Sitting of 22 May 1979

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

  SCOTTISH EQUITABLE LIFE ASSURANCE SOCIETY BILL
  Considered; to be read the Third time.
  BRITISH RAILWAYS (No. 2) BILL
  CHESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [Lords]
  GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL
  LONDON TRANSPORT BILL
  EAST KILBRIDE DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL
  Orders for Second Reading read.
  To be read a Second time upon Thursday next.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

    Comprehensive Schools
    Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is his policy on comprehensive schools.
    Mr. Rookerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on his support for comprehensive and non-selective secondary education.
    Mr. Thorneasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he will make a statement on his policy of support for comprehensive education and the ending of selection for secondary education.
    The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Mark Carlisle): The Government's policy is not to force authorities to reorganise on comprehensive lines but to maintain and improve the standard of education in all our schools.
    Mr. Meacher: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that his policy both of opening up local authority places at independent schools and of encouraging grammar schools to coexist alongside comprehensive schools simply turns the latter into glorified secondary modern schools? Will he acknowledge that this policy is socially divisive and, to satisfy his political dogma, does unwarrantable damage to the hopes and opportunities of the vast majority of the nation's children?
    Mr. Carlisle: I do not accept any of the hon. Gentleman's premises. The fact is that certain areas have already reorganised completely. Others still have selective schools. It will be left to each local education authority to decide what it wishes to do.
    Mr. Rooker: Can the Secretary of State give a guarantee that there will be no relative cutback in the facilities in any of the comprehensive schools in Birmingham compared with any of the selective schools he mentioned in his earlier

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    answer. Is he aware that in those comprehensive schools my constituents' children now have a wider range of choice of O and A levels than they ever had before reorganisation?
    Mr. Carlisle: Expenditure on the schools in Birmingham, as in all other areas, will be a matter for the local education authority.
    Mr. Thorne: What does the Secretary of State propose to do should a local education authority exercise its right and say that it is opposed to any form of selection and therefore will not follow the policy that he has enunciated?
    Mr. Carlisle: I think that the hon. Gentleman misunderstands the policy. If he is asking "What is the position where an authority does not wish to change that which it has?", the answer is that it is entirely up to that authority. If the hon. Gentleman is asking what my position is if an authority puts in proposals to reorganise, the answer is that they will be considered on merit.
    Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Will my right hon. and learned Friend accept the grateful thanks of the people of Lancaster in that they will no longer be forced to adopt a course that they did not wish? Will he also accept that our secondary schools are absolutely superb and reject the comments of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), who cast aspersions on our other secondary schools?
    Mr. Carlisle: I am grateful for what my hon. Friend has said. We have implemented at the earliest possible moment the undertaking we gave at the time of the election.
    Mr. Flannery: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that 85 per cent. of schoolchildren of secondary age are now in comprehensive schools, and that comprehensive education is. the greatest success story that has ever been known in the history of education in our country? Will he kindly explain to us how it is possible to have a creaming-off process, by which the top 5 per cent. or so of pupils is taken away, and still call the schools that are left comprehensive schools?
    Mr. Carlisle: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says in so far as I think that
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    83 per cent. of children of secondary school age are being educated at comprehensive schools. I assume that in his comments about creaming-off he is referring not to the Bill that we published last week but to the Bill promised for later in the year, under which we intend to set up our assisted places scheme. I shall deal with that matter during the debates on that Bill.
    Mr. Peter Bottomley: Will my right hon. and learned Friend consider the complaints from parents in my constituency, where all secondary schools at the moment are comprehensive and where families are having discrimination applied to them, so that in a non-selective system children graded as 1-1-1 have a smaller chance of getting into the school of their choice than if their parents had not encouraged them to work hard in their primary schools?
    Mr. Carlisle: Certainly I shall look at any matter about which my hon. Friend cares to write to me, but he must table a specific question to get an answer to it.
    Mr. Oakes: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman undertake that those authorities which in the future wish to go comprehensive—for example, Tameside and possibly Bolton and Kirklees—will be given unfettered freedom to do so? Secondly, in those authorities where parents have the misfortune still to have a selective system, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman allow them freedom of choice to transfer to an authority where they have comprehensive education and order the authority concerned to pay the out-of-district fee?
    Mr. Carlisle: The hon. Gentleman has asked two totally different questions. The second relates to the education of children across the boundaries of local education authorities. That is a matter which, presumably, will be considered, as it was during the passage of the 1978 Bill, during the course of the later Education Bill.
    As for the first of the hon. Gentleman's questions, I say at once that local education authorities will now have the power to put in proposals for reorganisation of the schools in their areas if they wish to do so, and I shall look at them in the normal way under section 13 of the 1944 Act.

    Village Schools (Staffordshire)
    Mr. Knoxasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he will have discussions with Staffordshire county council concerning the possibility of its submitting proposals to keep open the village schools in the Staffordshire Moorlands area which it is in the process of closing.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Dr. Rhodes Boyson): The proposals under section 13 of the Education Act 1944, submitted by the Staffordshire county council to restructure education in the Moorlands area, were approved under the previous Government and have been partially implemented. My right hon. and learned Friend cannot therefore intervene.
    Mr. Knox: Is my hon. Friend aware of the very strong feeling about, and opposition to, the proposals to close these village schools not only in the area directly concerned but throughout the whole of my constituency? Will he confirm that it will be possible for the Staffordshire county council to submit new proposals to reopen these schools, and, if it does, will he look favourably at the proposition?
    Dr. Boyson: I can reply entirely in the affirmative. If the Staffordshire county council wishes to make fresh proposals in relation to its schools, that is entirely a matter for it. If it puts up such proposals, they will be decided on their merits.

    School Transport
    Mr. Hal Millerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what proposals he has for reforming the present rules governing the provision of school transport.
    Mr. Temple-Morrisasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he has any plans to abolish or change the application of statutory walking distances to the availability of free school transport.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Neil Macfarlane): My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State will be considering the arrangements for home-to-school transport in the light of the
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    attempts which have been made during the past decade to find a more acceptable scheme.
    Mr. Miller: I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment. At the same time, may I ask him to accept that there is widespread concern throughout the country about the extent of the anomalies under the present system and also the change in conditions on our roads and public safety which amount to a difference in kind, and that, therefore, there is a reason why the present rules should be re-examined? May I refer him to the working party set up by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when she was Secretary of State for Education?
    Mr. Macfarlane: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind comments in the opening part of his observations. Of course, the Hodges committee to which he referred was set up in 1973 by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. For that reason, and because of the other initiative which the previous Administration took within recent months, my right hon. and learned Friend wants to have as close a look as possible at the present arrangements. My hon. Friend must understand that the local authorities and passenger transport undertakings will have to operate under any new arrangements. It is right that they, as well as parents and others likely to be affected, should be consulted about any possible alternatives.
    Mr. Temple-Morris: Is my hon. Friend aware that during the last Parliament, when a number of questions were asked on this matter by Opposition Members, there was a considerable degree of unanimity between both sides that there should be some reform? Is he further aware that in the obvious state of disagreement that there will be on this subject between local authorities, some of which are getting something for nothing whilst others are responsible for large areas which have to pay, this is a classic case for Government action? Is my hon. Friend prepared to give some sort of lead?
    Mr. Macfarlane: When my hon. Friend says that some authorities are getting something for nothing, I do not think that that is strictly accurate. Many authorities have a wide degree of variation in the rules which are applied. But we shall be

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    considering whether any practical changes in local education authority duties and powers would lead to a more equitable distribution of the £100 million or so currently being spent annually on the provision of free school transport. We shall be reviewing this as soon as possible.
    Mr. Cryer: Does not the Minister accept that the last Government did considerable work to provide a more equitable scheme—a flat fare scheme—for school transport? Cannot he build on that and, for example, use some of the money which he proposes to use to subsidise grants to independent schools for a better school transport scheme to help mitigate the business of the application of the rules by Tory-controlled local authorities such as Bradford?
    Mr. Macfarlane: It is a well-known fact that ratepayers in the hon. Member's own constituency area are subsidising this provision to the tune of more than £5 million a year. If the hon. Gentleman wants to spend the taxpayers' money to any greater extent than was done under the previous Administration, he will be increasing expenditure by some £50 million per annum.

    Teachers (Pay)
    Mr. Michael Lathamasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he will make a statement on the teachers' pay claim.
    Mr. Tim Rentonasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what progress he is making on the statement of the teachers' pay dispute.
    Mr. Mark Carlisle: The House will be pleased to learn that agreement was reached yesterday on a pay settlement for primary and secondary teachers in England and Wales. Details of the settlement will be circulated by the Local Authorities Conditions of Service Advisory Board.
    The Burnham Further Education Committee resumes its discussions tomorrow.
    Mr. Latham: Is the Secretary of State aware that all parents will welcome this sensible and honourable settlement? May we now expect normal working to be resumed at once by all unions in the interests of the children?
    Mr. Carlisle: I am glad to say that the executive committee of the National
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    Union of Teachers met yesterday and agreed to stop its withdrawal of good will, as it had called it. As for the National Association of Schoolmasters and the Union of Women Teachers, its executive committee is meeting at the moment, and I hope that it will also decide to call off any action.
    Mr. Renton: Can my right hon. and learned Friend tell us rather more about the terms of reference to the Standing Commission on Pay Comparability? Are they such that the favourable relativities established by the 1974 Houghton report will necessarily be enshrined in the findings of the commission?
    Mr. Carlisle: The terms of reference to the Standing Commission ask it to look at the pay of teachers in the light of their terms and conditions of employment. In those terms of reference, there is a reference to the Houghton report which asks it to take into account the matters referred to in the Houghton report together with all other relevant and practical matters.
    Mr. Skinner: Will the Minister be a little more specific on this matter? Will he state categorically that, whatever report is made by the comparability and relativities Standing Commission, the Houghton recommendations will be stuck to by this Government, not necessarily just in this year but throughout their period in office?
    Mr. Carlisle: The position is that the Government, at the request of both sides of the Burnham committee, have referred the matter to the Standing Commission. The conclusions of that Standing Commission then have to be returned to the Burnham committee because only that committee can make the final decisions.
    Mr. David Price: In my right hon. and learned Friend's reference to the Standing Commission, will he ask it to look at the anomalous position whereby senior teachers get the top salary only when they leave the classroom and go into administration? This must be wrong.
    Mr. Carlisle: That is a matter for the Burnham committee rather than for the Standing Commission.
    Mr. Oakes: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that Labour Members welcome the fact that at long

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    last a settlement has been reached and express the hope that all industrial action at schools by all unions will now cease?
    Mr. Carlisle: I am most grateful for what the hon. Gentleman says and I thank him for it. I would add this. I have always said—I know that the hon. Gentleman shares this view—that the children in the schools of this country have already suffered enough disruption to their education this year. Like him, I very much hope that the various actions that were being taken by different unions will cease forthwith so that there will be no further interference with children's education.

    School Textbooks
    Mr. Skinnerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he is satisfied with the allocation of many schools for textbooks; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Jim Marshallasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he is satisfied with the current level of expenditure on books in schools.
    Dr. Boyson: My right hon. and learned Friend recognises that it is very important for schools to have an adequate supply of books but it is for each authority to decide its own pattern of spending in the light of local needs and circumstances.
    Mr. Skinner: May I first congratulate the hon. Gentleman on being pushed to the bottom of the list on the Tory Front Bench? I am sure he is pleased about that recommendation. Will he give a guarantee that if the country and the Department of Education can find £50 million for direct grant schools there will be no cutback in educational expenditure, whether on textbooks or in any other direction?
    Dr. Boyson: I do not think that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) really understands local government finance. There is such a thing as the rate support grant. Labour Members talk about local option. Under the rate support grant, a sum of money is given each year to local authorities. It is up to local authorities to decide how they allocate that money within their own order of priorities. I would be surprised if the
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    hon. Member were not the first to object if we put the allocation in 100 categories and said that everything, even expenditure on books, would be under a separate heading.
    Mr. Marshall: Is the Minister aware that he has shown a complete misunderstanding of educational need over the past four years and that his reply to my hon. Friend indicates a complete misunderstanding of how local government operates? Does he accept that we need to maintain standards in this country and that the level of expenditure on books has direct relevance to that aim? Will he give a categoric assurance that if local authorities fall down on their duty he will see one of his main priorities as ensuring that expenditure is not only maintained but increased?
    Dr. Boyson: I am sure that everyone on the Government side of the House feels as strongly about a good supply of books for schools as anyone on the Opposition side. All that the Government can do is to encourage expenditure on books, through the work of Her Majesty's inspectors and others. Since we have indicated as a Government that we think that there should be a good supply of books in schools, we hope that local authorities will listen to that advice.
    Mr. Hardy: Would the hon. Gentleman care to tell the House a little more about local government finance? Will he say how he can maintain standards, improve the provision of books, and meet the teachers' settlement and other settlements with which local authorities are faced unless there is an early announcement of an interim rate support grant? Otherwise, the ratepayers will have a very bewildering experience next year.
    Dr. Boyson: This question is a matter for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It may be raised in debate later today.

    Thameside System (Sittingbourne)
    Mr. Moateasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will consider favourably representations to confirm as a permanent arrangement the present Thameside system of education in Sittingbourne, Kent.
    Dr. Boyson: The system of education in Sittingbourne is now a matter for the Kent local education authority.
    Mr. Moate: Will my hon. Friend accept that this more flexible and open-minded approach by the Government is in sharp and welcome contrast to the doctrinaire and dictatorial attitude adopted by the previous Government, who sought to destroy a system that has worked well and enjoyed widespread public support? Will he further accept that this Thameside system is a very acceptable compromise that could work in other areas? Will he look favourably upon representations, if made to him by the Kent county council or others, calling for its introduction in areas where it might be suitable?
    Dr. Boyson: I am grateful for the initial remarks of my hon. Friend, with which I fully agree. I am sure that he will welcome the fact that the letter sent from the Department on 8 February this year to the Kent education authority demanding that it should submit revised proposals by 8 June has no longer any standing. That letter has now been withdrawn and the future of education in that area of Kent will depend upon proposals put forward by Kent, if and when they come to us.
    Mr. Aitken: Is my hon. Friend aware that the Government's policies are enormously welcome in Kent, not only because they save good schools but because they save a great deal of public expenditure? Is he aware that under the previous Government's misguided proposals for forcing compulsory reorganisation in Kent, over £80 million of taxpayers' money would have to be spent on the buildings alone? This is now saved, and a good thing, too.
    Dr. Boyson: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's comments. I am sure that the people of Kent will also be glad that they not only have a choice of schools but a saving in public expenditure.

    School Closures
    Mr. Jesselasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what advice he intends to give local education authorities, faced with falling numbers of school pupils due to the drop in the birth rate, as to the criteria to be used when recommending which schools should remain open and which should be closed.
    Dr. Boyson: My right hon. and learned Friend endorses generally the criteria set
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    out in circular 5/77. I am sorry, I have got the wrong answer—[Laughter.]—
    Mr. Speaker: Order.
    Dr. Boyson: I am glad, Mr. Speaker, that I have at least brought an air of cheerfulness, for once, to the Labour Benches.
    My right hon. and learned Friend would expect that the criteria used by the local education authorities should not only take account of education and economic factors but should take full account of the wishes of parents and the need to provide a variety of schools, both State and denominational, single sex and co-educational.
    Mr. Jessel: Is my hon. Friend aware that in my constituency there is deep concern about the future of several local schools each of which has its own loyal following? So that there is no doubt about the Government's likely attitude, if called upon to make a decision following any proposals the local education authority might make, will he reiterate that the wishes of parents, as expressed by the choice of schools they make for their children, will be paramount, together with educational standards as measured by published examination results?
    Dr. Boyson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. My right hon. and learned Friend will pay great attention to all the circumstances of a particular case, including parental preferences, examination results and any other factor. He has already made clear that we shall be very concerned with the quality of education offered within all our schools. We shall also consider most carefully the balance of provision between single-sex and mixed schools, but every case must be decided on its merits. It is, therefore, impossible to give a categoric assurance that geographical considerations will be accorded the lowest priority.
    Mr. Beith: Will the distinct educational advantages of village schools be an important consideration? Will the importance of village schools to local communities be one of the criteria the hon. Gentleman bears in mind?
    Dr. Boyson: There is no doubt that I can answer the hon. Gentleman's question in the affirmative. We are well aware of the benefits of village schools both

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    educationally and socially in those communities. Wherever it is economically and educationally possible, village schools will remain.
    Sir Anthony Royle: Is my hon. Friend aware that his amended criteria will be greatly welcomed? Will he confirm that those parents who wish to send their children to separate schools, either for boys or for girls, will be given the opportunity to do so rather than being forced to send their children to mixed schools?
    Dr. Boyson: One of the considerations that we shall always take into account in deciding any schemes put to us is the need to provide a choice between single-sex and mixed schools where there are indications by parents of their desire for one or the other.
    Mr. Thomas Cox: Is the Minister aware that in the ILEA area, as school rolls fall, the issue is the need to retain the teachers who are already teaching in those schools? Is he further aware that throughout London there are some active PTA campaigns on this issue? What force will his Department give to them?
    Dr. Boyson: We are well aware that at a time of falling schools rolls it is important to keep up the morale of the teaching profession. Where there are falling rolls, it is important that special consideration be given to staffing so that specialist subjects, such as remedial teaching, language and mathematics, can be kept up.

    Youth Service
    Mr. Steenasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is his policy towards the effectiveness of the youth service.
    Mr. Macfarlane: My right hon. and learned Friend recognises the important contribution which the youth service makes towards meeting the needs of young people and will continue to support the voluntary youth organisations. I shall be seeing the interested bodies in the near future.
    Mr. Steen: Is the Minister aware that, to effect savings, local authorities are cutting grants to the voluntary youth organisations rather than making cuts in their own bureaucracy? Will he look at
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    the London borough of Islington, where the grant to Task Force is threatened to be cut by as much as 25 per cent. this year, although it has worked for the past 14 years in the borough recruiting young people to give community service to old and lonely people?
    Mr. Macfarlane: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, whose assiduous care and attention to the details of the youth service over past years is well known in the House. I shall certainly make it my duty to see precisely what the Islington council is doing on this matter. It is very much a matter for local authorities to review each programme. The bodies which exist within the youth service are many and varied. I want to look at this matter closely between now and the end of next month.
    Mr. Christopher Price: Has the hon. Gentleman seen the report in The Guardian today to the effect that £48 million is to be cut from the youth opportunities programme? Is he aware that this will cripple the programme, which is meant to provide reasonable employment opportunities for young people? Will he ensure that the Secretary of State will receive a delegation from the National Youth Bureau and the other national youth organisations so that we may point out the damage that this cut will do to young people's employment prospects?
    Mr. Macfarlane: The hon. Gentleman should not pay close attention to all that The Guardian writes. I take note of what he said and will convey it to my right hon. and learned Friend. If it is any encouragement to him, I have already had a telephone call this morning from the National Youth Bureau, of which the hon. Gentleman is chairman. Therefore, I am glad to have his comment on it. It is a dual responsibility between the Department of Education and Science and my right hon. Friend at the Department of Employment. We shall be reviewing that aspect with keen enthusiasm.

    Education Costs
    Mr. Dudley Smithasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will initiate a study into the feasibility of transferring the cost of education from the rating system to the national Exchequer.
    Mr. Mark Carlisle: I have no plans to do so. Such a transfer would have wide ramifications on the central role of local education authorities as one of the partners in the education service.
    Mr. Smith: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that education takes the lion's share of all rating revenue? Would not this be worth an examination, if only to take some steps towards bringing equity into an unhappy rating system?
    Mr. Carlisle: I am aware that education takes nearly 50 per cent. of the total expenditure of local authorities. On the other hand, I remind my hon. Friend that, as a party, we have always accepted that education, while a national service, is locally administered; and, of course, all local government finance is supported through the rate support grant.
    Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend about primary and secondary education and the dangers of a national education service. Will he preserve an open mind about further education, which is less of a danger, where the local interest is far less than in primary and secondary education?
    Mr. Carlisle: I accept that there is a considerable difference between further and primary and secondary education. Certainly I am prepared to look at what my hon. and learned Friend says.
    Mr. Hooley: Do the Government intend to abolish the rates, as was firmly promised by the Prime Minister when in opposition?
    Mr. Carlisle: We made no such commitment during the election. My answer to my hon. Friend stands.

    Local Authorities (Freedom of Choice)
    Mr. Formanasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he will publish details of the legislation he proposes to introduce to restore freedom to local education authorities to organise education in their areas along lines of their own choosing.
    Dr. Boyson: I refer my hon. Friend to the Bill published on 17 May which would implement our undertaking to restore to local education authorities the freedom to formulate their own proposals
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    for the organisation of secondary education.
    Mr. Forman: Is my hon. Friend aware that that Bill will be most welcome to many parents in the London borough of Sutton and elsewhere in the country, largely because it will remove the uncertainty and educational blight which has hung over the prospects of many schoolchildren?
    Dr. Boyson: I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. The section 99 order for Sutton, made by the Labour Government, which compelled it to submit revised proposals for reorganisation, has now been withdrawn. It is for Sutton to decide what amended proposals, if any, it now wishes to submit. I am glad that Sutton is pleased by the freedom that has been given back to it.
    Mr. Armstrong: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that where an authority wishes either to retain or to reinstate the 11-plus his Department will stand idly by? In view of his comment about teacher morale, will he tell us of any body of teachers which is asking for reinstatement of the 11-plus?
    Dr. Boyson: The question refers to a return to the 11-plus. Under the previous Act, authorities which wanted to retain selection were compelled to wipe it out and to bring in comprehensive education.
    On the second point, if we go back to the NOP surveys in The Times Educational Supplement three years ago, one year ago and recently, it will be seen—although we are not advocating this—that there is overwhelming support among teachers for some form of selection both between and in schools.
    Dr. McDonald: As many LEAs have neither direct-grant nor grammar schools, will those LEAs wishing to provide selective education for bright children have to take up boarding school places? How much will these cost? Can the hon. Gentleman guarantee that this will not be done at the expense of the State comprehensive sector?
    Dr. Boyson: If a local education authority is happy about its area being totally comprehensive, it is entirely for that authority how it runs that system. But if it wishes to bring back some form

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    of selection it will be up to the authority to put forward such proposals.

    Children (School Allocations)
    Mr. Silvesterasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what proposals he has for assisting parents dissatisfied with the processes of local education authorities in the allocation of their children to particular schools.
    Dr. Boyson: The Gracious Speech promised the introduction of legislation to ensure that parents' wishes are taken into account in the choice of schools for their children, and that there is a local appeals system.
    Mr. Silvester: When this matter comes before the House, will the Minister take into account the fact that a number of local authorities provide an inadequate appeals system? Will he ensure that there are bodies outside particular local authorities which can be relied upon to produce fairness as between one local authority and another?
    Dr. Boyson: One reason why we opposed the Education Bill proposed by the previous Administration was that we considered its appeals system to be totally unsatisfactory. There is a requirement that, in a local appeals system, some body different from that which made a decision should decide whether it was fair. The views expressed by my hon. Friend will undoubtedly be taken into account when we draft our Bill, which is proposed for later this Session.
    Mr. Carter-Jones: Will the Minister assure the House that if parental control is to be introduced the parents of mentally and physically handicapped children will have the same right of choice for effective education as other parents?
    Dr. Boyson: I know that the hon. Gentleman, who defeated me at the election in 1970, feels very deeply about handicapped children. I give the assurance that, wherever possible, we shall give maximum choice not only to the parents of normal children but to the parents of handicapped children to ensure that they have a say about the schools to which their children go.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: In the proposals that the Government intend to put forward to establish a local appeals procedure,
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    which I very much welcome, will there be any final appeal to the Secretary of State?
    Dr. Boyson: The Bill has not yet been drafted, so I cannot answer my hon. Friend's question authoritatively. In the ultimate, there must always be some form of overseeing of decisions made locally. We do not envisage a second appeal system to that extent.

    Nursery Education
    Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what progress he intends making with the development of nursery education for three to five-year-olds.
    Mr. Macfarlane: My right hon. and learned Friend is anxious to encourage the development of nursery education within the resources available.
    Mrs. Short: Is the Minister aware that that is an answer which tells us nothing? There are many hon. Members on both sides of the House who want to see a real advance made in nursery education. Does the Minister accept that, if he agrees with the principle of parental choice, nursery education should be available to all parents who want it for children from the age of 3 years to 5 years? Will he accept that as a goal which his Government should achitve?
    Mr. Marcfarlane: It is our intention, as was made clear in our manifesto during the recent general election, to work towards the provision of nursery education for all children aged 3 years and 4 years whose parents want them to have it. That was a recommendation made in 1966 by the Plowden committee and implemented in 1972 by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
    Mr. Kershaw: Does not the provision of nursery education depend primarily upon the economic position of the country? Was it not the failure of the Labour Administration to provide the necessary economic conditions that caused a shortfall in the provision of nursery education?
    Mr. Macfarlane: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right. Had the yardsticks of the previous Administration been projected into the early 1980s, the decline would have been about 30

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    per cent., based upon the assessment of the early 1970s.
    Mr. Oakes: Will the Minister draw the contents of the Conservative manifesto to the attention of many Conservative-controlled local authorities which are at the bottom of the league in the provision of nursery education? Will he ask those authorities to spend more money on nursery schools and ask them why they did not take up the allocations that the Labour Government made available to them?
    Mr. Macfarlane: I do not necessarily accept that the hon. Gentleman's final observation is absolutely accurate. We shall be telling local authorities that in our view most of the nursery education provision should take the form of classes in primary schools. Many local authorities have been waiting to see the nature of the decline. The pattern is now beginning to emerge. That is the sort of expression that we shall be making to local authorities.

    Schools (Governing Bodies)
    Mr. Beithasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is his policy towards the reform of school governing bodies.
    Mr. Mark Carlisle: School governing bodies can make an effective contribution to the life of a school. They are an important way of bringing parents and teachers together and of involving parents in the running of the schools attended by their children. We therefore want to ensure that each school should, as a general rule, have its own governing body and that elected parents and teachers should be included on all governing bodies. I hope that a Bill to be introduced later in the Session will include provisions on these lines.
    Mr. Beith: I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for that assurance. Does he agree that we made a good deal of progress on the issue when considering in Committee the Bill introduced by the previous Administration? Will he be rather firmer than the previous Administration and try to implement the Taylor principle, namely, that school governing bodies should involve a partnership between parents, teachers and the community and should not be a body on
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    which the local education authority has to have an automatic majority?
    Mr. Carlisle: I agree that we made considerable progress in our discussions on that part of the Bill to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I want an opportunity to consider all the speeches that were made when that Bill was being considered and the various proposals being made from both sides of the House before bringing forward our own proposals, which we hope to introduce in the autumn.
    Mr. Shersby: What is my right hon. and learned Friend's policy for the inclusion of pupil governors?
    Mr. Carlisle: That is a matter which was considered during the progress of the Bill introduced by the previous Administration. I made it clear that I was totally opposed to local education authorities being required to have pupil governors. However, my colleagues and I recognise that in some areas pupil governors already exist and that local education authorities in those areas are anxious to retain the power to have them. That is a matter which I shall have to consider before our Bill is drafted.

    Education Act 1976
    Mr. Cryerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the operation of the Education Act 1976.
    Dr. Boyson: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the statement made by my right hon. and learned Friend in the debate on the Address on 16 May and to the contents of the Education Bill published the following day.
    Mr. Cryer: Does not the attitude of the Tory Government in imposing support for independent schools, by the repeal of the 1976 Act, on the basis of providing local authorities with greater freedom point to the hypocrisy of their attitudes when they impose their doctrinaire prejudices on local authorities in terms of council house sales, regardless of whether authorities have a different view and of whether they want to take local circumstances into account?
    Dr. Boyson: The Conservative Party made clear in its general election manifesto that a Conservative Government

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    would return to local authorities the freedom to choose how to run their schools and that we would take back places in independent schools. However much the hon. Gentleman may disagree, the electorate agreed with our view.

    PRIME MINISTER (ENGAGEMENTS)
    Mr. Clinton Davisasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 22 May.
    The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): In addition to my duties in this House I shall be holding meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. This evening I hope to have an Audience of Her Majesty The Queen.
    Mr. Davis: That is very interesting. Will the right hon. Lady take the opportunity today, or at least at an early stage, to explain to pensioners why her Government refuse to link the pension with earnings or prices, whichever is the higher? When will she say something about the electricity discount scheme? In replying to all questions will she please not be too strident?
    The Prime Minister: As the hon. Gentleman is already aware, we have undertaken to implement the November increases in full. He is already aware that in the previous year his Government had a shortfall on their calculations. That is being made up this November. We announced it and we shall honour it.
    Mr. McCrindle: Will my right hon. Friend consider preparing a list of the trade union leaders who, since 3 May, have uttered dire threats of what will happen if the Government dare to carry out the policy endorsed by the electorate on 3 May?
    The Prime Minister: The vast majority of trade union members, being believers in democracy, believe that policy is made by a Government and is implemented by the House. The vast majority of them—I hope all of them—will agree to implement that policy. Otherwise it is the end of democracy.
    Mr. Charles R. Morris: Will the right hon. Lady take time during a busy day to allay the anxieties of those who question
    868
    merging responsibility for the disabled with ministerial responsibility for social security? Will she seek to relieve the anxiety of those who believe that that proposition will lead to a reduced provision for the disabled? Finally, will she bear in mind that the nation is perplexed—certainly her Back Benchers are perplexed—that she should appoint a politically disabled Minister to make provision for the physically disabled?
    Mrs. Thatcher: The right hon. Gentleman is less than generous in his last strictures. I have appointed a Minister with special responsibility for the disabled in addition to his other responsibilities. I am happy that he will carry that out as well as the right hon. Gentleman's brother did.

    RHODESIA
    Mr. Michael Lathamasked the Prime Minister whether she will pay an official visit to Salisbury, Rhodesia.
    The Prime Minister: I have no plans to do so.
    Mr. Latham: Although clearly there must be full and proper consultation with our allies and partners on this matter, will the Prime Minister at least confirm that British diplomacy will no longer be tilted towards the Patriotic Front and that the final decision on the legality of Rhodesia's future Government rests with the British Parliament and no one else?
    The Prime Minister: British policy on Rhodesia is to do our very best for the people of Rhodesia. We adhere, as we believe the Opposition adhere, to the six principles. There is only one final principle to be decided. The question is whether the fifth principle was decided by the results of the elections. If it was, the six principles will have been honoured. It will be our duty to bring Rhodesia back to legality.
    We accept that the responsibility for Rhodesia rests with this House. We shall do our best to honour it.
    Mr. David Steel: Is the Prime Minister aware that her Government are correct to proceed much more cautiously on this matter than did her party in the general election, and that it would be wrong to recognise a regime which came to power

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    after the banning of two of the main political parties in Rhodesia? Will she therefore give advice to the new Government in Rhodesia that they, internally, should seek reconciliation and a ceasefire agreement with those political parties which exist but which were barred from taking part in the election?
    The Prime Minister: We shall try to bring other countries along with us in the policy that we adopt towards Rhodesia. However, I ask the right hon. Gentleman to remember that the regime in Rhodesia was made illegal on the basis of six principles and six principles only. If those principles are no longer relevant, it will be our duty to bring Rhodesia back to legality, as the six principles will have been honoured.
    My noble Friend the Foreign Secretary is sending an emissary to have discussions with the front-line Pesidents and to consult with them on how best to proceed.
    Mr. Biggs-Davison: Is it not curious that some of the Governments most critical of the Rhodesian elections govern States in which there have been no elections at any time? When will it be possible for the report of the observers from the Conservative Party to be placed before the House?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend that democracy is about what the people inside a country want. The elections in Rhodesia were held on the basis of one person, one vote, involving four different political parties.
    The report of my noble Friend Lord Boyd will be published. We are not holding it up in any way. It will be available to the House as soon as it comes from the printers.
    Mr. James Callaghan: We all welcome the intention to send an emissary to consult with the front-line Presidents. I am sure that they will have some valuable opinions to offer. I welcome the fact that an emissary from the Foreign Office has been to see Bishop Muzorewa. Is it the intention of the Government to send an emissary to see Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Nkomo, who are both essential elements to peacemaking in that part of the world?
    The Prime Minister: I have no announcement or statement to make about that point.

    TUC
    Mr. Hal Millerasked the Prime Minister when last she met the leaders of the Trades Union Congress.
    The Prime Minister: I have not yet had an opportunity to meet the TUC since taking office but consultations between my colleagues and the trade union movement are already under way.
    Mr. Miller: May I first congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on her personal triumph in the recent election?
    When my right hon. Friend meets the leaders of the TUC, will she make it plain that the February concordat, which was cobbled together so hastily, provided inadequate protection for the individual in respect of the closed shop and secondary picketing? Will she make plain her determination to remedy those defects?
    The Prime Minister: I most certainly will. I am not known for my objectives or purposes being unclear. I believe that my policies on this are known. They are agreed with and overwhelmingly supported by the vast majority of people in this country, who believe that a law must be introduced to deal with certain aspects of the closed shop, picketing and the postal ballot.
    Mr. James Hamilton: Does the Prime Minister recognise that the trade unionists among us are responsible people, and that the majority of trade unionists are responsible? Based on her own experience in government from 1970 to 1974, does she recognise that confrontation with the trade unions is a disaster for the country? If she should work herself into a situation of confrontation, what will be the Government's reaction?
    The Prime Minister: I am not confronting anyone. I hope that they are not confronting me, either.
    Mr. Budgen: When my right hon. Friend next meets the leaders of the TUC. will she talk to them about the rate of inflation? Will she remind them that, as the previous Government allowed the money supply in the year ending April 1978 to rise by 16¼ per cent., as measured by M3, it is now inevitable that the rate of inflation will rise to about 16 per cent. per annum?
    The Prime Minister: I regret to say that the rate of inflation is rising once again. It is our intention to keep a firm grip on the monetary supply—and, in fact, to have targets six months by six months.
    Mr. McElhone: When the Prime Minister meets the Scottish TUC. will she give it a guarantee that free school milk, which was restored by the Labour Government to the children of Scotland, will not be at risk under her Administration? Before she answers that question, may I warn her that St. Francis of Assissi listened carefully to new converts, especially those who might repent previous sins?
    The Prime Minister: I rather thought that the school milk was restored through the good offices of the EEC—and not until those grants were available.
    Mr. Tim Renton: Doubtless my right hon. Friend will have a friendly reception when she meets the TUC leaders. Will she make it plain on that occasion that much damage will be done to the reputation of the trade union movement if NUPE and COHSE are allowed to think that they have an industrial veto over the decisions of Parliament?
    The Prime Minister: If anyone thinks that, he does great damage to himself, his union and the whole of parliamentary democracy. I hope that all of us will condemn anyone who thinks that.
    Mr. Healey: Will the right hon. Lady confirm the figures published by the Government last week, which show that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) was talking through his hat and that the money supply, M3, rose only 10½ per cent. in the past 12 months, which was barely one-third of the amount it rose in the final 12 months of the previous Conservative Government?
    The Prime Minister: A Chancellor of the Exchequer frequently takes the year-by-year sum. There are considerable variations within the yearly sum. There was a sharp rise during the past six months.

    PRIME MINISTER (ENGAGEMENTS)
    Mr. Brothertonasked the Prime Minister, if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 22 May.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave earlier today to the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Davis).
    Mr. Brotherton: Following my right hon. Friend's excellent start with the Price Commission, will she find some time today to consider abolishing the Equal Opportunities Commission? Is not my right hon. Friend's presence at the Dispatch Box living proof that the commission is unnecessary? While my right hon. Friend is about it, will she abolish many other commissions which do nothing but waste taxpayers' money?
    The Prime Minister: Not today, Sir—although I agree with my hon. Friend that I did not exactly need the commission. However, I shall have a look at other commissions, too.
    Mr. Snape: At the risk of being offered a job, may I congratulate the right hon. Lady on the surge in price increases since the Government took office?
    Will she explain to the British people that there are still another 200 companies in the pipeline which have yet to receive their pay-off for their contributions to Tory Party funds?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is remarkable how many price increases are held up just before a general election.
    Mr. Adley: Reverting to the question about COHSE and NUPE, does my right hon. Friend agree that what those unions said in the past few days is deeply offensive, not only to the House but to millions of people, especially after a general election? Is it not appropriate that she should seek a meeting with Mr. Len Murray at an early date to raise the matter with him so that the question may be fully and openly discussed and so that she may let him know what many people feel about what COHSE and NUPE are up to?
    Mrs. Thatcher: I believe that it is not only deeply offensive but also constitutionally wrong, and I believe that the leaders of the trade union movement would say the same thing. I shall convey my hon. Friend's message and the feelings of the House on this matter.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Ordered,
That—
(1) Standing Order No. 6 (Precedence of Government business) shall have effect for this Session with the following modifications, namely:—
In paragraph (2) the word 'fourteen' shall be substituted for the word 'ten' in line 5; in paragraph (3) the word 'eighth' shall be substituted for the word 'seventh' in line 8; and in paragraph (5) the word 'nine' shall be substituted for the word 'ten' in line 30;
(2) Private Members' Bills shall have precedence over Government business on 13th and 20th July, 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th November and 7th December 1979, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th February, 7th and 14th March and 4th July 1980;
(3) Private Members' Notices of Motions shall have precedence over Government business on 6th July and 14th December 1979, 11th, 18th and 25th January, 1st February, 21st and 28th March and 18th April 1980 and ballots for these Notices shall be held after Questions on Wednesday 20th June, Wednesday 28th November, Wednesday 12th December and Wednesday 19th December 1979, Wednesday 9th January. Wednesday 16th January, Wednesday 5th March, Wednesday 12th March and Wednesday 26th March 1980;
(4) On Monday 10th December 1979, Monday 25th February, Monday 12th May, and Monday 7th July 1980, Private Members' Notices of Motions shall have precedence until Seven o'clock and ballots for these Notices shall be held after Questions on Thursday 22nd November 1979, Thursday 7th February, Thursday 24th April, and Thursday 19th June 1980:
(5) No Notice of Motion shall be handed in for any of the days on which Private Members' Notices have precedence under this Order in anticipation of the Ballot for that day.—[Mr. St. John-Stevas.]

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS
  [SIXTH DAY]
  Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [15 May]:
  That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:
  Most Gracious Sovereign,
  We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.—[Sir William Elliott.]
  Question again proposed.

  THE ECONOMY, PAY AND PRICES
  Mr. Speaker: I have selected the amendment in the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. I must inform the House that the same considerations apply today as applied yesterday.
  I fear that all the hon. Members who seek to make maiden speeches will not be able to do so, in view of the very large number wishing to participate in the debate.
  3.31 p.m.
  Mr. Denis Healey: I beg to move, at the end of the Question, to add:
  But humbly regret that the Gracious Speech commits Her Majesty's Government to policies that will divide the nation, inflict grave damage on Britain's economic performance, raise prices, and increase unemployment.
  We are today concluding a debate which, by general consent, marks the biggest reversal of policy that any Government have undertaken for 50 years. The right hon. Lady opened it last week by laying claim to a position on what she called the extreme centre. Her extremism is clear enough, but where is her centre? Her claim to represent the middle way is almost as bizarre as her choice of a quotation from St. Francis—the humble apostle of poverty and equality—to sanctify a doctrine that glories in the conviction that the only valid motive force for social and economic endeavour is

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  naked materialism and selfish greed. Her hymn to human liberty last Wednesday would have been more effective if she did not always address her audience as though they were the inmates of a women's reformatory. Still, if her colleagues can put up with this sort of hectoring at close quarters every day at No. 10, I suppose that we in the House will have to learn to put up with it.
  I must say that the right hon. Lady has chosen some remarkable companions for her new Order of St. Francis. She has chosen 14 peers to make sure that her kitchen Cabinet is "fit for the Ritz", to quote her leading admirer in the Conservative newspapers. [Interruption.] The key Members, who have been paraded in front of us during the debate in the last few days, are more suitable for the "Dirty Dozen" than for a monastic order. We had Brother Michael at the Department of the Environment—[HON. MEMBERS: "Cheap."]—undertaking to make sure that the poor man would never get a lodging for the night. We had Brother Keith, at the Department of Industry, promising yesterday to galvanise entrepreneurs with massive injections of Schumpeter. We had Brother Peter at the Foreign Office, still searching in vain to find one foreign statesman to welcome the right hon. Lady's election, other than Franz Josef Strauss and Ian Smith.
  We shall listen this afternoon to Brother Geoffrey at the Treasury, who has been locked up in the same cell with the right hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen), the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson), the hon. and learned Member for Dover and Deal (Mr. Rees), and Lord Cockfield—[Interruption.]—all planted there to make sure that he does not allow common sense or morality to divert him from the pursuit of the right hon. Lady's only true religion.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members must realise that part of being in this place is listening to things with which one does not agree. It is the right of everyone to put his point of view forward and to be heard.
  Mr. Healey: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I must say that it is odd that a Chancellor of the Exchequer who has committed himself to less government and lower public expenditure should start by
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  increasing his ministerial team at the Treasury by 33 per cent. He is obviously finding life at the Treasury a little uncomfortable already, because we have heard in the last week or two a clumsily orchestrated lobby briefing which shows that he is trying to find some way of excusing himself to his Prime Minister, if not to the electorate, for his obvious inability to fulfil the promises that he made in the general election. He cannot, of course, make his sums come out, because they never added up in the first place. But it is a little thick for him to come along now and tell us that he is astonished at what he found.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he was astonished at the £1,000 million cost to Britain of membership of the Common Market, but that figure was published months ago by the Commission and was repeatedly discussed in this House by the last Government. If he is really concerned to do something about this intolerable burden on the British Exchequer, he had better get his skates on, for if he does not get a firm commitment from the June Council—which I assume the right hon. Lady will be attending—to correct the position, there will be no chance of progress on it until well into next year.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he was astonished at the effect on inflation of the wages free-for-all, which he spent the last five years in promoting. He said that he was astonished at the effect of a harsh winter on food prices and of events in the Middle East on the price of oil. If he is astonished about anything in relation to inflation, it must be at the fact that, despite these blows that the country has suffered in recent months, inflation is still well below the level of 13·2 per cent., year on year, which the last Government inherited from the Government of which he was last a member in 1974. If he is really astonished at all—
  Mr. John Bruce-Gardyne: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House whether it is still his opinion—he expressed it in January—that if wages rose by 15 per cent. in the latest wage round, as they have, we would be heading for a return to the confetti money of 1975?
  Mr. Healey: I shall be dealing with that point in detail in a moment. But let me

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  commiserate with the hon. Gentleman for failing to make the grade, in spite of the glowing words that his leader pronounced about him as being fit material for the Cabinet when he won his by-election not very long ago.
  If the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been really astonished at anything, it must have been at the fact that the inheritance that we left him was far more favourable to his purposes than was indicated by his moaning when we discussed the situation, before the election campaign began, on 3 April. The Chancellor inherited a strong pound, although it has weakened dramatically since he took office. He inherited reserves that are three times higher than when his party was last in power, although the last Government paid off, ahead of time, all their debts to the International Monetary Fund arising from the events of 1976. He inherited a surplus on the balance of payments, despite the soaring deficit which we inherited from his Government in 1974. He inherited a level of investment in private manufacturing industry which is growing strongly in volume for the third year running, as it never did when his party was last in power.
  The Chancellor told us last week that industrial production had been rising strongly after the events of the winter. The money supply is moving exactly as I predicted it would on 3 April. Over the last 12 months it has been in the middle of the range that I set a year ago, as I think the Prime Minister admitted a moment ago, although when the Conservatives were last in office it was rising not at 10½ per cent. but nearer 30 per cent., and that for three years before they finally left power in 1974.
  The Chancellor inherited a public expenditure programme that was under firm control and a smaller percentage of our gross domestic product than in most European countries, a fact that the European Commission has just verified. He inherited a public sector borrowing requirement which is a lower percentage of gross domestic product than we inherited from the last Conservative Government, although the last Conservative Government inherited a surplus on public account from its Labour predecessor. He inherited interest rates which, though still uncomfortably high, are nevertheless lower
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  than they were when I took office as Chancellor in 1974. He inherited an unemployment level which, though far too high, had been falling steadily for 20 months, and he inherited a level of employment that was rising faster—indeed, there were 100,000 more people at work in Britain last December than we inherited in March 1974.
  None of these facts should have astonished the Chancellor. I described all of them in our debate on 3 April. There are, however, genuine grounds for concern with regard to our economy, which I also described on 3 April. Abroad there is an increasingly sluggish outlook for world trade and strong inflationary pressures world-wide, both deriving in the main from the continuing increase in oil prices. At home we still have the failure of industry to respond fast enough to increased demand and the effect of wage inflation on prices in general and industrial costs in particular.
  One area in respect of which I may have been too optimistic on 3 April is that of wages. These may be rising faster in the private sector than I then expected. The new Government have given a boost to wage increases in the public sector by paying out ahead of time an increase of over 30 per cent. to the Armed Forces and an increase of about 20 per cent. to the police.
  As a result, the outturn on earnings—this deals with the point raised by the hon. Member for Knutsford (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) a moment ago could well prove to be closer to a 15 per cent. increase in the current round than that which I expected six weeks ago. This may have a serious effect on jobs before long, unless the present Government can get inflation under better control.
  I want to concentrate my remarks this afternoon on the central problem of inflation and jobs and to consider the prospect for both with the right hon. and learned Gentleman at the Treasury. He saddled himself with a string of election promises which simpy do not add up and cannot be made to add up without catastrophic consequences for jobs and prices. Yet he has fuelled expectations throughout the country, not least in Conservative newspapers, which it would be quite impossible for him to meet. He may recall an article in The Sun newspaper

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  during the election campaign, which read:
  "Tax cuts are promised 'in the first budget'. They must be dramatic tax cuts. We want no nonsense about four-year plans, no pie in the sky. The feeling of let-down throughout the country would be enormous."
  The Sun was right. The Daily Telegraph made the same point in its leader yesterday, as did the Evening Standard and the Daily Express.
  On top of the Chancellor's promise to cut income tax, his half-baked dedication to the grosser excesses of monetarist theory has led him to commit himself to monetary targets below the 8–12 per cent. to which the previous Government were committed—he appears to be talking of 7–11 per cent.—and to a public sector borrowing requirement lower than the £8½ billion to which the previous Government committed themselves, and a figure of £7·9 billion has been widely discussed in the newspapers on the basis of Government briefing.
  The Chancellor must be bitterly regretting these self-inflicted wounds. Already the CBI has told him to forget about a further reduction in the borrowing requirement and, of all newspapers, The Daily Telegraph was yesterday recommending that he should fix PSBR at £9 billion this year—an increase of £500 million over the target set by the previous Government. I must warn him—I am sure that he knows this—that he must reject that advice. If, in the present circumstances, he sought to achieve a public sector borrowing requirement above the £8½ billion to which the Government have committed themselves, the very fragile state of financial and business confidence would be utterly destroyed. I see the hon. Member for Blaby nodding his head in agreement to that.
  What I want to try to do this afternoon is to describe the nature of the dilemma which I know the Chancellor faces. As I explained to the House on 25 January, an increase in pay over the current round of about 15 per cent. is likely to increase the PSBR this year by over £1 billion above the £8½ billion that it would have been on the assumptions in the last autumn forecast. That is to say that personal allowances were raised in accordance with the Rooker-Wise amendment
  880
  and specific duties were revalorised to the real level of a year ago.
  In the caretaker Budget that I introduced just before the election, the Chancellor very reluctantly accepted the Rooker-Wise amendment. He had said in an interview with Reuters a few days earlier that he would not accept it. Indeed, his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment told us during the election campaign that the present Government were not committed in any way to raising personal allowances as envisaged in the caretaker Budget. If the Chancellor goes through with the Rooker-Wise amendment—so far he has made no commitment to revalorization—this would increase the PSBR by about £500 million. Therefore, on these assumptions the PSBR would be about £10½ billion before he formulated his Budget.
  We recognised the problems that would be created by excessive increases in pay in the current round before the election and took some steps to deal with them, for which I hope the Chancellor is duly grateful. First, we decided on the strict application of cash limits in the public sector that would reduce public expenditure by about £350 million below what it would otherwise have been. We persuaded the trustee savings banks to play a part in financing export credit, which would have cut another £200 million off public expenditure. I also left—I dare say that the Chancellor will be grateful—a contingency reserve of about £600 million, which is three times bigger than we had at Budget time last year, although this counts as public expenditure.
  As a result of what I did and what has happened in recent months, I would have expected the PSBR today to stand at about £9·9 billion. So the Chancellor must find £2,000 million by increasing taxes or cutting public expenditure if he wants to reach his PSBR target of £7·9 billion, even before he begins to finance any of the cuts in income tax which he repeatedly promised in recent weeks, going beyond the Rooker-Wise amendment.
  As the Chancellor has pointed out many times—including when we debated these matters on 3 April—the Rooker-Wise amendment is not a cut in income tax. It simply restores the level of

  881
  income tax to the real levels of a year ago.
  Let us look at the cuts in income tax which the Chancellor—even more his hon. Friend the Financial Secretary—led his supporters to expect during the general election. He told us that there would be cuts across the board at every level.
  To reduce the highest rate to 60 per cent. from 83 per cent. would cost £400 million. It would cost £1,200 million to cut the basic rate to at least 30p. To raise tax thresholds to the level at which they stood in 1973 would cost £1,400 million on top of the Rooker-Wise amendment. Therefore, the Chancellor must find another £3 billion on top of the first £2 billion if he is to carry out his promises to cut income tax, and that is without counting in the promises that he has also made to reduce capital gains tax—it would cost £250 million to index that—to reduce the investment income surcharge and to abolish the earnings rule. I am delighted to see the Financial Secretary to the Treasury looking so thoughtful and rueful as I list these elements in the problem with which the Chancellor has saddled himself.
  The right hon. and learned Gentleman told us that if he is to carry out his election promises and make these cuts in income tax he will have to raise £5 billion in all. He told us that he will do so by increasing taxes on what we buy, or by cutting public expenditure, or both. Why has he apparently ruled out increases in other taxes? For example, what about company taxation? He has given a firm undertaking not to increase the national insurance surcharge, but why not increase advance corporation tax? He could get really substantial help here, and, of course, ACT is levied only on companies that distribute dividends. There should be a lot more of them if the right hon. and learned Gentleman carries out his promise to reduce or abolish the control of dividends in his current Budget.
  Why not defer the payment of regional development grants, particularly if the Chancellor is planning to phase them out altogether in any case? Why not increase the taxes on betting, particularly on casinos? We could find some very useful help there. Why not make a further increase in the petroleum revenue tax? The increase in oil prices is certain substantially
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  to increase the profits of the oil companies. Apparently the right hon. and learned Gentleman has set his mind against all these ways of raising money. From what he said during and since the election, he has confined himself exclusively to increasing indirect taxation and cutting public expenditure.
  Now let us look at the problems that the Chancellor faces there. He has a special problem in raising indirect taxes, because he forced an election just before my normal Budget in April and is now taking six weeks to prepare his own. So the yield from any increases in indirect taxes on which he may decide in his Budget will be only about two-thirds of the full-year yield, although their effect on prices will be immediate. He will raise prices "at a stroke", to quote his previous leader, the ex-future Ambassador to Washington, on an earlier occasion.
  The Chancellor can raise a few hundred million pounds by revalorising the duties on petrol, drink and tobacco, but that would add about ½ per cent. to the retail price index. He can increase, and clearly intends to increase, VAT. In an article of stupefying frankness, in The Daily Telegraph, published only the day before polling day, he told us that he would not double the rate of VAT, but he said that a single rate of 12½ per cent. would bring in a certain amount of money and would increase the retail price index by about 2¼ per cent.
  Well, of course, if the Chancellor does that—I suspect that it was in his mind the day before the country went to the polls—it would bring in well under £2 billion in the current fiscal year. Therefore, all this together is unlikely to cut the public sector borrowing requirement by more than about 1½ billion out of the £5 billion he needs if he is to satisfy his supporters and carry out his election promises.
  Everything clearly depends on the extent to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman is able to cut public expenditure this year. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, whose frankness was one of the more agreeable elements in the election campaign, told us at that time that his party was committed to reducing public expenditure to the 1977–78 level, in real terms. That would mean a net cut in the current year of £5,000 million.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Nigel Lawson)indicated dissent.
  Mr. Healey: I stress the word "net", because so far the Conservative Party has told us only how it proposes to increase public expenditure. It has already spent £165 million on the police and the Armed Services, and during the last week we have had promises from Government Ministers of more expenditure on defence. The Under-Secretary of State for Defence who is responsible for the Navy said last week that he had promised NATO that Britain would achieve a growing maritime role in the Atlantic, and the Secretary of State for Defence has apparently promised to modernise the theatre nuclear forces of NATO and to spend more on Britain's nuclear deterrent. Therefore, where will the cuts come from?
  Mr. Lawson: To correct all the right hon. Gentleman's inaccuracies—not to use a stronger word—would be tedious, but may I point out that when I said that it was our intention to try to reduce public expenditure, in real terms, to the level of 1977–78, I specifically stated that this would have to be done over a period and could not be done in the first year? This was made absolutely clear and explicit.
  Mr. Healey: Yes, but I was trying to be kind to the Chancellor. If he is to cut it to that level over several years, he will have to cut currently planned expenditure for 1982 by £9,000 million and not by £5,000 million. If he does not make a good start this year, I do not know how the hell he will do it over the following two or three years, and I suspect that he does not have the slightest idea, either.
  We are hoping to get some information from the Chancellor about where the cuts will come from. We know where the increases will come from. The Chancellor knows that it is not easy to cut major spending programmes. There is not much scope for further cuts in capital spending. Indeed, the right hon. and learned Gentleman spent the last five years telling us that we have cut capital spending in the public sector too much. But cuts in current spending mean throwing people out of work, paying unemployment pay and in many cases making very heavy redundancy payments. Therefore, such
  884
  cuts take time to carry out and bring little immediate financial benefit, at least in the first 12 months. Of course, what they fail to do is at the cost of immediate human suffering.
  The Chancellor's right hon. Friend, the Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords, has already announced that he is cutting the Civil Service staff by 3 per cent., although in the small print it said that there would be exceptions. We do not know how far these exceptions will run. We gather that the Government certainly will not cut Customs and Excise staff. I gather that that has been announced. It will be interesting to see what will happen to the Inland Revenue staff if the right hon. and learned Gentleman carries out his undertaking to tax short-term benefits, because that could add at least 10,000 to the Inland Revenue staff—again, at a stroke.
  During the election campaign the Conservatives talked a lot about cutting industrial aid. They have talked very much less about it since. When I was speaking in Ayr during the campaign, I discovered that the present Secretary of State for Scotland spent the last five years pressing the Labour Government for more public expenditure in his part of Scotland. However, the Prime Minister went to the Conservative Party conference in Scotland, along with the Secretary of State for Scotland, and sang a very different tune about public expenditure there. She promised to maintain activities at present being buttressed by Government aid, and we even had the "mad monk" telling us yesterday that we must not expect any significant cuts in industrial aid in the next 12 months because of "prior commitments".
  It is clear that one of the Chancellor's secret weapons is the sell-out of the century—an attempt to auction off public property for the most money he can raise. He is not likely to get much money when he is going to the auction desperate for that money. This is an extraordinary example of Conservative financing, another example of the reversal in traditional Conservative policies, to sell capital assets to finance current expenditure. Neville Chamberlain must be turning in his grave.
  How much money does the right hon. and learned Gentleman expect to raise by

  885
  this route? The Secretary of State for the Environment told us a great deal last week about selling off council housing at a discount. But Mr. Tag Taylor, the chairman of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, has already told him that the councils would expect the Government to reimburse them for any losses caused by sales at a discount. That would lead to an increase, not a fall, in public expenditure.
  The Chancellor has talked—indeed, the Conservatives committed themselves in the manifesto to this course of action—of selling off British Shipbuilders, but no one will buy British Shipbuilders—those responsible for the previous private companies have made this clear—unless the Government guarantee the contracts upon which British shipbuilding will depend.
  The same is true of British Aerospace. It depends almost entirely on Government contracts. The Secretary of State for the Environment talked of selling off bits of British Airways, but, as the Financial Times pointed out the next day, it would be crazy to sell shares in British Airways now when they will be worth a great deal more in four or five years.
  There is then the mystery surrounding the Government's policy on BP. Conservative Central Office issued a statement during the election campaign saying that there was no truth in the idea that the Tory Party was thinking of selling shares in BP, although the right hon. and learned Gentleman who is now the Chancellor told the House last year that his party was planning to sell such shares. Will the Chancellor explain why he is planning to liquidate Churchill's last legacy just at the time when world economic forces are making the value of British Petroleum shares rocket and when the importance of British Petroleum to the nation's economy is at its height?
  Mr. Peter Hordern: The right hon. Gentleman will recollect that it was his Government who sold a large proportion of British Petroleum shares. What was he doing about the country's assets at that time?
  Mr. Healey: We were selling off the equivalent of the value of the Burmah shares, which are still the subject of litigation. However, we retained a substantial majority holding in British Petroleum
  886
  even after that sale. If the Chancellor attempts sales of shares now on the scale that he has been discussing, or on any scale that will make a significant contribution to funding his deficit, he risks losing control of British Petroleum completely, just at the moment when a new oil crisis, which could not have been foreseen in 1976, is increasing to the maximum the value of the shares in that company.
  In all these cases major purchasers of the shares of these public companies are bound to be the same financial institutions upon whose purchase of gilts the financing of the PSBR is bound to depend. The Chancellor may therefore gain nothing in relation to the money supply and the financing of the borrowing requirement. The one certainty is that to dump this enormous public asset on the market at this time would lead to an indigestion that would be likely to rule out the rights issues upon which British industry depends for new investment. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] If hon. Members want to know why, they should read the Lex column in the Financial Times over the next few weeks.
  The loss to private purchasers—perhaps to purchasers abroad—of the profitable parts of public industry is bound to increase the public expenditure needed to finance the less profitable parts that are left in the Government's hands. The fact is that the asset stripping on a mammoth scale to which the Government appear to have committed themselves would be financially unrewarding and economically disastrous.
  The only alternative left to the right hon. and learned Gentleman if he wants to finance his income tax cuts is a massive attack on the living standards of the British people, particularly the poor, the unemployed and the pensioners.
  Mr. Lawson: There is no point. They are not going to elect the right hon. Gentleman leader anyway.
  Mr. Healey: The poor old fellow. I apologise, Mr. Speaker. I was addressing myself to the Financial Secretary, and not to you, as you will recognise.
  Are the Government planning to cut transfer payments? It is time, now that we are reaching the end of the debate on the Queen's Speech, in which this matter

  887
  has been raised repeatedly without drawing an intelligible reply from the Government, for the Chancellor to tell us frankly whether, like the previous Government, he intends to raise pensions and other benefits in line with earnings, or only in line with prices. He may be aware that the present Secretary of State for Defence, in one of the more comic interludes in the last general election campaign, when he appeared, in "Panorama", to be mercilessly bullied—perhaps it is unfair to use that word—by two of my hon. Friends, committed his future Government to raising long-term benefits in line with earnings, not prices. Is that the Government's position? The Secretary of State for Education, when speaking on the matter last Thursday, seemed totally unclear as to what his Government's policy was, and I do not blame him for being so.
  If the Chancellor does not cut transfer payments, the only way in which he can raise money will be to increase charges, or inflict new charges, for services provided in the public sector. He has already decided to abolish the Price Commission to clear the way. That is why, last week, there was the 8½ per cent. increase in gas and electricity prices, timed to begin on 1 June. But what will follow? What will happen to the increase in railway fares, council rents, school meals and, above all, National Health Service charges? In Opposition, the current Minister committed himself to raising them substantially and to imposing entirely new types of charges.
  Every £1,000 million that the Government seek to raise in this way will add 1 per cent. to the retail price index. If the Chancellor seeks, therefore, to find, say, £2 billion by increasing charges, the total increase in the retail price index, on top of the indirect tax increases to which he appears to have committed himself, will be 4½ per cent. In the week after the Budget, therefore, inflation will be running at nearly 15 per cent. if the Chancellor has his way.
  That, however, is not the end of the story on prices. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has freed the private sector to increase prices to whatever level the market will permit. Bread went up by 2p for a large loaf only yesterday. The Government's agriculture policy will
  888
  put an extra halfpenny on milk on 3 June. In addition, they are committed to devaluation of the green pound so as to increase the price of butter by 10½p per pound, bread by another 1½p, cheese by 9p and so on, adding another half per cent. to the retail price index.
  In other words, if the right hon. and learned Gentleman attempts to carry out his policies to satisfy the expectations of those who voted for him, and those who wrote for him during the election campaign, he will have to finance them by means that increase the cost of living by 5 per cent. at a stroke.
  The benefit of the income tax cuts will go mainly to the better off. The damage caused by the price increases will fall mainly on the lower paid, the sick, the unemployed and children at school. As one of my right hon. Friends pointed out during the election campaign, only one wage earner out of 10 will be better off, but the man earning £1,000 a week will be getting an extra £152 a week in consequence.
  What will happen to pay in this situation, in the rest of this round and in the next round? The right hon. Lady has promised on many occasions that she will not intervene in any way in pay bargaining—with one exception, to which I shall return in a moment. At least, however, she has now agreed to talk about pay policy in some great new forum that includes employers, consumers, trade unionists—the lot.
  According to the Secretary of State for Employment, this is to be an enormous experiment in adult education. But mathematics will not be on the curriculum, because the Secretary of State for Employment has made clear, contrary to the views that he took when he himself was in Opposition—I know that his views were not shared by his party—that there will be no attempt to introduce figuring into the pay-prices equation. He will rely simply on spreading through the nation a better understanding of the facts.
  I have a great deal of sympathy with the Secretary of State's approach to these matters, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have to play a central role in any discussions of that nature, not only because pay policy is central to the whole of economic management in this country but because, if he wants to reach an

  889
  understanding with the trade unions on this matter, he will have to be prepared to discuss not only pay but taxation, prices and many other matters.
  Understanding is a two-way process, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not get far with the trade union movement if he treats its leaders and members as lepers. Again and again, he went out of his way over the past five years to insult the trade union leadership—"Ageing doctrinaire prejudiced Socialist trade union leaders", he called them, and the nicest phrase that he could find was to call them medieval barons.
  The trade union leaders—I know how uncomfortable the right hon. and learned Gentleman is about all these questions—are prejudiced. They are committed by those who elected them to protect their members' living standards. They are not barons. As one of my hon. Friends pointed out in the debate last week, one of the problems of industrial policy is not the strength of the trade union leadership but its inability to compel or persuade its members in many cases to do what the leadership thinks best.
  I suggest to the right hon. Lady, who herself will have to play a central role in these discussions, that if she is not prepared to talk to the TUC she should at least talk to the Conservative trade unionists—to Lulu and Pete Murray—and see whether they can get their own Conservative members to work with a Government who are deliberately throwing them out of work and forcing prices up to record heights.
  The nature of the problem that the Government face here is daunting. I do not deny that. The last Government were half-way through real discussions, with figures, with the TUC and CBI when the general election was called. It was already obvious that if we were to get inflation down to 5 per cent.—an objective shared with the last Labour Government by the right hon. and learned Gentleman—by the beginning of 1982—that, I think, is a common target between both sides of the House—we should need an increase in the nation's earnings no higher than 7 per cent. in the pay round after next; in other words, an increase of only half what looks like the current rate.
  Unless there is to be a superhuman and miraculous fall in the level of earnings in
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  1980–81, we shall have to get at least half-way there in the next pay round which begins in August, only two months hence. That would mean settlements in the next pay round averaging no more than about 7 per cent., or, indeed, perhaps less, given the effect of comparability in the public services and the great boost to pay claims in the public sector created by the present Government's decision to pay out 30 per cent. to the Armed Services at a stroke.
  Yet the right hon. and learned Gentleman has put himself into the position in which, if he is to carry out his Budget promises, he is liable to bring the increase in the cost of living to 15 per cent. or 16 per cent. before the next round begins. I am sure that that must be the reason—at least, I put this to him as a question—why the right hon. Lady refused to rule out a pay freeze. But if she sought to introduce a pay freeze at the beginning of the next pay round, she would be forcing the biggest fall in living standards on working people which this country has ever known in a single year.
  Does the right hon. Lady really think that she can make a pay freeze stick without industrial disruption on a scale that would dwarf even that which occurred during the three-day working week? Even if she made it stick, what would take its place? It would be bound to be followed by the father and mother of all wage explosions.
  Mr. Peter Tapsell: The right hon. Gentleman has devoted the whole of his speech to describing the extraordinarily difficult legacy that he has handed to his successor in office as Chancellor. But who has been responsible by his stewardship for creating this state of affairs over the past five years?
  Mr. Healey: I think that the House will agree that what I have been describing is the dilemma in which the Government have put themselves by irresponsible electioneering promises in the past week or two. I do not know how the right hon. Lady will escape from the box in which she has locked herself. I doubt that she does, either. Certainly, the financial markets do not. That is why gilts, equities and the pound have all fallen since the general election, as the implications of Conservative election promises have begun to sink in.

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  Will the right hon. Lady go on battering her head against the brick wall of facts in the hope that it will collapse before her skull cracks, or will she follow the precedent set by her predecessor and perform yet another U-turn, followed dutifully by the whole of her Front Bench as her predecessor was followed by her and by the right hon. and learned Gentleman?
  Either way, the British people, I fear, are in for a painful lesson, because all the policies to which the right hon. Lady committed herself at the time of the election were tried by her predecessor and failed. Why does she expect to succeed where the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) was forced to admit failure within 18 months? He, after all, was a paragon of pragmatism and flexibility compared with her. The problems that our country faces today demand patience, humanity and understanding. The right hon. Lady approaches them with all the one-dimensional subtlety of a comic strip. She is bound to fail. I only pray that her failure does not cost our country too much.
  4.19 p.m.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Geoffrey Howe): The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) made a characteristic speech, and perhaps nothing was quite so characteristic as the way in which he closed—he of all people least qualified to do so—calling for patience, humanity and understanding.
  The right hon. Gentleman asked me a number of questions about the way in which we were preparing our plans for the Budget. I must tell him at the outset that it is not my purpose, save in respect of one or two matters of pressing importance, to announce decisions today, since those will be for announcement in the Budget Statement next month, and the House will not expect me—neither would the right hon. Gentleman himself—to anticipate it on this occasion.
  There were several other curious qualities about the right hon. Gentleman's speech. I must say that the invective with which he started was less amusing and less attractive than usual—the product of a great deal of monastic midnight oil and intense study of the saints of the Church—and by the conclusion of it he
  892
  had succeeded in driving his right hon. Friend the former Government Chief Whip into a deep comatose slumber, which was a fair judgment on it.
  But there were some remarkable insights in the right hon. Gentleman's speech. I noticed that whereas throughout the general election campaign, when asked questions about the public sector borrowing requirement and about his own plans for dealing with it, he was about as unforthcoming as a Trappist monk, unwilling to tell the nation or the electorate one word about the forecasts that he was then making, today he was only too ready to belabour and batter those of us on the Government side of the House with the horrors that he had left behind him but was unwilling to reveal to the nation at the time of the general election.
  An even more characteristic transformation on the right hon. Gentleman's part was the way in which, throughout the general election, he trumpeted from one end of the country to the other about his enormous generosity in having cut income tax by £1,000 million. My hon. Friends will remember well the boast of the cuts that he had made—thousands of millions of pounds—before that. Today the scene is transformed and he tells us, with a candour that the nation did not get at the time of the general election, that the implementation of the Rooker-Wise amendment was not a cut in income tax at all. This is surely very characteristic of the right hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] Why, in heaven's name, did the right hon. Gentleman spend the entire election campaign, in broadcast after broadcast, boasting about his generosity if it were not so?
  The right hon. Gentleman appeared to have some sense of grievance at the decision of this House of Commons, before the election, to deprive him of the opportunity of what he was pleased to describe as his "normal" Budget on 3 April. I must say that he takes a great deal of satisfying, because during his tenure of the Exchequer he introduced five "normal" Budgets and 10 "abnormal" Budgets, and for most of us that was more than enough.
  It is possible now to appreciate a great deal more clearly than we have done throughout the last five years the magnitude of the task that the right hon.

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  Gentleman and his colleagues have left for us to undertake, because we are no longer now obliged to view the landscape solely through the distorting lens that he so often held up for us. That is an important change that we have achieved.
  Of course, there have been other changes that the House might like to notice in the familiar case in these debates as a result of the successes achieved by my hon. Friends in the general election campaign. Victory in Cornwall, North and Luton, West has simultaneously struck down the economic spokesmen for the Liberal Party and the Tribune Group. I dare say that we shall learn to live without those estimable gentlemen.
  Success by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. Hill) makes it—I hope, at least—less likely that the distinguished former Member for that constituency will be able in the future, in a single speech, to knock two cents off the dollar exchange rate. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Test will not seek to emulate that achievement of his predecessor.
  Mr. J. W. Rooker: Smear.
  Mr. Healey: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman admit that if he looks at the figures he will find that he has knocked more than that off the exchange rate by his own actions in the last fortnight?
  Sir G. Howe: The right hon. Gentleman knows that we have taken no actions yet and that they are for announcement at the time of my Budget. The changes that have taken place—the improvement in the exchange rate—were no doubt due to the expectation of our arrival in office. The subsequent deterioration was due to the realisation of the nature of the legacy that the right hon. Gentleman had left behind him.
  It is important for the whole House and, indeed, for the country to understand the gravity of our condition. It has become increasingly fashionable—often in speeches from Opposition Members—and all to easy to claim that our economy has been in decline for at least a century. In a sense, that is true, because in the Industrial Revolution we started ahead of other people. Certainly the growth of our economy has for many
  894
  years lagged behind that of other European countries, but that is too comforting and too easy an alibi.
  If we look back to 1950, we find that even at that time Britain was still one of the world's great commercial and industrial nations. We accounted at that time for one-quarter of the world's trade. Our standard of living then was almost the highest in the world—almost twice as high as that in Germany or in France. Our rate of growth, be it remembered, between 1950 and 1960 was faster than in any decade for which records exist. So much for the oft-repeated myth of the so-called 13 wasted years.
  It is during the last 15 years that the deterioration has become serious. Our share of world trade has fallen to less than 10 per cent. This has been accompanied by a steady decline of some of our major industries. We produced no more iron and steel last year than in 1957. Last year we produced no more cars than we did in 1960. In the past 15 years, our share of world markets for cars, ships and steel has been halved. Over the same period, more than 1 million jobs have been lost in manufacturing.
  Those trends have been made much worse by the developments of the last five years. The general decline of our manufacturing industry has accelerated in those five years. Manufacturing output last year was more than 4 per cent. down on what it was in 1973. Over the same period, productivity in manufacturing rose by a meagre half per cent. a year.
  None of that was changed by last year's brief spurt in living standards. On the contrary, foreign competitors have continued to gain an increased share of our domestic market. Last year, consumers' expenditure rose by 5½ per cent., but manufacturing output rose by less than 1 per cent. Last year the volume of manufactured imports rose by 13 per cent., but the volume of manufactured exports rose by less than 2 per cent.
  Some hon. Members may have read the fascinating and, I thought, rather disenchanted lecture given just 12 days ago by the former Secretary of State for Trade, the former Member for Birkenhead, Edmund Dell. In view of the facts that I have just quoted about the events of the last five years, they may agree with me that the former Secretary of State for

  895
  Trade was unduly kind in describing the previous Government's industrial strategy as "stillborn". Opposition Members seek today to accuse the present Government of inflicting grave damage on Britain's economic performance. We could not dare to match their achievements in that respect.
  Only the advent of North Sea oil has prevented the deterioration in our industrial performance being translated forthwith into sharply falling living standards and a seriously adverse balance of payments.
  The right hon. Gentleman appeared to think that I had no right to be astonished. I was certainly astonished to hear him today seeking to boast about and to take credit for his achievements in respect of the balance of payments. He should remember that just two and a half years ago he told the International Monetary Fund that he expected last year, 1978, a current account surplus of between £2 billion and £3 billion. In the result, and notwithstanding a contribution from North Sea oil and gas of £3½ billion, last year's external account was barely in balance. On the external side we still have inherited overseas debts of more than $20 billion. All these things are part of the legacy that the right hon. Gentleman has left for us.
  North Sea oil may have masked some of the consequences of our industrial decline but it has not prevented exceptionally high unemployment, which reached a post-war peak of 1,435,000. The Opposition amendment ventures to argue that our policies will increase unemployment. Once again, least of all are they entitled to make that charge in the light of their record.
  Mr. Harry Ewing: Can the Chancellor say that his policies will not increase unemployment?
  Sir G. Howe: We must address ourselves to the problems with a view to transforming the underlying performance of our economy. The former Secretary of State for Education is no longer in this House, but her article about the results of the last election in effect said that the Labour Party is bereft of any solution
  896
  to the problems. We believe that our solutions will improve prosperity, employment and living standards in this country.
  During the last Administration, in sharp contrast to what has happened in almost every comparable country, real post-tax incomes in Britain rose by less than 1 per cent. a year over the past five years. Price inflation over the past five years has been faster than in any of our major competitors except Italy and retail prices have more than doubled. The rate of increase slowed down last year because of the favourable movement of world commodity prices and the effect of North Sea oil upon the strength of sterling. In April, however, retail prices were 10 per cent. higher than a year earlier and going up. That is without taking account of the last Government's attempt to doctor the price index by holding down until the election was well out of the way price increases on everything from gas to electricity, bread to beer and industrial gas to Weetabix.
  It would be unfair not to acknowledge that my predecessor had some understanding of the importance of limiting the rate of growth of the money supply. His insight was, however, much more strongly supported by the International Monetary Fund than ever it was by his own party. One can understand that, whenever he refers to monetarism, he seeks to link it with some term of abuse, so that he can, on the one hand, claim credit for being associated with it and, on the other, look as though he has never soiled his hands by having anything to do with it. Even the modest control of the monetary aggregates that he attempted has been achieved only at a heavy cost in terms of high interest rates, which were needed to finance the last Government's excessive borrowing at times of persistently high rates of inflation. During the past five years the outgoing Government borrowed more than £40 billion at average interest rates of 13 per cent., thereby adding a huge burden to the debt to be borne by future generations.
  I also draw attention to the serious fall in profitability under the last Administration. Average pre-tax real rates of return on capital had fallen last year to 4½ per cent. and in manufacturing industry were even lower.

