On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct your attention to a remark published in today's OFFICIAL REPORT and ask for your guidance. The OFFICIAL REPORT states that I rose to a point of order and then follows this remark attributed to the hon. Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Simmons):

"Sit down you Communist tool."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th July, 1954; Vol. 531; c. 716.]

There was at that time a great deal of noise in the Chamber. I did not hear that expression and I doubt whether you heard it, but owing to our excellent loudspeaker system things can sometimes be heard in the Press Gallery which are not audible to Members and to the Chair. I wonder what action can now be taken, because I feel that if your attention had been called at the time to the use of that expression, you would probably have called upon the hon. Member for Brierley Hill to withdraw it. I think you will agree that it is not an expression which should be used in regard to any hon. Member. It casts an imputation which should not be cast.

I am bound to say that I did not hear it at all. It is one of the results of this marvellous amplication system that there is occasionally what might be described as electric eaves-dropping. I certainly did not hear it, and I think that, before I say anything, I should ascertain whether, in fact, the words were used at all, because it is very unlike the hon. Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Simmons) to say anything unparliamentary.

If it should turn out that the words were not used, what action can then be taken in regard to their appearance in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

If an error is made in this record, it can be corrected for the bound volume so that it will not become a permanent record. That is the only thing that can be done.

I was present in the Chamber at the time and I heard that remark made, but I heard it made by more than one hon. Member.

I did not myself hear it at all, and I think we had better ascertain the facts. I would rather not rule upon it until I am aware of the position.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Heath.]

Disarmament is perhaps the most difficult and complex problem facing statesmanship and Governments today, but none the less it is essential to solve it. We see a world divided into two armed camps engaged in an armaments race to a degree and intensity never before equalled in times of peace. It is estimated that the annual expenditure throughout the world on armaments amounts to £40,000 million a year, and an expenditure of only one-tenth of that amount would enable assistance to be given to the under-developed countries which would help to transform the social and economic conditions of probably two-thirds of the world's population.

It is interesting in this connection to appreciate that, according to the United Nations investigators, the average annual earnings of the populations in the underdeveloped areas is about £20 a year, and the £40,000 million a year to which I have referred works out at an average of £20 a year per head of the world's population.

The relationship between disarmament and economic development is emphasised only too clearly by the recently announced refusal of the British and American Governments to subscribe to the special United Nations Fund for Economic Development so long as the present expenditure on armaments is maintained. We on this side of the House strongly regret that decision. We believe that to solve the problem of poverty is just as important to the peace of the world as the problem we are discussing this morning.

I am afraid it cannot be said that the Governments of the world have treated this problem with any great sense of urgency; indeed, they have lagged behind the scientists, whose unrestrained activities may have the most profound effect upon the future welfare of the world. What are the facts? For over eight years disarmament has been the subject of discussion under the authority of the United Nations in the Atomic and Conventional Armistice Commissions. It was not until January, 1952, that the Disarmament Commission itself was established. The Commission had meetings from January to October of that year.

We have been told that in November, 1952, the first hydrogen bomb was exploded, and yet disarmament was not again discussed until November, 1953. Even then the Disarmament Commission was not reconvened until April of this year, this time at the request of Her Majesty's Government, supported by the French and United States Governments.

To my mind all this does not indicate any great sense of urgency, although I do not underestimate the difficulties. World Disarmament Conference which sat between 1932 and 1935 showed only too clearly the difficulties of securing agreement on disarmament, but it is an historical fact—at least one accepted by many people—that its failure led directly to the Second World War.

Today the development of nuclear weapons, and particularly, the advent of the hydrogen bomb, lends a new urgency to the problem and puts a new and heavy responsibility on Governments and statesmen throughout the world. Only yesterday the Prime Minister referred to:

"the appalling developments and the appalling spectacle which imagination raises before us."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th January, 1954; Vol. 531, c. 752.]

That was a reference to what would occur if there were another world war. But surely the verbal warnings and forebodings of statesmen must be translated into deeds and actions if the world is to be saved from the perils and dangers which lie ahead.

It is in these circumstances that failure to reach agreement at the recent meetings of the Sub-Committee of the Disarmament Commission at Lancaster House during May and June was such a great disappointment. I do not think that there is anything to be gained by assessing responsibility for its failure, except that I should like to express regret that the Soviet representative could not answer, or would not answer, the five specific questions put to him by the Minister of State on the working of the proposed international control organ which, as hon. Members know, is intended to be responsible for enforcing the provisions of any disarmament treaty. I think it is only right to say here that the Minister of State himself played a notable part in the attempts that have been made to secure agreement.

After a careful examination of the various proposals put forward at the Sub-Committee meetings, I cannot find any fundamental difference between them. The Minister of State will correct me if I am wrong, but I would suggest that there was common agreement on the following principles: first, that the atomic, hydrogen and other weapons of mass destruction should be totally prohibited and eliminated; secondly, that there should be a substantial reduction in all armaments and armed forces; thirdly, that an international control organ should be established.

The main differences seem to have been as follows: first, the Russians proposed an unconditional prohibition of atomic, hydrogen and other weapons of mass destruction to operate as from the date of the convention. The western delegates were equally in favour of the total prohibition of these weapons, but they proposed that prohibition and elimination were not to become finally effective until an agreed reduction in conventional armaments had taken place. Pending total prohibition and elimination they were prepared to agree to a declaration that such weapons should only be used to resist aggression.

The second main difference was over the reduction of conventional armaments. The Western Governments proposed reductions which would equate, broadly speaking, the forces of Russia and China with those of the United States, France and the United Kingdom together.

At their reduced levels.

At their reduced levels. It is true to say that the main burden of these reductions would have fallen upon the United States, Russia and China. On the other hand, the Russian proposal was for one-third reductions in the present armed forces of the countries concerned. This, of course, would leave them with the same proportionate superiority in conventional armaments while the Western Powers would be left in their present relative inferiority in this sphere. The abolition of nuclear weapons would, of course, give equality of security to all countries, including Russia, and would remove Russia's present inferiority in this sphere.

A third difference was that the Russian proposal did not provide for the international control organ being established and positioned before the implementation of the provisions of the disarmament treaty. Moreover, the control organ, in the Russian view, should only have the power of making recommendations and of reporting them for action to the Security Council, which would then act as laid down in the United Nations Charter, which means that the power of the veto would still operate.

Surely all these differences, while of great importance, are not insurmountable. The most hopeful document of all was the memorandum put forward by the French and British representatives, and this still seems to me to be the most useful basis of discussion before us. I think, however, that as Ambassador Patterson, the head of the United States delegation stated, this document is not inflexible and I should like to make one or two suggestions on my own personal responsibility which might bridge the gap between the Russian and the Western proposal.

Firstly, could not a multilateral declaration be made by all the Powers agreeing not to use the hydrogen bomb, except in retaliation? This declaration would be made as a preliminary to the conclusion and implementation of a comprehensive disarmament treaty. Secondly, could not the manufacture of all kinds of nuclear weapons be prohibited as soon as the control organ reports its readiness to carry out its responsibilities? Thirdly, could not the total elimination of half of all nuclear weapons take effect as soon as half of the agreed reduction in conventional armaments has become effective, instead of waiting until the end, as is the case under the present proposals? Fourthly, could not the final, total prohibition and elimination of the remaining half of all nuclear weapons take effect as from the completion of the second half of the agreed reduction in conventional armaments?

This should meet to some extent the views of the Russian Government and would certainly be a half-way house between the Russian proposal that nuclear weapons should be banned and prohibited at the outset and the proposal of the Western Governments that that should follow the carrying out of the agreed reduction in conventional armaments. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Minister of State will make it quite clear today that the proposals that he and the French delegate put forward at the Sub-Committee of the United Nations Disarmament Commission are not the final word and that he will consider the possibility of moving towards the stand which is taken by the Soviet Union.

