consumption over the next 25 years or more—both I had to calculate—I ask, what steps have been taken to investigate the use of other sources of fuel after the termination of the limited life of fossil fuels? By that I mean positive steps. Has any departmental or other investigation been made—and I am not referring to nuclear energy now—on which a report could be published? While geologists and the oil industry have been long aware of the limited supply of oil, have the Government sponsored specific research into this important question of alternative sources of energy? My question might appear impertinent, but it requires a pertinent answer. I will provide one example of the kind of research I mean. I refer to an article in the Baltimore Sunday Sun of October 21 of this year, which refers to the increased production of hydrogen in the United States. Already 60,000 cubic feet per annum has been produced for manufacturing purposes. Experiments are now being conducted to use hydrogen as a supplementary fuel and as an additive to petrol for use in cars. Some engineers have already forecast the use of hydrogen engines in planes, lorries, buses and trains by the year 2000.
My Lords, independent preliminary research work has also been carried out at Oxford. I am going to quote a relevant section of a report passed to me from G. R. Thompson of Oxford, who is engaged on research work. This report outlines a programme of research into the feasibility of the use of hydrogen for various purposes to augment or replace petrol. The report states:
"The maintenance of our social activities, particularly in regard to transportation, will require a medium analagous to petroleum for the distribution of energy of nuclear origin. Hydrogen seems well suited to this role. Preliminary investigations of its production from water and its combustion in small power units are promising … adequate safety in the distibution network seems technically feasible."

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My Lords, I should now like to return for a few moments to the important article in the Baltimore Sunday Sun. It refers to Jules Verne's prediction some hundred years ago that water would one day be used as a fuel furnishing an inexhaustible source of heat and light. One can ask whether or not it is safer to depend on the visionaries of science fiction to forecast our future than the academic conclusions and other negative attitudes of Governments and their establishments. It certainly seems that the United States, whether due to pressure from their scientists or the realisation that the products of research must be given priority, are deciding, as before in their history, to take immediate action to solve the problem of the sources of energy.
My Lords, because of the loosening of our ties with the United States of America following our joining the European complex, we cannot expect to benefit from the exchange of scientific knowledge as before. It is therefore our duty to realise that we are on our own, to imagine the worst, and then to take steps to avoid disaster. This turmoil could be our biggest blessing of the century if from it we can safeguard our supply of energy for the foreseeable future, and possibly further. In the meantime, we are in for a period of austerity. But, my Lords, the winter of our discontent could be a period of pregnancy, and the ideas conceived could produce results which will be a prodigy of achievement in solving our energy crisis. For instance, we have over the course of many years, and in particular in the last war, been able to face up to our problems and get over them.
Many years ago, that well-beloved Member of another place, the late Aneurin Bevan, observed that Britain was an island of coal surrounded by the sea and fish; it was a timely cognition. But the deeper import has not yet penetrated beyond the admiration for the pungency of his words. We are now at last aware of the importance of coal, and lately of North Sea oil and nuclear fission. We are as yet not aware of the importance of being surrounded by sea, although we know the value of fish as a food. We have a long coastline, and the sea can really be an inexhaustible supply of energy. No magic formula is needed;
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only the pursuit of further research into the methods of producing hydrogen and by-products from the sea. It is now mainly a problem for mechanical engineers. It will be expensive, but the results may justify Concorde, the Channel Tunnel and perhaps even Maplin: but without an inexhaustible supply of fuel none of these projects will be justified in the light of the present turmoil. Even the hoped-for benefits from joining the Common Market could be dimmed after the foreseeable exhaustion of North Sea gas and oil. We are now attempting to safeguard the next 50 years.
I should like to suggest to the oil-producing countries of to-day that they should consider the fact that hydrogen can be used as a very important additive to their oil, and can extend the life of oil as a fuel very considerably. One could even advise the oil-producing countries to invest in the establishing of plants to produce hydrogen in Britain.
Many of us remember the problems of structuring the Mulberry Harbour, referred to earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing. Many difficulties were emphasised, until Sir Winston Churchill banged the table and ended all further discussion by an order that the harbour must be completed at a certain date. And the miracle happened. We can expect similar negative attitudes from the various known sources, and we shall have to defeat them if the production of hydrogen is to succeed, as in the end it must. I should like to see a British Prime Minister once more bang the table and declare a date for the establishment of plant to extract hydrogen from the seas, and any other means to solve this problem. I have confined myself, because the hour is already late, to one possible source of energy. There are other sources already referred to in earlier speeches. My Lords, if ever there was a time for action, it is now.
7.30 p.m.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, four weeks ago to-day we had a debate on a Motion of mine which covered many of the points that have been dealt with this afternoon. 'Midst the encircling gloom, I have one bit of good news for your Lordships: I shall not inflict myself on your Lordships this evening for anything near even half the

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time that I did on that occasion. However, there may be various repercussions from that debate which I think are somewhat relevant to this afternoon's discussion. One particular remark of mine was widely misreported—that was where I offered to tell your Lordships how my Devon neighbour made his car run on methane gas produced from manure. It was reported that I would tell anybody all over the world the secret of this. The result has been that I have had inquiries from Hawaii to New Zealand and from France to behind the Iron Curtain. I have a cutting from a New Zealand paper, the heading of which reads: "Put a Chicken in your Tank". Your Lordships may be amused to hear part of a letter sent to me by a Mr. O'Riorden, who wrote to me from the Irish Republic as follows:
"Would it be artificial manure or the natural droppings of animals? Perhaps you would not tell me as I am an Irishman, but I often made poteen, so you would not be talking to a real amateur. I write to you in confidence because I know you must be an honourable person."
Being, of course, an honourable person, I have not mentioned his real name.
Going back to that earlier debate, I thought the Government's behaviour then was, to quote two other noble Lords who took part, rather less than gracious. In spite of the politest form of questioning by the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, the noble Lords, Lord Wynne-Jones, Lord Tanlow, Lord Hoy, my noble friend Lord Kings Norton and other noble Lords, all we really got by way of answer was a scarcely disguised brush-off. Perhaps the interval of four weeks between that debate and this one initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, will have given the Government time to come up with some of the answers which we did not receive on the former occasion, particularly concerning what most people have been demanding, namely, an alternative-to-oil energy policy and the establishment of a high-powered committee or commission to get on with producing just that.
The first prerequisite is to make quite sure that this commission has no representatives of the big oil companies on it. I quoted to your Lordships four weeks ago how the oil interests had blackmailed the Western Morning News into refusing
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Mr. Harold Bates's advertisement for using methane gas for internal combustion engines. Four high-powered newspapermen have since written to me, thanking me for having said what I did. So it seems that this form of skulduggery has also been going on for some time. In to-day's Express there is another article on the subject, and in last Sunday's Telegraph a correspondent pointed out that the shale oil industry at Bathgate was closed down by a deliberate act of Government policy—in that case by levying the same tax on it as on imported oil. Who was responsible? Was it pressure from the oil companies? Remember that this was six years ago. But whatever the implications, to my mind the oil companies have a lot to answer for.
Again, I think it is criminal negligence not to have made arrangements for alternatives to oil long before now. Any Government which does not safeguard its people against blackmail by monopolistic unions is really failing in its duty. I do not care whether one talks about unions of miners, electricians, engine drivers or producers of Arab oil. They are all tarred with the same brush. I think one very important point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigg: that is, that the unions of other commodity makers will obviously soon be following suit. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, referred to my speech a month ago as being "imaginative". Having carefully re-read the speeches made at the time in Hansard, I have come to the conclusion that the noble Lord's description was meant to be somewhat cynical. My criticism is of the Government's complete lack of imagination. Why have they not done anything about solar energy and the linear induction motor referred to by my noble friend Lord Kings Norton? That, you may say, is futuristic. All right then: why not start now? But what about now? When I say "now" I mean why is not something done about proved energy alternatives which either the Government (via the Treasury) or the oil companies have prevented us from making use of.
To take first, methane gas: is this not easily obtainable? Why is it that our sewerage works do not make it? Does not the Ogmore plant in Essex already make it, and was not a useful model of

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how to make it from farmyard manure on show at the Royal at Stoneleigh a few years ago? I seem to remember it could be ordered on the spot. Would it be possible to confirm to the House that attached to the model was a house and a kitchen, proving that heating and cooking could be done by means of this plant? Did the oil companies kill it? Is it not a fact that before the First World War, the noble Lord, Lord Iliffe, ran his large house and farm machinery on this system in the Cambridge Breckland? Is it not a fact that we waste a quantity of this gas every year equivalent in energy to our annual production of coal? Is it not also a fact that we could produce this gas from coal without a mine, simply by boring down to the coal seams? Did they not try this once in Russia? Yet we import it from Algeria, or get it from the North Sea at some expense. We know that our cars and trucks can run on it, and that in Australia big inter-State lorries use it, as well as Melbourne taxicabs. Enough is known now of electric cars to dispose of many of the myths about them; but as I have dealt with the matter before I shall not repeat myself now.
Over 100 years ago, another noble Lord (the noble Lord, Lord Kelvin) made known the principle of the heat pump—but anyone can look up the encyclopwdia about this. Suffice it to say that you can extract heat from running water or sewerage. It is refrigeration in reverse. Is it not a fact that the buildings of the Eastern Electricity Board in Norwich are heated in this way from the River Nene? Does not Nuffield College at Oxford get its heat in this way from a branch of the sewers that run under the College? The Palace of Westminster, and all London along the Thames, could be heated in this way. Existing radiators could be used. Why use expensive oil which is in short supply and imported, when this energy is available on our own doorstep?
I will mention only one more source of energy to-night, and that is the one which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Arwyn—hydrogen. It is the commonest of our elements; when burned it produces only water, and therefore there is no pollution. I wonder whether the noble Lord has had his attention drawn to an article which appeared in The Times
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a couple of months ago, when reference was made to the work of Doctors Abraham and Scheiner of the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. If that system works, it seems that hydrogen can be produced by using, over and over again, lithium and iodine. That means that you do not need the expensive electrolysis method we used in the past. To make the proposition even more attractive—and I am sure that the noble Lord does not need to be told—hydrogen can be easily absorbed on to plates of magnesium and released by moderate heat. Therefore, you do not need the big gas bags that were used during the First World War. Have the Government done anything about these things?
I am convinced that the ineptitude of Governments and the monopolistic greed of the big oil companies have largely got us into the state we are in to-day. Once the oil producers got together into a union, we should have seen the red light. Why should the Arabs sell us their oil? They have far too much foreign exchange as it is; they do not know what to do with it. Only three weeks ago along came an agent for a group, trying to buy, on my land, a site for caravans and holiday chalets. The agent told me that the money was coming from one of these oil companies. They offered a very handsome price. Although I did not fall for it, it indicates another way in which this oil situation is causing inflation. It seems to me that what we need is an Energy Commission possessing wide powers and adequate finance. There are many Members of your Lordships' House who could with advantage apply for membership of it—Lord Energlyn, Lord Kings Norton, Lord Wynne-Jones, to mention only three. We have the means in this country, we have the know-how. If we do not act fast, another country is going to do it, and your Lordships know what that means. If not, ask Barnes Wallis.
There is another question, perhaps somewhat irrelevant at the moment, which was not answered four weeks ago. At a time when we should be saying we are doing something about cutting down our dependence on oil, why have not the Government already announced that they are not going to build more oil-fired electricity stations, particularly the one at Plymouth? According to an article,