  897
  In these circumstances, it is indeed remarkable to read in the latter-day election manifesto of the Labour Party the bold claim:
  "Over the past five years, the Labour Government has laid the foundations of a stronger economy."
  My hon. Friends and I have had a good look for those foundations and have so far been able to find very little trace of them. A more accurate verdict on the last Government's record is to be found in an interesting news sheet, sponsored by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Holland) among others, called "Labour Activist". In that publication the judgment is as follows:
  "Labour's economic bequest … has been living standards among the lowest in Europe, nearly the worst inflation and unemployment which is forecast to rise from 1½ to 2 million in the next five years."
  It is clear from the decision that was taken on 3 May that the British people have come to the same conclusion and delivered a similiar verdict. They recognised, as my hon. Friends and I certainly do, that we have indeed been left with a dismal inheritance.
  In those circumstances, it would be irresponsible and counter-productive for me or anyone else to suggest that our condition can be quickly transformed. We certainly have not suggested, nor do we, that an economic miracle is now in prospect. That kind of political currency has been savagely devalued by my predecessor. I do not intend to follow his example.
  The Leader of the Opposition may remember using these words at the Labour Party conference in 1976:
  "We have lived for too long on borrowed time, borrowed money and even borrowed ideas and we live in too troubled a world to be able in a matter of months or even of a couple of years to enter the promised land. The route is long and hard."
  It was true then, and he must bitterly regret today that he did not keep these words more firmly in mind.
  Mr. James Callaghan: The difference is that I said it before an election but the right hon. and learned Gentleman has waited until after an election to tell the truth.
  Sir G. Howe: In speech after speech my right hon. Friends and I have spelt
  898
  out the difficulties that will face us. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Budget speech after Budget speech the right hon. Gentleman spoke to the British people of the economic miracle that was just around the corner. The Leader of the Opposition spoke of the golden decade that was about to open for us. The harsh honest words that he uttered at that Labour Party conference, which were the first words that he spoke as leader, were forgotten. He must regret that he did not keep them in mind. I certainly shall not be found repeating the other error so often committed by my predecessor of suggesting that we can look for easy or automatic relief from hopeful changes in the international climate.
  The prospect facing us is for continued slow growth of world trade of about 5 per cent. a year compared with 9 per cent. in the 10 years before the increase in the price of oil. So we cannot look for significant help from increased demand.
  Growth in the major industrial countries is likely indeed to be slower this year than last. Save in a handful of economies, the problem of inflation remains severe. An important factor that has contributed to those prospects has been the sharp increase in oil prices. When account is taken of the various surcharges that are being imposed, the price of oil is now nearly 25 per cent. higher than it was in December. I mention that to make clear the reality of the world in which we live. Unlike the previous Chancellor, I shall not be coming to this House from time to time to say that, whatever I have been doing to the economy in this country, the world will float us off the rocks. The Chancellor all too often sought to present that sort of world.
  In these circumstances, I look forward to discussion with my colleagues in other countries about our common task in struggling to improve that rather sombre prospect. Our search for common objectives will not mean common policies, because our circumstances differ, but shared understanding can help our policies to be compatible. The Government will therefore play their full part at the next economic summit to be held in Tokyo in June.
  I look forward also to a close and fruitful association with fellow Ministers of

  899
  the European Community. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has already explained, that does not mean that this Government will be slow to look after United Kingdom interests in the Community or elsewhere. I have already made it clear at last week's meeting of the European Finance Council that we need urgently a change in the budgetary arrangements of the Community, which leave us at present with a net contribution to the Community quite disproportionate to our resources. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]
  Right hon. Gentlemen opposite may say "Hear, hear", but that position is notwithstanding the financial mechanism for which the former Prime Minister took such credit and which gave him such pride when he negotiated it in 1975. The right hon. Gentleman was saying that I was astonished to find that. I said that anyone who had been concerned with the negotiations between 1971 and 1973—which includes the former Prime Minister when he was negotiating the financial meachanism—would have been astonished that, notwithstanding that, this was the outcome. It is justification for inviting our Community partners to consider seriously the matters that we press upon them from both sides of the House.
  Mr. Douglas Jay: The right hon. and learned Gentleman introduced the European Communities Bill into this House. Can he therefore explain what astonished him last week at Brussels?
  Sir G. Howe: I answered the right hon. Gentleman's question before it was asked. The former Prime Minister was nodding his assent. When he negotiated the financial mechanism, he thought, as we did in 1971–72, that that would not be the outcome. I venture to suggest that that view was also held by most of our Community partners. It is for that reason that we press our case as strongly as we do.
  The difference between our approach and that of the Opposition is that we shall be approaching this issue in a constructive rather than a destructive spirit, showing that we want to engage fully and actively with our partners in developing the Community.
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  The problems that face us both at home and abroad are serious. I shall be making no rash promises. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] No, I shall not do so—unlike my predecessor. Nor shall I fall into the habit of my predecessor of uttering vindictive threats. We shall be moving as quickly as possible, but we shall not allow short-term considerations to deflect us from our longer-term programme. Our concern will be with a policy for a Parliament—and a policy for the Parliament after that as well.
  It is crucial in the first instance to conquer inflation. That calls for the firm maintenance of rigorous monetary targets and for the maintenance of consistent fiscal, spending and borrowing policies. It is essential to sustain that firm policy over several years. The first limb of this Government's strategy is an absolute commitment to a programme of that kind.
  Mr. Denzil Davies rose—
  Sir G. Howe: No. I have given way a number of times.
  If properly sustained, such a programme can help not only to control inflation but to create conditions conducive to growth. Those engaged in determining wages and prices know that money will not be available to finance irresponsible increases. Businesses know that, provided public borrowing is controlled, finance for investment will be available—
  Mr. Denzil Davies rose—
  Hon. Members: Give way.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. It is quite clear that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not giving way.
  Sir G. Howe: I have been pressed, with some persistence, and in view of that I am not giving way. I have been giving way a good deal as I have made my speech. I repeat that businesses know that, provided public borrowing is controlled, finance for investment will be available on terms they can afford.
  If this programme is to be effective, the public sector must, of course, accept its discipline. The strain of meeting targets of this kind must not all be borne by the private sector, whether through higher taxation, higher interest rates or

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  credit rationing. The former Member for Birkenhead said:
  "The structure of government in this country reinforces pressure for high public expenditure and the lack of any constitutional limit on borrowing reduces the pressure on a government to face up at once to the tax consequences of its own profligacy."
  The former Secretary of State has precisely identified the main failure of the Labour Government. They were unwilling to subject themselves to the same financial discipline as they prescribed for others.
  The new Government will make sure that financial disciplines are applied to the public sector as much as to the private. Only in this way will the wealth-creating sector of the economy enjoy the assurance to which it should be entitled. It is important that this approach should be fully understood by those involved in pay bargaining.
  It is evident that the overall rate of pay increases this year has been as high as last year, representing an increase of earnings of over 14 per cent. That is incompatible with our approach, and higher indeed than our predecessors hoped and intended. I must stress that excessive pay increases will lead, and can only lead, to the loss of jobs. That is the case for much greater moderation, realism, and responsibility in pay bargaining.
  We intend to avoid detailed interference with the pay bargaining process. Our task—and it is vital—will be to create the right climate, particularly the disciplined financial conditions, within which the bargaining process must take place. Of course, the Government will necessarily be more closely concerned with pay bargaining in the public sector where they are directly involved, either as employer or as the provider of a large part of any settlement.
  For it is essential here—as it is for similar reasons in the private sector—to reconcile the consequences of pay bargaining with the resources that are available, which are necessarily not unlimited. Thus my predecessor explained, on 25 January this year, his own determination to keep the public sector borrowing requirement this year within the limit of £8·5 billion. I shall be announcing my own conclusions in that respect when I come to make my own Budget Statement.
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  One thing is already plain—namely, that we shall need to secure a substantial reduction in the spending plans which we have inherited. That is indeed a central element in our strategy. For only in that way can we make room for reductions in personal taxation and maintain the firm monetary discipline that is needed.
  One other thing that astonished me about the right hon. Gentleman's speech was his claim that he had left behind him a public spending programme that was well balanced and under control. The Labour Government's spending plans were already out of date by the time they were published in January's White Paper. The White Paper showed an increase in public spending in volume terms between 1977–78 and 1978–79 of over 6 per cent. The previous Government's plan was for a further rise of over 2 per cent. in the current year, giving a total increase of almost 8½ per cent. over the two years.
  It was amply clear, even to the Labour Government, that the prospects for economic growth simply could not sustain increased spending on the scale which they had planned in their White Paper. The outgoing Government would certainly have had to cut their spending plans.
  It is interesting to note that, when the right hon. Member for Leeds, East was seeking to warn people against the necessity for such a reduction in public spending that might be administered by a Conservative Government or to reject advice to that end, he immediately reached for such phrases as "such spending cuts would cause gross and immediate human suffering". All the emotional epithets came readily to his tongue. Yet when he finally announced in 1976, under pressure from the IMF, the huge public spending cuts he was obliged to make at that time, he said, as blandly as ever, "The cuts which I have announced this afternoon will create more jobs than they destroy."
  Mr. T. W. Urwin: Now that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is on the subject of expenditure cuts, I am sure he will recall with clarity, as I do, the catastrophic effect on jobs following the massive public expenditure cuts by Chancellor Barber in the earlier period of Conservative government. Will he now tell the House how

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  much unemployment is likely to arise as a result of the massive cuts which he now proposes to make, and to which he has referred repeatedly this afteroon?
  Sir G. Howe: I do not understand the right hon. Gentleman's intervention, because Chancellor Barber, as he calls him, left office with very substantially fewer people out of work than when he took office. Indeed, in that respect every Conservative Government have been the same, in contrast to every Labour Government, since the war.
  I am dealing with the background against which the right hon. Member for Leeds, East made his statement on 25 January. He said on that occasion that the Labour Government would
  "not accommodate excessive wage increases in the public sector by increasing cash limits accordingly."
  He went on to explain:
  "To the extent that reductions in volume were not brought about automatically by sticking to cash limits in the programmes concerned, they would have to be met by other cuts in public expenditure."—[Official Report. 25 January 1979; Vol. 961, c. 754–7.]
  Those conclusions were inescapable and right.
  The total reductions in public spending that are necessary will need to be achieved progressively over the next few years. But we must make a substantial start at once and I shall announce in the Budget specific cuts in the previous plans for this year.
  We shall also use cash limits vigorously, exactly as intended by the last Government, as an effective control on public spending. No increase will be made in the published cash limits for this year—either for central or local government—to accommodate higher price increases.
  On pay, we propose an increase in the defence cash limit to meet the cost of the Armed Forces award and we will honour the commitments made by the previous Government to the health authorities and the universities. In the Civil Service, we intend to make economies in manpower costs this year, and these will offset part of the cost of the pay awards and be reflected in the relevant cash limits. My hon. Friend the Minister of State, Civil Service Department is answering a Question about this today. I shall have
  904
  more to say on our approach to this year's cash limits in the course of my Budget Statement.
  We shall make a similar approach to local authority expenditure, where there is also need for substantial economies. Here the Government's contribution is made through the rate support grant. We shall take account of pay settlements in calculating the increase orders for the rate support grant. But we shall make a significant across-the-board reduction from the total thus calculated so that, as with the Civil Service, we shall not allow the whole cost of the pay awards to be reflected in the cash limits. It will be for the local authorities themselves to decide how to make the necessary economies.
  Mr. John Morris: After the statement that he has just made about the rate support grant, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give an indication of the likely increase in rates?
  Sir G. Howe: I cannot give the House an indication of that kind because we do not yet know what the outturn of pay settlements and pay discussions will be. But the right hon. Member for Leeds, East will recall—indeed, he reminded the House today—that he gave indications as long ago as 25 January of the substantial impact both on rates and on the public sector borrowing requirement of substantial pay increases in the public sector. Those are some of the matters of which we are taking account in the measures that I have announced.
  Of course, on their own those measures are not enough. The other key question—the right hon. Gentleman revealed how little he appears to understand this, even now—is how to achieve a major improvement on the supply side of the economy. He complained that in spite of what has happened in the past 12 months manufacturing industry is still sluggish at responding to growth in demand. It is for that reason that we attach as much importance as we do to improvements on the supply side of the economy to encouraging companies and individuals to produce more goods and services, and to produce them more efficiently.
  Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Before my right hon. and learned Friend goes on to the supply side, will he make it clear that if we continue to maintain the comparability Commission any awards that it may make

  905
  will have to be accommodated within the cash limits that he will be announcing in the Budget?
  Sir G. Howe: I have already made clear that, having made the calculations consequent on such pay increases as appear to be in the pipeline we shall make across-the-board reductions in cash limits so as to ensure that they are not fully accommodated. I have said that there will be no increase in cash limits to take account of variations in the price forecasts, but we shall be taking account of the pay increases and then making offsetting reductions, which will be announced in due course. [HON. MEMBERS: "When?"] As I have told the House, I shall have more to say on the approach to this year's cash limits, in all their aspects, in the course of my Budget Statement. The House will have to contain itself until then.
  Mr. Kevin McNamara: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman indicate those services supplied by local authorities that he intends should be cut or will have to bear an increase in rates in order to be sustained as a result of his action?
  Sir G. Howe: The hon. Gentleman understands that the main central Government support for local authorities is through the rate support grant, which is not allocated to programmes. That is why I said that it would be for the local authorities themselves to decide how to make the necessary economies.
  I now turn to our analysis of the supply side of the economy. The previous Government placed their faith in State finance and intervention, yet in spite of vast expenditure over the years on support for nationalised industries and subsidies and grants in other directions, the decline of British industry has accelerated. The truth is that State finance and intervention, by frustrating the market forces that channel resources towards where they are most productive, have been a major cause of our industrial difficulties. The high levels of taxation needed to finance State subsidies have on balance done more damage to industry than the subsidies have done good.
  During the past five years more than £10 billion at present prices has been absorbed by public corporations in operating
  906
  and investment subsidies and in debt write-offs, and a further £9 billion has been spent on industrial and regional subsidies and grants. The total assistance under these headings is now running at almost £3 billion a year. Moreover, the lion's share of that expenditure has been aimed at temporarily deferring the collapse of old jobs.
  We are convinced that the main thrust in creating new jobs and new prosperity must come from new processes and new firms. That is why we attach such great importance to the role of small businesses. Recent studies in the United States, which is an economy a great deal healthier than that which we have had, show that two-thirds of all new jobs in that country come from companies employing fewer than 20 people. The same studies show that no fewer than four-fifths of such new jobs in the United States have come from firms less than five years old. We in this country reject that lesson at our peril.
  Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk: There are about 14,000 jobs in my constituency alone which are supported by grants under the Industry Act and the Labour Government's temporary employment measures. The comments that the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues made during the election about ending those subsidies and grants have led to a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty among my constituents. Will he end that uncertainty now by indicating clearly and specifically what subsidies and grants, which he has just spoken about in a very derogatory way, his Government intend to end?
  Sir G. Howe: Nothing that was said by my colleagues and me in the election campaign did half as much to spread alarm and despondency thoughout the hon. Gentleman's constituency as the leaflet which I saw circulating on his behalf in that constituency threatening pensioners with a reduction in their pensions, threatening the introduction of hospital charges, and threatening the outright abolition of all industrial subsidies. The hon. Gentleman is the last person in the House to begin making claims of that kind.
  Mr. Dennis Canavan: The right hon. and learned Gentleman should answer the question.
  Sir G. Howe: We remain convinced that new jobs are more likely to come from new small businesses than from the large State agencies.
  That brings me to the last point in our strategy—substantial reductions in personal taxation. This Government share the widely-held belief that lower personal taxes are an important ingredient of changes and the prospect of prosperity. After all, it was my predecessor who said:
  "I definitely do think the present level of taxation serves as a disincentive and that rates must come down."
  The previous Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster agreed in particular, in a long and extended interview with Brian Walden, about the necessity of cutting the higher rates of income tax. He said:
  "Of course that has to be done. Otherwise the consequences will be damaging to our economy."
  The previous Chief Secretary was even more explicit when he proclaimed on a television programme last autumn:
  "How can one be happy with a tax system as unfair as this?"
  Yet he remained happy with it for five years in the Treasury.
  The Leader of the Opposition was yet more to the point when he told his party's national executive committee just over a year ago:
  "If you want to retain power you have got to listen to what people—our people—say and what they want. If you talk to people in the factories and the clubs, they all want to pay less tax. They are more interested in that than the Government giving money away in other directions."
  What a pity the former Prime Minister did not take his own advice! They may have been Labour's people then. They are our people now.
  Of course, the reduction in personal taxes cannot be achieved in one jump. Nor can it be financed entirely through reductions in public spending. That is why we are prepared to switch to some extent from direct to indirect taxation. But that change will offer more choice and greater incentives to individuals. It will return to people more of what is theirs, and allow them to do with it what they want, and not what politicians think they ought to do with it.
  Those are the policies which we shall pursue, and that is the background against
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  which I shall be framing my budgetary and other policies in the coming weeks—and months, and years. They are policies that will create new opportunities for industry and individuals. They are policies that will enable us to nurse back to health the sick economy that has been entrusted to our care.
  I urge the House to reject the amendment.
  4.58 p.m.
  Mr. Don Dixon: After listening to the eloquent speeches of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House over the past few days, it is with trepidation that I make this, my maiden speech. It may be appropriate, as I come from Jarrow, that I make my first speech in a debate on employment. Jarrow knew unemployment as high as 70 per cent. during the free market days of the 1930s.
  Like the hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Miss Wright), who made her maiden speech last week, I have received many words of advice from hon. Members on how to make my speech. I feel that all this worthy advice falls into four categories. The first is this. Do not upset Mr. Speaker or Mr. Deputy Speaker, and say something complimentary about catching the eye of the Chair. I am told that that is an investment for the future. Taking that advice comes fairly easily, because on the basis of what I have heard and seen of Mr. Speaker and Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the assistance I have received, I would compliment them on behalf of all new Members.
  Secondly, I was advised "Say some nice things about your predecessor." To be truthful, I know nothing other than nice things to say about Ernie Fernyhough. Ernie is a person of great courage. He is a great character with a great sense of loyalty to the Labour movement.
  Jarrow has been very fortunate with its representation in this House, certainly up to now. From 1935, we were represented by Ellen Wilkinson, a person loved by the people of Jarrow. She was a great little fighter who reached the highest positions in the land. When she died in 1947, we thought that no one could replace "Wee Ellen", as she was affectionately known in the constituency. Then along came Ernie Fernyhough, who

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  quickly won the affection of the Jarrow people.
  Ernie is a very humane person who had his feet planted firmly on the ground no matter what position of responsibility he held, and he held many. He was a full-time official of USDAW from 1939 until he was elected to represent Jarrow in this House in 1947. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister from 1964 to 1967. He was Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Employment and Productivity from 1967 to 1969, and he was made a Privy Councillor in 1970.
  Ernie has served this House, the people of Jarrow and the Labour movement with great distinction. I have been a personal friend of his for many years and had the honour of being made a freeman of the borough of Jarrow with him in 1972. His wisdom will be missed greatly in this House.
  Thirdly, I was told "Speak about the constituency." I am in a fairly good position to do so as I was born, bred and educated in the constituency. I have lived in no other place. Jarrow is an industrial constituency on the south bank of the river Tyne. We have coal mines, shipyards, factories and an unemployment rate which is far too high. Jarrow is well known for the ships it has built, the men it has bred and the march which took place in the 1930s for the right to work. It is a proud constituency, populated by honest and hardworking men—by miners, not millionaires, by builders, not bankers, by engineers, not racketeers, and by shipbuilders, not ship owners.
  Having said that, however, I say that no one should get the idea that Jarrow is all smokey chimneys and cobblestones. The Labour-controlled local authority within that constituency has built new housing estates, new community centres, new shopping centres, and this week I shall be opening an extension to the Bede art gallery, which is known nationally.
  I was proud when the Labour Party selected me, a local lad with an elementary education who has worked in the shipbuilding industry all his life. The constituency could have chosen one or other of the academics who applied for the seat when Ernie decided to retire—men who, incidentally, had more letters
  910
  behind their names than I have in mine. I was doubly proud when I was elected with such a big majority by the people of Jarrow. Another endearing feature about Jarrow is that we have two Labour voters for every Tory voter.
  Fourthly, it was suggested to me that I pick a topic from the Gracious Speech which could affect my constituency, but I was advised "Whatever you do, try not to be controversial." We Geordie shipyard workers are known for our bluntness and for calling a spade a spade—not to be controversial but to be truthful. So I say to Her Majesty's Government "Keep your hands off the shipbuilding industry." The workers in that industry have waited generations to see it nationalised, and they will not sit on one side and see it thrown back to the vultures of private enterprise who have no regard for the social consequences that unemployment brings. I wonder how many of those people know the humility of standing in a dole queue and signing the book with a pencil one and a half inches long tied to a length of string, which I and many others have had to do on a number of occasions.
  We in Jarrow saw the asset strippers of the 1930s in action. They murdered our town through National Shipbuilders Security Limited, which bought up the old Jarrow Palmers shipyard, sold the assets, and put a 40-year embargo on the building of ships. My grandfather and my father were thrown on the streets along with many thousands of other good hardworking men.
  Many of the problems in the industry today are there as a result of private enterprise. If it had not been for nationalisation, it is doubtful whether there would be any shipbuilding industry in the country today. When I hear right hon. and hon. Members talking about artificial jobs, I wish that they would come to my constituency to visit the dock bottom in the Mercantile dry dock, or the bowels of a ship at Hawthorn Leslie, and tell the men working in atrocious conditions there that they were doing artificial jobs.
  It has been said that the profitable parts of the shipbuilding industry will be sold. I ask, what do the Government propose to do with the non-profitable parts? Shipbuilding faces worldwide competition

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  at a time when there is a world recession in shipping. Many other countries which are competing with us for orders receive support of one kind or another from their Governments. One has only to think of Germany, Japan, France, Italy and the United States. What shipbuilding wants today is assistance, not the threat that is hanging over its head at the moment.
  I remind the Government that the last Conservative Administration did their first U-turn when they tried to ignore the closures of the Upper Clyde shipyards, and the present Government will face the same problems if they try to denationalise and rape our shipbuilding industry.
  In moving the Loyal Address, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Sir W. Elliott) said that many young students in his constituency had voted for him. I cannot argue about that. However, the young people of today are not so steeped in democracy that they will accept the solutions of the 1930s to the problems of the 1980s.
  I turn to another topic. It has nothing to do with the subject of today's debate but it is a matter of concern to many of my constituents. In doing so, I remind you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that in reply to the first point of order raised in this new Parliament, Mr. Speaker said that if hon. Members caught his eye they were free to speak on any subject which they thought ought to be in the Gracious Speech.
  Will the Secretary of State for the Home Department please reconsider the phasing out of television fees for all retirement pensioners? I ask this because of the many anomalies which exist in my constituency. A retired person who lives in accommodation provided under part V of the Housing Act 1957 and is provided with a warden or communal facilities by the local authority can acquire a concessionary television licence, yet someone who has not got these facilities, who is retired and who lives across the road cannot get it. We hear about millions of pounds of tax concessions. Surely it would not be too much to ask for the additional money for this purpose.
  My grandfather, who was a plater's helper in the old Palmer shipyard, told me when I first became involved in trade union affairs many years ago "If you
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  intend to speak, always think first and make sure that what you have to say is an improvement on the silence." I hope that I shall do that during my time in this House.
  5.9 p.m.
  Mr. Maurice Macmillan: One of the pleasures of speaking in this House is to be able to congratulate an hon. Member on his maiden speech. I do so on this occasion with particular personal pleasure because although my own political start was made not so much on Tyneside as on Teesside and the first general election I contested was a little further south at Seaham Harbour, I had the benefit of the advice and help then, and at other elections afterwards, of a Tory trade unionist. He came from the constituency of the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon) and, like him, he made his political start, as a Tory, in Jarrow. If he were alive today, he would be one of the quarter who did not vote for the hon. Member.
  The hon. Member for Jarrow follows in a great tradition of Members speaking out for the people of his constituency and for others in similar situations. From what we have heard today, we can say without much doubt that the hon. Member will follow in that tradition, saying what he believes to be true regardless of whether it is popular with his colleagues or with the Government. He has made, if I may say so without impertinence, a good outspoken start. I know that the whole House will look forward to hearing from him again.
  In the period since the Second World War, there has been a continuation of growth: in the national product; in the expansion of public policies; in the take-home money available—that is, in net profits, rents and savings income as well as in wages and salaries. There has been a triple expansion of national output, public spending on public policies, and money left in the pockets of individuals. This expansion applies more or less to all the countries within OECD but the three elements of growth do not apply evenly within one country or as between different countries.
  I take public policies as an example. In the period from 1951 to 1976, Sweden and Italy doubled the proportion of the gross domestic product that went on public policies. In Germany, the proportion

  913
  rose by 15 per cent., from 31 per cent. to 46 per cent. In Britain, it also rose by 15 per cent. from 34 per cent. to 49 per cent. Britain and Germany had a directly comparable rise in the proportion of the gross national product going to public policies, although we ended with a rather higher proportion than the Germans.
  If we look at the growth of gross domestic product over the same period, we see that German growth was at the rate of 6·1 per cent. a year, with a total growth of 310 per cent. over the whole period. Britain could achieve a rate of growth in the gross domestic product of only 2·8 per cent. a year—a total of 102 per cent.
  The effect of these disparate rates on take-home pay is clear. The money left in the hands of individuals in Germany during that period went up by 4·5 per cent. a year. By contrast, the equivalent increase in Britain was 2·1 per cent. a year. Over the whole period, take-home pay in Germany rose by 175 per cent. per head compared with only 51 per cent. per head in Britain. That is partly due to the different approach of the German Government to the problem of direct taxation.
  Unfortunately, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to contend with a rate of growth that is slowing down. In the six years from 1970 to 1976 the rate of growth of the German economy—the gross domestic product—averaged 2·5 per cent. a year rather than 6·1 per cent. and in Britain 1·9 per cent. rather than 2·8 per cent. One figure that is not going down is the rate of increase of public policies. Those policies are continuing to expand at a rate faster than the expansion of the gross domestic product. At the same time, the demands to maintain take-home pay at a level that is increasing in real terms have produced a grossly overloaded political economy with which the Chancellor has to deal.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has somehow to relate past commitments in public policies to present resources. One of the difficulties he faces, it must be admitted, is that public policies, like motor cars, are difficult to maintain and the older they are, the more expensive they are to maintain. Policies initiated at a level that seemed quite reasonable and within the compass of the political economy have a tendency over the years
  914
  to become open-ended commitments trying to meet not only needs but wants out of the public purse. This is an area on which the Chancellor must operate quickly and make savings as rapidly as possible. If he cannot make enough savings immediately, he must commit himself to a firm timetable.
  Secondly, the Chancellor has to try to encourage a higher rate of growth of our national output without adding to inflation by accelerating the demand for funds at a time when people are finding it difficult to save and when industry is not producing the profits for reinvestment. I say to right hon. and hon. Members on the Labour Benches that the ownership of industry—whether it is publicly or privately owned—in this analysis is totally irrelevant. Unless industry is generating funds to contribute to the growth of the national output, it is nothing but a drain on the taxpayer. That drain on the taxpayer may be reasonable for certain purposes. It is reasonable in the case of pensions. But there must be no illusion that any industry, because it receives public investment and exists in the so-called public sector, is necessarily for that reason making a contribution towards the rate of growth of the economy as a whole. It is much more likely to be doing the reverse.
  The third element in the Chancellor's problem is to protect take-home money. This is necessary to move people back into the regular economy. A large number of people are now doing jobs for cash rather than pay tax. Who can blame them when, for most people, £1 cash paid without tax is worth £3 of regular taxed earnings? We must take steps to reduce direct taxation and so protect take-home pay. In that way, we have some hope of making wage demands more realistic and diminishing the cost-push element in inflation. Who can blame people for putting in high wage demands when their increased earnings are taxed at an increased rate and they get relatively less out of greater effort, which buys less in the shops because of the rate of inflation?
  The other reason for protecting take-home money is to leave in industry the profits that are required to finance not only new investment but increased output from existing investment. I know of no country that has succeeded without cutting direct tax rates considerably at the

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  same time as public policies are reduced. The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) yesterday implied that this line of thinking was inhuman and almost anti-Christian. He rather conveniently ignored the parable of the ten talents. He also ignored the fact that the modern Welfare State benefits everyone, not just a few, and by no means necessarily the poorest element of the community. I am not casting blame on anyone. Over the years it has got to the point where we are attempting to meet through the Welfare State organisation people's wants as well as people's needs. This is bound to overload the political economy to the point of near collapse.
  The right hon. Gentleman also ignored just who pays income tax. It is easy for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to cut the higher rates of tax. If he reduces the top rate to 60 per cent., all he loses in revenue is about £240 million—1·3 per cent. of the total yield. If he cuts it to 50 per cent., he loses £445 million—about 2·5 per cent. of the total yield.
  The cruel fact is that, of the £19 billion which is raised in income tax, all but £1 billion comes from taxpayers paying at the rate of 33 per cent. or less. The total yield from people paying 34 per cent. and upwards is only £980 million. Therefore, the great burden of direct taxation falls on the average and below-average earner, which must mean raising the tax thresholds as well as cutting the rates of tax.
  The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East in his astonishing speech yesterday also quoted "The Middle Way", I gather, with some approval. He seemed to forget that the policies set out in that admirable book were designed to deal with a general depression caused by a failure of the United States stock market which in turn was caused by Hoover's tariff policies and by the fact that in 1922 he raised taxation in the United States to near 1920 levels.
  The right hon. Gentleman did not take his history any further back. If he had, he would have seen that the Republican Government, immediately after the First World War, cut direct taxation considerably. In the period 1921 to 1929 there was an enormous rise in the gross national product of the United States—about 54 per cent. in real terms—because prices fell
  916
  at the same time. There was a higher yield from lower tax rates, and the United States national debt was reduced from $24·3 billion to $16·9 billion. That flowed from a cut in direct tax and liberal economic policies, which were reversed by the policies Mr. Hoover brought in—policies which Opposition Members are advocating.
  Mr. Eric S. Heffer: The right hon. Gentleman referred to his father's book "The Middle Way". It may be some time since the right hon. Gentleman read it. Is it not clear that an essential aspect of "The Middle Way" is that it argues for economic planning? It is impossible to deal with the economic problems of capitalism and to maintain capitalism without a measure of economic planning. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) was arguing that point in relation to "The Middle Way".
  Mr. Macmillan: "The Middle Way" was dealing with a particular situation.
  Mr. Heffer: I shall quote from it.
  Mr. Macmillan: It did believe in planning. Conservative philosophy has never been anti-interventionist. We are not and never have been Manchester school liberals.
  The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East went on to quote the extent to which the German Government have been interventionist and have been successful in intervening. But he did not quote what they did earlier. He did not refer to the massive reductions in direct taxation made by Chancellor Erhard, starting in June 1948 and continuing in 1951, 1954, 1955 and 1958. Enormous reductions in direct taxation in those years produced a higher yield—the so-called German economic miracle—and an increase in revenues which enabled the Germans to construct a better Welfare State than ours on a sounder foundation and make a considerable defence effort on their own account. Therefore, I hope that nothing will deter the Chancellor of the Exchequer from cutting direct tax rates.
  No amount of planning, however well carried out, will make things better if the marginal rates of tax at every level are too high. Perhaps I may quote the most planned country in the world—the Soviet Union. The agricultural system there is

  917
  based on workers on collective farms being provided with all that they need by way of capital, equipment, housing and food and being allowed to keep 10 per cent. of the output of the collective. They are therefore taxed at a marginal rate of 90 per cent. and, as a result, they put in minimal effort. The result of that effective marginal tax rate of 90 per cent. is that the Soviet Union's output is not sufficient to feed itself. About 14 per cent. of Soviet workers are engaged in agriculture compared with 2 per cent. in the United States, but the United States' surplus is about a quarter of the output of the Soviet Union.
  We see the same effect when we look at the other side of Soviet agriculture. People working on collective farms are allowed to keep the entire output of their own individual plots of about an acre. In other words, their output from those plots is taxed at a zero rate. As a result, although private land in the hands of workers is only 1 per cent. of the total agricultural land, it produces about 27 per cent. of the total agricultural value. That is the difference between very high marginal rates of tax and no marginal rates of tax.
  That can be even more strongly illustrated. When Mr. Khrushchev effectively increased the marginal rate of tax on peasant workers on collective farms by halving the acreage which was allowed to them, it had a disastrous result. Output fell even further not only from the privately held land but from the collective farms. It was not until Mr. Brezhnev restored the situation that things got better.
  The point that I make to the Chancellor is that fiscal conservatism demands that a smaller proportion of the national output should go to public policies. The very high proportion going to public policies is starving the more productive end of the economy. That is so whether it is in private or in public hands. Ownership is irrelevant.
  Fiscal conservatism does not mean that the Chancellor has to have a balanced Budget. I regard the need to cut taxation to achieve the results that I have described in other countries as of overriding importance. It may be that he will have to put up value added tax. I think that he could well put up the tax on drink
  918
  and tobacco. But I hope he will not go too far.
  For I am not so concerned as many others about the short-term effect of adding to the borrowing requirement. The effect on individuals is very much the same as any other method of financing, for the real tax on people is public spending—public policies. One way or another we pay: by very high rates of tax falling largely on the lower rather than on the higher earners; through inflation; through interest on borrowed money. So long as public policies take up such a high proportion of the national output, it is we, the people, who pay, because there is no one else to do it.
  I should prefer to see the Chancellor boldly cut direct taxation in his first Budget, even it means adding rather more than he would like to the borrowing requirement short-term. I believe that would release the kind of energies that it has released elsewhere and lead to the expansion of the economy, without which it is not possible to pay off debt long-term. He would be wise to set targets for reducing the borrowing requirement, but he will achieve those targets only from an expanded economy.
  Whatever point of view we may have, it is no good trying to pretend that an overloaded political economy is the consequence of inflation. That is not so. Inflation is the consequence of an overloaded political economy. Our economy is heavily overloaded. It can be dealt with only on the lines that I have suggested. It will be difficult and perhaps there will be an element of risk. However, the risk of doing nothing, of trying to continue in much the same way as before with slight alterations or small tax reductions, is far greater.
  Britain, perhaps Italy, and Sweden are further down the road of overloading their political economies than other industrial countries. We can no longer afford the luxury of doing nothing while pretending to take action.
  5.31 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Meacher: I think that we must show some sympathy for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because he was speaking before delivering his Budget next month. To that extent he could not be very enlightening, and he certainly was not.

  919
  In the first part of his speech the right hon. and learned Gentleman fell back on the traditional device of Chancellors who have overcommitted themselves during an election and who have to meet their commitments—namely, blaming one's predecessors. I felt that there was a strong smell of retreat in the earlier part of his speech. He seemed to be retreating from manifesto promises and from some of the undoubtedly considerable expectations that have been built up in the electorate. There was nothing he said and nothing that he could seriously have learnt in the past two or three weeks that he did not know before the election. He has made some important promises and he will not now be able so easily to evade them.
  The Chancellor gave no indication of how increased commitments in terms of tax cuts and increased salary awards via the comparability Commission are to be compatible with cutting the public sector borrowing requirement by at least £2,000 million, if not rather more than that, in addition to the revalorisation of allowances. Instead, in the latter part of his speech he insisted on talking broadly—to some extent the right hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Macmillan) did the same—about producing the right environment and drawing more on the philosophy in the Queen's Speech.
  The Queen's Speech is rather a thin document, but to its credit it at least purports to be addressed to the fundamental problem of reversing Britain's industrial and economic decline. However, the Government's case, the Chancellor's case and the case for fiscal conservatism advanced by the right hon. Member for Farnham—fiscal reductions combined with cutting public expenditure—are based on four main premises, all of which are false and can be shown to be false. They are built on myth and not on fact. Even if they were correct, I believe that the conclusions that they draw, and the remedy that the Chancellor proposes on their basis, would not redress the central problem that he diagnoses.
  Nobody questions the fact of British decline over the past 20 years. Industrial production in France, Italy and Germany has increased threefold or fourfold. It has increased in Japan by a staggering tenfold. In the United Kingdom it has scarcely doubled. The causes—as the
  920
  Queen's Speech rightly acknowledges—lie in the low level of investment and the poor utilisation of such capital investment as there has been.
  The Queen's Speech emphasises the Government's belief that the main reason for the lower level of investment lies in lack of incentives and in low profits. The reasons that the Chancellor and many other Conservatives habitually advance for low profits are that there are too many strikes, too high taxation, too much public expenditure and too low a level of productivity.
  Overall, the British strike record has been worse than that in West Germany, France and Japan, but it has been rather better than in the United States, Canada and Australia. The strike figures are more or less insignificant when they are set against the overall effect on production. A recent Department of Employment report revealed that only one in every 50 firms in Britain has a strike in the average year. Therefore, strikes cannot be the main cause of the differences in output that I have mentioned.
  Secondly, there is taxation, which will be a favourite subject of this Parliament. Direct and indirect taxation and social security payments, when we consider the facts as opposed to convenient myths, form a lower proportion of national income in Britain than in any other industrial nation except Japan and the United States. Furthermore, Britain is the one country in the Western world where taxes and social security contributions decreased in the 1970s. In the economies of our main competitors they increased.
  Company taxation in Britain is effectively the lowest in the industrial world. In that respect the incentive to invest in Britain can hardly be higher. Conservative propagandists—I include the right hon. Member for Farnham in that category—always stress the supposedly punitive effect of an 83 per cent. marginal rate of tax on the top slice of income. Everybody attacks that level of taxation, but they ignore the huge allowances against tax that now amount to about £4,000 million a year. That is the value of allowances against direct taxes. The actual rates of tax for any high earner who has his head screwed on are considerably reduced. I took the precaution of studying the latest issue of Economic Trends, a Government publication. I found that a man on over

  921
  £10,000 a year, which is the highest income category in the report, pays only 24 per cent. of his gross income in tax and national insurance in a year. That is rather different from 83 per cent.
  The Tory argument about high public expenditure does not hold water when we consider the facts. A Treasury answer of 7 February showed that total general Government expenditure in the United Kingdom was almost exactly the EEC average. It is certainly not higher than the EEC average. It is only fractionally higher by 1 per cent. than in France or Germany.
  Fourthly, I refer to productivity. Output per man in British manufacturing industry increased as industrial manpower declined. In the decade to 1965, productivity increased by about 3 per cent. a year. In the decade after that, it increased by 4 per cent. a year. What let Britain down was not low productivity, as has been so often conveniently said, but rather the fact that industrial investment has been so low that it was unable to absorb the labour savings from existing productivity schemes.
  Mr. Percy Grieve: Will the hon. Gentleman tell us on what basis productivity increased by 3 per cent.? Is not it right that our productivity is still amongst the lowest per man in the Western world?
  Mr. Meacher: No. Output per man hour in manufacturing has been increasing faster than that of many of our competitor countries. It is convenient for Government supporters to take the view that low productivity, which they so easily equate with strikes, is our main problem. That is not what international figures, drawn up on an independent basis, show. The four main pillars of Tory policy for expansion are shown to be misguided on the evidence of the facts.
  The crucial sentence in the Queen's Speech says:
  "By reducing the burden of direct taxation and restricting the claims of the public sector on the nation's resources they"—
  the Government—
  "will start to restore incentives, encourage efficiency and create a climate in which commerce and industry can flourish."
  That sentence does not measure up to the real facts of the world. This country does not have a disproportionately high-rate
  922
  burden of direct taxation net of allowances—what people pay counts—nor does it have a disproportionately high level of public expenditure.
  The second part of the case against the Government is that, even supposing that those facts were true, as the Government said, their policies would still not provide the remedies. Nye Bevan had a telling phrase when he said that there was no need to gaze into the crystal ball when we could read the book. We may read the book of history well. I do not think only of the fact that the last burst of Tory expansion was dissipated in a property and asset-stripping boom.
  There is a much better test of the Government's contention that to raise profits and increase incentives will provide those who own and manage capital with the necessary incentive to invest in production. I refer to the years 1955 to 1965, the most prosperous decade in post-war British history. Those were Tory years, when the industrial rate of profit after tax was higher than at present. It did not fall in that time, It stayed at around 10 per cent. Those were the days when inflation never topped 3 per cent. or 4 per cent. a year and when interest rates were still, judged by today's standards, very low.
  Although profits in those good years were high in the United Kingdom, our rates of manufacturing investment in the best decade since the war remained substantially lower than those of all our main competitors. Our manufacturing investment stood at about 4 per cent. of GNP compared with 5 per cent. to 7 per cent. in France, 7 per cent. in Germany, 7 per cent. to 8 per cent. in Italy and 8 per cent. to 11 per cent. in Japan. It was considerably higher in the main competing countries. However inconvenient, the truth must be faced. Industrial investment here has always been low and only marginally affected by the rate of profit.
  Will the Government give an answer to the question on which the Government's strategy, as set out in the Queen's Speech, seems to hinge? Why do the Government now expect manufacturing investment, on which they base their strategy, to revive by increasing profits in conditions of higher inflation, higher interest rates and more depressed international trading conditions today, when

  923
  10 to 20 years ago—when all those conditions were more favourable and profits higher than now—manufacturing investment did not increase in a private market system?
  The Government must answer that question. In the absence of an answer, we are being served up with fraud and deception in the Queen's Speech. It gives expectations about what can be achieved within the private market which do not stand up to the realities of modern industrial life in Britain.
  What are the reasons for low manufacturing investment? There are many. First, I cite the scale and the nature of Britain's former empire. It left us with a network of international commitments that led to excessively high expenditure that we could no longer afford. That was mainly in the area of defence and in the international role of the pound and overseas investment. Yet those are areas in which, with incredible folly, the Government now propose to increase our commitments.
  The second reason—more directly—is responsibility for our low investment. I agree with the acknowledged view in the Queen's Speech that this is at the base root of our poor industrial performance. The responsibility must be shared in three ways. First, it lies with the financial institutions, and those who manage them, for their reluctance or refusal to play a serious part in the reconstruction of our industrial nation and a preference that they have exhibited so often in the past for quick profits through property, land and overseas speculation. Secondly, it lies with industry for failing to demand of our institutions the services, especially in the provision of medium and long-term finance, which are taken for granted abroad.
  Thirdly, the fault lies with the Government for failing to compel—it is a word that is accurate about the experience of Governments in France, Germany and Sweden—or induce our financial institutions to play a full part in supporting British industry. It is illusion to assume that this deep-seated problem may be remedied by increasing incentives within the private market. Yet that is the philosophy with which the Government came to power.
  924
  Already, corporation tax is almost negligible. It accounts for 5 per cent. of trading income. In 1975, the rate fell below 1 per cent.
  Mr. A. P. Costain: Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that in world competition conditions we are working at margins of 1 or 2 per cent.? Does he realise that 5 per cent. is a great deal of money in terms of competition?
  Mr. Meacher: The hon. Gentleman refers to 5 per cent. of trading profits. Ten years ago, industry was able to pay, and did pay, 20 per cent. to 25 per cent. of trading profits. That shows how far the rate has slipped. Not only that. The Labour Government gave immense assistance through their stock relief scheme, which was worth several billions of pounds. They gave a great deal of liquidity to British industry—an advantage which was not shared abroad.
  Already, mainsteam corporation tax is down to as little as £2 billion a year. It is almost equalled by Government handouts to industry which I thought totalled about £1¼ billion a year. However, I think that the Chancellor referred to the total value as being £3 billion. To withdraw or reduce those handouts, as the Government seem determined to do, can only make matters worse. We apparently have a Government with a Secretary of State for Industry who recommends his officials to read Adam Smith. We have a Prime Minister who, if she recommends anyone to undertake any reading at all, can only recommend them, judging by what we have heard of her, to read Samuel Smiles's "Self Help". But that was written in 1840 or thereabouts, and the world has moved on since then.
  The Labour Party, in its programme, has faced up to these realities and has developed a set of instruments which take full account of the collapse of private market mechanisms. But what this Government seem hell-bent on doing, that is, to return to a bygone industrial era—which, according to the Secretary of State for Industry, was a world of perfect or near-perfect competition between galvanised entrepreneurs—shows every sign of turning out, like most Conservative endeavours, to be a costly attempt to perpetuate the past on borrowed money and borrowed time.
  5.51 p.m.
  Mr. John Heddle: May 1, Mr. Deputy Speaker, express to right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber, and to the Officers of this place, my sincere gratitude, as a new Member, for all the kindness, courtesy and consideration which I have been shown during the past two rather bewildering but awe-inspiring weeks?
  I come here to represent the 102,591 electors of Lichfield and Tamworth. I come here following in the footsteps of former hon. Members of considerable parliamentary stature. Many right hon. and hon. Members on each side of the House will harbour fond memories of and affection for the former Mr. Julian Snow, now Lord Burntwood, Major-General Jack d'Avigdor-Goldsmid and, more recently, Mr. Bruce Grocott. I am assured, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that they all managed to catch Mr. Speaker's eye because they were considerably higher than 6 ft. in stature. While I am unable to match them in height, I will endeavour to match them—for whatever time those 102,591 electors allow me to represent them—with the same amount of vigour, determination, dedication and commitment as they showed in their time.
  The cathedral city of Lichfield—Dr. Johnson's birthplace—thrives upon tourism. Any right hon. or hon. Member who finds time on his hands in the recess which lies before us will, if he visits that cathedral city, be assured, from whichever side of the Chamber he comes, of a warm and hospitable welcome.
  The constituency also comprises the expanding towns of Tamworth—Sir Robert Peel's former constituency—and Burntwood, which are commuter towns for Birmingham and for the Midlands conurbation. Surrounding those towns are 500 square miles of fertile agricultural land, garnered and husbanded by small and profitable farmers. Set in the heart of England, Lichfield and Tamworth can be fairly described as a cross-section of industrial, commercial and rural Britain but, like that of Great Britain as a whole, the prosperity of Lichfield and Tamworth depends upon vibrant and healthy industry and profitable small businesses. It is to the encouragement of these vital arteries of our national bloodstream—indeed, of our whole country's future—
  926
  that I believe the Government's programme is rightly directed.
  That is why I welcome the Government's commitment to repeal the Community Land Act 1975 and to amend the oppressive development land tax, because the pages of our immediate past history show that small private builders, employing skilled labour, have just not been able to provide first-time homes for first-time buyers, those people who wish to realise their lifetime's ambition of standing on their own feet, of home ownership, and being independent of the State.
  That is why I welcome the reference in the Gracious Speech to the encouragement of short-term lettings, for it is only by allowing mobility of labour that people will be able to move from one part of the country to the other and transfer their human energies to the presently depressed areas. That is why I welcome measures designed to restore incentives—sadly derided by some speakers elsewhere in the Chamber—and so create a climate in which private industry, commerce and small businesses can flourish in the Midlands generally and in Lichfield and Tamworth in particular. The small business sector—all 900,000 firms—hold the key to our future prosperity. Only those 900,000 small firms can provide jobs for those poor people who are at present in the dole queues in the West Midlands and elsewhere who would dearly like to have the opportunity to go to work next Monday morning.
  If each of these 900,000 small firms were given the incentives—as, indeed, the Gracious Speech outlines—to employ just one person, whether that person be a school leaver or a family man, our appalling and immediate unemployment could be reduced dramatically and quickly. Not only would pride be restored to the life of that family man, but hope and optimism for the future would be restored to that school leaver's vision. At the same time, the overburdened taxpayer would not have to find the £40 per week, or £2,000 per year, which the State pays out to each of the 900,000 at present in the unemployment queue—and £2,000 a year times 900,000 is £1·8 billion Such a saving could go towards the personal tax cuts which are so desperately needed to provide the encouragement and the incentive for people

  927
  in Lichfield and Tamworth, and to people in the West Midlands and further afield, to work harder for their greater personal fulfilment and for the greater good of the country.
  This is the message that I am receiving from people who work in Reliant Motors in Tamworth, in GKN in Lichfield, and from other small firms throughout the constituency. I shall not join the pessimistic chorus of those who say "It cannot be done". West Germany did it, Japan did it and France did it. Great Britain, given the will and the incentive, can still do it.
  What is in it for us? We are all "us". We are all one people, if only we will allow ourselves to be. For the unemployed, for the disabled, for the low-paid, for the elderly, and for those in my constituency who have been waiting for two years to be admitted to hospital, there will be no future, there will be nothing, unless we start to balance our books now.
  5.58 p.m.
  Mr. George Foulkes: As a new Member, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should also like to put on record my gratitude to hon. Members and Officers who have shown me around the complexities of this House. I agree with the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle) with alacrity on that, for, having heard his subsequent remarks, I think that it will be one of the few matters on which I shall agree with him. With the name of Foulkes and the initial G, perhaps I should be particularly pleased that I received a warm welcome, and also that I arrived in May and not early in November.
  I understand that, as a matter of protocol and precedent, maiden speakers comment upon their predecessors. I aim to be no exception to that. However, the position in South Ayrshire is somewhat unusual, for I defeated someone who originally stood for the same party as myself but who chose to leave it and stood—unsuccessfully, I am glad to say—under another banner. Nevertheless, undoubtedly Jim Sillars served South Ayrshire well for many years, and one of my aims is to serve South Ayrshire as he did for those years.
  928
  South Ayrshire is a great constituency. I believe that my colleagues on the Opposition Benches will confirm that it is almost legendary in the Labour movement. It is not just where Keir Hardie began his political career. It is a longstanding Labour constituency and one which has returned a Labour Member most of this century, with a minor aberration in the 1930s. It is also famous for Robert Burns, James Boswell—which is a link I also have with Lichfield—and for William Murdock, who invented the gas light, something which may be recalled by some hon. Members though more right hon. Members will recall it.
  South Ayrshire is a constituency which has contributed, and does contribute, much more than its fair share to the wealth of this country, through its primary production in the coal industry, fishing and farming. It is a constituency which has a hard-working people with great strength of character. Yet I regret to say that it has not had its fair share of investment and has an unduly high rate of unemployment and that the undoubted talents of its people are not fully used.
  That is why the Scottish Development Agency, which is not yet fully in gear, is vital to the future of my constituency. That is why investment in the coal industry for the exploration of new workable seams of coal, and the development of those seams, is vital, for those reserves of coal will be there long after the much-vaunted oil reserves have gone. That is why the Co-operative Development Agency is important to my constituency and why I am proud to be a Co-operative as well as a Labour Member of Parliament. I am proud to represent the Co-operative movement, which is an integral part of the Labour movement.
  I hope that Conservative Members will remember the pledges they gave when the Co-operative Development Agency was introduced. The hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), then spokesman for the Conservatives and now Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, said on Second Reading of the Bill that he gave a cautious welcome to the agency. In Committee, he said:
  "we see workers' co-operatives, founded on sensible competitive bases, as a valuable

  929
  additional source of new enterprise—small business entrepreneurship"—
  those are phrases we have heard a lot of recently—
  "in this country. We can see a valuable role for this agency in promoting the development of such co-operatives."—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 18 April 1978; c. 6.]
  I hope that hon. Members opposite will recall those words and that we shall see the encouragement and development of the Co-operative Development Agency.
  Another area to which I should like to refer, which is mentioned in the Queen's Speech, and which I know will not find favour with the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) is the question of the government of Scotland. I hope that the Conservatives will not consider that devolution was a port to go into in a storm, and that there will be no danger of amnesia with regard to devolution. The House spent almost the whole of the final two Sessions of the last Parliament discussing the government of Scotland, yet it has figured very little in the discussion of the Queen's Speech. In the day-to-day difficulties which hon. Members opposite clearly will have to overcome, I hope that they will not be led to forget the issue of the government of Scotland. It would be unwise so to do.
  We heard a great deal from my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), about the instability of the Scotland Act. I ask hon. Members to consider the instability of the current situation where Scotland voted Labour yet has a Tory Secretary of State, where there will be the forced sale of council houses when Scotland voted against it, where there will be help for the privileged in private education when Scotland voted against it and where there will be cuts in public expenditure when Scotland voted against them. There is great potential for conflict there and great potential for the revival of the forces of separation unless we take some action regarding the government of Scotland.
  I regret that there is a commitment in the Queen's Speech to repeal the Scotland Act. I am afraid that that is inevitable, given the provisions of that Act. But I welcome the commitment to all-party talks. If we are to have meaningful talks on the government of Scotland, we must have an agenda. We must have papers for consideration during those talks.
  930
  What do the Tories have to table before those talks? Are they to table the thoughts of the late lamented Member for Glasgow, Cathcart, Mr. Teddy Taylor, or those of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Rifkind), now Under-Secretary of State for Scotland? Perhaps it would be more appropriate for them to table the recommendations of the committee which the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sid-cup (Mr. Heath), set up and which was chaired by Lord Home.
  I quote from the report of the committee:
  "there should be an assembly of persons directly elected. We describe the functions which the assembly could usefully fulfil. One is to provide a focus for the discussion in public of Scotland's affairs; the other is to provide a forum in which Bills which are purely Scottish in character can be debated and taken through their important legislative stages in Scotland. The assembly, which we propose should be named 'The Scottish Convention', would undertake much of the work at present done by the Scottish Grand and Standing Committees."
  Even that will not go far enough for some of the people—perhaps most of the people—in Scotland. Anything less will be considered by most of the people in Scotland as a total sell-out. The Secretary of State for Scotland must soon give a definitive statement to the House of what the Government intend to put to the all-party talks, or the people of Scotland will place little faith in them. I can assure the House that, as long as I am a Member, the issue of devolution will not be far from the forefront in the forum of the House.
  I had intended to stop at that point until I heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer talking about the effect of increases in the salaries and wages of local government officials on the rate support grant. I am not yet sure that all right hon. and hon. Members have fully realised the enormity of the effect of that announcement. I have served in local government for nine years, and if local government is to absorb all the wage and salary increases which have been announced or are in process of being announced, without any increase in the cost limits, which is what the Chancellor said, there will be either massive redundancies of local government staff—teachers, street sweepers and cleaners—or a very substantial increase in the rates. That is the enormity of what the Chancellor said.

  931
  Even if Members do not do so, I hope that people outside will realise the effect that it will have on local government services.
  I hope I have not gone beyond the bounds of the normal procedures with regard to maiden speakers. If I have, I crave the indulgence of the House and you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  6.8 p.m.
  Mr. Percy Grieve: In my first speech in the new House of Commons, may I first of all do publicly what I have already done privately and congratulate you personally, Mr. Deputy Speaker, upon your accession to your new high office? I am quite sure that all your friends in the House wish you, in that office, a continuance of the happiness and success that you have enjoyed throughout your parliamentary career.
  My second and happy duty is to congratulate two maiden speakers. First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle), who made a cogent and humane contribution to our debate and who spoke, as he said, as the successor to a number of Members who have made an important contribution to debates in the House since I have been a Member. I am sure that we shall hear him often. He will always be a welcome speaker and I am sure that he will have an important contribution to make to future debates.
  Secondly, I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Foulkes). He comes from a constituency which I know well. My stepfather, who was the only father I knew, was a Cunningham from Ayrshire. I know the beauty of that constituency and some of its problems. I do not go there often now, but obviously has those problems much at heart. He said a great deal regarding devolution on which I would join issue with him. The tendency nowadays is for maiden speakers to be rather more robust at the loss of their maiden head than was the tradition in earlier days in the House of Commons. I am sure that he, too, has many an important contribution to make to our debates and that all hon. Members welcome him here this afternoon.
  I now turn to the brief contribution that I wish to make. It is a pleasant thing to be in the House of Commons
  932
  and to be able to give an unmitigated welcome to the Gracious Speech. When one sits in the House of Commons for many years, one hears many Gracious Speeches that contain much of which one disapproves. But on this occasion there was hardly a comma or colon with which I would have taken issue. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Government on putting into the Gracious Speech for implementation in this Session of Parliament so many of the policies which we put clearly and soundly before the electorate, which resulted in the majority which the Conservative Party now enjoys in the House.
  Today we are discussing primarily the financial matters in the Gracious Speech. In contradistinction to the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), I entirely approve of that early passage at the beginning of the Gracious Speech speaking of the intention of this Government to reduce the burden of direct taxation and restrict the claims of the public sector on the nation's resources, thereby starting to restore incentives.
  If there has been one thing which has stood out over the years in the recent history of our country, it is that we have been the victims of a wholly excessive burden of direct taxation. It is not possible to fudge the figures by looking at the overall burden of taxation. I concede at once that our taxes in the aggregate may not be higher than those of some of the competing countries in the Western world. But our direct tax burden is without exception, and in many particulars, the very highest in the whole of the Western world. The truth is that under the Labour Government the former Chancellor of the Exchequer sought in his first year in office to increase the burden of direct taxation. Since that time he has sought over and over again to give himself the credit for the small ways in which he has sought to mitigate that burden, because even he has been brought to see that that burden was excessive and was grinding our country into a level of poverty compared with that of our other West European neighbours and our partners in the EEC.
  From whatever view one looks at this country's present burden of direct taxation, from which, I hope, we should soon be relieved, it is grossly excessive. There is no doubt that in the recent election

  933
  campaign in my constituency, as in the whole of the West Midlands, the Conservative Party enjoyed the support of a large number of workers in the motor car industry. Certainly, my own majority in Solihull could not have been what it was had it not been for a large accession of votes from workers in the Rover works. It is easy to see why. The differentials of the skilled men have been eroded, and they are paying the highest rate of direct taxation of any comparable workers in the Western world.
  I give the figures compared with France, which I know well. The average wage of a Rover worker on the shop floor is about £90 a week. At £80 a week, a married man with two children already pays about £740 a year in tax and national insurance contributions. His opposite number in the Renault or Peugeot works in France pays only £105 upon a similar wage. The difference is staggering. Although I concede at once that lesser differences prevail between this country, Germany, the Netherlands and others of our partners, the difference with France is quite staggering.
  At the upper end, the weight of taxation in this country is without question the highest in the Western world. When a man has reached just over £20,000 a year, he already begins to pay 83 per cent. income tax. If, in the course of rising to that eminence as an executive, he has saved for his old age, he finds himself paying, in addition, a 15 per cent. investment income surcharge upon those savings. The result is that very soon, not long after reaching the £20,000 bracket, he is paying tax at 98p in the pound. It is not possible to contend that tax at that level on that sort of means in modern society, allowing for the tremendous inroads on the value of money that have been made by inflation, is anything other than confiscatory, penal and bitterly unjust.
  It is for this reason that over recent years we have seen a flood of people going to live abroad. This does not apply only to people in the star class, the cinema, the theatre, painting and the arts. Very often such people go to live abroad against their will. Very often they would much rather be here at home. But this also applies to working men.
  Not long ago, at Rome airport, I met three working men who were working on
  934
  the oil wells at Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf. They were on their way for their fortnight off—they worked six weeks on and two weeks off. One was a Geordie, one came from London, but I cannot remember where the other came from. I asked where they were going and they replied "We are going to Malta". I asked "Why Malta?" and they told me "Well, we cannot afford to live in England." There were some of our finest technical men, exported all over the world, as they are, and for fiscal reasons they could not afford to come home.
  It is easy for Labour Members to contend that there is no relationship between this and our low level of productivity, or our increasing poverty compared with our Western European partners. But we do not have to look much further than lack of incentive for at least part of the cause. Here I entirely join issue with the speech made by the hon. Member for Oldham, West, who spoke of the collapse of private market mechanisms. Private market mechanisms have not collapsed of their own accord. They have been eroded by Socialist policies. Socialist policies have been eating away at the foundations.
  In his speech to the House yesterday afternoon, the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) asked:
  "Who benefits from the system?"
  This is his system—
  "We would all suffer if it collapsed, but the House knows that the people who pressed for it most were the industrialists. I have sat many times beside my television set and watched City bankers at big dinners denouncing public intervention. I have seen the very same men in my office the following morning, when I was Minister of Technology or Secretary of State for Industry or for Energy, pleading for cash."—[Official Report, 21 May 1979; Vol. 967, c. 719.]
  That does not show any lack of principle in those industrialists, or any desire to have the interventionist, Socialist State for which the right hon. Gentleman was contending. It merely shows that when he and his friends are in power, those who must keep the machinery of industry working have to go to them. No doubt they enjoy the power and the patronage which they can give in consequence. I believe that this also applies to the tax system.
  It is easy to say "We shall decide what is best for the people. We shall decide what they ought to have in their purses.

  935
  We shall decide how much money they should have to spend. We shall give them the social services, and the services that are not absolutely essential, which we think the public ought to provide, and we shall take the money from them to do it." That has been the essence of Socialist Government in this country for the last five years. That is wholly wrong. It destroys incentive, initiative and the motivation which enables a society to get on its feet.
  I applaud the words of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when she said that the desire of the individual to benefit himself and to provide for his children represents one of the principal motivations of society. It always has been so throughout the ages. To erode that is to cut at the very root of society. That destroys initiative and the desire to provide not only for oneself but for society. That is what our tax system has been doing, certainly for the past five years, if not for much longer than that.
  That is why I applaud the emphasis in the Gracious Speech on the need to cut taxation. We shall have to cut Government expenditure and, no doubt, raise indirect taxes to some extent, but surely the emphasis of taxation should be on spending—not spending on necessities. In addition, greater emphasis should be placed upon saving, which should be encouraged for the greater benefit of the community and society.
  These policies must be carried out over the period of a five-year Parliament. However, I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor will take a bold step this year, because I believe that the country expects him to make much more than a token reduction in direct taxation. I ask him also to consider, as the years pass, the position of women under the tax system. It is antediluvian and grossly unfair that women should still be regarded as one with their husbands for the purposes of taxation, and that there should still be a serious tax upon marriage where a woman has any fortune of her own. I hope that over the years we shall be able to remedy that.
  6.22 p.m.
  Mr. A. E. P. Duffy: The hon. and learned Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) claims popular endorsement for the Gracious Speech and
  936
  for the policies that are now flowing from it. I remind him that, whatever majority his party may enjoy, only one out of every three of the electorate voted for those policies. There is every promise, or perhaps threat, that those policies will throw a strain on one-tenth of the British people and perhaps upon our social fabric. As the Opposition amendment states, they might in the end divide society. That last point will be my main concern this evening.
  The Chancellor made the customary Conservative charge against an outgoing Labour Administration—that he has inherited a deplorable economic legacy. The right hon. and learned Gentleman described his inheritance as dismal. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) anticipated and, in a powerful speech, refuted that claim.
  I want to touch upon only one comparative index of economic performance, though there are others. The balance of payments showed enormous improvement under Labour. Last year, for example, there was a small surplus of £250 million. The deficit when the Tories left office five years ago was running at over £3,000 million a year. When one allows for inflation, that is now worth over £6,000 million a year. One-third of that huge deficit could not be explained away by the oil price rise of 1973.
  In the past 15 years Tory Governments have consistently left growing deficits in Britain's overseas payments, and Labour Governments have consistently turned them round into a surplus. I could touch upon other comparative indices such as GDP, exports or investment. They have already been touched upon by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East and my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), and no doubt others of my hon. Friends will be returning to the theme.
  I want to look forward to the kind of scenario that most of us now envisage for the 1980s. I want to show how we had promised the electorate we would approach and handle that scenario. I want to contrast it with the Government's apparent intentions.
  In indicating the configuration of the 1980s I need do no more than remind the House both of the problems that are shaping up and of the opportunities that

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  are offered. In the latter I include both North Sea oil exploration and microelectronics as well as other innovations that stem from contemporary industrial performance.
  Unhappily there is the other side of the coin—the challenge to our older manufacturing industries from the industrialising countries of the Third world. These brief references to the 1980s can give us all a picture of the opportunities and the problems with which the Government will have to deal.
  Let me remind the House of the strategy that my party offered during the recent campaign. We believed that whatever change was involved—and undoubtedly there will be profound change during the next few years—it must be approached where possible on a planned basis. This explains our creation of the British National Oil Corporation—the publicly accountable custodian of our oil wealth—and the National Enterprise Board with its attention to Inmos, Britain's own microelectronics enterprise.
  Labour's strategy was also intended to ensure that any cost that arose from the profound changes must be eased where possible for individual workers through retraining and through regional policies. The third prong of our strategy was that co-operation with the trade union movement and, preferably, an early instalment of industrial democracy were vital to ensure that any change took place on the basis of consent and with a growing participation by, greater information for and, therefore, the practical and genuine involvement of all those most closely affected by the change.
  Let me sum up Labour's policies as they were summed up in our manifesto. Our aim was to overcome the evils of inequality and poverty, on the one hand, while, on the other, going forward towards making Britain truly one nation.
  Tory policies have already divided Britain into two distinct voting blocs—North and South. They now threaten to divide Britain into two nations, the rich and the poor, for there can be no one in the House who, having heard the Chancellor today, can believe that in his forthcoming Budget he does not intend that his tax proposals will give most to those who have most. Moreover, recalling the speech of the Secretary of State for
  938
  Industry yesterday, we are confirmed in our fear—the evidence has come out already in the speeches from the hon. and learned Member for Solihull and the right hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Macmillan)—of the consequences of the Tory approach to our nation's affairs.
  The Tories' general approach to the economy presents a clear threat of measures which could put the economy into recession. The Chancellor speaks of the need for proper monetary discipline, with the implication of a reduction in the public sector borrowing requirement. Given the magnitude of the reduction that he must surely be contemplating, and given also the arithmetic so plainly presented today by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East, it seems inevitable that the Chancellor will cut public spending by more than he cuts taxation. This in itself will tend to deflate the economy, to cut output and to hit employment.
  But there is also the strongest presumption that, pound for pound, cuts in public spending will destroy more jobs than tax cuts will create, a point which seems to have been overlooked by the hon. and learned Member for Solihull and his right hon. Friend. Thus, the Tory tax and spending policies and the Chancellor's pledge of a much more vigorous use of cash limits undoubtedly add up to a threat to employment. The Chancellor's speech today was deeply informed with the spirit of Proposition 13.
  In addition, the Tory Government's industrial policies, as we learnt yesterday, pose further threats to jobs in particular areas. The Secretary of State for Industry could not be drawn yesterday any more than the Chancellor could be drawn today, but we on these Benches fear what he will do in respect of job-saving measures. Certainly there was a veiled threat yesterday afternoon to cut regional development grants in the assisted areas, and every right hon. and hon. Member, not merely on the Opposition Benches, who comes from an assisted area must think out the implications of that veiled threat not only for his region but for his own constituency.
  The Tory approach, I repeat, is fundamentally different from ours. In place of a positive industrial policy they now offer merely an act of faith. If taxes are cut, if industrial subsidies are axed, and

  939
  if the blind forces of the market place are left to their own devices, so the Secretary of State for Industry argued yesterday, everything will somehow work out for the best. But, as the right hon. Gentleman was reminded by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn), Government intervention is a fact of life throughout the industrialised world. Public ownership is widespread and all Governments use public funds to support industry and jobs. After all, as we were reminded yesterday, the development of microelectronics was pioneered not by private enterprise but on the back of massive public spending on the United States defence and aerospace programmes in the 1960s.
  Again, in the context of public enterprise, there is a strong Tory commitment to denationalise. I warn the Government that any attempt to sell off the aerospace and shipbuilding industries will not be in the public interest. However, I hope that if they persist the Government will engage in the fullest consultation with management and men in those industries. I do not expect them to find a manager or a man in those industries who will support their policies.
  Mr. Cranley Onslow: Rubbish.
  Mr. Duffy: I ask the hon. Member who calls out "Rubbish" to tell me, were the Government actually to achieve disposals in these industries and elsewhere, where they would effect a sale at other than a knock-down price.
  Mr. Onslow: Since the hon. Gentleman is so confident that there is neither a manager nor a man in those industries who would support their denationalisation, will he tell us how many managers and men he has spoken to, and will he explain why he thinks that these industries would not attract considerable public support and interest from people who want to see their savings go into truly profitable investment?
  Mr. Duffy: I repeat my assertion. I cannot believe that there is a manager or a man in aerospace or in shipbuilding who will support the Government's policy of denationalisation. I notice that the hon. Gentleman did not reply to my question: where can these industries be disposed
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  of by the Government save at knock-down prices and merely to pension funds? So much for an extension of that industrial democracy which we have heard is still so much revered by the Tory Party.
  There is no one on the Opposition Benches who does not believe that the right hon. Lady's U-turn will come—I do not suppose that any one of us would give her more than two years—and I hope that, when it comes, all her colleagues on the Government Front Bench, not merely those associated with the Chancellor's team, will go with her into political oblivion.
  Labour's strategy, in contrast—this is its most important foundation—is to rebuild and modernise our industries so that our workers in the 1980s will have the plant, the machinery and the investment to compete on equal terms with the best in the world. But the first short-term task is still to beat inflation. One is entitled to ask whether the Government have made a helpful start here by accelerating preferred pay claims. That is why it is vital for the Government to reach a renewed understanding with the TUC for the next 12 months. But how will they effect that with a promise of increased VAT pushing up the retail price index?
  Secondly, Labour's strategy for the years ahead must look to the new industries, to the expanding firms and to the building of modern plants. But we believe that this investment must be planned and that all regions must get their share. How can this be achieved, however, under the industrial policy which, though not yet enunciated, was hinted at pretty definitely by the Secretary of State yesterday afternoon?
  Labour's intention, thirdly, would be that public investment must not be allowed to suffer. But, again, how can that be achieved in the new climate envisaged by the Chancellor? It cannot but suffer. For example, we ought to begin to plan to meet our energy needs for the time when oil runs down. We shall therefore need to invest in research and development into alternative sources of energy.
  Fourthly, Labour would have given priority to the use of our new prosperity to help those in need and not just the

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  rich, the strong and the powerful. We therefore urge upon the new Government that they must have regard for the compassionate society. Yet does anyone in the House really believe that henceforth the social climate will not become chillier, less forgiving and less generous?
  The promotion and generation of prosperity cannot simply be left to Adam Smith's hidden hand. It must be planned for and worked for. North Sea oil alone will not enable us to do all that we want to do. A return to full employment, for example, will depend on an increase of industrial investment and production. We need the concerted action of the Government and of the trade union movement and of the managers uniting together, as well as the workers, in a spirit of confidence and adventure.
  Above all, there must be a feeling of a share for everyone. No one or no group should feel excluded. We must be one society. Tory policies may make that impossible. Tory policies threaten to divide Britain into two nations—the rich and the poor; the powerful and the powerless; the privileged and the deprived—whereas Labour was putting Britain into shape to face the challenge of the 1980s.
  That is why I commend to the House the amendment in the names of my right hon. Friends, and especially the reference to the way in which Tory policies now threaten to divide our society.
  6.40 p.m.
  Mr. Tony Speller: I arrive as one of the anonymous new Members. I come from Devon, North, and outside that constituency everyone knows who lost but no one remembers yet who won.
  I should like to start my career in this House by paying a deep and sincere tribute to my predecessor, Mr. Jeremy Thorpe. As a constituency Member, he was without equal, and there is no doubt of the respect and affection in which he was and is still held in our constituency.
  It is clear to me that hon. Members listen or half listen as new Members describe the beauties of their constituencies. Happily, I do not have to do it, because in my short time here I have met a charming lady police officer who was educated in Barnstaple and wishes she was there again, and another member of
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  the police establishment who comes from Bideford and wishes that he was there. I have met a lady who cleans for my host—my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam)—and who comes from Ilfracombe and wishes that she was there again on holiday, and even in the establishment known, I believe, as "The Kremlin" down below, the lady who helps there wishes that she was back in Bishops Tawton. Therefore. I have the advantage of knowing that many of those who surround me would happily come back and join me, if not politically, at least in the very pleasant environment of North Devon.
  But North Devon is not just Exmoor and lots of lovely rivers and good fishing and beaches. We have a distinct advantage over areas represented by many of the Members who have spoken today, hon. Members who come from areas of declining industry and of old industry, where the dangers are of cutting back, of loss of jobs and loss of work. In North Devon we have quite the other problem. We have young industries and new industries. We have industries that seek new employees and new opportunities. Our problems are those of growth, not those of decline.
  As a new Member. I have received a postbag never to be equalled again. But among the major and minor, the long-term and short-term problems that we have, are those, for example, of our one and only large employer—to us, "large" means anything over 500 employees—Appledore shipyards, which must be the most economic and probably the only profitable shipyards in the United Kingdom, if not in the world.
  We have the problems of the small firms which are growing, and I have made representations about one to the Department of the Environment this very day. The firm has built itself up to 170 employees over 10 years. It is making specialised pipes which are exported all over the Common Market. However, because of transport licensing problems, while this firm has grown in manufacturing output and while a small local transport firm has grown and specialised to carry its products to boost our export trade, the problems of licensing, of getting lorries into France, have arisen as current short-term difficulties. Also there are the immediate problems of the plant

  943
  hire firms which cannot get fuel oil. Because they cannot hire out their machines, the building industry—and ours is beginning to boom—cannot do its work. These are typical of our North Devon problems. Some are small and some are larger. But all are important.
  No one denies that British agriculture—not just that of North Devon—is highly efficient. Agricultural costs rise, but the income is held down. This may be nice if one is looking only at the price of food in the shops, but it is extremely hard if one believes, as I do, that Britain should grow as much of its own food as it can and should continue as an efficient agricultural entity, and not as something liable to "stop" and "go"—words I have not heard used for some time in relation to our economy.
  I am a Devonian born, bred and educated. I live there and work there, so all the problems and the good things and bad things can be ascribed to me as a Devonian. Most of all, in my part of the country we are in every sense an area of small business, of the small firm, of the shopkeeper not big enough to have someone else to do the books and returns. I know that we have been described, allegedly by Napoleon, as a nation of shopkeepers. As a shopkeeper, I find myself quite lonely in this House. None the less, we are the weekend workers who do the paper work when those lucky enough to enjoy a five-day week are away about their leisure. It is the small business and the small shopkeepers that are the backbone of our country. That is indeed so in my own local economy.
  Finally, one group of people often spoken of, but almost as an afterthought, are the population in our area who have become elderly. Many folk have retired to live amongst us and are truly welcome. These are the people who, a few years ago, retired and came to the West Country, but not with riches. They had, perhaps, sold a small business, or had cashed in their savings, moved down here, and bought a small house, thinking that, although they were not rich, they had a sufficiency. Now, the rates bill, the electricity bill and every bill that arrives brings the fear of not being able to meet from their limited resources the basic requirements of simple civilised life.
  944
  I believe that it is totally wrong that pensions received by virtue of age should be treated as taxable when supplementary benefits are not so treated. I do not seek to tax supplementary benefits, but I find it strange, and quite inexplicable to the aged, when we have to say "I am sorry that your savings, your thrift of earlier years, has brought you in just these few pounds, and now we will gross it up for tax purposes."
  In conclusion, let me say that I have received a great welcome in this House. I appreciate all the help and assistance that I have had and particularly thank, among many others, my two good friends, my hon. Friends the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) and Devon, West (Mr. Mills), for showing me around and showing me the ropes. It will be my pleasure and pride to serve in this House, to serve North Devon and to serve our country.
  6.47 p.m.
  Mr. Stuart Holland: Accustomed though I may be to public speaking, and anxious as I am to raise several points in this debate on the economy, pay and prices, it is only fitting that I make some comments about my predecessor as Member for Lambeth, Vauxhall, the right hon. George Strauss.
  George—or "G.R." as he was known to many of his friends and constituents—was the Father of the House until the last election. As such, his wide knowledge, experience and understanding of the House and its character endeared him to many here and gained him respect not only in this Chamber and the corridors and Committee Rooms of Westminster, but also over the bridge, through Lambeth Walk and beyond.
  George Strauss's record as a Member was quite outstanding. The thirtieth of this month is the fiftieth anniversary of his first election to Parliament. In fact, he just missed half a century of membership through temporarily losing his seat in 1931, and, by a handful of votes, failing to win it the first time round in 1924. Such a record of service in this House is without parallel in this century and is only just exceeded, I understand, by an hon. Member in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, who enjoyed contests—if that is the appropriate word—considerably less severe and on a much

  945
  more limited franchise, before the first Reform Act.
  George Strauss was also, for much of his long period in the House, the backbone of the House, inasmuch as he was mainly a Back Bencher, but he was also Minister of Supply from 1947 to 1951, and as Parliamentary Secretary to several Ministers he played an important role, including that of Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Aircraft Production during a crucial time in our country's history. He played an important part in the Labour Party and, for a time in the 1930s, outside it. He was a founder member of the Tribune group although he may later have come to regard it with misgivings. In the 1930s in particular he was a vigorous contributor to the discussion, debate and, where necessary, dissension which laid the foundation for the radical policies pursued by the 1945-51 Labour Government in which he played a prominent part. It is an honour to succeed him as hon. Member for Vauxhall.
  The structure of the constituencies of North Lambeth that he variously represented has been transformed by a fundamental and until now effectively unreversed change—from private to public housing, from the degradation of a board of guardians that was only one remove from the poor law commissioners and the workhouse to a Welfare State and social security. These advances of a welfare society are seriously in question for the first time in 50 years through the recent change in Government.
  Inner city areas such as North Lambeth and Vauxhall have recently undergone profound changes which threaten their vitality and viability. Progressive policies such as those for the new towns have proved increasingly regressive for inner city areas through the migration of labour and capital. The labour that has left Lambeth includes the younger, more adaptable and more skilled workers and their families. The capital and enterprise that has left Lambeth and other inner London boroughs has found greener pastures in the new towns or abroad. That has aggravated a vicious circle of decline in the older urban centres.
  Vauxhall therefore has more than its share of those in need in our society. That includes those for whom there appears to be no place in the stark world
  946
  of Tory self-interest—those who have no savings as a hedge against inflation, who cannot play the stock market, place Eurobond issues or redispose of their personally held shares; those who cannot simply take up their bed and walk into a new job in a new town and live in a newly purchased council house. It includes single-parent families who have no hope of finding a private mortgage in the manner of the bright young marrieds in Conservative media propaganda and those who cannot insure themselves through private medical companies against the infirmities of old age and chronic disabilities.
  There are those who cannot get executive jobs in the glass and steel palaces of office blocks such as that currently proposed by Heron and other companies on the Coin Street site by the National Theatre, rightly opposed by the local authority and action groups in the community. There are those who cannot escape from overcrowding, from lack of recreational facilities and lack of hope, as long as the Conservative GLC fails to fulfil its function as the strategic housing authority for the Greater London area and sells to those who come first rather than those who most need the new council housing. This will be aggravated if the Secretary of State for the Environment wields his axe on local authority spending with greater effect than he once wielded the Mace in this Chamber.
  That brings me to the touchstone of the allegedly new Conservative economic policies, the key with which they imagine that they will unlock talent and initiative in this country. That policy is remarkable for its massive leap backwards in time and because Conservative Ministers do not seem to understand the analysis or thought of the man whom they have elevated as the idol of their new economic brutalism. I refer to Adam Smith. He wrote two important books—"The Wealth of Nations" and the "Theory of Moral Sentiments", which he considered far more important.
  Smith basically admitted that self-interest through a competitive market mechanism was effective in that if an entrepreneur wished to make a higher profit for himself, he would do so mainly by lowering prices on the market. He was surprised that the mechanism worked, and stressed that the invisible

  947
  hand of the market that gets but a passing reference in "The Wealth of Nations" was more a moral than an economic phenomenon. In the "Theory of the Moral Sentiments" he developed a pantheistic argument that amounted to the expression of his surprise that the market mechanism worked as effectively as it did in his time.
  Unfortunately in current Conservative policies one sees much of "The Wealth of Nations" and little of the "Theory of Moral Sentiments". In addition, no attention is paid to one of the most stark warnings given by Adam Smith, that nothing is more certain when two or three producers are gathered together, even for merriment or diversion, than that they will seek to conspire against the public interest through some contrivance to raise prices. It is staggering to hear the Secretary of State for Industry and the Chancellor talk of the devolution of decision-making to millions of independent entrepreneurs without recognising the massive trend to monopoly against which Smith warned even in his time.
  The facts are that 100 companies account for more than half the industrial output and employment in this country. They thereby determine more than half the prices that go into the wholesale and retail trade. Less than 75 firms control half of Britain's visible exports. Two and half dozen companies command some 40 per cent. of Britain's visible export trade. That is a remarkable concentration of economic power. Over the years it has increased in muscle, strength and range, despite the efforts of the Monopolies Commission and the activities of the Price Commission.
  The Chancellor today talked of profits, but because he appears myopic in failing to distinguish between the phenomenal concentration of economic power in the heartland of the economy and the plethora of small firms being squeezed by that monopoly power. He gave only the aggregate profit figures. Let me give him some others. Over nearly a decade since 1968 the real profits of manufacturing firms rose by only 7 per cent., but those of the top 25 companies rose by 70 per cent., which is 10 times more. That is exactly the situation that we should expect from Smith's reasoning.
  948
  A further important factor is that the crowding of small enterprise that the Secretary of State claims is due to public expenditure is caused not by Government action but by monopoly enterprise. The biggest problem today for small business is not big government but big business. If the Government cannot recognise the need to countervail the concentration of economic power present in the economy by appropriate public and democratic institutions, they will not get far by relying on Smith's pantheism or the "Theory of Moral Sentiments".
  Another factor that the Government appear totally to ignore concerns the multinational spread of capital. During the election campaign the then Leader of the Opposition made passing reference to the West German economy and its tax structure, but those references are almost entirely irrelevant to the key argument before us. The Government have ignored the simple fact that the British economy is five times more multinational in structure than that of West Germany. Britain has five times more foreign production by our companies outside this country relative to visible export trade than has Germany or Japan. German companies abroad produce goods whose value is only some two-fifths of total German visible export trade. British business abroad produces goods whose value is more than double our total visible export trade. That accounts for much of the weakness in our exporting structure—and I stress the word "structure". Unless we intervene in these structures, we shall be able to do little to cope with the problem of our declining and poor visible trade.
  If a company such as Dunlop, GEC, Vickers, GKN or any other multinational company among the top 100 in our system located in both Germany and Britain, and if it were aggressively to sell following a devaluation of the pound on the German market, it would simply be competing against itself. There is no rationale concerned with profit or logic which argues that that is in the company's interest. But it is very much against this country's interest that we have no mechanism to cope with these matters. When there is a devaluation of sterling or when sterling is at a relatively low level, as it is now, in terms of foreign markets, when our wages happen to be about the lowest in Western Europe, why are we not introducing policies which oblige business to

  949
  pursue a more competitive export effort in certain foreign markets? This was part of the rationale behind the Labour Party's policy involving planning agreements which, I very much regret, it appears that certain people did not have the nerve to pursue, partly because they believed the mythology perpetrated by the CBI and partly perhaps because they were not aware of the full scale of the problem.
  I wish to return to my main point—namely, that big business is the main beneficiary of public spending in this country. This is one of the most fantastic ironies about the present Government's policies on the public sector. One can assume that they do not realise that while public spending has accounted for nearly half the total spending in this country, public enterprise accounts for 15 per cent. of the value of goods and services in our economy as a whole.
  Let me point out what that basically means. Rotarians and local business men who so enthusiastically supported the present Prime Minister when she promised, in effect, to cut public spending at a stroke might bear the following point in mind. For every £100 of public spending cuts in the economy from now, £85 will be taken from the private rather than from the public sector. In other words, it will be taken from private enterprise sales rather than from public enterprise sales.
  In voting for the right hon. Lady the small business lobby, which looks only to a direct tax cut, has failed to grasp the massive fall in sales which would flow from the fall in public spending. The illustrations are legion. There is not a school built, a council housing estate erected, a new hospital launched where the bulk of the contracts do not at present go to the private sector. Inasmuch as the right hon. Lady's axe falls on those construction programmes, it will fall also on the small and medium-sized firms in local areas which depend so greatly on that type of order.
  It is also ironical because business in this country lives off the teat of the State. It is poor sense for infants and less for adults to bite the teat that pleases them. In practice, it should prove a painful operation and should disconcert some of the Conservative Back Benchers when they see not only the edge of the axe but the cuts which occur.
  950
  There are other areas by which the Government's policy is rent with contradictions. It appears that they have no concept whatever of the social costs of closing down an individual enterprise. For example, in the North-East of England the Vickers company is trying to close the Scotswood plant in Newcastle, one of the forges of the original ironmasters of the Industrial Revolution in that part of the country. An economic audit of the operations of that enterprise, focusing on the indirect effect of that closure, showed that it would cost the community, and over the long run cost exports from this country, more than double the direct cost of Government intervention to assist that company.
  If the Government cannot take these factors into account, if they pursue the myth that the economy can be run as a kind of super firm, so that when one runs into the red one puts oneself back into the black, they do not realise the basic message argued by Keynes. And here Keynes was right and Milton Friedman was wrong. If the economy is run in those circumstances on the same lines as a company, by cutting back the State's budget one will aggravate and accelerate the vicious circle of decline in demand. Therefore—and the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of this matter earlier but missed the point—it will affect the supply of goods and services in that sector.
  In a real sense, Keynes has been outdated by factors such as those I have mentioned, especially the monopoly multinational trend in our economy. But Keynes needs to be transcended, not rejected, on both the ownership and control aspects of supply and on the redistribution of demand.
  Let me take another example from the favourite economy extolled by the present Prime Minister—namely, West Germany. Are the right hon. Lady, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Industry and the Chancellor unaware that there now is a massive structural crisis in the West German economy? Do they not know that gross fixed domestic capital for the nation, which is the overall investment that takes place in the system, has fallen from 9 per cent. a year in Germany in the early 1950s to 6 per cent. a year in the early 1960s and to 0·2 per cent. a year between 1970 and 1974?