There are those who argue that there is little prospect of ending the present deadlock until there has been a relaxation of world tension, but surely if we could make substantial progress towards agreement on disarmament a real improvement in the international situation would follow. There are some who advocate unilateral disarmament. Perhaps the outstanding case of a country which followed the policy of unilateral disarmament was that of Denmark during the inter-war years but, as we all know, this did not prevent that country from being invaded in 1940 and occupied for the following four years.

There are those who argue in favour of the prohibition of nuclear weapons, even though it is not possible to obtain agreement on the reduction of conventional armaments. In my view, disarmament must be dealt with on a comprehensive basis. It is not enough to eliminate a particular weapon—even the hydrogen bomb—in isolation from other existing weapons. The welfare of mankind would still be threatened by atomic weapons, the rocket, the guided missile or even the high explosive bomb.

The attack by a few American planes on Hiroshima, when one atomic bomb was dropped, is estimated to have involved 70,000 lives. In 1943, 1,000 R.A.F. bombers crossed the Channel and bombed Hamburg and in one night, by dropping several hundreds of tons of bombs, they are estimated to have killed between 40,000 and 50,000 people.

There were 200,000 at Dresden.

That strengthens even more my argument that getting rid of the hydrogen bomb and leaving more conventional weapons in existence will not safeguard the welfare of mankind.

We have to seek to remove the fear of war and in that connection, as the Franco-British memorandum recommended, reduce the level of armaments to that which is strictly necessary for the maintenance of internal security and the guaranteeing of obligations to other countries under the United Nations Charter. It is on that basis that the existence of foreign military bases could be terminated. I read with great interest the statement by the United States delegate during the Lancaster House meetings that:

"If we should succeed in reaching agreement on the regulation, limitation and balanced reduction of all armed forces and armaments, such an agreement would undoubtedly specify the bases that should be continued and those that should be discontinued."

Those who are interested in the question of bomb bases might well take some satisfaction for that expression of the point of view of the representative of the United States Government. What is needed today is to end the present deadlock. For the first time since 1939, fighting has ceased throughout the world.

No.

Yes.

Malaya?

We do not consider ourselves to be at war with those bandits. I thought that we were taking police action.

Could not a special disarmament session of the General Assembly of the United Nations be arranged in September? What a wonderful thing it would be if it could be addressed by President Eisenhower, Mr. Malenkov, Mr. Nehru, our Prime Minister and M. Mendès-France. In the old days of the League of Nations it was quite usual for Prime Ministers to attend the discussions. Could they not pledge their countries to make their contribution to security and freedom? The matter could then be again considered by the Disarmament Commission with a view to drawing up a disarmament treaty to be considered by a world disarmament conference which the Foreign Ministers of all countries, including China, could attend. A disarmament agreement would pave the way for many political settlements. For example, in a world in process of disarming, the controversy on German rearmament would take on an entirely different aspect.

It will be necessary, however, to remove the curtain of distrust that divides East and West as effectively as does the Iron Curtain. It will be necessary to surrender outworn concepts of national sovereignty in respect of all the problems of world relations. What is the use of preserving national sovereignty and losing national existence? Here I find myself in agreement with the Canadian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Lester Pearson, who expressed the view that the granting of such powers would not be so much an infringement as a utilisation of sovereignty for the purpose of world security.

In the face of the threats and dangers that confront them, the nations of the world must concern themselves with the problem of co-survival as well as co-existence. I hope that the Minister of State will tell us that it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to persevere to the utmost with a view to securing the greatest possible reduction of armaments. The achievement of disarmament will not lead to glittering prizes but to much greater and nobler results—a new world society in which the nations can live together free from the fear or the threat of war.

I am sure that the right hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson) will forgive me if I have not time to follow him through all the points he has made in the course of his speech, with much of which the House will agree in considering the cause that all of us have at heart.

I would refer to the meetings of the Sub-Committee of the Disarmament Commission and some of the summarised opening remarks of the Minister of State. The summary of the remarks states that by right hon. and learned Friend, on the opening of the Conference,

"pointed out that so long as the accumulation of great armaments continued there would be no certainty that the danger of war would be lifted from the world and that the development of new weapons …"

I was quoting from the extract of the opening remarks of my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State at the meetings in May and June of the Sub-Committee of the United Nations Disarmament Commission in which:

"He pointed out that so long as the accumulation of great armaments continued there would be no certainty that the danger of war would be lifted from the world and that the development of new weapons which now threatened the continued existence of mankind lent new urgency to the search for a solution to the disarmament problem."

I am sure that every Member of this House would entirely agree with those words.

My purpose in this brief debate is to ensure that the emphasis which we would wish to be maintained on this subject of disarmament is maintained in face of all the other preoccupations with which we have to deal. The policy of this country and of the Western nations as a whole has been that we must perforce maintain our defences, our armaments, in a state adequate to protect ourselves, but that we are at all times willing to sit down in council with all the nations of the world in order to arrive at a reasonable conclusion for disarmament. That has been our policy, and that is a policy with which I agree and which I believe the majority of Members of this House also support.

I should like to draw the attention of hon. Members to the great difference that has come about in the sphere of the subject of disarmament. Compare the position today with those disarmament conferences which some of us can remember 20 or 30 years ago. The whole position has been changed by the onset of these rather curiously named "unconventional" weapons of mass destruction which we have today. In the past, the objective direction of disarmament was in the form of a limiting down to nothing of the number of weapons—the number of ships, the number of armed vehicles and all the rest—that went to the making of wars up to 10 or 20 years ago. Today we have an entirely new factor which makes the whole thing much wider in scope and much different from the conventional picture which we had 25 years ago.

The scientists have gone on with their work and they will be bound by it. Scientists cannot stop. If he is true to his profession, a scientist must go on ever probing and discovering, and in his investigations inevitably he will make a number of discoveries which may be used for the purposes of mass destruction. They will not be sought for deliberately for that purpose, but it will be realised that they can be so used. I think it is true to say that we were searching for nuclear fission long before it was realised that its effects could be used for mass destruction.

So we come to a new viewpoint about disarmament. Now it is not so much a question of numbers or of weapons or of single objectives. It is now necessary to create an atmosphere in which we agree to abolish the use of all these new weapons as they are found. I wish here to quote again from the report of the same speech of the Minister of State in which he drew attention to this problem:

"He went on to define what he thought should be the aim of the Sub-Committee's work. This should be the abolition of the use, possession and manufacture of all atomic, hydrogen and other weapons of mass destruction within a system which would include, in addition to the prohibition of weapons of mass destruction, provisions for simultaneous and major reductions in conventional armaments and armed forces to levels to be agreed. …"

There again, the emphasis is on the abolition of the weapons of mass destruction.

How important that is and how terrible are these new weapons was emphasized by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister not only yesterday, but during the debate on the hydrogen bomb last April, when he said:

"Speaking more generally, we must realise that the gulf between the conventional high explosive bomb in use at the end of the war with Germany on the one hand, and the atomic bomb as used against Japan on the other, is smaller than the gulf developing between that bomb and the hydrogen bomb."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th April, 1954; Vol. 526, c. 48.]

In short, the difference between the high explosive bomb and the atom bomb is less than the difference in effect between the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb. Any responsible and intelligent man is bound to say to himself, "What is the next step, and what will the difference then be?" These are things which must be taken into account in any new system or agreement or co-ordination for disarmament. That is the position with which we are faced today.

In a speech during the debate on 5th April, I said—and I should like to say it again today, because I consider that it bears repetition—that the great trouble with the world is that its moral and spiritual development has not kept pace with its material and scientific development. Not even has the common sense of the nations of the world kept pace with scientific development. It seems incredible that a world which can make these vast and magnificent discoveries is unable to discover some means by which they can be utilised beneficially rather than for destroying life. It would seem that a world so clever and so intelligent in so many directions is unable to work out the simple commonsense matter of deciding to live together in peace rather than to destroy itself altogether.