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I think in the Economist, by an American called Dan Smith, it seems that the National Coal Board already have in use the type of machine to which I think the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, referred, which already practically does away with the need to have more than a couple of men underground. The article, which I think was written two years ago, more or less said, or inferred, that there would be opposition from the unions to the introduction of this machine, if that was so a couple of years ago, I would have thought, with people saying how short the industry is getting in manpower, that now would be the time to introduce this machine.
My Lords, I have only reiterated what I consider mainly unanswered questions from the debate on November 7. I should like to end with an apology to your Lordships' House. At 9.30 tomorrow morning I have an engagement of long standing some 20 miles from my home in Devon. That is over 200 miles away from here, and if I might be excused for not staying to the end of the debate I might get home at two o'clock to-morrow morning. I cannot drive more than 50 miles an hour. I have already ordered three copies of Hansard so that I might read the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn.
7.43 p.m.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, the question of our fuel requirements both now and in the future is of serious importance to this nation. We have a State of Emergency for the fifth time in five years and the Government have taken massive powers under the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Bill. This Bill in itself is an admission that the Government and the country face an exceptionally serious crisis. We not only face an energy crisis, but we also face an economic one, which puts in danger the growth policy—the only surviving policy of the Selsdon programme upon which this Government were elected. Jobs and whole industries are in jeopardy and the balance of payments, I believe, is heading for a gigantic deficit.
It is important that we should examine the real reasons for the energy crisis and not the ones put forward as a political cover up. We face two kinds of energy problem—the short-term and the long-
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term. The short-term problems are in electricity and coal. They will pass, as a settlement one way or the other will have to come about. They are not deep-seated, though reading the Press and listening to the television media one can forgive people for thinking that they are. The Government have deliberately distorted the whole situation for political reasons. It is the long-term energy problem that is of the utmost seriousness for the future of us all in England. It is the problem of oil which has been played down to a considerable extent, and for political reasons. The electrical engineers were first blamed and now it is the miners. The Government have deliberately tangled the long-term and the short-term problems together, as the Prime Minister did at Nelson when he referred to the combined effects of the miners' action and that of the Arab States.
The real reason for to-day's crisis is the uncertainty about oil supplies, and the Government cannot blame the miners for that. It was the engineers who were first blamed for the introduction of the Emergency Regulations, though their action had had little effect at that time. But that pretence has been given up and it is now the miners who are made the scapegoats in this confused propaganda that the people are hearing. I will be the first to admit that the miners' overtime ban will have a discernible effect, but the way the Home Secretary put the case for the Emergency Regulations made us believe that the miners were ruining the nation. He said—and this was only during the first three days of the overtime ban—that the loss in output was 20 to 25 per cent. of normal production. How he could arrive at that figure in the first day after the overtime ban, which had not yet had its effect in the pits, I cannot see. To-day we can view the situation after the third week of the overtime ban. To-day there is a 30 per cent. loss in production. I do not deny that the overtime ban is biting, and hurting, but there is no law in this land to my knowledge that can force men to work overtime if they do not want to do it. The loss is bad, but there are stocks of coal for our power stations and domestic consumers for 10 weeks even if the pits stop completely. But there is no stoppage and coal is still coming out of

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the ground. For myself, and also for the miners, I earnestly hope that this dispute will not come to a stoppage. The situation is bad and an end to this dispute is vitally needed; but so far there is not the total disruption that the Government forecast when proclaiming their State of Emergency.
The real disruption to-day is the uncertainty of the future. What are the reasons for the miners' union declining the offer which has been made to them? The Government's propaganda is that they are refusing a 13 per cent. increase. This is not true. The Secretary of State says that a miner working unsocial hours will get an increase of more than £9 a week. How many would qualify for this? The answer is, 14,000 out of 280,000, and to get this amount these lucky men would have to go on permanent night shift—that is, to work through the night every day of their lives. I do not know what noble Lords may think, but as one who has worked night shift in the mines I know that it plays havoc with family life. All the other parts of the offer—unsocial hours, efficiency pay and all the rest—affect only 95,000 miners out of the 280,000 in any given week. Miners are leaving the industry at the rate of 600 a week. We lost 17,000 last year, and they will not be attracted back, and neither will we get recruits by telling them what they can earn by working all the unearthly hours of the night.
In a statement some 21 months ago, the Home Secretary, then the Secretary of State for Employment, on the publication of the Wilberforce Report on the last dispute, pointed out the importance of what the Report called "an adjustment factor." He said the Government accepted that, because this adjustment factor, and the miners' claim, in the words of the Report, "should be given exceptional national treatment". The Wilberforce Report pointed out the need for this adjustment factor, and it said:
"When a distortion of trend arises it has to be recognised as due for correction."
Again, the Report, in paragraph 17, said:
"A serious fall has occurred in the relative position of the mine workers, when compared with those in manufacturing industries."
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Paragraph 20 of this Report stated:
"The fall in the ranking of coalmining pay has been quite unwarranted."
This was what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, said and that was what the Secretary of State accepted on behalf of the Government in his statement of February 21, 1972. What the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, said has not been carried out. The Wilberforce Report deplored the fall in miners' wages to below the average in the manufacturing industries and gave an award which put it right. Miners' wages to-day are below the average of the manufacturing industries. To put their wages level with manufacturing industries needs an increase of £3 a week, and to put the miners' wages back to the level which Wilberforce put them needs an increase of nearly £5 a week. Even under the N.C.B. offer, only half the miners would return to the wage level of Wilberforce, and a quarter of the men would still not be earning even the average wage in manufacturing industries. It is no wonder that there is an exodus from the mines, and that these men trained to win the coal needed for the nation are departing to earn better money in the factories.
Another piquant situation is that men are leaving the employment of the National Coal Board and going into the pits as employees of private contractors to earn twice as much as they did with the N.C.B. Can you imagine a man working in a pit for a private contractor getting twice as much as a workman working for the N.C.B. and doing the same work? Discontent is bound to arise in situations like that. Money to miners means the basic wage. Minimum wages in mines are maximum wages. There is no wages drift in the mining industry because all wages settlements are national wage settlements and there is no adjustment to them by pit bargaining. This is the reason why, in a period of statutory wage restraint, the general level of wages in the manufacturing industries has risen relative to the miners' pay, whereas in the mines a coal cutter underground cannot have a new name invented for his job to get round the Pay Code.
We are discussing an energy crisis, which I think is serious, but in facing

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this crisis the Government are not playing fair. When it comes to oil they are ready to pay whatever is asked of them to appease the oil countries with increased prices, together with the fact that they will determine our foreign policy. If we do not agree with them in the future they will cut off the oil, as Sheikh Yamani has told us today. When it comes to coal, it is a different tune. The Government are happy to accept the dictates of the oil producers, but when it comes to coal the Government as consumers insist on dictating to the producers. The Press and the Government have been agitating that the miners should have a ballot on the offer. If a ballot is the cure, the Government have no need to wait for the miners to organise one. They can do it themselves. Their Industrial Relations Act was introduced to bring about peace and tranquility to industry, but it has proved otherwise, as we said when the Bill was before this House. Nevertheless, in Section 141 the Act says:
"Where it appears to the Secretary of State that, in contemplation or furtherance of an industrial dispute or strike, or any irregular industrial action short of a strike has begun or is likely to begin, the Secretary of State may apply to the industrial court for an order requiring a ballot to be taken."
We are not wanting a ballot; it is the Government side who are clamouring for it. Why do not the Government use the powers they possess. Is it because they saw the hopelessness of the ballot they took among the railwaymen? If the Minister will not do his own job he cannot expect the miners' union to do it for him. Again, the miners do not want from the Government lessons on democracy.
The miners have been consulted extensively on the issues. The claim came from its National Conference. The claim was made and the National Conference was recalled. The matter was sent back to the pits and the branches voted unanimously for an overtime ban. This dispute can be settled only by reason on both sides. The Government should give greater leeway for constructive negotiations. The Home Secretary gave his blessing within Phase 3 which met the requirements of the firemen. As champion of the adjusting factor I have talked about, the Home Secretary can advise the Cabinet on how to do the
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same for miners. That way a settlement can be reached which will stop miners leaving the mines, ensure Britain the supplies of fuel she needs and allow the progress to go on between the N.U.M. and the N.C.B. that they were making before this unnecessary dispute arose. We have seen in these past few weeks the Press attempting to create public prejudice against them. They say that the miners are defying the law or engaged in breaking the law.
Then, there has been no breach of the law by the miners' union. Under the Counter-Inflation Act, as the House knows, the procedure is that the Government set up a Pay Board. Parliament has approved a Price and Pay Code and that Code has no legal authority. Legal authority arises only if a restriction order on remuneration is made by the Pay Board on a proposed settlement. In the miners' case there is no proposed settlement by the Pay Board and no order against any settlement has been made by the Pay Board. Even if there were an order against a settlement and the miners' union disregarded it, it is only the Attorney General who could give authority to proceed against the union, and he also has power to override the Pay Board at any time he likes. It is apparent, therefore, that there is no ground at all for saying that the miners are engaged in breaking the law, or threatening to break the law. All they are doing is to engage in negotiations in support of a claim which they consider to be a justifiable one.
I ask the Ministers on the Front Bench: What law are the miners breaking? What sections of which Act are being broken? What order of the Pay Board are the miners refusing to accept, or trying to overturn? Why is the Attorney General not making an order to release action in the courts? Has the National Coal Board, under Section 33 of the Industrial Relations Act, decided to bring an action against the miners because of the overtime ban? The Government cannot find an answer to these questions, because what the Government have done is to transfer political decisions on to the courts and on to the Pay Board. At the same time, they are trying to pretend they can draw from the courts legal authority for what is really political propaganda. This form of deliberate confusion is