  951
  That was before the OPEC price increases, and before the specific crisis that now faces the world.
  Is the Prime Minister unaware—indeed, is the German Chancellor unaware—that, if they are to be monetarists, the thing to do is to listen less to Chicago and to some people on the Government Front Bench who seem to be ideologically suited to some of the cities on the American Great Lakes, and to pay more attention to the fact that, unless the surplus trading countries act like bankers and unless they offer credit to other countries and achieve a joint reflation of demand—which can be based only on the reflation of public spending in its essence—we are bound to have a downwards spiral? That spiral is based not on "beggar-my-neighbour" protection, on which several Governments have congratulated themselves, but on "beggar-my-neighbour" deflation. A cutback in one country's imports is a cutback in another country's exports. Unless the present Government change course, we therefore are in for a very serious crisis in this country. These factors are in addition to those which are more widely known both within and outside the House, in the impending technological crisis of the third technological revolution, including the development of the microchip.
  Thet right hon. and learned Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke earlier about regenerating small and medium-sized enterprises by concentrating on innovation. Does the Chancellor not know that for nearly 10 years to date the main pattern of innovation in this country and in Western Europe has been in processes of production, and not in new products—in cheaper ways of doing the same kind of thing and not in the creation of an entirely new range of industry? We are no longer in a situation where investment automatically creates new jobs. Unfortunately, we are now in a situation where investment automatically displaces jobs, and thereby, ironically, if the Government succeeded with even one of their objectives by raising investment, they would thereby increase the problem of unemployment. This is a really major problem.
  What is to be done? In real terms, for a class-based party such as that which is behind the present Government, there
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  are two main options, and they are both capitalistic. There is either the option of laissez faire, blue in tooth and claw, taking this country through de-industrialisation to the brink of confrontation, grave social crisis, and the abyss of slump, or—and it appears that this has not occurred to Conservatives—capitalist State intervention of State capitalism. They could learn the lessons of intervention in industry, half-digested, but at least begun, under the previous Tory Government led by the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath).
  One of the most remarkable aspects of the speeches made by the right hon. Lady in the election campaign, and indeed earlier during the period of office of the Labour Government, was that she has a simplistic notion that State intervention equals Socialism. In practice State intervention or State capitalism, in its rationale, is as foreign to Socialism as the reality of such State intervention in their sister parties on the Continent of Europe is foreign to this Government.
  Essentially State capitalism amounts to intervention by whatever means feasible, including public spending, public enterprise, public works, public institutions and certainly price controls, wherever this manages to preserve a fundamentally unreconstructed class framework in society. In other words, State intervention in itself is not Socialist.
  The key questions are: State intervention for what, by whom, in whose interest, where and how? State intervention with-out changing what in practice are the social relations of power in our economy and society is certainly capitalist, at least in the key sense that it maintains the existing power structure.
  "Plan" is not a four-letter word in the language of the European Right. It appears to be so only in Tory Anglo-Saxon. The matter therefore involves recognising that the instruments of State intervention are of themselves not of Right, Left or centre, that they are not in themselves bad versus non-intervention, which in some sense is supposed to be good. There is no Manichean dichotomy of the kind that the Government appear to assume in State intervention, in public spending or in public enterprise.
  That was grasped by Baldwin, who argued in the 1920s, when electrification

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  of this country was proceeding apace, that he saw no case for giving private companies monopolies in the distribution of electricity, when that was a public utility and should be run as such in the public interest. If we need to go to another non-Socialist, we can point out that it was stressed a century ago by Bismarck, when from the start he nationalised the railways in Germany rather than allow them to proceed feebly or to fail under private enterprise, and introduced social security for the German working class.
  Will our Iron Maiden Prime Minister really turn the clock back to before the Iron Chancellor in her contempt for the intervening century? If so, this is a very serious message for the British people.
  There are further aspects on which the Government's disdain for the basic mechanics of the modern capitalist State is almost breathtaking. Either they know what they are doing in attempting to dismantle about a half century of consensus politics in this country or, to be more charitable, they know not what they do. In either event, their present determination to impose savage cuts on the weaker and more deprived sections of the community through restraint of public spending, added to their apparent willingness to confront organised sections of the labour movement, is fraught with conflict.
  Of course, there may be—indeed, is likely to be—yet another U-turn. But even if this Government do undertake such a change in direction, even if after one year or two years they are converted from a false concept of laissez faire—here I refer back to their false conception even of Adam Smith—to a specific form of State intervention, unless they also change the power relations within our society, unless in effect they are prepared to democratise decision-making and decentralise local and social control, we are likely to see a major crisis.
  Of course, the main political beneficiaries of the Government's forthcoming failure are likely to be on the Opposition Benches. But this forecast brings me no joy, because the main losers from this Government's recent electoral victory, on their current policies, are likely to be the British people. That is certainly why I support the Opposition amendment.
  7.13 p.m.
  Mr. Alex Pollock: In rising to address the House as the Member for Moray and Nairn, I am very conscious of my distinguished predecessors. For several decades the seat was represented by two men, each of whom in turn rose to the highest office that Scotland can bestow—that of Secretary of State for Scotland. The first was James Stuart, later Viscount Stuart of Findhorn, who was succeeded by Gordon Campbell, now ennobled and still serving this country in another place as Lord Campbell of Croy.
  From February 1974 until the last election the seat was represented by Mrs. Winifred Ewing, to whose tireless efforts on behalf of her constituents I pay tribute. She was always anxious to make sure that this House and the country at large were kept fully aware of the special problems and needs of the constituency. She was most diligent in pursuing any injustice that required correction or any unfavourable treatment of an individual constituent.
  That burden now falls on my shoulders. It is one that I accept with humility and pride—humility because of the record of those who have gone before me, but pride because of the nature of the seat that it is now my honour to represent.
  The constituency is arguably the most beautiful in Scotland, covering as it does two counties on the North-East Coast. It is rich in natural beauty, from the grandeur of the Grampian mountains down to the Moray Firth. It is the quintessential Scottish rural economy, embracing fishing, farming, tourism and small businesses. It is not directly in the front line of oil development, but it is certainly affected by its offshoots.
  One reason why I was anxious to catch your eye in this part of the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, was that I wanted to remind the House of the importance of small businesses and the necessary conditions under which they must operate if they are to thrive and prosper. In Moray and Nairn we have many such small businesses. They are composed of men who are hard-working and industrious. Indeed, those actively engaged in farming have productivity records on a scale that would put many other parts of the country to shame.

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  Most people do not ask for special favours. What they do ask for is sufficient recognition of the best considerations that must apply to such an economy if they are to benefit not only their area but the country as a whole. What they complain about most is the amount of unnecessary State interference in three main areas—fiscal, legislative and bureaucratic.
  I do not need to labour the fiscal point. Suffice it to say that the current levels of taxation are too high and must be drastically reduced in order to restore realistic incentives for individual effort.
  Turning to the legislative aspect, I earnestly urge the Government to take early steps to reform the so-called employment protection legislation. Far from achieving its declared object of employment protection, it has led in my constituency to employment prevention. Too many small business men dare not take on new labour for fear of falling foul of the Employment Protection Act.
  During my election campaign I spoke to an ex-Service man who now runs an electrical contractor's business in Lossie-mouth. There are many people like that in Morayshire. He has skills that he was ready and willing to pass on to young men who were out of a job, but he did not feel able to do so with the present legislation hanging over his head. He had one job that he wanted to offer, but he could not. In Forres, along the coast, there was another man willing to offer five jobs and in Elgin yet another employer waiting to offer 20 new jobs. But not one of those jobs will become available until the reform of the legislation.
  The other worry of the small business man, which must be tackled, is unnecessary bureaucratic harassment, which takes up time and energy that could be far better employed in running his own business. I should like to give a small example from my own experience.
  As a self-employed advocate at the Scottish Bar, I am required to fill in a VAT return once a quarter. Various questions are put to me, I am told purely for statistical purposes. The first time I received such a form I had to tell the VAT man how many cars I had exported on a zero-rated basis in the past quarter. You may or may not be aware, Mr.
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  Deputy Speaker, that members of the Scottish Bar are not in the habit of exporting cars, whether zero-rated or otherwise.
  I duly replied that I had exported none, and three months went by. Yet again the same question was asked, with yet again the same answer. So it has gone on during my years at the Scottish Bar, not only for me but for my colleagues.
  I suppose that there must now be some civil servant tucked away in a far corner of St. Andrew's House, paid out of the public purse, who could tell the House at the snap of a finger that since the introduction of VAT not one member of the Scottish Bar has exported a single car on a zero-rated basis. That kind of nonsensical bureaucratic interference is costly, not only to business men but to the taxpayer. It diverts us all from our true goals.
  I urge the Government to tackle these three areas—the fiscal, the legislative and the bureaucratic. If they do so effectively, I am convinced that rural economies such as that which I now have the honour to represent will be able to make an even greater contribution to the well-being of the country than they have already.
  7.20 p.m.
  Mr. Richard Wainwright: I am happy to offer congratulations to no fewer than three hon. Members who have just made their maiden speeches. I do so with some envy for the talents which they have displayed. It is quite clear that North Devon has acquired a powerful Devonian voice for its interests and a voice in this House for small business, which is always welcome. As for the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Holland), I suppose that it could be said that he has exchanged a vicarious presence in this House for a personal one. It may well be that hon. Members, all unknowing, have listened to speeches prepared by him in the past but delivered by others. It is good to have him here in person. If I may offer some greetings from a member of one minority party to another, I am glad that it is clear that his attitude to his own party will be almost as robust as his attitude to the Government.
  We also had a most interesting speech from the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. Pollock), who obviously is

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  accomplished in one of the major duties of Members of this House, which is relating the work of this Chamber to the interests of their constituents. He was able to provide some very telling examples in that respect.
  I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will be anxious to hear more from all three of those hon. Members. Their performances today will have reinforced the wish of most of us that our procedures shall be reformed radically so that the House may make the maximum use of the new talent which has come into it.
  On their own showing, the Government must already be a little anxious about maintaining their vigour and pace in the new Parliament. The message which comes through in different keys and tones from different members of the Government is that resilience and vigour are maintained by competition—this great key word which they use now. So they must reflect with some alarm, as I have done for many years, that they themselves belong to the tightest governmental cartel in the world in which there are only two parties, often passing under the title of Box and Cox or Ins and Outs—
  Mr. William Hamilton: Punch and Judy.
  Mr. Wainwright: Or Punch and Judy. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton), not for the first time, for assisting me with an apt simile.
  The obvious disadvantage of this iniquitous cartel is that standards of performance get lower and lower as the decades go by. As failure creeps up on each successive Government, they reflect with some complacency that at least they are no worse than the previous lot.
  I mention briefly another disadvantage of this cartelism in our antiquated political system. It is that when it suits the two Front Benches to exclude a very serious matter from effective argument or debate in this House or during an election, that subject, however important to the mass of the people, is deliberately ignored by the two parties.
  As polling day approached, it was commented on from all sides how the subject of pay determination and pay bargaining was being avoided by the leading
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  television performers of both parties because it was clear that both of them found the subject embarrassing. Similarly, there was a scandalous lack of emphasis on unemployment and on the dismal employment prospects for so many of our young people, because again the leaders of both sides found the subject too embarrassing to dwell upon.
  I say straight away from this Liberal Bench that we regard the greatest defect of the Gracious Speech to be its total lack of proposals to get moving back towards something approaching full employment. At the moment, we have 1,300,000 people unemployed. There is no ground for complacency in the fact that there has been some very modest reduction in that figure over recent months. It is clear that the Government's programme, not just in one way but in various ways, will add to the total of the long-term unemployed.
  To those of us on this Bench, one of the main duties and arts of government is to ensure that the country's resources, especially its human resources, are as fully employed as possible. Simply to keep inflation in check by imposing massive, deliberate, calculated unemployment is no form of government at all. It is an open confession of failure.
  The previous Government, which I repeat always found it embarrassing to raise this question because of their own record, tried to salve their conscience by increasing benefits for the unemployed and seeing to it that they remained untaxed. This is not an acceptable alternative to providing full employment. To offer an able-bodied person a benefit but no apparent role in the community is almost an insult.
  The necessary economic measures to get back to something like full employment cannot be embarked upon safely until the country has a sustained and carefully planned incomes policy with the full authority of Parliament behind it. No one in Government has so far had the sense of leadership to get the country united behind some fair and sustained incomes policy. As a result, we have to fall back on the mean and contemptible weapon of deliberate unemployment to regulate the economy.
  A few weeks ago, I should have felt that to make this point at any length to

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  the party in Government would be speaking to the deaf. But, as polling day approached and the pressure of morning Press conferences in London seemed to have its effect, both The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian reported that at her press conference on 23 April the new Prime Minister was driven into making an explicit and open admission that she might well have to enforce a pay freeze.
  When the former Chancellor of the Exchequer mentioned this today, he did not go on to relate what I thought was much the most significant part of the right hon. Lady's admission—that the Conservatives might have to impose a wage freeze. According to The Guardian of 24 April, the right hon. Lady said that she might be forced into a freeze by "irresponsible collective bargaining". A freeze, she said, was
  "a very temporary measure during which you revise political and financial policies in the light of circumstances."
  In view of that explicit admission at an important press conference, I am entitled to ask how the Government intend to revise political and financial policies when this freeze comes. Hon. Members will agree that the House is entitled to an answer. This is of the greatest importance to our future economic policy, which we are debating. Will the freeze be clamped on those who have been "responsible" and who have settled for modest pay increases just as much as it is clamped on those judged to be irresponsible? Is it to be a comprehesive freeze without regard to merit or deserts? Or will it be some attempt to administer rough justice? What is implied by the right hon. Lady's statement that she would use a freeze to
  "revise political and financial policies"?
  Does this mean that the Gracious Speech is liable to be overturned by new policies which will be devised in the familiar form of a U-turn?
  In view of the Prime Minister's statement on this subject, we must also be told how the country would be got out of this freeze and how the dangerous process of thawing will be administered. This has always proved to be the downfall of improvised and hastily cobbled together incomes freezes or panic incomes policies which do not really deserve that term. In any case, there is also this question
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  for the Government to answer. They are strong in their bold statements against monopoly at the outset of their career in Government. They demolish detailed interference but say that monopolists will tremble because the Monopolies and Mergers Commission is to be revamped—I must say it will have to be revamped out of all recognition if it is to serve any use—in order to be a terror to all who try to corner or monopolise in this country.
  To Liberals, that is an admirable aim which we shall fully support if we are satisfied that it is being effectively pursued. But what will the Government do about the monopoly power of certain trade unions? Unwisely, they reject, no doubt for electoral purposes, any kind of sustained and carefully planned incomes policy. Yet they have no apparent plans for dealing with one of the most powerful monopolies of our time. We are entitled to hear what they have in mind. It is no good the Government saying that by allowing conscientious objection against the closed shop they will be reducing this monopoly power. They will have to come out with some alternative during the next few months if they are to be credible in the world.
  I must now draw attention to what I regard as a totally puzzling gap in the Government's whole scenario. Even if one gives the Government—because this debate has to end before long—their eventual success in releasing all kinds of springs of enterprise and altering fundamentally the climate of business, they do not say how long this will take, although there have been ominous references to three Parliaments or 12 years. They do not explain how they will secure their re-election for that period. Much worse, they do not say what they will do in the meantime. They seem to be guilty of a glaring inconsistency.
  In one voice, the Government say that 15 years of Socialism, either of the Huyton kind or the Bexley-Sidcup kind, has utterly debilitated the British economy. We are told to contemplate our economy in the most appalling state of near collapse. At the same time, they seem to say that only a few weeks of the new tonic policy of cold baths and fresh air, the windows open all night and the turning down of the central heating, will miraculously, at a stroke, turn this chronic invalid, drunk and debauched

  961
  on 15 years of Socialism, into a healthy individual. This is not credible.
  Before the debate ends, the Government must tell us how they will bridge this gap while the British economy, in the terms of their own argument, is still convalescent. They seem to be in such excessive haste. They have not got the Monopolies and Mergers Commission within miles of anything like an efficient organ for terrorising monopolists. Last year, this lumbering, ponderous body could produce only six reports. When it took on Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds, it had to abandon the investigation because it simply could not see its way through it. This palsied body has somehow to be turned quickly into a totally different engine capable of rooting out monopoly in our system. This will take a long time. Before they have started, or even produced a Bill on the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, they have abolished the Price Commission. This seems an error of time scale beyond all reason. To throw away the existing panoply, even if they despise it, before their own system has got under way, or even been described to the House, seems either panic or a lapse of mind.
  The Government have many questions to answer tonight. I take some hope from the fact that no less than the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with his formidable resources, is to be put up to answer. I hope that he will give full answers to the questions I have posed. If we do not get satisfactory answers, we will have no course but to support the official Opposition amendment.
  7.36 p.m.
  Mr. Eric S. Heffer: Before coming to the main point I want to make, I would first like to congratulate you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as a colleague from Merseyside. I am sure that you will be very distinguished in your new position. I hasten to add that I am not saying that in order to get called every time I stand because I know I will not succeed anyway. It would be a total waste of my time doing so. I would like sincerely to congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment.
  I found the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Holland) most interesting in a remarkably excellent speech. I want to say a few words first about the contrast of the philosophy of
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  the Prime Minister and the view of a previous Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. The arguments now being advanced by the Government Benches are a repudiation even of the type of Conservatism experienced under Harold Macmillan and expressed in his book "The Middle Way".
  I would like to quote from a chapter in Harold Macmillan's book entitled
  "The emergence of a new doctrine".
  He wrote:
  "The average citizen of this country had been bewildered by the mysteries of economic theory and persuaded into an almost fatalistic acceptance of what he had been taught to regard as the operations of economic law. The idea that the laws of economics might be dominated by the will of men, and that 'the system' might be made responsive to life rather than life to 'the system' was one which even intelligent and progressive men were chary of expressing lest they might bring down upon their heads the contempt and the condemnation of the learned economists. But the crisis forcibly revealed the strangely haphazard and insecure character of our economic position."
  He went on:
  "The tide of depression had risen so high as to menace the position of many sections of the population which had formerly felt relatively secure. The obvious over-capacity and competitive redundancy in many industries generated in the minds of those responsible for their conduct new ideas of co-operative organisation. The interdependence of all forms of economic activity was more clearly revealed".
  That is "The Middle Way"—the Macmillan concept. That concept was repudiated by the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) for two years. But it was reverted to after two years because the policies now being pursued by the Government could not be carried through in practice.
  My fear is that we have a group of people on the Government Front Bench, supported by their Back Benchers, who are so stupid as to carry through what they say, unlike the right hon. Member for Sidcup, who, after two years, had to go back on his word. The result of such stupidity will be nothing but total economic and political disaster for the British people.
  What leads me to that conclusion? It is the views of the Prime Minister. Her views frighten me to death. I should like to give an example of her views. In an interesting article in the Sunday Express on 22 April 1979, during the

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  general election campaign, under the heading:
  "We shall reward the workers and declare war on the wreckers",
  she said:
  "There is no such thing as collective compassion, collective energy and collective ambition by Act of Parliament. What we get, and become, depends especially on our own efforts."
  Let us think about there being
  "no such thing as collective compassion".
  Mr. J. Enoch Powell: There is not.
  Mr. Heffer: I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman would perhaps agree with me on many things, but not on that. Both the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Lady are totally wrong. If there were no such thing as collective compassion, there would never have been a National Health Service or a Welfare State. The fear of ordinary working people going into the workhouse instead of receiving decent retirement pensions would have been with us still. It may be that some Tory Members are not aware of the fear that my mother had of having to go into what was known as the workhouse. It was collective compassion by Acts of Parliament which brought in the National Health Service and the Welfare State and eliminated that fear and changed the lives of millions of ordinary working people. It is a false argument to say that there is no such thing as collective compassion by Act of Parliament.
  The other argument is that we cannot have collective ambition by Act of Parliament. I do not know whether the Financial Secretary to the Treasury had a grant to go to university. Possibly he did not. Grants were brought in by Acts of Parliament because we needed legislation to give the sons and daughters of working people the opportunities of higher education which they could not get because the money was not available for them in the past. Therefore, collective legislation has helped collective ambition. Many PhDs, also holding professorial chairs, got there only because they had grants as a result of Acts of Parliament giving them the opportunities.
  Mr. Powell: As the hon. Gentleman referred to me both directly, though almost sotto voce, and perhaps by implication
  964
  in his reference to a professorial chair, might I indicate the difficulty which some of us feel over collective compassion? The good Samaritan had compassion. If two good Samaritans had compassion, that would still be individual compassion, not collective compassion. If the good Samaritan had been obliged by decree of the Roman Emperor to assist the traveller, that would not be compassion at all, because it would be done under obligation.
  Mr. Heffer: I remind the right hon. Gentleman that Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross for preaching collective compassion. He preached collective compassion: that we are our brother's keeper; that we are responsible for our brother as well as ourselves. That is why I believe that the basic doctrines of the Bible and Socialism are not very far removed. It is merely a question of historical interlude, but the basic argument is precisely the same.
  I seriously challenge the arguments put forward by the Prime Minister. They sum up the philosophy of Tory Members that we have to look after ourselves; that we have to be concerned with selfish interest and greed for ourselves. Is that the kind of society that we are to build in future? Are we not to be concerned about our fellow man? I fear that, with this Government, that is precisely the type of society for which we are heading. It is the repudiation not only of what the Labour Party has done but of the more humane type of conservatism which Mr. Harold Macmillan was advocating through "The Middle Way" and in arguments and books of that kind. I fear what is going to happen in future. I fear the type of society for which we are heading.
  I draw the attention of the House to what the Prime Minister said the other day. What right hon. and hon. Members say is very interesting. We should take note of this. The right hon. Lady said:
  "I turn to the second theme—that of restoring choice to the individual. That choice was progressively diminished during the lifetime of the last Government. … During the election campaign many people said that at least the Conservative Party gave people choice and that this was quite different from the other party."—[Official Report, 15 May 1979; Vol. 967. c. 79.]
  Let us examine the argument about choice. It used to be said that when the

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  unemployed marched from Scotland, Jarrow and South Wales, many of them presented themselves at the various big hotels in London for a meal. It was said that it was their choice to go to one of the big hotels. Of course, they were turned away. They did not have any choice. They did not have any money to pay for their meal so the doors were slammed against them. If they tried to go in, they were ejected by force. One or two were imprisoned because they dared to go in, sit down and demand a meal.
  There is no such thing as so-called total choice. The same applies to education. Conservative Members say that there should be freedom to choose schools. A banker with vast sums of money may send his child to Eton, Harrow Hailey-bury or any other public school. However, Fred Bloggs, the son of a joiner, is not able to give his children that type of comprehensive education. That is why over the years Labour has endeavoured to introduce a State system of comprehensive education so that our youngsters will be able to receive a decent education—not as good, admittedly, as that received by those who go to Eton, but at least moving in that direction.
  We must understand that there is no such thing as total choice. That applies even to schools in localities. I was a member of an education committee in Liverpool under a Conservative-controlled local authority. There was even argument about whether a child in one part of the city should go to a school just across the road but in another part of the city because of the zoning system. The concept of choice is ridiculous. To reach the stage of choice about which Conservative Members speak, it will be necessary to create the requisite social conditions and monetary basis.
  Why is it that ordinary people now have a greater opportunity for choice than hitherto? It is precisely because they have better standards of living due to trade union activity and legislation introduced by Labour Governments. There has been a greater measure of choice through our efforts and never through the efforts of Conservative Members. That should be made clear when we argue about choice and whether there is collective compassion and legislation to help forward collective ambition.
  Mr. Lawson: If the hon. Gentleman attributes improvements in the standard of living solely to the trade union movement, how does he account for the improvement in the standard of living that occurred between the dark ages and the nineteenth century when trade unions became an effective force?
  Mr. William Hamilton: There was no Tory Party then.
  Mr. Heffer: If the Minister was talking about the dark ages of early capitalism, it is clear that because there was only a weak trade union movement beginning to develop the workers suffered a great deal. The coming into existence of the capitalist system also saw the creation of the trade union movement to assist workers to defend themselves and advance their own interests. Working people's conditions are now much better in our type of society, where there is a strong trade union movement, than in other parts of the world where capitalism exists, such as in many Latin American countries, where the trade union movement is not strong and is unable to protect and develop the interests of working people to the extent with which we are familiar. Without the trade union movement, the conditions of our people would be much worse and completely different.
  It has been said that the Government will make a U-turn in two years. I do not agree with that. On the basis of the attitudes adopted by the Government Front Bench, I doubt whether that will happen. Therefore, we shall find ourselves with a serious economic problem.
  Something that is dear to my heart is the attitude of Government to industrial policy, especially for underdeveloped areas. On many occasions I have bored the House when arguing for extra work and more Government assistance for Merseyside. I asked the Secretary of State for Industry yesterday to set out his policy for the special development and development areas. He said that he was to visit them. He said that he would see the problems for himself and that he would listen.
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is he to wear a cloth cap as well?
  Mr. Heffer: Perhaps he will do that. It would be fine for the right hon. Gentleman to go to listen to the problems of

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  Merseyside if he had not already clearly indicated that he believed that there are no special problems on Merseyside. On 7 March, in an article in the Liverpool Daily Post, he was reported to have said in an interview that Merseyside has no special problems and that it must be treated in the same way as the rest of the country. That could mean special development area status being withdrawn from Merseyside. Incidentally, the added assistance which that status brings is basic to private companies. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lambeth, Central (Mr. Tilley) said, if that status is withdrawn, the high level of unemployment we now have will be nothing compared with the level that we shall see develop.
  With the development of the National Enterprise Board we saw a new instrument that should be used for the creation of new industries, new companies, and, therefore, work in areas such as Merseyside, the North-East Coast and Glasgow. If such instruments are withdrawn, or if their support is reduced, we shall see only further high levels of unemployment.
  The nonsense that economic problems can be solved by competition was precisely that which Harold Macmillan argued against. There had been a period of free competition. We had unfettered capitalism and we had the highest levels of unemployment ever known in Britain and other Western European countries. Unfortunately that did not necessarily lead to Socialism and a planned economy. Sometimes it led to Fascism, Nazism and to a Right-wing backlash. That is the other side of the coin, and that could be the outcome of the Government's policies. The Government will not solve our problems with their present policies.
  There is the choice of going further to the Right, with disastrous consequences, or putting into effect that for which the Labour Party—or many of its members—has been arguing for a long time, and some even from the commencement of the party—namely, planning our economy on the basis of democratic Socialism. The latter course is the only real answer to our problems.
  We are now in the age of the silicon chip. This is the second industrial revolution. Unless we plan our economy and
  968
  reorganise our society, unemployment levels are bound to increase. That cannot be avoided. That in itself will lead to higher levels of unemployment. Either we have policies that will bring about a democratic planned society with working people genuinely involved in forms of management control in the industries in which they work or we have a total economic disaster with laissez faire policies possibly leading to State intervention, but of a Fascist kind.
  That, I fear, is the choice in front of us. The policies advocated by the Government cannot work. The next few years will be difficult and rough, especially as, once again, we move into an economic crisis. At the end of the political five-year term—possibly before—the British people must make a choice of a Labour Government, but this time one carrying through a genuine, Socialist policy that will ultimately solve our economic and political problems, while solving those of the Western world.
  8 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Welsh: I am pleased to take part in this debate so early after being elected by the people of Don Valley. My predecessor was Richard Kelley. He was a great guy, loved and held in high esteem by all in the constituency. I was thrilled when I came to the House of Commons. Every member of staff, the police and all Members of Parliament had nothing but praise for the work done by Richard Kelley. It was said that he was one of the best House of Commons men in a number of years. That is a compliment to Don Valley for sending such a gentleman to the House.
  However, it is a great challenge to follow in his footsteps. I am prepared to accept that challenge. If I end up being half as good a House of Commons man as Richard Kelley, I shall have succeeded; I shall be a happy man.
  When I first came to the House of Commons, I thought that it would be pleasant to be a Back Bencher and that I should enjoy looking after the interests of my constituents. After only two meetings in this beautiful Chamber I decided that the only place to be was on the Front Bench, for two important reasons. First, that is the only place where water is drunk in the Chamber—if it is water.

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  Secondly, it is the only place where there is a flat surface on which to put papers. For those reasons, it is worth trying to get on to the Front Bench—but of course only on the Labour Front Bench.
  Don Valley is traditionally a mining area. It is a good area with six big pits. Before I came to the House of Commons I worked at Broadsworth colliery, which employed 3,000 people. Many men work in that mine. The Don Valley miners are known for working and playing hard. The Doncaster panel of miners, of which I was chairman for some years, knows how to fight hard when necessary. I hope that we shall not be dragged into that necessity this winter. I hope that everything will go right. Like all good miners, we never turn down a challenge. I hope that, being good negotiators and tolerant men, the miners will get what they desire without any struggle.
  Doncaster is the centre. It is surrounded by the Don Valley. There are good relations between town and village. It is a cosmopolitan area. People have come to it from Wales, Scotland and Derbyshire—even from other parts of the world. They are welcome. They are accepted among our communities. They play good roles in the local trade union committees, as local branch officials and as secretaries of working men's clubs, which are the hub of the villages. They join in the community life of the mining villages in the Don Valley.
  There is only one thing that is wrong. There are two kinds of citizens among those who come from Scotland and Wales. I regret that I can do nothing about it. If such people come to our valley with their children, the children can never play cricket for Yorkshire. However, if people come as youngsters and have their children in Yorkshire, the children will have the privilege of playing cricket if they are sufficiently gifted. That is important to the people of Yorkshire. The House of Commons can do nothing about those two sets of citizens. The matter is left to the gin-and-it boys at the Yorkshire cricket club.
  There are lovely rural areas in the Don Valley. This should be understood by those living south of Watford. On leaving the mine, we may eat our dinner, put the child in a pram and be in a beautiful rural area within 10 minutes.
  970
  We may be down in the bowels of the earth sweating, with lamps on our heads to enable us to see what we are doing. However, in the afternoon we may be in glorious sunshine walking around rural England.
  There are efficient farms in my constituency. I know a number of farmers. They work and play hard. More than anything, miners believe in fairness. If slightly wrong statements are made, they correct them. That is not my task today. I am proud and pleased that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have called me to make my maiden speech.
  It was said that the rate support grant would be cut. Would Ministers make sure that they know who receives it? A few days ago the police were given a £40 million increase. It was said that the rate support grant would help to pay the 61 per cent. In metropolitan districts the police come under the county budget. However the counties do not receive the rate support grant. The increase must be paid pound for pound from the rates. The rate support grant goes only to the districts. In the shires it is different. It will cost South Yorkshire about £500,000 to pay its part of the police bill. I do not say that the police do not deserve the money. However, it is a fact of life that £500,000 must be taken from somewhere else to pay the bill.
  Mention was made in the Queen's Speech of the people of the Third world. This matter is dear to the people in the Don Valley, who feel for those who are worse off. It is our nature. We cannot knock it out of our nature—and thank goodness we cannot.
  My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister how much of our resources would be available for the Third world. The answer was that we must wait to see what resources were available. That is correct. It is foolish to give anything away or make promises before we know what resources are available. The Prime Minister is correct to say that. However, that, £40 million was given to the police, increases were given to the Armed Forces, and £50 million was promised to enable people to buy their way into schools. Mortgages of 100 per cent. were promised so that there could be asset stripping within local authorities.

  971
  As these things were done before it was known what resources were available, there would seem to be one law for the haves and another for the have nots. As a new Member here, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am only saying that that is how it appears to me. I hope that the Minister responsible for making resources available to the Third world will come very quickly to this Chamber and inform the House that at the very least the Government will carry out the same commitments as the previous Government made, and which would have been undertaken had the Labour Party been returned to office. That is the minimum for which anyone could ask for our brothers and sisters, many of whom are literally dying of starvation because they do not happen to live in the advanced industrial world.
  I accept, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that there has to be a limitation on the length of maiden speeches, and I will do my best to be brief. I have always honoured the Chair—unless I am provoked—and always will honour the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker. But I want to say a word about industrial relations, as I have been a trade union official for many years. Having worked in the pits since I was 14, industrial relations have been my lifeblood, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. It is good fun. I must emphasise, however, that those who know how to deal with people are those who are on the spot. If they are removed too far away, the result is rather like ploughing through a minefield, and someone is bound to get hurt, so that it is important to be very careful about this aspect of industrial relations.
  Perhaps I may be permitted to tell a little story to illustrate my point, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My old secretary Tom Cowan, once went in to see the manager, and he said to him "These face workers are the hardest workers in the pit and you must give them more money." After an argument, they were given a 5 per cent. increase. The next day he went to see the manager on behalf of another group of workers, the front rippers, and he said to the manager "Boss, you have got to give these men an increase because they are the hardest working men in the pit." The manager said "Come off it, Tom, you said that yesterday about the face workers." Tom said "Yesterday I
  972
  was selling oranges. I am selling apples today." I might add that he managed to get the 5 per cent. for them also.
  There are parts of the Queen's Speech, concerning industrial relations, which ought to be looked at very carefully by the Ministers concerned. One important aspect is the matter of picketing. I have done a lot of picketing in my time. I have even been in the Chamber when the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) was dragging out the Derbyshire miners, in 1968, so I know what it is like to be picketing, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and fetching people out. When it is a good cause, it is done sincerely and from the heart. Miners, like others, may suffer while they are doing this but are prepared to do it if they think it is the correct course to follow.
  The Government should consult fully on the law on picketing with everyone concerned. The Government are talking basically about secondary picketing. The kind of tight limitation on secondary picketing now being proposed could cause the closure of factories. It is quite simple for about 100 craftsmen at one factory to picket another factory. If secondary picketing is made an offence, the people concerned will be pushed into gaol, resulting in factory closure. It is as simple as that. I am therefore warning the Government to be very careful indeed in what they seek to do about secondary picketing.
  Before I conclude, I should like to say a few words about the closed shop. I, for my sins, have been involved in industrial development in Doncaster, and we have done very well indeed. I have met many managers, and I am basically talking about managers, because I never use the word "entrepreneur". Dr. Royden Harrison once told us that the word went out of usage years ago, but it appears to have come back again. Industrial relations have evolved around the managers and the trade unions in industry. I have not only met very many managers in this country. I have also been to New York to invite managers to come over to this country. They always say to me "If we come to your area we must have trade unionism in straight away." The managers want the trade unions to be involved and they will accept closed shops because they then know the people with whom they are dealing. They

  973
  know where they stand when there is a dispute.
  I urge the Government, therefore, to be very careful in what they do about closed shops. This is not a threat that I am making, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I am not that sort of gentleman, but I hope that no one will ever take on the National Union of Mineworkers over the closed shop. Let us make that quite plain. When men's lives depend on their fellows who are holding a girder, they will not tolerate working with men who are not trade unionists. They will not tolerate people living on the backs of others. That is not a threat.
  Mr. William Hamilton: It is a promise.
  Mr. Welsh: But it is said in the very nicest way, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I hope that note will be taken of it.
  As for providing financial aid for postal ballots, I can only say that if the Government of the day are not careful, the lads in the unions will take them to the cleaners. I can well imagine an executive meeting saying "Go for £20" and the secretary coming back and saying "They won't give us owt. Let's have a postal ballot. We'll ring Government up and tell 'em to foot bill." I go further and suggest that the Government should also have consultations with the Post Office, because it is debatable whether the Post Office could carry all the mail that would be involved if postal ballots were to be held.
  The other serious aspect is that the Government would be allowing leaders of trade unions to abdicate their responsibility. If at the NUM conference next year we say "We will just go for a reasonable increase of £50 a week and not be avaricious", and we are only given £25, and go straight to the ballot, it is obvious to me that if an executive recommends to the men to go out on strike, they will support the executive, if they have any loyalty at all.
  Once that ballot is returned in favour of a strike, union leaders can do nothing. They cannot renegotiate because the members of the union have made a decision. They want 50 quid and nowt else. The union leader will have to telephone the boss and say "We want 50 quid and nowt else. We are not going to negotiate." This will be done through
  974
  the law of the land, not the unions. The union leaders will say "Our members have told us we must have £50. Give us a ring when you are ready. Tell them that we are out."
  When the union leader is interviewed on, say, "Panorama" and the interviewer asks "What have you got to say?" the answer will be "It is nothing to do with me. It is the law of the land and we are law-abiding citizens, so we must accept it." It is a fact of life. Therefore, I ask the Government to take great care and to have a lot of consultation with the trade unions before proposing any measure that may cause industrial strife or trouble. That is of vital importance.
  If the Minister should come back to the House and say that after consultations and second thoughts he recommends that these three points should not be implemented, I should not oppose his recommendation.
  8.19 p.m.
  Mr. James Molyneaux: I am happy to follow the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. Welsh). We all look forward to his future contributions. I am quite sure that he will forgive me if I do not follow him into the ramifications of the free post system. I am glad that he was not here prior to the election to make that speech, before we got our election communications posted.
  I particularly appreciate the efforts which the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has made to join his colleagues on the Government Front Bench during my brief remarks. I am sure that he will not mind my saying that I also appreciate the presence of the former Leader of the House and the right hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. Concannon), who, together with his colleagues, looked after the affairs of Northern Ireland for almost five years and earned the gratitude of the people of Northern Ireland. We in Northern Ireland may not always express our appreciation in terms that are clearly understood by people on this side of the water. However, we would want them to know that they have left behind them a great many friends and we are grateful for all they did for our Province.
  The House will have gathered that although the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), who spoke a short time ago, has joined us on these Benches,

  975
  we do not necessarily share the same political views. When he asserted that the right hon. Lady the Prime Minister had used the term "collective compassion" he may not have been aware that the phrase was first used, as I understand it, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), who naturally felt that he was under some obligation to offer enlightenment and explanation during the contribution by the hon. Member for Walton.
  Ulster shares, in more than full measure, the economic experience of the United Kingdom as a whole, being exceptionally exposed to economic stress by reason of its geographical location and, in particular, taking more than a fair proportion of the economic disadvantages which membership of the EEC, in its present form, entails. Economic policy in general and especially the maintenance of our national interests vis-á-vis the Community are therefore matters of acute concern to the people of Ulster.
  We are under no illusion that the only viable economic future for us is as an integral part of the British economy. That adds force to our desire to see Ulster tied in with the supply and distribution of all forms of energy on which the economy of the United Kingdom depends. We are convinced that physical links for that purpose between Ulster and the mainland make complete economic and financial sense. We hope that the impetus in that direction at the end of the last Parliament will not only not be lost but will lead to decision and action in the near future.
  These are matters which there will be opportunities for pursuing further at a later stage. The House will not be surprised if I turn to matters more directly political this evening. My colleagues and I extend our welcome and offer our help and counsel to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and his five colleagues. He—even more they—will have already begun to suspect the reason why there are so many of them. Six Ministers of the Crown to manage one-fortieth of the United Kingdom—just one and a half million people!
  Admittedly no Patronage Secretary likes to see the rewards at his disposal unduly limited, but in this case the Patronage Secretary is not guilty. Nor is it
  976
  anything to do with the terrorist assault which the people of our Province have had to endure for nearly 10 years. The Secretary of State, with one other Minister, could amply cover, besides other duties, everything that arises for ministerial decision out of the requirements of security.
  The reason for the number of Ministers is both simple and astonishing. Six Ministers of the Crown are required, and, as they will soon discover, are barely sufficient, however hard they work, because they are attempting to administer those matters which in the rest of the kingdom are the responsibility of democratically elected representatives of the people. From pavements and potholes at one end of the scale to the location and organisation of schools at the other, almost every detail of administration which concerns the lives of the people is, in Ulster, the sole responsibility of a Minister of the Crown.
  As an incidental consequence, hon. Members are the only elected representatives to whom their constituents can appeal. With every day that passes, the Secretary of State and his juniors will learn to appreciate still more the rightness of the objective that was set out in the Gracious Speech of
  "restoring to the people of Northern Ireland more control over their own affairs".
  That means the same control—none other—as all their fellow citizens throughout the United Kingdom enjoy and, indeed, take for granted.
  The Gracious Speech also says that the Government will "seek an acceptable way" of doing this. Let me remove what is perhaps a misapprehension from the mind of the Secretary of State and his Cabinet colleagues. The restoration of normal local government in Northern Ireland is already acceptable, except to a small minority which will oppose anything which does not obviously lead to the break-up of the union. The district councils, their members and staff are more than ready to tackle the additional functions which they could, and should, be discharging. I might describe these functions in shorthand as "second tier" functions. The desire to see democracy brought into the bureaucratic bodies which administer the larger or upper-tier functions is confined to no one class or section of the communuity. As I have

  977
  said on previous occasions, any party which declines to take its share in working local democracy would receive short shrift from the electorate. Therefore, I have no hesitation in wishing the Secretary of State will in the task outlined in the Gracious Speech, and I assure him that it ought to be easily within his reach, if not in this first Session at any rate by the middle of this Parliament.
  I offer three brief and respectful words of advice. First, let him work as for as possible upon the existing structure and along the lines of democratic local government in the rest of the United Kingdom. Secondly, let him bring into consultations those who have actually been elected to represent their fellow citizens, rather than individuals, groups or parties, however admirable otherwise, which do not have that sort of authority and responsibility. I can put my third suggestion to newly appointed Ministers in the words of Harold Macmillan, which were quoted in The Daily Telegraph today:
  "Ensure that you are in charge of your civil servants, not they of you."
  On the defeat of terrorism, which is the object and ambition of every Secretary of State and Government, let me say that people talk about solutions as if the Provisional IRA and its kidney cared a fig for any solution except its own. There is one solution, and one only, for Northern Ireland, and the Prime Minister has grasped it already. She said in her speech at the opening of this debate:
  "We shall do nothing to jeopardise the unity of the kingdom."—[Official Report, 15 May 1979; Vol. 967, c.85.]
  That is the key to the defeat of terrorism, to the return of peace. Let it be seen that the Government and the House will deny to Northern Ireland nothing that is implicit in the union, and do nothing in Northern Ireland which jeopardises the union. They will then bring back security and prosperity to Northern Ireland and to all its people.
  8.30 p.m.
  Mr. Norman Hogg: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to make my maiden speech so early in the new Parliament. I am most anxious to participate in the debate because of the importance of economic policy for my constituency.
  978
  I want to refer particularly to industry, industrial growth and industrial relations.
  I am proud to represent Dumbarton-shire, East. The constituency is at the very heart of Scotland and is an accurate reflection of old and new Scotland. It has traditional and new developing industries. It has new and exciting communities as well as well-established communities. The seat, which I gained for Labour at the general election, was previously held by the Scottish nationalists. Before that it was held by the Conservatives, from February to October 1974. My predecessor, Mrs. Margaret Bain, served the constituency for five years, and it is right that I should pay tribute to the hard work she did on behalf of her constituents. She was popular both here and in the constituency, and her defeat was the rejection of separatism. It was her politics, not Mrs. Bain, that the electors rejected.
  The population of Dunbartonshire, East is concentrated on three principal towns—Cumbernauld, Kirkintilloch and Bearsden. Cumbernauld is one of Scotland's five new towns. With respect to the hon. Members whose constituencies include East Kilbride, Glenrothes, Irvine and Livingston, I believe Cumbernauld to be the most successful. It is an exciting place where young people have come to live and work. They have the determination to ensure that it succeeds.
  The success of Cumbernauld in fulfilling the hopes of its citizens can be attributed to policies pursued by Labour Governments. It was a desire on the part of the people of Cumbernauld to see these policies continue that sent me to this House on 3 May. I know that the people of Cumbernauld are anxious to see their town grow and prosper, and I hope to help serve that objective here at Westminster.
  Kirkintilloch, which is a well-established community, is strongly independent of Glasgow. I hasten to add that there is nothing wrong with Glasgow, but the people of Kirkintilloch see themselves as being independent. Many of the communities that exist on the periphery of our great cities and that have their own heritage and traditions want to retain their identities and individuality. So it is with Kirkintilloch.
  The town has its own industry providing local employment. Maintaining

  979
  that base of employment is vitally important for the town. It is with considerable alarm and concern that the town viewed the recent notices of redundancy at the Kelvinside works of Anderson Strathclyde Ltd. I hope that the Government will appreciate the anxiety of the workers employed at the company and the fears of the townspeople. I hope, further, that the Government will act quickly to give the fullest assistance, and to that end my hon. Friend the Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Canavan) and I will seek a meeting with the Secretary of State for Scotland.
  My constituency includes the villages of Twechar and Croy. For generations they produced colliers for the mines of central Scotland. Some of their men are still employed in the coal industry, but many have found new work in industry that has been developed with Government assistance. These small villages know the importance of Government assistance, and they know the valuable activities of the Scottish Development Agency. They therefore hope that the agency will be able to continue its good work.
  The Gracious Speech includes the statement:
  "Proposals will be brought forward to amend the Industry Act 1975 and to restrict the activities of the National Enterprise Board".
  In Scotland that could mean a massive loss of jobs, and I fail to see how that will aid the economy. It takes us back to the talk during the election campaign of the need for real jobs. I suppose that the Government see it in that context.
  During the campaign I visited the mines where some of my constituents work. The miners there were working at real jobs. I visited factories which have been assisted with public funds in the form of grants, tax relief, free rental periods and so on, and in every case the workers were engaged in real work. I visited Woodilee hospital, in my constituency, and there the staff are worried about an economic policy which might reduce or level the financial support for the National Health Service. They are having enough difficulty as it is in maintaining the service, and what they do is real work.
  In Scotland generally there is considerable support for Government action and
  980
  intervention in the management of the economy. The National Enterprise Board and the Scottish Development Agency enjoy massive public support. The jobs created and saved by these organisations total many thousands. They, too, are real jobs—jobs in the manufacturing sector—and there can be no sound economy in Scotland without their continued presence. I should add that any restriction on the NEB and any decline in Government help for industry will be strongly resisted throughout Scotland.
  I turn now to a different area of industrial life, that of industrial relations. Yesterday, the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Walker) gave the House a resume of his career as an active trade unionist, and it would be impertinent of me to challenge the validity of his credentials, but I suggest that some of us on these Opposition Benches also have some background and experience in the trade union movement.
  I have served for the past 12 years as a full-time officer of Europe's largest white collar trade union, the National and Local Government Officers' Association. Latterly, I was secretary to the trade unions committee for the electricity supply industry in Scotland and was much involved in the negotiations within that industry. Also, I had a major role in the consultative arrangements with management on policy. I hope, therefore, that I have the right background to comment briefly on industrial relations.
  I believe that co-operation has been shown by experience to be the only way to make progress—co-operation in the recognition of trade unions, co-operation between management and unions in making effective arrangements for negotiation, and co-operation in creating procedures for conciliation.
  I regret that the Government are intent on further legislation. I regret the more that I doubt their good intentions in regard to postal ballots. I have no wish to argue with my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. Welsh), who commented on this matter a few minutes ago, but my conclusion is that the Government's proposal is intended to reinforce the fallacious claim often made by Tory candidates in the recent election campaign that trade unions are undemocratic.

  981
  The facts are very different. The trade unions of this country have long used secret ballot procedures, and this in two major respects—first, in the making of senior full-time appointments to the union, and, secondly, in major decision-making, often in respect of pay and pay settlements.
  The AUEW makes its senior appointments by secret ballot. The General and Municipal Workers' Union makes its senior appointments by secret ballot, as well as references to the membership on pay. The National Union of Mineworkers appoints by secret ballot, and right hon. and hon. Members will be aware also of the pay settlement ballots of recent time. The electricians' union ballots its members on senior appointments, and there has just been a ballot of the membership in the power industry on a pay claim. The National and Local Government Officers' Association elects its national executive on an annual basis by secret ballot.
  There are similar procedures at all levels thoughout the trade union movement in Britain, not only for appointments at national level but at regional and district level, too. Therefore, I can only draw the conclusion that the intention of the purpose expressed in the Gracious Speech is to support the argument which Conservative candidates offered at the time of the election that the trade union movement is undemocratic. All I can say is that I have seen no evidence whatever to support that contention, and my 12 years' experience as a full-time trade union officer tells me that it is completely untrue.
  I hope that in the weeks and months that lie ahead I shall have the opportunity again to speak on industrial relations, but I certainly do not believe that there is anything to be added to the economic strategy of the new Government by attacking the trade union movement and making it clear, from the very beginning, that they have no confidence in the movement. I think that that is very mistaken and that it can add nothing whatever to the dialogue which I understand the Government hope to have with the movement.
  8.40 p.m.
  Mr. William Hamilton: It is a very great privilege to me to congratulate my hon. Friends the Members
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  for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Hogg) and for Don Valley (Mr. Welsh) on their extremely able speeches on a subject about which they know a lot—industrial relations. I wish that the Government would pay more attention to people such as these before they embark on their legislative proposals to deal with the trade unions. The speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley was like a breath of fresh air. He spoke on industrial relations with a stimulating honesty and a profound knowledge of the subject. I hope that both of my hon. Friends will speak very often and very loudly on matters about which they know so much.
  Intervening at this stage of the debate, it is very difficult to find anything original to say, but I shall have a go.
  When the Prime Minister made her first speech in that role on Tuesday last, she said:
  "we are offering people what they want."—[Official Report, 15 May 1979; Vol. 967, c. 75.]
  My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley should take that as his text to his next branch meeting, when he is putting in that claim for £50, because the Prime Minister said:
  "we are offering people what they want."
  Therefore, if miners want £50, she is committed to giving it, so my hon. Friend does not need a secret ballot or anything. The Prime Minister is on record as saying that she will give him what he wants.
  Let us examine for a few minutes just who is offering what. Let us look at the composition of the Cabinet, for instance. Antony Sampson, writing about this very matter in The Observer on 13 May, said:
  "It is like a roll call of the employers' side of the Corporate State."
  The composition of the Cabinet is a mixture of lawyers, very wealthy landowners, very wealthy ex-directors of big multinational and national companies, and public school boys. Peregrine Worsthorne, in an article in the Sunday Telegraph of the same date, 13 May, described it in this way:
  "the new Government is encouragingly full of hereditary Peers, self-made and hereditary millionaires, wealthy landowners … headed by a lady who has married money."
  That was from an eminent Conservative.
  It was put in another way by the television critic of The Observer, Clive James,

  983
  in the same edition of The Observer. He put it this way.
  "Now that the incoming Tory Government has made greed patriotic, there is no use pretending that we aren't going to have a much easier time of it. Except, of course, for those who are going to have a much harder time of it. But in one thing we are all united. We are all doomed to cope with five years of Mrs. Thatcher's liturgical tones."
  That phrase will appeal to the Leader of the House. Clive James continued:
  "She started quoting St. Francis within minutes of becoming elected, and scarcely an hour had gone by before she was sounding like the book of Revelation read out over a railway station public address system by a headmistress of a certain age wearing calico knickers. By dawn of the same day she was doing a fair imitation of the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps she is just nerving herself up for the miracles she will have to perform with the loaves and fishes."
  That language might be rough, but there is more than a germ of truth in it.
  From the Labour Benches the theme of the debate has been that the country is facing great economic, social and other difficulties. In order to solve them we have to get what is sometimes called consensus and carry with us people who may not be of our political persuasion and may come from a social origin different from ours. We have to learn to understand the fears, hopes and aspirations of these people. The Government have started on a completely different tack and sought to hector and bully and assert that they are right. The policies for which they have been given a mandate, by hell or high water they will impose.
  It is a threat or promise that whether we like it or not we shall be offered choice, freedom and diversity. Those words are never far from the lips of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. In the short time since the election, we have had indications of the harsh reality of those high-sounding words and exceptional sentiments. In education, health and housing only cash will give people an effective choice. There is complete freedom of choice in education for those with sufficient cash to send their children to public schools such as Eton and Harrow. There is freedom of choice to enter a hospital with highly paid consultants and nurses if one has sufficient cash. Without it, there is the second-class service, the State hospital service. With cash to pay for a house there is complete freedom of choice, but
  984
  the building societies have warned the Government that the large sums of money necessary for the purchase of council houses will not be available from them on anything like the scale that the Government anticipate.
  Judging by the election results, the offer made by the Conservative Party to reduce taxation was attractive. It suggested increasing incentives and that sort of baloney, and was coupled with ill-defined threats to cut public expenditure. To date, public expenditure has been increased by about £160 million on pay rises for the police and Services. There is a promise to increase expenditure on defence, and an extra £2,000 million over the next five years is probably an underestimate. The Government are presumably committed on pensions and other social security benefits, and I hope that they will eventually say whether they intend to honour the commitment made by the Labour Government, which is still in legislative form, that the old-age pension will be tied either to price increases or earnings increases, whichever is the greater. They have not come clean yet on that. If they are committed to all those increases in public expenditure, there will have to be swingeing decreases in public expenditure in other areas or swingeing increases in indirect taxes. We must have specific and clear answers to these problems.
  The Government have given substantial increases in pay to police and Service men. I am not arguing the merits; I am here representing NHS employees, particularly the nurses. If the Government do not recognise that a nurse or an ambulance man, or any other ancillary worker in the Health Service, is not worth as much as a copper or a corporal—and we must appreciate that a corporal in the Armed Forces will receive £5,000 a year, slightly less than the salary of a Member of Parliament—where do the relativities come into the matter? Are the Government committed to the finding of the relativities board? This is an important matter. If the Government value policemen, or corporals or anybody else in the Armed Forces at that kind of pay, what will they do with other public employees in other important sections of our services?
  The nurses feel desperately aggrieved, as do the teachers. I was a teacher

  985
  before I became a Member. I see that today the teachers settled for 10 per cent. or a figure in that region. But if they have their eyes on the Houghton recommendations, they will not be satisfied unless and until they reach that stage. The Government have that problem to face. The incomes policy has to be formulated somehow or other. It is an extremely rough and unscientific exercise. The Government must thrash out the matter with the trade unions and organised workers to achieve something that is socially and economically acceptable. I fear that the Government are going about the process in the wrong way.
  Next winter, when we reach the next round of wage demands, the kind of industrial unrest that I envisage will make last winter's look like a Sunday-school tea party. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, that is my forecast. If the sounds made on the Tory Benches in the last five days are anything to go by, there will be enormous bitterness and divisions in this country and the trade unions and organised workers will not be responsible for them. The responsibility will lie on the shoulders of the Conservative Government.
  8.53 p.m.
  Mr. Tom McNally: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) for being so brief. I, too, shall be brief because I know that the House is awaiting the replies from the Front Benches.
  My first duty as Member for Stockport, South is a sad one. It is to pay tribute to my predecessor, Maurice Orbach, who died three days before he was due to come to speak for me at my eve-of-poll meeting. Maurice was a proud Member of this House—proud of his service as Member for my constituency, and earlier as the Member for Willesden. He was also very proud of being a Jew and a Welshman. I shall greatly miss his counsels. He taught me the importance of being a Member of Parliament who cares for the individual and the individual constituent. He leaves behind in Stockport very fond memories among many people who have been individually helped by the care and compassion of Maurice Orbach.
  In common with all cowards, I decided to rest on a quotation to start my maiden
  986
  speech. It is a quotation from the general election of 1835, and it is couched in the robust words of that day. It is addressed to the electors of Stockport and reads as follows:
  "You now have the power to emancipate this opulent and intelligent borough from the thraldom of Toryism and make it contribute largely to the collective wisdom of the nation. It is for you to decide whether this populous hive of productive industry shall add two champions to the intrepid phalanx of devoted patriots who in the House of Commons will present a bold frontier to the desperate and bigoted invaders of your dearest rights, or whether, by narrow and contracted views of public duty, you accomplish the virtual disfranchisement of our borough and render it to scoff and scorn."
  The House no doubt will be pleased to know that Stockport is still an opulent and intelligent borough. It will be doubly pleased to know that it is still a populous hive of productive industry. The House will be thrice pleased to know that it has sent two champions to join this intrepid phalanx of patriots. I refer to myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett), whose victory was very much a personal triumph as well as a political one in the recent election.
  My constituency is almost a blueprint for what industrial strategy is about. It was once a mighty cotton and hatting town. It has become a town at the very forefront of technology. It has one of the finest shopping centres in the North-West and is a leading centre for commerce. If I give the names of the industries in Stockport—the nuclear industry, oil, marine, aerospace, microelectronics, computers, high-precision engineering—hon. Members will be able to see that it is indeed a town of the future.
  One has only to add the constituency's magnificent motorway system, its very efficient rail system and its international airport, which is really misnamed "Manchester airport"—it should be "Stockport airport"—to see what an attractive centre it is for industry and commerce.
  I can see that hon. Members are saying "This boy has it made. What is he worried about?" What I am worried about is that all that technology, all that precision, all that transition from declining industry to modern, forward-looking, late twentieth century industry has been carried out by firms with names such as Ferranti, Fairey, ICL and British Aerospace.

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  It will be realised why, with all the advantages, with all the efforts that the working people of Stockport have made to adapt themselves to change—no Luddite atmosphere there, but a real attempt to face up to new technology, to adapt to the challenges of the modern world—there is a genuine fear hanging over Stockport.
  That fear is that the people's effort and success will be sacrificed on the altar of Tory ideology. They fear that what we face and what we have heard in the past two days are proposals which will put at risk everything that has been done in the town over the past 10 or 15 years.
  We have been told that the present Government will go one better than their predecessors of 1970–74, that they will go one step further. Between 1970 and 1974 the Conservative Government established an asset strippers' paradise. Now they will cut out the middle man; they will do the asset stripping themselves. It will be done not as part of a great industrial strategy, not as part of making a leaner, fitter Britain, but because they can think of no other way of paying for their tax promises, which we told them in advance, at the election, they could not keep.
  We shall see the hiving off, splitting apart, of industries which five or 10 years ago were on their uppers, facing bankruptcy and closure, but which, because of the efforts of the Labour Government and the National Enterprise Board, and because of co-operation between working people, management and Government, are now prosperous again.
  One has only to talk to senior management or workers in British Aerospace, or Fairey, to discover the importance of keeping groups together so that ideas can flow from one to another. It is no use advancing the old argument that nationalisation always fails and is always costly. Of course it will be if every time it succeeds Victor Matthews and company can go round for their spoils and their pay-offs.
  Many warnings have been given to the Conservative Front Bench in the past two days. Let me add another. The people of Stockport will not lightly allow them to destroy what has been their success in the past few years. I tell the Chancellor
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  and the Secretary of State for Industry that the people of Stockport do not believe that down the leafy lanes of Hazel Grove and Cheadle there are hundreds of entrepreneurs waiting for the clarion call to rush out and create jobs. They have had the chance to do so time and time again, and time and time again they have failed the working people of Stockport. What helped the working people of Stockport was the Labour Government with the initiative and the will to create new jobs and new industries.
  Perhaps nothing can stop this Government going on their mad and foolish way. But the working people whom I represent will resist them until they see the folly of their ways and give way to a Government who will work with working people to create new industries, prosperity and the wherewithal to make the fair and just society to which we are committed even if it has been forgotten and abandoned by the Conservative Party.
  9.0 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Foot: Nine maiden speeches have been delivered today, in addition to all the others that we have had during the debate on the Gracious Speech. Today we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon), the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle), my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Foulkes), the hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Speller), my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Holland), the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. Pollock), my hon. Friends the Members for Don Valley (Mr. Welsh), and Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Hogg), and, just a moment or two ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, South (Mr. McNally).
  If I commented in a full and proper manner on all those speeches and gave the full premonition of the further occasions on which we hope to hear those hon. Members speak, I might exhaust the whole of the time available to me. I have no doubt that some hon. Members would ask why not. They might eagerly seize on such a proposition. Therefore, I hope that it will be attributed to my natural sense of malice rather than any lack of generosity towards them if I do not follow that course.

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  Having listened to all those speeches, however, I believe that the House of Commons is a richer place on their account. I say that especially because there have been three maiden speakers from the Government Benches and six from the Opposition side. That is a very proper proportion that I should like to see fulfilled more widely in future.
  It would be invidious if I picked out from the many speeches any individual ones, although I shall comment on some of them as I proceed with my remarks. But I hope that none of the others will think it discourteous if I refer especially to the speeches of those of my hon. Friends who spoke with a peculiar knowledge of industrial relations. I have in mind my hon. Friends the Members for Dunbartonshire, East and for Don Valley. I hope that their speeches will be studied carefully by members of the Government, especially by the Secretary of State for Employment, before they proceed with any of the legislation outlined in the Gracious Speech.
  It appears that some of the proposals ventilated at the time of the general election for dealing with these matters have now been abandoned, and I believe that if the Government study the speeches of my hon. Friends on these matters they will assist them in abandoning the rest of those measures, resulting in our having much more time throughout this Parliament to deal with all the other issues. So I urge the Secretary of State for Employment to read, for example, the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley, who in one speech laughed out of court the propositions which the Government have been making on many of these matters.
  I comment first on the speech yesterday by the Secretary of State for Industry. I do so because the Prime Minister on a number of occasions has paid tribute to him as the author of many of the policies which the Government seek to apply in this Parliament. He is their guide and philosopher. On his broad shoulders, he carries, Atlas-like, the full weight of the intellectual case which the Conservative Party has to present to the House and the country.
  It is the Secretary of State for Industry who has woven into one dazzling theme the views of Adam Smith, of Schumpeter,
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  of Professor Hayek and of Waldron Smithers, as some of us remember him in this House. All are woven into the same tapestry. It is on that basis that I approach the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. I say this especially because he put the case so strongly and effectively. If he were to apply it immediately across the whole range of our industry, covering all the industries mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley), who also spoke in that debate, I imagine that the full-scale, catastrophic, industrial crash in this country would come roughly about July or the beginning of August.
  The Secretary of State for Industry has the endearing habit of suggesting every now and again that he is not going to carry through the full logic of his own principles. Every now and again, he seems to pull himself up, interrupt himself and say "Maybe I have got it wrong again, after all". That is the impression that he seems to give to us in this House. Perhaps that is the impression, or the very words, that he will use in Cabinet when he reaches that conclusion a little later, if he does.
  Some of my hon. Friends believe that this is too optimistic. I am not making any prophecy because I believe that the right hon. Lady—I will come to her in a moment—really has the courage of the right hon. Gentleman's convictions. That is the danger that we have to face. But the right hon. Gentleman—I must give him credit—says every now and again "Maybe I should look at it again". Indeed, he made the offer in his speech yesterday that he would come to some of our constituencies, presumably, before putting into operation the policy that he himself has been advocating. I give him here and now an invitation to come to Ebbw Vale. We will show him round. My hon. Friends will take him to Merseyside and to other areas to see, with his own eyes, the utter destruction and devastation that would be caused in this country if the Government were ever to carry their policies into full operation.
  During the election campaign, the Secretary of State for Industry went to some of the areas that I also visited to see some of the industries that have been sustained by Government action. He went to the part of Lancashire where there is a Rolls-Royce factory and made a notable speech.

