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Mr. H. Morrison
I desire, Mr. Speaker, with your permission, to make a statement in the absence of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
The Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe will meet at Strasbourg in May, and it is therefore desirable that the 18 representatives from the United Kingdom should be appointed as soon as possible. The distribution of these appointments between the parties remains the same as it was last year; that is to say, nine Members of the Labour Party, eight of the Conservative Party and one of the Liberal Party. My right hon. Friend has arranged these appointments, and, in the case of the Conservative and Liberal Parties, they have, of course, been made on the basis of nominations by the Leaders of these parties. The representatives from the Government benches are: My right hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall); my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon), Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Blyton), Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion), Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Crosland), Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman), Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Hoy), Reading, North (Mr. R. Mackay), and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison). The representatives of His Majesty's Opposition are: The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill), the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan), the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe), the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), the hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Boothby), the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Northwich (Mr. J. Foster), and the hon. Gentlemen the Members for Taunton (Mr. Hopkinson), and Belfast, South (Mr. Gage). The Liberal representative is the noble Lord, Lord Layton. These appointments are for the Third Session of the Assembly, and will hold good until either the beginning of the Fourth Session, or the election of the next United Kingdom Parliament—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—patience would not do any harm—whichever is the earlier.