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designed to build up for the Government a good position in public opinion.
Another ridiculous posture of the Government is that the overtime ban is a threat to the Constitution and Parliament. We are asked to believe that miners, who are getting out of mining at the rate of 600 a week because they can get better and cleaner jobs, are threatening the Constitution, which is really nonsensical. My Lords, when this dispute is over, as it will be, there will be a coal shortage next year, not due to industrial dispute but due to wastage; and if it continues at the present rate, when all is peaceful there will not be sufficient men to get the coal. Let the Government get out of their mind that the unions are the problem. The real problem is recruiting men into the mines, and unless they are forthcoming the position will be serious. Maybe some of the fierce critics of the miners outside will volunteer and help the nation to get the coal in ensuing years. But let us face the fact that unless the Government are prepared to pay the miners enough, this problem cannot be solved. Are the Government to-day trying to make overtime compulsory? Are they saying in effect that if men do not work overtime they are undermining the Government? Well, if they think that, they will believe anything.
Then we have the threats of an Election. Was this done to frighten people? We all know as politicians that it is the Prime Minister who calls an Election. He decides when we go to the country, and I for one would welcome the chance. It would not be an Election based on bashing the trade unions or on whether the trade unions hold too much power. It would give the Conservatives an opportunity to explain what their policies have done to the people of this country. They will have to explain why the pound has lost 25 per cent. of its value; how there has been a 40 per cent. increase in food prices; a 13 per cent. bank rate; a huge balance-of-payments deficiency; rents up by 30 shillings a week under their Housing Finance Act; an 11 per cent. mortgage rate; the fantastic prices of houses; the huge reduction in house building, and our terms of entry into the Common Market which are crippling us to-day. These are the issues
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that will be faced in an Election, not an overtime ban by the miners. Whenever in the pits an explosion takes place and men lose their lives, when men are hurled down a shaft at 60 miles an hour to eternity, when men are drowned by inrushes of water, we get sympathy and sentiment by the bucketful. But when men ask for an increase in wages to meet what Government policy has done to their wages, we are attacked right, left and centre. It is about time that this sympathy we get when a catastrophe hits the pits was translated in real terms into wages for the hazards and work the miners undertake for the nation.
As I have said, this fuel crisis is one of oil. From 1955, when the big change to oil started, miners' Members of Parliament in another place have warned both Tory and Labour Governments that years ahead a fuel crisis would arise and that, at the rate the Western World was using oil, the Arabs would conduct a conservation policy and restrict output, with higher prices, and would conserve their oil. We requested, time after time, that pit closures should be slowed down and that we should not make the economy dependent on imported fuel. We always said that the Middle East was so unstable that some day we should find ourselves in difficulty. That day has now arrived, as a result of this country's having based its economy too much on oil. I never thought, when I was Front-Bench speaker for thirteen years in the House of Commons on fuel and power matters, and gave those warnings, that the day would come when we should appease the oil countries; I never thought we should reach the stage when, to get oil, the oil countries would determine our foreign policy. Yet this has happened.
The rundown of the coal industry has gravely damaged our industrial strength. The rundown was based on too narrowly commercial a view of profits, costs and prices. At least what we said for years is now being grasped: that there was no permanent guarantee of cheap, plentiful oil. We urged for the maintenance of coal in our economy of 180 million tons a year. I remember Lord Robens, as Chairman, fighting for 200 millions in the economy; but no Government, either Tory or Labour, would listen to

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our pleas. Even the present Prime Minister, on December 1, 1966, said:
"In my opinion the closure of pits should move as fast as possible, and faster than it has been doing."
He made the same mistake as the Labour Government did with that advice because they closed the pits fast after that—and what has been the result? Ghost villages were created; mining stock was lost to the industry and it will never return; those who are in the pits are getting out, and they in turn are keeping their sons from going into the pit. That has been the result of the policies of the past, and it has made us so dependent upon oil, with all the consequences that we face in the future.
This oil problem loomed ahead of us long before the Arab-Israeli war. Although the issues of the Middle East war brought the oil crisis much more sharply into focus, we were bound to face a long-term policy of conservation by the Arab States. Those who have followed the policy of the OPEC countries know that this is their future policy. They intend to have their own equipment to make use of their own oil to the advantage of their own countries, and I cannot blame them for it as it is their oil. Strange as it may seem, this is a policy that I would advise our Government to operate in respect of our North Sea resources. We ought to have a policy, not of trying to get it all out in one year, or two years or three years, but of conserving it. We should not try to get it out in the shortest possible time. We should make use of our reserves to benefit our own country. No doubt there will arise problems of Britain's relationship with the Common Market. We are sitting on great coal reserves—more than the other Common Market countries. We have oil and natural gas on the Continental Shelf. We have the greatest know-how in nuclear energy and we can build up in the future a very powerful situation. It is not in the British interests, whichever Government may be in power, that because the Government took us into the Common Market, we should accept as a fact that the reserves should be regarded as European reserves. Sitting as we are on massive reserves, the national interest must be paramount as the Government consider the position of our own raw materials. It must be made clear to all
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that our North Sea reserves are an essential national British interest and are not to be traded away for the vague idea of a united Europe. North Sea oil will be expensive, but nevertheless the reserves of oil and natural gas will be a boon to us in our balance of payments problem.
What we should now do is to get the dual-fired stations in electricity on to coal. We ought to have electrification of the railways as sharply as possible; we ought to have massive research into improving existing energy sources and towards discovering new ones, and we should also clear off the roads the great lorries carrying goods that ought to go by rail. In future years coal has to play a larger part than it has in the last 15 years. There ought to be a long-term plan to achieve an optimum level of coal production, and from where it can most effectively be produced. Coal costs nothing in foreign exchange and is mined by a body of responsible workers. In this context it is more sensible to pay miners a living wage than to pay exorbitant prices (as we shall have to do) to the oil-producing countries. We must conserve our fossil fuels until nuclear power can take over a larger share of electricity generation, late in this century or early in the next.
Facing the nation is the fact that oil is no longer abundant, and the private motorist and the road haulier will find that they will have less choice of fuel suppliers. Fuel suppliers independent of the big oil companies will find it increasingly difficult to secure any fuel to sell. Secondly, petrol and diesel fuel will be increasingly expensive. The price of crude oil has already reached levels that were not expected until 1980. Iran is today holding an oil auction which looks like realising very high prices indeed. In the future we must use every endeavour to ease our economy from its dependence on imported oil, and all those who can help in this will be benefactors to this country. Although Sheikh Yamani has told us that there is no reason to ration petrol, I ask the Government not to trust that statement too much. It is clear that the cut of 20 per cent. in Britain's normal oil needs is to stand, which means that there will be a severe shortage throughout this winter. Sheikh Yamani has made it clear that

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Arab oil supplies will flow or falter depending upon whether we support or oppose Arab policies in the Middle East. That means that the blackmail will go on and will not be limited to the present conflict in the Middle East. The situation for the future is, that whenever or where-ever the Arabs decide their interests are threatened, the oil weapon will be used against us.
For years past the National Union of Mineworkers have warned Governments that depending on Middle East oil was treading on a slippery slope and that the day would come when we should regret it. That day is now here. We must now develop our own resources and never again rely on Arab oil. We must not leave our wellbeing in the hands of oil countries who control the oil wells. My people, the miners, need no lectures on patriotism. Our past history as miners is one of undoubted patriotism. If we had an Election and the present Government were to win again, that would not cure the malady—there would continue to be marching feet from those in the mining industry unless decent wages were paid—nor would it get fuel dug from the earth.
I say to the Government, in conclusion, that we must get the fuel industries working contentedly so that we in this country may work out a fuel policy that will save us from future crises.
8.20 p.m.
LORD KINGS NORTON: My Lords, I am sure we have all listened to the noble Lord, Lord Blyton, with the greatest attention and respect, but noble Lords would not expect me to follow him in that very remarkable speech, except in one or two respects, namely, concerning the conservation and husbandry of our fuel resources. I rise chiefly to make a plea for what perhaps I may be permitted to call my particular kind of Energy Commission, the kind of Standing Committee which I put to your Lordships on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, on November 7. I asked then that there should be set up a Standing Committee whose chief objective should be to study the transition which will inevitably be made sooner or later from hydrocarbon fuels to alternative sources of energy. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord
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Taylor of Mansfield, and from the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, that in some respects coal and natural gas resources are still enormous; nevertheless, they are not illimitable. At some time or other we shall have to make the great change.
I believe that at least some of our present difficulties are due to lack of imaginative planning a decade ago, and that a permanent agency, undisturbed by changes in Government, would be of the greatest value in plotting our energy course ahead. Obviously, the course would be changed from time to time. I think the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, made this point clearly. We could not plan a course which would last without change for years ahead, but the Commission could take account all the time of the trends which are influencing us. Despite the recent discoveries of new sources of oil and gas, it is not too soon to plan for the days when these fuels will be, if not exhausted, at least getting very expensive to win.
I think the forward thinking would be of two kinds. First, in the shorter term this Standing Committee which I urge upon the House should plan the much more economic use of the hydrocarbon fuels remaining to us. To-day, we use them in an appallingly wasteful manner and we must learn how to husband our resources. For example, we could economise in the energy used for domestic and industrial heating, as has been said already this afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing. We could carry much further than we have in the past the utilisation of the heat rejected by power stations and industrial processes. In some new housing schemes and in blocks of fiats we could use solar energy for domestic heating, using quite simple heat exchangers on the roof, as is done already in various parts of the world. We get quite enough sun for this to make a useful contribution to the energy husbandry programme. We could move towards automobile engines of smaller capacity and could well economise by encouraging light vans and commercial vehicles to copy their larger brethren in moving to diesel engines. These are just a few examples. Great savings could be made by a programme which embraced a number of small contributions. Such a policy would be designed to hold the fort, so to speak, while the great new sources of the future