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  He was obviously asked questions on what he thought about subsidies and assistance for Rolls-Royce. He gave the simple answer "We are not going to do anything rash about Rolls-Royce." That was a very fine undertaking.
  When the right hon. Gentleman said that the Government would not do anything rash about Rolls-Royce, it meant presumably that the Government will not apply their own principles to Rolls-Royce. They should give us a full list of the places and the industries they will not be rash about. The right hon. Gentleman might put in the Library or Hansard a full list of the industries that the Government will not be rash about—those industries that have been sustained by Government action. They would have a full list of industries, large and small, sustained by the actions of the last Labour Government. I hope that the Secretary of State for Industry will be prepared to do that. We would certainly be prepared to take him to those parts of the country that are absolutely dependent on Government initiative, Government investment and Government action in order to carry through the transformation from older industries to new industries. If the Government were to intervene and say that they were proposing to cut short that process, the results for this country as a whole would be devastating.
  I turn from the Secretary of State for Industry to the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath). I invited him to come along this evening. I hope that the right hon. Lady will not think that I am intervening in her prerogatives in any way. I thought it might come better from me.
  The right hon. Member for Sidcup has played a notable part in our debates. Even in his absence there has hardly been a speech from either side of the House which has not referred to him. As I listened to the Prime Minister delivering her speech at the beginning of our debate, I could not help thinking that in a certain sense the right hon. Member for Sidcup was the luckiest man alive. It is like one of those terrible aircraft accidents of which we hear and someone not turning up at the right airport or forgetting to set the alarm bell ringing and therefore being let off altogether. The right hon. Gentleman comes into that class.
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  To change the metaphor, the right hon. Member for Sidcup has been left out of the present Administration because it was thought or felt—or feared perhaps—that he might be a kind of Jonah on board ship. I can understand that point of view. But now I think that he is swimming safely ashore, without even the assistance of any whale, leaving the rest to face the shipwreck. That is what will happen. I think that the right hon. Gentleman deserves our congratulations both on not having had the offer and on having refused it.
  Perhaps I should come to the right hon. Lady directly. I never agreed with the proposition that the right hon. Lady had not put her own imprint on the general election that we have just fought. She led her party, she put her imprint on it, and I think that she is entitled to claim the victory, as some of her hon. Friends have said.
  No one before the right hon. Lady—she made it clear up and down the country—fully appreciated the rich spiritual quality which was to be found in a straight proposition for an across-the board cut in the standard rate of income tax. Nobody before the right hon. Lady struck such a fine combination or such a wonderful balance—I think that is the word that she prefers in the Queen's Speech—between moral uplift and mass bribery, because that is what she has been engaged in. There has been nothing like it for generations.
  I have racked my brain to think where there had been such a comparable mixture of appeal to sentiment and cupidity. There has been nothing like it since Shylock went through the streets of Venice crying:
  "My daughter!—O my ducats!—O my daughter!
  Fled with a Christian!—O my Christian ducats!—
  Justice ! the law!"
  —and other themes from the right hon. Lady—
  "my ducats, and my daughter!"
  What we must do in this Parliament—at the begining at any rate—is to disentangle from the right hon. Lady's pious claims the reality of what she is proposing for our society. The more we examine those realities, the nearer we discover how indeed the consequences would be those that have been outlined by my hon. Friends who have described a very

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  different kind of society being established if we follow the course recommended by the right hon. Lady.
  The right hon. Lady sometimes talks about her difficulties. Nobody could have talked more fully, if not eloquently, on the subject than the new Chancellor of the Exchequer today. But the right hon. Lady's main difficulties are of her own creation. The main difficulties that she will have to face in these coming weeks and months will arise from the manner and the form of the undertakings that she gave during the general election. The right hon. Lady made a whole series of commitments. She assured the whole country of the aspirations that she was going to carry into effect right from the beginning. She made it clear that she would make tax cuts on a very considerable scale.
  The right hon. Lady gave more direct undertakings about wage increases for specific groups than have ever been given in any election campaign. She gathered many votes by that process. I dare say that she gained some policemen's votes by saying that the police would have an increase straight away. I dare say that she obtained some votes from those in the Armed Forces by saying that they would receive their full increase straight away. I dare say that she received some extra votes, if she did not have them already, from doctors and dentists. I dare say that she received some from them by saying that they would have an increase. Is that to be so? We have not been told that yet.
  During the course of the general election the right hon. Lady undertook a wide range of undertakings and commitments—increases in wages, in payments and in the rate of inflation. She was entitled to do that, if only she told us how she would do it. If she had done that, it would have been a somewhat different story.
  We shall have to wait for the Budget, and possibly for the next one, to see how it will happen. The Opposition claim—I believe that it will be proved by the facts—that she will not be able to carry out her commitments and to satisfy the aspirations that she has aroused for increased material standards unless she inflicts heavy injuries and injustices on the poorest sections of the British people. That is the meaning of
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  a range of other aspects of the items that appear in the Queen's Speech.
  All the right hon. Lady's proposals about health, education and housing involve the imposition of injustices—in some instances glaring injustices—on the poorest. It is shameful to say that we shall be able to have a system of selling council houses—I am in favour of doing that in certain circumstances, but I am not in favour of doing it when nothing is said about what will happen to the rents of those who cannot afford to buy—when no real provision is made. What will happen is that sales will be financed partly by the rents collected from those who cannot afford to buy.
  The same applies throughout the range of the right hon. Lady's supposedly social policies. She will have to impose heavy hardships on many, especially if she stands by the policy that has been pronounced already that involves drastic cuts. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that as clearly as he said anything earlier today. He said that there will be heavy cuts in all the provisions for sustaining industry and for creating new industries throughout the country, especially in the areas that have the hardest task to bear.
  We had that before. The Government of 1970 set out on much the same course. They set out saying much the same as members of the Conservative Party said in the election and have said throughout the debate. The Tories eventually decided to change course. We are now told that there will be no change in the course. That may be. What happens when we repeat the performance, but in different circumstances and with a different cast? What happens when Selsdon man joins forces with the Iron Lady? That is hard to imagine. I suppose that it might be something like the hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit). That is only by the way.
  If we were to proceed along that course, and if there were no turning back, the prospect facing us would be dire. That is why the reality of this debate—if Government supporters apply their minds to it—came from several of my hon. Friends, who described how we should get back to that point. That is where the House and the country will arrive.
  The right hon. Lady talks about her being a new beginning. She is not a new beginning at all. She is a historical

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  aberration. Indeed, in its modern form the Conservative Party is a historical aberration. Its members never learnt anything from what happened to their Government from 1970 to 1974. Now we have an Administration who seem to be dedicated to the proposition that they will never learn anything from them again. Those hon. Members from our great industrial areas who spoke indicated clearly the different choices faced by the country.
  The idea that we may resolve these matters by a return to the ways and methods of the 1930s or the nineteenth century is absurd. The question we must face is not how we can turn back the clock in that manner. I do not believe that the country will tolerate that. The question we must face is how we are to apply much more boldly and determinedly the method by which we may manage and organise the new science and technology that provides the ways of living in our society. It cannot be done by the methods of the unplanned market. I do not think that many Government supporters believe that. If the Government set out to do that, we are heading for the most serious times that the country has faced for generations. We are heading for the clash described by my hon. Friends. Today, in a most notable speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall described where we were heading. Above all, it will be the responsibility of the House of Commons to ensure that we avoid those difficulties as much as we can and prepare for the time when the nation may renew the course on which we should go.
  We intend, and have the right, to fight the measures proposed by the Government in the Queen's Speech. We know that the Government have a temporary majority which they are entitled to use and to claim. I do not think the Government will stay in office for anything like five years. If the Tories pursue the policy to which the right hon. Lady dedicated herself at the beginning of the Queen's Speech, this country is in for very rough times. It will require all the intelligence and authority of the House of Commons to ensure that the catastrophe does not come. Even the right hon. Lady must turn back. The Government have already showed signs of turning back. Some members of the Government
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  have already abandoned those policies, it appears, but we are not quite sure about the right hon. Lady. All her colleagues apparently have abandoned the most vicious and reprehensible proposal to be included in their so-called trade union legislation—the proposal for the imposition on strikers' families. That, I gather, has been abandoned altogether. [Interruption.] If hon. Members who are interrupting me now would listen to the rest of the debate, they would hear that many of the other items will have to be abandoned.
  There is a proposal, for example, about a secret ballot. Many of us are very much in favour of secret ballots. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, they have been used in many cases. But, as has been explained by my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley, what will happen is that the Government will apparently pay for all the ballots of the NUM. I am sure that the NUM will be very happy to send in the bill.
  If the right hon. Lady would listen to the rest of the speech, she would discover also that even that provision, which is the most innocent and most unexceptionable section of the proposals, has in it such flaws that it would not be possible to put it into a proper, intelligent Bill to be carried through the House of Commons. As for the other measures that she is proposing, my prophecy is that the more the Government seek to ensure that they are set out in detailed legislative form, the more impossible it will be to carry them through this House of Commons and to get them accepted by people up and down the country.
  I know that Conservative Members do not like heeding these warnings. They did not listen to such warnings as we gave them at the beginning of the 1970s. As a result, they suffered great difficulties and the nation also suffered great difficulties. They had better heed these warnings now. Even more, they ought to heed the warnings that we have given them from the beginning of this debate to the end of it on the way in which industry has been sustained through the worldwide slump. We had not heard a word from the Conservative Party for the past five years about the world wide recession, but we heard about it today. We had not heard a word for five years about the balance of payments, but it has

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  been rediscovered today. I dare say that there will be several other rediscoveries of that nature.
  Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman rose—
  Mr. Foot: There are many other rediscoveries of that nature that the Government will have to make. As they discover what is the real nature of the world in which they live, they will either have to abandon the policies on which they were elected or they will have to proceed to the shipwreck and the catastrophe which some of us have prophesied.
  Mrs. Kellett-Bowman rose—
  Mr. Foot: I urge upon the right hon. Lady at the earliest possible stage in these proceedings to try to see how she can rectify these matters and come to the House of Commons—
  Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Foot: —with a different point of view. I will not give way to the hon. Lady.
  The right hon. Lady has won her victory temporarily, but she did not in any sense whatever—
  Mrs. Kellett-Bowman rose—
  Mr. Foot: —present to the House of Commons—
  Mrs. Kellett-Bowman rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman) learnt a long time ago that the right hon. Gentleman will not give way.
  Mr. Foot: The right hon. Lady did not, in any sense whatever, present to the House of Commons in the debate the realities of the country and the world today. She did not seek to present them in the general election campaign. That is the albatross that hangs round her neck. She was the one who placed it there and she alone can remove it by generally declaring to the House the problems we have to face. For the rest, the country will have to endure again a replay, in more dangerous and difficult circumstances, of the follies and crimes the Tories perpetrated at the beginning of the 1970s. It is this House of Commons, and eventually the country itself, which will have to rescue us from that fate.
  9.30 p.m.
  The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas): By tradition, the Leader of the House replies tonight not only to the amendment we have discussed today but to the whole six-day debate. That, I think, is a daunting task at any time: at the beginning of a new Parliament it is particularly so.
  This is the first speech I have been able to make in my new office and perhaps it would be appropriate, therefore, if I joined with the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot), in congratulating the other maiden speakers whom we have heard in this debate.
  We have had no fewer than 32 maiden speeches—nine of them today—to many of whom I have had the pleasure of listening. I cannot pick them out individually. The roll of honour has been called out by the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. I would, however, like to comment on just one of the maiden speeches because it was an impressive and moving one. I hope I shall not be accused of any partiality because it came from the Opposition Benches.
  The speech to which I refer is that of the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. Welsh). I do not comment on what he said about industrial relations though that was certainly illuminating, but rather on his moving plea for what he called our brothers and sisters in the Third world. The accidents of history and geography have made them less fortunate than ourselves in so many areas.
  The great difficulty in this part of the twentieth century is not to bridge the gulf between the rich and the poor at home it is to bridge the gulf between the rich and poor nations in the world. I was delighted that a maiden speech should have been chosen which dealt, in part, with this vital theme. The high quality of the speeches which we have heard makes us hopeful for the future.
  There are always Jeremiahs who predict the demise of Parliament. Unlike Jeremiah they will prove false prophets. The shallow denigration of Parliament is one of the unpleasant signs of our times. It is not only depressing and unpleasant, it is also dangerous. Great nations fail only when they cease to understand the institutions which they created. I am

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  not saying that Parliament is perfect. Who is, apart from you, Mr. Speaker—that is, when we catch your eye? We should be ready to revise and revitalise our procedures—a point that has been made by several hon. Members. That is vitally important. We have no constitution in this country. We only have procedure.
  There is no doubt that over the past 50 years the balance of power in our constitution has shifted away from the House to the Executive and to Whitehall. That is not to say that the function of the House has ever been to govern. It has not. The function of the House has been to subject the Executive to limitations, control and supervision, particularly in regard to the matter of supply and taxation. It has been to protect the liberties of the individual citizen against the arbitrary use of power. It is the desire to do that work more effectively that lies behind the proposals of the Procedure Committee of this House.
  The Government, in the manifesto on which they won the election—and so many of the pledges in that manifesto have already been redeemed—have a pledge on the matter to which I have just referred. My hope and my expectation—they are not always the same—is that that pledge, too, will be redeemed before we rise for the Summer Recess.
  Before I leave the constitution, let me say one word about the Leadership of this House. The Speakership of this House apart, to be Leader of this House is the highest office to which any hon. Member can aspire. It is, of course, a political office, and politically I hope to give as good as I get, and sometimes better—
  Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Hear, hear.
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: —and I will not give way to anyone, except the hon. Lady. But constitutionally I shall always remember that my title is Leader of the House, and in the last resort every hon. Member has equal rights which must be respected. If I may quote a great radical, Thomas Rainborowe,
  "The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he".
  Mutatis mutandis—that applies to Front Benchers and Back Benchers alike.
  I also want to say a word about Northern Ireland. I found the words of
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  the leader of the Ulster Unionists very moving. I am sure that I stress the concern of the whole House that peace should be brought, if it can be, to that troubled Province. I wish the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland well. I can pay him no higher tribute than to say that we believe he will be a worthy successor to our friend and colleague, Airey Neave.
  I now turn to the terms of the amendment that has been tabled by the Opposition, and studiously avoided by the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale this evening. When one looks at what it says, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman was being prudent. It humbly regrets that the Government policies
  "will divide the nation, inflict grave damage on Britain's economic performance, raise prices, and increase unemployment."
  Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: Labour Members are right to cheer, because their warnings must be taken seriously. It is advice from experts. After all, the warnings come from the party which last winter divided the nation in a manner that has not been seen since the Industrial Revolution. Then at least, it was capitalist against worker. But it was the achievement of the Labour Government that they set worker against worker, citizen against citizen and trade unionist against trade unionist.
  What about the damage to Britain's economic performance? Under the Labour Government, it was the worst performance of any industrial country in Europe and many of the industrial countries in the world. For five years, from 1973 to 1978, most of which was occupied by the late Government, output went up by only 2·7 per cent.—one-quarter of that of the United States, one-half of that of France and one-third of that of Italy.
  The amendment talks about raising prices. The highest rise in prices since records began 300 years ago was achieved under the Government led by the Leader of the Opposition. Prices doubled in five years. We had the worst inflation of any industrial country, Italy alone excepted. As for unemployment, nearly one million people have joined the dole queue since the Labour Government took office. Under the last two Labour Governments, over one million people have been permanently unemployed for three and a half years. Today, 500,000 of those people are under

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  25 years of age. It was my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Thornton) who in a maiden speech pointed out the appalling situation on Merseyside—in the Speke area in particular—where 35 per cent. of the population is unemployed. That is a truly staggering figure.
  For any Government to deprive that number of people of their most important right, the right to work, is bad enough. It is essential to the dignity of human beings that, however mechanical their task, they should have the right to support their families by their own labour. For a Labour Government who claimed to speak for the industrial workers of the country, that is a disgraceful record.
  Mr. Heffer: The Leader of the House referred to Liverpool and to Speke. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the value of the last Government's support for industry on Merseyside? Does he know what the level of unemployment there will be if his Government withdraw that support?
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: Of course I agree that the temporary measures introduced by the Labour Government helped to alleviate the situation. Without those measures the situation would be even worse, if one can imagine that. But those measures are not a permanent answer, as the hon. Member knows.
  The right hon. Members for Ebbw Vale and Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) have been wheeled out again to support this preposterous amendment. We welcome them back to political life. Where were they during the election campaign? Why is it that only now these two shrinking violets of Labour's herbaceous border have been allowed to come into full bloom? The right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale was allowed to appear only once at the Labour Party press conference. After hearing his speech today I believe that that was a wise decision. He made no official television appearances until late at night after the vast majority of the electorate, following the sage advice of the then Prime Minister, had gone to bed.
  The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East was even more elusive, and the election without him was not like Hamlet without the prince but rather like Hamlet without the ghost.
  1002
  Let us consider the arguments advanced by the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. There was some amusing badinage about alleged divisions within the Conservative Party. I would take that seriously from a party that was itself united, but not from one which before our eyes is beginning to tear itself apart in a series of agonised recriminations about who was responsible for losing the election. This must be the first occasion at a wake when the corpses have got out of the coffins and started belting each other before the burial has actually taken place.
  This is hard lines on the Leader of the Opposition, who only last Friday at Llandudno was exhorting the members of his party to look forward to the long years in Opposition and hoping that they would not slay and slang each other. That, I must say, is the most optimistic statement I have heard since that of the former Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. Silkin), speaking on the occasion when we discussed picketing. On that occasion, when he invented the famous new term "lawful intimidation.", he concluded his remarks by saying:
  "I trust that I have clarified the situation."
  At least, the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East produced a coherent argument, and, if I may, I compliment him on his speech, for it was one of the great set pieces of this debate. With passion, logic and conviction, the right hon. Gentleman put forward his point of view. He said that he had waited 22 years to make it. But whom was it aimed against? Ostensibly, it was aimed against the Government, but everything he said was a repudiation not only of the Leader of the Opposition's Government, of which he was a member, but of the Government led by his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson), of which the right hon. Gentleman was also a distinguished ornament.
  Of course, the right hon. Gentleman delivered a great broadside against the Prime Minister and against her analysis of our situation. The passage which apparently caused particular offence came when my right hon. Friend said:
  "How is society to be improved?—by millions of people resolving that they will give their own children a better life than they had themselves."—[Official Report, 15 May 1979; Vol. 967. c. 77.]

  1003
  The right hon. Gentleman said:
  "I have never heard a Prime Minister use language like that before."
  I can only say that it is high time he did, because the Prime Minister was not talking about ideology; she was not even talking about philosophy; she was talking about a fact of life and about an old value on which scorn was poured by the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. She spoke of an old value which needs to be restated in the conditions of modern times.
  Warming to his theme, becoming denunciatory and even apocalyptic, the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East said:
  "No doubt, it was the language that ultimately drove Christ out of the Temple in Jerusalem when he tried to get rid of the money changers."—[Official Report, 21 May 1979; Vol. 967, c. 715.]
  I do not wish to seem contentious, but may I point out to the right hon. Gentleman that St. Matthew gave a rather different account, and he had the marginal advantage of actually being there. According to St. Matthew, it was in fact the Lord who drove the moneylenders out and not the other way round.
  But I leave that aside in the interests of peace and concord—we have some evidence on it—just to ask how the right hon. Gentleman knows what was said on that occasion, since it is not recorded in the Gospels. We all know that the right hon. Gentleman is well connected, but we did not suspect that he was as well connected as that.
  Mr. Tony Benn: In view of the right hon. Gentleman's known direct connections with the world of theology, may I ask him to be candid? Is he saying that the Carpenter of Nazareth went into Temple to galvanise the entrepreneurs?
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: I think that the right hon. Gentleman is confusing the Old and the New Testaments. I thought that he understood what animates people. Does the right hon. Member really think that people are animated by reverence and love for the State? Is that what he is saying? Does he really think that people are merely painful prerequisites for Socialism? Why do people struggle and toil and make sacrifices? It is not for personal
  1004
  selfish reasons but precisely, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, to give their children a better start in life. A principal reason why the Labour Party lost the election, why people voted so massively against Labour, is that for the first time since the war people looked forward and saw their children starting not with a better future but with a worse one than they had had themselves.
  The family is the great unit of society. Families are not isolated one from another. They are linked by care, concern and friendship. They constitute community. The idea of that is entirely alien from the right hon. Member's thoughts, because in his universe he sees only a world in which there is a sterile confrontation between the individual and the State. It is promoting the family and the community which lies at the heart of our philosophy and of our ideas.
  Mr. Andrew Faulds: Will the right hon. Gentleman be so good as to let us know when his nuptials are to be announced?
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: In that remark, the hon. Gentleman has lived up to his reputation.
  I do not recognise the heartless caricature of Conservatism that was put forward by the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East and the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. We are entitled to our own form of idealism, just as right hon. and hon. Members of the Opposition are entitled to theirs. I do not recognise in that caricature the party of which I have been proud to be a member for 30 years. If that party were as the Opposition say it is, it would never have survived into the age of universal suffrage, let alone could it be returned at what, by common consent, has been one of the crucial elections of this century.
  What we believe in is a society of removable inequalities, a mobile society in which men and women of talent and industry can rise as far as their merit deserves. We recognise that the gifted owe a duty to those less gifted to use their gifts for others and for the community as a whole. That is a very different idea from that of those whose idea it is to mount the ladder of opportunity and then kick it away lest anyone else should climb to where they have reached.

  1005
  There is one other passage in the right hon. Gentleman's speech to which I should like to refer. It is really the heart of the matter, when he boasted in relation to the National Health Service—incidentally, that was the creation of a Conservative-dominated coalition—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes. Admittedly, it was introduced by a Labour Government. However, what the right hon. Gentleman said was:
  "we have transformed the right to treatment from cash to need".—[Official Report, 21 May 1979; Vol. 967, c. 724.]
  I ask the right hon. Gentleman: how will he meet the need without the cash? The National Health Service is breaking down because the resources are not there. The only contribution by the Leader of the Opposition has been to make the situation worse by driving the pay beds out of the National Health Service. That will mean a loss of £30 million to £40 million a year.
  My last word to the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East is that if the Socialist solutions that he and his followers so eloquently advocate are right, why is every society in which they have been put into practice distinguished by a lower standard of living for the ordinary citizen and a catastrophic loss of personal liberty? The right hon. Gentleman has quoted from the scriptures. I do not mind his infringing my monopoly, but I shall assert my rights and quote the scriptures back at him:
  "By their fruits ye shall know them."
  The Opposition are being difficult tonight because they have to face the tact that the majority of people in this country reject their policies. A sizeable proportion of traditional Labour voters prefer ours. That is true of the trade unions, it is true on education, defence, the maintenance of law and order and on the central issue of reducing taxation.
  Mr. Walter Harrison: What about the North?
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: Yes, it is true in the North as well. The right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Harrison) can only comfort himself by looking to the North, where there was a swing to the Government of 5·4 per cent. In the South there was a swing of over 8 per cent. It is a curious form of comfort to apply to one's wounds.
  Mr. Harrison: The right hon. Gentleman is staggering.
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: No, I am not. I have plenty more here but I have to keep an eye on the clock.
  Tonight's debate and the Gracious Speech are the result of an electoral decision of the nation. I have never known a Queen's Speech that contained more positive proposals or that is more comprehensive in its scope. On the Tory side of the House, we know the magnitude of the task before us. Members of the Government know it better than anyone. We are aware of the gravity of our predicament and of the dangers that beset our cause, but we know that it is probably the last chance of setting Britain on the road to recovery once again. In that enterprise we have two assets of incomparable worth. The first is the confidence of the British people as shown at the election. The second is our indomitable determination to keep faith with them and carry our programme through to a triumphant conclusion.
  Mr. Ioan Evans: It is typical of the Tories that they have nothing to say—
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Michael Jopling)rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
  Question put accordingly, That the amendment be made:—
  The House divided: Ayes 272, Noes 337.

  Division No. 2]

  AYES

  [10.0 p.m.

  Abse, Leo

  Ashton, Joe

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Adams, A.

  Atkinson, Norman (H'gey, Tott'ham)

  Booth, Rt Hon Albert

  Allaun, Frank

  Bagler, Gordon A. T.

  Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur (M'brough)

  Alton, David

  Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

  Bradley, Tom

  Anderson, Donald

  Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood)

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Archer, Peter

  Beith, A. J.

  Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

  Armstrong, Ernest

  Benn, Rt Hon Anthony wedgwood

  Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)

  Ashley, Jack

  Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N)

  Brown, Ronald (Hackney S)

  Brown, R. (Edinburgh, Leith)

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Parker, John

  Buchan, Norman

  Haynes, D. F.

  Parry, Robert

  Callaghan, Rt Hon J. (Cardiff SE)

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Pendry, Tom

  Callaghan, Jim (Middleton & P)

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Penhaligon, David

  Campbell, Ian

  Hogg, N. (East Dunbartonshire)

  Powell, R. (Ogmore)

  Campbell-Savours, D.

  Holland, S. (Lambeth, Vauxhall)

  Prescott, John

  Canavan, Dennis

  Home Robertson, John

  Race, R.

  Cant, R. B.

  Homewood, W. D.

  Radice, Giles

  Carmichael, Neil

  Hooley, Frank

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn (Leeds South)

  Carter-Jones, Lewis

  Horam, John

  Richardson, Miss Jo

  Cartwright, John

  Howell, Rt Hon Denis (B'ham, Sm H)

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  Clark, D. (South Shields)

  Howells, Geraint

  Roberts, A. (Bootle)

  Cocks, Rt Hon Michael (B istol S)

  Huckfield, Les

  Roberts, E. (Hackney North)

  Cohen, Stanley

  Hughes, Mark (Durham)

  Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)

  Coleman, Donald

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen North)

  Robertson, George

  Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Coventry NW)

  Conlan, Bernard

  Janner, Hon Greville

  Rodgers, Rt Hon William

  Cook, Robin F.

  Jay, Rt Hon Douglas

  Rooker, J. W.

  Cowans, Harry

  John, Brynmor

  Roper, John

  Craigen, J. M. (Glasgow, Maryhill)

  Johnson, James (Hull West)

  Ross, E. (Dundee West)

  Crowther, J. S.

  Johnson, Walter (Derby South)

  Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

  Cryer, Bob

  Jones, Alec (Rhondda)

  Rowlands, Ted

  Cunliffe, L.

  Jones, Barry (East Flint)

  Ryman, John

  Cunningham, George (Islington S)

  Jones, Dan (Burnley)

  Sandelson, Neville

  Cunningham, Dr John (Whitehaven)

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Sever, John

  Dalyell, Tam

  Kerr, Russell

  Sheerman, B. J.

  Davidson, Arthur

  Kilroy-Silk, Robert

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert (A' ton-u-L)

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Kinnock, Neil

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter (Step and Pop)

  Davies, E. H. (Caerphilly)

  Lambie, David

  Short, Mrs Renée

  Davies, Ifor (Gower)

  Lamborn, Harry

  Silkin, Rt Hon John (Deptford)

  Davis, Clinton (Hackney Central)

  Lamborn, James

  Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)

  Davis T. (Birmingham, Stechford

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Silverman, Dennis

  Deakins, Eric

  Leighton, R.

  Skinner, Dennis

  Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)

  Lever, Rt Hon Harold

  Smith, Rt Hon J. (North Lanarkshire)

  Dempsey, James

  Lewis, Arthur (Newham North West)

  Snape, Peter

  Dewar, Donald

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Soley, C. S.

  Dixon, D.

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Spearing, Leslie

  Dobson, F. G.

  Lyon, Alexander (York)

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Dormand, J. D.

  Lyons, Edward (Bradford West)

  Stallard, A. W.

  Douglas, R. G.

  Mabon, Rt Hon Dr J. Dickson

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  Douglas-Mann, Bruce

  McCartney, Hugh

  Stewart, Rt Hon Donald (W Isles)

  Dubs, A.

  McDonald, Dr Oonagh

  Stoddart, David

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  McElhone, Frank

  Stott, Roger

  Dunn, James A. (Liverpool, Kirkdale)

  McGuire, Michael (Ince)

  Strang, Gavin

  Dunnett, Jack

  McKay, Allen (Penistone)

  Straw, J.

  Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

  McKelvey, W.

  Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley

  Eadie, Alex

  MacKenzie, Gregor

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton West)

  Eastham, K.

  Maclennan, Robert

  Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

  Edwards, Robert (Wolv SE)

  McMahon, A.

  Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)

  Ellis, R. J. (NE Derbyshire)

  McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, Central)

  Thomas, Mike (Newcastle East)

  Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)

  McNally, T.

  Thomas, Dr R. G. (Carmarthen)

  English, Michael

  McNamara, Kevin

  Thorne, Stan (Preston South)

  Ennals, Rt Hon David

  McWilliam J. D.

  Tilley, John

  Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)

  Magee, Bryan

  Tinn, James

  Ewing, Harry

  Marks, Kenneth

  Torney, Tom

  Faulds, Andrew

  Marshall, D. (Glassgow, Shettleston

  Urwin, Rt Hon Tom

  Field, F.

  Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)

  Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.

  Fitch, Alan

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester South)

  Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)

  Fitt, Gerard

  Martin, M. J. (Glasgow, Springburn)

  Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)

  Flannery, Martin

  Mason, Rt Hon Roy

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  Maxton, J.

  Watkins, David

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Maynard, Miss Joan

  Weetch, Ken

  Ford, Ben

  Meacher, Michael

  Wellbeloved, James

  Forrester, John

  Mellish, Rt Hon Robert

  Welsh, M.

  Foster, D.

  Mikardo, Ian

  White, Frank R. (Bury & Radcliffe)

  Foulkes, G.

  Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

  White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)

  Fraser, John (Lambeth, Norwood)

  Miller, Dr M. S. (East Kilbride)

  Whitehead, Phillip

  Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

  Mitchell, Austin (Grimsby)

  Whitlock, william

  Freud, Clement

  Mitchell, R. C. (Soton, Itchen)

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Garrett, John (Norwich S)

  Morris, Rt Hon Alfred (Wythenshawe)

  Willey, Rt Hon Frederick

  Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)

  Morris, Rt Hon Charles (Openshaw)

  Williams, Alan (Swansea West)

  George, Bruce

  Morris, Rt Hon John (Aberavon)

  Wilson, Rt Hon Sir Harold (Huyton)

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Morton, George

  Wilson, Rt Hon Sir Harold (Huyton)

  Ginsburg, David

  Moyle, Rt Hon Roland

  Wilson William (Coventry SE)

  Golding, John

  Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

  Winnick, D

  Gourlay, Harry

  Newens, Stanley

  Woodall, Alec

  Graham, Ted

  Oakes, Gordon

  Woolmer, K. J.

  Grant, George (Morpeth)

  Ogden, Eric

  Wrigglesworth, Ian

  Grant, John (Islington C)

  O'Halloran, Michael

  Wright, Mrs S.

  Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

  O'Neill, M.

  Young, David (Bolton East)

  Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Hardy, Peter

  Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

  Palmer, Arthur

  Mr. John Evans and

  Hart, Rt Hon Judith

  Park, George

  Mr. Thomas Cox

  1008

  1009

  NOES

  Adley, Robert

  Edwards, Rt Hon N. (Pembroke)

  Lang, I.

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Egger, T.

  Langford-Holt, Sir John

  Alexander, R.

  Elliott, Sir William

  Latham, Michael

  Alison, Michael

  Emery, Peter

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Amery, Rt Hon Julian

  Eyre, Reginald

  Lawson, Nigel

  Ancram, M.

  Fairbairn, Nicholas

  Lee, J.

  Arnold, Tom

  Fairgrieve, Russell

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon M. A.

  Aspinwall, J.

  Faith, Mrs S.

  Lester, Jim (Beeston)

  Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne)

  Farr, John

  Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

  Atkins, R. J. (Preston North)

  Fell, Anthony

  Lloyd, Ian (Havant & Waterloo)

  Atkinson, David (B'mouth, East)

  Fenner, Mrs P.

  Lloyd, P. (Fareham)

  Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)

  Finsberg, Geoffrey

  Loveridge, John

  Baker, N. (North Dorset)

  Fisher, Sir Nigel

  Luce, Richard

  Banks, Robert

  Fletcher, Alexander (Edinburgh N)

  Lyell, N.

  Beaumont-Dark, A. M.

  Fletcher-Cooke, Charles

  McAdden, Sir Stephen

  Bell, Ronald

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  McCrindle, Robert

  Bendall Vivian

  Forman, Nigel

  Macfarlane, Neil

  Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torbay)

  Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

  MacGregor, John

  Benyon, T. (Abingdon)

  Fox, Marcus

  Mackey, J. J. (Argyll)

  Benyon, W. (Buckingham)

  Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford & St)

  Macmillan, Rt Hon M. (Farnham)

  Best, K.

  Fraser, P. (South Angus)

  McNair-Wilson, Michael (Newbury)

  Bevan, D. G.

  Fry, Peter

  McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Galbraith, Hon T. G. D.

  McQuarrie, A.

  Biggs-Davison, John

  Gardner, Edward (South Fylde)

  Madel, David

  Blackburn, J. G.

  Garel-Jones, T.

  Major, J.

  Blaker, Peter

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Marland, P.

  Body, Richard

  Glyn, Dr Alan

  Marlow, A.

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Goodhart, Philip

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Goodhew, Victor

  Marten, Neil (Banbury)

  Bottomley, Peter (Woolwich West)

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Mates, Michael

  Bowden, Andrew

  Gorst, John

  Mater, Carol

  Boyson, Dr Rhodes

  Gow, Ian

  Maude, Rt Hon Angus

  Bradford, Rev. R.

  Gower, Sir Raymond

  Mawby, Ray

  Braine, Sir Bernard

  Grant, Anthony (Harrow C)

  Mawhinney, Dr B.

  Bright, G.

  Gray, Hamish

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Brinton, T. D.

  Greenway, H.

  Mayhew, Patrick

  Brittan, Leon

  Grieve, Percy

  Mellor, D.

  Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher

  Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St Edmunds)

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Brooke, Hon Peter

  Griffiths, P. (Portsmouth N)

  Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove & Redditch)

  Brotherton, Michael

  Grist, Ian

  Mills, I. (Meriden)

  Brown, M. (Brigg & Scunthorpe)

  Grylls, Michael

  Mills, Peter (West Devon)

  Browne, J. (Winchester)

  Gummer, J. S.

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Bruce-Gardyne, John

  Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom & Ewell)

  Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

  Bryan, Sir Paul

  Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

  Moate, Roger

  Buchanan-Smith, Hon Alick

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Molyneaux, James

  Buck, Antony

  Hannam, John

  Monro, Hector

  Budgen, Nick

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Bulmer, Esmond

  Hastings, Stephen

  Moore, John

  Burden, F. A.

  Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

  Morgan, Geraint

  Butcher, J. P.

  Hawkins, Paul

  Morris, Michael (Northampton, Sth)

  Butler, Hon Adam

  Hawksley, W.

  Morrison, Hon Charles (Devizes)

  Cadbury, J.

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Morrison, Hon Peter (City of Chester)

  Carlisle, J. (Luton West)

  Heddle J.

  Mudd, David

  Carlisle, K. (Lincoln)

  Henderson, B.

  Murphy, C. P.

  Carlisle, Rt Hon Mark (Runcorn)

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Myles, D. F.

  Chalker, Mrs Lynda

  Hicks, Robert

  Neale, G.

  Channon, Paul

  Higgins, Terence L.

  Needham, R.

  Chapman, S.

  Hill, S. J. A.

  Nelson, Anthony

  Churchill, W. S.

  Hogg, Hon D. (Grantham)

  Neubert, Michael

  Clark, Hon Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)

  Holland, Philip (Carlton)

  Newton, Tony

  Clark, William (Croydon South)

  Hooson, T.

  Normanton, Tom

  Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Hordern, Peter

  Nott, Rt Hon John

  Clegg, Walter

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Onslow, Cranley

  Cockeram, E.

  Howell, Rt Hon David (Guildford)

  Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs Sally

  Colvin, M.

  Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

  Osborn, John

  Cope, John

  Hunt, David (Wirral)

  Page, John (Harrow, West)

  Cormack, Patrick

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)

  Corrie, John

  Hurd, Hon Douglas

  Parkinson, Cecil

  Costain, A. P.

  Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)

  Parris, M.

  Cranborne, Viscount

  Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick

  Patten, C. Bath)

  Critchley, Julian

  Jessel, Toby

  Patten, J. (Oxford)

  Crouch, David

  Johnson Smith, Geoffrey

  Pattie, Geoffrey

  Dean, Paul (North Somerset)

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Pawsey, J.

  Dickens, G.

  Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

  Percival, Sir Ian

  Dodsworth, Geoffrey

  Kaberry, Sir Donald

  Peyton, Rt Hon John

  Dorrell, S.

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Kershaw, Anthony

  Pollock, A.

  Dover, D.

  Kimball, Marcus

  Porter, G. B.

  du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Powell, Rt Hon J. Enoch (S Down)

  Dunn, R. (Dartford)

  Kitson, Sir Timothy

  Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

  Durant, Tony

  Knight, Mrs Jill

  Price, David (Eastleigh)

  Dykes, Hugh

  Knox, David

  Prior, Rt Hon James

  Eden, Rt Hon Sir John

  Lamont, Norman

  Proctor, K.

  1010

  1011

  Pym, Rt Hon Francis

  Speed, Keith

  Viggers, Peter

  Raison, Timothy

  Speller, A.

  Waddington, David

  Rathbone, Tim

  Spence, John

  Wakeham, John

  Rees, Peter (Dover and Deal)

  Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)

  Waldegrave, Hon W.

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcestershire)

  Walker, Rt Hon Peter (Worcester)

  Renton, Tim

  Sproat, Ian

  Walker, W. (Perth & E Perthshire)

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Squire, R. C.

  Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir Derek

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Stainton, Keith

  Wall, Patrick

  Ridley, Hon Nicholas

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Waller, G. P. A.

  Ridsdale, Julian

  Stanley, John

  Walters, Dennis

  Rifkind, Malcolm

  Steen, Anthony

  Ward, J.

  Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

  Stevens, M.

  Warren, Kenneth

  Roberts, M. (Cardiff North West)

  Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)

  Watson, J.

  Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

  Stewart, J. (East Renfrewshire)

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)

  Stokes, John

  Wells, P. (Hertford & Stevenage)

  Rossi, Hugh

  Stradling Thomas, J.

  Wheeler, J.

  Rost, Peter

  Tapsell, Peter

  Whitelaw, Rt Hon William

  Royle, Sir Anthony

  Taylor, Robert (Croydon NW)

  Whitney, Raymond

  Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

  Tebbit, Norman

  Wickenden, K.

  St. John Stevas, Rt Hon Norman

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Scott, Nicholas

  Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs Margaret

  Wilkinson, J.

  Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

  Thomas, Rt Hon Peter (Hendon S)

  Williams, D. J. D. (Montgomery)

  Shaw, Michael (Scarborough)

  Thomson, D.

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  Thorne, N. G. (Ilford South)

  Wolfson, M.

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Thornton, G. M.

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Shepherd, R. (Aldridge-Brownhills)

  Townsend, J. (Bridlington)

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Shersby, Michael

  Townsend, Cyril D. (Bexleyheath)

  Silvester, Fred

  Trippier, D.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Sims, Roger

  Trotter, Neville

  Mr. Spencer Le Marchant and

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  van Straubenzee, W. R.

  Mr. Anthony Berry,

  Smith, Dudley (War. And Leam'ton)

  Vaughan, Dr Gerard

  Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

  Question accordingly negatived.
  Main Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:
  Most Gracious Sovereign,
  We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal
  1012
  subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.
  To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

  FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Newton.]
  10.22 p.m.
  Mr. Greville Janner: I am grateful for the opportunity of raising in the House relations between this country and the Federal Republic of West Germany and, in particular, an aspect of those relations of which I have given notice to the Minister, namely, the repeal of the German Statute of Limitations, which is at present before the German Parliament.
  We in this country have long been concerned about the bringing to justice of those who perpetrated not merely war crimes but crimes of genocide; crimes directed not only against our soldiers and other troops against whom German armies fought, but those against totally innocent people—crimes committed not only during but even before the war.
  By the German penal statute of 1871, any prosecution of those against whom investigations have not now begun will have to terminate on 31st December of this year unless the German Parliament sees fit to repeal that statute.
  I submit that we, from the Palace of Westminster, in no spirit of ill will, in no unhappy memory of the bombing of this Chamber, but, after those years of war and ill will, having come together with the Federal German Republic in the EEC, having worked and operated with it in a spirit of comradeship in many areas, should now appeal to the Bundestag to enact the Bill which will enable the prosecution of war criminals and of those who were guilty of crimes in concentration camps to continue. This problem is sometimes thought to be an internal matter for Germany, and to an extent it is. The German people are sovereign in their own Parliament, as we are in ours, and they make their own decisions, as we do. But it is not an internal matter when we consider those who were the victims of the crimes with which we are concerned. I served as a war crimes investigator in Germany. I
  1014
  and my colleagues dealt with Stalag Luft 3 and we attempted, not always with much success, to find and to bring to justice those who had shot our prisoners of war in contravention of the Geneva Convention and of all decencies.
  Speaking as a vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, I can assure the House that the Jewish community in Britain is deeply concerned with these problems. The Association of Jewish Ex-Service Men and Women has spearheaded a campaign on behalf of all who have lost relatives and friends in the holocaust. That is a matter that concerns not only Germans. In the main, those who were killed were not Germans; they were Poles and Russians, Czechoslovaks and Hungarians, Danes and Frenchmen. Although we hear a great deal about the 6 million Jews who were killed, 5 million non-Jews were killed.
  This is a matter of concern not only to the Jewish communities but to all those who are devoted to justice. Nor is it a question of revenge. It is a demand for justice to those who were slaughtered and those who remain. Murderers who have succeeded in escaping justice all these years should not lightly sleep in their beds in the knowledge that they may now return to the leadership of those evil Fascist and Nazi movements that exist not only in Germany but, alas, in Britain as well.
  There is no spirit of revenge when we consider the case of Hess. He was a leader of the Nazi movement. If I say that I think that the Russians are right, I know that in the House that will be taken as an expression of deep approval. They must indeed be right. They say that it is not in a spirit of revenge that Hess remains imprisoned, and that if he is to be allowed out he must at least say that he will not take the lead, even at his age, as the symbol of Nazism but will retire into decent obscurity where he wishes to pass his last days. If that is the basis upon which the matter is put, we may consider it in one light. If, on the other hand, we say that because a person is elderly or old he is incapable of leading a movement that should be destroyed, that is another matter.
  The Statute of Limitations in Germany is not regarded as an internal matter for Germany by any of the resistance movements in the world, nor by any of the

  1015
  minority groups that suffered in the days of Nazi persecution. The years that have passed have not caused memories to fade, nor should they. We ask not for revenge but that these crimes should not be forgotten, if only to avoid a recurrence of the disasters that occurred in the past.
  As I have said, this is not an internal matter for the Germans. It is not a matter that concerns only one section of the British people or one party. I pay my deep and personal tribute to Airey Neave, who worked with some of us on this issue shortly before his tragic murder. He and hon. Members on both sides of the House, one of whom, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Toxteth (Mr. Crawshaw), is now a Deputy Speaker and unable to take part in the debate for that reason, devoted much time and thought not to revenge but to preventing a recurrence of the crimes with which Airey Neave was so deeply involved in the Nuremberg trials.
  Whether we are on one side of the House or the other, we share in common the wish to see democracy flourish and Nazism and dictatorships of all sorts die away. We share a wish that the Federal Republic of West Germany should exist and live alongside us in peace and deal with its own problems in a way that will cause it to be proud. We share the wish that it will not offer to the East Germans and others who wish it ill probably the greatest propaganda gift that they could have, namely, the suggestion that it is no longer concerned with the commission of crimes in times of war and in times before war, crimes of genocide, crimes in concentration camps and crimes in prisoner-of-war camps. In East Germany, Poland and other countries they have been carefully hiding records. They have not been giving forth the information that would enable prosecutions to take place. They have been holding it back and producing it as and when they see fit. They would certainly rejoice in the opportunity which would be presented were the German Statute of Limitations not to be repealed.
  The effect of the repeal would not be very great in numbers. In this country, Statutes of Limitations prevent the institution of proceedings where no step has been taken in the courts—steps such as the issue of a writ or of a summons. In
  1016
  Germany the rules are different. There, once an investigation has begun, once a person's name is on the file, the process of the court is said to be in action and the statute does not operate. For a person to take advantage of the statute, he must have hidden himself successfully away for over 30 years. He should not receive the prize of eternal peace as a result. However, not many people will be affected by this.
  What matters much more is the moral principle. We should say to our colleagues and friends in the EEC that we do not regard the expression of opinion in this House as an interference in the sovereign rights of a foreign Parliament or people but that we appreciate and share their views. The hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill), Mr. Douglas Henderson—a member of the Scottish National Party who is no longer a Member of Parliament—and I went to the German Embassy and saw the ambassador. We were received with great cordiality and kindness. We had the impression that there was no difference of view between him and us. When the Bill for the repeal of the statute was tabled in the German Parliament, it was supported by 215 deputies of the Social Democratic Party, 40 members of the Christian Democratic Opposition party and by some of the free democratic parliamentarians. Some of the leading figures in Germany expressed their warmest hope that this statute would be repealed.
  The Bill then moved into Committee. There was a suggestion of a compromise which, if accepted, might be unconstitutional under German law. This is a matter into which I would hesitate to enter, the intricacies of our own law being sufficiently vast and miserable for us without having to try to cope with those of the German Republic, especially in view of the language difference.
  It is the earnest wish of the vast majority of Members of Parliament, on both sides, that the German Parliament should repeal the statute. German Members of Parliament should understand that in so doing they will be expressing the view of the majority of their people and of ours. They should regard this not as a purely internal matter for them and their people but as a human rights issue.

  1017
  When, tomorrow, the new German President is installed, we in this House wish him—or I understand that it might be her—the very best of luck. We hope that whoever is elected to that post will have a successful, healthy and peaceful term of office. We hope that the German people will continue the process of reconciliation with those with whom they dealt so ill, the process which was begun by Mr. Adenauer, which has been continued by many of the present parliamentarians and which we invite them to see as one of good faith, good fellowship and good nature, not as one of ill will or revenge
  Equally, should the Germans decide not to repeal that statute, I hope they will appreciate that their good name will be most adversely affected not only in this House but amongst all those whose memories have not faded, who suffered, or whose families were lost in the Nazi holocaust.
  I hope that in those circumstances the Minister will express the view of the Government and of the House in saying that they will take the step that I have been so happy to have this opportunity of urging upon them in this Chamber.
  10.35 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Richard Luce): I think that the whole House will acknowledge the very strong feelings which have been expressed by the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) on this subject, which I am sure represent the views of a great number of people in this country. Over many months and many years, inside and outside Parliament, he has expressed his strong concern about matters which cover individual rights and individual justice.
  I should like to accept with pleasure the fact that the hon. and learned Gentleman, in raising the subject, spoke of the present very warm relations that we have in this country with the Federal Republic of Germany. May I set the scene, before I seek to comment on the specific points about the Statute of Limitations, by saying that the Government plan to place a high priority on good relations with the Federal Republic. The Prime Minister very much welcomed the opportunity that she had very recently to meet Chancellor Schmidt at such an early stage after the
  1018
  election. As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows, the Federal Republic is one of our most important partners, both in the North Atlantic Alliance and within the European Community. During Chancellor Schmidt's visit, the two Governments were able to exchange views on a wide range of subjects, including defence and Community affairs, and we have now established a close working relationship between our two Governments which I believe will be important for the future.
  It is against this background that I should like to comment on the Statute of Limitations relating to war crimes and murder. Immediately after the last war, the three Western Powers had responsibility, in what is now the Federal Republic of Germany, for the prosecution of war crimes. Since 1955, responsibility for such prosecution has been entirely a matter for the Government and the courts of the Federal Republic. The time limit, under the Statute of Limitations, for the prosecution of Nazi war crimes and murder was extended, as the hon. and learned Gentleman probably knows, in 1965 and again in 1969. It is now due to expire on 31 December this year.
  The law on limitations in the Federal Republic of Germany provides a number of ways in which the limitation period can be suspended—for example, while investigations into alleged crimes are being pursued. But, unless the provisions of the existing statute are altered, anyone guilty of murder committed during the last war will no longer face prosecution after 31 December 1979, always providing that legal proceedings have not been instituted before that date.
  The Government understand the concern which has been expressed in this country and elsewhere, and by the hon. and learned Gentleman, about the application of the Statute of Limitations in the Federal Republic of Germany to murder and Nazi war crimes. We share the widespread view that the crimes committed by the Nazis should never be forgotten. The question whether the Statute of Limitations should or should not apply to Nazi war crimes and murder is a matter of active public debate, as the hon. and learned Gentleman knows and has already described, in the Federal Republic of Germany.
  A Bill which would lift the time limit on these crimes has been tabled in the

  1019
  Bundestag by 208 Social Democrats and seven Free Democrat Members and secured its First Reading on 29 March. It is currently going through the Committee stages. It is thought that the Second and Third Readings could be taken before the Summer Recess at the end of June. Chancellor Schmidt has already declared his support for it. The Federal Government as such have not yet formed a final view on the problem. It is, however, being treated as a non-party issue, and it seems likely that a free vote will be allowed on the further readings which will take place in the Bundestag. The Federal German Republic naturally insists that the debate is an internal German affair, and I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman would acknowledge that the Bundestag has a difficult decision to make in this respect.
  Recent reports from Germany underline the practical difficulties of bringing war crimes to a conclusion. Four people accused of murder were ordered to be released because of lack of evidence. As time goes by, it is likely to become progressively more difficult for the prosecution to prove cases because witnesses are becoming too old to give evidence or have even died.
  According to the Federal German Ministry of Justice, between the end of the last war and 1 January 1978, the legal authorities of the Federal Republic investigated accusations of possible participation in war crimes against over 84,000 people. In 74,260 of those cases, the accused was acquitted, the case was dropped for lack of evidence or the accused died before the investigation was completed. A total of 6,432 people were convicted, in 12 cases the accused being
  1020
  sentenced to death and in 151 cases to life imprisonment. Legal proceedings have been instituted against a further 3,708 people whose cases are presently being investigated.
  Her Majesty's Government believe that there should be no time limit on the initiation of legal proceedings or the imposition of punishment with respect to war crimes and crimes against humanity—such crimes as those to which the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West has referred. We are also in no doubt that this is primarily an internal matter for the Federal German Republic. Responsibility for the prosecution of war crimes, and for any modifications to the Statute of Limitations, in the Federal Republic of Germany lies clearly with the courts of the Federal Republic and with the Government. Therefore, I do not think that it would be appropriate or wise for Her Majesty's Government to raise this directly with the Federal authorities in Germany.
  Having said that, may I point out that individuals, or organisations, or Members of Parliament for that matter, who feel strongly about the issue are, of course, free to make representations direct to the Federal German Government. I believe that many have already done so. The hon. and learned Gentleman himself said he has done so with the German Ambassador in London.
  I suggest to the hon. and learned Gentleman that the outcome of this debate will be fully noted by our friends in Germany, particularly in the Bundestag in the coming debate.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at eighteen 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 Peterborough.
Several Lords—Took the Oath.

WRIT OF SUMMONS
2.43 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: 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 will take appropriate measures to suggest an amendment of the Writ of Summons to Parliament so that recipients are commanded to advise regarding not only the Monarchy, the State and defence of the United Kingdom and the Church, but also the service of the people, human freedom and peace.
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, I must apologise for the length of this Answer. I think I owe it to the learned Clerks to thank them for much of the historical learning that has gone into the Answer.
The form of the Writ of Summons to Parliament is very ancient. The present form, but in Latin and not English, was used so long ago as the reign of Edward III. A writ of 3rd December 1376—more than 600 years ago—contains the words:
"…Pro quibusdam arduis et urgentibus negotiis, nos et statum et defensionem regni nostri Angliae ac ecclesiae Anglicanae contingentibus …".
It is apparent that the word "state" refers to the state of the realm, and not State with a capital letter, as implied in the Question. In 1429 the word "contingentibus" was altered to "concernentibus" and has remained the same ever since, being carried into the English. At some time during the reign of Queen
224
Anne, the word "Anglicanae" qualifying "ecclesia" was dropped, no doubt in deference to the union between England and Scotland in 1707. After 1733 the writ was issued in English in precisely the same terms, so near as could be, as it had previously been issued in Latin, and no further changes have been made since that date.
Before advising Her Majesty that a practice so long observed and well-established should be changed, Her Majesty's Ministers would need to be satisfied that there was some real and pressing reason to alter it. I do not believe that any such reason is apparent and know of no public demand for a change. My own view is that the traditional words I have quoted are wide enough to cover, and in fact are understood to cover, the various matters about which the noble Lord is rightly concerned.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his reply—most of which I did not understand—may I ask him whether the directive is a definition of the functions of Parliament in medieval times? Has not the function of Parliament been completely transformed in the 19th century and in this century, as illustrated in our debate on the gracious Speech dealing with economic, social, and international affairs?
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I personally think that it is all covered in "the state of the realm", and very well and succinctly covered, too. But I must say that I rather echo the words of the medieval priest to whom was pointed out an error in his copy of the Mass book, "I prefer my old mumpsimus".

LAW OF THE SEA CONFERENCE
2.46 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what were the conclusions of the Law

225
of the Sea Conference which ended at Geneva on 27th April 1979.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I hope this Answer is more comprehensible to the noble Lord than the previous one. It was decided in Geneva to include, in a revised negotiating text, a number of provisions on certain key subjects which enjoyed broad support, thus bringing a convention nearer. But on deep seabed mining, and some other topics, important questions remain to be satisfactorily resolved. The Eighth Session resumes in New York from 19th July to 24th August.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I congratulate and welcome the Minister on his first reply in his post to Questions. May I ask him this: was there not general agreement at the recent conference on most issues promising a solution at the revised conference in New York in July? Was not the most controversial question that of seabed mining? Would the Government indicate to us their view of the two unresolved problems: the financing of the international authority, and the transference of technology to it?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right. One of the major issues which remains to be resolved is the question of the deep seabed régime and the mining that will take place there. The noble Lord raised, first, the financing of the mining operations. This matter really has yet to be resolved satisfactorily, but I hope that progress will be made at the resumed conference in July and August.
On the question of the transfer of resources, certainly some progress was made on that, and I shall tell the noble Lord of it now. The United Kingdom made one particular proposal which was very widely accepted; this was to offer training facilities for the personnel from developing countries so that they can assist in the operations when they come to pass. We certainly believe that the transfer of some technology is necessary so that when the convention comes into force the mining operations can begin as soon as possible.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, could the noble Lord tell the House what the attitude of the British Government is
226
going to be if in fact the United States takes unilateral action and sanctions deep-sea mining before the Law of the Sea comes into force?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, the Government are following the progress of legislation in the United States on this matter, but, as the noble Lord will know, the legislation has some way to go in the American Congress. I think that there are two measures going through, one in the Senate and one in the House of Representatives, neither of which has made much progress so far. We are certainly watching the position closely, but we have not yet reached any decision ourselves as to what we would do in similar circumstances.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, can the Minister confirm whether at the conference the United States delegate indicated that the United States would be taking unilateral action by authorising private companies to exploit seabeds? Even though they said that they would conform with an international convention, would not this give American companies an unfair advantage over other companies in advancing their proposals?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am not aware of the suggestions about the position of the United States Government in this matter. I do not think that I can do more than repeat the position as I understand it; namely, that any activities of this nature would in the United States require legislation, just as they do here, and so far the legislation has not passed the American Congress.

WAR WIDOWS' PENSIONS
2.51 p.m.
Lord CHALFONT: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what regulations govern the award of the occupational element of war widows' pensions.
The MINISTER of STATE, MINISTRY of DEFENCE (Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal): My Lords, I assume that

227
the noble Lord is referring to pensions awarded under the Armed Forces Pension scheme to the widows of Servicemen whose deaths are attributable to their service, rather than to War Widows' pensions themselves, which are awarded in the main by the Department of Health and Social Security. The relevant current Armed Forces Pension regulations were introduced on 1st April 1973. They provide for a widow's pension related only to the husband's rank, without any period of qualifying service. They provided a substantial improvement in benefit over the earlier regulations, under which there had to be in addition a minimum period of qualifying service. If the noble Lord has a particular case in mind, I shall be happy to look into it.
Lord CHALFONT: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. I have no specific case in mind; rather, it is a more general case. I should like to ask the noble Lord, by way of a supplementary question, whether the war widows, in addition to the pensions they receive under the war widows' scheme, are eligible for National Insurance scheme pensions in the same way as are other widows. More specifically—and this is the point of my question—are very old war widows (those aged over 80) eligible for the old person's pension in the same way as other widows over 80?
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I think that it would be unwise of me to try to give an ex cathedra answer in an oral manner, across the Floor of the House, to a rather complicated pensions question. Perhaps I may write to the noble Lord to give him positive guidance after I have taken advice on this question.
Lord CHALFONT: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. Perhaps it would help if I were to table a Question for Written Answer.

TANZANIA: ECONOMIC AID
2.53 p.m.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will offer special economic aid to the Government of Tanzania to help to pay the cost of Tanaznian participation in the overthrow of Amin of Uganda.
The FOREIGN SECRETARY and MINISTER FOR OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT (Lord Carrington): My Lords, it would be wrong to use development aid directly or indirectly for military purposes.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that Britain has a special responsibility in this case, in view of the obvious welcome that was given at the time to the overthrow of ex-President Obote, and bearing in mind that both President Nyerere and President Kaunda from the start condemned the racialism of ex-President Amin, as well as the fact that the world has now been rid of a dictator by the action of a very poor country? Does the noble Lord also agree that it is the duty of all members, both of the Commonwealth and of the world community, to lend that country support in the use of her treasure in a task which affects us all and which is an international obligation?
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, it is undeniable that the result of this matter was not unwelcome, but there is only a certain amount of money to go round, and I think it better if we use the money to help the poor in the underdeveloped countries.
Lord LEE of NEWTON: My Lords, is there no way in which we can assist by using the legislation on pest control?
Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTON: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us whether the President of Tanzania advised us, or asked our advice, before invading a fellow member of the Commonwealth?
Lord CARRINGTON: Not to my knowledge, my Lords; but perhaps that supplementary question would be better addressed to members of the noble Lord's own party.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, in view of what has been asked, may I inquire

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whether the incursion of Tanzanian armed forces into a contiguous country was with, or without, the invitation of the United Nations?
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, so far as I know, it was without it.
Lord ORAM: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether Her Majesty's Government will continue the policy of concentrating aid mostly in the poorest countries and for the benefit of the poorest people in those poorest countries? If that is to be the case, as I hope it will be, will not Tanzania qualify for priority in receiving aid, quite apart from the reasons advanced by my noble friend in his supplementary question?
Lord CARRINGTON: Yes, my Lords: the noble Lord is absolutely right. That is exactly what I have said, and of course we give large amounts of aid to Tanzania for the purposes of development and of relieving poverty.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, is the noble Lord surprised that countries in Southern Africa are turning to the Soviet Union, thus eliciting a phobia about Marxism which might be reduced if we helped countries like Tanzania in these circumstances?
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, as I have already said, we are helping Tanzania in the development of its economy and in aiding the poor in the underdeveloped parts of the country. I think that the aid is much better spent in that way, rather than as military aid.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, referring to the question put to the Minister from the Government Benches, may I ask whether it is not a fact that the first invasion was by Uganda into Tanzania, as would be endorsed by the High Commission in Nairobi? Furthermore, in view of the poverty of Tanzania, quite apart from military action, ought not this Government to give more aid to that country in seeking to build its new society?
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, I do not think that I have anything to add. I have made the Government's position clear; and I think that that is where we stand.

SHORT DEBATES
The LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL (Lord Soames): My Lords, the rules for the conduct of short Wednesday debates, which are set out in the Companion to Standing Orders, state that until the Whitsun Recess there should be one day set aside each month for short debates. This rule was formulated in 1972 in the context of a normal Session beginning in October. No provision was made for a Session like the present one which begins in May. Plainly, some provision should be made for short debates in the months before the Summer Recess, and, accordingly, I would propose to your Lordships that there should be two Wednesdays—one in June, and the other in July—for short debates. When the House returns after the Summer Recess, short debates will take place as usual, I would suggest, up to the Whitsun Recess of next year.
The usual channels have been consulted, and it was their view that it would be for the convenience of the House if the dates for these debates were 27th June and 18th July. The ballot for the first Wednesday will therefore be held on 13th June; that is the day after the House returns from the Whitsun Recess. This should allow sufficient time for your Lordships to table Motions which will appear in the Minute in the usual way.

DINNERS
Lord DENHAM: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of your Lordships to know that dinner will be available this evening.

DEPUTY CHAIRMEN OF COMMITTEES
The CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be appointed the panel of Lords to act as Deputy Chairmen of Committees for this Session:—

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Airdale, L.

Alport, L.

Amherst of Hackney, L.

Cathcart, E.

Champion, L.

Derwent, L.

Douglas of Barloch, L.

Hood, V.

Jacques, L.

Listowel, E.

Maybray-King, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Segal, L.

Simon, V.

Wootton of Abinger, B.—(Lord Aberdare.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES COMMITTEE
Lord ABERDARE: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to consider Community proposals, whether in draft or otherwise, to obtain all necessary information about them, and to make reports on those which, in the opinion of the Committee, raise important questions of policy or principle, and on other questions to which the Committee consider that the special attention of the House should be drawn;
That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the Lords following be named of the Committee:—

Ashby, L.

Bessborough, E.

Camoys, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Cobbold, L.

Cranbrook, E.

Crowther-Hunt, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Elles, B.

Fraser of Tullybelton, L.

Goronwy-Roberts, L.

Greenwood of Rossendale, L. (Chairman)

Kennet, L.

Murray of Gravesend, L.

Onslow, E.

Plowden, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

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Sainsbury, L.

Sandford, L.

Seear, B.

Sherfield, L.

Trevelyan, L.

Walston, L.

White, B.

That the Committee have power to appoint Sub-Committees and to refer to such Sub-Committee any of the matters within the terms of reference of the Committee; that the Committee have power to appoint the Chairmen of Sub-Committees but that such Sub-Committees have power to appoint their own Chairman for the purpose of particular inquiries; that two be the quorum of such Sub-Committees;
That the Committee have power to co-opt any Lord for the purpose of serving on a Sub-Committee;
That the Committee and any Sub-Committees have power to adjourn from place to place;
That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the Committee have leave to report from time to time;
That the Reports of the Select Committee from time to time shall be printed, not-withstanding any adjournment of the House;
That the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee or any Sub-Committee from time to time shall, if the Committee think fit, be printed and delivered out;
That the Minutes of Evidence taken before the European Communities Committee or any Sub-Committee in the last Session of Parliament be referred to the Committee;
That the Committee or any Sub-Committee appointed by them have leave to confer and to meet concurrently with any Committee of the Commons on European Legislation &c. or any Sub-Committee of that Committee for the purpose of deliberating and of examining witnesses; and have leave to agree with the Commons in the appointment of a Chairman for any such meeting; and
That any Lord requested by any Committee of the Commons on European Legislation &c. to attend as a witness

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before them or before any Sub-Committee appointed by them shall have the leave of this House so to attend, if his Lordship think fit.—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That it is desirable that a Joint Committee of both Houses be appointed to scrutinise delegated legislation.—(Lord Soames.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

ADDRESS IN REPLY TO HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH
Debate resumed on the Motion moved on Tuesday last by Lord Camoys—namely, That a humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
"Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."
3 p.m.
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, this is for me an agreeable occasion, because it is the first time for over five years that I have addressed your Lordships from this side of the House; and, although over these past five years we have become accustomed to seeing the Labour Party on this side of the House and have come to regard most of them with affection and respect, I must confess that I have even more affection and respect for them when they sit on the other side of the House. Of course, there is an added advantage: after far too long a period of deprivation, we on this side of the House can see as well as hear noble Lords on the Liberal Benches.
Over these last years the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, has spoken on
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foreign affairs for the Labour Government. Nobody could have been more courteous; nobody could have taken more trouble; nobody could evade a question with more skill, and nobody had more practice. I hope that from his great experience of foreign affairs and defence he will continue to speak on these matters in your Lordships' House; and if I can be half as courteous and as skilful as the noble Lord, I shall be content.
I have been looking at the programme which lies ahead for the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary this summer, and I began to understand why he is called the Foreign Secretary. There seem to be a plethora of international meetings abroad. Indeed, even this afternoon it will be necessary for me, with your Lordships' permission, to absent myself for a time. I hope that the House will understand if I am not as regular an attender as I would wish, and that no discourtesy to your Lordships is intended. My duty, of course, is to this House, but there will, I am afraid, be occasions when it will be impossible for me to be here; and I am happy to think that my noble friends Lord Ferrers and Lord Trefgarne will be more than competent to deal with foreign affairs in my absence. This afternoon I may talk for rather longer than was my custom when I used to sit on the other side of the House, but I think it is necessary to say a number of things on a Conservative Government coming to power which I hope will be taken note of, not only in this House but outside it.
It is not easy, I think, to speak in broad terms about foreign policy without falling into a series of platitudes. Yet over-concentration on detail, the routine world tour, lowers your Lordships' spirits while not necessarily enlightening your minds I do not expect to escape the trap entirely, but I shall at least avoid the attempt to cover all the difficult international problems which face this country at the present time. I shall concentrate, if I may, on a few principles, on a few major issues, and on a very few of the most pressing tasks which the Government will have to tackle in the weeks and months to come. I shall speak in particular about détente, about our relations with our European partners and about Southern Africa.
The foreign policy of a medium-sized industrial country like Britain has a simple

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enough objective. It is to influence the international environment so that our people can prosper in peace and security. The scope for pursuing this objective is limited by the constraints of geography, by economic circumstances, by the state of military technology, by our national traditions, by our social and political system and, indeed, by the objectives and ambitions of others. These constraints may vary slowly with the passing of time. It is very rare that they can rapidly be altered. The scope for fundamental choice is limited, and it is hardly surprising that successive British Governments have, broadly speaking, pursued similar policies abroad. Of course, those policies have been attacked over the decades, or over the centuries even, by radical critics who preferred some quite different policy: accommodation with the French Revolution; protectionism in a time of free trade; Little England in a world of interdependence.
Sometimes the accidents of politics have brought the radical critics to power. I suspect, on reading history, that they have usually quickly fallen in with the underlying principles of our external relations. After all, British interests are British interests regardless of party. Of course, a Government may be more or less successful in the conception and execution of particular policies. Matters of timing and style are not to be ignored, and failures are rightly criticised by the Opposition of the day. But the broad continuity of policy which flows from Government to Government is reassuring to our friends and allies, and discourages those who do not wish us well from trying to exploit our domestic differences. It is a source of real strength and stability.
Security is the necessary condition of all successful foreign policy, and the avoidance of war is our own prime purpose. But security has never been a matter of simple military strength alone. To effective armed forces, Britain has always sought to add a network of alliances with her friends, while pursuing better understandings with her potential enemies as well; and the appalling destructiveness of modern weapons had added new urgency to the pursuit of arms limitation.
These considerations condition the Government's approach to the linked issues
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of détente, defence and arms control; and my noble friend Lord Strathcona will speak at the end of this debate about the Government's intention to strengthen the British contribution to NATO, which is and will remain—and it hardly needs to be said—the basis of our defence arrangements. None of us wishes to bear the burden of unnecessary defence expenditure, or to seek confrontation where it can be avoided. But, while the military balance in Europe continues to turn against us, we have no choice but to do what is necessary to maintain our defensive arrangements with our allies.
To match these defensive arrangements, we need to negotiate arms control measures which maintain the balance of security at a lower level of risk and a lower level of expense. There is no contradiction in that. Unless our military arrangements are convincing, there can be no real bargain to strike between the opposing forces, and no sensible way of negotiating security at a lower level of military confrontation. The Conservative Party has long supported a prudent limitation of strategic arms. We look forward to the early signature and ratification of the SALT II Treaty. We are participating constructively in the negotiations for a comprehensive test ban treaty and mutual and balanced force reductions in Europe. But we shall not lose sight of the need for balance. Arms control arrangements which are not carefully worked out in detail, and which favour one side rather than another, in the end contribute neither to our own security nor to the peace of the world as a whole. Of course, détente is the political facet of this complex of security issues. To live in a world free from the threat of catastrophe is obviously the ambition of us all. There is no country whose people would not profit from a relaxation of military, political and ideological tension, from the growth of trade, and from the exchange of ideas and people. But the obligation to work for a relaxation of tensions is mutual. It cannot be selective. It must apply to all parts of the world, and to all countries; not just the super Powers, not just to Europe. It is with this in mind that we approach our relations with the Soviet Union. We shall look at the totality of the policies which the Soviet Union pursues at home, in Europe and further afield, but our firm intention is to work

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for a stable and a mutually advantageous relationship with the Soviet Union.
If our security rests on partnership with our allies in NATO, our political strength and our economic well-being now rest equally on our relationship with our friends and neighbours in Europe. That relationship has been neither simple nor free from trouble in recent years. One does not want to go too far back in history but in the 1950s we all of us failed, or nearly all of us failed, to realise the significance and originality of the political experiment on which the members of the newly-created Community were then embarking. The omission was remedied by Mr. Harold Macmillan in 1961, who realised to the full that the future of Britain must lie in Europe, and that the future of Europe would increasingly govern the events which will unfold in the world over the remainder of this century and beyond.
But our application for membership was twice rejected, while the Community worked out policies on finance, agriculture and fisheries which naturally took no account of British interests. The process of mutual adaptation between the Six and ourselves when we finally joined the Community would thus, in any case, have been complicated. I must say frankly that it would have been eased by the wholehearted commitment of the British Government to the common political purposes of the Community. This commitment was not forthcoming. Instead, for five years the last Government tried the patience of our partners by the suspicious way they approached even the simplest and most constructive proposals for common Community action. It is hardly surprising that they were not heard when they drew attention to the serious weaknesses in some of the Community's policies and called for their reform.
By contrast, the Government today are determined to engage actively with our partners in developing the Community in the interests of all its members. We believe that it is in this co-operative framework that we can best construct a Europe in which future generations can live and prosper. We welcome the enlargement of the Community to include Greece, Portugal and Spain, and next month's direct elections to the European Parliament, as signs of the Community's willingness
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and ability to accept new challenges and thus to demonstrate its continuing political dynamism.
Having said that, the healthy development of the Community is subject to one essential condition. It must reflect a broad balance of the aspirations and interests of each of its members, and match the rights and obligations of all of them. By this, I do not mean that each should expect to get out of the Community exactly what he puts in. The Community is more than the sum of its parts, and there are many intangible benefits which far outweigh the costs. But the present balance of the Community's policies does not meet this basic condition. It produces serious anomalies which it must be in the long-term interest of the whole Community to rectify.
The pattern of payments through the Community's budget illustrates this point perhaps clearest of all. Already the United Kingdom is paying far too high a share of net contributions to the Community budget. Depending upon how one calculated it, either we will be the largest contributor or the second largest contributor; even though, in terms of per capita income and GNP, we are only seventh. Next year our net contribution could reach more than £1,000 million. And there are substantial resource costs as well, which do not show up in the budgetary figures. These enormous sums must be reduced.
My Lords, we are not alone in these disadvantages, Italy, a poorer country than ourselves, makes a net contribution almost as great. This is quite contrary to the Community's aim of bringing about a greater convergence of economic performance between its members. This is sufficient evidence of a serious weakness in the Common Market agricultural policy, which accounts for by far the largest proportion of the financial transfers within the Community. The Government will aim to reform the operations of the Common Agricultural Policy to the benefit of all concerned. The immediate and overriding aim is to eliminate costly and unwanted surpluses. The Commission have themselves pointed the way with their proposal for freezing prices. Thereafter we shall look for the development of policies which balance more successfully than hitherto the interests of the Community's

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consumers with the legitimate interests of the Community's farmers, our own included among them.
On these agricultural issues, as in the discussions over the Community's fisheries policy, we recognise that our partners, too, have a great deal at stake, and that it cannot be easy to modify the compromises they hammered out with so much difficulty during the period of our exclusion from the Community. But we believe that they recognise that mutually satisfactory solutions are needed if the Community is to prosper. We also believe that they will respond to the sort of attitudes which we adopt which are both constructive and, I hope, persuasive.
My colleagues and I have already begun bilateral and multilateral talks with the President of the Commission and our ministerial colleagues in the other States. And in June the Prime Minister will meet the other heads of the European Governments in Strasbourg, where she will be able to set out our position at the highest political level.
My Lords, I assured you that I would not engage in a comprehensive tour d'horizon, and I will not do so. But before turning to the problems of Southern Africa, I should touch briefly, very briefly, on some aspects of Asia and on the Middle East. First, we recognise the importance of our relationship with Japan, the second largest industrialised democracy in the world. I shall be accompanying the Prime Minister to Tokyo next month and, if your Lordships will allow me, I look forward later this afternoon to having discussions with the Foreign Minister of Japan. Secondly, one of the most welcome developments of recent years has been the improvement of our relations with China. A stable and prosperous China contributes to international stability. In building our political and commercial links with China, we shall not, of course, overlook areas where our policies diverge. Nor shall we allow our relations with China to complicate, or be complicated by, our relations with other States in Asia—such as those in the increasingly important grouping of ASEAN—or beyond that.
Events in the Middle East affect vitally Europe and the rest of the world. I
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believe that our contribution to a settlement of the Arab-Israel dispute can be made most effectively in co-operation with the United States and the Nine countries of Europe. We welcome the recent Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel. But it is only a partial step towards a comprehensive settlement and a solution of the Palestinian problem; and the Palestinian problem lies at the very heart of the issue. The objective here must be full and genuine autonomy for these areas as a step towards determining their final status. Nothing would do more to help these negotiations, to build trust in the area, and to win the consent of the Palestinians than for Israel to cease the expansion of its settlements in the occupied territories.
Finally, I turn to Southern Africa and to the two crucial and related problems of Namibia and Rhodesia. They are related because if we can achieve an internationally recognised independence for Namibia and Rhodesia, then we may set a pattern for peaceful progress in Southern Africa; but if we fail, the prospect of bloodshed in Southern Africa and damaging implications much further afield will be grave. It is for this reason that in the case of Namibia the Government believe that the best solution remains the implementation of the Five's proposal for elections under United Nations' supervision, that will lead to independence in the conditions which I have described. We are consulting our partners in the Five Western Powers about ways of overcoming the remaining obstacles—and they are formidable. I have asked Mr. Luce, the Member for Shoreham, to visit Lusaka, Cape Town and Windhoek during the coming week to learn at first hand about the remaining problems, and to find out from those most directly concerned how they see the chances of making progress towards a peaceful settlement. He will be leaving tonight and will be able to report sometime towards the end of next week.
In Rhodesia we face a new situation which requires a new approach. Our predecessors, with respect, sought to make the facts fit their policies: we shall ensure that our policies fit the facts. And the facts are that there has been a fundamental change inside Rhodesia. There has been an election in which every adult man and

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woman has been enabled to cast a vote in a nation-wide election. There is now an African majority in Parliament and there is soon to be an African majority in Government also. Successive British Governments have acknowledged their responsibility in Rhodesia. That responsibility is moral as well as political and it would be morally wrong to brush aside an election in which 64 per cent. of the people of Rhodesia cast their vote.
It is our duty, as we made clear before the general election, to respect the wishes of the people of Rhodesia. We acknowledged the importance of what was about to take place when the Prime Minister, as Leader of the Opposition, asked my noble friend Lord Boyd of Merton to go to Rhodesia with a number of other colleagues to observe the election there. My noble friend presented this report to the Prime Minister last week. We are studying it and I have read it. I shall hope to arrange shortly for copies, together with copies of the report by Mr. John Drinkwater, QC, (who was also with my noble friend) to be made available to your Lordships. I shall also be studying the report of the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, who I know took a different view of the elections from my noble friend.
My Lords, I am sure that, when you read my noble friend's report, and that of Mr. Drinkwater, your Lordships will agree with me in thanking my noble friend Lord Boyd and his colleagues for the thorough, skilful and impartial way in which they carried out their task. Because his report has not yet been published—and it will be published—my noble friend has decided not to take part in the debate, though if he has enough stamina he will listen to all of it and will of course be able to give your Lordships an account of his views in your future discussions of the matter.
In the meantime, I think your Lordships would wish to be clear that, with certain reservations, my noble friend and his colleagues come to the conclusion that the election in Rhodesia was fair in the sense that the electoral machinery was fairly conducted, that it was as free as was possible in the circumstances in Rhodesia, and that in his and his colleagues' judgment the result represented the wishes of the majority of the electorate in that country.
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The Government will be guided by his conclusions in seeking to build on the progress which has already been made in Rhodesia. They reinforce our aim and our determination to return Rhodesia to legality in conditions of peace and of wide international recognition. In the first few days of the new Government, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and I sent a very senior official to Salisbury to talk to Bishop Muzorewa about his plans and ours for achieving our objectives. These discussions must, at any rate for the time being, remain confidential; but I can say that Bishop Muzorewa welcomed the visit of Sir Antony Duff and our obvious wish to play a role which will help him when he takes over as Prime Minister in the new Government.
That was an important first step. The next step must be to keep ourselves fully informed of developments in Salisbury, and to be able to engage in a continuing dialogue with Bishop Muzorewa and his Government and others in Salisbury. For too many years we have had no adequate means of informing ourselves of the situation in Rhodesia or indeed of exercising a direct influence on the course of events. Occasional visits, in my judgment, are not enough. I have therefore decided to send a senior official to Salisbury to stay there for as long as necessary to maintain and develop the closest possible contact with Bishop Muzorewa and his colleagues and to report to me, travelling between London and Salisbury as often as the need arises. I am sure the House will welcome this announcement as an important step in establishing continuing contact and confidence in Salisbury.
My Lords, it is vital for Rhodesia that she should be able to live at peace with her neighbours and, as a landlocked country, trade with them and with the international community. Britain has the constitutional responsibility for Rhodesia, but that gives us an added duty: to exercise our constitutional prerogative in the most responsible way we can, in a way that will bring real and lasting benefit to Rhodesia.
Rhodesia's greatest need is for peace in which to build a more prosperous future for her people of all races, and to play the part for which her skills and her