I hope that this country and the other Western nations will continue to give a lead to the rest of the world in this matter of disarmament. We and the United States and the other Western nations have access to the most advanced weapons of destruction available today. That is not a legend. There have been practical demonstrations of that fact in the explosions of the hydrogen bomb in the last 12 months. We nations have this bomb; we have all that has yet been discovered, not only regarding the hydrogen bomb, but guided missiles and rockets and all the rest of it. The moral strength of such a lead as we can give will be tremendous, and very different in effect from that which might be given by a nation in the position of a suppliant with very little to offer.

I trust that we shall go on in that vein. I am proud to feel that our Minister of State opened the meetings of the Sub-Committee in May and June, and that those meetings were held in this country. I hope that we shall continue to give the lead which must be given if the world is to find a solution to this problem. It is something which we are doing for posterity. Death may come to any person at any time in the normal course of events. By having this disarmament conference in our day and time we are endeavouring to build up a system of security, peace and confidence, as distinct from the fears which actuate most countries at present. If we prove successful we shall have done something not so much for ourselves as for posterity.

I hope that I shall be forgiven if I speak in my usual forthright manner. I must first refer to the attendance in the House today. Quite frankly, it is shocking for a debate of this character. I know that this debate should have been held yesterday, but the Whips' departments on both sides of the House seem to be losing control of their back benchers. However, that does not excuse such an attendance when we are discussing a problem concerning our fellow countrymen and countrywomen throughout the Commonwealth and the world. When the issues involve human survival, it is simply not good enough to find that there are not 20 hon. Members present.

My hon. Friend must be careful, or he will be counted out.

I can only hope that no hon. Member will count out the House on a day like this.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson) covered ground which has been covered many time before. There is nothing new in the Report of the Sub-Committee of the United Nations Commission on Disarmament. What is in it has been said many times before and it will be said many times again. One of the reasons is that it is putting the cart before the horse. Disarmament, in a world of changing war techniques and changing economic and social conditions, cannot be decided in isolation. With nations locked in mutual suspicion and distrust it is apparent that fundamental changes in their foreign policy must be made before we can make any progress at all in disarmament.

In this respect, if we survey what has been done since 1945 and consider the cynical use of the United Nations organisation and the mistrust which has been built up by internal conquest by infiltration in what were once free countries, and if we try to view the picture as a whole, we realise the size of the job we have to do and the long way we have to go before we can reach any concrete plan for world disarmament.

It is always a good thing to try to look at these matters as they appear in the eyes of the Kremlin. The Western allies are more or less agreed. We have consciously and conscientiously used the United Nations for the purpose for which it was designed, but we have seen the agression in Korea and the cynical infiltration in other places as well. What have we to try to do? First, we have to try to bring home to the Soviets that the liberty and freedom of the countries they have invaded, by whatever method, is of vital concern to us. The liberty of the Austrians, the Hungarians, the Rumanians, the Czechoslovaks, the Poles and the Eastern Germans is something which at this stage of world development we cannot write off as something which should be forgotten. Things do not work out in that way.

If there is still in these peoples who are behind the Iron Curtain the same sense of nationalism and the same desire to be free, and to have their own Governments, as was shown in the debate yesterday about Egypt, something must be done. Until the Soviet Union can be persuaded that these nations should be free we shall never achieve any degree of disarmament. The Soviet Union feels that it is encumbent upon it to defend the territories which it has annexed.

Although the allies, in 1945, reduced their armies to a considerable extent—especially we in this country who almost placed our country in danger—the Soviets did nothing of the kind. When one remembers Casablanca, Potsdam and Yalta we can see running through those conferences the same theme, which shows that the Russians knew exactly what they were doing. They maintained 4½ million men in their army in Europe with the purpose which they have now achieved. With the armies of the satellites their forces number 7 million men—an extremely large number.

Since 1945, there have been incidents which could have touched off another war in Europe. For instance, there was the airlift to Western Berlin. If we had failed there, goodness knows what would have happened. We must find answers to the problems in Europe before we can start to go anywhere. It is not as if Britain, under a Labour as well as Conservative Government, has not made substantial contributions by way of restoring freedom to India, Burma and Ceylon. These, in the total sum, reduce our effective defence, whichever way we look at it. We have no longer any control over the manpower of those countries. This little island has shown by its inspiration and example that it is preferred to go all the way, but there has been a cynical disregard of the efforts we have made.

The plan outlined in the Report of the Sub-Committee does not differ substantially from the plan of 1946. If we are to control nuclear development to prevent people from making war then each country will have to have its sovereignty infringed. There must be a sharing of technicians and workers with no secrets, and no hidden piles of bombs should be built up. There must be a complete freedom for the interchange of working staffs. Would the Soviet agree? In view of the policy of Russia the plan falls down. The Soviet Union will not allow its sovereignty to be infringed.

This was first proposed at a time when, as far as we knew, the United States was the only country in possession of atomic secrets. Even then, the United States Atomic Energy Commission was prepared to share its secrets with the rest of the world. But the Soviet Union turned down the proposal. Why? Events have proved that Russian knew something. It was not very long before we discovered the activities of Nunn May, Pontecorvo, Fuchs and the Rosenbergs—a host of people who were traitors to their own countries and who supplied the Soviet Union with information so that, as far as we know, its position is the same as ours.

We have a long way to go before we settle this problem. Conventional armies, navies and air forces may not be used in future; we do not know. Recently, I read in a scientific journal that the Soviet Union has developed a high-speed rocket, the M.103, which is capable of covering 1,600 miles and which is guided by radar. If that is true, it means that we can manage without the bomber plane as we know it.

There is no effective defence against the hydrogen bomb except guts and courage. It has been estimated that a hydrogen bomb attack on the United States could result in 23 million casualties, including 9 million dead. How do we set about burying 9 million dead? It simply cannot be done. That is what is facing the world today.

We are no nearer a solution today than we were in 1946. Meeting after meeting has taken place and similar meetings will probably take place in the years to come, but until we find an answer to these other problems, we shall not find an answer to the main problem of disarmament. I do not know for how long our country can sustain the major burden which we have carried during the last 10 years. Had it not been for the participation of the United States on a wider scale in European affairs, the world today might have been an even sorrier place.

It is very easy, and is sometimes done in this House, to criticise the United States. Criticism is levelled against that nation by people who have a phobia against America, and sometimes by people who are genuine pacifists. In principle, although it is outmoded and has no place in modern affairs, I agree with genuine pacifism, but even the genuine pacifist must remember that his right to speak his mind, and to enjoy the liberties he has, has been dependent, in the past, upon the willingness of young British soldiers to die in battle. Let that not be forgotten when, too easily, some of our friends deride the part the United States has played.

I know that the United States is a young, vigorous and powerful nation. It may be that over the years perhaps more wisdom will apply in United States foreign policies than has applied hitherto. But there is nothing wrong with her principles. At times she has been at fault. The desire to achieve decisions quickly is something not generally known and approved of in normal diplomatic channels. There is a way of doing these things which takes a long time.

To end the few words which I have spoken to the House, thin as it is, I go back to my original theme. There can be no settlement, no progress made on disarmament, until the major issues which I have mentioned are recognised by countries which are now holding down other countries as slave States.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) has made an extremely sombre speech, but I do not think the truth of much that he has said can be contested. There is no doubt that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson) was quite right in saying that international disarmament is desirable. It is one way of reducing the tremendous economic burden of armaments which now presses on all nations and is a way of releasing economic strength to face the problems of poverty in Asia and Africa. It is also one way of reducing the tension which at the moment creates some danger of war. Some of my hon. and right hon. Friends believe also that international disarmament offers an alternative for solving the concrete specific diplomatic issues which at present divide the nations.