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were being harnessed and the necessary apparatus for them was being developed.
In the speech I made to your Lordships' House on November 7, I discussed some of these new sources, and I do not intend to bore your Lordships by repeating them, except in one respect. I wish to emphasise what I said about the appalling problem presented by nuclear fission as a primary source of energy. There is the appalling problem of the safe disposal of the deadly atomic wastes. Without controlled nuclear fusion, I believe it would be wrong to allow ourselves to be entirely dependent, or largely dependent, upon nuclear fission for our primary source of energy.
If we are not, what is left? The winds, the tides, the waves, the waterfalls, the heat of the earth and the heat of the sun. When one does the necessary sums against the background of the energy demands of the future on what the winds, the waves and the tides can produce, one realises, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, said, that they can make only relatively small contributions to satisfying the global demand. When one starts to spell "energ…" one is never sure whether one is going to spell "energy" or "Energlyn" because these are almost synonymous. The noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, speaks with the greatest possible authority. I entirely support and admire the vision he gave of a new South Wales using the power of the sea. But it is true, and I think he would agree, that whilst we can and must do all these things, and we must use our water power to the utmost, of all the things I mentioned the only ones that can take the place of oil, which is used on such an enormous scale, are either nuclear or solar energy. Of the two, I should prefer solar energy because it is a system which would produce no pollution and no dangerous wastes which we scarcely know what to do with.
One may say that this is looking too far into the future. I do not think it is; because the solar cell is today at the stage which nuclear fission was at 30 years ago. It is now that we should be thinking of developing and working towards what could be the salvation of the world in the year 2010 or 2020, or whatever it may be. The great inexhaustible source of the sun about which
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I spoke to your Lordships a month ago can sustain us as far ahead as thought can reach; but we have a lot of work to do, a lot of research, a lot of development and much construction. The Energy Transition Committee, or my version, if I may say so, of the Energy Commission, which in her reply on November 7 the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said was an idea that the Government should note and consider, would advise on how solar energy should be absorbed and translated.
There are certainly several ways, some biological and some physical. A month ago I instanced the widespread use of solar cells as a means of generating electricity. Of course, that electricity would be used partly in the way we use electricity now, but some would probably be used to produce fuels for industrial and vehicular use. For example, hydrogen could be produced by the electrolysis of water. It could be burnt as a fuel in internal combustion engines with the great advantage that it would cause no pollution; it would produce only water. But a great deal of work would be necessary to devise safe conditions. I believe that another more hopeful possibility would be to combine it with carbon dioxide to make methanol, another liquid fuel which could be used in internal combustion engines with as much facility as we now use petrol.
In these few minutes I have been trying to indicate the kinds of forward thoughts which I believe the Energy Transition Committee would have if it came into being. I am not going to take up much more of your Lordships' time, but this Energy Transition Committee would show the way in which we could provide for a future without embarrassing periods such as we are now going through and without, in the longer term, experiencing acute shortages as the hydrocarbon fuels dry up. I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, replies he will be able to give some hope that such a Standing Committee as I have envisaged may be created. In conclusion, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, who in these debates almost always follows me, for the fact that I cannot stay to hear his speech because I have another appointment; but I hope to get back in time to hear the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn.
8.30 p.m.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, for those kind remarks from the noble Lord, I am grateful. On many occasions I have followed the noble Lord, and I am quite sure the House is all the better for the expertise in his speeches. I liked his phrase that we are now in for energy husbandry, and I will use that as a peg for my speech. I will try to take a leaf out of his book, because he was kind enough to delay the House with that excellent speech for only about 10 minutes. That is sometimes the fate of many of us; sometimes we are lucky and early in the debate, and other times, because of the extent and importance of the debate, we are lower down, and it would be unfair to delay the House too long. Consequently, I am going to omit about 80 per cent. of what I was going to say. Anyway it has been said.
I want to add this. To-day has been a teach-in again; there have been some brilliant speeches, and none more constructive and helpful than those of my two noble friends Lord Taylor and Lord Blyton who have worked in the mining industry most of their lives and know what they are talking about. That is what hurt me when the Lord Chancellor, in that after-dinner speech, quite unnecessarily—I do not think he meant to be malicious; I have known him about 35 years and he goes off half cock sometimes—made reference to the miners and the mining industry and their patriotism. The villages of South Wales are full of war memorials, as well as those in Durham, Yorkshire and Fife, to miners who had to be called from the trenches in order to cut coal—war memorials of those who never will come back. We had to prevent miners going out as sappers, in World War I particularly. So let us get rid of this stupid inference that they are unpatriotic.
Let us boil the manpower problem down to a sentence: the miners have to work overtime because we have not enough miners. That is the answer, and if we stayed here three days and three nights no other answer would come. The reason is that the mining valleys of Great Britain provide fewer and fewer recruits to the mining industry. It was fascinating to listen to my noble friends Lord Energlyn and Lord Arwyn, a mining engineer and a professor of geology, who brought out the
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possibilities of some future approach. It is worth reminding this House, when we talk about trade unions being unconstructive, that in 1972 the T.U.C. brought out an integrated national fuel policy based on the maximum use of Britain's indigenous fuels of coal, natural gas and oil. The N.U.M. demanded that such a policy should go on and they have been demanding this for years. They have put forward a short-term 20-point plan for an energy policy. No notice was taken, because of this pathetic apotheosis of growth, and this pathetic belief that we were going to get oil flowing like milk and honey as long as we lived. As A. J. P. Taylor said in the Sunday Express last Sunday, probably this is good for the world. It may be the end of the oil age.
Our transition problem, whatever we do about atomic energy, is what are we going to fill in with for the next twenty years. It will take twenty years before a reactor gets going. I have warned the House and other people, and I have spent many years trying to understand this problem of radioactive waste and effluent. One reactor produces in a year a 12 foot by 5-foot drum of radioactive waste that has to be covered in lead or concrete and sunk in the sea somewhere. On television the other night, somebody said: "Ah, that is a problem for the future; it is not ours"—silly little man! The radioactive waste affects the genetic future of mankind. It is interesting that to-day, while we are talking about this, Newport, Mon-mouthshire, has had an escape of radioactivity from an X-ray machine; the centre of Newport had to be isolated, and they talk of shielding it with a lead covering. There one sees the infancy of some of this debating, if one does not also take into account the vital biological and ethnological snags in the use of this most difficult technological weapon that we have; namely, radioactivity and the energy from the atom. It may be that next century we shall master this problem.
But our problem is in the next twenty years, and I am worried that we are not putting enough emphasis on our natural resources of, for instance, power, coal and hydro-electricity. I really believe that solar energy could make quite a contribution. I can go back to my days in South Wales, when, even as schoolboys, we were talking about the possibilities of

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harnessing the tides. My noble friend Lord Energlyn dealt in passing with this problem of harnessing the tides in the Bristol Channel. We talked in 1932 and 1935, and way back, I can remember, in World War I, of the possibility of generating electricity from the Severn. I contend that it is absolute idiocy to talk of digging a hole from Dover to Calais to run a train through for which we do not have the energy at the present moment. Why not divert that to the Severn Bore and changing the Severn tides into electricity? In ten years we would have that supply of electricity.
I will not quote from The Times in detail, because this House is well informed, but your Lordships may have read the other day, and seen the letter by a number of firms, talking of the potential tidal power of the Severn Estuary. Our knowledge of engineering now, as compared with 1945, say these senior partners of Sir Frederick Snow and Partners, is such that the Severn Estuary could give a constant annual output of more than forty times the energy that we envisaged in 1945. Therefore, it is an immediate possibility and I would divert Government capital now to the conversion of this power. There are other parts of Britain where hydroelectric power could usefully be used, including Scotland. My noble friend Lord Blyton, in his excellent speech, talked about building no more turbines depending on oil, but rather depending on our native fuel, coal.
There is something strange happening to mankind. The trouble is that people do not seem to know why they are alive; they move around miserable, grizzling; petty little Hitlers now at petrol pumps say, "Take the cap off yourself or you will not get petrol". That is an actual incident. In the name of God, what is happening to the British people! These are not things that have made Britain's greatness. We are losing our charisma and we are losing it because of the ugly face of capitalism. I do not know what cosmetics we are going to stick on that face to change it. It is an unpleasant face, and it is infectious. I would say that in this energy crisis of the world we should hold up on growth. It is happiness people want; it is learning to live together. I hope to God we will now stop building mighty motorways
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that destroy the possibility of agricultural production worth millions of pounds over a period of time. To go on worshipping growth when you have not the energy to maintain growth is to me fundamentally paradoxical.
The other lesson to learn is in strategy and in military affairs. If you are in such a mess as this with your energy problem, what does NATO mean; what does protection mean? The best thing we can do is look to our own moat and develop the indigenous fuels that we have. Technological society is a weak society. Technological society is fragile and vulnerable, and it is at the mercy of aggressive individuals.
I think that it was my noble friend Lord Wigg, in his excellent analysis of the problem, who had the courage to make a brave speech loaded with truth. In his speech he referred to the kind of aggressiveness that is growing in society. An underground newspaper was circulated in London not so long ago telling people how to make an atom bomb. People laughed at me twenty years ago when I said that the day will come when an atom bomb can be made out of a milk tin. But this underground newspaper that was circulated said that the best place at which to explode it would be at Charing Cross, and you would destroy not only the Houses of Parliament but elsewhere, much better than Guy Fawkes. There is something evil in this. This is because people have lost their faith: they do not believe in politicians, nor in the future destiny of this nation. Now we can remedy this situation by pulling together.
I have cut out about 80 per cent. of my speech, and this is my final contribution. I believe that the Severn Bore, and the Severn hydro-electric scheme, could light up possibly half of Britain. By using that money and Government know-how to harness those tides we could get that energy with much more speed than ever we shall get the silly old hole driven under the sea from here to France. I believe more than ever that we should open up the railways as quickly as possible in the old mining areas, because those narrow valleys cannot stand lorries running, up and down with coal as fluently and as fast as the trains used to run down to Cardiff in the old days, or to the ports in the North East of England.

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If we do these things, as the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, said, we shall be following a policy of energy husbandry. At this moment that is vital. As I said when I opened my short speech—and I have spoken for only about 12 minutes—most things in what I call this teach-in, because that is what it has been, have been said from both sides of the House. I will not take all the controversial parts, but one point should be emphasised. It was illustrated dynamically by my noble friend Lord Wigg. Not only does this difficulty apply to oil, but if we opened our eyes we should see that it applies to fertilisers, phosphates and other precious raw materials. In many of the underprivileged parts of the world there will be a famine and a shortage of these supplies. Consequently, without too much political claptrap, we need energy and commodity conservation husbandry to face the future, and the sooner we get it the better for Britain.
8.44 p.m.
LORD REDESDALE: My Lords, I always believe in being brief, and after so many major and weighty speeches I shall be even more brief than the noble Lord who has just spoken, who, I must say, has for him been very brief to-night. He has raised a great many interesting points. So many of the things that one would have said have already been said this evening, but I should like to speak to the immediate future. One of the problems which I foresee if we have rationing is that the oil companies will wish to deliver, or retain the right to deliver, to retailers of their choice. This action could cut out a great many private small retailers. It would put them out of business and would also inconvenience the public, because in the future there will be fewer outlets and less service all round. I hope that the Government will resist any demands by the oil companies that they should retain this right. I feel that the basis should be that of a cut-down to a percentage of the supplies that they took in the past, so that everybody gets a share of what they received in the past.
My next point is that in any crisis there are always villains of the piece. I am not discussing the major issues covered earlier, but coming down to those people who are not looking after the interests of the
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country or of the public. Many filling stations have signs saying, "Closed, no petrol", but I happen to know that, along with some other interests, quite a number of these sites have considerable stocks of petrol. There is a considerable amount of fuel which could be used, and perhaps is being held back for a possible price increase. I appreciate that it is difficult for the Government to take action to get these stocks released now, but I hope that thought will be concentrated on ways and means of doing so.
I come on to the subject of the waste of energy. As has already been said tonight, a large proportion of domestic heating is wasted. By simple lagging or double glazing, heat losses can be considerably reduced. However, the real losses are in industry, and one of the biggest losses—although I may be corrected, and at the moment it may be uneconomic to correct this—is from those monuments to waste, the cooling towers. These are absent from round this area because the heat is used for district heating, which is one of the few places where it is used. Obviously it costs money, but the price of fuel is rising very considerably, so let us try and spend money now on encouraging district heating.
While still being very brief—I shall be the briefest speaker to-night—another point I wanted to raise concerns the encouragement of savings. Industry should be encouraged to save. If this money is found immediately in terms of grants or allowances, or in some other way, then in the very near future we could see considerable savings. For instance, a brewery in the North East has saved 10 per cent. of its fuel by putting in a computer programme to plan the deliveries of beer to their pubs. There, there was a 10 per cent. saving. Probably it could be more. In some other industries it could be even greater. It costs money to install such a programme, but it is a worth while saving. I hope that the Government can find ways of encouraging industry to spend money on this type of planning which would make for very considerable savings in the future.
Before we get to these exciting thoughts of an Energy Commission, which is very long term—when I say "very lone term ", I mean that it takes