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natural resources equip her in helping to develop the economies of neighbouring countries. It is our responsibility to try to bring Rhodesia to legal independence in conditions which will afford that country the prospect of a more peaceful future.
To that end it will be our objective to achieve a return to legality in conditions of the widest possible international recognition. It is by those means that we shall best be able to contribute to a more secure future for Rhodesia and the Rhodesian people. It is for this reason that the Government have embarked on a process of discussion with our partners and allies about developments in Rhodesia, in order to consult them and to achieve the wide basis of recognition which we seek.
I was glad to be able to start these consultations myself when I met my colleagues in the European Community 10 days ago. Yesterday I had talks with the United States Secretary of State, Mr. Vance, and I shall be talking to him again tomorrow. I attach special importance to the closest possible consultations with our partners in the Commonwealth. The Government accordingly intend to arrange for a high-level emissary to travel to Africa in the very near future to talk to the Commonwealth and other African Governments most directly concerned. This is an essential part of fulfilling our commitment to the people of this country and to those of Rhodesia.
I think your Lordships may agree that in two weeks we have taken a number of initiatives, all of which have one overriding aim; namely, the fulfilment of the wishes of the people of Rhodesia as a whole who for too long had been deprived of their rights and who now have a unique opportunity to join the international community as members of a free nation. That, I believe, is what 64 per cent. of the people of Rhodesia voted for last month, and it is our duty to respond to their wish. Our overriding aim, as I have said, is a return to legality. But the people of Rhodesia have also voted for peace in which to build a more prosperous future in which all races can play their part. The steps which I have announced, following Sir Antony Duff's visit to Salisbury and his consultation with Bishop Muzorewa, will, I believe, be seen as the
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first significant steps towards a return to legality in conditions of the widest possible international recognition, and thus to the achievement of a settlement of the Rhodesian problem, which will be not only acceptable but welcome to, and welcomed with relief by, the Rhodesian people.
I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Paget, has an Amendment to the debate on the Address, and I am aware, of course, having been in your Lordships' House for some years, that there are others who feel as he does. I would say only this to him in the light of my previous remarks. I should have thought, from what I have said, that he would see that the Government have fully accepted the commitments which they made in the Manifesto which was published at the beginning of the general election. We have already taken a number of steps towards implementing those undertakings. I hope your Lordships will understand not only the complexity of the problem which faces the incoming Government—or, indeed, any Government, because it would have faced noble Lords opposite if they had won the election—but, also, the need to carry international opinion with us, just as much for Rhodesia's sake as for our own. Your Lordships would, if I may say so, be doing no service whatever to this in seeking to force a Division on this matter so early in the life of this Parliament. Indeed, it is under three weeks since this Government took office. There will, of course, be other occasions in the not too distant future when this matter will inevitably be discussed, and I welcome that. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord will not press his Amendment, or, even better, will make a splendid speech and will not move it, in the light of what I have said.
Today as always in our foreign policy, though perhaps even more so in our changed circumstances, we find prosperity and security in co-operation with others in the international organisations and bilateral relationships in which we have chosen freely to participate. We do not seek to increase our influence by claiming a role beyond our power; and our power depends to a very large extent on the strength of our economy. We do not seek to intervene in the quarrels of others. We do not believe that we enhance our reputation by shirking our responsibilities

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when we find them irksome, or contracting our activity in those organisations to which we belong because we find that we have obligations as well as rights. We neither believe that we should inflate our claims for influence or opt out of the world in the way that some, in recent years, have urged us to do.
I remember many years ago listening in this House to a speech made by the late Lord Keyes, and he said this:
"It is not our past performance or our present weakness but our future prospects of recovery and our intention to face the world boldly that we have to demonstrate".
I am content to let that statement and sentiment stand for today.
3.34 p.m.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, my first and most agreeable task, of course, is to congratulate most warmly the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, on his appointment and to wish him well in his most difficult task. He certainly brings to his great office qualities of the highest order; in particular, wide experience and balanced judgment. He will be confronted by problems of an unimaginable complexity, where judgment as to the balance of consequences is vital to their solution. There are certainly, so far as I can see, no foreign or security questions which are susceptible of simplistic solutions by extremism. We on these Benches will not indulge in fractious criticism, because we believe that there is a very large expanse of common ground in foreign and Commonwealth questions, and in relation to defence and security. That is not a matter of reproach but of reassurance, that a country should find the largest possible amount of common ground among the parties on those two fundamental matters. Indeed, it is when that common ground is seriously eroded, or even tends to disappear, as in the 1930s and during the Suez adventure, that this country, and democracy itself, is in its greatest peril. So we shall do our best not only to maintain the common ground and that continuity of which the noble Lord spoke, but, if possible, to expand that ground.
If he and the Government approach these great issues in a constructive and progressive spirit, we shall be glad to support them. But we shall not hesitate
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to denounce forthrightly any signs of a take-over of the foreign policy of this country by reactionary and extremist elements, which are latent and sometimes rampant in the party opposite. So that we shall, as Her Majesty's loyal Opposition, watch very carefully the development of the foreign, as well as the internal, policy of the new Government.
The noble Lord—quite rightly, in my view—concentrated on the outstanding issues that confront this country, and indeed the democratic West, and first in importance, at least to us on this side, is the question of arms control and disarmament. We very strongly welcome the Government's decision to support the early ratification of Salt II. It was a most welcome early statement on his part, and I am sure that it has given President Carter great encouragement in his magnificent efforts to make a reality, through ratification, of Salt II. Beyond the ratification of Salt II lies the greater possibilities of Salt III, but beyond the non-ratification of Salt II lies the probability of a new and even more disastrous nuclear arms race in the future.
We also agree entirely with the Government in pressing forward for the completion of a comprehensive test ban treaty. I have had a little to do with this, and at this point may I pay a tribute to the Diplomatic Service, to the Foreign Office officials and experts, who, with the Russian and American experts, have been engaged in these vital discussions. The fact that there may well be an imminent possibility of agreement, certainly before the end of this year, owes a great deal to the British input from our Foreign Office, from our experts, to the discussions which have been proceeding. But I would add this. Our technicians are superb, but it is necessary for political direction, and sometimes political pressure, to be placed upon even the most expert of technicians, especially military technicians, military experts, and it would be a great pity if this very important treaty were to be diluted by excessive reservation based upon technical and military considerations. There is here room for political inputs at this time. This comprehensive test ban treaty will not only be a valuable addition to the safeguards against nuclear testing in the environment but will also encourage the countries of the world as they approach the Non-Proliferation

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Review Conference. The noble Lord quite rightly reminded us that in the next few months, and indeed in the next year or so, a great many important international conferences—executive conferences taking decisions—will be held; and we certainly will sympathise with his need to absent himself from the House in order to promote those great purposes.
Among the most important, of course, is the Review Conference on Non-Proliferation. Proliferation is already a fact. It is not only the five almost traditional nuclear powers that have the capacity: today we have to admit that India, Pakistan, Iraq, Argentine, Brazil, Taiwan, South Korea, Israel and the South African Republic all, in varying degrees, have the technical capacity. So proliferation is proceeding and has been proceeding for some time. The Review Conference must therefore fasten on to this fact and endeavour to arrest the spread of nuclear weapons and to achieve a new concentration on the exchange of peaceful nuclear technology.
The Foreign Secretary knows of course that what we must try to do here is to get the nuclear weapons States to curb their own vertical proliferation in order to persuade the non-nuclear weapons States to curb their horizontal proliferation. It is a straight swap of policies. If we can devise, as a result of the Review Conference, a new régime of restriction of warlike usage and an expansion of the peaceful exchange of technology, then indeed, together with the comprehensive test ban, we shall possibly be ushering in a new era in the nuclear age.
I will say nothing about defence because the noble Lord did not address himself specifically to that point. I would simply say that we adhere to NATO. We are one of 17 countries and we believe in collective security, as indeed they do in the Warsaw Pact. Until there is mutual agreement that both alliances will wither away, if I may permit myself a Leninism for the moment, we shall stand by and make our full proportionate contribution to NATO; but we shall resist any suggestion from that side of the House that, although we are—do I recall the figure rightly?—only the seventh most prosperous country in Europe, we should contribute rather more than the six who
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precede us, to NATO costs. It does not follow. If we are only seventh in our economic performance, why should we be second in our military contribution? It will need a good deal of explanation, through White Papers and otherwise, to persuade us that this is a logical position to assume, but, as to our commitment to NATO, there is absolutely no doubt on this side of the House.
I pass on now to what the noble Lord said about the European Community. I do reject what he said about the attitude of the Labour Government towards the Community, and I say so in the presence of at least one distinguished Minister who performed on behalf of this country and in the larger interests of Europe with great distinction; that is, the noble Lord, Lord Peart, a fellow Front-Bencher. There is also the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, whose standing in the European Parliament. I think, would be second to none, especially on budgetary and financial matters, which represent the heart of the matter concerning us. I do reject the suggestion that somehow the Labour Government, because they were blunt and forthright over British interests, were poorer Europeans than the rest. I do hope that the Latter Day Saints, as the party opposite are in this matter, having criticised and jibed at us because we stood up for British interests, and having made some mileage out of it, now that they are face to face with the realities they too are going to be tough and they too declare that they will not be "soft touches". Well, I hope so, because unless we speak with absolute clarity to our friends and allies in Europe we shall get nothing out of them. They are hard-headed businessmen: you must prove your point and you must stand by it. Style will not do it. One hears these fashionable phrases since the Kennedy era—somehow style will do it. What style is that of the present Prime Minister and Mr. Heseltine—or the style of abject courtesy—when the issue is equity and fair dealing?
I was very glad to hear the language used by the noble Lord this afternoon. He sounded to me as if he meant business. I very much hope that he does, because, as a long-standing European myself and as one who grew up in the 'thirties and realises the vital importance of political unity in Europe, I would say that you will

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not get it unless the economics of it make sense. I would very much deplore the re-emergence of the issue of whether this country remains in the Community, simply because we had not the "nous" to get the sums right. If the summum bonum of political unity in Europe—and it is a pearl almost beyond price—is to be achieved, then we really must show to our own people and to a growing number of people in Europe that the economic arrangements of the Community are reasonable and sensible. They are not now.
I pass on to another point made with great force by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. He referred to the question of the Middle East. Very briefly, I will say that we stand four-square by Resolution 242, and if you wish to add No. 338 to it, by all means to so. That refers to a balance of the right of Israel not only to survival but to security, plus the right of the Palestinians to a homeland and to be able to look forward to self-determination over the next few years. I think I understand the approach of the noble Lord to this: I think it is right and I hope to support him in it.
He then quite rightly referred to the Tokyo Summit. I am very glad he is accompanying the Prime Minister to that Summit. It is, of course, the usual thing to do. It promises to be possibly one of the most significant Summits so far held. I also welcome his reference to ASEAN. I do claim a little credit for the Labour Government for having discerned from the start the significance of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, ASEAN. We supported and helped it, without intruding, giving advice and encouragement. This Association, which covers a very significant as well as a very large part of South-East Asia, is a very promising development indeed. We wish them every good fortune in the future. I am sure the noble Lord will wish to continue that policy of total support to ASEAN without in any way impinging upon their own sovereignty. We have many friends in South-East Asia, and we should keep them and make many more there.
The noble Lord then referred to the problems of Rhodesia and Namibia. On Namibia, I can only say that we agree. We agree entirely that the approach
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to the Namibian question is on the lines which he has described, so I shall not detain the House on that point.
Turning to Rhodesia, I was very gratified to see the noble Lord on the television screen; he is so very telegenic. But, more than that, he spoke with great statesmanship, at an early point after his appointment, on this question of Rhodesia. I think the House is agreed that we want to see Rhodesia, under whatever name—and I myself rather like the name "Rhodesia"—proceed legally through the various stages that may be necessary to independence, hopefully within the Commonwealth, and as a country in which majority rule is a fact and where people of all colours, creeds and interests are able to make their contribution proportionate to their numbers and requirements.
It is a temptation, I know, in many parts of the House—and no doubt in the other place—to accept the existing régime because it has moved forward a certain distance, and to accept the recent elections as a basis for a far bigger thing than is represented by the movements forward in the last year or so or by most recent elections. It is a very big thing indeed to accord recognition and to lift sanctions without making absolutely sure not only that are you carrying the peoples of Rhodesia with you but also that you are carrying with you the peoples of black Africa. In the consultations which the noble Lord has said he has already started—and I profoundly wish him well in those consultations—I hope he will pay particular regard to what is said in Africa, for it is their continent below the Sahara line and above the Zambesi, certainly, and what they say and feel in that part of Africa must count. You cannot go against the feeling there.
Also, of course, it is necessary, as the noble Lord has said, to consult the Commonwealth. I have sometimes thought that the party opposite has become increasingly indifferent to the Commonwealth in the last few years—that having a fling with the new love in Europe meant that they could forget about the old. I have two loves. It is the European tradition upon which much of the Commonwealth is based, and it would be very shortsighted indeed to make a dichotomy between the Commonwealth and Europe. They flow from the same source.

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I am delighted, therefore, that the noble Lord said that he will consult the Commonwealth specifically. He will need to do so, for they will be consulting him in Lusaka in the next two months or so. He had better have his answers ready for the Commonwealth—and not just for the black but for the coloured Commonwealth and also for Australia and Canada, who feel just as deeply as any Commonwealth member from Africa about these matters. The noble Lord will need, of course, to keep in line with our European partners. Part of the promising political co-operation between this country and our eight friends and allies in the Community is on Rhodesia, and is on Africa.
I believe that the noble Lord will need to consult many industrialists in this country and to avoid, in prematurely lifting sanctions against Rhodesia, running the risk of having the whole of Africa apply sanctions against us, because we have trade of the order of £1,300 million a year with black Africa—more than twice that which we have with the South African Republic. So caution and consultation must be the key to a durable solution of this long-standing problem.
As I have said, we wish the noble Lord well. I hesitate to speak too admiringly of him, in case he should then find that he is in bad odour with his own side. However, I had personal experience of the noble Lord as the Leader of the Opposition when I was a Minister, and, in addition to the qualities which I have already mentioned, I should like to say that the noble Lord combines intellect and integrity. He has the intellect to understand difficult problems and the integrity to speak about them and to try to solve them with complete honesty.
3.56 p.m.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, I have always found it rather difficult to compose a speech on this particular occasion. It is customary, I think, to refer in two or three sentences to some of the most appalling problems which now confront not only the world but our unfortunate Government, so I imagine that some kind of tour d'horizon is inevitable. I propose to make one—but very shortly—and then to dwell at rather greater length on one or two of the great general problems to which the Foreign Secretary referred.
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First may I say that we Liberals are most glad that these appalling problems will now be dealt with by a man who, by reason of his experience and his very nature, is eminently qualified to cope with them. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has won our respect by coming out at the very beginning of his term of office with a statement in favour of our commitment to Europe. We must hope that this enthusiasm will persist. Unfortunately, not all of the noble Lord's colleagues are equally committed to the European idea. In particular, it is questionable how many of them will favour the gradual emergence in Western Europe of a genuine political community. I propose to say a word or two about that later. At this point, may I say that we Liberals would contest the noble Lord's view that it was Mr. Harold Macmillan who was the first man to suggest that we should go into Europe. It was the Liberal leaders immediately after the war who had that honour, and they have maintained that position ever since.
Now let me say a word about China. Recent events in that huge country have been fascinating and, on the whole, encouraging. Napoleon once said:
"C'est un géant qui dort: Laisse le dormir".
However, the giant has now woken up with a vengeance and is intending, if possible, to emulate other countries which have, with various degrees of success, followed the example of Europe and tried to raise their standard of living by industrialising themselves on Western lines. The difficulty is that a process which has taken 200 years to develop in Europe and North America is just not going to produce the same results elsewhere in 10 or even 20 years. Japan is an example of more or less successful industrialisation within a comparatively short period, but even there it took about 100 years. Just look at what has happened in Iran. Just look at what may happen in Indonesia, in the Philippines and even in Brazil if modernisation is too quickly pushed forward. And all this at a moment when even the long-term advantages of industrialisation are being widely questioned in the West, and when the ecologists, with some reason, are pointing to the likely fearful consequences of the destruction of the great rain forests—which, at present rates of felling, are likely to disappear totally by the end of the century—or of the

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pollution of the air and the oceans by the exploitation of the earth's petroleum resources, which in any case are not inexhaustible.
As regards China, therefore, I hope that they will not push industrialisation too fast. The chances are that they will—and I hope that they will—still maintain the bulk of their enormous population on the land, while increasing the standard of living in the communes: mechanising them, no doubt, to an extent but not following the example of Europe in the nature of the industrialisation which they intend to attain. Anyhow, I am sure that the new régime will gradually become more liberal in outlook, though a completely free economy is clearly out of the question. Nevertheless, as the Foreign Secretary said, it is clearly in our interest to get on the best terms with the Chinese Government and I am sure that he is well qualified to do so. What I believe is certain is that the new Chinese Government, apart from industrialisation, are determined to make sure that China somehow counts in the world and can no longer be pushed about as it was in the past by the great Powers as a sort of corpus vile. I think this was mainly the reason for their recent action in Vietnam, a country which was responsible not only for expelling hundreds of thousands of Chinese in pretty horrible circumstances but also for committing aggression in violation of its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations, against a country which, however dreadful its régime, was, strategically at any rate, an ally of China.
As for Cambodia, this seems to be the supreme example of total inhumanity —often referred to as "social engineering". Taken over by wretched peasants, led by half-baked intellectuals who had only apparently learned from a few months' study of Marx that it was necessary to eliminate the bourgeoisie, about a fifth of the entire Cambodian population was massacred simply because they could read and write and lived in towns. No sooner had this crime been perpetrated, to the great apparent satisfaction of much of the so-called Third World, than the unspeakable régime was overthrown by another, almost equally uncivilised, that is now trying to run it on totalitarian lines in co-operation with Moscow. We can only hope that the social cancer will not
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spread westward to Thailand and Burma or southwards to Malaysia. Here I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, in thinking that there is great hope in the successful development of the ASEAN group of nations. Perhaps now that China is freeing herself from totalitarian ideology—at any rate to a considerable extent—she will play a restraining rather than an activating role in this great world development.
But are we, after all, witnessing the famous "Domino" process predicted by the late John Foster Dulles if Vietnam was lost to the West? In our pessimistic moments we might well think so. The Indian sub-continent can hardly be said to be very stable at the moment, more particularly Pakistan. Afghanistan is already more or less in Soviet hands, or at any rate the Government is; Iran is in turmoil; the Gulf Arab States are deeply apprehensive; Turkey seems often to be on the verge of collapse, and it is clear that unless there is real progress towards a general settlement, necessarily involving some concessions by Israel on Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and, above all, the West Bank, which seems highly improbable, the maintenance of a pro-Western Government in Egypt can only be assured (as we must all hope it will be) by really massive injections of Western, and presumably American, finance. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, is nodding his head.
We must certainly recognise that Russia may profit from all this confusion to exert her power over the Eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean where, as we know, she has already secured good bases for her new and very formidable navy. But that is not certain and it is good, after all, to consider what it may all look like from what is called "the other side of the hill". After all, the formation of revolutionary Moslem States extending from Istanbul to Islamabad, even if they were not pro-Western, could only represent a potential danger to the Soviet Union in view of the possible effect on the Soviet colonies in Central Asia.
Some crack-up or some dissolution of the existing States would no doubt be preferable from the Soviet point of view; but this is not certain, and with luck, and no doubt if the West—and this is a point

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on which I hope the Foreign Secretary will agree—and notably Europe, pursues a co-ordinated policy of aid (this was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts) not military, but rather industrial and social—ploughshares, as it were, taking the place of swords—then I think there is a reasonable chance that it will not happen.
Take Iran only. It is indeed quite possible that the State will now collapse, the non-Farsi speaking periphery splitting off and the semi-industrialised centre and south coming under some kind of Communist control. But if what might be called the "mild Mullahs" as opposed to the "mad Mullahs", perhaps, have their way—and we must do all we can to encourage them—a peaceful 'shia State may still emerge and build itself up on the still huge revenues derived from oil. Perhaps we may have an opportunity to discuss these great matters later on, before the end of the Session?
In Africa, too, the Western position is not hopeless. It is true that the Russians, formidably assisted by their Cuban allies, seem to have established themselves in Angola, and in Ethiopia almost certainly; but now that the monstrous Amin has somehow faded out, the Eastern side of the Continent, broadly speaking, seems inclined to resist Communist pressure, as does the immense Zaire and, most important, Nigeria.
Yet over the whole continent, and whether we like it or not, there broods the spectre of apartheid, and however much we may protest that the era of white domination is over, this is something which, as it were, haunts our relations with the new African nations and just will not go away. It is, indeed, the suspicion that white rule will simply be perpetuated under another form—and however genuine and well conducted the recent elections in Rhodesia may have been, it is still the great difficulty so far as the West is concerned—which stands in the way of a happy and, above all, an accepted settlement in Rhodesia. This is a subject which I myself think it is obvious that we should be ill-advised to discuss today in any detail until the Foreign Secretary has completed his talks with Mr. Cyrus Vance and we have all had time to consider the
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implications of the Boyd and other reports which we have not yet read.
Leaving the tour d'horizon, I should like to say just a few words about defence and Europe, because after all the two cannot be dissociated—a sentiment which, from what she has said, is presumably shared by our Prime Minister. On defence the chief event is obviously the apparent agreement between the Russians and the Americans on SALT II. If it is signed, as I am sure it will be, we must assume that the American experts are satisfied that strategically, in other words as regards missiles which reach the heart of the two super Powers, there is (a) a substantial parity, and (b) adequate means of inspecting and verifying the carrying out of the treaty. Presumably it must also be assumed that in the opinion of our chief ally the means of retaliating effectively after a potential first strike on the part of the adversary are so great that they will constitute a really effective deterrent to any such action.
I suggest that we should be well advised to take the word of the administration on all this. After all, they are cautious and sensible men. But there does remain the fact that even after the conclusion of the treaty the Soviet Government will continue to maintain an array of formidable mobile medium range nuclear weapons of enormous force, trained on Europe, to which there will be no means of replying, save by employing either the Poseidon weapons allocated to SACEUR or the main strategic weapons of America, or even of Britain and France, which, if employed, would obviously be the start of a general nuclear escalation.
While, therefore, the possible use by NATO of so-called tactical nuclear weapons to check any Soviet advance would probably result in a corresponding use of Soviet tactical weapons—there is no reason to suppose it would not—there would be no very profitable means, to say the least, of retaliating against some major attack by the Soviet Union on a Western European city, presumably in the Bundesrepublik or the Low Countries, since a Soviet attack on United Kingdom or French territory would probably entail the obliteration of at any rate some Soviet towns, even if only submarine missiles were employed.
The question, therefore, is: Should such very accurate weapons as the cruise

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missile be deployed in Western Europe in order to make up the deficiency? To this question I should hope the answer will be, yes. Perhaps the noble Lord who winds up will say whether the answer to that question is yes or no? None of this, if we go in for this kind of policy, should affect détente. I agree that détente depends essentially on some kind of agreement being come to not only on strategic nuclear but also on conventional weapons, in fact perhaps more especially some agreement being reached in Vienna on MBFR. But until such time as agreement is reached, in my view détente will be very much an illusion.
Whether the United Kingdom strategic deterrent should be brought up to date is another burning question. If we can rely on the Americans remaining in force in Europe for such time as the Russians constitute an obvious threat, it is arguable —I only say "arguable"—that the billions necessary for renewing our own strategic nuclear deterrent might be better spent on reinforcing BAOR with the latest conventional weapons and on building up our own hunter-killer submarines, for example, and our general aerial defence in order to guard against defeat in a conventional war, because a conventional war is always a conceivable thing, or even to act as a deterrent against a conventional war—another aspect. Personally I should like to see this sort of option argued out by experts in Lord Shinwell's defence committee with the intervention of Peers specially qualified to join in the debate, and surely we have many here. Just as war is too serious a matter to be left to the generals, so nuclear strategy—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, said something of the kind—is too serious a matter to be left to nuclear experts. I think also things like the test ban treaty and the non-proliferation treaty might equally well be discussed in that committee.
Lastly, my Lords, Europe. I do not know whether your Lordships heard the other day on the radio the voice of Franz Joseph Strauss. He explained that the Germans, while not expecting the new directly elected Parliament to have any very great new power, at any rate to start with, had a great belief in its role as a sort of catalyst for European unity and were all taking it very seriously. In France, though unfortunately the
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elections have been caught up in domestic political struggles, there is also the feeling that direct elections do mark a new and potentially revolutionary change. In both countries, and in Italy too, they are being taken most seriously, and many famous parliamentarians look forward to playing a significant role. Not so, for the moment, at any rate, in Britain, where it seems a very low poll is expected—I hope not, but it seems expected—and that out of 81 British members probably 50 to 55 will be Tories, the great majority of whom, though no doubt excellent people, will never have had any political experience at all. I therefore hope that, no doubt under the impulse of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, the Government will now make a great effort to explain to the people not only what the importance of the Parliament is likely to be, but what they conceive to be the ultimate nature of the political community which we are now presumably on the way to creating, whether we like it or not.
We shall of course, have an opportunity of discussing this subject in detail tomorrow on the Motion of my noble friend Lord Banks. So I will conclude by reiterating once again my own firm belief that it is only in European unity that we can all, in the long run, in this part of the world avoid becoming satellites of the Soviet Union. If we believe this, and I am sure that many Tories do believe it, it just makes no sense to go bumbling on, "pragmatically" as the saying is, with a system in which common decisions must always depend on complete unanimity, and which therefore in practice can seldom be taken, or at least taken in time. To paraphrase the immortal words of Nurse Cavell, "Pragmatism is not enough". It is not a question of abandoning our famous sovereignty, it is simply a question of sharing it; it is not a question of one member of the Community dominating it, it is a question of arriving at a general will as opposed to individual wills.
If we, as I think some people in this House would like, go on simply pressing our own view, our own desiderata, and without consideration of the views of anybody else, I do not think we are going to get far. If we are to arrive at any common will it must be by concessions by everybody to somebody else's point of view; otherwise the system cannot work. My Lords, unless these truths are

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understood and accepted, the future of the democracies in our part of a world rent by divisions of race, creed and colour and the victim of cyclical depressions, is likely to be unpleasant, and they will probably not remain democracies for very long. Cassandra was never popular, but had she been heeded the Greeks would not have won the Trojan War.
4.17 p.m.
Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTONhad given notice of his intention to move as an amendment to the above Motion, at end to insert:—
("but, whilst welcoming Your Majesty's Government's intention to bring about a lasting settlement with Rhodesia based on the democratic wishes of her people, regrets that no proposal is made to recognise the democractically elected Government of Bishop Muzorewa when they assume office or for the removal of sanctions imposed on a former white Government.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, may I commence by adding my congratulations to the noble Lord, the Foreign Secretary, and may I say that I do it with perhaps more sincerity and less regret than would be the case with any of his colleagues.
I had the privilege of being present at the Rhodesian elections. They were African elections. There was no register. I believe that is right for Africa. After all, if you have no register there is much less opportunity for fraud. It is far easier to rig a register than a polling station. Again, there is far less opportunity for intimidation if the people can go and vote in any polling station they choose. I certainly—and I have had some experience of African elections—felt that this was very much the best one I have ever seen. Of course, one objection to having no register is that it is possible to switch your supporters where they are surplus on the ground in one constituency to another one where you feel that you are perhaps thinner. I think to a very small degree this happened. I do not really know whether it is wrong, but certainly it was marginal and irrelevant. The decision was clear.
Again, it was an open election. I do not think any of the observers or the great
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Press corps felt that anything was being kept back from them, and indeed great efforts were made to enable us to see anything which we asked to see. I think it was an honest election. I believe there was really only one observer who took a different view, the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, who certainly saw some very terrible things: employers were giving lifts to the poll on tractors! Well, there is duress if ever one saw it! I wonder whether there is any Member of this noble House who employs agricultural labour who has not given them a lift to the poll. I certainly have, but I warn your Lordships that it does not do any good. The silly fellows still vote Conservative!
I believe also that the noble Lord found that at one place the army had shot 18 people in order to make them vote. That seems an odd method. The terrorists were certainly shooting anybody they could to prevent them voting, but to shoot people to make them vote is, I should have thought, counter-productive. In any event, the Rhodesian Army is not that sort of army. Massacres are committed by undisciplined armies—armies such as those one meets in Zaire and places of that sort. The Rhodesian Army is a superbly disciplined army. I think that all of us who saw it were proud to be English because it derived from England. It is a splendid brigade with Israeli standards, and it is probably a good deal better than anything that we can produce ourselves. It is a splendid force and has a splendid discipline.
Nor was it that sort of an election. It was a relaxed election. It was a happy election with singing, a carnival atmosphere and laughter. People were going to vote joyously and that was the more so, of course, in the towns, where protection was perfect. There was some anxiety in the provinces, but it was a joyous, happy, fair, open and honest election.
What was the purpose of the election? First, it was to show the world who ruled Rhodesia, who were the effective Government of Rhodesia. That, I think we should remember, is the only question which, under international law, should concern us when we come to decide whether we can recognise them as the Government of Rhodesia. The Patriotic

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Front committed themselves to stopping the elections. So, to their shame, did the United Nations, the Commonwealth Secretariat and our own Foreign Secretary at that time. None the less, the challenge was accepted by the Rhodesian Government.
We had been told that the victorious legions of the Patriotic Front controlled the whole of the countryside, and that the whites were laagered in a few towns. The Rhodesian Government set up 700 polling stations and nobody was more than 10 kilometres from a polling station. Rhodesia is a country as large as France and with a hostile frontier longer than Poland. It was a formidable military task to undertake. Those polling stations were defended, they were not defended to compel voters. Voters walked miles to go to those stations; they queued for a long time to cast their votes and they were defended from those who wished to stop them voting.
I was particularly impressed by what happened at Mitoko—a place we visited on the second day. These are tribal lands next to Mozambique. We travelled by Dakota. We flew high to avoid ground fire. We then dived on to the airfield; back came the flaps and then it was bump, bump, bump as we landed —like it used to be in the war when travelling in these very rugged stripped planes. We then got into a "chopper" and went out into the country. We were briefed by the military commander of the area who said: "We cannot guard the frontier here—it is completely open. The terrorists have been in here in force and they have told the people not to vote. They have moved the people out of the kraals and they have burned some of the kraals. I think that you will see very little voting today". In fact, there had been no voting the first day. Then, suddenly from this "chopper" we began to see small parties on the ground beneath us coming from all directions and converging. I asked the pilot who they were. He was not sure. Then we came down. The people had converged in their thousands. They had come to vote not in the party spirit of the towns, but because they had reached a very firm decision. They had come with their tribal chiefs—there were no white men in the area—and their petty chiefs to vote.
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They had come to reject the terrorists. They wanted their schools and their buses back, but above all they wanted their clinics back, all of which had been upset by the terrorists. They had decided to reject Mugabe and to come to the bishop, and very bravely—because this was a very brave thing to do—they made this demonstration.
Even more interesting afterwards was the effect of that demonstration. We went somewhere else and the next thing we heard was that the terrorists were telling the people to vote. They were the very people who had committed themselves to stopping and shooting anybody who voted. There was but one reason —they had changed sides. The people who were commanding the terrorists out in the bush and in this area saw what was happening, saw who was the new leader, and were building their bridges to the bishop. We saw on that day that they were changing sides. It was one of the most dramatic incidents that I have seen. At the end of the week, the massive Patriotic Front effort had not closed a single one of those 700 polling stations for even five minutes. The Patriotic Front had suffered an enormous and humiliating defeat. Its supporters were falling away and joining the other side.
The second purpose of the election was to provide a Government that had the consent of the people. The Government do have that consent. I can tell your Lordships that Mugabe and Nkomo are not coming back; they are not acceptable to the people of Rhodesia, and that the people have made clear. Mugabe never had a reputation inside Rhodesia. He was basically a Russian invention. His army had a great reputation in Rhodesia. The people expected his legions to march in and give them the white man's lands. They sang songs about it. But, it was the army that they sang about. They never sang about the Duke of Plazatoro who led his legions from behind. Mugabe never appeared in the country; he has never taken part in a guerrilla operation. He has been the Duke of Plazatoro who stayed behind and he has no reputation in Rhodesia. It was quite interesting to note that at a number of stations we were told that people had asked, "How can we vote for Nkomo?" At quite a few they had asked, "How can we vote for

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Smith?" At no single station did we ever hear of anybody having asked how they could vote for Mugabe.
Nkomo is quite a different proposition. He is the only Matabele leader; there is no credible alternative Matabele leader. That is a great drawback. However, there are terrific difficulties about Nkomo. Those of your Lordships who saw him recently on television cannot have failed to see how that man has gone to pieces and how depraved he is—his crazy raving. There is also the matter of the airliners and his behaviour, which has shocked not only white Rhodesians. His reputation has gone a very long way back. That is as it may be, but we now have a Government of Zimbabwe, and it is for them to decide who they will have. They offer amnesty, but they do not want those two men back.
The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has said that the problems are complicated and complex, with which, most respectfully, I agree. However, with some impertinence, I venture to suggest that when problems are complicated and complex the simplest and most direct road is sometimes the best. I also believe that we should avoid asking for advice if we do not intend to take that advice, for that is the way to confrontation. It seems to me that there is a very simple answer here: we should give recognition to a government which is in effective control. However, I believe that the situation is urgent, and that now is the time for decisions. We may not have another chance.
We have seen a huge military victory—for such was the election. I think that it was Chairman Mao who said:
"Guerrillas should be as the fish to the sea".
The sea has turned sour on the fish; the forces are killing them at about four or five times the rate of a month or two ago. The figures of those killed are published, but the figures of those coming over are not published, and they are coming over in vastly larger numbers. When I was there, I visited a large estate which I knew very well 10 years ago. I was told there that terrorists are there all the time, that they have been hidden by the work people and have been fed by them in the caves. I was told that they did not do much harm and that everyone
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had lived and let live. In the last week they had all been handed over to the security forces. That is the kind of thing that has been happening.
I believe that this moment must not be lost. It may be an old-fashioned point of view, but, together with Winston Churchill, I believe that the military decision must always come before the political decision. One cannot reach a satisfactory political settlement until one has first had a military settlement. I believe that to be profoundly true in this instance, as it was in Kenya and in Malaya, which both depended on the military solution which we provided, and they are now relatively satisfactory countries.
The Rhodesians must return from Mozambique and Zambia. Now is our chance. Mozambique is in real trouble for it depends on South Africa for its living. Mugabe's army in Mozambique is starving and is out foraging, which is not making it popular. I am informed that Machel's troops have already killed several hundred Rhodesians in Mozambique. Machel is urging Mugabe to push his troops back across the frontier into Rhodesia in order to do some fighting. However, when they go, they desert. I think that Machel is only too thankful to get rid of them. If we bring pressure to bear and tell him and the South Africans that the war is over and that we shall not toleratc the illegal maintenance of forces to attack a part of a Crown colony, then I think we have a chance. That chance may not last long. The Russians may rally him; they may build up. However, at present we have our chance.
Much the same applies to Zambia. Kaunda is also in trouble. His people have been starving and, frankly, it is due to the very remarkable generosity of the Rhodesians that he is able to feed them at all. He is not without competition at home; a great many political threats have been made against him. He is depending very much on the Commonwealth Conference and, above all, on the visit of Her Majesty in order to restore his prestige. Are we to send Her Majesty to Lusaka where she will be at the mercy of Nkomo's guerrillas?—because there is no question that that will be so. Kaunda's troops are quite incapable of controlling them. Or is she to see them

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sent off to be trained by Colonel Gaddafi in Libya and come back to re-start a war in what is, after all, one of her colonies? Or—dare one say it?—are we going to object to our colonial citizens most of whom were kidnapped, being transported to Libya to be trained as janissaries? There was a time when the great Powers acted together to suppress the Barbary pirates, but those times have passed.
I warn the Foreign Secretary that if he cheeks the great Gaddafi, he will be condemned by the United Nations and by the Security Council with three abstentions, because that is what has happened. We need a Swift to tell us what has happened to the West and to tell us how the Yahoos took over from the Houyhnhnms in the United Nations. Surely now is the time for us to tell Kaunda that the war is over and that if he wishes to see Her Majesty, he had better repatriate his visitors. Most of them were kidnapped anyway and will be welcomed home by a black Government.
There are economic reasons, too, why I believe that this matter is urgent. Rhodesia is a success story. All of us who were there were impressed by the cleanness and beauty of her towns; by the cars, so many of which seem to be new; by the general sense of confidence and by a gross national product which, although it has dropped a little in the last two years, has more than doubled since sanctions began. When visiting a tobacco farm, I saw new investment of £157,000 in a drying plant. That shows the confidence they have in their economy. However, that economy has had consequences.
I do not know what the population was when the white man came; it was tremendously exaggerated by Rhodes, who wished to sell his shares and advertise available labour. On the best authority I can find the population was about 70,000. It is now nearly 7 million. It means that in 100 years we have seen a 100-fold increase in the population. Rhodesia has the highest child-survival rate in the world. Fifty-six per cent. of the population are under the age of 16, and the people look marvellously well. That is the extraordinary thing, and it is so different from the accounts of what those wretched children look like when they are taken to Zambia.
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If they are to live, if they are to find employment as an alternative to banditry, something must be done quickly. There must be investment; there must be trade; the white man must stay. We cannot feed people on that level by dividing up the white man's land, and reverting to peasant subsistance farming—of course not. These large organisations must continue. The white man must stay.
There is no time for me to inform your Lordships now as to why this is, how it works in Africa, why the white man is necessary and how nations come to be born. I recommend your Lordships to read my new book, The Human Journey, which is very good on the subject. However, in a sense, I believe that I am pushing at an open door here. All, save a sick minority who express their class grievance in an inverted racialism that hates its own colour, know perfectly well that recognition is the right policy. The settlement is agreed. It is not for us to interpose.
Races have equal rights. Nobody is to be promoted or sacked because of his colour. I think that that is right. This means that a white led army, judiciary, and civil service is likely to be there for about 10 years. Is the democratic record of African led armies such that we wish to impose one on the Bishop? At least he will know when he comes to visit us that his General will not have usurped his job. Again, do we really wish to push up a new judiciary inexperienced and before its time? Do we really think that the economy of Rhodesia would be better with an inexperienced black civil service until it gets on? What we need here is courage, not appeasement.
My noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts has threatened us with supposing Africa imposes sanctions on us. Africa could not even impose sanctions on Rhodesia. There was not one of the African countries that was not breaking them, and Zambia most of the lot. This sort of thing is ludicrous. We must realise that Africa needs us far more than we need her. Again we are told, "What will it do to President Carter's black vote?" Is this really our concern? I personally prefer the views of the American Senate.
Then there is the case of the Common-wealth High Commissions. I asked the Secretary of State, did Tanzania ask our

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advice before she invaded a fellow member of the Commonwealth? He referred me back to the last Government. He may have found out the answer. I am sure that she did not. Did she tell us in advance? I am sure she did not. What would she say if we presumed to tell her how and by whom to govern Zanzibar? There is certainly room for telling. There are few more atrocious governments. Is there a single Commonwealth country who consults us as to who to recognise?
Rhodesia is our Crown Colony, and I would venture to say to the Commonwealth Commissions that unasked advice on that subject is an impertinence. It is time we stood up. We have crawled enough in our foreign policy. I think the time has come for us to say, "This is our business". I say to the Minister that this is what England expects. It is time that we sought to be as courageous as the American Senate. My Lords, the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary has asked me not to divide the House at this stage and on this Question. I cannot say that I am by any means satisfied, but I will on this occasion comply with his request and I will not now use the words which put my Amendment before the House.
4.43 p.m.
Lord CARVER: My Lords, it would be strange if a former Chief of the Defence Staff did not welcome the very positive attitude expressed in the gracious Speech towards defence—and of course I do so. Some of us a few hours ago were attending a service of thanksgiving in Westminster Abbey for the 30th year of NATO. Indeed, we have very good reasons to be grateful for what NATO has done over that period. But the alliance must not let its defences be eroded by the relentless increase in the capability of the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, that of her satellites.
It is not so much the increase in the numbers of her armed forces, although they have increased in a certain number of fields, but to my mind the most sinister aspect is the increase in their quality. The effort which the Soviet Union is clearly devoting to research, development, and production capacity is such that it enables her to replace the equipment of her very large armed forces at intervals more
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frequent than those at which any members of NATO, and certainly ourselves, plan to do, or could indeed possibly do within the resources devoted to defence if we are also to keep up our numbers. That is a threat which I am glad to see the Government have clearly recognised.
In recognising that challenge they have a number of difficult decisions to make (some of which will cost a lot of money) over the next few years, and perhaps at the top of their list is the future of Polaris and our other nuclear weapons systems. Recently public interest has been centred on the threat to Western Europe of the Russian SS 20 missile, and there has been a good deal of concern about this. I find the concern somewhat curious, and some of the response to it in fact rather dangerous in conception. There is nothing new about the fact that Russian nuclear weapons could be delivered by them on targets in Western Europe whether by aircraft or by missile, and whether the missile came from a submarine or from the land.
But the answer to that lies, and has always lain, not in ensuring that every Russian nuclear weapon that can be brought to bear on Western Europe is met nuclear weapon by nuclear weapon, by a nuclear weapon in NATO's O's hands stationed in Western Europe, but by the involvement of the United States in the defence of Europe, and the very clear linkage between the United States' strategic deterrent force and the forces of NATO in Europe, whether they are nuclear or conventional. Anything whatever that weakens that linkage could be very serious. I believe that the acceptance of a concept that Russian nuclear weapons stationed in Europe must be met almost exactly by NATO nuclear weapons also stationed in Europe could be the thin end of a wedge leading to what NATO calls "de-coupling" between the defence of Europe and the United States' strategic deterrent force, and I would regard that as extremely serious.
When the party that is now in office last came into office, at the beginning of their administration there was a tendency among them to say that the United States would tire of her support of the defence of Europe and that we must therefore, particularly in close cooperation with France, try to build up

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the defence of Western Europe so that it could be independent of the United States. Under the realities of international politics that idea was pushed further and further into the background during their period of office until, I am glad to say, it finished up more or less under the carpet.
I very much hope that that idea does not re-emerge. I would regard it as a very serious matter if it did. I think to start down that path would be fatal. It would encourage those in North America who would like to wash their hands on the defence of Europe to do so. It would encourage those in Western Europe who would like to make some form of abject accommodation with the East to start moving to do so, and of course it would encourage the Soviet Union themselves to drive a wedge and exploit the rift that would then appear in NATO. Indeed, I believe it could bring the end of NATO itself. Do not let us kid ourselves that there is any other defence organisation for Western Europe which could provide for the defence of Western Europe without the United States.
The serious nuclear threat today is the fact that NATO's nuclear weapons in Western Europe are vulnerable to the modernised nuclear weapons systems of the Soviet Union, of which the SS 20 is one. It is the weapons themselves, their means of delivery—and they are often confused in the public mind—their storage and their transport which need bringing up to date. I know that NATO is very well aware of this. I hope that when the Government get round to considering the future of our own nuclear forces, including Polaris, and the modernisation of NATO's nuclear forces, they will seriously consider linking those two problems. I know that that may not be the advice which the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, may receive when he is in the Ministry of Defence. Nevertheless, I believe that it should be given very serious consideration.
There are other important decisions which will face the Government in the defence field in the next few years which will cost a lot of money. One of them is the replacement of the Jaguar and Harrier aircraft. I hope that the answer to this will not be that the European consortium will produce a European copy, at great
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expense, of the American F-16 ten years later. I think that there is a danger of that. I also hope that, in order to avoid that, they do not commit themselves, without very serious thought, to a vertical take-off aircraft, and an aircraft which could be neither efficient on the battlefield nor economic to operate.
Then there is the future of the replacement of the Chieftain tank. That is very much affected by events in Iran and the cancellation of the Iranian tank order. Nevertheless, I believe, if wisely handled, that could be a blessing in disguise. It could mean that the British Army received a more up-to-date tank perhaps earlier than it would otherwise have done so.
In these matters of international arms co-operation I suggest that a pragmatic policy should be followed between going it alone and international co-operation. It is very easy to see what the right answer is. The right answer clearly to my mind is that if the European members of NATO come to the conclusion that they can produce an equipment, both in the time-scale and within the cost, which is effective on the battlefield in that cost and in that time within Europe, they should do so; but they must also all have the same one and they must try to persuade the Americans to have it too. But in many cases they will judge that that is not so and that an American equipment would he better; then they must also organise themselves to have the same one and to take an American equipment, and see that it is one that is going to be in service in the United States armed forces at that time.
I must also welcome not only the promise but the action which the Government have taken to restore comparability to the pay of the Armed Forces, and the promise to maintain it. Pay has been an important factor over the last year or so in encouraging particularly skilled men to leave the forces who might otherwise have stayed. But I do not believe that pay has been the only factor. There are a number of other factors at work which make Servicemen and women today much more reluctant to see their private lives disrupted.
There are three factors which are perhaps important to mention here. The fact that Servicemen—and Servicewomen—marry very early; the fact that they

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expect their wives to work; and the very great difficulty and expense in getting a house. These are all factors which tend to make the Serviceman reluctant to stay in and face the disruption of his private life. I hope that when the Government set their minds to finding an answer to this they will not err too far on the side of providing stability at the expense of flexibility. Armed forces that are not prepared to have their private lives disrupted are not good armed forces. I have seen the results of this in many other countries' Services where the regular Serviceman has become little more than a commuter, sometimes addicted to some of the more undesirable restrictive practices.
I am very well aware that a maiden speech should be brief and non-controversial, and I have my eye on that clock. Nevertheless, I feel that I would be justly accused of dodging the bowling if I did not say a short word about what I now believe is called Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. I noted very carefully what the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary said, and I would not by anything I say want to make his task in any way more difficult, or make it harder to arrive at a peacefully negotiated settlement of that country's troubles. It is clear to me that the constitution which is going to come into force, I think next month, does not in fact give the people of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia what I would call genuine majority rule. Certainly it does not hand over 95 per cent. of the control to 95 per cent. of the people who are black. Nor do I suppose that the elections were entirely free and fair, but not many elections in Africa are, even if they take place at all.
What I believe we must recognise is that a considerable proportion of the inhabitants of that country want Bishop Muzorewa and his party to lead them forward to genuine majority rule. I, therefore, entirely agree with the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary in saying that a new situation has been created. When these situations are created experience surely tells us that things move very quickly. There is no going back. Indeed, the speed at which they advance becomes very great. I would appeal to Joshua Nkomo and to Robert Mugabe to recognise this, and to abandon the armed struggle which has brought them very little dividend, and go for the political struggle.
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One thing, I would hope, should be common ground in this House, and perhaps elsewhere, is that the Anglo-American proposals, certainly as they were first put forward in September 1977, are dead. I believe that they were a very well-intentioned and valuable method of extricating us from the Geneva impasse into which Dr. Kissinger's instant diplomacy had led us. Nevertheless, it was not long before it was absolutely clear that neither of the main parties involved were prepared at any stage to hand over responsibility for the country to Her Majesty's Government, or, as the proposals were later modified, to an individual appointed by Her Majesty's Government who was then responsible, so far as I could make out, only to his own conscience.
I was delighted to hear the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary say quite firmly that the first priority now for us all and for Her Majesty's Government was to try to bring about peace, to end the war, as indeed the previous Administration constantly recognised, for which they were often not given credit where they might have been. When the party that is now in office was in Opposition they suggested that both defence and foreign affairs were in a terrible mess. Now that they are in office, I hope that they have found that some things in defence are not in as great a mess as they thought, but on the other hand that in foreign affairs some of the problems are not so easily solved. by just doing what their supporters wanted.
If there is a lesson that I take from this it is that the defence of this country's interests, in its very widest term, is not something that should be treated, in the words of a recent notorious Irish-American, as a political football. Indeed, I would make a strong plea that the needs of the Armed Forces are not kicked about in that manner, as I am afraid to a certain extent they have been over the last year in anticipation of an election. I would hope—and I was very glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, say this—that the Government could expect to have the support of most of this House in foreign affairs and defence, and I certainly wish them well.
4.58 p.m.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, it is a great pleasure and honour for me to

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follow the noble Lord, Lord Carver, and to congratulate him upon what is undoubtedly by any standards in this House a most distinguished speech. From being a second lieutenant in the Royal Tank Corps to ending up as its colonel commandant, as well as serving with the United Nations force in Cyprus, his service and devotion to this country have been evident. We are sure that in this noble House his service and devotion will always be at the disposal of your Lordships, and I take this opportunity to thank him most warmly for his speech. Indeed, I would say that the expert knowledge that he has brought to the debate, particularly on matters of defence, supports the view of many of your Lordships—which I certainly share—that defence is too important an issue to be considered with foreign affairs in the debate on the gracious Speech. Therefore, bearing in mind the kind of speech we have just heard and a maiden speech at that—perhaps our Front Bench will consider at some future time, in the many years that we shall be in government, whether we should have a debate on defence as well as a separate one on foreign affairs, following the gracious Speech.
I must give my apologies to your Lordships because I have to attend certain activities this evening in a Euro-constituency, and so, unfortunately, I shall be unable to stay until the end of the debate, but perhaps it is compensation to your Lordships that I propose to keep my comments extremely brief. So at least my apology is accompanied by brevity.
I personally welcome not only the change in direction of the aspects of foreign policy outlined by my noble friend Lord Carrington, but also the entire policies that are set out in the gracious Speech. We all know that there cannot be a successful foreign policy without a strong economy and a strong defence, and it is these elements which will strengthen the hand of our Foreign Secretary, and indeed our Government, in negotiating in the future on behalf of this country.
We recognise also that the hopeful restoration of our economy will once more lift us up in the comparable economic leagues, whether in Europe itself or internationally. For too long we have been
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somewhere near the bottom of the European list and not very high up in the world list; and it is by these lists that we are judged in the context of world affairs. Therefore I particularly welcome the hope and the confidence which the Government have inspired in the few days they have been in office, and I do so in the hope that the situation of this country may change and strengthen our position in the world.
The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, commands respect from all sides of the House, and it was interesting to hear what he said about our being only seventh in the economic league in Europe and about contributing more to NATO, where we are somewhere near the top in terms of financial contribution. As the noble Lord will know better than anyone else, this is playing with statistics, because if one looks at the situation on a per capita basis, one sees that we are also seventh in the contributory league—we are not at the top. It depends how one measures one's contribution. It was also interesting—
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the noble Baroness is accustomed to giving way, as I have been accustomed to giving way to her, and I am most grateful to her now. Why go after per capita as a criterion of contribution when proportionality to the simple measure of gross national product is so simple, so equitable, and so honest?
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, I think that in three or four years' time we should be very happy to measure the situation on a per capita basis, and perhaps we shall again be high in the list on that basis of measurement. Perhaps we could defer our argument for two or three years to see whether our ecomony and GNP increase; and then we can again measure our contribution to NATO.
I certainly welcome, as I am sure do all noble Lords on this side of the House, the recognition of our international and political legal obligations in the long-term interests of the United Kingdom, in restoring the priority of membership of the Community, not only to our foreign policy but to our domestic policies. Once again I regrettably must take issue with the much respected noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, when as a good

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European he tried, regrettably perhaps not very successfully, to convince us that the last Government was very pro-European. All of us will remember the six Cabinet Ministers who in July 1976 voted against the European Assemblies Bill. After all, at that time they were part of a Government, taking collective responsibility for going towards direct elections to the European Parliament. All of us know the unsuccessful efforts of those who were anti-European. I do not say that they were all anti-European. It would be silly to pretend that they were. But the six Cabinet Ministers who went so frequently to Brussels, and who negotiated so badly on our behalf, now have to admit that our budget contribution is too high. They have failed to solve any of the problems with which we are faced with regard to the CAP. They have failed to get a common energy policy.
But I do not wish to dwell upon these matters because I think that we should look not to the past, but to the future. I believe that in this country we have a great future by being in Europe and by contributing to the success of the Community, which is of course of vital interest to us. We shall have an opportunity on 7th June to show the support that we are going to give to our own Government. Our own Government in their manifesto went to the polls showing that they are committed to the European Community and are convinced Europeans. Surely it will be up to the electorate to support the Government and to strengthen their hand by going to the polls on 7th June and again supporting our Government and their European policies.
Indeed, I would say that if, with a regrettably comparative ignorance on the functioning and the existence of the European Parliament at present, we in this country have a joyful turnout of 64 per cent. of the population on 7th June, no one will doubt the validity of these elections. It would be very surprising if we get anything like 64 per cent; but the validity will in no way be doubted in this also new democratic experiment of multi-racial and international elections.
In Rhodesia, whatever the consequences may be, and whatever the kind of constitution for which the people were voting, we have seen a valiant attempt at democracy.
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This must be admitted by all sides. At another time, and in another place, this attempt would have been greeted with amazement and congratulations, particularly in regard to the achievement of a result of a black majority; whether it is 95 per cent. or 85 per cent. is totally irrelevant. The fact is that there will be a black majority Government, and whether or not it will be imperfect, one cannot but congratulate Bishop Muzorewa upon having achieved these results. After all, the Rhodesians—or the Zimbabweans, as we may prefer to call them—have themselves proved that black is not synonymous with Marxism, as we have so often been made to believe, or at least had pressure put upon us to believe. A peaceful settlement in the war-torn country of Rhodesia must be the desire of everyone in your Lordships' House, regardless of party. In particular, I would plead with the Front Bench to make every effort to ensure that all the children who were abducted from their families—no matter by which guerrilla movement, and regardless of in which country they find themselves—be returned to their families, so that they can live in peace and grow up to contribute to the economic and social success of their country.
It must surely be in the long-term interests also of the front line five Presidents that their countries should be neighbours to a country which is at peace and which is economically successful. We know perfectly well that they depend upon Rhodesia for their food supplies and their communications; it is hypocritical to deny it. Why do we try to punish even those who are supporting guerrillas? Surely our aim should be to achieve a peaceful settlement for the benefit not only of Rhodesia, but also the countries which surround it.
I believe that our neighbours in the European Community have been extraordinarily tactful, extraordinarily cooperative and extraordinarily reticent (if I may use that word) about making difficulties over this very delicate and difficult situation in order to give Britain and our Government a free hand in deciding which course we should take, and this should be of benefit to our Foreign Secretary. My firm belief is that it is not only the European Community. Despite their difficulties, I believe the countries of the Commonwealth are waiting for a lead from this

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country, and it is up to our Foreign Secretary, with our Government, to give that lead. It will be a great test of the diplomatic skills of my noble friend, but I believe that, in the end, he will achieve a peaceful settlement. However, I also believe that this can be achieved only if our party as a whole—and one would hope, indeed, the country as a whole—give him support. I do not think the right way is to press him to lift sanctions immediately or to take other steps immediately. He is in a position to judge, and he has his hand and the power where it is needed. Therefore, I believe he must have the full support of our party in taking the decisions which he deems right at the right time, because, of course, as we all know, in politics it is timing which, in the end, is the essential element.
Finally, my Lords, I should like to say how much we welcome the commitment of the United Kingdom under a Conservative Government to the support of our obligations under the United Nations Charter to promote respect for and observance of human rights wherever they may be violated. Whatever might be the solution of the Palestinian problem by way of the restoration of their homes on the West Bank or in Gaza, there should be a peaceful solution for these people who have been kept out of their homes for decades. We should attempt at least to exert pressure to see that administrative justice is restored to Iran. We should not allow 207 or 210 people to be executed, without a proper trial and without defence, in the middle of the night, by a country which has been restored to so-called democracy. Whatever difficulties there may be in Iran—and I accept that there may be very many difficulties—the Iranians should not be encouraged or allowed to undertake this kind of activity without some comment from others on the world stage; and I would hope that the British Government would make their voices heard as well.
Then, of course, the tackling of problems like food aid and world aid to less developed countries is again part of the commitment of this Government, and we would hope to see more special trading arrangements and special commercial activities, and greater protection of investment in less developed countries who need our investment. They ask for our investment, and we should go forward in
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joint ventures with them in order to help them develop their trade and restore and increase their economic, social and cultural abilities and development. With those few words, my Lords, I should like to wish every success to my noble friend the Foreign Secretary. Knowing that he has the full support of our party will, I think, enable him all the better to go forward to undertake the very difficult tasks which he has before him.
5.12 p.m.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, may I endorse the remarks of the noble Baroness in regard to the excellent and instructive speech which we have heard from the noble Lord. Lord Carver? In the course of hearing many maiden speeches over a long time I have rarely heard, if at all, a speech which has contained such knowledge and experience as the noble Lord has displayed to us both today and by his previous help towards a country in whose activities he has participated. I am quite certain that everyone in this House will look forward with the greatest pleasure to hearing him again often in the future.
My Lords, in view of the large number of your Lordships who wish to participate in this debate I shall confine my remarks to a subject in which I believe your Lordships are aware I have been interested for very many years. Her Majesty's Speech contains but a brief reference, as indeed did the speech of the noble Lord the Leader of the House, to the subject of the Middle East. Her Majesty said:
"My Government will fully co-operate in endeavours to achieve a just and comprehensive settlement in the Middle East and to bring peace to all the peoples of the region".
With that, very few, if any, will disagree. I hope this will be keenly followed and that the most important constructive step which has been taken will be pursued. I emphasise this because I believe it is of tremendous importance that we should realise what the peace treaty really means, not only for Israel and Egypt but for the Middle East and for the world as a whole. The signing of the treaty by the three eminent leaders—Mr. Carter, President of the USA; President Sadat, President of Egypt; and Mr. Begin, Prime Minister of Israel—will, I hope, be supported in a most enthusiastic manner by Her Majesty's Government, the EEC and

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all countries who desire to see peace restored to the whole Middle East.
Right since the foundation of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, of which I have had the honour of being President for a number of years, motion after motion has been carried expressing goodwill towards Arab countries and peoples; and in that particular sense I have never yet known of any person, either in Israel (where I have been very many times) or elsewhere, speaking against Arabs as individuals. The original pioneers, who were the forerunners of the Zionist movement, commenced the conversion of parts of the desert into food-producing and health-giving areas. Incidentally, if I may say this in parenthesis, what a disgraceful thing it is for the World Health Organisation at the present time to utilise that body for political purposes! I am very pleased that both the previous Government and our Government at the present time took action opposing the resolution by senseless people, which I consider to be a most terrible step, particularly in view of what has been done by Israel in regard to health and what has been done throughout the world by very many Jewish medical men and researchers.
The process of pushing back the desert and repairing the ravages of nature, which had destroyed the fruitfulness and utility of the land for many centuries, has been continued with energy and devotion by Israel and its predecessors. The peace treaty marks a new era of civilised conduct towards each other by neighbours in the Middle East, achieved by negotiations—and not by war—led by men of great courage, ability and statesmanship. Thirty-one years after Israel gained its statehood, this ends its monolithic request for peace.
I should like to direct your Lordships' attention for a few moments to several of the very important passages contained in the treaty itself which indicate its invaluable example for the creation and establishment of peace. In the Preamble it is stated:
"Desiring to bring to an end the state of war between them and to establish a peace in which every state in the area can live in security: convinced that the conclusion of a treaty of peace between Israel and Egypt is an important step in the search for comprehensive peace in the area and for the attainment of the settlement of the Arab-Israel conflict in all its aspects".
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Then there follows, in Article III:
"The parties will apply between them the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations"—
and God knows how important it is that that should be observed, judging from the steps which have been taken from time to time against Israel by her enemies in the United Nations in respect of this particular matter—
"and the principles of international law governing relations among states in times of peace. In particular: (A) They recognise and will respect each other's sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence; (B) They recognise and will respect each other's right to live in peace within their secure"—
and I underline that—
"and recognised boundaries".
What follows, my Lords, is tremendously important, particularly if you want to establish proper peace in the Middle East:
"(C) They will refrain from the threat or use of force, directly or indirectly, against each other and will settle all disputes between them by peaceful means".
Egypt and Israel could co-operate, and, I am sure, will co-operate, with each other in a large number of fields. I hope the House will permit me to refer to some of them which I have endeavoured to investigate in the course of my inquiries. They are: agricultural projects, including water conservation and storage, drip or trickle irrigation, desert agriculture, plant protection, biological warfare against plant pests, new fertilising systems, desalination of sea water, crop rotation, new methods of harvesting and picking, improvement of quality and yield of crops, fish breeding ponds (which have been referred to as far as our own interests in this country are concerned and which are very important), increasing milk yields in dairy cattle, production of animal feed, veterinary services, eradication of animal diseases; growing desert crops (and this was developed in the Negev and the Sinai); airlinks between Israel and Egypt, roads and sea links, ecological agreements, protection of the environment, wild life and land, public health, marketing of agricultural produce, trade relations, foodstuffs, medicines and chemicals.
Noble Lords will realise what a tremendous benefit there would be in co-operation between these two great nations in those respects. Such cooperation could ultimately result in a

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very important advance in respect not only of Israel and Egypt but also throughout the Middle East. Let me turn, for example, to what Israel has been doing lately in the utilisation of solar power. Some 50 to 60 per cent. of the houses are actually being heated by solar power. This undoubtedly would be of tremendous advantage to the Egyptians themselves. I am sure that in time they will co-operate to provide that form of energy—as we should—particularly in view of what I have often called "blackmoil" of some of the countries who oppose this peace treaty.
I should like to refer for one moment to the position taken by Israel. After all, I do not think it is yet recognised what concessions Israel really have made. They have already agreed to hand over the whole of the Sinai area, the oil fields, the airfields and so on, and are prepared to negotiate with respect to all the other points which are still at issue. To us in the Western World, I do not think I need try to persuade your Lordships how important it is to have a State like Israel in the Middle East, particularly at the present time. References have been made to the question of defence, but your Lordships know as well as I do that a State of that description in the Middle East is of tremendous importance to the peace of the world—as against any ambitions (let me put it that way) by other forces which, to put it very mildly, are not very well disposed towards the Western powers.
My Lords, I think we ought to face up to the fact that no country in the world faces Israel's security problems or has so much at stake. Since independence in 1948 her population has increased fivefold. In an area of development, few countries can show Israel's record in agriculture, health conditions, education and industrial development. It is practically the only country in the world that has emerged to independence since the war that has faced these problems at once and has tackled them in a system of democracy.
There is one thing I should like to add. I think it should be said. There is an attempt made to defame the present Prime Minister of the State of Israel—who, incidentally, is here to talk to many
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important people in this country; and I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I leave the Chamber for a few hours later on in order to hear what he has to say. He is speaking in Central Hall, Westminster. As your Lordships know, I am against terrorism of any kind and for any purpose. But I think we must be fair. I was informed that on a radio interview Mr. Begin a few days ago explained the line that his friends took when he said that under no circumstances did they plan attacks on women, children or civilians.
I think the House is entitled to know some facts that I came across in the course of some professional inquiries I have been making in respect of what happened at the time of the King David Hotel incident. I came across them not very long ago; I am saying this with the consent both of the people who have been in touch with me and also of the doctor concerned. I want to wipe away the suggestion that no warning was given. I propose to read a letter from a Dr. Crawford in Bournemouth. I quote:
"It was very kind of you to phone me today and I sat down at once to write to you".
I met Dr. Crawford at another venture of Israel which is well known to many people—the Magem David, which is the Shield of David Ambulance and Health Services. I happened to meet him at a conference held in Bournemouth. Casually he told me that he knew something about this. He says in his letter:
"Further to our recent conversation in Bournemouth, I am writing to confirm that the officer"—
he spoke about an officer whose name, I am sure, is known to those who were in Palestine—
"who wrote to me in 1946 concerning the King David Hotel 'incident' was Major-General Dudley Sheridan Skelton, CB, DSO, FRCS, formerly DGMS in India, Hon Physician to HM The King and to HE the Viceroy of India. He retired from the forces about 1937"—
I think that it is of great importance that this attack should be properly and effectively met—
"when he was given the rank of Brigadier and was ADMS in the SE Command. It was in this area that I met him in the course of my duties as Assistant Medical Director of the Emergency Medical Services Hospital at Preston Hall Sanatorium, Maidstone, and I worked with him until my transfer to Bournemouth as Medical Superintendent of Douglas House Sanatorium in 1943, but we remained in contact with each other for some years.

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"In 1946, he was head of a hospital in Palestine near Jerusalem and was a frequent visitor to the King David Hotel; apparently he was there on the very day of the explosion and he wrote me that 'a warning' was passed on to the officers in the bar in rather jocular terms, implying it was 'Jewish terrorist bluff'. But despite advice to 'ignore the bluff' he decided to leave and thus was out of the hotel when the explosion took place.
"I kept his letter for many years, but unfortunately, after the death of my wife in 1970 and my own severe illness in 1971, I sold my house and went into a flat and because of limited space I unwisely threw away a lot of my accumulated papers and correspondence, so the letter is no longer available; and Brigadier Skelton has long since died.
"I hope these facts will be of some help to you. Many of my friends knew this story at the time but few have survived; my sister-in-law will remember it clearly as she was friendly with the Brigadier and lived with us at the time. If you think it worth-while, I could contact her"—
I did ask him to contact her and she wrote a letter confirming what Dr. Crawford said.
As your Lordships are well aware, I do not approve of terrorists of any kind. The Prime Minister of Israel explained a few days ago what happened and I hope that the letter I have read out now will, in all fairness, answer the accusation that has been made about this incident. I am very grateful for the attention the House has given me.
5.34 p.m.
The Marquess of SALISBURY: My Lords, may I first add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Carver, on what we all agree was a notable contribution to our discussion, and add my hopes to those of previous speakers that we shall have the opportunity of hearing him on numerous occasions in the future. I hope that the noble Lord who has just spoken will allow me not to follow what he has said. I want to speak exclusively on the proposition put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Paget of Northampton. In view of the number of speakers, I shall try to be as brief as I can and I will not follow up the detail of the noble Lord's argument and his very impressive report on the conduct of the elections in Rhodesia. He and others who have also been there will be covering this aspect.
I was also very much encouraged to hear Lord Carrington's brief report on the findings of the noble Viscount, Lord
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Boyd of Merton. It seems to me that the combination of what he said and what the noble Lord, Lord Paget said indicates that there is general acceptance that in Rhodesia a fair basis has been found to pursue discussions with the new Government. From what has been said everybody is agreed that a new situation has now arisen, one on which we must try and build. There seem to be encouraging signs within Rhodesia that many of those who might have been opposed to Bishop uzorewa are rallying round.
I should like to confirm, from the information that I have, what the noble Lord, Lord Paget, has already said, that many of the terrorists are coming over to the Government's side, some because they have seen the success of the elections, that they have worked well, and some because—as always in Africa especially, although in other countries as well—it is wise to be on the winning side. Also, apparently, the amnesty offer by the bishop has encouraged many of them to lay down their arms. All this goes to show that there is every chance that the new Government will get off to a good start.
As has already been pointed out, it is important not to lose time on these occasions; things can go wrong. I very much hope the proposed new initiative that the Foreign Secretary is starting will take place very rapidly, and that if there are any prospects of success it will be followed up with immediate action. We all know that he has a difficult task to perform; but ultimately, as he said, it is our responsibility, and ours only, to secure a solution to the Rhodesian problem. I know we all appreciate that he has to have consultations, that he has to try to reach agreement with as many people as possible, but in the end his recommendation is the one that is going to stick.
Therefore I very much hope that reports I have seen in the Press that he intends to wait until after the Commonwealth Conference before coming to a decision will prove groundless. There are indications that the majority of the Commonwealth do not intend to recommend recognition. If our Government go to the conference in Lusaka and have a formal resolution put to them not to recognise, surely their task is going to be much more difficult.