When all that has been said, we must face the question: is there, on the evidence available, any real prospect of achieving international disarmament at present? Some of my hon. and right hon. Friends believe, for example, that the alternative to German rearmament is international disarmament. I am sorry that none of my hon. and right hon. Friends who have given their names to a pamphlet which puts forward in great detail this alternative to German rearmament are here this morning to speak to the policy which they themselves have advanced.

What are the facts, unpleasant as they are, which face us at the present time? The first is that at a time when America and Britain are actually reducing their armed strength, when there have been cuts in the number of divisions which America planned to make available for the defence of herself and of the free world, and when there have been cuts in our own programme, the Soviet armament programme remains at its previous level, and the Soviet armies have increased. For that fact we have the authority of Marshal Bulganin in a speech which he made in March of this year.

There is also the fact that the Soviet Union claims to have been the first nation to produce that terrible weapon of mass destruction, the hydrogen bomb, and such Russian leaders as Malenkov and Kruschev boast of the fact that they hope to maintain superiority in that field. The Soviet Government—and also, by the way, the Chinese Government—openly declare that they are still increasing their armed strength and intend to maintain a superiority over the rest of the world.

The next fact which we must face is that there has been no change whatever in the Soviet attitude towards international disarmament negotiations in the year since Stalin died. There have been, it is true, some shifts in Soviet foreign policy since then, but no change whatever in her policy on disarmament. Any-one who has read through—as I hope all hon. Members have—the full verbatim report of the recent Disarmament Commission meeting at Lancaster House must finish their reading with a sense bordering on despair in regard to this problem.

One thing struck me very much. In France, as in this country, some of the main opponents of German rearmament claim that international disarmament offers an immediate practical alternative. What interested me about the Lancaster House speeches was to see that the French representative was, in fact, the main French opponent of German rearmament—M. Moch. When I read M. Moch's speech on the reply of the Soviet representative to the Anglo-French proposals on disarmament, I could not for the life of me see how anybody can maintain that at the present time there is any serious prospect of the Soviet Union agreeing to international disarmament.

rose—

I am sorry, I cannot give way.

If my hon. Friend would allow me. It is relevant to what you have said. As you have quoted M. Moch's statement I hope you will refer—

Order. I did not refer to this statement.

As the hon. Member has referred to M. Jules Moch, will he also refer to the statement made by M. Moch only two days ago that he was firmly convinced that it was possible to bridge the remaining gap between the Anglo-French proposals and the Soviet proposals?

The opponents of German rearmament have often shown a remarkable capacity for maintaining two contradictory propositions at the same time, but nothing that M. Moch said in New York two days ago affects the truth of what he said at the disarmament meeting.

Let us face the situation. Britain and France have broken from the United States to take a long stride forward towards meeting the Soviet. They recounted their proposals in great detail and waited with intense interest for the reply. Mr. Malik made a reply which was a systematic distortion of the proposals. M. Moch said of it:

"I felt as if I were looking into one of those distorting mirrors which make the thinnest people appear fat or shapeless and give immense pleasure to children and, sometimes, even to grown-ups. Today, however, I can take no pleasure in such systematic distortion. I deplore it, since I see postponed, perhaps sine die, hopes to which we had clung, to which I had clung despite the warnings of many sceptical spirits, and also practical measures the need for which we believe is daily becoming more imperative."

I do not believe that anyone who reads the Soviet reply to the Anglo-French proposals can imagine that there is any serious intention on the part of the Soviet Government to make any concessions whatever on this issue.

Many people, including the Soviet representative at these discussions, have argued that some system of international disarmament should be introduced which depends on mutual trust rather than on effective verification and control. It has been repeatedly pointed out that the whole need for disarmament arises only because nations do not trust each other. They arm because they distrust one another, and disarmament is only possible if an effective system of verification and control—and, if need be, of punishment—can be established which is proof against all the suspicions that have caused the arming in the first place.

I myself take an extremely pessimistic view about the possibility of establishing such a control organisation, at least in the foreseeable future, because I believe that the advent of atomic weapons has changed the whole picture in relation to disarmament no less than it has changed the picture in relation to strategy, as the Prime Minister said yesterday. The main contending Powers in the cold war—the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States—all now have a stockpile of atomic weapons and, what is equally important, a stockpile of the nuclear fuel with which to build more atomic weapons.

The difficulty that I see is that—and the scientists to whom I have talked agree with me—whereas it might have been possible, before the nations had these stockpiles, to transfer all the embryonic atomic development to a single international authority in the hope that then no evasion would be possible, when already at least three great Powers have a large stockpile of weapons and nuclear fuel it is almost impossible to conceive of any effective international control organisation which could be quite certain that none of the parties to the agreement had salted away some of their nuclear fuel or atomic bombs before the control organisation had been introduced.

The United States has a superficial area of 3 million square miles. The Soviet Union and China have a superficial area of 12 million square miles. Any square mile of the territory of any of these Powers could conceal, almost without hope of discovery, enough nuclear fuel or sufficient atomic weapons to destroy life on this planet, and the powers which such an effective control organisation would require in order to produce a foolproof system against the evasion of an international disarmament proposal would be far beyond any of the wildest dreams of the enthusiasts for world government. I ask hon. Members to consider this point. It is very difficult to Conceive of any effective international control system, given the nature of modern weapons and the fact that the great Powers already have a stockpile of modern weapons and of the fuel with which to make more.

I discussed my hon. Friend's argument—as I think, his defeatist argument—with Dr. Oppenheimer about six weeks ago, Dr. Oppenheimer being the man who made the original atomic bomb and who played the major part in devising what was called the Baruch Plan, which subsequently became the United Nations Plan adopted by the Assembly. Dr. Oppenheimer told me that he thought that the argument which is being used by my hon. Friend had been pressed much too far, that he thought a scheme which would be relatively efficacious could be devised, and he thought it absolutely vital to go on with such work.

I have the greatest respect for Dr. Oppenheimer's capacities as a scientist, but I think there is too much evidence that scientific ability is not transferable into the political field for me to have a similar respect for his abilities as a politician. This is essentially a political and not a scientific problem.

My hon. Friend is basing his argument on the opinion of scientists.

I accept the point, and I am quite prepared to sustain my position without calling on the aid of any scientists whatever, because the facts are simple enough. An atomic bomb is not a very large item of equipment. It could be hidden in a building not much larger than a garage. The fact is that most of the countries whose disarmament in this field is desired, already have a large stock of these implements, and I defy anyone to show me that it would be impossible for one or other of these countries to conceal a number of these implements before an effective international control organisation had been introduced. That is common sense and it does not require a great deal of scientific knowledge to recognise that fact.

I am not worrying too much about the possibility of international controlled disarmament, because I believe that arms are essentially the result rather than the Cause of international conflict. The problem which we must face is whether we can reduce the causes of conflict which have led to the piling up of arms on both sides of the Iron Curtain. To go into that matter in detail would take me far too wide of the specific subject of this debate, but I would say that the relaxation of tension as a result of which arms might be reduced depends on achieving a balance of power between the two worlds as soon as possible, and on drawing clear lines of division between them which can be held by force. I believe that a power vacuum between the two worlds is more dangerous than a clear line of division which is maintained by a balance of military power on both sides. That seems to me to be the decisive argument against proposals for the neutralisation of Germany.

The other great problem of disarmament is to reduce the burden which the present level of arms imposes, and that can only be solved if the Powers on this side of the Iron Curtain aim, as they undertook in the original N.A.T.O. Treaty, at balanced international forces rather than adequate national forces. I hope that when the Minister replies he will say a word or two about progress in this respect, because it is the only field still open to us through which we can hope for some alleviation of the burden falling on this country.