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time to set up a Commission and time for that Commission to become effective—we could make savings in the near future, and I think that they would be worthwhile. All that is required is a certain amount of encouragement from the Government in terms of grants.
8.49 p.m.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I have no wish and no qualification to add to the very large number of admirable speeches to which we have listened on this highly technical matter. I have learned a lot from listening to them, and I hope and believe that other noble Lords have too. What I would ask your Lordships to do, at the same time as considering the technical aspects of these problems, is to turn your attention to some of the political lessons that we should draw from the present energy crisis.
There are many that we can draw, but I would put to your Lordships only two of them—the two that I think are the most important. The first is this. It has been manifest to experts, and to a certain number of non-experts, for very many years now that, whether or not there was going to be a crisis in the Middle East which would cut off our oil, there would undoubtedly be a slowing down of the amount of oil which we were going to get from our traditional suppliers. It has been manifest that, sooner or later—and it is amazing that it has been later rather than sooner—they would wake up to the fact that they were selling, in depreciating currency, a diminishing, wasting asset. and that sooner or later (and, as I say, I am surprised that it has been later) they would decide to restrict the amount that they would send us and increase their prices. That they have done, quite regardless of any Middle Eastern war or dispute of any kind.
That is something which has been known to those who study these matters for a very long time, but there has been a grave political failing—and the failing has been just as much on this side of the House as it has on the other. Our politicians, who are people upon whom we should be able to look as statesmen, have not recognised this. They have been so intent on dealing with day-to-day problems that they have been unable to raise their eyes and look ahead for five or ten years to plan the overall policy
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of this country, whether it be for energy or whether it be for anything else. I suggest to your Lordships most forcibly that this crisis will not have been in vain if we now realise, very late in the day, that for the welfare of this country we must have at least two and preferably three senior Ministers in every Government, in each Cabinet that comes along, whose job it is, not to deal with the day-to-day problems—how to get out of the shipwreck which is impending today—but how so to plot our course that we do not run on to the rocks in ten years' time. After all, if I may use the analogy of a petrol tanker, the quarter-of-a-million-ton tanker to-day needs something like 20 miles or so in order to alter course. It is no good the captain of that tanker spending his time seeing what is under the bows of the ship: he must be looking ahead and plotting his course so that he does not run on to the rocks. We have failed to plot that course sufficiently, and so we have our captains and our senior officers running round to see how the leaks can be plugged, whether the lifeboats are in order and all the rest of it, and they are still failing to look ahead and plot a safe course for the future.
I am not blaming the Secretary of State personally at all, but it is disastrous that the Secretary of State responsible for this matter, Mr. Peter Walker, should now have to busy himself with whether power stations get a few extra hundred thousand gallons of oil or not. That is a job which can be left to the lower levels of government. He must be thinking of the wider, longer term, and he has not time to do it. So my first plea is that the lesson we should learn from this is that we must not only have a "Think tank"—that is a good idea—but that there should be senior politicians who are going to make use of that "Think tank", who will give it problems, asking what is going to happen in the various aspects of our central national life in the next decades, and then make the political decisions which will minimise any ill effects which might arise from those things and maximise the benefits we can get from them. That is the first lesson.
The second lesson is a more specific Party political one, if you like. I do not intend it to be so, but one cannot avoid it. Our energy crisis at the present time

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is, as we all know, exacerbated by the fact that we are not getting as much coal from our own resources as we expected to and as we had every reason to think we should be getting. I will not go into the reasons for that—it has been dealt with far better than I could possibly deal with it—but I would suggest this to your Lordships. We have now, at last, moved away, albeit unwillingly on the part of certain political sections of our community, from the belief that prices (and that includes the prices for labour as well as the prices for goods) should be determined by the free play of the markets, by the market mechanism. We have said that it is the job of the Government—and as a Socialist I praise a Conservative Government for doing this —to hold the ring and to see that no section of the community is able to grow fat upon the needs, the shortages and the urgencies of the rest of the community. We have made that decision and it is good. But from the practical, political point of view it is very difficult to make such a decision easily, quietly and happily. It is a very big change and it requires an enormous amount of political skill and real statesmanship in order to bring it about in a manner which is going to be effective.
Again without taking sides in this matter at all, how can one expect any group—at the present time the miners, and shortly the railwaymen—to forgo at this time their enormous economic advantage, the use of which over the generations they have been taught by the Conservative capitalist philosophy is the right way to get on in the world, and on grounds of patriotism say, "We will not press our advantage"? How can you expect them to do that at a time when not only do they see millions being made by property developers, commodity speculators and a whole lot of other people but also the money being made by people at much lower levels—by the bricklayers' labourers being paid their £80 to £100 a week; the temporary typists, young girls fresh out of college, being paid their £40 a week? How can you expect the skilled, trained locomotive driver to say, "In the interests of the country I will get less, happily, than the typist"? How can you expect the underground coal-face miner, with all his hardships and dangers, and with
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all his skills, to say, "I am going to take home part of the wage I should get if I was a bricklayer's labourer"?
That is the problem facing the Government to-day. It is the problem of trying to convince the most essential sections of the community, whether they be coal miners, engine drivers, doctors or teachers—the whole range of them—that we have now moved into a policy where market forces are pushed into the background and value to the community, skill, danger, unpleasantness and all sorts of other things are going to be the deciding factors in a wages policy. That, I believe, is the second lesson which we can learn from this crisis to-day. And if we learn that lesson, if we profit from it, and if the wise men among our politicians, among the whole range of society, can devote their minds to how we can avoid this sort of thing happening in future, the unpleasantness, the discomfort, the near-disaster that is facing us now, may not have been in vain.
8.58 p.m.
LORD HARVEY OF PRESTBURY: My Lords, I agree with almost every word that the noble Lord has said in his direct and short speech. It must be maddening for a miner or any other worker who has skill and who faces danger to see men making money as easily as some people do; but what the noble Lord is really doing is making the case for Phase 3—and I am glad to have his agreement on that. There was a question to-night about the patriotism of the miners. I hope this is not being called into question by anybody. The miners, in my view, have never lacked patriotism, either in their jobs or in war, and we owe them a great debt. There is probably only one worse job than that of the coal miner at the face, and that is the job of the deck-hand on a distance-fishing trawler. I did a trip once myself, and I can only think that that is the worst job. He does not get into his own bed at night, and he is away 21 days, probably longer. It is a ghastly job, and those men and the miners deserve very high, exceptional wages.
I will not go into detail, as I have no ambition to "stir it up", but I hope that the miners, who, as I have said, are a very fine body of men, will see their way clear, through their advisers, to accept the terms which are being offered,

723
on the strict proviso that after the given period of six months they are at the top of the list when we are through this immediate emergency. Could not more be done about the pensions for these men? I do not know what their pensions are now, but when I was the Member of Parliament for Macclesfield a number of miners from the Potteries area lived in my constituency and I know that the amount of their pensions was appalling; they received pittances. The amounts are probably more now, but railwaymen and miners get poor pensions and something should be done about that.
My Lords, we have had a wide debate, and if the Government were to put a fine comb through most of the speeches they would find some good ideas on which to work. I was impressed by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Energlen, whom I had not heard speak before. I thought it was a magnificent speech and I congratulate the noble Lord. I should like to make one suggestion; could not more be done in the way of freight-carrying by the railways? That is a point which has not been emphasised in this debate. We have immense juggernaut lorries on our roads, but our rail services are to be improved and they are pretty good now. I think we should be proud of our railway system and of the rate at which it is improving and I should like to see something done to get more freight carried by the railways.
I would willingly see the Maplin project disappear and be replaced by the provision of hydro-electric stations. We cannot do everything in this country. We have the technological skill, but our resources are limited. As the noble Lord, Lord Energlen, said, the French have brought about a great achievement on the River Rance and the same could be done in the Bristol Channel. I was impressed by a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, who talked about the price of oil as a commodity, and he referred to other commodities. I think we have to look ahead because every day the price of commodities, such as lead, zinc and tin, is going up. The peoples of the Free World have got to get their heads together to see where they stand over this matter. I am not referring to bartering or holding off supplies; I mean that we must bring some sense into the world, otherwise there will
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be real shortages. In the weeks since the Middle East war started I have been disappointed at the lack of leadership from the Economic Community. The members have not met as they should, and I think that, now we are in the Common Market for better or worse, Britain should play a greater part in these important matters in the days ahead.
I wish, my Lords, to make one or two points about the chemical industry, with which until recently I was actively engaged over a period of twenty years. A number of problems affect this industry and almost every other industry in the country, and I am not satisfied that the matter has been properly understood or dealt with by the Government. Not only does this industry need oil as a fuel but also it needs oil as a feedstock, as the starting material from which a wide range of products are made for a number of other industries. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said he had been assured that the industry could absorb a reduction of the magnitude proposed in supplies of oil, without severe disruption, but that more than 10 per cent. would bring problems. In a subsequent announcement from the Department of Trade and Industry it was stated that the production of chemical substances derived from petroleum feedstocks was included as a "priority use", but it remained unclear what was the practical effect of this priority classification.
Chemical manufacture other than petrochemicals did not have a priority classification, even though petroleum-based materials might be used to supply energy to endothermic reactions, or to supply the latent heat needs of the process in melting, evaporation and so on. Subsequently naptha was stated not to be under control, but fuel to the napthausing part of the chemical industry apparently remains under control. Because of the low output of the industry in November a year ago, the arbitrary reference date chosen for the allocations meant a cut to 90 per cent. of supplies at that date. This, my Lords, would represent a cut of between 25 per cent. and 30 per cent. of the chemical industry's present needs for petroleum fuels. Since chemical products find their way into most manufacturing industries as raw materials or operating supplies, a reduction in the chemical output would have

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a multiplying effect over the whole manufacturing sector.
Historically, the chemical industry has a favourable export trade balance, exporting about 25 per cent. to 30 per cent. of its output in 1972. I know that these views have been expressed to the Secretary of State but in my opinion there are two principles that should be observed. The first is that whatever priority it was decided to give in the national interest to petroleum-based supplies to the chemical industry, the same degree of priority should be applied to such materials, both as fuels and as feedstocks, and it should apply to the total chemical industry and not simply to that part which uses petroleum-based feedstocks as raw material. Secondly, if it was necessary to make cuts in the feed material, this should be done in such a way that the chemical industry would not be put in the position of being a bottleneck in production for the many industries downstream which depend on the chemical industry for their supplies or raw materials.
There is one other point I wish to make, my Lords. I am told that P.V.C., which usually sells at about £150 a ton, has been exported at £400 a ton. It is a worthy achievement that exports of that magnitude are being obtained, but our manufacturing industry is having to import the same material at something like £500 a ton. I hope that we shall not overdo exports of material which is needed by manufacturers in this country. I do not think that the technicalities of the chemical industry are fully understood by the Minister. It is not like engineering. It is a comparatively new industry and I hope that these points will be examined.
Many noble Lords have said to-day that we are going through a crisis, and undoubtedly we are. But it is a challenge. I believe that if the Government will put responsible Ministers who are effective on television—not many of them are—to explain exactly what is the position almost from day to day, and if they explain in a language which the average individual can understand, I think that they will get a response from the public. The British people will never fail you if they are given the facts and if they do not have the wool pulled over
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their eyes. I beg of the Government to do this, and I am sure that they will get a response, and much good may come out of this crisis in the long run.
9.8 p.m.
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, I could not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Harvey of Prestbury, more. I only doubt whether the Government would want, 18 months before the Election, to put the whole situation frankly before the British people. I doubt it very much, and we shall see which of us is right. May I for once congratulate my Front Bench in their astuteness in picking this theme of debate on this Wednesday. We have had three previous debates on this subject, so they must have learned quite a lot about it. Nevertheless, they were so astute as to know that we shall be sitting until nine o'clock in the evening, Lord after Lord spouting the most admirable sentiments.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, praise from the noble Lord is praise indeed.
LORD BALOGH: I hope also, you see, that in future statements from the Front Bench will be more in tune with that of the Party. The problem is really one of short-term and long-term. In the short-term, of course, we can do very little. We have, on the whole, relied on things going very much as they were going. We have relied very much on getting the raw materials 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 per cent. higher than the year before, and we are now jolted out of this position. In a way I think we ought to be very grateful to the Arab Sheikhs, and various other potentates, for having jolted us out because it could have been done at a very much worse time for this country, though bad the position is. I think that here I have to join with the noble Lord, Lord Harvey of Prestbury, in hoping that the Government will take very good care so to ration feed stock, petroleum and raw materials as not to cause unemployment. This, in the short term, is the optimum way of dealing with the matter. It seems to me that it is unfortunate that the consumer interest is now intruding, as it has to intrude in a democratic country, 18 months before the Election, and I hope that the Government will as much as possible disregard the consumer and put the emphasis of