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Is it not better, since it is our responsibility, that we should go ahead—if indeed it proves possible to do so—as soon as the Government are satisfied that they can reach an agreement with the new administration in Rhodesia and recognise them and follow this up with the removal of sanctions?
It is therefore with great pleasure that I support what the noble Lord, Lord Paget, has had to say. Apart from the international side, there are cogent reasons within Rhodesia itself why it is important that decisions should be taken as rapidly as possible. They are also—if I may suggest it—tied up with the need for white support for this emerging country. Criticisms have been made that the whites have too big a share of the vote in relation to their numbers. This is not an uncommon development within the Commonwealth as it has emerged. The situation in Kenya and Zambia was, I believe, somewhat similar when they were first given autonomy. One must remember that the proposed constitution in Rhodesia is a transitional one and no one anticipates more than the proposed 10 years. During that time—
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, may I intervene; at the end of the 10 years, the proportions of black and white in the legislature can only be altered by a committee of five, of which the Chief Justice and three whites form three, and since the Chief Justice himself will be white the whites will have a veto on any alteration in the proportions.
The Marquess of SALISBURY: My Lords, I think the noble Lord is perfectly correct but I do not see that is any cause for concern, with a majority of Africans in control, and I would not have thought that any minority would wish to have a confrontation; but the noble Lord may have a different view and I am not in a position to look that far into the future. So far as white representation is concerned, there are these two reasons: first, the one I have mentioned, the need for support for the emergent Administration. They are new to these responsibilities; they have to cover a very sophisticated economy and they have to provide food not only for themselves at the moment but for some of their less fortunate neighbours. At the present time, if my figures are correct—I
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have tried to check them—the Africans farm something over 53 per cent. of the country and produce rather less than 28 per cent. of the product. With the problem of feeding 6 million people, it is surely important that the white farmers should stay until the Africans are able to conduct their farming in a more efficient way.
Secondly, there is the problem of the growing black population which has been referred to. They are increasing in enormous numbers and they are all going to want employment. If they are to achieve that, the country will require a massive injection of capital from abroad and if that is to be properly applied I would suggest to your Lordships that a white element in the country will be required to see that it is put to effective use. So for these reasons, both internally and externally, it seems to me that the whites ought to be encouraged to stay. The guarantee they have got for this period is in the substantial number of seats they have been given, and they do need some encouragement. That, again, is a reason why I hope negotiations will take place in the very near future. I am told that a number of farmers, particularly in the difficult areas, are wondering whether it is worth planting another crop at this point in time for the next growing season, which will start in October or November. If Rhodesia is to avoid a chronic shortage of food in the near future, these white farmers have to be given hope.
There is an additional problem we must not forget: that is the security forces and their composition. At the moment they are largely dominated by the white leaders but from next month I imagine there will be a substantial change in control. Let us remember at the same time—the noble Lord, Lord Paget, has already pointed out this—that they are a formidable army at the moment and they are providing stability not only in Rhodesia but in the whole of Central Africa. That is a stability which I should have thought we could ill afford to do without.
It is entirely due to the white element that this is so, for 80 per cent. of the troops are African. They are the same people genetically as the terrorists; but just look at the difference in the quality of their performance! So that is important. Equally, within the country they owe allegiance at the moment to the

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State and not to a faction: in other words, they are not a private army—that is the danger the country could face if the present control of the security forces was too much diluted. So I hope that at least during the transitional period while the new government is getting going it will be accepted that there is a need for a white content within the security forces.
Finally, my Lords, I should like to say just a word about sanctions, which is a subject covered in the proposition put by the noble Lord but which has not been touched on very much today. Much was said last November in the very long debate we had then about the need to carry out our international obligations. However, it is quite clear from what came out in that debate that everyone (including ourselves, if the Bingham Report is correct) has been guilty of double standards. In that respect it seemed to me that the legal arguments used on that occasion were decidely selective. Surely, ultimately if we could achieve a return to legality, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, we would then be in a position to say whether or not sanctions should continue. This must be important because, looking at the composition of the United Nations and at what is going on in Africa itself, it is surely clear that it is in the interests of the Soviet bloc and their supporters in the Organisation of African Unity to keep sanctions going on as long as they can, or at least until they can achieve their objective, which is to secure Rhodesia for their puppets, the Patriotic Front.
I cannot see, unless we can take steps along those lines, that there is any hope of bringing sanctions to an end. Therefore, it seems to me that we must try to achieve something within the framework of any agreement we reach with Zimbabwe Rhodesia to ensure that as a result of it we no longer apply sanctions.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, would the noble Marquess give way: This is a matter of genuine puzzlement to me, as it was when I was listening to the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary. What does the noble Lord mean by "a return to legality"? As I understand it, every member of the Smith regime since 1965—every policeman, every civil servant,
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every member of the armed forces and every judge—has broken an oath to the Queen. How do you return to legality in the present circumstances?
The Marquess of SALISBURY: My Lords, I think the situation is governed by the Act of 1965 dealing with it. Presumably what Parliament has done it can undo. It is perfectly possible to give immunity. It has been done in the past and in fact I believe there is a case going on at the moment where this has happened. Surely it is perfectly open to Parliament to take whatever steps are necessary to safeguard the position and to guarantee the future of those concerned, if it should be necessary. I hope, in conclusion, that we shall be able to take urgent steps to try to resolve this situation which has bedevilled us for so long.
5.48 p.m.
Lord CHITNIS: My Lords, I, too, would like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Carver, on his maiden speech and also to say how glad I am to find myself following the noble Marquess, without whose assistance I have been led to believe it would have been difficult for me to get into Rhodesia—a country where I was in danger of being declared a prohibited immigrant. That, too, is a subject I should like to talk about and I would start by referring your Lordships to Chipinga, which is a small township in Rhodesia near the Mozambique border. I am aware that Rhodesia is a subject on which I am considered to have somewhat eccentric views, in so far as I believe that the recent Rhodesian election was not free and fair, whereas other observers think otherwise. I am frequently asked what I saw and heard but others did not which led me to this conclusion.
In Chipinga I had an experience which I think I can say with confidence no other observer underwent. I found myself there with my assistant—probably the only non-Rhodesian in town—on the evening before polling began. We were invited to go up to the Chipinga social club to have a meal. That is one-storey building about a mile out of town and it was full of troops in their uniforms, with guns everywhere. There was a heavy amount of smoke in the atmosphere and a fair amount of drinking was going on, but in spite of the somewhat "wild west" atmosphere of the place I

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was able to have a perfectly rational conversation with a white Rhodesian who was there, who knew my name and why I had gone to the country, about the problems of Rhodesia. After about a quarter of an hour the conversation, pleasantly and not unnaturally, widened out and I happened to let slip that I was of Indian parentage. I have never seen a man's mood change so rapidly. A look of instant hate came into his eyes and he looked at me and said, "My God, there's an example of British degeneracy—curry merchants in the House of Lords!" I do not know whether your Lordships find this story disgraceful or amusing. Frankly, I find it a little of both, though I must admit that at the time I was extremely upset, and I have truly asked myself since it happened whether it warped my judgment in any way. All that I saw and heard in Rhodesia far outweighed in my mind what was a silly, racial insult.
I arrived in that country, without an invitation from the Government or anyone else, on 12th April, my assistant having arrived there a week before. I did this on the basis that I thought—as many of your Lordships who have fought elections will agree—that elections are not fought, won and lost on election day, but during the campaign beforehand, and I thought it essential to see as much of that campaign as possible. We travelled in seven of the eight out-Rhodesian provinces. We talked, of course, to the black leaders of the transitional government, to ministers, to civil servants, to people such as the International Red Cross and, also, to dwellers in the townships, in the tribal trust lands and in the protected villages, and I took time to come to my conclusions.
I like to think that, as opposed to some foreign observers, I went to Rhodesia comparatively open-minded. I had never spoken about the subject before, or written about it. The trust which I control has, indeed, given £60,000 to Bishop Muzorewa, but I did not arrive with any preconceptions and I hope—and, indeed, I like to think—that my open-mindedness was preserved on television. A few days after I arrived there, South African television interviewed me and asked me what I thought of the show so far and, at the time, I made fairly guarded noises to the effect that on the basis of what I had seen it did not seem
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to be too bad. Then, when I had come to my conclusion and before I made any public statement, I told the Government first.
This was not at the nightly briefings which the Government held for foreign observers. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Paget, who did participate, I do not believe in lending my voice to other people's propaganda exercises. But I had private meetings with the head of the election directorate, with a senior official of the Foreign Office and, finally, with the co-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. P. K. van der Byl, in which I told them of my conclusion, which was that the election was in no way fair and free.
I am not going to get involved in the constitutional argument and talk about the basic consitutional flaws which people think there are in the 3rd March settlement. One does not have to go to Rhodesia to form an opinion about those. But what I think is a second and very fundamental objection to the election, is that there was no test of acceptability given to the black population about the terms of the 3rd March settlement. The whites had such a referendum; the blacks did not. Indeed, what appears to have happened is that we had an attempt to by-pass a black test of acceptability, in that the blacks were merely asked which of a set of leaders they would prefer to lead a government based on the terms of the 3rd March settlement.
I asked continually in Rhodesia why no black referendum had been allowed. I received various and, it seemed to me, unsatisfactory answers. Chief Chirau said to me that the whites were the givers and the blacks were the takers. Therefore, there was no need to ask the blacks for their opinion. This, I should have thought, was quite simply a naive point of view. I was then told—and this came out continuously in talks with white officials—that there was not a black referendum, because the blacks were too simple to understand the terms of the constitution. If that was so, I wonder how it is that people thought the blacks were able to differentiate between the policies of the various political parties who were standing in the election; between the policies of the two main ones, the UNAC and ZANU of Sithole. It would, in my opinion, have required a medieval theologian

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to distinguish. I was very much struck on this point with what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said in the debate last Thursday. He said:
"… the electorate must be given a rational choice, and if it is not given a rational choice based on differences it will not be able to exercise a choice at all". —(Official Report, 17/5/79; col. 125.)
If that is true then the election in Rhodesia does not pass that test.
A further basic flaw was that there was no provision during the election campaign for those opposed to the settlement to persuade others to their point of view. I am not talking about the violent supporters of Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Nkomo, but I simply invite your Lordships to consider the proposition that it is possible to come to the decision—and I think this is mine—that, while not being a supporter of Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Nkomo, nonetheless, having examined the points in the 3rd March settlement, it is deficient in various respects. If, having come to that conclusion and living in Rhodesia, I attempted to persuade others to that point of view, I was liable to detention; to being, in fact, imprisoned. There was no opportunity at all for what one might call positive abstention, and this is particularly important because there had not been a referendum of the black population. How was one meant to get across a quite honestly held point of view, that the settlement was deficient?
Then, if, by any chance, you were meant to play a part in organising the elections and decided that for conscientious reasons you did not want to do so, terrible things happened to you. There was a case—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Boyd, will know of it—where 15 teachers in the Shabani region were sent an instruction to become polling clerks. They wrote back and said that they did not want to participate in this election. They were arrested and put into prison, and I have a copy of the letter which they wrote from prison asking for bail to be stood for them, and a copy of the bail document. Indeed, they were then let out on bail but, subsequently, they had to stand charges.
There was throughout the country at this time propaganda at what I consider to be a totally unacceptable level, in order
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to persuade people to vote, and it was based entirely on a false prospectus. The Government slogan was "Use your vote and stop the war". This was a cruel hoax on a desperately war-weary population and, not unnaturally, it was a very potent one. But one thing that is certain as a result of this election, and this election alone, is that it will not stop the war and that would have been known beforehand. This was a totally false prospectus.
But, over and above this, I found evidence, which I have published in a report, of official intimidation on a very great scale indeed. I am not just talking about what I might call social intimidation. A lot of people said to me "I know that this election really isn't up to much. It doesn't really solve our problems. It isn't what we want. But, what with one thing and another, it would be simpler if I went round to the polling station and so I did". I am not talking about that.
Back to Chipinga social club again. There was a white farmer who was clutching a gun at the time, and he kept on cocking and uncocking it in a rather unnerving way. He told me that he had 250 people on his farm and he said to me "You know, tomorrow morning when I get back off patrol I am going down to my farms and see how many of my kaffirs have voted". If I repeat that statement in your Lordships' Chamber, will it make the farmer sound like a learned seeker after truth? I can only tell you that nothing on earth will convince me that that man's employees had any other choice but to go to the poll. Taking another example, if you were travelling on buses in the Mrewa area of Rhodesia, troops got on the buses and asked who had voted and who had not. Those who said that they had not voted were taken off the buses, marched to the polling stations and made to vote before they were allowed to go back onto the buses. In the Buhera and Mangwende tribal trust lands, troops went around saying to people "Go to vote or we will bomb your homes". I am telling your Lordships of only a very few cases, of many of which I have evidence.
Then in Sipolilo on Good Friday—and this is a tale about which I am amazed, and which I stumbled across virtually by accident—the troops came and they said

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to the kraal head that they wanted him to take his people to a "How to vote" meeting. The polls were open on the following Monday and throughout Rhodesia during this campaign there were teach-ins on the voting system. "You make a cross this way, you make a line that way and that is how we cast our vote". There was a slogan that was being repeated at meetings throughout the land. I said to the kraal head, "Come to the meeting", and he said "No". He and his people were not interested in the election and did not want to go. The security forces went away, but then returned and they opened fire and killed 15 people—not 18—who included my informant's two children. I have told you of only some examples of some of the terror exercised by the security forces.
Over and above that there is, of course, the intimidation and terror committed by the private armies, the auxiliaries, of Bishop Muzorewa and the Reverend Sithole, and there are plenty of cases of similar terror committed by them. Of course, there is also the terror of the guerrillas. I do not just mean the awful, bestial business of letting off land mines under vehicles taking voters to the poll. There was also considerable intimidation by them, and in Matabeleland and Victoria, where they were particularly active, there was a low poll, which, I suppose, is a demonstration of how severe their intimidation was. Sensible people have said to me "That is all right, then. The intimidation of one side has cancelled out the intimidation of the other". That is, of course, nonsense and merely justifies the view that it was impossible to hold a fair and free election in the circumstances prevailing in Rhodesia last month.
But the one thing I do not make a great case about is malpractice within the electoral process itself; the actual putting of the cross on the ballot paper in the ballot booth. Had this been a British election, had I been an election agent watching it, there were some things that I should have complained about. There were one or two polling stations which were, frankly, run disgracefully, and where, as I pointed out to a Ministry of Information official at the time, there was considerable evidence of under-age voting. Generally speaking, however, the polling process itself was not bad, and one or
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two polling stations would have passed muster in any democratic society in the world. The point I have been making is that by the end of the campaign there was no reason for anybody to attempt to tamper with or perpetrate fraud on the electoral process.
It may be that a very large number of people in Rhodesia wanted to vote for one particular party rather than another. All I say is that it is impossible to conclude, from the April election, how many, because of the circumstances which I have described to your Lordships. It may be that this was a freer and a fairer election than those which have been held in other parts of Africa or other parts of world. In answer to that, I will say only that so far as the foreign observers were concerned, that was not a question which the Rhodesian Government ever asked us. They never asked whether this was a freer election than those held in Uganda, or Tanzania, or the Soviet Union or Chile. They asked, "Is this a free and fair election, which we believe that it is?"
It may be argued that although it was imperfect it was a step in the right direction. If it is believed that a fraudulent election can he a step towards democracy, then I have no argument with that point of view. It may be that there are greater considerations relating to the conduct of the elections which impel Britain and the United States to lift sanctions and to grant recognition to Bishop Muzorewa's Government—or even creeping recognition which, as far as I can understand it, involves either the Bishop breaking his word or a sort of grandmother's footsteps during which one keeps taking a few steps at a time, hoping that the Nigerian Government or the American black electorate do not notice.
Last week I was invited to Washington to give evidence to the House Sub-Committee on Africa, and I certainly found that it was easier in the United States to find people who said, "Yes, of course we know that the elections were a shambles, but for this, that or the other reason we are going to have to lift sanctions and grant recognition". On these other reasons I am not expert, and it would be foolish of me to attempt to pronounce. I have no sophisticated knowledge of East-West relations, defence, economic matters and so forth. I only know that if,

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because of these other considerations, it is decided to lift sanctions and to grant recognition, then it is not open to the Government to do so on the basis that these elections were free and fair, because they were not.
I have been asked why I alone, apparently, saw all these things, whereas 70 other foreign observers and 200 journalists did not. I am not in the least bit defensive about this. I have a report which lists places, the names of firms, dates and numbers. If anybody can contradict those, please let them do so, but if they cannot do so it seems to me that the question is not one which should be directed at me but at the other observers of the Rhodesian elections. What were they doing during their stay in Rhodesia if they did not see the kind of things which I have outlined in my report?
I have also been told several times during the past few weeks that I am the stooge of Mr. Mugabe, whom I do not support, of the extreme Left, which I despise, of the Liberal Party, which I do not, of Mr. Garfield Todd, who excites my admiration, and of the Reverend Sithole, who does not. I am not a stooge of any of them. My position is simple. In Salisbury on 19th April, Mr. Smith said to the foreign observers there assembled, "Go home and tell the truth as you have seen it". In my report and in my speech to your Lordships today, that is all that I have tried to do.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, could he help us about his very interesting report which reached the Library only this afternoon. He has mentioned numbers and has invited us to refute them, if we can. Can the noble Lord tell us whether he was able to check the figure of 1,000 detainees, which he mentions on page 20, and the three-quarters of a million people forcibly removed to protected villages, which the noble Lord mentions on page 19?
Lord CHITNIS: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Earl could give me the first page reference again.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, on page 19 there is a reference to the three-quarters of a million people
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who were forcibly removed into protected villages, and on the following page it is stated that there were not less than 1,000 detainees. Can the noble Lord tell us whether he was able to check those figures?
Lord CHITNIS: My Lords, generally speaking, I stand by the figures which I have given in my report, but I am afraid that I cannot see those figures on pages 19 and 20 of my edition of my report.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, they are not to be found on those pages. The noble Earl has given the wrong reference.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, for the convenience of the House, may I say that the last sentence of paragraph 1 on page 19 states that:
"Reliable sources within the country estimate that there are not less than 1,000 detainees".
In paragraph 2 on page 20 there is a sentence which reads:
"Under the emergency legislation, some three-quarters of a million people have been forcibly removed from their homes into protected villages".
My question is whether the noble Lord was able to check either of those figures.
Lord CHITNIS: My Lords, regarding the second figure, I believe that I have as good evidence as I am likely to get. On the first figure, I say in the text here that because the authorities have not given the figure, one is able to rely only on estimates given by others.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Catholic Peace and Justice Commisison to which he refers, told me that they considered the elections to be completely fair and open?
Lord CHITNIS: My Lords, I was not aware of that but it does not alter my view. People have been telling me for the past several weeks that these elections were fair and free. I still think that they were not.
6.7 p.m.
The Duke of DEVONSHIRE: My Lords, it is with very great diffidence that I speak in this debate, particularly as so many of the points which one wished to raise have already been covered with far

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greater eloquence than I can command. If I may follow the noble Lord who has just sat down and say one word about the elections, it seems that the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, is the only person who has found the elections to be unacceptable. Everybody in this House, with the possible exception of the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, has total faith in the integrity of Lord Boyd. When we see his report, I have no doubt we shall find what we have already heard: that in the circumstances the elections were as free and fair as could possibly be expected.
I found the same thing and would quote only one name and one organisation—an American organisation called Freedom House, headed by Mr. Justin Bayard, who is a very distinguished and prominent member of the black civil rights movement. He and his nine-man delegation were totally satisfied with the conduct of the elections, although he is a man who, by instinct, would probably have wished to find the elections unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, as he is a man of honesty and integrity, his findings went the other way. Therefore, I think we can take it that the elections can be accepted as just and fair. Only those who are unreasonable would disagree. In discussing the future of Rhodesia, everybody in this House and elsewhere is agreed on the aim, which is to establish a free, prosperous, peaceful, multiracial State that is recognised throughout the world and can take its place among the comity of nations. What we are discussing, and where we differ in shades of opinion, is how best that can be brought about.
I should like most warmly to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Paget of Northampton, on his brilliant speech which stated the case for immediate recognition, a case that was most ably supported by my noble kinsman Lord Salisbury. I am not in a position to contradict anything that Lord Paget said, because he was there and I was not. He must therefore be in a far better position to speak on it than I am. Nevertheless, I query whether he has not possibly underestimated the strength of the Patriotic Front. I must confess I found it somewhat curious that the speech of my noble friend the Foreign Secretary contained no reference to the Patriotic Front and their activities and
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backing. Indeed, while it is perhaps impertinent to criticise, I thought that the tenor of his speech concerning the future of Rhodesia tended to minimise the problems that lie ahead in achieving recognition for a multiracial Rhodesia.
Lord Paget has told us that Mr. Mugabe behaves like my colleague the Duke of Plazatoro. I was slightly vexed by this reference, as I had intended to use it myself. The noble Lord also tells us, which I found elsewhere, that Mr. Nkomo is deteriorating. Both may well be true, but the fact remains that whatever the leadership may be, the Patriotic Front commands enormous support in the continent of Africa and among the Organisation of African Unity. If there is to be lasting peace in Rhodesia the régime there must be universally accepted and must be accepted by the other countries of the OAU. We may say that they are a pretty scurrilous lot: they accepted General Amin's grossest delinquencies without dreaming of expelling him from that body; they raised no hint of criticism at Dr. Banda's close friendship with, and virtually entire reliance upon, South Africa—he is equally acceptable—but nevertheless they are a body to be contended with and sooner or later the regime in Rhodesia will have to be recognised by them, as they will have to be recognised by a largely Third World dominated United Nations.
So we would be unwise to underestimate the opposition that recognition will present. At the moment of course that opposition is far wider. Opposition to recognition has been expressed by our colleagues in the EEC and indeed by the Southern Africa Committee of the Commonwealth Secretariat, which includes both Australia and New Zealand. If we give Her Majesty's Government and my noble friend the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister a breathing space, I have little doubt that they will be able to persuade our colleagues in the EEC, and certainly the old Dominion countries within the Commonwealth, of the justice of the cause of Bishop Muzorewa's government and get them to change their view and to be prepared to recognise that government. But this will certainly take some time and speaking at this moment, opposition to the recognition of Rhodesia is not confined to African States.

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Timing is of course of the essence. The noble Lord, Lord Paget of Northampton, put the case for immediate recognition brilliantly, but I wonder whether immediate recognition is in the best interests of all the peoples of Rhodesia. If we were to recognise them and the Americans were to recognise them, might we be guiding Mr. Nkomo, and to a lesser extent Mr. Mugabe, into the hands of the Russians? Here one is on very delicate ground because one simply does not know. We do know that Mr. Nkomo has been to Moscow, and from statements issued by him since that visit there is no doubt that he regards Russia as his friend and ally and it is clear that should the situation arise he might well turn to them for increased support, or to their Cuban lackeys. It is imponderable. My noble friend the Foreign Secretary will be far better informed, as will Mr. Cyrus Vance, of the danger that lies in this field, but after what happened in Angola we cannot be sure that this will not happen.
One thing is certain: the Patriotic Front will not give up lightly and in particular the support of the so-called Front Line States will take a lot of weaning away. President Kaunda has gone to great lengths to support Mr. Nkomo's guerillas; he has provided them with training bases in his own country at (to put it mildly) extreme inconvenience. They have caused havoc in his country and they must be a real thorn in his flesh, but owing to his belief in the justice of Mr. Nkomo's cause—which I suppose no one here shares—he is prepared to put up with this grave inconvenience. It is interesting, and indeed rather dramatic, that the next Conference of the Heads of Commonwealth States should be taking place at Lusaka with President Kaunda as its host.
There are those who argue for time—and it was implicit in what the Foreign Secretary had to say this afternoon that Her Majesty's Government do not wish to recognise immediately, and we are led to believe that the Prime Minister would like to postpone any firm decisions until the holding of the Conference of the Commonwealth Heads of States in August. She may well be right and here I would address my remarks particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Paget. He gave us a most graphic description of how the political tide was
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flowing in Bishop Muzorewa's direction. If that is the case—and I have no reason to doubt it; I have read it elsewhere in the Press and heard it from other sources—surely there is a great deal to be said for giving that tide time to flow ever stronger towards the Bishop; and in the intervening weeks between now and August the defections of the guerillas, of which we have heard and which are extremely encouraging and which my noble kinsman referred to, may well increase and the Bishop's position when the conference is finally held will be strengthened by clear evidence that Africans of all denominations are in favour of Bishop Muzorewa's régime.
I recognise that I am on delicate ground here, but the Bishop has one grave disadvantage as the leader of a country to its independence. For better or for worse he is regarded throughout the Third World, and certainly throughout Africa, as Ian Smith's man. This is no time to discuss the merits and achievements of Mr. Ian Smith but the fact remains that his name is a highly emotive one. In the countries of the OAU he is regarded as the epitome of white racism and white domination and it will be hard for the Bishop to live down his association with Mr. Ian Smith. That will be something that he will not be allowed to forget. That is a further reason for postponing recognition.
On 1st June the Bishop becomes Prime Minister of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and for the first time he will be "his own man". Until now he has been seen as Ian Smith's man. It is interesting to note that he has given certain indications that as soon as he becomes his own man he will take an independent line and will do all he can to cast himself free from the influence of Mr. Ian Smith and his colleagues. So it may well be that the two months between now and August which the Bishop will have to show himself as the new leader of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia will be extremely beneficial and the whole of Africa—indeed the whole of the world—will be in a position to see that once he has been put in the position of Prime Minister he is beholden to no one. I put that forward as a second reason for postponing recognition.
He is faced with very grave difficulties. If one looks at the other countries which are our former colonies in Africa, we see

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that they have all achieved independence under the leadership of a man who has brought them to independence and a man to whom the whole of the nation can look and who commands the whole of the nation's loyalties: President Kenyatta in Kenya; President Banda in Malawi, President Kaunda in Zambia, and as indeed in Tanzania. Unfortunately for the Bishop, not only has he never been put in prison by the British Government but also he is not a great nationalist leader. We know now from the elections that he commands the overwhelming support of the Africans but he does not have the glamour of having to fight for independence; he has been granted it at the behest and through the good wishes of Mr. Ian Smith and his Government. As I say, he will have very great difficulty in establishing himself on a par with the other Presidents of African countries who are his neighbours.
I should also like to say a word about elections. We make great play of elections; we always have. I think all the countries which achieved their independence had elections on what is known as the Westminster democratic system. But they do not really work in Africa. If you look at all the countries that were our colonies, can you find one where now 10 or 20 years later a Westminster style democracy is maintained? I have checked. The only one I am not sure about is the Gambia in West Africa.
A noble Lord: Botswana.
The Duke of DEVONSHIRE: With that possible exception—I am not qualified to speak there—all the countries that used to be administered by us have either opted for military rule or for presidential rule. Where political parties are allowed only one is permitted, and opposition as we understand it does not exist; it comes from within the framework of that political party. The truth is that the African people do not like the role of opposition. Noble Lords opposite may say they are not the only ones. But in Africa it is carried further. There are no pickings. I do not wish to be unkind, but the role of opposition simply does not appeal to them, and this was all too clearly shown by the recent elections. The Reverend Sithole contested those elections. He did not do at all well—he won only 12 seats—
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and his immediate reaction was to say that the elections were rigged. So although I suppose we must go through—I am almost tempted to say—the charade of holding elections, we are deceiving ourselves if we think they will have any lasting effect.
As the years go by in Rhodesia it is certain, I think, that the pattern that took place in Kenya and Tanzania will be followed. Both those countries began by having at least one European in their Cabinets. Here in Rhodesia there will be far more. But there is little doubt that what happened in those countries will happen in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and that white influence politically will steadily deteriorate. This is indeed to be welcomed and can only be expected. But I think one is optimistic if one thinks that in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia a totally different pattern of government after independence will be created than has been created in any other African State that was formerly our colony.
There is, fortunately, little danger of an army takeover, as has occurred in Ghana and Nigeria, in that at present and for some considerable years to come the army will be dominated by white leadership. But politically we must expect increasing Africanisation, and to make it more complicated it is bound to be backed by tribal feeling. It may be considered indelicate to refer to the strength of tribal feeling that exists in African States, but it is there and we ignore it at our folly. It is for that reason—and I hope noble Lords will not think I am unduly cynical—that it seems to me highly dubious that should the Patriotic Front ever achieve any position of authority in Rhodesia it would hold together. I think the alliance between Mr. Nkomo and Mr. Mugabe is a perfect example of adversity making strange bed fellows. Already there is severe friction between their respective guerrilla forces, and should the Patriotic Front ever win an election or take a leading part in African affairs I have little or no doubt that the Patriotic Front would wither and their respective leaders cease to be on the same side and become bitter enemies. However, this is to digress.
The point I wish to try to make is that while I accept the strength of Lord Paget's argument, that it is no good seeking advice

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if you are not going to take it, and that therefore if we intend to grant recognition regardless of what is said and what we are told in August in Lusaka then we had better to do it now. At the same time for the two reasons I have given—one, that the intervening period will give time for more Africans in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia to defect from their respective guerrilla bodies and join the bishop's party, and secondly, because it will give an opportunity for the bishop to establish himself as his own man—I think the balance of interest lies in delaying recognition at least until after the Commonwealth Conference. Whether President Carter can manage to stall Congress as long as that is a different matter. If the Americans were to give recognition it would be difficult to know whether we should follow.
One final thought, and here I seek advice. Recognition and the lifting of sanctions have been taken together in the same sentence. Is it possible to divorce them? Would it be possible to lift sanctions—which would bring immediate and enormous relief to the hard-pressed Rhodesian economy, and everyone who lives in Rhodesia, whatever colour they may be, would benefit from the economic results that would immediately flow from the lifting of sanctions—while delaying recognition of the bishop's Government? I suppose I could put it this way: the lifting of sanctions without granting recognition would be recognising Rhodesia de facto but not de jure. The fact that it was not de jure might give comfort, or might antagonise less, the OAU and the front line countries than full de jure recognition. It may not be possible to do the two separately, but if it were I see a strong argument for lifting sanctions at once, thereby benefiting the whole of Rhodesia.
6.29 p.m.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, may I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Carver, on a remarkable maiden speech, and may I also add congratulations for his efforts in the Rhodesian crisis and attempts at assistance to solve that crisis in the last few months.
My Lords, at the risk of raising the blood pressure of certain noble Lords on the other side of the Chamber, I would like to begin my speech by quoting from
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Karl Marx. Marx was accustomed to saying,
"History repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce".
I would suggest that 1970 was tragedy, 1979 was farce. I have been reading the Queen's Speech of 2nd July 1970 and would challenge any noble Lord opposite to tell us where the difference lies between the Queen's Speech as spoken in this Chamber last week and that of 1970. I have no doubt that noble Lords opposite, and particularly those on the Front Bench here and in another place, have every determination to follow through the measures of that Speech. I believe they will fail as lamentably, and even more tragically, because of the ensuing nine years, as they did between 1970 and 1974. I should like to say for a moment why. In this respect, I am pleased to see that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has returned to the Woolsack because I should like to take up a point which he made—I can do so only briefly—last week in his speech on the gracious Speech when he referred to the relationship between community rights and individual rights.
The central point that I should like to make concerning the whole of the gracious Speech and, indeed, the whole of the policy that has been put forward over the past few weeks by the Conservative Party, is that it is running right against the trend of history. I say that for the following reason and I think that the noble and learned Lord will take this point. Over the past 100 years organisations and institutions have been becoming greater and greater and more and more powerful. As a consequence, the individual looking for liberty has increasingly had to seek that liberty in communal action. That is why the institutions in industry, commerce and finance have been matched by an increasing power in the trade union movement. That is still happening. That is what divides our two parties and that I believe is what will bring to an end the hopes of the party opposite in both Houses. It will bring them to an end not because they do not intend to carry out their measures, but because they will come up against the hard force of historical reality.
In a nutshell, what they are trying to do, is to introduce or to strengthen elitism in this country. After all, they

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have the Cabinet to do it. They have the good chaps from Greyfriars School along with their fag from Marks and Spencer. One awaits only the arrival of someone from Keyser Ullman to supervise the books and then we shall have the whole team. Therefore, they have the team for the elitist approach which they are putting forward—and one must admit they are successfully putting it forward—to the country. Perhaps I may sum the situation up in a quotation from an author who I am sure is much more popular on the opposite side of the House than Karl Marx. T. S. Eliot said:
"Only the fool fixed in his folly may think he can turn the wheel on which he turns".
We are living in the age of the big battalions. We are living in an age in which talk about a few pence off income tax, the reduction of subsidies and so on really does not make any difference to the centre of power, and nor did it between 1970 and 1974. What happened to all that investment that was being released in this country to regenerate our industry? British investment in Western Europe increased five times. In this country it hardly moved. That, I suggest, is what is likely to happen this time, but this time we have other and more profound challenges to that same doctrine.
We now have what is popularly known as the silicone chip or perhaps better known as micro-electronics. Are we going to pass that over to private enterprise? Are we going to allow that to become a toy when it is estimated that 10 to 15 per cent. of our workforce will be put out of work over the next decade? Are we going to allow organisations like ITT, which I have been observing recently in the United States, with their slush funds, to dominate the economy of this country and those of overseas countries? Are we going to allow the hundred largest companies in this country to go on increasing their share of manufacturing industry? In 1950 their share was one-fifth; today it is one half. Those are the issues which I should like to debate further with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor as regards where the majority of individuals in this country have to seek their liberty and freedom from the massive commercial and industrial organisations which increasingly dominate their lives.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady
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Elles, that foreign policy is the extension of domestic policy and that only with a sound domestic policy can we have a sound foreign policy. That is why I have begun from this point because it is the same philosophy that has been portrayed to the people of Britain in domestic affairs, that dominates the philosophy of foreign policy which has been put forward and is being put forward both during the election and this afternoon.
It is not just a question of the number of votes that are cast; it is not just a question of constitutions or the freedom of the Press or even the use of Government funds by the South African Information Department to swing opinion behind the policy of apartheid. There is something much deeper, and that is the growth all over the world of the multinational corporation which cannot be said to be based in any country because different parts of it are to he found in different countries. Such firms are constantly moving around and it is that power which is at the centre of the Rhodesian issue.
I am sorry that the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd, has left the Chamber, although I quite understand him doing so because he sat here for a long time. However, he will remember the arguments that we used to have over the Central African Federation, where the issue of Rhodesia was initiated. The Central African Federation was an attempt, principally by the large copper corporations of Northern Rhodesia in conjunction with commerce in Southern Rhodesia, to build up in central Africa an economic block under the domination of large-scale capital. That was the type of argument that the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd, myself and my friends had during the 1950s. The result tied the economies of what are now Zambia and Rhodesia inextricably together and then left Zambia 13 months after independence with the demand that she should untie those knots in order to follow the British policy of applying economic sanctions against Rhodesia. However, that has not been forgotten. The copper companies like Anglo-American, Selection Trust and the American conglomerate Union Carbide were mainly responsible for the breaking of sanctions with the import of chrome to the United States. The activities of Shell and BP—and when are we to hear

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what happens after the Bingham Report? —are now openly categorised by a learned judge with Shell and BP as being in breach of sanctions in Rhodesia.
I should like to substantiate my remarks about the importance of this economic issue in Rhodesia, which, I believe and would suggest to the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary, is the central issue between the present regime and the regime of the Patriotic Front in exile. Let us listen to these words:
"In a few years, or even a few months, the Government of Rhodesia will be black. We will not forget those who ignored our suffering, scorned our rights, and, in complicity with the fascist regime of Mr. Smith, took our minerals, bestowing wealth to the white minority and sentencing the black majority to poverty and physical depravity".
Words from whom? Joshua Nkomo, Robert Mugabe, Sithole? No, my Lords. Those words were spoken by Bishop Muzorewa when he recognised that his people were determined to throw off the economic yoke of the white monopoly of political power, backed by economic power, in the country of Rhodesia.
I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, that he considers this very real, complex and difficult problem within the context of the whole of Southern Africa, because here there has been an important and crucial shift in policy over the past nine months; since the overthrow of Mr. Vorster and the coming to power of Mr. Botha as Prime Minister, there has been a deliberate shift in foreign policy. That foreign policy is now more interventionist than it has been for many, many years. It is now the objective of the South African Government, clearly supported by the massive money that can be called upon by its information department, to build a South African empire in Southern Africa.
In Namibia a bargain was struck between the West and the front-line States, a bargain which the front-line States delivered—SWAPO agreed to elections—but which the Western States have not been able to deliver, and I freely admit that that is through no fault of the noble Lord sitting opposite. Nevertheless, it is a factor in the situation that the Western Powers have not been able to deliver the South African Government, and fulfil their part in the United Nations' plan.
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Again in Namibia the same large-scale economic interests are involved; for example, there is Rio Tinto—about which the noble Lord knows—defying the United Nations by its operations with the Rossing mine, and today Anglo-American is raping the country, taking out diamonds as fast as possible, irrespective of the way it is mortgaging the future of the country and preventing further diamonds being exploited in the future.
In Zambia, the Rhodesian regime, supported by South African arms, is invading a fellow Commonwealth country, a friendly Commonwealth country, to such a point as to be able to blow up a house just half a mile from the President's house, a house that I was in just six weeks ago. What do we say here in this Britain which is at the heart of the British Commonwealth? Where are the protests about the invasion of a fellow Commonwealth country by an illegal regime for which we say we have responsibility? Where is this responsibility?
Lord HANKEY: My Lords, is not the noble Lord looking at this rather one-sidedly? What about all the guerrillas coming from Zambia, blowing up aeroplanes and goodness knows what, and trying to stop the elections?
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, I should be delighted to answer that question because in my opinion—and I have said this consistently for 10 years—what you call the guerrillas, or what are called out there the freedom fighters, are doing the job for which the British Government are themselves responsible. There was a rebellion in Rhodesia. What did the British Government do?
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt him?
LORD HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, I am just about to finish and I shall willingly give way for as long as noble Lords like. The guerrillas the noble Lord speaks of were and are acting against a regime which has revolted against Her Majesty the Queen. I ask: what are the British Government doing? Those guerrillas have been losing their lives doing the job that the British Government have always said is their responsibility.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord. He is always very courteous and has a marvellously good temper, as have so many on his side when I interrupt them. When he says that the guerrillas are doing, so to say, God's work in trying to overthrow the rebel government, what does he call it when they fight each other, which is what is happening?
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: Indeed, my Lords, I fully recognise the force of that point. Those of us who have had any influence in Rhodesia—and, again, the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd, will bear this out—have been trying for 30 years to bring together a single nationalist movement in Rhodesia, as in Tanzania and eventually in Kenya and in other countries, and we have failed. I do not deny that for one moment. However, it is still our responsibility to go on trying. Otherwise the future of that country will be too awful to contemplate.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, will not the noble Lord agree that the leaders of the guerrillas were asked several times to partake in the elections in Rhodesia? Repeatedly, they said that they wanted an answer only through the sword. Further, early on in the noble Lord's speech he appeared to be saying that the Africans regarded the whites as taking their minerals and impoverishing them. Human life started in Africa a long time before it started in Europe, and the Africans have had a long time to set up their own institutions. If the white man had not come, they would never have got them.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, I am delighted to be interrupted at any time, but it would help if the questions were pertinent. Of course, there has been a refusal by the Patriotic Front to attend a conference, but it was the Patriotic Front which said that it would go to a conference first when the Smith regime said it would not. Then what happens? Smith and Sithole go to Washington and what is the news on the same day that they announce that they have changed their minds and that they will attend a conference? Rhodesian planes have bombed Zambia—this on the very same night as Smith announced in Washington that he would go to a conference.
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That has been Smith's tactic throughout. If noble Lords have followed the story, they will know that that is how Smith works—he always has.
I turn now to Rhodesia itself. I shall not go into any detail here because I could not match the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis. He had one advantage that I did not: he went to Rhodesia. Many people have asked me why I did not go to Rhodesia to observe the elections. There are two reasons. First, I think it wrong to give that kind of recognition to the Rhodesian regime. Secondly, I am a prohibited immigrant in Rhodesia. I consulted the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor on this privately in the corridor a few weeks ago and, with his usual Puckish sense of humour, he told me that noble Lords here would certainly raise many objections if I were to be molested or put in prison in Rhodesia. Indeed, many of my friends have said that for years, but I am not of the martyr type and have no intention of inviting that fate. Although a Member of the British Parliament, I am still a prohibited immigrant of one of the Queen's colonies, and I ask noble Lords to think upon the implications of this—
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me for intervening on a matter of the habits of the House, not the merits of what he is saying. I believe that as a general rule we never refer to conversations which we have with other noble Lords outside the House. If it were to be a general practice that what we said in the corridors outside were repeated on the Floor of the House, it would make our civilised communication very difficult indeed.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, perhaps the sense of humour of the noble Lord opposite, of myself and of the Lord Chancellor are different. If I have in any way offended my noble and learned friend, I apologise immediately; I do not believe that I have. We had a good joke about it, and it was told in that spirit.
I was going to ask whether there was anyone taking notes on behalf of the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd of Merton. Perhaps I may address myself to the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary and ask two questions arising from the report of Lord Boyd and his team of observers. The

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first question is: did he visit any of the detainees in prison?—because they were members of the Opposition and it is customary to talk to the Opposition. There is a precedent for this. When the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd, was Colonial Secretary, I visited Central Africa, before I was a prohibited immigrant. This was when the present President of Malawi, Hastings Banda, was imprisoned in Gwelo. I was enabled to see him and his colleagues in that prison, and I was able to discuss matters with him in complete privacy. I would ask that question first, and the second is—
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. He asked whether the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd, who is not here, saw the detainees. I think I can say that my noble friend Lord Crawford saw 96 detainees at Bulawayo when he had been told that there were 900. No doubt he will make his own speech in his own time, but he was not in the Chamber when I interrupted the noble Lord, who I knew would want an answer to his question.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, I did not know that; that is why I was asking the question about the Boyd Report. My second question is: did Lord Boyd or any of his team go to Lusaka and Maputo to see the leaders of the Opposition, Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe?—because they also are parties to the political future of Rhodesia. It would seem to me obvious that this is part of the job of any observers.
Without going into any details of how the elections were conducted, there is one central, crucial fact that I should like to put to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. It is that the Five Principles have not been fulfilled. They have not been fulfilled for a simple reason, and one does not have to leave these shores, or even this House, to discover it. It is that the constitution has not been approved by the whole of the Rhodesian people. It has not been disapproved of. But they have not had the opportunity to approve or disapprove of the constitution. If Members opposite are going to maintain the stand that they took when they were previously in Government—the stand which the Labour
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Government also took—which has been a bipartisan stand insisting upon the fulfilment of those Five Principles before recognition is granted then recognition cannot be granted in present circumstances.
I do not see the danger of recognition being granted now. I see the danger of recognition being granted and sanctions lifted after the Lusaka Commonwealth Conference. I would remind the noble Lord what happened last time he was in office. I would remind him of the rows that his Leader had in one week with President Nyerere of Tanzania and with President Kuanda of Zambia. I would remind him of the disastrous Singapore Conference of 1971. I would remind him of their insistence upon supplying South Africa with arms. I would remind him about the support which the Conservative Government gave to the Amin rêgime when Obote was overthrown. Indeed, I would remind himv—if he needs reminding—that when he was Minister of Defence he was most persuasive in getting large armament contracts for the Shah of Iran.
Finally, I would refer to the comparison between the situation in Rhodesia today and that in 1975–76 in Angola. If the noble Lord is genuinely concerned about the future of white settlement in Rhodesia, and about British interests in Rhodesia and in Central Africa as a whole, and if he is concerned—as I believe he is—with the difference between what can now be British influence and what used to be British power, then I admit that he has a very grave difficulty. We have left him with a very complex legacy.
The front page of the New York Herald Tribune says today:
"Lord Carrington reassured Mr. Vance that the government intends to move gradually on Rhodesia … leaving the first major shift of policy up to the Carter administration".
I would suggest that he must do more than that. I would suggest that there is a positive step that he can take. As he has said himself, there is a new situation since the elections. Now Bishop Muzorewa has more political credibility than he had previously. Let the Foreign Secretary use his influence with Bishop Muzorewa to bring him together—it may take time—with the leaders of the Patriotic Front. I know that it is difficult. I know that it may be impossible. But let him try. Let him try to complete what was at one time

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started—a reconciliation between the different branches of the nationalist movement. I say this because nothing short of that will allow peace to break through in Central Africa; and anything short of that will lead to disastrous chaos throughout that region.
6.58 p.m.
Lord GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, I am not capable of competing with the previous speaker, although I propose to say a few words later about Rhodesia. The first half of the noble Lord's last sentence was the only cheerful, and a somewhat balanced, picture of the situation that he gave us. I know that the thesis he announces is in fact a historic one, and one which is treated by scholars with respectabilty, but he might have given us a little more encouragement in a little less time.
I should like to join with other noble Lords in congratulating the maiden speaker upon his outstanding speech. It is very rarely that we hear someone who knows so much, who gives us all that knowledge in so comprehensive a form, and who thinks so quickly as does the noble Lord. It was a most remarkable performance, and I hope that we shall hear many such performances repeated.
My Lords, first may I congratulate very warmly (if that is proper) the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, on obtaining this extremely important post in Government; and I think it is a great compliment to your Lordships' House that he should exercise that post in this House. It is, I think we may like to say, perhaps, a compliment to him as well; but I feel that the Government have said something to us of great encouragement, both by leaving him here constitutionally, as it were, and by asking him to lead this extremely important branch of our Government from this House. I am sure we shall all wish to do our best to help him, even, on many occasions, those who may not agree with him politically. May I also echo what has been said to the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts. I am sure we all agree that he has served us with great fidelity and great expertise. When I have been working up to a supplementary question to be addressed to him I have always found that he has usually answered it before I have had time
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to ask it. I am sure we are all deeply grateful to him.
I should like to speak briefly about three subjects. The first one will be the Common Market, on which I have just one small remark to make; the second will be the Middle East; and the third will be Rhodesia—and I shall try to make them all extremely short. On the matter of the European Community, as someone who was in and out of negotiations on that subject for about 15 years, may I say that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has described exactly the difficulties under which we operated in all negotiation, but particularly in the negotiation of the Community agricultural policy. The point was that that policy was going to be difficult for us anyway; and because in 1955 we had felt ourselves strong enough to do without the Common Market, so to speak, we were always behind in our efforts later on to get back to the position we might have reached had we decided in 1955 that we wished to join as full members. I am not criticising the Government of the day; it was understandable. But it has put us in a position of disadvantage ever since. On that particular point, and on the point that we needed to do something about it, there was no difference of opinion recently, to my mind, between the then Government and the then Opposition.
But, my Lords, where I must differ on this matter from the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, is on the matter of handling, the matter of style, the matter (if you like) of diplomatic technique. A great American President, Teddy Roosevelt, is said to have said,
"Speak softly but carry a big stick".
We went into these negotiations with a very small stick, but we did not speak softly. We spoke very loudly, which was much worse still; because if, in diplomacy, you are trying to get something out of somebody which he does not want to give you, the last thing to do is to be rude. But for some inexplicable reason—and I do not say this from any party point of view; I say it from a technical point of view—the previous Government chose the tactic of sailing into our friends in the Common Market as though they were our enemies. So to the disadvantage we were in already we added the disadvantage, to put it crudely, that we looked as though we did not like them; so we were further behind still. The point one must make—I

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say again, without any basic party views on matters generally—is that that was bad diplomatic practice, and that is why one has welcomed the different stance which the present Government have adopted.
I should now like to go on, equally briefly, to the Middle East. I was glad to read in the Official Report of the proceedings in the other place that the Government had made an encouraging and friendly statement to President Sadat on the initiative which he took. But as I ventured to say in November last, it seemed to me that the attitude that we were taking, partly in Government and in the public but even more in the media, was to commend the initiative of Mr. Begin and President Sadat politely and then to rush after all the reasons why it was all extremely difficult—and I particularly criticised the media on this point. What seemed to be missed about the whole affair, but which was not missed by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, today, was the truly unique nature of what had happened. I venture to underline this for a moment because what this initiative by Israel and Egypt did was suddenly to present to people like ourselves, who have always been very cautious not to offend either in order to keep some position in Israel and Egypt, a situation in which we could heartily commend what an Israeli and an Egyptian, or an Arab, were doing together. This had not happened for 30 years. As I say, the significance of this seemed to be somewhat missed.
My Lords, if we may look at this a little further, let us look at it by comparing the attitude of President Sadat, in particular, and also Mr. Begin, and the other Arab countries. One sees that the Arab initiative through Egypt was a matter of immense courage, immense imagination and immense hope. Then you go across to Damascus and you see Mr. Gromyko in full flight to tell the Arabs that they must not do anything of the kind. Here, unfortunately, the courage of the more moderate Arabs has for the moment somewhat forsaken them. One must hope very much that this is going to be a temporary phenomenon, because if there is one group of people to whom peace would be profitable in that part of the world it
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would of course be the money-owning Arab States. So one must hope very strongly that that gradually dawns on the Arab leaders in the countries other than Egypt, and that, while the connections with the Palestinians perhaps prohibit active support of the Sadat-Begin peace, at least there may be a certain degree of neutrality while this great work, which also owes so much to President Carter, proceeds.
If I may be a little brash, while I have given a few words of advice to the Arabs may I also give some, for which I hope he will forgive me, to my noble friend who spoke so eloquently about Israel. I have worked for a considerable time with Israeli colleagues, and of course all of us know a good deal about Israel generally; and I should like, very sincerely and in really friendly style, to give my noble friend one word of advice. The people of Israel are overwhelmingly able, ingenious, brave—I could list whole lines of virtues with perfect sincerity—but this leads them sometimes politically to overrate the market, to try, prefectly honestly, to acquire out of a situation more than that situation will carry. Then opposition begins and whatever was started perhaps does not end so happily. As I say, I think this is a result of an over-intelligent (if I may put it like that) use of great virtues and strengths. I would just put to the people and to those who run the Government of Israel the thesis that three-quarters of a victory won with content is worth much more than a whole victory won with resentment. I am sure that this is an important proposition.
My Lords, my last subject will be that of Rhodesia, again a subject in which one has from time to time been in contact. I will not venture on the difficult scene of recognition and so on, but I have one or two ideas which I should simply like to leave with your Lordships as an ingredient of the very difficult situation with which the Government are dealing. Before I do that, may I again express (I think one can say) gratitude to the Foreign Secretary for resisting on two occasions the great temptation to rush ahead too soon on the basis of the Muzorewa Government. The Government resisted the temptation to suspend sanctions at one moment and they have also resisted the temptation to recognise.

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I have every conviction that these two decisions were absolutely right. It was extremely tempting to rush into something which would have damaged us with the Arab countries and further. There may come a time when we shall have to do something that not all the people in Asia and Africa will commend. We cannot be run by them; we must be run by ourselves. But at this moment it would have been quite wrong to rush into the scene without consideration, without asking a lot of questions and without them sitting down and having a good think with ourselves. I am glad that things went that way.
My Lords, I think it was the noble Duke who said that he would not presume to comment personally on Mr. Ian Smith. I will do so, because I believe that Mr. Smith —and I am careful fo call him politely by his proper name and not abusively as many do—is still a kind of image of the Britain that the Africans do not want. This may not be fair any more; I do not know. But I am sure that this is the case. I think that it would be a great and positive act if, when Bishop Muzorewa finally takes over, Mr. Smith were to announce that, having brought Zimbabwe-Rhodesia to the point where there is a majority black Government, he would wish to retire with honour—and I emphasise "with honour"—from the scene so that there will be no feeling of a residue of some of the policies which were pursued in time being pursued any further. I say this with all respect to him; but I believe that as a public relations sentiment, if you like, there is something in this.
I would also add two other thoughts. One is that, given the bad feelings that there have been both between same Africans and the British and some Africans and other Africans, I think—and I leave this as a suggestion to the Foreign Secretary—that we may have to, or would be wise to, if we make progress, have some kind of (shall I say?) charter of—not non-intervention; the stock phrases are inadequate—perhaps abstention or something stronger, a covenant, perhaps, among all those concerned that there will be no more killing. We should have that firmly. Things like non-intervention and so on have become so weak in a rather tough world that we want something even more clear and more emphatic as a kind of oath of the people that fighting shall not go on any more. It
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is so devasting for the ordinary people of Rhodesia who would rather get on with tilling their vineyards. If we could do that then—and I am only speculating—maybe a new feeling could come into Rhodesia, a feeling of at least "live and let live", if not something better. It is because I feel that we want to progress in some of these ways that I have simply not made any propositions but put out these ideas as a speculation upon which other people can, I hope, think more expertly and more thoroughly.
There is one other point which has not been mentioned today with which I will close. After all the damage that people have inflicted upon each other—and this is not particularly aimed at the British—I think that there will have to be another look at aid to restore some of the institutions and places in that country. One cannot in these days go to a Government and ask for money on a sort of Marshall Plan magnitude. This would not be right; but it would be right to start thinking of ways in which the parts of Rhodesia that have been badly damaged in all this conflict could be helped from the more prosperous countries so as to be able to put themselves together again —without any dogma but with a practical eye on what needs doing now and on a reasonably big scale.
My Lords, this has not been a tidy discourse; but I have felt that one might be able to help with a few more ideas on Rhodesia. I can only end by expressing my very warm wishes—as I am sure are those of the rest of the House—for real progress and real reconciliation on the whole Rhodesian front.
7.18 p.m.
Lord ALPORT: My Lords, it was my misfortune that I was unavoidably unable to reach the House in time to hear the speeches of my noble friend the Foreign Secretary and the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts. I apologise to both of them and to the House as well. But I can at least offer my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Carver, on his excellent maiden speech. It was clear and concise in the best traditions of the Staff College at Camberley. We hope that we may hear him often again.
Like those who tried to discern the great and ominous events of the future in

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Roman times from the entrails of a chicken, we today seek to interpret the future of our country from the composition of a new Government. The procedures are liable to some degree of inaccuracy in both cases. Let me say that the most favourable omen that any of us could hope for is the appointment of my noble friend Lord Carrington as Foreign Secretary. No doubt, we will have plenty of advice to give him in the days ahead which he will sift, winnow and discard as his judgment dictates. As I am afraid your Lordships may know only too well, I have offered advice at intervals over nearly 20 years here on the subject of Rhodesia—some of it, I hope, good; some of it, no doubt, bad. Let me on this occasion shortly try to give one or two comments on the present position of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.
I think it most important in the first place that we—that is the new Government—should not get the problems of Southern Africa out of proportion in relation to the rest of the world. First, it would be intolerable, in my opinion, if the wholly self-interested illusions of a quarter of a million Europeans, nearly 50 per cent. of whom have gone to Rhodesia since 1965, who are Afrikaaners, Greeks, Portuguese, Germans and embittered refugees from other parts of the Commonwealth, should succeed in destroying through their emotional appeal as our so-called "kith and kin", Britain's nexus of international, economic and cultural relationships which is represented by the Commonwealth. We should remember, my Lords, that the present constitution of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia is, from the point of view of the Europeans, less favourable than could have been achieved 17 years ago if the Rhodesian Front under the leadership of Mr. Smith had not destroyed the party of Sir Roy Welensky and the late Sir Edgar Whitehead, which stood for the multiracial solution advocated by successive British Governments.
Some 12,000 corpses, black and white; the advance of Communist influence in Southern Africa; the terrifying uncertainties of the present day are the sum total of Mr. Smith and his friends' achievements. How he can claim a continuing role in the political direction
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of the country to which he has done so much harm (let us be fair, with the help of misguided friends here) is to me an example of unparalleled arrogance—"not in my lifetime"; "not in a thousand years". Anyone who had made those his watchwords and his commitments in public life in this country would no longer be in public life.
But I recognise there is now a new situation in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia today. I have never doubted that the election which took place last month would be far more convincing than critics outside Rhodesia generally supposed. Indeed, I advised your Lordships in that sense a couple of years ago after my last visit to Salisbury. I also remember that in 1962 Mr. Nkomo and, I think, Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Sithole organised a "do it ourselves" election or, more accurately, referendum, to coincide with the European election of that year. The Europeans were astonished on that occasion at the efficiency of the arrangements; and, more particularly, they were impressed by the urge of Africans to cast their votes. No doubt then, as now, there was pressure, intimidation and impersonation perhaps, and other irregularities; but I have no doubt then, as now, the voting represented the general wishes of the people who were involved.
If I may at this point, I should like to say that I have some experience of Mr. Sithole's capacity for walking out of a situation which does not fulfil his personal expectations. He followed Mr. Nkomo out of the constitutional conference of 1961 less than one hour after it started by pre-arrangement, and Her Majesty's Government should assess him as such. He shares, in my view, culpability with Smith, Mr. Nkomo and Mr. Mugabe for the lost opportunities of the past and the present dangerous situation which exists.
The evidence of the credibility of the election in Rhodesia last April is in my view different from the impressions advanced by observers on the spot. Before 21st April only a handful of people in this country had heard of the existence of one of the contending parties, the United National Federal Party. The only reference to its existence, that I saw, was one mention in the Financial Times. Yet this party achieved equal representation

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in the new transitional government as Mr. Sithole's long-established ZANU. It has elected nine members in its support. Despite the intimidation of Mr. Nkomo's guerrillas, despite the powerful UANC machine; despite Mr. Sithole's appeal, despite the private armies to which reference has been made, Chief Kayisa Ndemini's party, less than four months old, without any real financial backing, won substantial representation in the new Parliament. I am sure that in doing so they reflect accurately the aspirations of the people of Matabeleland from whom all their representatives are drawn.
But while I have no doubt that the results of the April election represent a genuine response by Africans and Europeans to the chance of choosing from the political options available to them, I am certain that no African of any party would, given a free choice, have been prepared to accept a Parliament in which nearly a third were European Rhodesian fronters led by Mr. Smith. I have no doubt that Prime Minister-elect Muzorewa wishes those Europeans who can and will contribute to the future of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, with loyalty, to remain in that country. I have no doubt that he is prepared to pay a price for the help that they can give. But the price which frankly was asked of him during the constitutional discussions earlier last year, and which is enshrined in the present constitution, is too high, in my view, in terms of the political realities of contemporary Africa. I suggest to your Lordships that before recognition is possible not only must there be full and continuous consultation within the Commonwealth, with the United States and the EEC, as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has already promised, but three things in addition are necessary.
First—and here I follow my noble friend the Duke of Devonshire—Mr. Smith and his henchmen of the Rhodesian Front must take a rapidly diminishing role in the Government in Salisbury and remove themselves from the public life as soon as possible. The Africans have already demonstrated by their selection for the new Parliament that the old Rhodesian front guard are not acceptable to them. Secondly, there must be a return to legality on the initiative of the new Zimbabwe-Rhodesian Government recognised by the British Government and
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the British Parliament under appropriate conditions. Thirdly, the new African majority Government must give evidence of its ability both to sustain effective control of the country and to promote a revised constitutional settlement reflecting the realities of the racial, tribal and continental situation which now exists in Central Africa.
I should like to suggest that towards the achievement of all this it is essential that a British presence should be established in Salisbury, and that presence should be led by a distinguished and experienced diplomat. Such a mission would not have diplomatic status nor would it imply recognition, but it would do something which in my view is of immense importance: it would put at the disposal of Prime Minister Muzorewa and his African colleagues advice and information which would relieve him of his present dependence upon the Smith faction and upon the Government of the Republic of South Africa. I would add, if I may on a personal note, that I only wish that Sir David Scott, Her Majesty's Ambassador in Pretoria, was available for this desperately difficult and in my view important role.
To sum up, my Lords: I believe that for the first time since "Tiger" and "Fearless" there is a chance of avoiding disaster—the ultimate disaster—in Rhodesia. Much depends on the wisdom and statesmanship of Bishop Muzorewa. But I also believe that if we have the patience to undertake the most thorough process of preparation and get the timing right, we—that is Her Majesty's Government—can bring to a successful conclusion this potentially disastrous postscript to the long and honourable story of the British Commonwealth and Empire.
One of my fears is that the situation in Southern Africa, which has occupied so much of this debate, will also absorb too much of the time and energies of the Government, to the detriment of our effort to help to solve far more ominous and dangerous problems in other parts of the world. I implore the Government to realise that the most imminent danger to this country and to the whole of the Free World lies in the developing situation in Afghanistan, Iran and the Gulf.
As your Lordships perhaps know, last September I was able fortuitously to see at first hand the alarm which the Soviet

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take-over in Afghanistan created throughout Asia. Moscow has played its "joker" —to use the terminology of the BBC's programme "It's a Knockout"—and there are sinister implications, because, if there is anything which could knock out the immense power of the Western Free World, it is the loss of access to the oil resources of the Middle East. I do not think there is any need for me to take my argument beyond that. With a weak and quixotic Administration in Washington, Europe which has not yet produced a coherent policy of action in defence of its vital interests, a Commonwealth which does not claim political cohesion and a United Nations Organisation whose rules of membership have so diluted the realities of political power as to reduce it to a role of being little more than a social and charitable body, there is a vacancy in the ranks of international leadership.
My country—our country—is not now the most powerful in economic or military terms, but it is still the most stable, with a unique record of constructive political leadership in every continent. Is it possible that at this critical juncture in the affairs of the world, when the seeds of a world war are not only being sown but are germinating in the oil areas of the Middle East, this island of ours could prevent another catastrophe? This is the measure, in my opinion, of the task which lies ahead of my noble friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, and there is no one in this House to whom I am more happy to see it entrusted. I only hope that the strong emotions and sincerely-held opinions on the Rhodesian situation will not seek to force him and Her Majesty's Government into lines of action which will compound the mistakes of the Rhodesian illegal rêgime and destroy what may be the last opportunity this country has of resuming its rightful role in the leadership of the Free World.
7.33 p.m.
Lord NOEL-BAKER: My Lords, I join in the congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Carver, and in conveying gratitude to my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts. This has been largely a debate about Rhodesia, and on Rhodesia-Zimbabwe I offer only one serious, if seemingly frivolous, observation. I was for many years in another place with my noble friend Lord Paget of Northampton,
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who moved his amendment so admirably this afternoon. I voted on innumerable occasions in the same Lobby with the noble Lord; but never there and never here have I found a single political issue on which we shared the same opinion. I am in much greater agreement—indeed, in very broad agreement—with the noble Lord, Lord Alport, who speaks with such authority on Rhodesia-Zimbabwe and who has given us such an admirable speech this afternoon.
This is also a debate about defence. I should like to mention, if I may take the time, the nuclear deterrent. I make only one observation here: it is a plea to the noble Lord the Secretary of State. He is going to Japan. I hope he will take the time to pay a visit to Hiroshima, to visit the Peace Museum and talk with survivors of the bomb. It will only take him half a day and I urge, with all the emphasis at my command, that he should make that pilgrimage.
I turn to one other simple and, as I think, important theme: the growth of the power of the Soviet Union and its allies, and the menace which so many people think it holds. I start with two brief lessons from my personal experience in the far-off past. In 1905 the British Admiralty launched a new super-battleship, the Dreadnought. It threw away the mastery of the seas. In pre-Dreadnought ships we had a margin of a four-to-one superiority over the German Navy but, of course, as anybody might have foreseen, when we built Dreadnoughts Germany began to build them, too. In fact the programme announced by the Kaiser's minister, Admiral von Tirpitz, was acceptable from our point of view. But in 1908 a British private manufacturer of arms Mr. Mulliner of Coventry, who made mountings for naval guns, came back from a visit to Germany and said he had learned that von Tirpitz was building secret Dreadnoughts. The story was without foundation, but the loyal Opposition in another place took it up without examining the facts. They moved "no confidence" Motions; they won a by-election on the cry of, "We want eight and we won't wait". They created a panic which swept the country from end to end. The Government gave way and built the eight. They started the Dreadnought race between Germany and Britain.

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By 1909 the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, said that the most serious single cause of tension in the world was the Dreadnought race. In 1912 Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, said that if the Dreadnought race went on we should have war within two years. In the same year, the Kaiser's Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, wrote him a minute, with the precise warning which Sir Winston had given. But in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion and hysteria, no one would listen to the voice of reason. The Dreadnought race went on and in 1914. as Sir Winston predicted, the war began. When the war was over, Sir Winston said in his book that there had been no secret Dreadnoughts and von Tirpitz had said nothing that was untrue. But all the politicans of that day—Lloyd George, Sir Edward Grey, Arthur Balfour, Bonar Law—all agreed that Mr. Mulliner had played a very serious part in the causation of the war. I recite that past event to show how dangerous it is to make unsupported allegations about the armaments of a rival power.
My second lesson I tell more briefly. It so happened that, in the years 1919 to 1924, I was in almost daily contact with what was happening inside the Soviet Union. I had constant warnings of the burning indignation which was caused by the Western intervention in their civil war. The present rulers of the Kremlin are all old men. They remember that three-quarters of a million Western soldiers fought on Russian soil for the Tsar against the revolution. They remember that that intervention prolonged the civil war from a few weeks to three full years, with appalling devestation of their country as a result.
I turn to the substance of my argument and I express my gratitude to Mr. Harry Dean, of the Armament and Disarmament Information Unit of the University of Sussex, for the help which he has given me. He has given me some calculations which I shall cite. He has sent me a copy of a most remarkable paper by a US Congressman, Mr. Aspin—a paper fully documented from official US sources. I start with the combined armies of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Almost exactly a year ago, on 26th May 1978, Colonel Stanhope, the military correspondent of The Times, printed a study of this subject
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and he showed that the combined armies of the NATO powers had a margin of 9,000 troops more than the combined armies of the Warsaw Pact. Mr. Aspin makes a similar calculation, but he reaches a more striking answer. He says that the margin in favour of NATO is 133,000 men—a very large margin indeed.
Of course, it is true that the Warsaw Pact has a great many more tanks than NATO, and it is also true, as Hitler proved, that tanks can be decisive, especially if they are joined by bombing aircraft. But Mr. Harold Brown, the Defence Secretary of the United States, said not long ago that he agreed with General Jones, the Chairman of his Chiefs of Staff, that he would not swap the US Army for its Soviet counterpart. He said, also, that the NATO tanks were increasing in numbers much faster than the Warsaw Pact tanks. He said, too, that the NATO tanks were better. He said that NATO had 17,000 anti-tank missile launchers and 40,000 sophisticated missiles to meet a tank attack. On aircraft, Mr. Brown said that in what he call avionics, in pilot training and in flying time the US Air Force was far superior to the standards of the Soviet Union—and in the air it is quality that counts.
There has been gloomy talk about the Soviet Navy and the menace that it presents in every sea. Not long ago, I had a five hour talk with Admiral La Roque of the US Navy, Retired. Admiral La Roque was the victor in 15 naval battles in the Pacific war. He holds every decoration which the United States can give. He told me that the tonnage of the US Navy is 5 million. The tonnage of the Soviet Navy is 2½ million. He said that the United States had, in the British, French, Italian, Norwegian, Greek and other navies, very powerful and well-trained support indeed. Mr. Aspin says in his paper that the rate of new naval construction now going on by NATO is far in excess of new construction by the Soviets, and that that is true of submarines as of other vessels, too. In Admiral La Roque's Defence Monitor, which he sent me a week ago, I find this fact that in 1972 the cost of the United States Navy was 24 billion dollars. In 1980, it will be 44 billion dollars. That almost doubling of the expenditure is not

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all due to inflation. It is an increase in real resources, too.
What is the overall picture of the comparative strengths of the NATO and the Warsaw Pact forces? Here I quote the statistics given to me by Mr. Harry Dean. He says that over the last 10 years the percentage increases on each side have been as follows. In total manpower in the forces, NATO has increased by 4 per cent.; the Warsaw Pact has increased by 2 per cent. In tanks—this is over 10 years and we are now accelerating—NATO has increased by 60 per cent., while the Warsaw Pact has increased by 63 per cent. In tactical aircraft, NATO has increased by 10 per cent.; the Warsaw Pact by 14 per cent. But on the aircraft, we must remember what Mr. Harold Brown said about the quality and training of the crews. The Soviets are increasing their expenditure, but so are we, and we say that our armaments are directed against the Soviet Union. In 1974, our military budget was £3,600 million. In 1979–80, five years later, it is £8,558 million. That more than doubling of expenditure is not all due to inflation. There has been an increase in the real resources that we are devoting to the armaments which we maintain, and we are pledged to make a 3 per cent. increase every year in real resources from now until 1984.
May I give one last figure, which I think blows to glory the legend about swarming hordes of Russians ravening and overrunning the West, if ever they get the chance. Colonel Stanhope's study, which I quoted, states that if one compares the combined forces—Army, Navy and Air Force—of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, NATO has a margin of 1,100,000 men more than the Warsaw Pact; a very substantial margin indeed.
May I venture to say a few words about the Government's pledge to seek what they call in the gracious Speech:
"real measures of arms control".
With all respect, I think that the phrase" arms control is a contradiction in terms. The words are a genteel way of saying that you mean to keep the arms and control them. But that is precisely what you cannot do. In April 1915, I was present at Ypres when the Kaiser's army launched its first chlorine gas attack. I saw the Hague Convention on
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the laws of war—a great achievement of arms control—perish as Canadian soldiers gasped their lives away, yellow froth coming from their mouths. The atom bomb violates every principle of accepted international law, built up over three centuries after Hugo Grotius wrote his book. But we had the atom bomb and we used it, and today we have nuclear stocks that could obliterate mankind.
What is needed today in foreign affairs is a sense of realism. I join the appeal of the noble Lord, Lord Alport, that the Foreign Secretary should not confine his attention to Southern Africa alone. We need a sense of realism. It is not realistic but blindfold folly to drift on in an arms race that may end in nuclear war. There is only one realistic alternative to the arms race. That lies in the transformation of the society of the world from armaments, war, poverty and hunger to disarmament, peace and human welfare: a transformation urged in the Final Document of the Special Session of the United Nations a year ago. I believe that the new Secretary of State, the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, is personally, and by his experience, qualified to lead the world towards this goal, and I pray that he may direct his greatest efforts towards that end.
7.55 p.m.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, has given us an impressive example of his capacity for memorising things, and I am sure that we all admired his speech. As for myself, this debate on the gracious Speech has given us great pleasure and has been a cause of jubilation on this side of the House. I seize the opportunity of the small courtesies provided by the gracious Speech to express my admiration for the performance of the mover and seconder and for the elegance and matter of their speeches, which was indeed thought provoking. They hold out great promise for the future. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, in his scarlet uniform gave added glamour to the scene. I hope that he will maintain the true conservatism that we expect. We certainly had it in his grandfather, who as the Chairman of Committees in this House, invariably wore a frock coat when on duty.
May I also congratulate Lord Carrington on his appointment as Foreign

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Secretary. He has had a long period in this House. I remember listening from these Benches to his excellent speech as mover of the Address. He also was in a scarlet uniform. I find it hard to believe that that was 34 years ago. He showed political promise, and that conspicuous promise has been significantly fulfilled.
Last Thursday, on reassuming his high office for a second time, the Lord Chancellor gave us a superb reminder of his talent and his traditional rhetoric. The week before, having taken the Oath and shaken hands, I passed quickly to the Library to confirm my memory that I had performed the same exercise when his father was in a similar position, after having assumed his second tenure of the same high office. I was surprised to find that that was 44 years ago—a splendid example of two generations holding two terms of office. Surely that must be almost unique.
I now turn to the gracious Speech, and I wish to record dismay at the proposal to project the person of the Monarch into the insecurity of the communities indicated. With reference to Iran, I hope that should he desire it, the recent ruler of that country, with whom we have had a rewarding relationship, will be granted asylum. Then I wish to mention Somalia, a country with which we have had long and happy relations. They are oppressed from external sources including, from some alarming reports we have had, Cubans as well as Russian-trained terrorists. They are in an area where already Russian influence seems to have penetrated effectively. In the Yemen, in Afghanistan, in Iran, in Ethiopia and now with this pressure on Somalia, one is puzzled at the lukewarm support and general attitude which Britain seems to have taken.
I turn now to South-West Africa, where Communist pressure, again with Cuban support, both Russian-trained and armed, has disturbed the desire of the native population for independence. SWAPO have shunned the conference table and prefer the gun. The flexible attitude of the Republic has been impressive against the double standard of the United Nations. Anyhow, so far as the agreement recorded in November last is concerned, it has demanded concessions
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by the South African Government to which they could not be expected to agree.
Many people will wonder what is the position now of our representative on the Committee of Five detailed by the United Nations. If I correctly understood the Foreign Secretary, he suggested that the proposals put forward in November should be resurrected and another election arranged. One finds it hard to believe that that is something which will bring the hoped-for independence.
Years ago—I think it must have been after World War 1—I voraciously absorbed a pamphlet which indicated the possibility of a conjuncture of a large part of Southern Africa. This was to be done with the agreement of Portugal, our oldest ally. It was represented as being a large area of great fertility and a treasure house of minerals. It would have comprised, in addition to Mozambique and Angola, Tanzania, Malawi, what were then the Rhodesias, the Union, the then Protectorates and South-West Africa. But it would have been guided by Britain. Today that is what Soviet Russia is seeking to control.
There is a similarity between South-West Africa and Rhodesia. Both places are pressed by external forces armed by Russia and preferring the gun to the conference table. Yet the West is supporting them. Why? I submit that Russia is a danger which should be opposed everywhere and by every means. Likewise, any and all opposition to Russia should be supported by Britain; and I include South-West Africa, the Republic and Rhodesia. This surely should be British policy and British interest, even in face of the risk to trade with the rest of Africa—trade where quality, price and delivery will always be the deciding factor. Or again over the problem of the black vote in the USA.
I urge the Government to return to traditional Conservative principles and to put British interests first. Let British leadership return to what it produced in former years. Leadership is what is wanted today and if that is given, much else, many other countries and individuals, will follow. In spite of the fact that so far as one can tell from this debate, the reasonings of procrastination or action at the present moment in Rhodesia are

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nearly balanced, I believe that it should include swift and all-embracing support of the new black Government in Rhodesia, the six points having been fulfilled, and thus avoid the possibility of its moving into the Soviet sphere.
8.9 p.m.
The Earl of CRAWFORD and BALCARRES: My Lords, I listened with very great interest indeed to the opening speech of my noble friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and I found myself in a wide measure of agreement with the arguments which he adduced. I also found myself in complete agreement with the priorities of foreign affairs policy which he outlined in his opening speech. If I may say so in opening my own very brief remarks, the noble Lord brings an experience to the office of Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary which very few people in this country can rival. I would like to extend to him my very warm good wishes in the daunting task which lies ahead of him.
I also listened to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Carver, and again I listened to that with very great interest indeed. He brings a fine career in the military field which I think—and I can speak for the whole House—will certainly ensure that whenever he addresses the House he will be listened to with great interest and respect. During the time when I had the honour of serving at the Ministry of Defence the noble Lord, Lord Carver, was then the Chief of the General Staff and we had adjoining rooms. In our two different spheres we worked I think one could almost say day by day over a period of two years, and during that period of time I learned to respect the quite remarkable skill of analysis which I think we witnessed today in the House, and also his quite outstanding ability of exposition which again we heard in the House. During that period of time I learned to share and understand the great authority which he commanded both in the military field and in political circles. I only hope that this, his first speech in the House, will be followed by many others because I am sure the whole House will always listen to them with great interest.
I am in fact tempted to follow him in some of the points which he made on
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defence. Indeed, I am tempted to follow my noble friend Lord Carrington on the wider range of foreign affairs, but there are so many speakers that during the very brief remarks I wish to make I will concentrate only on one subject, namely that of Rhodesia. It is right that someone from this side of the House who had the opportunity with other noble Lords of attending the elections in Rhodesia should give his impressions. I think the task of anyone studying those elections was really twofold. First of all, one has to ask oneself whether the authorities in Rhodesia, namely the transitional government, were genuine in their wish and their desire to hold a free election and a fair election or whether there was a hidden intention to distort and rig the results. Secondly, an observer of such an election, in the circumstances which exist in Rhodesia at the moment, must ask whether in fact the authorities were physically able to hold a free and fair election.
Like other noble Lords, I spent five days during the course of the election visiting cities and rural areas, visiting the tribal trust lands, visiting areas close to the borders of Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana, visiting polling stations in safe areas and also visiting areas which were guerrilla infested. I am bound to say that I reached the conclusion without any doubt in my mind that the actual mechanics of the election, namely the secrecy of the ballot, the security of the boxes, the conduct in the polling stations over that period, a long period of five days, were exemplary. I have been slightly surprised by the way that some critics of the election tend to dismiss this as being unimportant. In fact, it is the very heart of the democratic process, and it was I believe a substantial achievement of the transitional government that the mechanics of the election were conducted in such a manner. Indeed, it is difficult to think of many countries in Africa—and, to be frank, I cannot think of any African country of the Commonwealth—which could conduct, and does conduct, the democratic process as well as it was conducted in those elections in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.
The two guerrilla or terrorist or liberation units—whatever one likes to call them—ZIPRA and ZANLA, the guerrilla wings of the Patriotic Front,

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had declared their deliberate intention to disrupt the election. As the noble Lord, Lord Paget, said, the transitional Government met that challenge head on. They decided that irrespective of the amount of intimidation, of the threats to the polling stations, they would establish 700 polling stations throughout the length and breadth of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and they would guard them. In fact, there were attacks on the polling stations. We were told—I could not check this myself—that during the first two nights there were eight mortar attacks delivered against those polling stations. But the fact is that those polling stations throughout the entire five days of the election were held open for the electors from early morning until the closing time in the afternoon. That was a great achievement for which the transitional government deserve great credit.
What I admit is far harder to judge is whether, in an atmosphere of fierce terrorist intimidation and widespread terrorist or guerrilla infiltration—and there are something like 12,000 guerrillas in Rhodesia and something like 40,000 outside in Zambia; whether in an atmosphere of intimidation and abductions and beatings and murders; at a time when kraals are being burned and people are being forcibly removed to remote areas in order to stop them voting; at a time when the Patriotic Front, having been repeatedly invited to take part in the forging of the constitution, having refused to do so and having declared their intention to destroy the election, and having been banned—whether in those circumstances it is possible to hold a fair election.
I listened to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, and I am perfectly prepared to accept that there might have been pressure by employers to persuade or encourage their employees to vote. I can only say that, having talked to dozens and dozens of people going into the polling stations and coming out having voted, this was a complaint which was never made to me by any single voter. Certainly I was told that in the rural areas transport was provided by employers to take their employees to the polling stations, but to me, like the noble Lord, Lord Paget, this does not seem to be such a very terrible thing. Political parties here certainly do their very utmost to
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provide transport to get the electorate to the polling stations. I am bound to say that I did not see this intimidation on people to vote, although it is certainly true that the whole media, controlled by the government, encouraged a high poll.
The noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, made in his speech, I thought, some very grave charges indeed. It seems to me that someone who has been to witness an election should not come back with allegations, but should be in a position to substantiate the charges which he makes. Perhaps he is in that position, but I understood him to say earlier in the debate that 15 people had been murdered by Security Forces—I see that the noble Lord nods in agreement—for telling people not to vote. The noble Lord made that allegation—I think that he used the figure of 18—in a television programme in which I took part with him, and he has repeated it today.
I should like to ask him whether he went to the village where this scene must have been widely known. Did he substantiate the facts by talking to all the people in the village? If not, why not? I have had only a very brief opportunity of quickly reading the report which he has lodged in the Library and I am bound to say—perhaps I am wrong and if so he will forgive me—that I find no reference to that very grave allegation in the report. I accept that I have read it only briefly and perhaps such a reference does appear in the report. However, I think that an observer ought to substantiate the position.
Perhaps I may give an example. We were told by the authority that a lorry containing 41 persons returning from voting had been blown up by a land mine. Forty-one people had been injured and four people—women and children—had been killed. Of course, as an observer, one of my colleagues immediately went to the hospital and spoke to all those people involved in the scene and is able to substantiate the facts.
Again, there was some dispute between my noble friend Lord Lauderdale and the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, about the number of detainees. I see that in his report the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, says that "reliable sources"—we are not told who they are—within the country estimate that there are not less than 1,000 detainees. He may or may not be right. However,

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I was told by the representatives of the Patriotice Front who came to see me, that 904 persons had been detained in Bulawayo just before the election. When I went to Bulawayo, the authorities told us—myself in the company of other observers—that 96 persons had been detained and they gave the dates. Immediately after the briefing I went up to the authorities—I am not quite sure with what authority—and said that, as a Privy Councillor, I expected the right to be able to see any security situation in Zimbabwe/ Rhodesia and I wished to go to the prison not in a matter of three or four hours but straight away. I must say that I was impressed by the fact that they immediately picked up the telephone and arranged for me to visit. A car was there straight away and it is interesting to note—because nothing is easier to hide than situations in prisons—that the number of detainees was identical to the number of which the authorities had informed me and all the details about the days on which people were detained were identical to the information given by the authorities.
Lord CHITNIS: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission I should like to deal with the two matters raised—that is the Sipolilo incident and the number of detainees about which, since the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, asked a question, I have been able to make inquiries. Let us take the Sipolilo incident first. The noble Earl has asked a question and I am sorry if the answer is long. I should like to tell your Lordships exactly how I discovered the incident. I said in my speech that I discovered it almost by chance. I was setting up a meeting with some people and was told that it was a great pity that so and so was not there but something awful had happened and he was unable to be with us. I thought that the chap had 'flu or something similar. The conversation proceeded and at the end, only because conversation lapsed, I said, as a matter of interest, "Why isn't so and so able to be here?" I was then told this tale which frankly I could not believe because it was a tale so awful and of such horror. I then asked if I could see the chap. I have spoken to him and I know that the story is true.
Secondly, as regards the number of detainees concerned, I think that there is
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an etiquette about these things—I am not a professional diplomat or politician—which, frankly, I do not know and which I would disregard. The figures which I have quoted in my report came from the International Red Cross.
The Earl of CRAWFORD and BALCARRES: My Lords, the noble Lord has said that he stands by that information. I think I am right in saying that it is not in his official report. However, I cannot dispute it. He has substantiated it as a fact and not as an allegation, in which case I feel sure that the noble Lord would have reported it to the Election Supervisory Commission which will have inquired into the matter. The Election Supervisory Commission—and I do not think that he of all people would query its independence and impartiality—has said that in its opinion the election was fair. I cannot believe it would reach that conclusion if, in fact, those types of murders took place.
Although no one told me about being intimidated into voting and although I accept that the media were encouraging people to vote, I am bound to say that I spoke to many people and the way they spoke about the intimidation by the Patriotic Front was almost universal. There were gunfire attacks on people going to vote and they showed great bravery in voting. I flew over roads which had been made quite impassable for any form of transport by trees being brought down and culverts blown.
In the circumstances of that type of intimidation, it was really quite a remarkable achievement that the turnout amounted to something like 64 per cent. of the electorate. I simply do not believe that one can intimidate 1.8 million people to vote against their wishes. Also, one cannot intimidate people and then have an election with such an incredibly spontaneous atmosphere. It was an atmosphere of exhilaration—a carnival atmosphere. People poured in to vote from great distances. I think that that is perfectly natural. The black Africans have been striving for the right to vote for too long. Here, they had for the first time the opportunity to exercise their vote. I believe that what we saw in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia was a turning point because what we have witnessed—and it is irreversible—is a dramatic transfer of power from the

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white minority to a black Government elected on universal suffrage. Overwhelmingly it was a vote for the parties taking part which wished to end the war and it was a vote, I should have thought, against those parties—the Patriotic Front —which wished to destroy and tried to destroy the elections, and whose intention is to win Zimbabwe-Rhodesia by force.
It seems to me unacceptable that sanctions which were introduced against a white minority Government elected on a very narrow white franchise, consisting of something like 20,000 persons, should now be continued against a black majority Government, elected on universal suffrage on a high poll and with a vote of 1.8 million people taking part. A whole sequence of British Governments have laid down principles on which they said they needed to be satisfied. The only one of those principles which has for far too long been outstanding is the first one. I remind the House of the words,
"The principle and intention of unimpeded progress to majority rule, already enshrined in the 1961 Constitution, would have to be maintained and guaranteed".
Now, we have seen not only progress to majority rule, but the actual implementation of majority rule in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. I think that, that being the case, the Government should now reach an absolutely firm decision not to renew sanctions. I am not saying that they should announce that decision at this particular moment. However, we in this House must realise that sanctions are not neutral.
The Government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia have as their prime objective the task of ending the war. In present circumstances sanctions can only perpetuate the war. Apart from ending the war, the greatest task which the new Prime Minister has is, in fact, the reduction of unemployment, because unemployment is the great recruiting sergeant of the terrorists, and he desperately needs capital investment in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. He desperately needs to embark on agricultural and educational schemes and the restoration of the clinics in order to raise the standard of life of people whose lives have been destroyed by the war.
One reads that the American Secretary of State, who is over here at the moment, and some of the Commonwealth countries
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are against lifting sanctions. Of course, my noble friend must listen and must weigh up the arguments. Equally, he must probe the arguments of those who are against lifting sanctions. Are some of them, perhaps, afraid of losing face, having backed a loser? In Zambia, for instance, are they afraid of the noose being tightened around their neck?— because Russian influence is very strong, as it is also in Mozambique. Are they complaining about the white roll—namely, the fact that the Europeans have 28 votes? If so, one should remind them that, as an opening gambit before negotiations, the Anglo-American proposals suggested 20 seats for the Europeans. It is also worth remembering that Kenya and Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania all had white rolls when they were recognised as independent sovereign nations.
I listened to the speech of my noble friend Lord Alport with great interest and respect. But there was one point on which I disagreed with him. He said that the new government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia should revise the constitution. I do not think that that is practical. That constitution resulted from an immensely difficult negotiation; it was hammered out on the one side recognising the aspirations of the Africans and on the other side recognising the fears of the Europeans. The Anglo-American proposals are dead. The elections which have taken place have their own dynamic and the government's task is to build on them.
In conclusion, while fully recognising the need for intensive diplomatic discussions within the Commonwealth, with Francophone African countries, with the European Economic Community and with America, and with so many voices urging my noble friend the Foreign Secretary to be cautious and to take no precipitative action, I, for my part, should like to emphasise the importance of boldness and of acting with a degree of speed. If he delays for too long, the disillusion among the African population which will follow that exhilarating election will be very real indeed. If, in addition, the white population sees the war and sanctions continuing, their expectations will be hurt. There will be a drifting away from Zimbabwe-Rhodesia of the European population and our hopes of a multiracial society will be destroyed. We now