I want to conclude with a point which was discussed at some length at the meetings at Lancaster House and to which so far no reference has been made today. I mean President Eisenhower's proposal for an international atomic pool to which all the existing atomic Powers should give a proportion of their nuclear fuel for distribution to the countries which need power. It seems to me that, against the sombre background which has been sketched by other speakers as well as myself, this proposal for an international atomic pool offers by far the brightest hope of some progress in the various fields in which we need it.

In the first place, I think that if the countries on this side of the Iron Curtain—since Soviet Russia has declared her refusal to participate—set up such a pool, they would learn techniques of co-operation in the atomic field which might well be transferable to the field of atomic disarmament if ever Soviet policy changed sufficiently to make this possible.

In the second place, I think it offers the best possible means of winning the confidence and friendship of uncommitted Africa and Asia towards the creation of that international society which I think is our common aim. In the third place, I believe that some such scheme offers the only speedy method of alleviating the poverty from which Africa and Asia suffer at present. The difference between the standard of living of the Asian and African peoples and of the American people is a difference of one to 30, and that is exactly the difference between the power available to the workers in the two countries.

I believe that if only by some such scheme we could make atomic power available to the peoples of Africa and Asia, we should be able to make a really effective and rapid impact on poverty in those areas. Moreover, I am convinced that the Soviet Union, although she is not prepared to co-operate in international schemes of this type, will make such power available on her own terms to the satellite countries and China, and unless we can hold out to the non-Communist countries, including Africa, the prospect of similar advances, we shall find ourselves in an extremely dangerous political position.

I should like the Minister to correct the impression which the Prime Minister has given on many occasions in this respect that Britain is in some way formal, cold and lukewarm towards the American President's proposals. I should like him to be able to encourage us by holding out some prospect that the British Government are pressing forward with the proposal to set up an international atomic pool. The British Government should react towards President Eisenhower's proposal as the late Mr. Bevin reacted to a previous American Secretary of State's proposal, in his Harvard speech, out of which developed the Marshall Plan. The proposal for an international atomic authority offers by far the most hopeful initiative in the extremely sombre position of the present day, and I hope that the Minister of State can say something about it.

I should like to express my gratitude to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson) for having persisted in securing a debate upon this vital subject. If my expression of gratitude is short it is because of the limited time at my disposal and not because it is not sincerely meant. Having read through the Report and the verbatim record, and after what I have heard, I should also like to take the opportunity of saying how much I appreciate the energy, ability and sincerity of the Minister of State in taking the lead and initiative at the recent Disarmament Conference.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East (Mr. D. Healey) said that the speech made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) had been a sombre one. If that speech was a sombre one, the speech to which we have just listened was one of absolutely inspissated gloom. The pessimism which afflicts my hon. Friend arises not so much from the facts contained in the Report and the verbatim record as from the attitude of mind in which he has examined them. He has pinned his hopes upon arms. He was a formidable supporter of the Labour Government's rearmament programme. He thought that through armed strength we could negotiate peace, but now, at the end of four years of struggle and sacrifice, in which we have added arms upon arms, his only solution is to thrust arms upon others and to build up a new stockpile of weapons in the centre of Europe.

I admit that the problem of trying to reach agreement with the other countries of the world in this connection will be a difficult one to solve. What appalls me, however, is the way in which some people seem to derive satisfaction in pointing out the difficulty of negotiating with the Soviet Union. In this connection I recall a statement which the late General Wavell, as he then was, made during the last war. He said:

"If things are going badly; if there are difficulties to face, think just how much greater are the difficulties for the other side."

I invite my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East—who brings a great deal of knowledge, learning and sincerity to bear upon this problem—to think a little more about the possible alternatives to not persisting in trying to reach agreement with Soviet Russia, however discouraging it may be and however keenly we may feel the setbacks.

Let us think of the possible alternatives to disarmament. Inevitably, failure means an ever-increasing weight of armaments. The armament programme upon which we embarked four years ago has not brought us one whit more security, and not a single man or woman in this country feels more secure as a result of the heavy weight of armaments which we now have to bear—

Nonsense.

Not one man or woman in this country feels more secure today than he or she did four years ago.

I do, for one.

Would not my hon. Friend agree that most of our people think that the shift which has taken place in Soviet policy during the last two years means increased security for the people of these islands? Does not he also agree that many people—although, perhaps, not himself—believe that this shift in policy is a direct consequence of the determination of the Western peoples to unite and rearm?

It may be that we have a better chance to reach agreement now than we had four years ago, but I still say that the average man or woman—and that excludes my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget)—does not feel one little bit more secure than he or she did four years ago.

I want to make a brief reference to the hydrogen bomb in connection with the present technique of warfare. The Prime Minister, yesterday, based the Government's case for quitting Egypt upon the difference which the hydrogen bomb had made to the military facts of life. He said it was impossible to hold Suez because the hydrogen bomb could be used against that base. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition rightly asked whether that consideration did not apply to Cyprus as well as to Suez. The hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery) asked, quite rightly, about Portsmouth and Southampton. I thought that the height of absurdity was reached, however when the Foreign Secretary said, later, that in the event of war we intended to return to Suez.

Are we to assume from that that whilst the hydrogen bomb makes the Suez absolutely impossible to hold in time of peace, it is possible to do so in time of war? The fact is that the whole method of reasoning is clouded and distorted by the conception of these new weapons of war which confronts us. It is not possible now to make an absolutely logical and rational speech within the framework of modern military facts. The lesson I draw from all this is that we simply must try to reach an agreement to limit our armed forces.

I do not think that the disagreement between the two sides is so great as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East tried to make out. The nature of the disagreement is a question of procedure rather than of objectives. That point was very well made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton. The other difficulty is that, with all the various proposals that have been put forward, one side or the other feels that at any given stage in the process of disarming it will be left relatively weaker than the other side. "If we have prohibition of weapons before control," say the West, "that will place the Soviets in a stronger position." "If we have control before prohibition," say the East, "that will give the West the opportunity to examine all the territory which, hitherto, we have so closely guarded, and after all that we may not get the prohibition which we set out to achieve."

Then we have the arguments about the limitation or reduction of conventional forces. The Russians make what appears to be a simple and straightforward suggestion for a one-third reduction of these forces. Our argument is that if a proportionate reduction of that kind were made we should be left, at the end, in a relatively weaker position than they. The weakness of the Anglo-French Paper—which I should have supported, on the whole—is that we begged the question by suggesting only a "major" reduction. If we agree to a major reduction in principle we shall get bogged down in trying to decide precisely in what form and in what amount the reductions shall be.

I want to state my own conclusion as a result of reading these documents. I believe that national arms of any kind are incompatible with the conception of security. I feel that it would be easier, now, to reach a measure of agreement upon a scheme of total disarmament. It would be easier to do that than to try to jockey about between two sets of proposals, with each side trying to achieve a proportionate reduction the net result of which would be to leave it relatively stronger than the other side. When I was reading these documents I occasionally had the feeling that it was not disarmament that we were all really after but a more economical way of achieving national armed security. We seem to want to have both sides disarm, but also to be left in a relatively stronger position than our opponents in the end. As that is what the other side is also trying to achieve it seems obvious that we shall not be able to reach agreement in that way.

That was the background for those discussions. I think it was the wrong background. The background should have been the knowledge that at the United Nations organisation we were building up a different concept of securing peace. If we could have in the background some supranational armed force charged with the duty of enforcing international law that might well be a way of bringing about national disarmament and some genuinely secure peace.

I address my concluding remarks especially to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East. I hope he really is my friend. The very last thing we should do after this conference is to give way to cynicism and defeatism. That is the very last thing we should do. Let us not readily assume that Russia does not want an agreement equally with ourselves. Let us not readily assume that Russia is not concerned with security equally with ourselves. If this is not the right way of getting disarmament and security it is up to us—all of us—to try another way and yet another way until we can one day secure the abolition of national armaments.