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their policy upon the producer. In that case, I think we shall be able to weather the crisis without very much unemployment, and without a real setback in our production process, apart from the possibility that we might have a crisis of a financial character of which we cannot talk to-day.
In the longer run, I think what is absolutely essential is to get our raw material supply much more firmly under control than we have had it in the last decade or so. It seems to me that we have been far too ready to accept calculations of an economic character—my colleagues and myself are very much to blame for this—in deciding the policy of the country. It seems to me that it is very much more important than we had realised, in the new conditions where the small countries seem to have a power of compelling large countries, relying on the dutifulness and reasonableness and fairness of these countries.
It seems to me that we shall have to have a substitution of coal for oil, and probably hydrogen. I think we shall have to do our utmost to get the last penny out of the North Sea in order to be able to carry this through. I beg the Government to think again. They have begun to think again, but I think they will have to look very much more into the sort of problems which I have, through the luck of the draw, been able to draw to your Lordships' attention.
It is in this context that I want to refer, for just a minute, to the mining problem. There is no question that mining is a dangerous and exceptional industry. I think, on the whole, one ought to be able to work out some sort of satisfactory settlement with the miners. It is a regrettable fact that the present Phase 3 legislation, from this point of view, is very much more crude and primitive and unsatisfactory than was the White Paper issued by Sir Stafford Cripps when he imposed a freeze on wages, because one of the special exceptions in that Paper was that there was a shortage of manpower in an essential industry. This exception has not been mentioned in any of the recent declarations by the Government. I entreat the Government to look very closely at this point again. On the other hand, of course, there is no doubt that any exception would shake the incomes
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policy and, therefore, could be negotiated only if the general run of trade unions would accept the special case as a special case. Here I should like to entreat the trade unions, with whom I feel great solidarity, to be reasonable, so as not to give any possible interpretation of their attitude as one which is contrary to national interests. My Lords, we have had a very long debate. I had a bet with the noble Lord, Lord Walston, that I would sit down earlier than he did, and I do that very thing.
9.16 p.m.
LORD REAY: My Lords, we can be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for bringing forward this debate at this particular time. His Motion, couched as it is in terms that do not intend to confine discussion either to domestic or international considerations, but which permit of both, and the crisis being such as to justify either, I shall take the option of speaking almost exclusively about certain international and political consideration.
The events which have succeeded each other with such bewildering rapidity over the last two months mark a milestone in our lifetime. Fundamental changes in the distribution of wealth and power, not simply locally, but internationally, have been demonstrated and accentuated. Big question marks hang equally over the future of those countries from whom this wealth and power has been taken, those to whom it has gone, and others—for example, the developing countries—who are not directly involved. Within our own democratic capitalistic system we have been made starkly aware of our weakness; namely, that we depend for our raw materials on sources which we can no longer control, but which others can now in combination control, as a result both of their own political development and of rising world consumption. For the first time we have had to face the possibility of forgoing improvements in our own economic wealth, with uncertainty over when this trend to which we have been used, and which is built into so many of our social policies, can be resumed.
Like other noble Lords, I am sure that some of the consequences will be beneficial. Internationally, aside from the profound changes that have occurred

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and the eventually new patterns of co-operation between countries of greatly different experience that will need to follow, this crisis should have, and I believe in the end will have, a powerful positive effect on the integration of Europe. I have reservations about a single aspect of our short-term policy in this respect which I shall enter into more fully in a moment. But the need and urgency for Europe to integrate its policies, its resources and its decision-taking procedures could not have been more strongly demonstrated.
Secondly, our societies have not hitherto tackled as seriously as they might, and as they will have to, the problem of the scarcity of resources, including the waste of resources, within the competitive capitalistic system. I do not think it will be seriously disputed that a political organisation that has enabled the major sources of oil to be controlled at the present time, and enabled demands to be made of us in return for its continued supply, has acted simply from an economic point of view as a foretaste of what our experience would in any case have become in a world in which consumption continually rises, but resources are finite. By bringing this matter from the domain of the prophet into the painful arena of public experience, the chances have at once been improved both for the better internal adaptation of these societies to the possibilities and the expectation of scarcity, and for the international collaboration of all fronts without which such adaptation cannot proceed very far, or achieve very much.
I must confess that I am disturbed by one aspect of the current crisis, and that is the matter of the continued embargo on Holland and the fact that other member-States of the Community, in particular Britain and France, have not pledged to assist her with oil supplies. Many people have taken this up in the recent period as a question of principle, and I should like to look at it a little more closely. Perhaps I should say that I have myself long-standing connections with Holland, and my family at home is there—but this is not why I am intervening. The observations and arguments I shall use derive from considerations of the interest of the Community as a whole, including this country, and they would
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apply whichever member-State found herself now in the position of Holland. It seems to me inconceivable that the member-States of the Community could, beyond a certain point, allow another of their members to suffer serious hardship—and I am thinking in terms of loss of production and employment—from which they did not suffer or from which they suffered much less acutely, and which they could alleviate by a change of policy, albeit undertaken at a certain risk. In such circumstances, how would it be possible for us, for example, to ask for support and, still less, to expect the support of such a member-State or of other member-States for measures of a longer-term character which we wanted the Community to adopt? Indeed, to permit such a situation to arise would be incompatible with the maintenance of the policy of establishing a European Union, and since I have no doubt that this Government are sincerely committed to such a policy we must conclude that in the end we and other member-States of the Community will in fact give Holland assistance if this present oil embargo is maintained.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord could enlighten me on one point? Holland, we know, is in trouble with the Arabs because they made a pro-Israeli statement at the beginning of the War. Does the noble Lord know whether the Dutch Government cleared that statement through the political co-operation machinery of the European Community? I asked this question of our own Government the other day, but they did not answer it, and I can understand the reasons for their reticence.
LORD REAY: My Lords, I am not sure that I can answer that question, but I was going to come on to deal with the general point the noble Lord has raised in a moment or two. The question therefore arises: should this be made clear sooner rather than later? At the present time, it seems to me quite plain that the Dutch Government and people do not feel they have had the assurance they need that the rest of Europe will not allow their country to suffer worse than themselves. It is not a convincing argument to say that now there is no evidence that she is suffering worse because the Dutch (and everyone

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else) know that she is facing a particular danger. If Holland began to suffer more severely than the rest of us, or even if she feared she was about to—and we are in a siutation in which events within as well as outside Europe can move quickly, and populations can suddenly become afraid for their future and angry even with their friends—if she then started to retaliate, or even seriously threatened to do so, if she used her veto in the Council, if she threatened not to supply the natural gas she is contracted to supply to other member-States, then we should have lost considerable advantage in having to give the assurances or the assistance in those circumstances rather than in these. Therefore the deterioration in the political climate of Europe, and the damage to Europe's reputation which could by then have occurred, would be unpleasant to experience and would take time to rectify. It is worth remembering that the risk then of provoking the Arab countries could be the same as it is now.
The problem of assuring assistance is not primarily one, other things being equal, of accepting additional sacrifices ourselves. Given the very much larger consumption of oil in this country, a relatively small percentage of our consumption is equivalent to a relatively large percentage for Holland. In addition, of course, the burden could be spread between member-States. The risk of acting is the provocation of a similar embargo for the rest of Europe, despite the fact that the Arab countries insist that they do not wish to cause serious damage to Europe, and despite the fact that it is almost certainly not in their interests to do so.
The demand of the Arab countries is in fact unrealistic; they are ignoring a political fact. The Community exists and we cannot agree to ignore it. It would be much as if we announced that we intended to bring the State of Wyoming to its knees and forbade the other States of the Union to interfere. It is not a sustainable policy. There are some demands which simply, because of their character, cannot be met. There have been changes in Europe as well as in the Middle East and both groups of countries need to be party to the processes of re-education.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that the State of Wyoming is unlikely to make a statement of its own about the Middle East war?
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, does not express the views of this side of the House.
LORD REAY: I will nevertheless attempt to give him an answer. Certainly I do not think that the solidarity shown by member States towards the Dutch in this situation would imply any support for their previous national policies. The embargo that was applied specifically to Holland arose out of a situation where member States still had their own independent national policies. Since the adoption of the common E.E.C. statement on this question, to which the Dutch subscribe, this situation no longer exists.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, does the noble Lord not realise the tremendous political risks that are involved in the policy he advocates? Does he not realise that the Economic Union—that is to say, the Common Market—is not exactly popular in this country, and I would go so far as to say it loses its popularity every day? A great deal of the mess this country is in is because, without the consent of the British people, they have been frog-marched into a political undertaking of which they do not approve. If they were now asked to pay the economic price on behalf of Holland, might there not be a threat which would shake us to our very roots?
LORD REAY: The noble Lord is taking the question rather wide. I agree that certainly there are risks in the action I am recommending, and indeed it is the existence of these risks which has presumably resulted in no action beng taken. I think there are quite serious risks in our not taking action of this sort. I believe it is a situation in which we need the courage to act, and that means to make it plain—and I mean publicly plain—that we cannot refuse to supply a member State of the Community; and I do not believe that we should postpone any longer an acknowledgement of our obligation to a member State.
My Lords, I have dealt with this problem at some length because it is a problem of a unique character since we joined the Community. All other matters