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have a chance to build on the elections and to move towards the political and economic rehabilitation of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. I would urge on my noble friend the desirability of acting boldly, forcefully and fairly speedily.
8.35 p.m.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, I should like to join with those other noble Lords who have expressed their warm congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Carver, on his incisive and expert maiden speech. I only wish that we had been able to separate the debate on foreign affairs from another one on defence, to which the noble Lord has made such a significant contribution, so that it could have been followed by others who would have liked to comment on the many points that he raised. However, inevitably, the debate has centred on the problems of Southern Africa. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington—whom I should also like to congratulate on his first appearance as Foreign Secretary at the Dispatch Box—set the tone of the debate by discussing these matters at some length.
With great respect, I should like to begin by agreeing with him that the problems of Namibia and Rhodesia are closely inter-related and that if internationally acceptable settlements can be achieved in those territories, it would set the pattern for peaceful change in South Africa itself. I very much welcomed the noble Lord's reaffirmation that the best solution for Namibia is that of elections in accordance with the proposals of the five powers; that is to say, elections which are held in accordance with Resolution 385, allowing for:
"United Nations supervision and control of free and fair national elections".
One of the problems in Namibia, with which I shall deal later, is that the Western Powers have allowed that original resolution to be watered down, and ambiguities have crept in which have led to disputes between SWAPO and South Africa. That, in turn, has allowed each side to stall, and therefore there has been a failure to reach agreement on how progress should best be made.
However, obviously the most important subject that we have to discuss this evening
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is that of Rhodesia. I should like to begin by taking up one point mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Crawford and Balcarres. He said that unimpeded progress towards majority rule had already been attained under the previous constitution; whereas I would acclaim that unimpeded progress towards majority rule is not even attained under the present arrangements, for the reason I gave in an intervention earlier, when I pointed out that even after the 10 years, which is provided for the Government of National Unity, there can only be a change in the number of white seats in the Legislature if the Commission of Five Wise Men agree, or if the majority of them agree—the Commission being made up of the Chief Justice, who is himself bound to be white, two whites and two blacks. Therefore, in that body there will always be a built-in majority of three whites to two blacks and until the Chief Justice is black himself, which is a possibility in the remote future, there could never be a majority of people who represent the ethnic composition of the country as a whole.
However, far more important is the question whether the fifth principle has been satisfied. I beg to disagree with the noble Earl, Lord Crawford and Balcarres, on that as well, as he will not be surprised to hear. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships of the wording of the fifth principle. It is that:
"The British Government would need to be satisfied that any basis proposed for independence was acceptable to the people of Rhodesia as a whole".
It was because the Conservatives adhered to that principle just as much as Labour ever did, that the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, had the Smith-Home agreement of 1971 tested by means of the Pearce Commission. When the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearce, reported that the people of Rhodesia as a whole did not regard the Smith-Home proposals as an acceptable basis for independence, the Conservative Government of the day dropped those proposals and the Prime Minister moved a resolution in another place reaffirming the desire of that House to achieve a settlement within the Five Principles.
If I have understood the policy of this Government correctly, it is not that they are saying that after all these years we ought to resile from the fifth principle, but

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rather that they have, in fact, been satisfied by the elections which have just been held under the agreement of 3rd March. They reason—and we have heard something of this in the debate today —that since there was a high turn-out in the elections, and since all the candidates who stood in this election (and of course ipso facto the parties for which those candidates stood) were in favour of the constitution under which the elections were being held—in public, at least, though some of them may not have been too enthusiastic about it in private—then this meant that all the voters too endorsed the settlement and wanted it to be recognised in the outside world.
I think that argument is demonstrably false because people are continually acceptingpolitical settlements and trying to make them work simply because they are the best they can get, even though they really wanted something different. To take an example quite near home, many of us in this House are opposed to the hereditary principle but we do not, for this reason, decline to speak and vote in your Lordships' House. In next month's European elections I would imagine that many of the voters will be men and women who keenly opposed our entry into Europe. But now that an elected European Parliament is coming into being, whether they like it or not they might as well exercise the rights they have been given. We in the Liberal Party are constantly pointing out the undemocratic nature of the electoral system, but that does not stop our contesting elections held under that system. So it would not be surprising if the people of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia exercised the powers they have been given although they would like some different powers.
As for the point that all the candidates and the parties in the Rhodesian election were in favour of the constitution, this serves to underline the point which has been made by many observers, including the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, that the elections were neither free nor fair because no person or party opposed to the 3rd March agreement was allowed to stand or even to raise his voice. It was agreed on all sides, including even those who attended at the invitation of the Anglo-Rhodesian Society, which I think it would not be unfair to describe as a fanatically pro-Smith pressure group, that the 3rd March agreement was hardly
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mentioned at all during the campaign, and did not become a perceptible issue in it.
This is not only the view of the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, but was echoed by those noble Lords who went with the noble Earl, Lord Crawford, to whom I have had the opportunity of speaking. They said that at none of the meetings, and in none of the literature, was the constitution itself an issue. It was not put to the people. I heard that said by one noble Lord who went as an observer, and it struck me, as it must have done others, that most of them—not of course, the noble Earl, Lord Crawford—unlike the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, had never fought an election in their lives and perhaps did not quite know what to look for.
It was alleged by these noble Lords that the constitutional background was far too complicated to put before an unsophisticated rural electorate. The Smith/Home proposals were not all that simple, and your Lordships will recall that when the noble Lord, Lord Pearce, had thoroughly investigated the understanding of the people of those proposals he came to the conclusion that the great majority of those who gave their opinions had a sufficient understanding of the proposals to enable them to pass judgment on them. I think that the voters in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia would have understood only too well for Mr. Smith's liking that 28 out of 100 seats in the House of Assembly were reserved for whites—a factor which the noble Lord, Lord Alport, rightly said was too high a price to demand from the majority in terms of contemporary political realities; that the blacks had one vote, the whites two; that the constitution could be only amended if not only all the blacks but at least six of the whites decided that it should be; that the police, the army, the judiciary and the public service will remain under white control virtually indefinitely. It was because these simple facts would have been readily understood by the people if those issues had been put to them in the terms of a referendum, that Mr. Smith and his stooges decided not to risk testing their acceptability by putting the constitution to the black voters as they had done to the whites. Therefore, I must conclude that even if the mechanics of the election had been quite

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beyond criticism the fifth principle would not have been satisfied. It was not a Left-winger but the noble Lord, Lord Carver, who stated baldly that the constitution does not give genuine majority rule.
How are we to form a judgment about the question of whether these elections were free and fair? We have not had the opportunity of reading the report of the mission which the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd, undertook. It would have been very useful if we had had it this afternoon. We have not had any written report from noble Lords who went at the invitation of the Anglo-Rhodesian Society, and I gather it is not their intention to make any written report. So we have the thorough and painstaking report of the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, and we have that of Professor Claire Palley, who did not go herself but who is very familiar with the Rhodesian scene and had some penetrating things to say about the constitutional and political background. There is also a good deal of testimony of responsible observers who are not politicians but who have been in the territory recently. I have to say from this evidence that I personally would conclude that, although it may be possible to hold elections in a country which is engaged in a civil war, I do not think that the conditions in Rhodesia were such that free and fair elections could take place for the simple reason that normal political activity there was unthinkable.
If we contrast this with Namibia—and I am glad to continue with the theme set by the Foreign Secretary that these problems are interrelated — the United Nations Secretary-General said in respect of Namibia that before the electoral process can begin it is necessary that conditions be such that they will facilitate it, and he went on to specify a general cessation of all hostile acts. It would be necessary before free and fair elections are conducted in Rhodesia for that to be the case there too. I do not think you can hold democratic elections in a country where there are something like 1,000 people in detention. I have seen one figure which is much larger than that quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis. I think it was International Defence and Aid who published a list not so long ago which contained 1,900 names. Some of
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these may have been released since that list was published. But I think it is not to be argued or disputed that there were a very large number of people who were opposed to the elections and who were locked up for the whole of the period during which they were conducted.
There is the evidence that the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, has mentioned this evening for the execution of some people during the elections, and the intimidation by the semi-official forces under the control of Bishop Muzorewa and the Reverend Sithole; the fact that 90 per cent. of the land area of the country is under martial law; that perhaps as many as three-quarters of a million people are in the so-called protected villages. I gather that there is some dispute whether this figure is accurate or not. Whether it is three-quarters of a million, half a million or a quarter of a million, it is a very large number of people who have been forcibly uprooted from their homes and made to live in areas under military supervision. So I think it is hardly surprising under these circumstances that there was a high poll.
The stories of a 100 per cent. turnout on some of the farms which were given to the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, and repeated in some of the Rhodesian newspapers were reminiscent to me, at any rate, of the elections which are conducted in Eastern Europe. I believe that in Rhodesia, as in the Soviet Union, a great many people voted for the good of their health and, just as in the Communist countries—and this is not disputed by the noble Earl, Lord Crawford—the whole apparatus of the newspapers, radio, television, the armed forces, employers and the public service was mobilised to rubber stamp a stooge parliament behind the skirts of which the real powers are going to continue in operation. The whites, who I think stand in a similar relationship to the people of Rhodesia as a whole, as the Communist Party does in the Soviet Union to the people of that country, know that it made absolutely no difference whether Bishop Muzorewa or the Reverend Sithole won the majority of the 72 black seats, because they were well aware that the victor would be unable to touch the entrenched provisions which maintain the whites in control. As Mr. Christian Anderson, the co-Minister of Justice said in the debate on Second Reading of the Constitution Bill:

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"Those who attack the constitution have simply been unable to get it into their heads that there is no way in which the white community is prepared to risk the loss of what has been built up ".
But it certainly made a difference that the turn-out was high. It was 114·8 per cent., in one constituency (Mashonaland West); in that case going even better than the Communists, who never achieved more than 100 per cent. But I think that it was correctly recognised by the Smith régime and the black internal parties that the bigger the vote, the better the chances of persuading the outside world to lift sanctions and to recognise the new Government. Unsophisticated tribesmen in Sussex and California would be unable to distinguish between a big vote and endorsement for the constitution under which the election was held. That was a correct assessment, and it was also rightly foreseen that the enormous pressures on everybody to vote would be seen by the external observers simply as trying to help people to exercise their democratic rights, and not as having any political overtones.
It was, however, equally predictable that there would be very strong opposition, particularly among the Commonwealth nations, towards any moves for recognition following the elections. If there is to be what Robert Stephens in the Observer christened "creeping de facto recognition", the Prime Minister will have a hot reception in Lusaka, and we see that that will be not only from the black nations, because some of the white Commonwealth countries were parties to the representations made on their behalf this week by the High Commissioners in London to the Foreign Secretary.
I believe that the international repercussions of following Tory inclinations (some of which we have heard this afternoon) are too appalling to contemplate. At worst, they include not only the break-up of the Commonwealth, but also the spread of Soviet influence in Africa, so that ultimately, when the countries of Southern Africa attain genuine majority rule, they will look to the Soviet Union rather than to the West as their friends and allies.
Apart from the fact that we ought to find it intolerable that our Governments
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should prop up these white oligarchies while the Soviets pose as the champions of democracy, we might also consider where our true economic interests lie. A free Zimbabwe might deny her chrome to the West, and a free Namibia might deny her uranium, to mention only two examples. Our relationships with the rest of black Africa are bound to be adversely affected if we are always seen to be on the side of the white minority régimes or their puppets. As has already been pointed out to your Lordships, our trade with black Africa now amounts to £1,300 million per annum, which is more than twice the size of our trade with the Republic of South Africa.
Finally, I want to point out that while our attention has been mainly concentrated on the events in Rhodesia, the South Africans have been bent on imposing their own internal settlement in Namibia, contrary to Resolutions 385 and 435 of the United Nations, the latter being based on the proposals of the five Western Powers, which the Foreign Secretary mentioned. The Western plan provided for a cease-fire, for a 7,500-man UN transitional assistance group to supervise the restriction of all forces to base, the repeal of discriminatory laws and release of political prisoners, free and fair elections for a constituent assembly, and finally the adoption of a constitution leading to independence.
Now South Africa has rejected the cease-fire and election terms proposed by the United Nations and they have announced that a so-called "interim Government" is shortly to be chosen from among members of the constituent assembly which was elected in December 1978. Systematic agression has been perpetrated against Angola and Zambia by South African forces, and as recently as 12th May the Administrator General issued a decree placing Windhoek and large areas of the north of the country under martial law, which allows suspected persons to be detained for up to 30 days without access to a lawyer. Prior to that, on 27th April, 47 leading opponents of the régime were taken into custody. In fact, all those who are opposed to the continuing South African occupation of Namibia have now been either arrested or exiled, just as in Rhodesia all opposition to the internal colonialism of the Smith clique has been similarly crushed.

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Mr. Justin Ellis of the Christian Centre says that South Africa's judgment is that Western resolve on the issue of achieving internationally acceptable settlements in Namibia and Rhodesia will crumble,
"and that black Africa, economically weak and militarily impotent, will be unable effectively to confront South Africa. Thus the stage seems set for the progressive alienation of Africa from the West and an increase in Soviet and Cuban involvement in the conflict".
The régimes now taking office in Namibia and Rhodesia are not acceptable to the people of those countries as a whole, but are merely the least unacceptable of the limited range of choices offered to them. I believe that these régimes can survive only with the aid of South African military and economic might, and are destined to become protected zones for stopping the spread of black liberation to South Africa. It is very much against the long-term interests of the West, and of Britain in particular, to encourage, or connive at, the formation of this system. Conversely, it is in our interest to promote the emergence of stable democratic Governments in Southern Africa which undeniably command the support of their people as a whole, and thus genuinely qualify for recognition by the international community.
8.56 p.m.
Lord BALFOUR of INCHRYE: My Lords, my first words must be to congratulate the Government upon their formation and to wish them well. When one surveys the problems that they have I believe that congratulations might well be diluted with prayer for the future. I also wish to add my thanks to that already expressed by the Foreign Secretary to the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, for many years of courteous, considerate treatment of his opponents as much as of his supporters.
I believe it is a pity that our parliamentary business has been so arranged today that when I rise just before nine o'clock there are still 17 speakers to come. I think, too, that it is a pity that the debate, which had the label of "foreign affairs and defence", has in fact lapsed almost entirely into a debate on Rhodesia. I look at the sparseness of the Chamber which seems to me to contain noble Lords whom I hope I may describe without offence as the "live and the dead". The
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live are those who intend to speak, and the dead are those who have already spoken. We also have a few who are still breathing, the poor Whips on the Front Benches; and they will have to take down what other noble Lords say while the Ministers are absent.
The debate is supposed to cover foreign affairs and defence, and though I regret the way that it has turned out, we have had the advantage of one most illuminating and brilliant maiden speech, by the noble Lord, Lord Carver. I am sure that all those who listened to the noble Lord heard wise, experienced words. I am quite sure that those who did not have that advantage will read what Lord Carver said in Hansard tomorrow.
My Lords, if I may be forgiven, I will not mention the name "Rhodesia" in my few remarks, which will not detain your Lordships very long. I refer particularly to the words in the gracious Speech from the Throne:
"They will maintain the effectiveness of Britain's nuclear deterrent".
It is on that subject that I should like to say a few words. I so agree with what our Foreign Secretary said, which was reinforced by what Lord Goronwy-Roberts said: that any agreement for the limitation of nuclear weapons is an agreement to be welcomed by the civilised world. But the danger of strategic inter-continental ballistic attack remains so long as intercontinental means of delivery continue to exist. To all of us, such a conflict is, I think, too terrible to contemplate.
I was looking at the report published in the Daily Telegraph of a study by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. It is a study which I understand was not meant to be published, but was leaked. That study found that
"up to 165 million Americans could die and that the rest would live on 'in the economic equivalent of the Middle Ages'"
if a total nuclear inter-continental strategic war was pursued. The same issue of the Daily Telegraph covered a most interesting statement made to the NATO Defence Ministers on Russian strategic missile strength. I need read only a very few words:
"… NATO defence ministers meeting here yesterday [heard] that the Russians 'in every category of capability be it nuclear, chemical, land, sea, air or space' were gaining in ascendancy".

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Even so, my Lords, I do not think we need panic at that, because if we cannot achieve parity (which I do not believe we shall) our forces must be able to inflict such destruction in retaliation that no country can contemplate such an inter-continental missile war. I think we can abandon the talk of parity. I was interested in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker. He went back on the history of parity and quoted, as I had already written in my notes, words which I think are very appropriate when we think of parity. He went back to the early 1900s, to the Dreadnought race with Germany, when
"We want eight and we won't wait"
was the cry which went through the country. Parity, I think, is an obsolete word in modern warfare, For the word "parity" I would substitute the word "sufficiency". Sufficiency is what we have to substitute for parity. In a conflict of total nuclear war, the concept of parity is irrelevant and sufficiency is the key word: sufficiency to launch retaliation such as to make a war so terrible to those who initiated it that Sir Winston Churchill's words, which are repeated in the gracious Speech from the Throne, come true:
"The nuclear bomb is a great deterrent".
Having said that, as I hope, there will never be a strategic nuclear attack because I hope it will be ruled out by general world consent, there is the possibility of more limited tactical war with limited use of nuclear weapons, probably in the field of Europe. A good many noble Lords will remember the old staff college bromide:
"Strategy starts where diplomacy ends: tactics start where strategy ends",
and it is true in this particular connection. For such a tactical war we need air, sea and land forces with power to repel the enemy and to deliver our own missiles in that tactical war. Here I come to my misgivings over the Royal Air Force striking force and defence ability. I fear that in quantity of material and in manpower we are inadequate, and in the final event we cannot say, "It does not matter; we rely upon NATO". In the final event we have to rely upon ourselves. When I say that, it is no disparagement of NATO but is the final truth we have to face.
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My Lords, the fighter strength of this country is, I believe—and I would be glad of contradiction—somewhere between 70 and 100 fighters. You can vary the figure upwards from 70 to 100 by taking into account certain reserves and certain aircraft which are not actually serviceable at any particular moment. As well as that shortage of striking force, our squadrons are undermanned and overworked. On the one hand, we demand from our air crews technical and electronic knowledge which, to me, is a completely incomprehensible maze. In the fields of radar and in the complex radio-controlled weapons—air to air, air to sea or air to land—these young men have developed high skills at speeds which most of us, certainly those connected with the last war, never thought possible.
I recently had the privilege of staying at a fighter station in the East of Scotland. I saw these young men at their work. At that station, and possibly at other stations, for 24 hours of the day and night for 365 days of the year there are two fighter aircraft ready to go up within minutes to do shadowing work over the North Sea. The Russians do the same shadowing work. I asked some of our pilots what they did when they met the Russians. They said: "We fly alongside each other, and we fly very close." I asked: "Do they ever signal to you?" He replied: "They sometimes wave; but if there is a grim-looking figure in the rear cockpit they look straight ahead. They have a commissar on board."
I have spoken of the work that these young men are doing. On the other side of the picture, the new pay scale of the Government will, I hope, help; but I share the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Carver, that it will be sufficient to attract highly-trained electronic engineers either to join the RAF or, if trained by the RAF, to make the Service their long-term career. But their conditions of life, by Government and Parliament support, need to be rectified. So short-handed are some of the squadrons that leave entitlements cannot be fulfilled. There is too little time to relax by overworked personnel. As the noble Lord, Lord Carver, truly said. family life is difficult for our married airmen, be they commissioned or other ranks. The wives nearly all have to go out to work. Married quarters are often

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inadequate or unobtainable, and the small extras that make the home a welcome haven are very parsimoniously provided by Her Majesty's Government. Yet the morale and spirit of these young men is wonderful. These are young men risking their lives almost daily, yet they are enthusiastic about their work, proud of their skills and proud of being members of the RAF.
My Lords, I conclude by saying this—and I hope that the Minister will kindly take note. There is in the Services a fount of goodwill; there is pride and the devotion of young men to their duty. But we must not trade too long on good-will for, finally, the fount of goodwill dries up. The policies outlined in the gracious Speech encourage us in the belief that the defence of our country in the fields of strategy and in the fields of tactics will be recognised as vital to our national safety.
9.10 p.m.
Lord GREENHILL of HARROW: My Lords, I should like to join with others in congratulating the noble Lord, Field Marshal Lord Carver, on his maiden speech. It was certainly no surprise to me. Few people have served their country more effectively in war and in peace and it is very good to be able to share his wisdom in this House. I should like also to extend my congratulations to the new Foreign Secretary, whose qualities and experience will, I am sure, enhance our reputation and our success in our international dealings. I am glad that he has appointed such a particularly well-qualified team of Ministers to his Department. Some people have said that there are far too many junior Ministers. That is a matter of opinion, but I hope that the size of the new contingent will ensure that Ministers attend not only to the fashionable subjects but apply themselves also to the essential and less glamorous activities which in the past have sometimes been neglected.
While speaking of Ministers, I should like to join with those who have paid a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts. I enjoyed working with him in the Foreign Office more than 10 years ago and I was delighted to sit with him in this House and to see how skilfully he handled his responsibilities. My information from
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inside sources is that he actually reported the proceedings of this House to the former Foreign Secretary.
To return to the present, I hope that the Foreign Secretary and the Minister of State, Mr. Hurd, who I believe will be responsible, will pay particular attention to British representation at the United Nations and at the United Nations Committees. Proper representation at important committees can do a great deal to maintain and improve our influence, and I think that there has been justifiable complaint in the past—and particularly about the recent meeting of UNCTAD at Manila—that our ministerial representation has been inadequate. The new Minister should, in my view, do a good deal of travelling. Rightly or wrongly, ministerial visits have become an integral part of modern diplomacy and the so-called "Socialist" countries and our friends have both made much more of this tool than we have, to our detriment. Now there is a chance for us to repair this damage without the risk of the travelling Minister being suddenly recalled to take part in a division in the other place, which offends and mystifies the host country.
Our reputation abroad is in my experience at a very low ebb and there is an important job for Ministers to do by selective visits. There is no risk, I am sure, of the new Government instituting some further inquiry into the working of the Foreign Office, but now that the question of Civil Service staff reductions has arisen I hope that the Foreign Office will be given credit for its past good discipline compared to other less conscientious departments.
It is inevitable that Rhodesia should occupy a central part of this debate. It is an immediate problem facing the Government and it is the one by which they will be quickly judged both at home and abroad. There was a time when I had some special knowledge of it; this is no longer so and I am content to accept the view of the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd, on the recently conducted election, although I wonder whether a democratic election will be able to be held in Rhodesia for many years to come, whether under United Nations supervision or in any other way. But, given the facts, I think that the recent election met the standards which we require and I shall be very glad to study Lord Boyd's report.

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There seems to me no risk that the Government will attempt to proceed with recognition in isolation and without proper prudence. There are important questions of international law arising from the mandatory resolution of the Security Council. These must be respected and our treaty obligations must be observed. As for consultation with others, the Secretary of State has made it clear that this will proceed. I remind him that, so far as the Commonwealth is concerned, it was pressure from certain members that led Mr. Wilson's Government to make its initial errors on sanctions and which again and again blocked attempts in the 1960s to get a settlement when the possibilities were very near.
As for the EEC and the other industrial countries, I think that we are entitled to expect support from them, since several of these countries have in practice played a perfunctory role in observing sanctions and it is time for them to be franker with us and with the world. I do not see a settlement of the Rhodesian question happening very soon, and I was particularly impressed by what the noble Duke, the Duke of Devonshire, said. I followed his line of argument very closely and agree with it.
My Lords, it is late and there are other points I should have liked to develop. I was very glad to notice that the Secretary of State mentioned Japan. I think that the previous Government somehow neglected their relations with Japan and I hope that the new Government will repair this omission and will work with Japan in both political and economic affairs.
I shall confine myself to just one further point. Looking ahead into the 1980s, we see that our policy and our diplomacy will be much affected by what I believe is called "the pluralist society"—in other terms, the crowding of the world stage with an ever-increasing number of powers whose strengths, political, military, financial and economic, compel attention and demand satisfaction. This is obvious to all, and the trend is irreversible. Speed of communication, growth of education, accessibility of technology, the enhanced value of certain raw materials—all these things contribute to this process.
These developments, of course, have the effect of diminishing the influence of the
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giant powers, but the existence of many competing countries of generally comparable power brings severe difficulties. They vastly complicate the conduct of international relations and create problems which the United Nations machinery has certainly not yet solved. What surely is demanded is a degree of consultation and co-operation between like-minded countries which they have yet to develop. Unless this co-operation is developed, our individual governments will be pushed around and our individual interests will suffer. In the latter part of this decade I think it can be argued that there has been not an increase but a decline in the harmonising of policies even among the Western industrial democracies. Time and time again they have failed to act together in matters of critical interest, and your Lordships will no doubt recall incidents in which that has happened. I know it is much easier said than done and is particularly difficult in times of recession. One of the main contributory causes is, of course, the lack of leadership. Problems can be vastly ameliorated or exacerbated by personalities, and I happen to think that the personality of our new Foreign Secretary will be especially helpful.
Years ago, it seems, in the 1950s, the American State Department had an absolute phobia about what they used to describe as "ganging up". The great diplomatic sin was to "gang up" against someone who threatened your interests. They made exceptions in the case of the Soviet Union but seldom anywhere else. Personally, I think the 1980s ought to be the decade of "ganging up" and the technique of doing so ought to be the first call on our diplomacy. Only in this way can damaging constraints on our policies be avoided. The developing and non-aligned countries are well ahead of us in these techniques. What I am suggesting is not a recipe for confrontation but it means in fact merely maximising one's bargaining power and so ensuring stable and lasting solutions. The United Kingdom can and must play a leading part in this.
This debate has not allowed time to cover the very wide subjects which it ought to have done, and I hope therefore that we may have another opportunity to debate these matters when the Rhodesian question takes up less of our time.
9.25 p.m.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, I think that the last speech only underlines the fact that we have not organised our affairs in this House as well as we might have done. I cannot help feeling that it is not very wise, when there is not a great deal of business coming in front of us, to try to concentrate 40 speeches on matters as wide as foreign affairs, Rhodesia and our whole defence arrangements into a single day's debate. I cannot help feeling that we should have liked to hear the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, and so many other expert speakers at much greater length and in greater detail. I hope that the Front Bench will put this matter right at a fairly early stage.
Understandably, this debate has concentrated much on Rhodesia, because of recent events in that area, and because of the forthcoming Commonwealth Conference. I could not help reflecting what an advantage we have in this House in having a Foreign Secretary who came to this House and first took responsibility when he was 27 years old, has served for a third of a century in various capacities with a brief and very distinguished and successful break of service in Australia, and has come back to serve as our Foreign Secretary. Whatever the make-up of our House, there is great advantage in having some hereditary Peers with experience and expertise, such as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has, and I cannot help feeling that there are very few parliamentary institutions which have effected such success. It is interesting to reflect that he came here when he was 27, he has given 33 years' service to us, and is still under the age of 60, which I believe he reaches next week.
Like others, I had intended to develop all of the matters arising from the Defence White Paper, because we were owed a defence debate when there was an intermission due to the general election. But I have exorcised that from my speech in the interest of brevity. I wish to concentrate on another matter, because it is also of supreme importance to the Free World, for after seven years of negotiation between the USA and the USSR the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty—that is to say, SALT II—is now due to be signed by Mr. Carter and Mr. Brezhnev in three weeks' time. I think that most of
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us would welcome some kind of agreement, provided that it is reasonably watertight and effective.
I do not know—none of us in this House can know or can influence the position—whether Congress will ratify the treaty in its present form. But it might be asked: Why is this treaty of concern to us? I think that it is of concern to us for two reasons. First, the USSR has been deterred from even greater subversion and aggression in recent years only because of the unity of NATO, where the most powerful link is the USA, and, in the last resort, because of anxiety about nuclear retribution. After all, last year we saw the occupation by the USSR of Afghanistan. We have seen a revolution in Iran, much of it certainly encouraged, if not promoted entirely, by the USSR. We have seen the sponsoring by the USSR of the Cuban invasion of some 11 African countries, armed and carried there, and supplied and serviced, by the Soviet Union.
By barring the front doors alone the Iron Curtain, the Free World has bought time, but has surely allowed the Soviets to spread their Communist doctrine into much of Africa, into Indo-China and the States around Indo-China and, more recently, into the Middle East. Britain therefore has a vital interest and will have a greater interest still in SALT III, when this comes to be discussed and drawn up, for it is SALT II which concerns the transatlantic strategic arms, and SALT III will concern the Euro strategic weapons.
I think that two questions emerge. First, is SALT II verifiable and is it phrased in hard, accurate and easily defined terms? Secondly, will the USSR cheat and, if so, will the President of the United States take early action before the Standing Consultative Commission, which is made up of a US Commissioner and a Soviet Commissioner, to draw attention to any transgressions which arise? I will go on to show that there have been many transgressions—they may be minor but they are important—in the last five years by the Soviet Union against SALT I. I was not comforted by the fact—nor would your Lordships have been—that only 48 hours ago the President stated that there had been no transgressions by the Soviet Union against SALT I.

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I ask whether SALT II is verifiable. I would say that it is partially verifiable. Russia will have to open her frontiers—and that she will probably never do—if we are to be certain that every detail has been properly obeyed. As missiles become more and more sophisticated, it becomes more and more difficult to ascertain whether Russia is keeping to the exact terms of the treaty. It has become even more difficult since the North Iran sites, which played an important part, are no longer available to the Free World for monitoring this treaty.
The treaty limits the number of nuclear warheads which are packed into the nose of a missile, but how can we be sure of the number which are packed in? This is not verifiable, either by satellite or by any other means. Too often the wording of these treaties is woolly. In the rush to obtain agreement the words are left woolly, perhaps for political purposes, and the two sides interpret the words in different ways.
One thing that the NATO nations and Britain in particular want to make clear is the right of the United States to transfer technology to its allies, and at the moment this is not clear in the SALT discussions. In particular, we want the transference of knowledge about the cruise missiles. These have a range of nearly 3,000 miles, so they are strategic rather than tactical missiles, and they have multi-nuclear heads. Can we be sure that this can be looked after in SALT III?
The second question which I put is whether Russia will cheat. I think that it would be unrealistic if we answered by saying anything but, Yes, so long as she can get away with it. Russia has cheated on SALT I, as I shall go on to show. She has cheated over Helsinki. How many of the terms drawn up and signed at Helsinki have been honoured? What has happened about the exchange of political prisoners, or about the liberty to leave Russia if one wants to do so? And what about the exchange of newspapers in our two countries? A host of other agreements have not been abided by. I think that Russia will cheat and that she will cheat again, unless she is most carefully watched.
SALT I was signed in 1972. In 1973–74, right up to 1977. Aviation Week and other
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United States journals published details of alleged violations of SALT I. These are summarised in Aviation Week—which is published by Bob Hotz, an outstanding contributor to the Free World's knowledge of aerospace—dated 6th March 1978. At least seven violations of SALT I are listed. The information is also published in greater depth in State Department Document No. 7. It is called SALT I Compliance, and dated 21st February 1978. It is surprising, by virtue of those publications and that acknowledgement of cheating, that the President should have been so misinformed as to say that this had never happened. One there-fore must begin to think that political considerations are overcoming the strategic considerations which are wrapped up in this treaty.
There is joint United States and USSR representation on the Standing Consultative Commission. If a matter was referred to them after it had been published, there was often a delay of one year, or even one and a half years, before the United States Government raised queries with that Commission. After raising them, the Soviets would often go on cheating for a few months and then stop. Sometimes they would deny the allegations and sometimes they would have a counter-claim. But do not let the Free World lightly consider that everything is settled because we have signed a treaty. We have signed a treaty with a closed economy which will not allow inspection, which makes it more difficult to find out what is going on. Do not let us take any comfort from that source.
I believe, incidentally, that the USA Government have never taken a single issue to that Commission which has not beforehand been published in one of the American journals. How can the Free World know exactly what is happening? The minutes of the Standing Commission are, by its terms of reference, completely secret. Clearly the USSR does not want publicity for its transgressions. Of course, one can understand that. If you are posing as a great peace lover, despite what has happened in all parts of the world, and despite the May Day processions through Red Square, you do not want to be caught cheating on arms. During the seven years of negotiation of SALT I the United Kingdom, West Germany and other NATO countries and

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other allies have made strong representations and yet there are no signs that the anxieties expressed in those representations have ever borne fruit in the terms that we know of in SALT II.
So I would urge the noble Lord our Foreign Secretary to probe deeply with his right honourable friend the Minister of Defence and to urge the USA to be robust in monitoring these undertakings in the interests of the Free World. Will he ask them to be robust, too, in putting the safety of the Free World, which they lead and on which so much depends, above the short-term political ends, and to take every opportunity of exposing the USSR, whenever and wherever they cheat.
9.37 p.m.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, like other noble Lords I join in paying a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Carver, on his limpid lucidity, his beautiful logic and his marvelously balanced judgment, to further instalments of all three of which we shall look forward as time proceeds. We shall do so with pleasurable anticipation. Again, like other noble Lords, I must join my good wishes to a great personal favourite of this House, the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, on elevation to his present office. I do not think he will take it amiss from me when he reads it in Hansard, since he is not here at the moment, if I say that we all know that in his heart of hearts he is really a Whig. That may account for a subtle if not necessarily a malign slippage from the unqualified promise of the Tory Manifesto which said that the Government will have a duty to return Rhodesia to a state of legality, to move to lift sanctions and to do its utmost to ensure that the new independent State gains international recognition. From that unqualified undertaking we now have one hedged about with qualifications about consulting the Commonwealth, and so on, and indeed now it is our objective rather than our duty to achieve a return to legality—not indeed ourselves to "bring about" a return, but with others to "achieve" a return to legality, in conditions that attract international recognition.
On the matter of consulting the Commonwealth, I must echo the anxiety expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Paget, when he asked whether it is
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prudent that Her Majesty the Queen should visit Lusaka. There Mr. Nkomo's forces are at least as strong as, if not stronger than, those of the Zambian Government; I wonder whether the same anxiety should not also be expressed about the Queen's project to visit Botswana.
At any rate I hope that my noble friend will beware of a good deal of African bombast which is already going around. There have been rumblings from the Commonwealth but Nigeria did not even send observers. Kenya did send observers, which is overlooked by many people—and Kenya has not rumbled at all. Botswana and Malawi, who know a great deal about the situation, have both been silent and abstainers from these rumblings, and of course Uganda is silent also. When we hear the boasting by Nkomo that, "We can impose our own sanctions", let us remind ourselves that he and Mugabe said that they would disrupt the elections and failed singly to do so. And when we learn of the Libyan threat to train 2,000 terrorists, let us remember also that Libya got her fingers badly burned in Uganda in her endeavours to support General Amin. So do not let us be overwhelmed by what I would call the bombast, some of it from some countries of the Commonwealth, and do not let us overrate the situation in regard to Nkomo and Mugabe themselves. Would we not be rather distressed if the Americans told us we had got to talk with the IRA? Here is an analogy which we should take to heart.
It is always a pleasure to hear the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts. Many tributes have been paid to him today and I must add mine. He is ever courteous, never lacking in humour, sometimes even informative. He has said today that we must beware of African opinion. The last time he and I had an exchange on this subject across the floor of the House he defined African opinion in effect as that of the Organisation for African Unity. But he was not able to tell me then, what I have since learned, that only four or five of the OAU States have any kind of democratic Government which would have the sort of claim on our attention that has the new Government of Rhodesia.
The insurgency must be seen in perspective. The scale of terrorist losses is

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truly formidable. More than two and a half thousand of them were killed last year and more than 1,100 more in the first three months of this year. More than 2,000 came "on side "—that is, surrendered—before the elections took place. When I interviewed several of them they said they came on side because "one man one vote" had now been obtained. With some 12,000 terrorists supposed to be in Rhodesia in the months leading up to the election only one" incident" of any kind—which can include blowing up a tractor—occurred for every four terrorists in four months. Four-fifths of them were and are inactive; some have actually been encouraging people to vote.
Those are aspects of the picture which came to my attention when I visited recently as a guest of the Anglo-Rhodesian Society. I am not a member of it, but being invited I felt that one ought to take the opportunity to go. As an old newspaper correspondent I am fairly familiar with going to a completely strange country and fairly soon finding one or two fixes in the situation whereby one judges and dissects the official propaganda. I applied the old newspaper techniques in aid of my researches while I was there.
Perhaps I should just say that I think the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, is a brave man. I do not agree with very much he has said or written, but to be the odd man out when the opinion so widely expressed by so many observers is almost unanimous does require courage. I hope he will accept that I mean that, although I did interrupt him earlier and I hope he did not take it too much to heart.
We are told that the electorate was cowed and indoctrinated. Well, as an old newspaper-trained observer I say this: There was a choice of at least four parties, and in one part of the country five. When people come singing and dancing to the polls that is not because they are frightened. There was full freedom to spoil the ballot paper and at the count I attended I only saw two or three. It is worth mentioning that the Roman Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, which is by no means sympathetic to the régime, by no means whatever, has expressed to me the view that it considers that the elections were fair and free.
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I believe there were three motives at work among the voters. Most of them did not want to miss out on this Western big juju. It seemed a pity to miss whatever it was. Then there was a vote for peace; finally there was a vote from frustration: they said: "This at least is something we can do to stop the rot". But, there are issues here which are far wider and I believe more serious than those of mere politics, and those issues I hope will command the sympathy of all quarters of the House. I refer to simple considerations of humanity. Those dictate the early lifting of sanctions. The fertile soil for the disenchanted, uprooted, frustrated and aspiring young who are so readily recruited into the "mujibas" as they are called, is indeed unemployment, rising expectations, and frustrated restlessness of those with a tribal background and a more or less peasant economy confronted with the industrial society's wealth and the opportunity that, at the same time, it is felt it denies them.
It is urgent—indeed, it is very urgent—on grounds of humanity alone that certain critical requirements are met now. There needs to be a crash programme to re-open 80 per cent. of the senior schools which had been closed by the insurgency; and a crash programme to resume and extend vocational training for young men who have been away. They have had their fun and run with the guerrillas and now they might well be induced to settle down if they had the opportunity to be taught a craft. The same is true of the need for a crash programme to give access to A-levels and therefore to an eventual share in the top administration. Finally, to make all those things possible, there is an urgent need for the inflow of capital to expand the economy, to develop the mineral resources, to pursue reconstruction and—this has been mentioned by others—to encourage the white population to stay. There are, of course, strategic overtones in the whole issue which it would be tedious now to go into. However, perhaps it is worth drawing attention to the words of Mr. Andrew Young who said:
"Of a dozen raw materials that our society depends on to keep its technology going, about eight are found predominantly in Rhodesia, Namibia, Botswana, Angola—right there in that middle belt of Africa".
That is worth hearing in mind as well, of course, as the simple fact of Simonstown and the Cape route.

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I had never been to Rhodesia before and because I had never been there I have never tried to make a speech on the subject. But, having had a quick look, instead of writing a two or one volume book I have to make this speech tonight. As an old newspaper man I have the impression that this is a watershed in Southern Africa, and that delay could mean disillusion and loss of dynamic. I am reminded of Walter Savage Landor who wrote:
"We talk on principle, but we act on interest".
I believe that both on account of principle and on account of interest we should urge the Government to stand by their unqualified election Manifesto pledge and accept that they have a duty to return Rhodesia to a state of legality and move to lift sanctions as soon as possible.
9.50 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I think that this debate has proved two things: first, that although foreign affairs and defence are related, we need separate days to discuss them and, secondly, that when noble Lords put down their names to speak, they should indicate their subject so that we might have some sequence in the debate. I apologise to the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, that I shall not be following him, but that is an indication how the debate is spoilt because there is not sequence in the discussions.
I propose, though necessarily telegraphically, to discuss the prospects of détente, disarmament and peace in the world. I shall be asking the Government some questions, of some of which I have given notice. During the election I said that my greatest fear of a Conservative Government would be their effect on détente, disarmament and peace. I was a little reassured by the thought that Conservative Governments are always less reactionary in office than they are in opposition and that, to my regret, Labour Governments are always less socialist in office than they are in opposition. However, as I have looked at the gracious Speech, my fears have been renewed. There is no reference whatever in the gracious Speech to the great opportunities which now exist for disarmament in the world. There is only one platitudinous sentence which refers to the peaceful solution of disputes.
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In the world today there are two threats of major wars. There have been local wars. I have counted 47 cases of hostility between nations or within nations since the last world war. But the two major threats are between China and the Soviet Union, and the confrontation between the Soviet Union and its allies and the West. I think one can say tonight that there are signs of hope in both these cases. China has offered negotiations to the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union has promptly agreed. Therefore, my first question to Her Majesty's Government concerns the following. I hope that they can give us an assurance that they will do their utmost to encourage a settlement between China and the Soviet Union.
Similarly, in the confrontation between East and West there are hopeful signs. There has just been the visit of the French President to Moscow, where the Soviet Union and France agreed:
"To co-operate in a programme for détente and disarmament".
There is the enormously important SALT II agreement, which will limit missiles in inter-continental space. Despite the decision in the Senate of the United States of America, I hope that there will be no doubt that SALT II will be signed. If it is not, the effect upon the possibilities of détente in the world would be great; we should plunge again into the cold war. I welcome the fact that Her Majesty's Government have welcomed SALT II, and I hope that they will do everything to mobilise the countries of Western Europe to bring, pressure for its signature.
There has been some unease among the member States of NATO about SALT II because it does not deal with the threats of the Soviet weapons, SS20 and the Backfire Bomber. However, SALT III will deal with those weapons, which are effective within Europe and which are not inter-continental. I want to urge tonight that nothing should be done to escalate the missile conflict within Europe before SALT III meets and comes to conclusions. I hope very much that the Soviet Union will respond to the German Chancellor's appeal that in return for Western encouragement of SALT II the Soviet will apply limitations to SS20 and the Backfire Bomber.
But we must also show restraint. Recently there has been a visit to this

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country of the West German Chancellor, and he has met our Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher. There are reports in the Press that at that meeting our Prime Minister agreed to accept in this country the cruise missile. Western Germany has said that it will not provide sites unless other countries do so. I hope those reports are not true. I hope we can have an assurance from the Government tonight that they are not true.
The question of the possible siting of a new missile in this country makes relevant the fact that we already have missiles here, the Polaris submarines. I welcome the fact that in the Labour Party Manifesto in the recent election these words were used:
"In 1974 we renounced any intention of moving towards the production of a new generation of nuclear weapons, or a successor to the Polaris nuclear force. We reiterate our belief that this is the best course for Britain".
In the early 1990s the Polaris submarine will become obsolete. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will fulfil that hope voiced by the Labour Party that no successor to the Polaris nuclear force should be implemented.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, would the noble Lord consider trying to make the same appeal to the USSR, which is building missile submarines, one every five weeks at the moment? Is it wrong for us to build any more and right for the USSR to do it?
Lord BROCKWAY: Certainly, and I have often done so. In view of the vast superiority of the Soviet Union and of the United States of America, the existence in this country of nuclear weapons is just trivial in any war situation. In addition, it is a threat to all our people. If war occurred and we had these nuclear weapons, Great Britain would be one of the first targets for the Soviet Union to attack, and 12 Soviet missiles could destroy the whole of our population. I want to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will agree not to proceed with further missiles in this country before SALT III has been able to discuss this problem.
There is even an opportunity before the SALT III discussions. There are the
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talks in Vienna, which have been bogged down. But the Warsaw Pact has now called for a conference this year of European countries, and of the United States and Canada as members of NATO, to agree on ways of reducing military confrontation. I should like to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have responded to that appeal from the United Nations Secretary-General and, if so, what the response has been.
I want to pass on from that to much greater opportunities. We have had during the past year the Special Assembly of the United Nations on Disarmament, at which the leaders of every country in the world declared in favour of large steps towards disarmament. I want particularly to draw attention to the terms of reference which that Special Assembly suggested for the committee in Geneva which is to implement its discussions. The Assembly proposed to the Geneva Committee as terms of reference:
"Abolish all armed forces, except for internal security and United Nations peace-keeping force".
That is a tremendous proposal. Are our Government in favour of it?
To the committee at Geneva the British Government made a series of radical proposals. I want to congratulate my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts upon the way he put these forward at the Assembly of the United Nations. The first proposal was for negotiations on strategic arms with the objective of reducing, and eventually eliminating, nuclear weapons. The second was a comprehensive test ban treaty with verification. The third was the establishment of nuclear-free zones in the world. The fourth was the prohibition of chemical and radiological weapons. The fifth was a continuing review to prohibit further weapons of mass destruction, and the sixth was for negotiations for limiting conventional weapons.
Those proposals were made not only by our Government, but by 15 Western Governments which supported them. They are now being discussed at Geneva. The United States of America and the Soviet Union have gone even further in their proposals than Great Britain. President Carter has said that he is in favour of a 50 per cent. reduction in nuclear weapons in the world, and he

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has also said that if SALT III is signed, there should be a reduction to zero. President Brezhnev of the Soviet Union has proposed that there should be destruction of all nuclear weapons and of all weapons of mass destruction, and that there should be a phased advance to complete disarmament. I want to ask the Government whether they endorse the British proposals which are now before the Geneva Committee, and also whether they will support the more radical proposals that are being made.
Once again, one need not wait until conclusions of the review by the committee at Geneva. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr. Waldheim, has sent a letter to all the member States of the United Nations. He asks all of them for their proposals on a programme of general disarmament. Again, I ask the Government what response they have made to that letter from Dr. Waldheim. It may be a little early for them to have made that response already, and if that is the case, what are their intentions?
My Lords, the Soviet Union has replied. It has replied that its ultimate goal is general and complete disarmament" under strict international control"—and those words are very important. In addition to that ultimate goal, it has said that there must immediately be a ban on all nuclear weapons and on the development of weapons of mass destruction;the guarantee of security to non-nuclear States; the reduction of the military budgets of permanent member States of the Security Council, to be followed by others.
I conclude by asking this. The core of this matter is whether we believe in the sincerity of the Soviet Union and of President Brezhnev. The last Foreign Secretary did. He wrote me a letter saying that he believed that President Brezhnev was as sincere as President Carter. The speeches of our Prime Minister before the election suggested that she did not share that view. If the Government do not share that view as to
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the sincerity of the Soviet Union in making these disarmament proposals, I suggest that they should call the bluff of the Soviet Union. It has declared itself in favour of these proposals. All right; let it express willingness to attend the conference to implement them. That would be a test of the Soviet Union's sincerity. We now have, not a Utopian, not an idealistic, but a realistic opportunity for disarmament in the world. I hope we shall seize that opportunity.
The MARQUESS of LINLITHGOW: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, will he allow me to say this? I, unfortunately, like so many noble Lords, remember well my distress as a much younger man when I heard exactly what the noble Lord has just been saying, but in a different context—in terms of bombing cities, and so on, as opposed to nuclear weapons. I remember exactly the same arguments being produced in 1937, 1938 and 1939 as those that the noble Lord has now put forward. We have been caught once—and we were very nearly caught completely at that time—because we were ready to accept the sincerity of an opponent who in fact had no sincerity whatsoever in terms of his own plans for conquest. Nothing that the noble Lord has said has persuaded me otherwise—and this is the question I should like to ask him. Is the noble Lord aware that Mr. Brezhnev's expression of sincerity may be just as insincere as those of the people who were threatening us in 1938 and 1939?
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I would say this. The great difference is that now we have all the Governments of the world pressing for disarmament. It is no longer Utopian idealism or romanticism; it is now realism. There has been the Special Assembly of the United Nations, followed by the committee in Geneva which is now working out these problems with practical proposals before it. What I am asking is that our Government should seize this opportunity. If the Soviet Union is insincere, put it to the test.
10.9 p.m.
Lord HANKEY: My Lords, I was constantly at the first disarmament conference in the 1930s, but I do not propose to follow the noble Lord in the complicated issues to which he has referred. I should like to start by congratulating my noble friends Lord Carrington and Lord Goronwy-Roberts, with all respect, on the admirable speeches they made today. I think that if we could have our foreign affairs continue to be conducted with realism, commonsense and in a friendly atmosphere of consensus, it really holds out the best hope for this country.
I am worried at the dramatic change in the balance of power which has been taking place in recent years and I think that, while being as short as I can, I must draw attention to what is going on. Iran, obviously, is the latest example which one thinks of. It has a Marxist State, recently seized in a coup d'étât, on the North-East, Afghanistan; it has a more or less Marxist State to the South, Iraq. I do not think that the Iranians are going to get any joy from the Ayatollah Khomeini. He seems to me to be a remarkable religious bigot. The future seems to be most uncertain. I just wonder what is going to succeed him when the present Government there fails.
I note that Russia will be short of oil, according to all expectations, in the 1980s. This brings me to look at the situation across the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly under pressure. Twenty-five per cent. of the known exploitable reserves of oil available to the free world are in Saudi Arabia. On the other side of Saudi Arabia, South Yemen has become the principal Soviet satellite in the area. Our friends there are mostly in concentration camps run, I am told, on the best Nazi lines by East Germans. Aden bears out what appears to be quite a rule: that when the British move out, the Russians tend to move in. They did it in Egypt and, fortunately, the Egyptians got rid of them. They have now moved into Ethiopia and, with Aden and the port of Massawa, they have control of the Red Sea, which is the umbilical cord of the British Commonwealth.
I am sorry to say this, but I think we have been very remiss in withdrawing
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from East of Suez for reasons with which I could never agree. We have to consider how to rectify the errors which have been made over the last 15 years. I recall that the naval mission to India is Soviet-run; about half the Indian Navy consists of Soviet ships and the Soviets have a base not far from Madras. Then, I go to Mozambique, now Maputo. I look across the continent to Angola. I notice, as in Ethiopia, that there are Russians and Cubans there. I say to myself: "What is the Organisation for African Unity doing about this? If the British had sent troops to those countries they would have howled to the housetops." There is a dangerous degree of "doublethink" going on in the world and I do not think that we can afford to neglect this. It ought to be shown up. The Organisation for African Unity does not impress me with its real concern for African rights and independence.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me to intervene, when he speaks of the presence of Russians and Cubans in Angola, is he aware that it has been established by the Americans themselves that there were no Russians and no Cubans in Angola until the country was invaded by the South Africans?
Lord HANKEY: My Lords, I think that that is burking the issue. There is no use in putting one's head in the sand. I am interested in what is happening and in what is going to happen. I do not think it was the fault of the South Africans that the Cubans came in. I am astonished that the British and the Americans and the other European Powers allowed Cubans to be moved into that part of Africa. If the Americans or the British had done it, half the world would have shrieked in protest—and the noble Lord would have done the same, and perhaps he would have been right. We must not have "double-think" in these matters.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, would the noble Lord also criticise the French for their involvement in some of the countries in Africa? Is he saying that it is not right for independent countries in Africa to invite in foreign help from whatever source they think fit?
Lord HANKEY: My Lords, the process of foreign Powers getting themselves invited into Africa is a dangerous one. I do not think that, having set these countries free, we want them to become the pawns of other Powers. I think it is a dangerous process and I think that we should resist it. I recall in Mozambique, or Maputo, they gave every assurance to the Portuguese that when Frelimo took power they would be able to stay there. When Frelimo had taken power, the first thing they did was to throw all the Portuguese out without a penny. Exactly what happened in Angola I do not know; but I think it was something similar. If one visits Portugal, as I have done, one will see masses of people who have suffered these misfortunes.
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord knows that the Portuguese have been invited back to Mozambique, Maputo being the capital of Mozambique, but not many of them have yet gone.
Lord HANKEY: I do not think many have gone, and one of the reasons is they do not want to live in a Marxist State. This brings me to oil. I mentioned the oil in Saudi Arabia. Iran has one-tenth of world production. If anything happened to Iran to reduce the availability of Iranian oil permanently, it would be extremely serious for the Western world. However, I am thinking today principally of the communication lines by which the oil has to reach the Western Powers. I recall that over 40 per cent. of the oil used by the industries and the armed forces of the NATO countries has to come round the Cape of Good Hope and through the Indian Ocean. Oil was the Achilles heel of Germany in the last war and I think that it is probably NATO's Achilles heel now.
I make no apology for drawing attention to this because it is not inevitable that the next war is going to depend entirely on nuclear weapons. I think it will in fact do so, but it is quite possible that we would be so damaged by economic pressure of this sort that we would find it very hard to resist Russian pressure in some sphere or other where our vital interests are concerned. This is a major danger. Therefore it is essential on the
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broader strategic and political grounds that we should retain control of these maritime communications. I hope that we shall send forces back East of Suez as soon as we have some forces to send there. I do not suppose at the moment we have many.
It was a real act of betrayal of our national interests when we withdrew the Navy from Simonstown. If ever the Soviets got into Simonstown the balance of power would really change in an alarming manner. There is no question of that of course at the moment; but one has to look to the future. I look more to the future than to the past, and it is high time that we began to busy ourselves with these issues.
There are issues other than human rights which ought to be looked at in connection with Southern Africa, although I am afraid that Mr. Andrew Young does not seem to see them. It is not just a matter of oil. As one noble Lord has already mentioned, there are a great many economic sources in central and Southern Africa which are essential for our industries and for the employment of our people. I recall that all through sanctions the United States has continued to buy Rhodesian chrome. That is a remarkable fact. There are many products besides chrome which we need from this area. This means that we need those industries to continue functioning efficiently.
This brings me to Rhodesia. I warmly agreed with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. I thought he put the issues just right, but I am not going to needle him on this subject. If I mention Rhodesia, it is to comment on some of the things which have been said in our debate. First of all, may I say how remarkable is the number of observers who have been to Rhodesia and seen the elections, who are Members of this House. The noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale (he is not in his place at the moment) is a most experienced observer. I have seen him on the job in many foreign countries, and his testimony is always worth hearing. He is a man of great judgment and ingenuity in collecting information. I am sure that the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd, whose views we respect so greatly, will give us a most

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interesting report and I also hope that it will be coming out soon.
I do not want to add to the length of this debate, but I must say briefly that I personally think sanctions should be removed as soon as possible. I do not sec what other occasion there will be to remove them, and the longer we wait the harder it will be to do and the more controversy we are likely to arouse. I do not think it is very sensible to say that we do not like the constitution or that there are too many whites in the Government. Rhodesia has voted by a large majority in favour of the present set-up. They have been able to choose between a number of different parties. It is not true that Mugabe and Nkomo were excluded. They were invited to come in and did not do so. They both declared war on the election but were prevented from doing so and have been thoroughly and deservedly humiliated. I do not think that we ought to be bamboozled into paying a great deal more attention to those people. They are not our friends. They are under Soviet influence and control. Mr. Cledwyn Hughes, whose views I greatly respect, went to Rhodesia not long ago and reported back that there was no chance of any alternative agreement. I am sure that is the position today.
The longer we keep sanctions going, the longer we give hope to Messrs. Nkomo and Mugabe that if they only keep on fighting and get some more Russian arms and money they will be able to make more trouble. Therefore, I think that we would be wiser, as soon as we have completed the consultations now going on, to take action as quickly as we reasonably can. I think that as we initiated sanctions and asked other people to do so, we should take the lead in removing them, which we are entitled to do.
I think one is entitled to consider what are the motives of those who want sanctions to continue. I am slightly surprised at the American attitude but I believe, as so often happens, that they are thinking of internal American politics. These are very important to them. The President wants to be re-elected next year and I am sure he is thinking of black votes. This is not a consideration which
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ought to carry much weight with our own Government, though naturally we like to keep close to our American allies.
The African States, especially the Marxist ones, probably do not want any white men or any Europeans to continue to have any position in Rhodesia. Certainly the Marxist ones do not: they always want to exclude the Anglo-Saxons and their friends. So I have three comments on this. First, the presence of the Europeans in the Government was approved in the election. So far as I am concerned, it is now a democratic reality and I do not see any further reason to question it. Secondly, the Europeans are certainly essential during a transitional period, if Rhodesia is not to disintegrate before the new Government has gained experience. We have to consider: Do we want this Government to disintegrate or not? If we do, get rid of the Europeans and continue sanctions and it will disintegrate sooner or later. All Governments make mistakes after a time and they are sure to get into a mess, but, in my opinion, they will get into less of a mess if people of the experience of Mr. Smith and his colleagues remain and co-operate honestly with Bishop Muzorewa and his colleagues.
Thirdly, the continuance of a successful multiracial Government in Salisbury is very important in South Africa. If there is chaos in Rhodesia and the whole thing breaks down, it will minister to a Maginot Line mentality in South Africa. They will dig themselves in, they will totally resist the outside world and they will give up all the nascent tendencies of liberalisation which we now see. I repeat the word "nascent". I do not want to exaggerate. On the other hand, if we have a real régime of multiracial harmony in Rhodesia, approved by the removal of sanctions and recognized even just de facto by the sending of representatives from this country and other countries, this will encourage the moderate people in South Africa to press their case inside that country.
So I earnestly hope that we shall not try again to get Nkomo, Mugabe and their Marxists into the new régime in Salisbury. It has been disastrous all over Europe to have the Marxists in the Government. I was intimately mixed up with the Yalta agreement and Poland.

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The Marxists faked the elections, they threw everybody else out of the Government and it was a terrible state of affairs. I have lived through another Communist revolution in Hungary. We saw what happened in Czechoslovakia. But I do not want to go back so far. You have only to look at what has happened in Vietnam, quite recently, and in Mozambique and Angola. It is not a very desirable state of affairs.
We must learn by experience. There is no good to be obtained by getting those people back into Rhodesia, unless they go back in a sensible frame of mind. Continued sanctions merely encourage the African States to hope that they can "down" the new democratic régime in Salisbury, and therefore that makes the problem worse. Consequently, I urge that as soon as we reasonably can we ought to get rid of sanctions. I do not see what other occasion we can expect to find as good as the present one. If the great experiment in Salisbury fails, and if the Europeans leave in the end, the Cubans and Russians are bound to move in. I do not think that the black population of Rhodesia is in a position to run the great industries, the power schemes, the mines and so on, with any reasonable efficiency. I do not see that they would have any alternative. They would get the Cubans and the Russians to go and help and that would be a disaster. I am very willing to leave this to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and I shall look with great interest to see how, with his well-known wisdom, he settles these problems.
10.29 p.m.
Lord CHALFONT: My Lords, I should dearly have liked to follow the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, and to test some of his rather cosy assumptions about the desire of the world powers for disarmament. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, I attended disarmament con-Jerences, in my case for six often weary and frustrating years, and I can only say that this desire for universal disarmament was not, to me at any rate, very evident in the attitudes of any of the great powers who took part in those conferences. However, I shall not follow the noble Lord. I have another subject upon which I should like to speak. But
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perhaps before I do so I may be allowed to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, on his assumption of his great office. He has had many compliments paid to him today, all of them deserved. My own contribution will simply be to say that I can think of no-one in either of the great political parties in this country, or even outside them, who will discharge the great office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs with such a potent combination of toughness, elegance and intellectual distinction.
May I also add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Carver, on a notable maiden speech. Lord Carver is what his friend and mine, the late Captain Liddell Hart, would have called an educated soldier. The clarity of his expression this evening and the maintenance of his objective throughout his speech is what one would have expected from a soldier of such immense distinction, and I hope that we shall hear from him very often in your Lordships' House.
May I make one other brief point in passing which has been made before. It is, without elaboration, that I hope that in future we shall be able on these occasions to have separate debates for defence affairs and foreign affairs. I know that this has been said often, so I shall not dwell upon it.
The present Government are likely to be responsible for the foreign and defence policies of this country for most, if not all, of the 1980s. It will be a precarious and dangerous decade. It is the period which, in my view, will almost certainly determine whether we shall reach the end of this century without a third world war.
It is tempting to reach for the broad brush and to talk about such things as relationships with China, the emerging super-Power of the 1980s, and about Rhodesia, of which we have heard a great deal this evening. One might even wish to talk about British policies in Latin America, an area which seems to have been treated somewhat equivocally by the previous Administration. Incidentally, I know that on this particular subject your Lordships are to hear later from the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, who, as chairman of Canning

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House, has done so much to promote political and cultural relations with some of the more important Latin American republics.
However, in the comparatively short time during which it is proper for a Back-Bench Member of your Lordships' House to speak in this debate, I want to concentrate on a subject which I believe, without exaggeration, to be the most important single foreign policy issue facing the new Government; namely, the proposed agreement on nuclear weapons between the United States and the Soviet Union—the draft Treaty, usually referred to as SALT II, upon which the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, has already spoken so eloquently this evening.
I was interested, and perhaps I should say a little disturbed, to hear the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, say in the course of his most impressive and encouraging speech that Her Majesty's Government look forward to the early signature and ratification of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, in a characteristically elegant and lucid speech, welcomed what the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, had said. The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, was even more fulsome in his welcome of this statement.
I am sorry to strike a discordant note in this chorus of welcome for SALT II. My own welcome for it is, I am afraid, less cordial, and I believe that the more familiar one becomes with the provisions of this treaty the less welcome it may seem. Therefore, I should like to spend the few minutes which I have this evening just saying briefly what this agreement is, why I believe it to be a defective agreement—and, in some ways, even a dangerous one—why I think that those dangers are of enormous importance not only to the Americans and to the Russians but to every single one of us and, finally, what I think Her Majesty's Government should be doing about it.
First, what is SALT II? In its present form, the form in which, substantially, it will be signed by Mr. Carter and Mr. Brezhnev, if it is signed, it is a treaty, a protocol and a statement of principles. It is very complicated, very technical, very long, but its principal and main effect is to place a limit on the number of
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strategic nuclear delivery vehicles; that is to say, on the number of missiles and heavy bombers which may be held by the Soviet Union and the United States. It also, incidentally, places certain limits on the number of nuclear warheads which may be carried in those delivery vehicles. There are many other provisions in this treaty, some of them very abstruse, very technical, concerning such things as the testing of missiles and warheads and the transfer of technology to third countries; but basically SALT II is, as I have said, a treaty limiting the total number of nuclear missiles and bombers in the Soviet Union and the United States.
What, your Lordships may well ask, can possibly be wrong with that? Let us get one thing straight first. This is not a measure of disarmament. In fact—and this may come as a surprise to some of your Lordships—it will permit both sides to have more nuclear weapons than they have at the moment. Just to put this into perspective let me give your Lordships one set of figures—only one this evening, I promise. If we take only one category of weapons, that is to say inter-continental missiles without multiple warheads, intercontinental missiles with one warhead each, and if we take 1985 as a reference point, by that time the United States will be entitled, even under the provisions of SALT II, to have weapons with a total yield of up to 1,000 megatons; that is to say the equivalent of 1,000 million tons of explosive. The Soviet Union will be entitled to have 6,000 megatons—6,000 million tons of explosive—and that, my Lords, takes no account of possible stockpiles of more than 1,500 multiple warheads on the American side and 6,000 multiple warheads on the Russian side. So can we at least dispose of one fallacy in this argument, that this is a treaty which limits strategic nuclear weapons. It does not; it allows them in fact to grow between now and 1985.
The next point concerns the balance of power in that growth. Your Lordships may have noticed in the figures which I have just mentioned a slight disparity in favour of the Soviet Union—in fact more than a slight disparity. Here I follow something that the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, was saying: this disparity could be tilted even further against the West if the Soviet Union were to cheat

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and secretly contravene the provisions of the treaty; for example, in such a thing as the number of warheads allowed in each missile. I do not suggest that the Russians will cheat, although from what the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, has said about violations of SALT I, the first part of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty does not fill one with a great deal of confidence. But I do not say that they will cheat. All I do say is that if they did cheat there is no way under SALT II of detecting the fact that they are cheating. There is no provision in this treaty for international inspection or verification, and I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, who unfortunately is not in his seat at the moment, placed great emphasis on the need, in a comprehensive test ban treaty, for international inspection. Then why not in a treaty of the importance of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty?
Perhaps I should say—because this will come out over and over again in this debate, which will become more and more intense, especially in the United States—there is no certain way, even with all the modern means of satellite photography and electronic surveillance, of calculating the range of a cruise missile, for example. There is no way of calculating the number of warheads in a single launcher. There is no way of determining whether a given missile carries a nuclear warhead or a conventional warhead. There is no way of doing that without international inspection, and there is no provision for it in this treaty. During my experience in Geneva, in Moscow, in Washington and in New York in the 1960s I became convinced of the truth of one of the basic axioms of arms control and disarmament negotiations. I am convinced of it now. It is that an agreement which cannot be effectively verified may well be more dangerous than having no agreement at all.
This combination of imbalance between the two sides and lack of verification in the treaty has already led many responsible American observers to conclude that in the worst possible case, if all went wrong, the Soviet Union might in the 1980s achieve a high degree of nuclear superiority, indeed that they might be able to destroy a large proportion of the American land-based missile force using relatively few of their own nuclear weapons. We must add to that the fact—this is perhaps
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most significant of all to us in Western Europe—that SALT II, as the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has already conceded, deals only with those Russian weapons which can reach the United States of America; it does not deal with the Backfire bomber or the SS20 missile, both of which can be used to deliver nuclear weapons of immense power on targets in Western Europe and in this country; they are totally unaffected by SALT II. It is all very well for the noble Lord, Lord Brockway (I am sorry to refer to his speech continually when he is not present), to say that these matters would be dealt with in SALT III. But, my Lords, the axiom of all international negotiation, especially in arms control, is that each step must guarantee security to both sides. It is no good taking risks in one stage of an arms control negotiation in the interests of some problematical Utopia in the future.
One typical reaction to all this kind of argument—and I understand it well; it is brought about, I think, by an understandable psychological reluctance to face the appalling implications of nuclear war—is to say, "But, surely, no sane person would risk a nuclear war. No political gain could possibly compensate for the massive destruction that would follow, and therefore all this talk of nuclear superiority and strategic superiority has no meaning". This is, in my view, a profoundly dangerous form of mental confusion. If nuclear weapons and the calculation of this kind of balance existed in some kind of vacuum it might be possible to dismiss them in that way. But, my Lords, they do not exist in such a vacuum; they exist in a world in which the Soviet Union—and here the noble Lord, Lord Carver, provided us with his own immediate experience in these matters—has built up a gigantic military machine at all levels, and it is, furthermore, conducting an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy which can be and is being supported by the application of effective military force anywhere in the world.
A focal point of Soviet strategy is, and has been for many years, Western Europe. Let us be clear about this. This does not simply mean that the Russian forces on the northern and central fronts in Europe are in a position to overrun large areas of Western Europe in a surprise attack; although they are able to do that, that is not what is important. It means also—

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and the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, made reference to this—that by dominating contiguous areas such as the Middle East, the Soviet Union can outflank and isolate Europe from the rest of the world. To dominate the contiguous areas such as the Middle East it has set out to achieve positions of power and influence in such countries as Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq on one side; Yemen, Ethiopia and Southern Africa on the other; and to neutralise Turkey to the north. We can see all that happening before our very eyes. At the same time the Russian leaders are determined to isolate the only world power which seems to understand their strategy—China—by pressures on Pakistan and India, alliances with Vietnam, and by exercising their influence and dominance in North Korea. That is the strategic background against which we must approach the question of nuclear weapons and the SALT agreement. It is not a strategic vacuum: it is a dangerous and precarious strategic situation which affects every single one of us.
The Soviet Union does not want nuclear war; the Soviet Union does not want war at all. It has recognised that it can achieve its aims without firing a single shot, if it can face China and the West with decisive superiority in every aspect of military power. For some time now we have been unable to pose a serious conventional defence against Soviet attack in Europe. We are conventionally inferior. We are unable to meet, at its own level, Soviet military operations anywhere in the world. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, has mentioned the presence of Cubans in Africa. He said that they were present in 11 African States. My own intelligence is that they are present in 13 African States and that there are 50,000 of them present there and that there is nothing the West can do, or at least has done, about it.
In the past the Soviet Union has been deterred from a more decisive and adventurous attack on Western interests almost entirely by the superiority of the American nuclear striking force. That has implanted in the Russian mind the very strong possibility that, if they go too far, the United States might use its nuclear weapons in defence of the vital interests of the West. That superiority has now disappeared and if present
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trends continue it might soon give way to a decisive Russian superiority instead. In those circumstances the Soviet Union would be able to pursue its foreign policies totally unhindered and confident that the West would be unable or unwilling to resist it. It seems to me, to say the very least, strange that, faced with that strategic situation, the United States should be contemplating now an arms control agreement which will at best freeze the balance in its present state and, at worst, open the way for the Soviet Union to complete its total military superiority over the West.
Finally, your Lordships may well say that, even if all that is true, there is very little that Her Majesty's Government can do about it. These are, after all, bilateral negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Mr. Carter will sign the treaty whether we like it or not. But that is not the end of the matter. Recent public opinion surveys in America show that when people know the implications of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty they begin to have doubts about it. In the American Senate there is a deep sense of concern among a considerable number of senators with many of whom I have discussed this matter. As your Lordships know, it requires a two-thirds majority of the Senate to ratify President Carter's agreement on the treaty. So, if 34 American senators either reject the treaty or demand its amendment, it will not be ratified. President Carter and his advisers have pointed out that that will damage their credibility, that it will damage relations with the Soviet Union and that it will brand the United States as warmongers. I very much hope that Her Majesty's Government, and especially the noble Lord who is now Her Majesty's principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, will look at these propositions with a very cold and calculating eye.
If SALT II is a bad and defective agreement—and the noble Lord must satisfy himself upon that point—it would be dangerous and foolish to ratify it, whatever may be the short-term effects in Washington and Moscow. As the noble Lord has said, we have our own interests to consider, both as an independent nation and as a member of the European Community. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has clear and realistic views about these matters.

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I can only ask him to ensure that on this very complex, highly technical and abstruse subject, he does not take all his advice either from his own official sources or from the United States Administration. There are many powerful voices in the United States, including those of such distinguished former statesmen and officials as Dr. Kissinger, Mr. Walt Rostow and Mr. Paul Nitze, all of whom are known personally to the noble Lord, who have serious doubts about the wisdom of signing this treaty—at least as long as Soviet foreign policy shows itself hostile and aggressive towards the interests of the West.
There are others who say that even if the treaty is signed and ratified, the United States must take steps to ensure, by the planning of its own future nuclear weapons systems, that the Soviet Union cannot achieve nuclear superiority behind the smokescreen of SALT II. Therefore, I should like to ask the Government—and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, might even be able to answer this when he replies to the debate—to give an assurance that before Her Majesty's Government give any further support, either by word or deed, to the signature and ratification of this treaty, they will seek at first-hand the views of many people on both sides of the Atlantic who believe that SALT II is not in the best interests of the Western Alliance as a whole; and who are convinced that even if it may carry some immediate short-term benefits for the United States Administration, it is certainly not in the best long-term interests of Western Europe or of this country.
Finally, before I sit down, may I say how delighted I was to hear a passage in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington—I think it was a throwaway passage, but nevertheless to me a significant and welcome one—in which he said that British interests are British interests whichever party we belong to. I hope that we are now entering an era in which we shall not be afraid to speak openly of British interests and, indeed, to defend them vigorously. If Her Majesty's Government will make that the heart and the driving force of their foreign and defence policies, they will deserve and they will get the support of the great
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majority, not only of your Lordships' House, but of the people of this country.
10.53 p.m.
Lord PLUNKET: My Lords, I must apologise that I shall not be following the last speaker, but I am sure that all noble Lords have been extremely impressed by his lucid exposition of Soviet strategy. I shall be talking about Rhodesia. The remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, were extremely pertinent in the context of Rhodesia. I shall confine my remarks to Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Today, we have heard it called Rhodesia, Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. I do not think it matters which we call it; we all know what we are talking about. I shall talk about Rhodesia because I still live there; I have been there for over 20 years. I believe that perhaps the point of view of someone like myself should be brought to the attention of this House.
It is extremely difficult to make a fresh contribution to this debate on the subject of Rhodesia. It is very possible that I shall reiterate some of the remarks of previous speakers and in the short time that this debate will continue—I hope not too long a time—I may take the words out of some other speakers' mouths. However, I believe that that will only serve to strengthen what will be a common point of view. I should like at this stage to say how pleased I am that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, is now our Foreign Secretary. He is a person who understands Rhodesia, and he has been out there many times. I can assure him that the appointment is very much welcomed in Rhodesia.
I said a little time before the last election, in common with a lot of other people, that the election was totally irrelevant. I said that because I felt that the proposed constitution left far too much power in the hands of the very people who were committed to minority rule, and this was supposed to be a majority rule constitution. In particular, the Patriotic Front were deliberately excluded from the election. I hear a noble Lord say that they were not, but indeed I must say that at this moment of time their names are not even allowed to be printed in the Press. We may well take the view, however, that they excluded themselves, but that is the position.