I am quite sure that no one here can now accuse the Labour Party of being composed entirely of starry-eyed idealists, especially after the speeches of two of my hon. Friends this morning. Nevertheless, they have been salutory, because it is very often true that those who explore the possibility of ensuring peace fail to face acute and ugly facts, and so I am obliged to my hon. Friends who have brought us face to face with facts that emotion sometimes inclines me to evade.

On the other hand, there is evasion of another kind of which, I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East (Mr. D. Healey) has himself been guilty today. Facts are not always of so sombre a nature, and we are not always so suicidally inclined, as my hon. Friend seems to think. Otherwise the outlook for humanity at the present time would be melancholy in the extreme. There is such a thing as human reason. There is such a capacity as human good will, and although I do not place too high an estimate in regard to those two factors in the operation of human affairs, yet, nevertheless, they do operate sometimes powerfully so.

I say that because, underlying the argument of my hon. Friend that the present explorations of the possibilities of disarmament were more or less failures, was the assumption that so long as we had a vast mass influenced and, indeed, dominated by the Soviet Union one could do nothing about international disarmament, until either by force or by some other means the Soviet Union changed its point of view. I appreciate that because I think the cardinal weakness of the Communist sphere, approximately controlling one-third of the world, arises from a firm belief in its dogma as being the solution of all our evils and the conviction, therefore, that it must implement that dogma in practice.

On the other hand, I would point out that such a human error is not a new one. There have in the past been people wedded to dogma, theological and otherwise, which they have pursued and sought to impose on others. Sometimes they succeeded, but not indefinitely. In the course of time the attempts to impose dogmas have suffered erosion, steadily, subtly, but nevertheless definitely under the influence of other factors in human affairs. I apply that consideration to the Soviet Union. I deplore with others this blind identification of the human race with one particular dogma.

Nevertheless, I believe there are factors operating even now to modify this more than 30-years-old adhesion to that dogma. There is the factor of fear, a common fear afflicting the whole world at the present time. At this stage in the world's history there are other relevant factors inducing hope and not despair that have not arisen before at any other stage in the world's history. Never before in the history of mankind has there been such a wide agreement about the burden and menace of armaments as there is today. There have been in the past a consciousness of the burden of arms, and complaints, grievances and resentments at the burden of arms, but never before has there been such a widespread appreciation of the menace and burden of armaments as in our own time.

A second factor is this. Never before in the history of the human race has the race itself been threatened with complete destruction, and that factor affects all of us, no matter what ideology we may profess or the philosophy or religion we may hold. I am perfectly certain that the Russian peoples themselves, including their leaders, begin to appreciate this. The hydrogen bomb has exploded inside every ideology, and it is expecting too much to assume that the leaders of the Soviet world at the present time are unaware of the fact that if war comes it will devastate their régime, their amazing sociological experiment, quite as much as that of the world to which we prefer to give our loyalty. This, I believe, has been ignored very largely by my hon. Friend who has spoken in such a melancholy vein today.

I discern in the Report of the disarmament conference that met this year certain encouraging signs, by which I mean that there are indications in that document of an approach, however slow it may be, which I would describe as the human rather than the ideological approach towards this acute problem.

No one, of course, denies that the problem of disarmament by progressive stages is an acute, complex and a baffling one. It would be even if we had not this resistance on the part of the Soviet world. One has only to appreciate, for instance, what a progressive reduction of arms at this juncture would entail even if the Russian world did not exist. It would mean inevitably a tremendous amount of economic dislocation both here and in America.

That problem can, of couse, be met if only we begin systematically to divert the energy, the skills and the economic resources we have towards meeting the tremendous needs of the malnourished two-thirds of the world. It cannot be done instantaneously, it has to be prepared for; and we can prepare for it as much as we prepare for war. We could as well visualise the possibilities of constructive progressive disarmament as we visualise preparing for our mutual destruction. So I am not without hope.

The third factor is this. Surely it is a hopeful sign that the disarmament conference should have been held at all. At this point I, too, would also and very gladly pay my tribute to the work of the Minister of State in the conference and in preparing the Report. The Report and the work of the conference are a sign of encouragement. Surely it is better to proceed that way than otherwise, and surely it is better than merely saying we can do nothing at all about disarmament.

If we can get people to meet together to discuss these vital matters the needs of the world will be brought home to us clearly and sensitively, and we must welcome such meetings of human minds. I hope that in the days to come there will be more opportunities for meetings of not only those of the Western world but also with those with men belonging to the Soviet world, so that in thus coming together we may foster the exchange of thoughts, have meetings of minds, even if often there is frustration. Never is it truly futile; for the human mind is much greater than all the ideologies that come from it. It is on this that I pin my faith, and therefore I believe that the conference at Lancaster House recently was not without cumulative effect and influence.

It may be that there is little as yet apparent to support my faith in this respect. But what is the alternative?—tragic fatalism. Therefore, I do not be- lieve that we can do nothing even in present circumstances, and that because we must accept this monolithic tyranny, that there is no value in human contact with it. I will not accept it because I am convinced that some day, somehow, mankind will release itself from its present overlying burden of mass frustration and imposed ideologies. I therefore hope that is the note which the Minister will sound, for the world needs not a note of morbid fatalism but one of faith and hope if ever it is to achieve sanity and peace.

As I listened to some of the speeches today they brought to my mind an observation made by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede)—when Cain killed Abel he was just as dead as if an atomic bomb had been used. I think that that is a point which we might bear in mind when discussing these things.

There have been many proposals for disarmament and every one of them has proved futile. I believe that they will prove futile again because I believe that they are based on a fundamentally false premise. Man's desire to defend himself is the result of his insecurity. Armaments are not the cause of insecurity; they are its results. Where the world is unstable, armaments will be built up. When we get stability and confidence in frontiers, armaments will be reduced.

The instability which has caused war has been far more often in history the result of too few arms than of too many. That happened after the last war. We had a very insecure situation because we demobilised too quickly and the Russians did not. We have a vastly better security today and a vastly more stable world than existed when war broke out in Korea. That is because we have armed, because we have corrected that unbalance, and because we have given frontiers the look of security. There was not a war in Korea because the Americans had armed forces there; there was a war in Korea because the Americans had withdrawn their troops. There was very nearly a war on the frontiers of Europe for the same reason.

When I hear this talk of disarmament I am reminded of a story which was told about the last major disarmament con- ference. It was a description. "The cock looked at the eagle and said, 'Let us abolish talons.' The eagle looked at the lion and said, 'Let us abolish teeth.' The lion looked at the cock and said, 'Let us abolish spurs.' And then up spake the bear and said, 'Let us abolish all these things and have one great hug.'" That is not a bad description of a disarmament conference.

The power of survival of the more advanced communities lies in their technical superiority. If we disarm, then the more primitive community has more clubs than we have. Our security in the West lies in our technical superiority.

Nuclear disarmament is not available today. Conceivably it was at the time of the Baruch Plan, but now it does not require Oppenheimer or any one else to tell me that nuclear weapons can be concealed and that no nation would trust the other to have destroyed its pile. The reason that nuclear weapons will not be used, if they are not used, will be because both sides will be aware of the other's capacity to use them. Any defence which we have against nuclear weapons will be the knowledge of the other side that if they use theirs we should use ours.

That is where I come to the point which I wish to make: disarmament has invariably proved futile, but agreements as to the use of arms and weapons have proved most effective. They differ from disarmament in that they accept the reality of the existence of arms. Where we have three conditions, the rules of war work. They have saved the world a vast amount of suffering. Those three conditions are these: first, a mutual interest in the performance of the obligation undertaken; secondly, a sanction—that sanction being the capacity of both sides to retaliate in kind; and thirdly, a definition.