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involving differences in national interests have been able to be discussed, and then to be discussed again in a stable background where the deadlines have been set by agreement. In this case the volatility and potential severity of the economic movement and of the emotions in the situation make it unsafe, I believe, for us to rely on the private processes of diplomacy; nor is it enough to leave the matter of redistribution to the covert activity of the oil companies. I believe it is a question of principle and that we need to assert the indivisibility of Europe.
9.25 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, this has been a really remarkable debate. It has been an important one and an authoritative one, and I feel it is one which will be read carefully not only in Government circles but in other places as well. The outstanding feature of this debate is that the situation has been treated not so much as a crisis, rather as a challenge. I am sure that this is right. Crisis has more than one meaning and, among other things, it means a time for determining things. We are at the moment at a point in our history when we have to take a careful look at our future and revise our direction in view of the entirely new situation with which we have been faced in recent months. I should not like to pick out any particular speech, but one of the features of the early speeches was that they almost all dealt with one of the means which we might choose to guide and study our policy for the future. There are a number of noble Lords who have spoken about this: the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, in a very well-informed speech; the noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Gore-Booth; and the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, who I see is still with us. It is really to study ways of conserving existing energy resources and new ways of meeting our energy needs. I noted particularly that there is now no question, as there was before, of an Energy Commission which would have executive powers. It is generally recognised that this would be very difficult, because it would interpose another body between the Government and the energy industries and so would inevitably complicate the lines of responsibility.
LORD BALOGH: Hear, hear!
LORD DRUMALBYN: What we have to do, among other things, is to deal with the approval of investment plans of nationalised industries, and it is very difficult to divorce this from Government responsibility and decision. Yet the fact remains that decisions in this field are of crucial importance for energy policy, and if we were serious about making an Energy Commission a truly executive body, we would face great difficulties in decision making. There is general agreement about this now and, to that extent, we have made a step forward, which I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, welcomes.
The suggestion that we have been considering to-day is an advisory body—call it what you will, an agency, a transition commission—which would not actually take decisions but which would bring together expertise, perhaps carry out research and certainly advise the Government on energy policy generally. There is a strong argument against this, in that it would in each and every respect duplicate facilities which are already available to the Government. There is a lot of expertise in Departments now. If we want advice from outside it is always open to us to ask for it. Where we need it we already ask for it, as, for example, the creation and appointment of the Nuclear Power Advisory Board indicates. As regards research, a great deal goes on in nationalised industries and in the private sector now. If the Government want to back research they can and do so now. On the face of it, we still feel there is no need for the creation of yet another body to do what is already being done.
One of the crucial points is that any body of this sort which was going to advise would have to take the very widest considerations into account and would have to have the widest possible access to information of all kinds, much of it treated as within Government. I note the point that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, when he said that you cannot deal with energy in isolation He had in mind, I think, the wider political considerations.
My noble friend Lord Lauderdale said that the prototype for the advisory board lay in Queen Mary College. But they have already taken these steps; their assistance is available to us. I quite

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understand the value of the mathematical models, and the rest. So I cannot hold out hope at the present time of a decision to set up such a Commission, but of course it is always foolish to close any doors, and this is the sort of matter that we shall continue to look at.
LORD GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to ask one question on this subject? Will he deal with the point that there would perhaps be an advantage in having the top people in the different energy industries confronting each other in such a Commission?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, this is very useful and it is the sort of thing that we have already in the nuclear power field, but it has been argued on the other side by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for example, that we should not have the heads of the nationalised industries and other bodies but that they should all be entirely independent people, independent both of the nationalised industries and of the Government.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, it is very courteous of the noble Lord to sit down for me, and I should like to say, in an entirely constructive spirit, that I am much encouraged by the noble Lord's not having shut the door on this suggestion. But surely the point is that we do not have all the heads of the different energy-producing sectors meeting together, as the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, has just said; we have the nuclear board dealing with the nuclear energy and we have corresponding boards for other sectors of the industry, but we do not have them all together. I should not be at all averse to having a committee of the executive heads of the different energy sectors meeting from time to time so long as there is a strong, independent research secretariat probing into all their sectoral prejudices and darknesses, so as to get comparable costings throughout the whole field.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I understand the point, but I have been saying that this exists in Government already. The Government are in a position to service any sort of body and it does not need to be created separately outside. This is our view at the present time.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, but quite rightly the Civil Service does not publish. What I want to see is a body that will freely publish a spectrum of different interpretations.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I thoroughly understand the noble Lord's point of view, but even if we were to set up this body it might not necessarily published, just as there has been criticism of the Nuclear Power Advisory Committee and the way in which it proceeds, when it really does advise the Government confidentially. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, does not like it, but this is still one thing that could be done. Does the noble Lord, Lord Blyton, wish to ask me something?
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that it is essential in the present crisis that all the heads of nationalised industries dealing with fuel and energy should get together and thresh out the position we are going to be in, and ensure that we co-ordinate our fuel and energy policies?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, there is of course constant contact all the time with the heads of nationalised industries, but whether they should sit down round the table regularly is another matter. I am afraid I cannot say at the present time whether they do or not. But that there is constant contact is the important point.
Reference has been made on several sides, including by my noble friend Lord Harvey of Prestbury and my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing, to priorities for essential industries. I can assure noble Lords that one of the aims of our contingency plans for rationing would be to ensure that vital industries and services continue to receive adequate supplies. My noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing also referred to cuts to garages, which he said were 60 per cent. and not just 10 per cent., but I can assure noble Lords that deliveries overall are being maintained at a rate of 10 per cent. below those of last year.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, there is some funny business going on!
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, there have been several problems, particularly in the South East. The Oil Industry Emergency Committee is operating a

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mutual aid scheme to balance demands against available supplies, and this will deal fairly with those, including garages, who allege hardship in the allocation of supplies. There is certainly no evidence of garages withholding petrol against a possible price increase, but if any noble Lord has any particular information about that, then I will most certainly see that it is passed on to the Committee.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, would the noble Lord answer the point made by his noble friend Lord Redesdale on the question of the level at which the petrol companies are inflicting their 10 per cent. cuts?—because there is no doubt whatever there is evidence of great disquiet on this point. It seems to me it could be met quite simply if the Minister would undertake that an appeal machinery was set up so that where a garage thinks it is unfairly dealt with it appeals, not to the petrol company which does the supplying, but to his Department.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, there is no reason at all why garages, or individuals if it comes to that, who feel that they are not getting their rights should not approach the Regional Offices of the Department of Trade and Industry.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, I am much obliged. If I come with half a dozen cases tomorrow, will the noble Lord undertake to look at them?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I will certainly look at them as a matter of interest. But I shall do more: I shall pass them on to people who actually carry the matter out.
The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, spoke about telling the people. I wonder whether I might spend a minute or two in giving the House some information on the general situation. The restrictions that we have placed on oil supplies are related more to the need to conserve stocks than to the immediate present stock situation taken by itself. It would not be right of course at any time to divulge our stocks, and I hope that your Lordships will be content to leave it to the Government to disclose stocks at such times and in such manner as the Government themselves judge it appropriate to do.
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How much oil do we expect to get this month and in the coming months? This is obviously a question which has exercised the minds of many noble Lords. Noble Lords will appreciate that the decision of the Gulf oil producing countries, with the exception of Iraq, to cut the level of production in November by 25 per cent. is likely to have worldwide repercussions. It is bound to affect not only the volume but the pattern of world oil shipments. It is gratifying to have the assurance of the Saudi Arabian Oil Minister that oil supplies to the United Kingdom will be maintained at the average for the first nine months of 1973, or at the September level, whichever is the higher, and that Britain, France and Spain would be exempted from the further 5 per cent. cut in December which the Arab countries intend to make this month. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Blyton, will rest on this assurance, because we all—
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way? In to-day's Press, Sheikh Yamani has said that that decision is dependent upon acceptance of their foreign policy.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, what they have done is to declare their intention to make further cuts of 5 per cent. each month after that until the Israelis withdraw from the Arab territories, and it is not clear how these will affect us, directly or indirectly. But we also have to take into account that normally our imports of oil would be higher at this time of year and that the consumption of oil has been rising. Many industrialists have pointed out that a cut of 10 per cent. based on their consumption this time last year is, in effect, a cut of much more than 10 per cent. of what deliveries would have been but for the present situation, because their needs have increased in the mean-time.
The chemical industry is a case in point. We cannot tell how soon the difficulties in the Middle East will be brought to an end. That being so, it would be imprudent to count on our having adequate oil supplies in the New Year. Our prospects of having them are adversely affected by the severe reduction in coal production, which was running at 30 per cent. below its previous

739
level last week. This may worsen if maintenance difficulties accumulate. One of the steps which the Government took was to ask the Central Electricity Generating Board to reduce their oil consumption; they did so by 30 per cent., by switching to coal. It is clear they must conserve their coal stocks and, instead of 30 per cent. of oil consumed, there will be only a 13 per cent. reduction. Noble Lords may feel it is unfortunate that after all the pressure brought to bear for coal burning to be increased in electricity generation, and after the steps which the Government took in the Coal Industry Act to make possible more coal burning, we are not able to carry out these plans at the very moment when we need most to do so, as we could have done if the normal working arrangements which have applied for so long were being applied now.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, is it not true that everyone except the Government has always known there was going to be an oil shortage this year, quite apart from the present incidents in the Middle East?
LORD DRUMALBYN: I do not think that is the case. Of course the position has been very closely watched indeed. What I am saying at the moment is that it cannot be denied that our inability to get the coal we are accustomed to getting is making the situation rather worse. As I pointed out last Monday, if we had been able to count on normal supplies of coal throughout the winter, there would have been a saving of 4¼ million tons of oil, a very useful contribution in the present energy crisis. These are facts one cannot avoid.
The decision of the Arab oil-producing States to limit their production appears to stem from considerations other than the Middle East conflict alone. Their exports of oil bring them in more money than they can use. In consequence, they are building up very considerable financial surpluses. Unless these can be used in ways regarded as satisfactory to those countries, they will have little incentive to increase production to meet the growing needs of the West after the present crisis. It follows that the Governments of the oil-producing and the oil-consuming countries will need to co-operate to ensure that the surpluses are not only used for
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the development of the producing countries, but for safe and profitable investment elsewhere as well. But the first consideration will be the development of the producing countries themselves. This is an important matter because it is a matter of statesmanship and co-operation. This is one of the things we look forward to in the future.
I would like now to say a word or two about the development of existing resources. I do not think I need say much about the development of North Sea oil because we have covered this so fully in the past, and not a great deal really has been said about it in the debate. However, I have been asked about nuclear power. I am sure noble Lords will appreciate that I cannot possibly anticipate the decisions that have to be taken in the next few months. Reference has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, to what he called the appalling problem of nuclear fission. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, also said a good deal about this. On the other hand, I think it is right to recall the remark of the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, that no subject had been treated with greater responsibility by scientists. As for the safety of the various reactor systems being examined at present, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate are keeping in close contact with the work on the safety of these reactors which is being carried out not only in the United States of America but in other major countries, such as Germany, which have adopted the system of the light water reactor. I can assure noble Lords that unless the Secretary of State is fully satisfied about the safety aspects of a particular reactor system, then that reactor system will not be introduced here.
I take note of what has been said about carrying on with what is called the Magnox system. Everything that has been said on this subject today will of course be taken into account when the Government are making up their mind. I have already mentioned the objection of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, to the advice of the Nuclear Power Advisory Board being kept confidential, but my right honourable friend has made it clear that when his decision on thermal reactor choice is announced, the detailed base on which he comes to his decision will also be made available, as it was on the