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However, as the election got wound up I became satisfied that in fact a great many blacks did want to vote. As we know from the election, a great many did in fact vote. I felt at the time that there was no point in trying to prevent this election taking place, and there were people at the time who felt, as I had earlier, that it was irrelevant. This was because it was action of some kind, and we had got into a great impasse. The high turn-out in the election was totally unexpected. I would make the point that it was vastly greater than the turn-out before the Commissioners of the Pearce Commission. I mention that because you will recall that when the commissioners made their report they came to the conclusion that the proposals that had been put forward were not acceptable to the people as a whole, but they did that on the advice of a very small proportion of the population.
I am sorry that the report of the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd, and his six colleagues was not available before this debate for us to look at, but we understand, because it has been said, that the general consensus of opinion of those observers was that it was as free and fair an election as could possibly have been held at the time. In contrast to that, the report of the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, plus one assistant, says that the election was not free and fair. So we must make up our minds about which of those reports we are going to believe and place reliance on. I think that all agreed that there was indeed intimidation by the Government. But how much intimidation? It is claimed by some that 75 per cent. of Rhodesia is now under the control of the Patriotic Front. This is an argument to show that the Patriotic Front have large support. However, people like that cannot have it both ways. How came it that there was indeed then such a large turn-out at this election? The reason is that there was no doubt whatever that people did in fact want to vote.
I want to make another comparison, and that is again going back to the Pearce Commission. Your Lordships may remember that at that time what I then thought were excellent proposals were put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel. Those proposals were being sold by the whites to the blacks as proposals that should be accepted. It has been
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suggested that at the last election some farmers had guns in their hands, but I hope that that accusation will not be made against me.
I felt at the time to which I refer that the proposals should have been accepted, and I arranged for my staff and employees to go into the local village when the commissioners were there to hear evidence. When they returned I asked them how they got on and they said, "We voted as a family", and I was dismayed to hear that they had all voted, "No". That "No" vote was organised by the Bishop. It was not so much a vote against those proposals; it was a vote against the involvement of Mr. Smith in them. Therefore, I feel that it is misleading to try to equate an African election with the type of election that took place nearly three weeks ago in this country. At the time of Pearce the word went out, "Vote No". At the last Rhodesian election the word went out, "Vote", and they have voted. My reading of that vote was that, first, it was a vote for peace—the population are sick and tired of war—and, secondly (and it was second, I think) it was a vote for majority rule. The people are now looking to the so-called Government of national unity for peace, and I feel that it is incredibly important that the British Government should realise this and should take action to ensure that it does not become a Government of disunity.
In the past I have broadly been a supporter of British Government policy since UDI. I was appalled by the folly of UDI. I find RF policy over those years intolerable. The country is nearly ruined economically, and we are in a state of civil war. As your Lordships can imagine, my views are not particularly popular among whites in Rhodesia, and perhaps they are not all that popular among certain blacks, because a gang of ZANLA in fact burnt down my house. But had the RF not been so intractable, there would have been no ZANLA. But past Government policy, I feel, has run out of steam. It has been a chilly and negative approach towards what we always regarded as good black nationalists, simply because they made a deal with Smith. I might remind your Lordships that they were not the only people who have been trying to make deals with Smith.
This negative attitude has, very unfortunately, been taken in Rhodesia as

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active support for the Patriotic Front. I think it absolutely essential that our new Government in no way are branded in this regard. As many speakers have already said, it is a unique opportunity for a fresh start, now that we have two new Governments.
The only cards which I feel the British Government hold at this moment are recognition—which is sometimes called return to legality—and the removal of sanctions. These cards, I feel, can be used more than once; but, once played, they are gone. But they can, I feel, be kept separately and played independently. At this moment I think it is very important to try to continue the momentum which has followed as a result of the two new Governments—and I shall come back to this point in a moment.
I feel that the Bishop must be encouraged to demonstrate that he is in a position to act independently, and that he can bring peace. The noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, laid emphasis on the danger of whites leaving in greater numbers—I feel this is what he meant—if Mr. Smith and his supporters are turned out of their present offices. My reading of the situation is that over these past few years, when we have had such heavy guerrilla incursions, what has in fact driven farmers off the land has not been the guerrillas so much as their being unable to farm economically and unable to make themselves a living. It was not terrorism which was driving them out: it was their lack of livelihood, though now that the whites have accepted majority rule, I do not feel that if their power is diminished that will continue the great exodus which is taking place at the moment.
In addition to the Bishop being encouraged to demonstrate how he can act independently of Mr. Smith, I would hope, indeed, that Mr. Smith will very shortly retire. I may tell your Lordships that there is quite a large number of detainees still in Rhodesia; they were not released before this last election, and they are still being detained now. I can even instance one of my own senior staff who I visited in prison. He has been there for some time, and one can appeal to no one—no appeal court or person—in order to have his case reviewed. In addition, there is a very important case now pending in which
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the judiciary is in conflict with the security forces, who are acting under martial law. I feel it is important that the Bishop should be able to exercise control over those affairs; and if it is seen that he is in fact leading, then, when those conditions obtain, I feel that the time will have come to remove sanctions. What will happen if sanctions are removed? I would say that the Bishop would then be on even terms with the Patriotic Front; he would not be in front of them.
Unfortunately, the fact that we now have a new Government is not going to bring an end to the war, but it is a new situation and it will break the present stalemate with the Patriotic Front. But it is my own feeling that they must be brought into negotiations. In the last election, as your Lordships have heard, Chief Ndemini, who up to a very short time ago no one had even heard of, in fact won nine seats. He is a Matabele. My reading is that, in fact, he received those votes because he was a surrogate for Nkomo.
Whatever form negotiations take, what we do not want is another Geneva. Therefore, I feel that it is up to the black leaders to organise another conference or to handle the negotiations. They must do this themselves. I do not think it is important, or even right, that the British Government should get themselves involved in this. It is a Rhodesian problem and those leaders must sort it out themselves. I think it essential that they sort it out. The noble Lord, Lord Hankey, drew attention to how disruptive Communist parties can be at conferences of this sort. That is why I feel that we must allow the black leaders to sort this out themselves and not ourselves get involved. If the Patriotic Front will not take part, then they are shown up to the world for who they are.
In this two-stage lifting of sanctions and granting legality, I would say of the return to legality that the reason why we are not going to grant it immediately to the Bishop is because it is an extremely complex matter. I recall a meeting addressed by Mr. Luce, myself and a representative of Dr. Owen—a meeting which I think the noble Lord, Lord Carver, attended—where this question of the return to legality was brought up. We were not given a proper answer by Dr. Owen's representative;

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indeed, we are still waiting. I feel that that is some indication of how complex the subject is.
Lastly, I should like to stress the urgency. I think there is a feeling in the House that because there was this vote and the Bishop got in we can, in fact, wait for two months before we do anything. I believe that this is a totally false impression.
Several noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord PLUNKET: My Lords, I myself was in touch with Salisbury this morning and I was told that the situation there was as bad as it has ever been. I spoke to Mr. Todd today and to another Rhodesian who confirmed this. Part of the reason why there is this feeling that all is going well is because most observers were out during the time when 60,000—I think that was the number—additional whites were drafted into the security forces. They blanketed the guerrilla activities at that particular time. During that time, commercial and industrial life in Rhodesia practically came to a standstill. Therefore, it would be quite impossible for that sort of situation to go on.
It is a by-word that Colonials talk of Britain as "home". I use the word "Colonials" advisedly because I believe that the legal position of Rhodesia is that it is a self-governing Colony, now in a state of rebellion. We cannot allow the rebellion to be superseded by a civil war. The new Government in Rhodesia striving for genuine majority rule is ideologically leaning to the West. I suppose that in a way I have a foot in both camps. As a Rhodesian citizen, I want to see links with Britain re-forged; as a British citizen, I want to see Britain's responsibility honestly discharged. Perhaps I am biased, but I do not think that it would be improper for the British Government to hope that they are now dealing with a future leader of the sovereign independent state of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, a future firm member of the Commonwealth.
11.15 p.m.
Lord NEWALL: My Lords, this evening and, in fact, for most of the day, we have been discussing two enormous subjects, but I hope to be as brief as usually I am. I do not intend to cover a routine world
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tour to bore your Lordships, as the noble Lord, the Foreign Secretary, mentioned, nor I hope do I fall into the category mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, as a latent or rampant extremist. I want to cover two aspects only, which are both really requests to the Government, neither of which concerns Rhodesia.
About two months ago I visited Cyprus. I was very fortunate to spend two weeks there, one week in each half as a guest of the Turkish Cypriots and the Greek Cypriots. I talked to Mr. Kyprianou, and I talked to Mr. Denktash. I saw most of the Ministers on both sides, and Opposition leaders. I visited factories; I saw the Greek Cypriots on the Turkish side, and the Turkish Cypriots on the Greek side. I spent 24 hours in the sovereign bases, where I was thoroughly briefed. My wife visited many of the schools, hospitals and other organisations there.
I could discuss several aspects of the many problems, but I will mention only one overriding impression I had, and that is that the Government let Cyprus down. We let Cyprus down in the 1960s and again in 1974. There was a policy that if things were left alone the problem might disappear. It was a policy of inaction. I was extremely surprised by the warmth of feeling towards this country, but always there was an undercurrent that if more had been done at the time the situation would be a lot better now. There is no doubt that our reticence has caused a lot of hardship, and it is now time to heal the wound that stretches right across the whole Island, small and beautiful, as many of your Lordships will know. Obviously, the recent talks must be very much welcomed, and the 10 point agreement is very encouraging. We hope that the resumed talks on 15th June will be held in a spirit of conciliation and concession.
One of the 10 points which was highlighted concerned Varosha. Having been able to see Varosha from the roof of one of the hotels—and it looks as though a neutron bomb has fallen in this area—if there is some agreement on Varosha, where about 40,000 Greek Cypriots still hope to return, I think it will be a big step forward. It will add a lot of weight to the talks, even if it may take a long time to produce other conclusions. There is a great deal more to be done.

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The recognised government is Greek Cypriot. It has no influence whatsoever over any of the Turkish Cypriots who suffer, albeit as a result of their leader's policies. They suffer from a trade embargo; from a travel embargo; and they suffer from money and cash problems. There is an enormous lack of charitable benefits which are normally available to many deprived countries. So my plea to the Government is to take some positive steps soon to help the talks to keep on the right lines and to look into the methods of encouraging charities and to look at Northern Cyprus as well as Southern Cyprus. There are many hardships which could be alleviated with some guidance which probably the Foreign Office could give. Even school books are desperately needed in some areas.
There are many wider issues which make some initiative even more urgent. The divided Cyprus itself is only part of the story. The Turkish mainland has many economic problems which, if not resolved, could cause great difficulties. The Greek mainland has many problems, most of them economic. There is a dispute still over the Aegean and it must not be forgotten. Not least, there are the overall needs of NATO in the light of reduction of bases in other areas. In other words, Cyprus has become even more important recently.
From the military point of view, the sovereign bases in Cyprus fulfill a very important role. They provide a bridge between the two sides, employing both Greek and Turkish Cypriots working alongside one another, and they assist the charities in the South. The position of Cyprus has to be seen as an important link in NATO's chain of bases, as I have already mentioned, especially with Iran and other areas denied to us. From the British point of view, Cyprus is a wonderful training area for all three Services, and this aspect alone must save many frustrating and wasted training hours waiting for suitable weather conditions in other areas. The bases are highly efficient and very well organised, with room for some areas of expansion should the need arise. They are highly valuable properties which we nearly gave up under the last Administration.
Finally, I come to the broader concept of our Forces' problems. In discussions
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with different ranks in our Forces, I have been very much struck by the keenness, the professionalism and the ability of so many of our highly skilled soldiers, sailors and airmen. We all know of their previously inadequate personal rewards, which have now been brought up to a realistic scale by the present Government, but there is still an element of crisis which pay alone, however welcome, will not wholly dispel.
The crisis is one of job satisfaction. We advertise the Forces as "professionals" and we know they are; and then we expect them to prepare for battle with aging vehicles—some even bastardised to keep others running—with out-dated equipment, often vital to their role, and frequently a shortage of spares and equipment. The noble Lord, Lord Carver, brought his own expertise to bear on this subject in his excellent maiden speech—and who am I, as a mere retired captain, to question a field marshal? Surely these professionals need a better deal than this.
The last Government ran down the equipment, with arguments concerning teeth and tail, and they could not see that cutting down the tail would be bound to affect the teeth. So I hope that the Government will respond as fast as possible and look into the other side of the crisis—the crisis of confidence—which is caused mainly by the lack of job satisfaction in many branches of our Forces, in that a lot of equipment needs replacing now. Of course it will be expensive, but it must be done.
Perhaps I should add that the Northern Ireland problem also adds to the crisis by taking so many soldiers away so often—separating husbands and wives and holding so many additional exercises to retrain the soldiers, which again causes additional separation of families. We do need more equipment, more spares, more tanks and many other things far too detailed to go into at this moment. I do urge the Government to look at this aspect with great speed. As for Cyprus, I hope that the apparent lack of interest shown by the previous Government will not be repeated and that some strong initiatives will be taken to relieve the situation, so helping to create a good atmosphere for the new talks which start on 15th June.
11.23 p.m.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, I make no apology, even at this late hour, for trying to repair what has been an omission—there are many of them, of course, in the very complex issues we have been discussing today. Like my right honourable friend the Leader of the Opposition in another place, I had great difficulty in finding the reference to overseas aid in the gracious Speech. It is there all right, all 17 words:
"My Ministers will have regard to the need for trade with, and aid to, the developing countries "—
my Lords, a sotto voce aside, a gesture to the hoi polloi, who just happen to represent two-thirds of our world.
Usually I have no complaints about brevity—I try to practise it myself—as we see it in the book of Genesis:
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light".
I wish that applied in this case; but actions speak louder than words. Make no mistake, my Lords. The reconversion of the Ministry of Overseas Development into a department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is not just an administrative convenience. It is a major act of policy, the meaning and the consequences of which will not be missed in developing countries. This Government have masked the hopeful light of universal enlightenment in a dark lantern of the Foreign Office, to be shuttered and unshuttered as political expediency dictates.
It has happened before under a Conservative Administration, because, of course, the Ministry of Overseas Development had been created in 1964, with my right honourable friend Barbara Castle as Minister in the Cabinet, so that when the Conservatives came in it had to be made a ward of Chancery, where orphans belong. It was taken out of pawn by the Labour Government in 1974, and I assure Members opposite that I do not have to be reminded that it went back into the FO, with Mr. Reg Prentice as Minister of State, in 1975. If I may say so, that was a mistake on both counts. However, the Ministry's autonomy was restored with the appointment of my right honourable friend Judith Hart. Her role won the respect and admiration, not only of people like myself who care about and think we understand the nature of aid, but of her colleagues in the Commonwealth, in the EEC, in the
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United Nations and its agencies and among the beneficiaries, who are of course the people of the developing world. It was she who steered the new direction of aid, with emphasis on help to the poorest—not only the poorest countries, but the poor in the other developing countries as well. It was she who worked so arduously and so effectively to give meaning and substance to the Lomé Convention, which extended the European Community commitments beyond the associated States to 46 developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, to secure for them the preferences and the advantages of aid.
In the direst days of economic stringency, her Ministry not only maintained but increased its aid budget. It rose in 1978 and 1979 to £714 million and it was intended that that should increase to £926 million by 1983. Do not blench, my Lords. That is still less than our undertaking, with other advanced nations, to reach a target of 0·7 per cent. of the gross national product of the advanced countries to be available for overseas development.
And the increases were very proper, because the OPEC price rises which had complicated our situation, and which are our justification for so many restrictions and restraints, had, in fact, crippled the developing countries. The bitter irony was that those countries which were looking, for example, to the miracle grains—the high-yielding wheat and rice strains—to relieve their food problems were being held to ransom by the oil situation. The high yields needed fertilisers—from oil; they needed pesticides—from oil; they needed herbicides—from oil. Extended cultivation needed tractors, and tractors needed oil. Essential irrigation needed pumping, and pumps needed oil. Those countries needed help. So did the poorest of the poor countries, such as the countries of the Sahel, which were afflicted by drought, and Bangladesh, which was drowned by the floods. So did countries beset by hurricanes and riven by earthquakes. The Ministry established a disaster unit to make contingency provisions and to co-operate with the United Nations Disaster Relief Office.
But there were other means of helping the poorest of the poor. In 1978, the Government previous to this one decided

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to convert into grants past aid loans incurred by 17 of the poorest countries—retrospective terms adjustment or RTA. This took care of something which I have felt very strongly about and have called "feeding the tapeworm". If one has a tapeworm—I hope that your Lordships have not—it grows on what one eats. One can starve a tapeworm by not eating, but one can die of hunger in the process. Loans are the tapeworms of poor countries. They grow with the debt charges. A country borrows to pay the debt charges and the tapeworm grows again. If it does not borrow, it starves its own development. What this country has done—and all credit to us—is to purge the tapeworm.
If the tortoise-like withdrawal of the Ministry of Overseas Development into the Foreign Office of conventional expediency politics means what I fear it means, aid can again become the pourboire of politics: to try to buy—bribe is the truer word—the favours of those who are prepared to become accommodating and penalise those who are not. We are going to apply absurd labels. We are going to say that those who do not conform to our presently self-evident interests are disqualified, that those who are the poorest of the poor are unimportant.
Be warned, my Lords. Thirty years ago I was in Libya on a United Nations mission. The caretaker government at that time was British, preparing for the handover to King Idris. Apart from the green belt of Tripoli, it was a meaningless desert. Famine was rampant. The desert tribes were being forced into the towns to find food. It was like the Sahel of recent times. We, the British, were the quartermasters, dispensing relief from many countries. We were good quartermasters, but we were doling out relief then to a politically meaningless people. Be warned, my Lords. He who comes as a beggar to your gate may be the Gaddafi who tomorrow may turn up with the bailiffs to foreclose the mortgage. Gaddafi, the desert Bedouin of 30 years ago, the protector of Amin, is the most intransigent, the most mischievous character in OPEC, which holds all the cards in the oil situation.
What I am saying is that you cannot judge by the appearances of the present.
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You do not know upon whom one day you may depend. In dealing with aid—and I have been dealing with it for 30 years in all parts of the world—you do what is right because it is right. You give help because people need help. You encourage development because people may produce the resources on which our livelihoods may depend, or provide the markets for our trade. It is not charity that we are doling out. We are investing in a future, in a world reduced to a neighbourhood in which we have to get along together.
Remember, above all, that the beggar's thanks is the beggar's curse. People do not want to feel patronised. They want to have and to keep their self-respect. If you expect gratitude, you will be disappointed and you will have a grievance about ingratitude. If you do not expect gratitude, you will be surprised at the gratitude that you will get. That is what the Ministry of Overseas Development, undeterred by political expediency, has shown to be possible. That is what we ought to be aiming for. That is what I hope that the present Government, by again giving the Ministry of Overseas Development its rightful place, will in fact secure. My Lords, you do not barter goodwill in this way by simply treating it as a political issue.
11.34 p.m.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, who has just sat down will excuse me if I do not follow him by dealing with overseas aid. Overseas aid is, of course, a very noble purpose, but I know of instances where overseas aid has not gone into the right pockets. This happens especially in Africa. Instead, I shall change the bowling for three or four minutes and speak about Northern Ireland where I have many roots, which I visit quite frequently and where I have interests. Today's debate is about defence and foreign affairs and I believe that Northern Ireland should be part of it. I shall also speak about Rhodesia for precisely five minutes.
First, Northern Ireland. I should like to welcome, as I am sure all your Lordships would, the right honourable Member for Spelthorne, Mr. Humphrey Atkins, on becoming Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. We all wish him well. He brings

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a fresh mind to the problem but he will be bombarded with all sorts of conflicting advice. My advice to him is to remember two things. First, that everybody in Ireland, North and South, is heartily fed up with terrorism. I should say that 99 per cent. of the population are absolutely fed up and wish for nothing better than an end to it. The other thing is that what would appear logical to most people and most nations is no certainty in Ireland. We had the power-sharing under Mr. Heath's Government, which was entirely logical. It should have solved the problem, but the IRA and certain loyalists continued the bombings and violence and therefore I can see no point—in fact, I can see a danger—if the new Secretary of State embarks on any new political initiative, as he may be urged to do. Before any new political initiative can be started there must be an end to the violence. The violence will end eventually and then we can have a new initiative.
There is something which I should like to see the Secretary of State do. It cannot be called a political initiative, but I should like him to restore to the local authorities in the North of Ireland those powers which were transferred to Stormont, before the Stormont Government ceased to exist. Of course, there would be dangers from mischievous propaganda, but with proportional representation being practised in local elections, discrimination would not be so easy to practise, especially if we had—as we would—the ultimate power here at Westminster. It would be a beginning and by giving the people of Northern Ireland more control over their own affairs, as in fact is called for in the gracious Speech, there would eventually come about a Government in Northern Ireland, which would take some time, I suppose, but it would be a Government which would be agreeable to all denominations, all creeds, all people, and would have, I am sure, close and friendly ties with the South of Ireland.
I will now change horses and speak for a few minutes on Rhodesia—I nearly said that I shall not be like some noble Lords who have spoken for half an hour. I have spoken on Rhodesia very many times and I have visited quite a few States in Africa. In these elections in Rhodesia we have seen a really remarkable achievement in the democratic process: it is an achievement unparalleled in Africa. Here we
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have the beginnings of a multiracial society for which everybody has been asking, actually coming to fruition. As we have heard, the Six Principles have been adhered to: some people refer to them as Five Principles, but I thought there were six, although perhaps I am wrong there. We have also heard (apart from the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis) the overwhelming mass of evidence that the elections were carried out fairly. The great majority of foreign observers thought so, including, I understand, about 250 journalists.
I understand, though we have not had the opportunity of reading it yet, that the report of the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd, confirms the fairness of the elections. Lord Chitnis appears to be the odd man out. I am quite sure he was sincere in his remarks, but I think I cannot take his arguments seriously, as apparently the only odd man out. He did say, why did not the black population have the opportunity in a referendum to decide on the constitution? Well, how many people in this country understand the constitution? I would hazard a guess that certainly not more than 30 per cent do. If you have any experience of tribal Africa, or even the West Indies, how on earth could many of the people be expected to vote on various constitutions? It would be quite beyond them. It is easy to vote for a leader, but a constitution can be a very complicated matter.
What worries me is that the Prime Minister in the other place and the Foreign Secretary here—and I congratulate him on his appointment—said that the objective of the Government is to achieve a return to legality in Rhodesia in conditions which will secure wide international recognition. Presumably that means the agreement of the United Nations. As Russia has the power of veto in the Security Council, and as the controlling majority in the Assembly is the Afro-Asian bloc, surely that is going to be very difficult. The extraordinary thing is that the majority of these countries in the Afro-Asian bloc, especially in Africa, are the reverse of democratic; they are absolute dictatorships, many of them cruel and corrupt, with a complete disregard for human life and human rights. I cannot see them agreeing to recognise the new government.

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It is amazing when you think that countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania dare to criticise the elections in Rhodesia and the transitional government. They have no democratic elections themselves; they are dictatorships; from my slight knowledge I would call them corrupt. I am surprised that they dare to criticise. Their record of government is shocking, in spite of the legacy of good government that we left them.
I should like now to answer two or three of the criticisms. One criticism is of martial law during the election. But whose fault was that? It was that of the guerrillas. The guns were pointing outwards. The guns were there to protect the voters, not to intimidate them. The guerrillas wished to intimidate them. The chief criticism appears to be of the 28 white seats in the new Parliament, together with the white control of defence, the judiciary and the administration. Well, I understand that this is to be only a temporary situation. If that were not so the usual pattern in Africa on independence would follow. Rhodesia would suffer the fate of the rest of Africa on achieving independence—that is, the breakdown of government, famine, wars and pestilence. It would be utterly disasterous.
The leaders of the black majority have realised that and have asked the whites to stay. I think that every black Government have white advisers. They have white technicians and engineers, and they could not do without them. However, they are usually expatriates who may have little interst in the country; who are there on a short-term basis and are interested chiefly in what salaries the country has to offer. But how much better is the situation in Rhodesia. Many of the whites in Rhodesia were born there; they know Rhodesia and its problems and people intimately. Their commitment to that country would be far more valuable than as expatriates.
Before I conclude I should like to point out that the British Government have been given a very strong mandate by the British people. What the British people yearn for—and they have been yearning for it for years—are a Government that will take decisions. For too long we have drifted along like a river, always taking the
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line of least resistance. As we have heard today, Rhodesia is a British responsibility. We were responsible for the imposition of sanctions through the United Nations; therefore the matter must be treated as our responsibility, and we should likewise take the lead in lifting sanctions.
As we have heard today, Rhodesia has one of the fastest growing black populations in Africa. It is fair to say that it has one of the highest standards of living for the African—a standard of living far higher than that of the African living in any black republic. Therefore, although I understand all the political difficulties regarding formal recognition, as other noble Lords have said, in the interests of humanity would it not be better to lift sanctions now to allow trade to flow freely? Rhodesia is feeding Zambia. I am afraid that if we do not lift sanctions this remarkable achievement in African democracy might not come to pass—it might be throttled at birth. If that happened it would be an absolute tragedy. Formal recognition could be given later, after the Commonwealth Conference at Lusaka. However, I ask the Government definitely to lift sanctions now. If this experiment fails, history will judge the British Government and, I am afraid, the British Foreign Secretary, very harshly.
11.49 p.m.
Lord MORRIS: My Lords, I should like to confine my contribution to matters concerning the South-West Atlantic. Before I do so, I should like to recall the early hours of the morning of 4th May last. When it became apparent to me that the Conservative Party were going to win the general election with an overall majority approaching a landslide I suffered—no doubt in common with many Labour Lords and Baronesses opposite—considerable sadness. For then I realised that no longer would the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, be fielding and guiding my clumsy attempts to contribute. It was very largely his example and encouragement which stirred in me an interest in these matters and, indeed, instilled in me a great affection for and interest in your Lordships' House. As ever, I am deeply grateful to him and, indeed, to all his noble colleagues for the many kindnesses and forbearance during the latter part of the forty-seventh Parliament, my first Parliament.

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However, any sadness that I feel is mitigated by the knowledge that no less a champion of British interests in the South-West Atlantic than my noble friend Lord Carrington is now Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Indeed, on 10th May last year my noble friend Lord Carrington asked this Question in your Lordships' House:
"My Lords, since the Argentine Government have been advertising for tenders for fishing the territorial waters around the Falkland Islands, and since increasingly fishing is becoming important in that part of the world—and around the Island of Thule as well—and since there may also be oil on the Falkland Islands, will the noble Lord assure the House that the Government will robustly defend our commercial interests?"—[Official Report, 10/5/78; col. 980.]
My noble friend was, of course, referring in part to the fact that in May 1977 Argentina declared a 200-mile fishing right around the Falkland Islands. Despite United Kingdom official protests, Argentina subsequently contracted fishing rights in this area with Japan and West Germany.
It must be as apparent to noble Lords as it is apparent to me that the commercial and strategic importance of these waters is evidenced by the attention being paid to them by nations other than the United Kingdom, and in particular by the merchant fleets of the Warsaw Pact countries. The South-West Atlantic fishing grounds are being exploited con-centratedly by the merchant fleets of Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany, Japan and West Germany. At this very moment there are two Polish supply ships permanently based at Port William in the Falkland Islands. Yet there is not one British fishing vessel, or any other vessel for that matter, in sight.
In the light of that, I beseech the Conservative Administration as a matter of urgency to review, report back upon and act upon the desk survey by the White Fish Authority, which was commissioned by the former Administration, and to do so in conjunction with the most admirable report of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. Although I appreciate that the survey has been on the Minister's desk only since 14th May last, many believe, as I do, that time is of the essence.
Noble Lords will recall that early last December, as a result of a Question tabled by my noble kinsman, the Earl of
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Lauderdale, it was learned that Her Majesty's Government had received a hydrocarbons survey of some 200,000 square miles around the Falkland Islands. Furthermore, on 13th March last the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, declared that the results of the survey would be forthcoming "in the near future". Bearing in mind that some six months have passed since Her Majesty's Government received that survey, may I ask the Minister whether the Conservative Administration will be as coy as their predecessors were about informing your Lordships' House of the result of this survey?
Noble Lords may recall that on 16th January this year I asked Her Majesty's Government whether they would be good enough:
"to inform your Lordships' House of the nature and extent of the scientific co-operation agreement between Her Majesty's Government and that of Argentina, particularly in light of the fact that they have already been good enough to inform a delegation of the Legislative Council of the Falkland Islands on 7th January this year".
In part, the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, was good enough to reply:
"I am not yet in a position to say what are the results of that consideration by those Governments; but as soon as it is clear what the conclusions are by those various Governments, a full statement will be made to the House in accordance with the noble Lord's very proper request."—[Official Report, 16/1/79; cols. 845–846.]
As I understand it, the most recent talks between Her Majesty's Government and the Argentine Government, held in New York between 21st and 23rd March of this year, have broken down. Furthermore, I understand that the Legislative Council of the Falkland Islands have rejected the British/Argentinian proposals for scientific co-operation. One cannot but guess at the reasons.
Maybe one of the reasons was that Her Majesty's Government were seen to be attempting to place a cloak of spurious legitimacy around the illegal occupation by a foreign power of a British dependent territory, namely, Southern Thule, under the guise of scientific co-operation. While enlightening your Lordships on these matters, would the Minister be good enough to confirm the very good news that the Argentine has now requested the exchange of Ambassadors and that Her Majesty's Government plan to agree to that exchange?

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However, as with so many matters of a political and economic nature, it is when one considers the defence aspect that the importance of political and economic investment in sensitive areas of British interest and influence becomes clear. I believe fervently that for any British Government to relegate the defence of the South Atlantic to a minor role would be a monstrous act of almost unthinkable short-sightedness. As reiterated in the gracious Speech, it has long been British defence policy to confine its defence resources to NATO. Other than Hong Kong, the Cyprus sovereign bases, Gibraltar, and Belize, there are virtually now no other British defence commitments outside the NATO area.
Defence circles in NATO have long wished to see their responsibilities extended beyond the southern boundary of the Tropic of Cancer in order to safeguard the vitally important sea route around the Cape of Good Hope. At present some 70 per cent. of all NATO strategic material, and some 80 per cent. of the West's oil resources, come round the Cape of Good Hope. I am of course tying a knot in Lord Hankey's argument on this point. Sadly, for political reasons, such a move to extend NATO's southern boundary has never been countenanced.
Yet what do we see happening at the moment? The Soviets are moving fast. Their navy is operating along this route at will, with facilities for land bases in Africa emerging. Reliance by the West on a continually friendly and stable Southern Africa would be foolhardy. Similarly, the political complexion and stability of Governments in South and Central America cannot be relied upon. Any revision of the Panama Canal Treaty, by no means out of the question, or any unforeseen event closing the Panama Canal, would make the Cape Hope route the only sea route linking vital naval and merchant shipping between the east and west coasts of the United States of America, let alone any other international commerce.
Reliance on the Continent of Africa and South America for naval bases has become a less than certain proposition. Yet within the vast area of the Southern Atlantic the Falkland Islands offer a unique base for monitoring Soviet shipping in peace and
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for controlling and defending allied shipping in war. NATO's reluctance to extend its southern naval boundary offers the Warsaw Pact a free hand to inflict crippling damage to Western allies' economy at a stroke. The strategic military requirement in the Falkland Islands is for a naval anchorage and for an airfield that can serve supply and strategic aircraft. But at present our defence forces in the Falkland Islands consist of one platoon of Royal Marines and an airstrip that could land Hercules aircraft, but is not long enough to allow them to take off again. And even then, as your Lordships well know, mere British presence in the Falkland Islands is being threatened by political indifference and what appears to be deliberate economic erosion.
In the light of the continuing Soviet presence in Africa, and their continued determination to usurp, by all means possible, stable government in Central and South America, and bearing in mind the dramatic increase in the strength of the Soviet naval and merchant naval arm, would the Minister be able to reassure your Lordships' House that a Conservative Administration place the highest priority on a review of NATO's defence commitments in this area?
I appreciate that I have burdened the Minister with a number of questions, and while I realise that it is the height of bad manners to disturb someone on his honeymoon, my only defence is that I have given the Minister notice and that I believe the questions to be not only important but, despite the hour, timely. Fundamentally, what I am asking of the Minister concerns values far higher than matters of mere global security and beyond sterile foreign relations or international trade. I ask whether a Conservative Administration are conscious of their trust to protect the smallest, the loneliest, and most vulnerable and the most loyal British community. As ever, no one could put it as well as did my noble and learned friend the Lord High Chancellor of England, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, when he asked in your Lordships' House on 25th January last year, as reported at column 341 of Hansard,
"is it not a fact that these islands of English-speaking people in or near the South American continent are not simply relics of colonialism, but small peoples whose rights and culture and right

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to self-determination should be accepted, irrespective of the character of the regimes to which they are neighbours? Will Her Majesty's Government—I am sure they will—constantly bear in mind that British people all over the world"—
and indeed Britain's future—
"are not for sale?"
12.3 a.m.
Lord SPENS: My Lords, I want to follow my noble friend Lord Newall in speaking about the problems of Cyprus. I too feel that we have let down the inhabitants of that island very badly in the past, and there is no reference to Cyprus in the gracious Speech. I hope that that indicates something good rather than bad, because, although in the last two gracious Speeches introduced by the previous Government specific reference was made to the island, nothing was done about it. I ask only that Her Majesty's Government will confirm that they still accept a special responsibility as a guarantor under the 1960 treaty not only of the independence of Cyprus, but also of the rights of both communities as set out in the 1960 constitution.
We all welcome the achievement of the Secretary General of UNO in bringing about a successful meeting between the leaders of the two communities at which agreement has been reached for the resumption of continuous negotiations for a final settlement. I have here a copy of the 10 points of that agreement, and I should like to read them out to your Lordships for the record. They are not very long. They are:

"1. It was agreed to resume the intercommunal talks on 15th June 1979.

"2. The basis for the talks will be the Makarios/ Denktash guidelines of 12th February 1977 and the UN resolutions relevant to the Cyprus question.

"3. There should be respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms of all citizens of the Republic.

"4. The talks will deal with all territorial and constitutional aspects.

"5. Priority will be given to reaching agreement on the resettlement of Varosha under UN auspices simultaneously with the beginning of the consideration by the interlocutors of the constitutional and territorial aspects of a comprehensive settlement. After agreement on Varosha has been reached it will be implemented without awaiting the outcome of the discussion on other aspects of the Cyprus problem.

"6. It was agreed to abstain from any action which might jeopardise the outcome of the talks, and special importance will be given to initial practical measures by both sides to promote goodwill, mutual confidence and the return to normal conditions.

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"7. The demilitarisation of the Republic of Cyprus is envisaged, and matters relating thereto will be discussed.

"8. The independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-alignment of the Republic should be adequately guaranteed against union in whole or in part with any other country and against any form of partition or secession.

"9. The intercommunal talks will be carried out in a continuing and sustained manner, avoiding any delay.

"10. The intercommunal talks will take place in Nicosia."

My Lords, there are one or two very important points there. There is not only the question of the early return of Varosha, but the statement that both sides now agree to keep,
"The independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity … adequately guaranteed against union in whole or in part with any other country …"
In other words, the Greek side has publicly given up the idea of Enosis and the Turkish side has publicly given up the idea of any union with Turkey. I understand that, to emphasise the importance of point 6, which called upon the parties to abstain from any action which was likely to upset either side, the London representative of the Turkish Cypriot authority, Major Muftuzade, will be asking the British Press to soft-pedal on points of controversy until something comes out of the new talks.
I had the opportunity to revisit the North of Cyprus in company with my noble friend Lord Newall and his charming and very hard-working wife. I believe that my noble friend is the only Member of your Lordships' House who has spent a length of time with both communities. We had the chance to be taken into Varosha and, as my noble friend has described it, it looked as if a neutron bomb had fallen. There is no human habitation there other than a very few Turkish soldiers, but the buildings, with very few exceptions, are not particularly dilapidated. I believe they could be inhabitated again within weeks rather than within months once an agreement is made to return Varosha to the Greek Cypriots. While we were in Cyprus we met a number of British residents in Kyrenia and in Famagusta. They seemed to be very happy. They had some grumbles, but I think that is natural. We asked Mr. Denktash in the course of two long interviews we had with him what was the situation concerning the compensation claims of British owners of property in the Turkish sector. We were

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told that compensation could be paid immediately in Turkish currency. For those who wanted payment in sterling, agreement on a rate of exchange was being negotiated in Ankara between the British Embassy and the Turkish government. The reason for this is because the Turkish Cypriot authorities have no access to the Central Bank of Cyprus and cannot call on the foreign exchange facilities available there. May I ask Her Majesty's Government whether any progress has been made on those negotiations?
One important matter which became clear during our visit is the serious shortage of English teachers in the North of the island. I think that the British Council have supplied five at present. There is no Greek being taught there and, presumably, no Turkish being taught in the South of the island so that the generation now going to school will not be able to communicate with each other except through a third language. That language ought to he English. There is also a very poorly equipped British Council library in the British High Commission building in the Turkish sector of Nicosia, which I visited. There were not much more than 1,000 books there compared with, so I am told, some 20,000 hooks on the Greek side. Communication between the two communities in the future is going to be of vital importance if a peaceful settlement is to be reached.
I have taken up this matter with the director general of the British Council. He is fully aware of the problem but is restricted both by the present political situation where Her Majesty's Government have given no official recognition to the Turkish Cypriot community and by lack of funds. I urge Her Majesty's Government to give special attention to this problem of spreading the teaching of English in the island.
I am also pleased to have read this morning in the latest English news bulletin, dated 16th May, to reach me from the North of the island, that formal talks were held last week with an EEC delegation which visited the North of the island to discuss seven projects for which the Turkish Cypriots are seeking aid. This is very welcome news and a sign that at last the North of the island may be going
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to get some financial help other than from Turkey. An earlier bulletin that came today reported that the 10th Islamic Conference held in Morocco last week adopted a resolution on Cyprus which expressed the hope that communal talks would be resumed and supported the principle of equality for the two communities.
My Lords, before sitting down, there is one final point on another subject. It is one that is not very pertinent to this debate but this may be my only chance to mention it in reference to the gracious Speech. I am absolutely delighted that the gracious Speech tells us that the Scottish devolution Act is to be repealed. I believe I made the shortest speech on the Second Reading of that Bill because I could not find anything good to say about it. In fact, I consigned the Scotland Bill 50 fathoms deep to the bottom of the sea. In my dislike of that Bill, I also consigned the noble and learned Lord who guided the Bill through the House, the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, to the bottom of the sea. I am most glad and relieved that the noble and learned Lord is still with us. But I am also extremely happy that the Scotland Act is about to sink to those depths.
12.15 a.m.
Viscount MONTGOMERY of ALA-MEIN: My Lords, I should like to join with others in congratulating my noble friend Lord Carrington on his appointment as Foreign Secretary. I presume that it may be due to his influence that such a large section of the gracious Speech was devoted to foreign affairs. I should also like to congratulate the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, on his brilliant maiden speech. I was privileged to do my National Service immediately after the war with the First Royal Tank Regiment which was commanded in the Desert Campaign by the noble Lord. He had already become a legend in that regiment and part of the folk lore. There was even a song about him, which was quite respectable, but I do not propose to sing it at this late stage in the proceedings.
I regret that I have no knowledge of Cyprus, Rhodesia or Africa, but I have learned a great deal about these subjects. I cannot therefore follow previous speakers. I should like to take my

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cue from the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, and, in doing so, thank him for his kind remarks. I should add that he is an immediate past president of Canning House, a position he filled with great distinction and dynamism. I have had the privilege of collaborating with him in a number of industrial promotions overseas.
I should like very briefly to translate your Lordships across the South Atlantic to Latin America, a continent where our colonial legacy is minimal but the opportunities are numerous, increasing, and where we are missing the boat. Our European partners, who in this context are very much our competitors, seem to be taking developments in Latin America much more seriously. Our trading position compared to these industrial nations has been declining for many years and is now down to only 3 per cent. One reason is that France, Germany, Italy and others are all increasing their investments in Latin America, whereas Britain is not. I hope, therefore, that Her Majesty's Government will encourage new investment in that area.
Turning from the general to the particular, I should like very briefly to mention three countries. First of all, Chile, where very sadly the record of the Labour Government has been somewhat doctrinaire and rather short-sighted. In the past three years Chile has undergone a miraculous economic recovery from the totally bankrupt position that her Government inherited in 1973. Britain has been trading with Chile for 160 years and until 1974 maintained the closest relationship. During the past five years we have seen the removal of both the ambassador and the defence attaché. Both of them should be restored as soon as possible.
Currently we only grant ECGD cover for 180 days; there are no medium or long term facilities, which is an absurd state of affairs. Chile is carrying out a major programme of industrial reinvestment and capital plant re-equipment, and has foreign exchange reserves in excess of one billion dollars. For every other country with which we trade, ECGD facilities are considered on economic criteria alone, and this should be so for Chile also. France, Germany and other industrialised countries have not been so short-sighted and are taking
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advantage of our failure. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, will have something positive to say on this.
Crossing the Andes, we come to Argentina, where again we have no ambassador, which is most unfortunate but this is no fault of ours. In the context of Argentina, I should like to take up the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Morris, on the Falkland Islands, particularly the latter part of his remarks. Of course, we must respect the wishes and safeguard the rights of the islanders, but the fact is that the islanders may well be unaware of the massive progress that is taking place around them and which they can do nothing to stop. I sometimes feel that the Falkland Islanders are not unlike someone living in a small thatched cottage with a lovely view, faced with the prospect of electricity pylons being erected in the neighbourhood. Of course it is disagreeable, but in the end it is hound to happen; progress cannot be halted.
What has been happening in the South-West Atlantic is that the marine wealth is being exploited by everyone except the two main interested parties, Britain and Argentina. The fact is also that the Argentine claim, however unsound it may be in law, will not go away. We should therefore be working in the closest possible harmony with Argentina: first, to control the area and, secondly, to develop it together and not allow so many other nations—referred to by my noble friend Lord Morris—to fish the area indiscriminately. Obviously, if we were able to reappoint an ambassador in Argentina and receive one here likewise, all these negotiations would he greatly facilitated.
Before leaving the question of Argentina. I should like to pay tribute to the last Minister of State in another place, Ted Rowlands, for the way in which he conducted the negotiations in this delicate field. I had many conversations with him and also with the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts; and although there may be other matters on which we disagreed, such as our attitude to Chile, to which I referred earlier, invariably we were in agreement about the South-West Atlantic.
Thirdly, my Lords, I refer to Mexico, where we have no political problems and

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where we have enjoyed friendly trade relationships for many years. The point about Mexico is that in the last two years it has suddenly become a major world oil power, and therefore we must increase our commercial activity accordingly. Last year a major British industrial exhibition was held in Mexico City, and British industrialists are following up the many opportunities, which will undoubtedly lead to greatly increased business. In these circumstances, I wonder whether we have sufficient senior commercial and other staff in our embassy to cope with the volume of traffic, and I think this matter needs investigation.
Finally, returning to Latin America as a whole, we need more high-level official visits. Although there have been a number of visits during the last few years by members of the Royal Family, which have been immensely successful, there have been very few visits at the highest political level. No Prime Minister in office has ever visited Latin America, and only one Foreign Secretary. I believe that a visit now, during the lifetime of this Government, by the present Prime Minister would be an unparalleled success, as indeed would be one by my noble friend the Foreign Secretary. I hope it will be possible for these to be realised. The Conservative Government were elected on a platform of the need for change. I would venture to suggest that one most welcome change would be a greater awareness by Her Majesty's Government of the immense opportunities for Britain in Latin America.
12.25 a.m.
The Marquis of HEADFORT: My Lords, I rise tonight to draw the attention of your Lordships' House to the current problem of refugees from Vietnam, which faces the colony of Hong Kong. I have been resident in Hong Kong for a number of years, and therefore feel perhaps more than slightly qualified to speak on this subject. I raise this problem, because its solution can be reached only through the initiative and determination of Her Majesty's Government. Hong Kong is an exceedingly small place, and is subject to two massive inflows of migration. With a total population of less than 5 million at the beginning of the year, they are now forecasting immigration of

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up to half a million people this year. It is as if 5½ million people were to arrive in this country in a single year, before next spring.
We need to distinguish between two streams of migration, the first from China and the second from Vietnam. Immigration from China is now running at a rate never known before. Some immigration into Hong Kong has always been acceptable. Fifty a day has been a figure that the Hong Kong Government has frequently mentioned; that is, about 18,000 a year. Last year immigration from China, both legal and illegal, amounted to over 100,000 people. This year, the 50 a day quota for the year was reached during January, or, if we count only the legal immigrants, by mid-February.
Immigration at this rate is intolerable. Both Her Majesty's Government and the Governor of Hong Kong had raised this with the Chinese People's Government. Recently some slight reduction in legal immigration has been noticeable, but over 200 people a day are still being sent in with travel documents. Illegal immigration this month is running at about five or six times this rate. Some 7,000 illegal immigrants were detained and returned to China in the first half of May alone, but probably more than three times this number got in undetected. It is within the power of the Chinese People's Government to reduce this flow and allow Hong Kong to digest the swollen influx of the last two years. Thereafter, great problems of social adjustment, housing construction and urban development will remain, but, in the light of past experiences, one can reasonably be confident that these problems can be tackled if China restricts the flow.
The Vietnamese refugees present a completely different set of problems. They are foreigners and even those of ethnic Chinese origin have lived in Vietnam for generations. The solution to the problem of the Vietnamese refugees is not absorption into Hong Kong, but resettlement elsewhere in permanent homes. This is an international problem. Hong Kong is prepared to—and, indeed, already has—played its part. Some 15,000 refugees have already been given permanent residence in Hong Kong. Pro rata this would be matched by

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150,000 resettlement homes in the United Kingdom. Hong Kong is prepared to continue to accept any with Hong Kong connections of a fairly tenuous kind, but they cannot be expected to do more.
There are now 30,000 Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong. They are in camps. The totally inadequate United Nations staff have processed less than a quarter of these. The Hong Kong Government is contriving accommodation for the rest. The Hong Kong Government cannot enjoy the luxury of bureaucratic delay. The people are on their shores and must live day by day, while the United Nations staff asks questions and draws up lists. The boat people are now arriving in Hong Kong faster than in any other neighbouring territory.
Your Lordships may be aware—it was on the news this morning—that a British freighter had to pick up 900 refugees from Vietnam, who were in sinking vessels. These are now heading for Hong Kong. In the first three months of this year, about 14,000 boat people fled to Hong Kong, but only about 2,000 of these have been resettled elsewhere. In the same period, about 13,000 went to Malaysia and about 10,000 were resettled. Much smaller numbers went to Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. None was allowed into Singapore. Present expectations are that some 75,000 Vietnamese will be in Hong Kong by the autumn, though where they can be accommodated in that crowded place I cannot imagine. They will be resettled only if diplomatic pressure is exerted on both the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the host countries. Only Britain can exert this diplomatic pressure, because Britain is responsible for the foreign relations of its own colony. Hong Kong has been able to tackle many difficult internal problems on its own, but an essential constitutional obligation on a metropolitan country is to conduct foreign relations for its colonies.
I suggest also that it is time for diplomatic pressure to be brought to bear on Vietnam itself to stop this outflow. It is well known all over South-East Asia that refugees pay the government as well as refugee racketeers for the privilege of leaving. As to the mechanics through which these Vietnamese refugees, who are mainly ethnic Chinese but who have lived
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in Vietnam for many generations, are enabled to leave their native land, we have firm evidence in Hong Kong that this modern trafficking in refugees, which is not far removed from the slave trade of the last century, is totally organised by the Vietnamese Government and provincial authorities.
The Vietnamese central Government have set up a special department to handle the exodus of the refugees. It is headed by a politbureau member who is directly responsible to the Vietnamese Prime Minister. The current charges are between 10 and 12 taels of gold for each ethnic Chinese and 15 taels of gold for each ethnic Vietnamese. Of this sum, two taels of gold is paid for the transportation. Perhaps I should give some indication to your Lordships of the value of one tael of gold. It equals approximately 1,400 Hong Kong dollars, which is about £140.
I feel that I should include details of one case. This concerns a 22-year-old ethnic Chinese woman and a 17-year-old boy. It confirms that the exodus from Vietnam is totally organised for profit by the Vietnamese Government. In November of last year, an older woman was asked if she was prepared to give up all her property. Some time later she agreed, and in December of last year Vietnamese Communist officials came to her home and documented all the property. A short time later, on 5th December, officials came and seized all the property and warned the family to leave that night. Later, under cover of darkness, they were driven by car to a remote beach where there were some 300 other persons. A large junk was waiting. Everybody was again searched by Communist officials, and all items of value, other than one watch and one ring for each person, plus cash to the value of 40 to 50 United States dollars, was seized.
I am happy to report that in due course this family made it to Hong Kong. However, we shall never know how many hundreds, or indeed thousands, drowned in the South China Sea due to the unseaworthy vessels in which they were attempting to flee with their lives but with nothing else.
There is, perhaps, one more thing which I personally consider to be rather sinister. Your Lordships will be aware that there is still a large amount of United States

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dollars circulating in Vietnam. I am informed that the Russians are able to sell their gold for United States dollars in Vietnam at inflated prices, and it is this gold which is financing this trafficking in human beings. The Vietnamese Government had the effrontory to send a representative to the Djakarta Conference on the establishment of a processing centre for Vietnamese refugees. The situation is bizarre. Here we have a Government growing fat on the expropriation of the funds of its wealthier citizens in return for sending them to sea in boats in conditions that make a mockery of international conventions on the safety of life at sea and on human migration. So many are despatched in this way that tens of thousands survive to cause disruption in every country in the neighbourhood. When the affected countries gather to see what can be done the Vietnam Government coolly sends an emissary to say that there is no intention to cause hardship or burden to neighbouring countries with the refugee problem!
Obviously those who have already left the country will not go back and need to be resettled. But cannot Her Majesty's Government bring home to the Vietnamese that their conduct is totally unacceptable? We are not dealing with the odd dissident or political protestor. To call these people refugees is an abuse of language. The exodus from Vietnam is now taking on the nature of a Government-sponsored mass migration conducted with total disregard of human rights of the people involved and of the wellbeing of neighbouring countries. It is abhorrent to contemplate a Government harsh enough to drive a few of its people to flee at great danger to themselves. It is difficult to find words strong enough to condemn a Government which makes money from encouraging the mass exodus we see today.
We know in Hong Kong that at least two of our neighbouring nations have used violence against these people in an effort to prevent them from landing upon their shores. In one case, naval forces of the country concerned towed the refugee boats out to the open sea and then towed them in ever decreasing circles until the refugee boats capsized. They then prevented the survivors from boarding the naval vessels, even in some cases using firearms. Eventually they had a change of
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heart and a few of the remaining survivors were allowed to board the naval vessels. It is from their testimony that we know of this horrible incident. I hope the Government in reply will be able to give some assurance that it will lead an international effort to bring home to the Vietnamese Government the enormity of their behaviour, and in the meantime arrange the resettlement of those who have already migrated.
I cannot conclude, my Lords, without paying the greatest possible tribute to the officers of the Hong Kong Government, the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, not only the marine division but also other departments involved. Also to our small but effective Royal Naval patrol boats and, lastly but not least, the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force who, although inadequately equipped, manage to provide maritime surveillance and thus intelligence to the Hong Kong Government of the approach of vessels to Hong Kong.
12.38 a.m.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Carrington on his appointment. I know that he will carry out his very arduous tasks remarkably well and successfully, and I say this with some knowledge as I have known him for 36 years. I should also like to congratulate him on a very fine speech, and while on the subject of speeches I should also like to congratulate the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, on what was to me one of the finest maiden speeches I have ever heard in your Lordships' Chamber.
I feel that Rhodesia must take first place in foreign affairs today, as it affects practically the entire world, and although I very much agree with the Amendment spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Paget, I am glad that it is not going to be pursued because I think that a little more time should be given before what he has advocated is done. I maintain that the Six Principles laid down by successive British Governments for recognising Zimbabwe-Rhodesia have now been met, and further the "rebellion" of Rhodesia was against us and not against the United Nations.

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If the annual debate on raising sanctions should arise next November, it must be a pretty good bet that we shall then vote to raise them, and if we are going to raise them then, I think we should do it much sooner than that. At least in the eyes of the world we shall appear honest and forthright. The abysmal and disastrous policies of Dr. Owen and Mr. Young cannot be allowed to continue, and it seems to me extraordinary that so many non-Marxist countries seem hell-bent on destroying an independent and civilised country. One can only assume that, like certain Left-Wing elements, Marxist elements, which we have in our own country, there must be the same elements at work in some others. If we are honest with ourselves, a high proportion of member States in the United Nations are dictatorships, and only a small minority have institutions that conform to Western standards of democracy. So really I do not think the United Nations are too well equipped to decide what we should do.
Perhaps it is true that the election in Rhodesia was not 100 per cent. successful, but Mr. Nkomo and Mr. Mugabe refused to recognise the ballot box; they tried unsuccessfully to ruin the election. So if it was not 100 per cent. successful it was their fault. As Dr. Luns implied the other day when he addressed the defence study group—and many of your Lordships were present—that it is much better for a Rhodesian to have three-quarters of a vote than none at all, which is what would happen if the terrorists had their way.
May I remind your Lordships very briefly of what Mr. Nkomo said on 1st March:
"Relations between the freedom fighters and the Soviet Union are excellent. The Soviet Union and other socialist countries enjoy total freedom. They are free from exploitation and all other forms of oppression. The Soviet Union triumphed in the cause of freedom and justice and in the battle for the general welfare of its people. This was the first country in the world to succeed in its struggle against oppression and gain its freedom."
While it is true that there are some people from the Left-Wing of the British Labour movement who go to Moscow, and they might talk the same way, no one, I am glad to say, is proposing that the fate of Rhodesia should be entrusted to those people.
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Perhaps the most revealing part of Mr. Nkomo's statement lies in the following words:
"Our friendship with the Soviet Union is very close. The people of the Soviet Union are openly encouraging us to dedicate ourselves to fighting for our freedom. Our pains are their pains, our suffering their suffering."
I repeat, the terrorists are supported and financed by Russia. Further, my Lords, let us always remember that the Russians are very adept at getting other people to do their foul deeds and dirty work for them. If we ruffle a few feathers now in the Commonwealth the dust will have settled by the time of the conference in August. Anyway, I do not believe that the Commonwealth, the EEC and the United States wish to see Marxism reigning supreme across the whole of central Africa. At present the terrorists—I do not like calling them the Patriotic Front—are disorganised, despite Mr. Nkomo being made an honorary doctor of law at a university in Atlanta the day before yesterday. Many thousands of them are accepting Bishop Muzorewa's offer of an amnesty. So I beg, do not give them time to regroup and reorganise themselves.
This leads me very briefly to defence. Her Majesty's Government are dedicated to increasing our defences and improving them, but one problem is how to pay. We are way down the world list in arms and defence equipment sales. This is perhaps due to the Trihunites, who, although perhaps not quite so numerous as they were, are still quite a force to be reckoned with, and who I am sure will get quite vociferous over what I suggest. Let us sell defence equipment to China, and in particular let us sell them Harriers. Let us build mini Harrier carriers for export to friendly nations, even if their Lordships of the Admiralty do not want them for the Royal Navy, although in this instance I am not sure that they have made the right decision. Let us sell defence equipment to South Africa. Why should other countries reap this rich harvest? By these methods employment would be increased, the balance of payments would be increased, and we should have more money to spend on our own defences as well as on our own welfare.
As regards SALT II, there seem to be widely differing views, and the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, has put the situation

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much better than I can. However, the one point that I should like to raise is that Europe must not be allowed to be the meat in the sandwich. Just over a year ago I asked an Unstarred Question about Britain's nuclear deterrent in the 1990s. I believe that we now have only about another 12 or 18 months to decide whether we shall have one and, if we are to have one, what form it will take. I should not like to see France as the only European country to have a nuclear deterrent in the 1990s.
Finally, I turn to civil defence, which really means home defence. There are many people with the right attitude towards this problem and who would like to participate. They need guidance now, before they slip back into lethargy and indifference. The basic need is for two types of volunteer: one type to help in hospitals, schools, rest homes and ambulances; and the other to help the police and firemen. It may well be necessary to convince some of those mentioned that the training of voluntary helpers is not to act as strike breakers and form an alternative body of services. On the contrary, we cannot afford to pay high wages to a large standby body of reserve services. So, the key to good pay is the minimum number of professionals and the maximum number of well trained volunteers to help when the load is heavy. The need is thus great both in peace and in war.
The NATO Review of April, 1979 and the Federal German Concept of Civil Emergency Preparedness said:
"Efforts aimed at providing funds and manpower for military national defence are inadequate, if they are not complemented by preparations in the field of civil emergency preparedness. Overall defence will always be only as strong as its weakest element."
The existing structure of civil aid, helped not inconsiderably by Colonel Raymond ill, should be enlarged and given full support from Her Majesty's Government, so as to fill the gap in our home defence. It is essential to get as many people as possible involved now while the climate of public opinion is favourable.
I hope that when my noble friend Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal winds up the debate tonight, he will—even if he cannot answer all the points that I have raised—look into my few suggestions,
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and I hope in a favourable light. I hope that he will simultaneously confirm that this Government will do all in their power to defend and protect the freedom and liberty which we all cherish and value so much.
12.48 a.m.
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, I am a little surprised to find myself speaking from the Despatch Box tonight, because it had been hoped that my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the whole area of foreign affairs, would speak first from this Bench and then also wind up as he has done many times as a Minister. However, it takes rather more than a week or so to get used to being on this side of the House and we discovered at lunchtime that it was procedurally impossible for him to speak twice in this debate. The eagle eye of the Government Chief Whip had discovered a flaw in the arrangements and therefore I stand before your Lordships not nearly as prepared as I should like to have been in such an important debate.
First, with the whole House, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Carver. He made a fascinating and a deeply-informed speech. I should not have been brave enough to call him an educated soldier, but I do think that the whole House will benefit from having such an expert in our midst. When we say that we are looking forward to hearing him many times in the future, tonight we mean it very specially. I thought that his analysis of the post-election situation in Rhodesia was most helpful and his phrase about Bishop Muzorewa leading them forward to a genuine majority rule was a very suitable pointer and a very subtle one. His wise and temperate words about Zimbabwe-Rhodesia were in marked contrast to the speech by my noble friend Lord Paget of Northampton. Indeed, it is very difficult to call him my noble friend tonight. Apart from anything else, he described me and those who think like me on these Benches—and, after all, that is the vast majority of his own party—as,
"class ridden people suffering from an inverted racialism that hates its own colour".
I think that that is going it a bit far. He treated us to a scenario like a primitive wild western film.

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However, nothing in Rhodesia is simple like that. He referred to the splendid and disciplined Rhodesian Armed Forces. It may sound a bit old-fashioned now, but the Rhodesian Government was in rebellion against the Queen and those British ex-soldiers who are serving there are too. For more than 13 years it has been a treasonable Government and it has now been brought—most unwillingly—to its slightly questionable new constitution because of the actions of the black Africans, the black people there, including the Patriotic Front.
The noble Lord mentioned the wild mountain area up near the frontier with Mozambique, and the burnt kraals there. I think that he has forgotten the recent history of that area, which I know very well, and what happened to the gallant Tangwena people who live there. I knew them very well too. They refused to give up their ancient tribal land, which they had lived on for hundreds of years, to their white farmer neighbours. What did the Rhodesian soldiers do? They burnt down their kraals; they killed their cattle, their only wealth; they destroyed their crops again and again; they demolished their school and, finally, they kidnapped their children and sent them to institutions in other parts of the country. That kind of recent history is still important and still remembered in Rhodesia.
We have always thought of my noble friend as an independent-minded sort of man, but on this subject he appears only to have listened to the propaganda of the Rhodesian Government. He jeered about Robert Mugabe being the Duke of Plazatoro who stayed at home. He had to; he was in prison without any charges for 10 years, along with thousands of other brave Africans. I am deeply sorry that some of the expressions which my noble friend used should appear in the Lords Hansard and, worse still, should be read in Africa, in Canada, in India, in Asia, in Europe and at the United Nations.
The noble Duke, the Duke of Devonshire, in a most fairminded and constructive speech, pointed out that my noble friend had minimised all the difficulties which still face Rhodesia. It was a most dignified contrast to what my noble friend had said, though I am afraid that his idea of lifting sanctions and recognising Rhodesia in two goes, as
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it were, would not work—and I think that the noble Viscount had the same idea—because, in effect, it would be recognising the régime. In any case, sanctions were imposed by the United Nations and cannot be lifted unilaterally, either by us or by the United States.
Those are the problems with which the new Government will now have to grapple, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, said, one thing, alas! the election has not done is to bring peace to Rhodesia. That is a tragedy for all the people of Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, but it will not be solved by ignoring the whole of black Africa, India, the EEC, the Commonwealth and the Security Council of the United Nations. We on these Benches believe that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, will incline to the views of the noble Duke rather than to those of my noble friend.
We very much enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Alport. He both educates and informs the House whenever he speaks. I hope that it does not do him any harm, but I nearly always agree with every word he says about Rhodesia. I was specially glad that he mentioned Sir David Scott, our ambassador in Pretoria, because he and I served together in the Commonwealth Relations Office as Private Secretaries to my noble friend Lord Noel-Baker when he was Secretary of State. Tonight he showed that he can still make magnificent speeches more than 20 years later.
It sometimes seems as if supporters of the Government, and even noble Lords on the Cross-Benches, really wait for a chance to cheer Mr. Smith and his South African friends and to lose no opportunity to applaud attacks on black African leaders in other parts of the Continent. I hope that the House will remember that when the appalling General Amin was toppled it was not the white countries that did it but President Nyerere, whose people, appallingly poor though they may be and ill prepared for war, were prepared to make sacrifices to do it. What is more, the Tanzanian Government succeeded in this difficult operation with a minimum amount of loss of blood, and they solved the political problems with a great deal of wisdom and statesmanship. Moreover, it was President Kaunda of Zambia who shared the greatest risks in

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his tough policy against his neighbour. There is a lot to be said for a system of government which produced these two great men of Africa, Presidents Nyerere and Kaunda.
The developing countries are now no longer areas to be exploited, and our hope is that they will be turned into our partners in the fight against their poverty. They need our knowledge; they need our investment; they need our confidence; they need our technical knowhow. If we do not make these available there will be others with less noble motives who will be eager to provide them. This we all know. We are more sophisticated in the world than we were 20 years ago.
There is one subject relevant to this debate which, until my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder spoke, had not been mentioned, and that is the most important subject germane to foreign affairs and defence: aid. I always enjoy my noble friend's graphic language. I liked his tapeworm, and I always remember his description of the increasing world population. I wrote it down. "It is like two Cup Final crowds turning up every day without their rations." That is the kind of thing one remembers from people's speeches. At this hour, the House will be relieved to know that I shall cut my remarks about aid because my noble friend spoke so eloquently, but I want to mention it from this Front Bench so that noble Lords opposite know with what importance we regard it.
As I scarcely had time to consider my own speech, I am afraid that I could not extend the usual courtesy to the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, and give him my points in advance, and I shall quite understand if he cannot answer them tonight. But it is not at all clear from the gracious Speech what the Government's intentions about aid really are. We are in the middle of a grave economic depression, plus the rising oil prices and all the rest of it. This is very serious for the developed world, but it is even worse for the Third World. Now is the time when they especially need to know what will be available to them.
We on these Benches are proud of our record on aid. Since 1975 our new
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policy, as outlined by my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder, has been directed to the poorest people in the poorest countries. Since 1975 all aid to those countries has been in the form of grants and not loans. We have taken action on debts due on loans, and our aid programme was increasing by 6 per cent. every year in real terms. I must tell the noble Lord—and I hope that he will tell the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, who I am glad to see has not stayed until the end, something which I think would have been most unreasonable of us to ask with his responsibilities, though I hope that he will be told—that we are deeply disturbed by the Government's move to place the Ministry for Overseas Development under the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It is a serious misconception of our relationships with the Third World to do this and, after all, a lot of the Third World is in our Commonwealth and aid is a crucial element in our whole foreign policy.
There is a difference of approach between a Foreign Office and a Ministry of Aid and Development. Both sides are needed, but there is, and should be, a difference Noble Lords may remember that I served in the Foreign Office and in the Commonwealth Relations Office, and I have been a spokesman for ODM in opposition and in government for what seems like years, and I am sure that it is quite wrong to suppose that the departments should be integrated. The act of putting them together makes the receiving countries doubt the bona fides of the donors. 1 believe that there should be a separate Ministry of Overseas Development. Indeed, I personally believe that the Minister ought to be in the Cabinet, and I disagreed with my own Government about that. But whatever may be the merits of that point, it is all the more essential now, in the increasingly complicated conditions of the Third World, that we should have separate Ministries.
Having dealt with that matter, I should like to ask some questions of the noble Lord. For instance, what is the Government's approach to the UNCTAD meeting now ta ing place in Manila? First reports are rather gloomy. I should like to know what will happen to the 6 per cent. increase in aid planned for the next four years. Furthermore, I should like to know whether the Government will continue our

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policy of aid to the poorest. Have they committed themselves to extending the Lome Convention—a matter of extreme importance? Will they continue their research into the alternative sources of energy supply for the Third World? Will we continue our contribution to the UN High Commission for Refugees? I should also like to ask for a sympathetic approach to the plight of impoverished Uganda.
Lastly, I should like to ask the Government to be positive in their approach to the Commonwealth. The Tory Party used to be the party of Empire, but we are not so clear that they are the party of the Commonwealth. I have had the privilege of attending international conferences over the last few years, and I have been immensely proud of the mature, constructive, and co-operative participation of our Commonwealth countries to the great problems of our time. No one can consider that the task that the Foreign Secretary is taking on will be easy, but we hope that he will tackle it with his great skill and abilities, so as to consolidate the Commonwealth and inspire the world; and we wish him well.
1.3 a.m.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, there is at least one matter on which I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Brockway. It was probably the only thing I agreed with him about; namely, that it was a great pity that this debate was not spread over two days and that the two aspects of it which we have been trying to cover were not dealt with on separate days. I cannot possibly attempt to do justice in trying to wind up a debate which involved 40 speakers, including at least six ex-senior figures from the Foreign Office, and seven ex-senior figures from the Ministry of Defence, including the most notable one in the shape of an ex-Chief of the Defence Staff. He gave us, predictably, a brilliantly well-informed and brilliantly well-argued speech, even if I did not altogether like some of the content. I congratulate the noble Lord, and I hope that in the future some of the things that he has to say will be slightly more acceptable to us.
Looking back over the debate, it is perhaps a pity that the authority and wisdom of some of the speeches have not been matched by brevity, in which case I
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would have found myself in a better position to attempt to reply to some of the excellent points made. But I am sure that at this late hour—a late hour by the standards of any House—noble Lords would not wish me to attempt now to give detailed replies to all the points that have been made. So far as defence is concerned, we shall have a further opportunity before the Summer Recess to return to this subject when we deal with the continuation order for the Army, Navy and Air Force Discipline Act. I should therefore like first to restrict myself to a brief restatement of our defence policy, to emphasise the very great importance that this Government attach to defence.
The first responsibility of any Government must be the protection of their citizens, and the provision of that security which enables them to enjoy the values of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law on which our society is based. Earlier today, at Westminster Abbey, we gave thanks as a nation for 30 years' peace under the shield of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Because we continue to believe that security can best be provided for the democratic nations of the Western World by the collective security that comes through membership of the North Atlantic Alliance, the Government are totally committed to the North Atlantic Alliance and dedicated to the need to join with our allies in preserving the peace and the integrity of NATO territory. One of the problems with NATO—and I have said this before in this House—is that its very success in maintaining peace leads some doubters to question its necessity, and nobody—least of all, I can assure your Lordships, somebody in my position—pretends that defence is a cheap commodity.
In spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, and the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, said—indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, effectively answered many of the points that they made, but in spite of what they said—Lord Chalfont pointed out that the threat to our security is regrettably clear. It is of the gravest concern that the Soviet Union continues to devote some 11 or 13 per cent. of its gross national product to its armed forces, and has increased defence spending over the last few years by between 4 and

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5 per cent. per annum. The last Government admitted that the threat from the Soviet Union had been growing and that the size of that country's armed forces far exceeded any realistic assessment of its defensive need; that is, the countering of any supposed threat from NATO or other countries. But where we differ from them is that their response to the massive Warsaw Pact build-up was to cut our forces, to weaken our defences and to reduce our contribution to NATO. In distinction, our policy, in the light of the clear evidence of the need to call a halt to this process, will be the exact opposite.
However, we have no intention of indulging in an arms race, and we will of course continue our efforts to reduce the tension between the East and West and to further the search for a more lasting peace in Europe through arms control and disarmament agreements. As we said in the last Conservative White Paper, published in 1973,
"only negotiation from strength is likely to produce equitable agreements"—
a sentiment which has been expressed in many ways but which remains fundamental. We must be grateful that the resolve exists within NATO to meet the challenge posed by the Soviet arms buildup, and this resolve was demonstrated yet again at the meeting of NATO Defence Ministers held in Brussels last week.
I would accept Lord Carver's point that NATO is nothing if it is not a transatlantic alliance. As to certain trends in the military balance of power—I do not in the least bit accedt any of the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, produced, in spite of his remarkable achievement in recounting them all out of his head; and perhaps that is why we do not accept them—the military balance is continuing to favour the Warsaw Pact. The defence Ministers welcome the steps already taken to bring about improvements in the alliance's defence and the deterrent posture but also acknowledge that continuing efforts are needed to support the alliance's common defence.
In particular, they agreed that nations should intensify their efforts to aim at making available resources which will allow annual increases in defence spending in the region of 3 per cent. in real terms
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in the years up to 1986. Secondly, they welcomed the vigorous steps taken to ensure an effective follow-through to the long-term defence programme. Thirdly, they agreed on the common funding of a new five-year alliance infrastructure programme for the period 1980 to 1984 at a substantially increased level.
Thus, although there are challenges and difficulties facing NATO, there is an underlying degree of resolve demonstrated in the alliance's activities from which we can all take at least some comfort. It will be the objective of this Government to strengthen that resolve and we shall do all we can to promote the objectives of the alliance.
However, it must be admitted that there are difficult decisions ahead on how to improve our own contribution. I would not wish to exaggerate the pace at which deficiencies can be made good. A high proportion of our future defence spending will be devoted to the equipment programme. It will not be possible overnight to produce better equipment but we shall aim to provide a steady programme of improvement which will, in turn, have considerable benefit for British industry and, in order to make the best of our resources, we shall seek to exploit opportunities for collaborating in equipment programmes with our Allies. That has remained a difficult area to which we have all paid lip service but the achievements have been disappointing.
I would mention a particular area where we shall exercise a firmer grip than our predecessors. In the face of the ambitious programme by the Warsaw Pact to improve its nuclear weapons, it is essential that the effectiveness of all three elements of the NATO triad of forces is maintained: that is, the strategic and theatre nuclear systems as well as conventional defence. We must continue to modernise NATO nuclear forces, not only to preserve the spectrum of deterrence in a military sense but also to demonstrate our clear resolve to take together with our allies the steps necessary to ensure NATO's collective security. The United Kingdom has an important responsibility and a role to play in this and I can assure noble Lords that we shall not shirk our responsibilities in this respect.
If there was one element of our defence effort which the Labour Administration

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mismanaged more conspicuously than any other, it was the most as import aspect of all, the aspect of manpower. We shall not treat in a similar niggardly manner the men and women who make up the Armed Forces. In accordance with the pledge we gave in Opposition we have already implemented the recommendations of the Pay Review Body in full from 1st April this year; and the Chancellor announced this afternoon in another place that the Ministry of Defence cash limit is to be increased accordingly. It is our firm intention to maintain Service pay at the proper levels in the future.
One cannot overstress the importance of this. It was an urgent essential in the face of the serious manning problems in the Armed Forces. Though recruitment last year was quite good, the loss of trained manpower through premature voluntary retirement was substantial, leaving all three services seriously short of experienced personnel. I should love to give examples of that because that is not just a theoretical statement, it is an actual, immediate problem: unmanned aircraft, undermanned ships, and this kind of thing.
The morale of the Armed Forces must be the core of any nation's defence policy. The Armed Forces need to feel that the country appreciates what they do and that they have a secure future. The country as a whole has clearly shown members of the Armed Forces how much it appreciates their efforts by electing a Government which gives paramount importance to defence. We shall secure the future for our Servicemen and women by providing continuity and stability in our defence policy, and by making sure that they know that the Government and the people of this country believe that defence of the realm is a vital if not the most vital task.
It would be wrong of me to wind up this part of the debate without paying tribute to our Forces in Northern Ireland. Nowhere are the high standards of professionalism of the British soldier more apparent than in Northern Ireland. Operations in Northern Ireland remain a major commitment for the army, which continues to provide the majority of assistance and support to the RUC. But both the other two Services also provide essential help. At the moment, for example, 40 Royal Marine Commando is on a 12 months tour in Ballykelly, while
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RAF helicopters help to provide vital mobility. Noble Lords do not need me to remind them of the skill, determination and resourcefulness with which the Forces carry out their exacting and dangerous task in that country.
I must try and reply to one or two particular points. The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, and the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, raised points about the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. I agree that it is fair to assume that the Russians will only violate an agreement where they are confident that they can get away with it. As regards SALT II, President Carter has said:
"The stakes are too high to rely on trust or even on the Soviets' rational inclination to act in their own best interests. The treaty must and will be verifiable from the day it is signed."
The Americans do not pretend that their verification capability is perfect, but they have said that they are confident that they will detect any violations of the treaty in sufficient time to allow them to decide whether to withdraw from the treaty and start new programmes to prevent a significant adverse shift in the strategic balance. So far as SALT I is concerned, the Americans have monitored Russian compliance with the agreement. They have promptly raised with the USSR any unusual or ambiguous activities that have caused concern. They have stated that in every case activities stopped or they obtained a satisfactory explanation. The SALT II provisions relating to verification are more extensive than those in the SALT I agreement. The Soviet Union has followed the letter of the provision of the Helsinki CSCE final act relating to ICBMs, and these are of course not mandatory.
The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, sought an assurance that before we came to a final view we would seek the views of people on both sides of the Atlantic who have expressed concern about SALT II. I can assure him that the Government will study the text of the agreement and its implications. The issues raised by the noble Lord are among those which my noble friend the Foreign Secretary has been discussing with Secretary of State Vance during his present visit to London, and the Government have, of course, been in close touch with the United States authorities at all stages of the negotiations.

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Finally, my Lords, to Rhodesia: as my noble friend has told your Lordships, the Government will be adopting a new approach to the Rhodesia problem. It is their view that fundamental changes have taken place inside Rhodesia. Remarkable progress has been made there. We welcome this and our intention now will be to build on it to achieve a return to legality in a context of wide international recognition. The report of the noble Viscount, Lord Boyd of Merton, on his mission to observe the Rhodesian election will be made available as soon as possible to your Lordships. The Government will be guided by its conclusions.
My noble friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary has already begun the process of consultation with our friends and allies in his talks with the American Secretary of State and with our partners in the European Community. We attach particular importance, as my noble friend said, to high level consultation with the Commonwealth. We are taking immediate steps to keep ourselves informed on a continuing basis about the situation in Rhodesia and to establish an effective channel of communication with Bishop Muzorewa and his colleagues. We shall lose no time in pursuit of the task we have set ourselves; that is, to bring Rhodesia back into a normal relationship with the rest of the international community, in circumstances which will give that country the best chance of a more peaceful, stable and prosperous future.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paget, for saying that he does not intend to press his Amendment but rather that he is to associate himself with the advice given by my noble friend Lady Elles, who said that we should back the Foreign Secretary and not harass him. That was advice which was underlined by the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill of Harrow.
I said at the start that I would not be able to answer many of the questions raised by noble Lords, and I am well aware that it is not just a tour d'horizon which we have been invited to make this evening. I have not mentioned the Argentine, the Falklands, Cyprus, the Panama Canal, Cape Horn, the Horn of Africa and the trade routes through the Indian Ocean. I can only say that we
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will study the points that have been made by: noble Lords, covering all parts of the globe, but I think we will have to leave those places for a future time, and perhaps we can discuss them at a more reasonable hour.
On Question, Motion agreed to, nemine dissentience: the said Address to be presented to Her Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee with amendments.
  ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW: BANK HOLIDAY
  ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW: BANK HOLIDAY
  ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS. KEW: ENTRANCE FEE REVENUE
  ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS. KEW: ENTRANCE FEE REVENUE
  SHEEP: TRANSPORTATION TO OSTEND
  SHEEP: TRANSPORTATION TO OSTEND
  HORSES AND PONIES: EXPORT REGULATIONS
  HORSES AND PONIES: EXPORT REGULATIONS
  OAK WILT: PREVENTIVE MEASURES
  OAK WILT: PREVENTIVE MEASURES
  CIVIL SERVANTS: SCOTLAND
  CIVIL SERVANTS: SCOTLAND