We have the mutual interest. It is to nobody's interest to annihilate each other's cities. We have the sanction, for we both have atomic bomb piles. What we do not have at the moment is the definition.

The Hague Convention provides that it is illegal to bombard cities behind the lines by any means. That requires re-definition. The profitable thing to do today is to re-negotiate the Hague Convention. We have all the conditions exist- ing today which can make the Convention a success—mutual interest and the existence of the sanction. All we require is the definition. We have the existing agreements upon which to work as a start. I urge the Minister to try to see whether something useful cannot be done on those lines.

I think everybody will agree that the small attendance is not a measure of the importance which attaches to the subject. In spite of the small attendance, we have had an extremely interesting debate in which there has been a certain amount of controversy, but not on party lines.

I will make a very brief reply because I am on record—perhaps too much on record—about these matters; and I can only say to hon. Members who felt that they needed to hold this debate that I must pay tribute to them for their patience and endurance. I thank them for the kind remarks which have been said about me personally.

If I am to speak briefly, it will not be possible for me to deal with all the points which have been raised, and I will not pursue the hon. Member for Leeds, South-East (Mr. D. Healey) into his conception of balanced forces and balanced disarmament. Dealing with his question about President Eisenhower's proposals, the President said a few days ago, in reply to a question, that he regretted the Russian refusal to take any part in these proposals, but he certainly did not wish the scheme to die. That is a statement which we most cordially endorse, although it is a great pity that the Soviet Union have found themselves unable to come into the scheme; because although it dealt only with a small part of the field, it might have engendered a degree of confidence which would have led to something bigger.

I turn next to our objectives in discussing disarmament. On the security aspect, I find myself very much on the side of the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney), the hon. Member for Leeds, South-East and the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) about the sense of security in the world today. There is a greater security in the world than there was four years ago; I do not think there is any doubt about that. Indeed, there is great force in the argument of the hon. and learned Member for Northampton.

But should we draw from that the conclusion that we should cease any disarmament efforts? I do not think so. I acknowledge that we cannot deal with disarmament in isolation. For any disarmament plan to work it must be accompanied by a general reduction in tension and the causes of tension, but I have always felt that if we were able to reach a measure of agreement on plans for disarmament, that of itself would begin to lower world tension. If we can manage to reach agreement between the two sides upon these matters, that of itself will help towards a solution of other problems.

As for Her Majesty's Government's position in this matter, I think we can claim that we have tried to give a lead in continuing these discussions and in trying to produce some results. The meetings in London were a result of our initiative and our desire to get the Disarmament Commission at work. As I think I have told the House previously, I felt that if we could divide the problem into three fields, we might come to an agreement. The first was to try to agree on the scope of the disarmament treaty—in other words, what we wanted to prohibit and what we wanted to reduce. And then from that proceed to try to agree on the extent of the reduction. If we can deal with that, we shall have done something.

We then should try to reach agreement on the general powers, functions and nature of the control organ. If we succeed in doing that, then the bringing into operation of any plan of disarmament would be made very much easier. The easiest thing to do is to try to agree on the scope of the treaty and then on the control organ; if we can do that, I think that the timing of the whole business would be easier to handle.

Unfortunately, we were not able to persuade the representatives of the Soviet Union really to discuss at all the paper on the scope of the treaty nor the paper on the control organ. Therefore, we had to proceed upon the Anglo-French proposals. I entirely endorse the tribute paid to M. Moch. We found that our minds had been working very much along the same lines independently, and the Anglo- French memorandum was the result of that work.

In this subject there are two basic principles which I feel we have to observe. First, that the treaty is comprehensive. I do not believe that the singling out of one particular weapon is going to add to security. As the Leader of the Opposition said on 5th April:

"The banning of one weapon exalts another, and so on down the scale, each time with perhaps a different balance of advantage to different States."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th April, 1954; Vol. 526, c. 40.]

I think it is true that the hydrogen bomb is more horrifying than its predecessor, and its predecessor more horrifying than the blockbuster, and so on. I do not think that there is much to choose between all these things when it comes to World War III. Civilisation is going to destroy itself whether or not the hydrogen bomb is banned. I think it is bound to end in the destruction of society as we know it. Therefore, I feel the principle of the scheme must be comprehensive. We have comparative agreement on that point. That is common ground. We must prohibit certain things, reduce other things, and we must have a system of international control.

The second point of principle is that the prohibitions and reductions must be effectively supervised and safeguarded. I think that if we have done nothing else in all these talks, we have narrowed the field of controversy between us. I think that we have brought into relief the differences between the Soviet Union and the Western countries. All these really lie in the timing, in the scope, and in the functions of the control organ. I think that is in itself a degree of progress.

The hon. Member for Leeds, South-East took a very pessimistic view about the capacity of the control organ to make things absolutely foolproof. That obviously is true, but I think that one has to decide whether one ceases to make any attempt for that reason. These frightful things have to be delivered as well as produced. In any case, if we are pretty confident that we can establish a system of control which will of itself break down the division between one half of the world and the other, we are making a contribution towards peace.

I feel that if we can get the Soviet Union and the other countries concerned to accept the kind of system of international control that we have in mind, that of itself would make recourse to war most unlikely. It is a tremendous thing to ask. It does mean a totally different conception of national sovereignty, and it means that countries have to submit all their industrial processes to be under the supervision and examination of an international body of people, who, I hope, would be of outstanding qualities and qualifications. That means a totally different conception of national sovereignty.

I think that this is most important. In the paper itself we suggest managerial control which is virtually the same as the Lillienthal proposals, which were unacceptable to the Russians. The Russians in their paper say that they accept continuous inspection. Would the right hon. Gentleman say what is the difference between continuous inspection on the one hand and managerial control, if that means something less than ownership?

Surely these are two fundamentally different ideas—complete ownership and management by an international body and the international body simply being permitted to inspect. To meet the difference between these points of view, I hoped to put forward the idea that there should be something which I described as akin to managerial control. By that I mean that in each place dealing with atomic production there should be in parallel with the actual management a unit or cell provided by the international organisation. Although they would not actually take the decisions, they would know exactly what decisions were taken.

I know that it is a very difficult conception to explain, but I think that it is the only way of bridging that particular difference, and it means that on every decision that is taken by the national management there has to be also in on these decisions the international control organ representatives. There are very serious practical difficulties, which anyone can see. In all this problem it is very easy to see the difficulties.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman who opened this debate suggested, with regard to the Anglo-French proposals, that we ought to go a little further to try and meet the Soviet point of view. I would remind him of what I said when introducing the proposals. I repeat the way in which we have sought to meet the Soviet Union point of view. First, our conception includes specific provision for the total prohibition of nuclear weapons, and secondly, the plan provides that conventional armaments and nuclear weapons shall be dealt with together. Thirdly, when the treaty comes into effect those who have ratified it are committed from that moment to a process which ends, and is bound to end, in comprehensive disarmament.

Fourthly, we have made it abundantly clear that disarmament, and not just disclosure and verification, is our essential objective. These are four objectives to meet the objections which the Soviet Union have repeatedly put to the proposals which we have put forward at previous meetings.

I ask hon. Members to pay attention to the point that in the Anglo-French proposals, once they have been ratified, a process begins which is not within the capacity of an individual country to hold up without repudiating the treaty itself. In that way the timing is decided on by the international control organ. One would have thought that if this were agreed and ratified, the people of all countries would have confidence that this process is bound to end in disarmament.

I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will associate himself with what Ambassador Patterson said. Surely the Anglo-French proposals are not inflexible and are but the basis of discussion, and there would be readiness to modify them by agreement.