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previous occasion. It seems to me that this fully meets the noble Lord's point.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said that the application of the customer/contractor arrangements to the Atomic Energy Authority are absurd. The Department of Trade and Industry's new arrangements, whereby the requirement board commissions nuclear research and development affects only non-nuclear research and development so far as the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is concerned. This is only a small proportion of the Authority's total effort.
My noble friend Lord Lauderdale has argued that we should try to break the OPEC cartel by developing the world's resources of natural gas. I am bound to say that I did not manage to register all the statistics he gave, and he may have found that there was a nought or two misplaced in some of the things he said when he came to revise his speech. There is a drawback in his line of argument, and that is that most of the areas where there is a surplus of natural gas production over consumption are in OPEC. Substantial reserves exist in the Soviet Union, in the Middle East, North and West Africa. Indonesia and Australasia, of which only Russia and Australasia are not in OPEC. The rest of the world is expected to develop into a big importer. So it is unlikely that the dependence on OPEC will decrease very much. I noted that he referred to Nigeria and the Caribbean, and we shall certainly study what he said.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said that fusion research should be stepped up, and I think noble Lords may like to know what the situation is here. Up to and including 1972–73, the United Kingdom spent over £50 million on fusion research. In 1972, the fusion review panel set up under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Massey recommended three things: first of all, that the Atomic Energy Authority's fusion programme should be continued at a higher level of expenditure; that it should form part of a collaborative European venture, and that a large experimental assembly should be built at Culham. In the light of these recommendations, approval was given earlier this year to the continuation of the programme during the next three years at an annual gross expenditure rising to nearly £6 million, £17 million
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over three years. The Authority's programme at Culham is being integrated with fusion research in other European countries and a financial contribution of £1 million to £1½ million a year will be received from the European Community. A contract of association giving formal effect to this collaboration was signed between the European Atomic Energy Community, Euratom, and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority in October this year. An international team is currently assembling at Culham to consider the initial design of a large joint European experiment, and no decision has yet been taken on where the experiment will be built. I hope this is welcome news to the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, and to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet.
A good deal has been said about tidal power. Possibilities do exist here: tidal barrages, such as have been suggested for the Severn Estuary. There are not many sites suitable for this kind of development in the United Kingdom, and some of them are also suitable for fresh water reservoirs, so that reduces the number still further. They could make only a very small contribution to total energy requirements, perhaps the equivalent of two or three nuclear power stations, but at very much higher cost. The Severn schemes which the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, talked about have been examined but have not been found economically attractive. I believe, incidentally —and this was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth—that the French do not have any proposals for building a second example of the Rennes tidal barrage.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, who is so courteous. I should like to point out to the noble Lord that one should take into consideration other things apart from the economic cost. I know that we will take care with nuclear reactors, but a surgeon takes care in the operating theatre and accidents still happen. We have no pollution whatsoever with a barrage, and social benefit should be weighed against economic costs so far as barrages and the Severn bore are concerned.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I would agree, but not weighed against but along with other costs. As usual, we were all fascinated by the speech of the

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noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, and I was particularly fascinated with what he had to say about the liquefaction of coal. While, as he said, this is technologically possible, it has not yet been mounted on a scale massive enough to be tried out commercially. A great deal of work has been, and is being, done in the United States of America, but their current view is that what is called "synth crude" will not make a significant contribution to energy problems until 1985 at the earliest. The cost would be enormous, and in any case we shall need all the coal that we can produce in the foreseeable future for conventional fuel needs.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Mansfield, asked whether illegal hours are being worked in the mines. I would be surprised if illegal hours are being worked. One of the responsibilities of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Mines is the enforcement of statutory restrictions on working hours. The noble Lord, Lord Blyton, made one of his usual vigorous speeches. It is not a question of miners breaking the law, but rather of not adhering to what was worked out, and what they undertook to carry out, under the industry's five-day week agreement. I could not make out from what the noble Lord said whether he thought that the miners should be treated as a special case or not. Wilberforce said that they were, and look what happened to that! Had he been here, I would certainly have asked him whether he believed that the trade unions should, or could, all agree that the miners should be treated as a special case, and that the miners should be exempted from the provisions of Stage 3.
The noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, also spoke about battery car development. The obstacle to their development is not a matter of the resistance of people with vested interests in petrol engines; the simple fact is that battery cars cannot compare in performance, or range, with internal combustion engines, and the user demands both performance and range. The key to bringing in electric cars—and we must bear in mind that so long as electricity is oil-based the advantage of it is not fully achieved—is development of an improved battery. He also spoke about fuel cells, but I am told that this idea has been looked at by
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experts and so far appears unpromising. I cannot advise noble Lords that fuel cells, of whatever kind, seem likely to make a significant contribution to fossil fuel displacement.
The Government are well aware of the importance of thermal insulation. We have been consulting interested parties, including local authorities, on the proposition that thermal insulation standards should be tightened up. The Government hope quite shortly to be introducing legislation which would enable the tightening up of standards to be taken further than under the existing Acts.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, in the meantime, could the noble Lord say whether it is possible for the Department of the Environment simply to issue a circular to local authorities saying that they will not be granted loan sanction unless they greatly improve the standards of insulation of their own dwellings, let us say by doubling the thickness of the insulation which has been adopted hitherto under the building regulations? Would not that be a simple way of improving the situation "at a stroke"?
LORD DRUMALBYN: It seems a simple way, my Lords, and I will certainly convey it to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, in this connection may I ask the noble Lord—because he knows my interest—whether he will seriously consider the possibility of grants for existing houses? I think the calculation goes something like this: that one-third of our energy requirements are used in the home, and if you spend some £10 per home you can probably reduce the energy requirement by something like 3 per cent., which is really a very worthwhile saving. So may I ask the noble Lord to consider this suggestion seriously?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I will certainly consider it. My noble friend Lord Redesdale asked whether the oil companies will be able to put small dealers out of business if rationining is imposed. It is our intention to make sure that if it should become necessary to impose rationing the position of independent petrol distributors and retailers will continue to be safeguarded.

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My Lords, I have done my best to answer as many as possible of the points which have been raised in this excellent debate. It was certainly timely and appropriate for the House to discuss this Motion, and I am sure we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for having given us the opportunity to do so. As I said at the beginning of my speech, we are now faced with an entirely new situation, both in the present and the immediate future and also in the longer term. If the oil-producing countries husband their reserves, then we shall have a more difficult time until our own North Sea oil is in full flow, but in that case the day when natural oil reserves are exhausted will be postponed. In any case, oil is going to be more expensive, and that will put up costs both to ourselves and to our overseas suppliers and customers. That, of course, will be a challenge to further development, and it is a challenge to all of us. But our own underlying position, I think I can fairly say, is better than might be thought from our present difficulties. Nevertheles, I have no doubt that we shall not only have to make the best of what we have but also have to apply all the wisdom, all the restraint and all the ingenuity and statesmanship of which we are capable if we are to preserve and enhance our heritage for the generations to come.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Davies of Leek has called this a "Teach-in", and so it has been. It has certainly been a long "Teach-in". Excluding the Minister who has just wound up—because we always interrupt Ministers who are winding up so much that it is not fair to say that they take too long—there have been no fewer than five Back-Bench speeches lasting half an hour or more. I think this may be something which we shall want to watch in future. But I am convinced that it has been a good "Teach-in" and a constructive one. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

FUEL AND ELECTRICITY (CONTROL) BILL
10.3 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 [Power to relax statutory and contractual obligations, etc.]:
LORD HOY LORD HOY had given Notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 1:
Page 3, line 37, at end insert—
("() Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (3) above and notwithstanding any provision in any other enactment, Her Majesty may, for the purposes of section 2 of this Act, by Order in Council provide that—

(a) no person shall drive a motor vehicle on any road at a speed greater than 50 miles per hour; and

(b) the driving of any class of motor vehicle on any road shall be restricted to a speed less than 50 miles per hour:

Provided that such Order in Council shall not apply to the driving of a motor vehicle on a road on which there is for the time being a restriction imposed on the driving of that vehicle in excess of a maximum speed which is less than 50 miles per hour.")
The noble Lord said: I will not detain the Committee for very long. The Government announcement this afternoon about the 50 m.p.h limit has overtaken this Amendment which I put down some considerable time ago. The only consolation I have is to think that anything that we suggest and put into the ear of the Government on the right-hand side comes out as their considered opinion on the left-hand side about 10 days later. We are grateful to the Minister for accepting this Amendment before we had an opportunity to discuss it. As a consequence of the action he has taken, I do not move the Amendment.
On Question, Whether Clause 4 shall stand part of the Bill?
BARONESS WHITE: I understand that this is the time at which it is appropriate

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to ask a question which would arise under the regulations made under this Bill. From an announcement in the public Press it would appear that when, or if, petrol rationing comes in it would be illegal to use one's coupons if one were a passenger travelling in a car which was not one's own car and the vehicle for which the coupons originally were issued. If this is true, legal life in the rural areas will become impossible. Those of us who live part of the time in the country know that we could not get around without sharing transport on various occasions, including journeys connected with public business. I should like to know the Government's intentions in this matter. One does not wish to break the law but one wishes to be practical.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am entirely in sympathy with the noble Baroness. She may know that in another place to-day the Secretary of State made the position quite plain; in fact he went so far as to say that car sharing will have to be the accepted practice for the bulk of motoring, especially for journeys to work. That being the case, no doubt the Orders, when they are made, will reflect that intention.
I think I should say also that the Secretary of State went on to say that all motor insurance policies now cover owners and drivers against liability for the death of, or bodily injury to, passengers, so that drivers need not therefore hesitate to offer lifts. I know that this is a different point but it is a way of sharing. The Minister went on to say that the Government are examining the possibility of exercising powers to allow motorists to accept contributions from regular passengers towards the cost of a lift without the need to comply with public service vehicle licensing requirements. I quite understand the point made by the noble Baroness. It is the simple point that you have two cars and you want to pool petrol for those two cars. I should like to look into that a little further to see how that could be not only practical but also legal.
LORD HOY: I am grateful to the Minister for what he has said. I had a word with him earlier. There is a great deal of difference between sharing
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payment and sharing petrol coupons. That is the point at issue. If you are to have a petrol supply you have to produce coupons for the car, and the car has to be registered before the coupons become legal tender. All my noble friend was asking was that when the Government come to discuss these regulations they may try to meet this situation, because cash is no compensation for petrol if petrol is getting short. Petrol would be more valuable than money. All we are trying to do is to ask the Government to consider the matter before they introduce the regulations. As I understand it, what the noble Lord has said is that they will give some thought to this question and we are prepared to let it go at that; but at the same time we say to the noble Lord that we shall have to look at the regulations closely to see whether the point has been covered.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, for leaving the matter in that way. The technical position at the moment is that in order to draw petrol with your coupons you must have it put into that particular car. I do not see any great difficulty about this because people could use their cars turn and turn about.
BARONESS WHITE: No, they cannot.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Plainly, the petrol rationing scheme is based on the concept that petrol must go into the car for which you hold the coupons. If the noble Baroness is suggesting that you not only pool the petrol but also that you try to get it into another car, that is another matter.
BARONESS WHITE: That is the whole point. I have just had to cancel a conference in mid-Wales because of transport difficulties, including possible trouble on the railways as well as the shortage of petrol. In order to travel from various universities and colleges in Wales to a central point, as we originally intended, it would be stupid for me, as an individual, to use a car. I should want to join with someone else for that occasion; but I have no guarantee that I should ever want to drive with that man or woman again. Therefore, I cannot do it on a sort of sharing-a-car basis. I need to be able to contribute my share of petrol in order to go in that car. I want

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to be able to do it legally, and it would be quite stupid to do it in any other way. That is the whole point.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I see the noble Baroness's point; she wants not only money to be transferred, but money's worth in the form of petrol. I shall have to take further advice on that point, I am afraid.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes past ten o'clock.