I am coming to that particular point which the right hon. and learned Gentleman has mentioned. He suggests that we should agree to prohibit the use of the hydrogen bomb except in retaliation. The trouble is that we should not be there to retaliate. I think that the most we can do along that line is to agree not to use it except in defence against aggression. Aggression is the thing which we seek to stop. I think that until we have a comprehensive scheme, internationally supervised, for eliminating the use of atomic weapons, prohibition except in retaliation would simply add to insecurity and not diminish it.

Then the right hon. and learned Gentleman suggested that we should agree to a ban on the manufacture of nuclear weapons as soon as the control organ reports that it is ready to carry out its responsibilities. That is really very near to what is in the plan itself. We have said that after the constitution and positioning of the control organ, which shall be carried out within a specified time, certain measures shall enter into effect. Really, that is a standstill. Then, as soon as the control organ reports that it is able effectively to enforce them, the following measures shall enter into effect: (a) one-half of the agreed reductions of conventional armaments and armed forces shall take effect; (b) on completion of (a) the manufacture of all kinds of nuclear weapons and all other prohibited weapons shall cease.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked whether there was any flexibility in our proposals. Certainly there is. Although percentages and timings are given in the White Paper, I do not suggest that they are put forward as the laws of the Medes and Persians. The difficulty about the whole thing was that we could not get any process of negotiation whatever on the plan which we put forward. I do not accept that as a final position; I do not accept defeat on this. I do not think we can accept defeat upon it.

My own view is that the Soviet Union has not moved an inch to meet us since I began to take part in the disarmament discussions at the end of 1951. We have tried to meet the Soviet objections and have tried to get understanding, but although the Soviet Union has not yet moved to meet us, I do not give up hope and I do not despair.

What we have to do now is to try to mobilise world opinion on this matter. We have produced a blue print for disarmament which in spite of all its incredible difficulties, is workable and could be made effective. We must now present our case on that to the world and permit an interval of time for the Soviet Union to consider fully the implications of our discussions and the exact position in which we now are.

I do not for one moment believe that the Soviet refusal to answer my questions about the control organ is necessarily a final decision. We have got to mobilise world opinion, which, I think, may in time have its effect upon the rulers in Soviet Russia. After all, our interests in these matters are the same. Whether a Russian, an American or an Englishman, one wants to survive. There is that great common interest between all the countries of the world, and I believe that time may induce a reconsideration by the Soviet Union of the present position. I assure the House that at the forthcoming meeting of the United Nations we shall do everything we can to concentrate world opinion upon this matter.

May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman one question, which I have put to him in earlier debates? Would the Government consider asking the Assembly to give the Commission an instruction to prepare proposals in the form of a definite draft treaty, whether or not the commission is fully agreed on all the clauses of that treaty? Then it will be shown to the world that the technical difficulties—which are very real, and to which some of my hon. Friends have drawn attention today—can, in fact, be solved.

The right hon. Gentleman has many times brought forward this point of view. I have frequently said that I am in general agreement with him. I think he will see in the form of the memoranda tabled at the Sub-Committee that we are gradually moving towards his conception. But it is important, if we can, to move together and to try to keep as large a measure of agreement as possible. I certainly do not despair of there being in draft one day a disarmament treaty, but it would be a mistake to force the process. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be content with the way in which we are moving towards something which will become a draft disarmament treaty in time. More important than that, of course, is to get agreement.

May I remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman of one point in my speech? Will he not say a word as to whether the only way to break this deadlock, which he admits has existed throughout the recent discussions, is by raising it at the highest level and asking Prime Ministers to attend the next meeting of the General Assembly to see whether something cannot be done to break the deadlock?

I do not control the movements of the leaders of countries, and that is not for me to pronounce upon. I am not sure whether failure to reach agreement at a very high level might not be a great setback and whether it is not better to go on with this rather patient work of clarifying positions and continuing the process of education. What the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said is well worthy of consideration. All I can say is that whoever represents this country at the United Nations next time will seek to concentrate attention upon these matters.

I wish to raise a question which has been raised in the House on many occasions. I make no apology for the fact that it is a question of which the House is well aware, nor do I make any apology that I am aware that the Ministry has the matter in hand. But I cannot help feeling that it is one of those things that has been in hand for rather too long.

The Minister, in May, indicated that he was asking local authorities to look into the requirements that they made for qualifications for applicants to their housing lists. I am also aware that my right hon. Friend has subsequently asked the Housing Management Sub-Committee to go into this matter and that the Sub-Committee has had a number of meetings. I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, who is here today, will be able to say, if it is not premature, what has happened at those meetings and whether any conclusions have been reached.

The question is that of the members of Her Majesty's Forces who, on return to civilian life, find that they cannot get even a place on the waiting lists of local authorities. That is a serious predicament for anybody. The reason that people leaving the Forces cannot get a place on a waiting list is that local authorities will not accept anybody who does not have a residential qualification extending over a number of years. These qualifications vary, but generally speaking the average is about three years. It must be obvious to everyone concerned that if a man is involved in an organisation like the Regular Forces, with commitments all over the world, to have a residential qualification of any period of time before he leaves the Service is an impossibility.

My main object on this occasion is to ventilate the problem and to bring out some very clear difficulties which confront members of the Forces. I ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to say in his reply how he stands and what action he thinks can be taken. I am fully aware that it would be out of order on the Adjournment to discuss legislation, but it will do no harm to review this whole problem and to see whether there is any hope of an early solution. This has been going on since 1945 and it is now very nearly 1955. That is a very long time for an obvious problem to go unsolved.

The nature of Regular service in Her Majesty's Forces makes it quite impossible for any Regular members of those Forces to have residential qualification for inclusion in any local authority housing list. We cannot change that situation because that is the nature of the service, so that we are up against a special case right away. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War has remarked on numerous occasions, the Government and the previous Administration have been very much concerned at the situation which is created by our widespread commitments all over the world which involve our Forces being great distances from these shores, with very few of the Regular Forces here at all. So the situation is aggravated even more than it would be if we had our forces established here and there were some chance of the families being able to claim residential qualifications through the serving man living at home and going to the barracks to do his service.

Again, because of the nature of their service, many members of the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force cannot know until they almost retire when they are coming out of the Forces. In many cases they are likely to need further employment and often they cannot estimate at a sufficiently early date for them to register on the housing lists where they will live or when they come out.

From the cases which have come to my notice—and I can only go on cases which have been sent to me; I have had one or two from hon. Members opposite, to which I will refer in a moment—it seems that even if it were possible to make a decision to retire at an early date and put in an application for a house, the local authority will not take any notice of the application. It says in effect, "You have not got any residential qualifications, and we cannot entertain your application." So a situation arises where members of the Regular Forces have no prospects for housing when they come out of the Forces. That must have a very serious effect upon recruitment.

I do not want in this debate on this day to go into that aspect of the case at any length. Most hon. Members will agree with me when I say—this is no party point—that if we are going to have any weakening of the Regular element in our Forces upon which the whole of our defence system is built, then that system is going to be in jeopardy. Therefore, it is a national responsibility to see that the Regular element, which is the basis of the whole system because it encourages voluntary recruitment and is responsible for training the National Service element, is given a life in the Service which is as satisfactory in every respect as are conditions and prospects in other forms of civilian occupation.

That is the fundamental principle upon which we must insist in this House, because if that state of affairs does not exist it will be found that the Regular Services are unable to attract men to serve in them because of the attractions of competing activities. Once that happens we shall have a very serious problem before us. I hope my hon. Friend will realise—as I am sure he does—the problems facing the Service Ministers in this regard.

Under certain circumstances it has been possible for families to obtain housing qualifications, but again that depends on the decision of the local authorities and often of the wife and family remaining at home while the soldier goes abroad. That is not a satisfactory situation, because it splits the family. Here are two clear objections to the present position of Service life. It may not bring any future housing prospects for the Regular Service man; or, alternatively, to get any such prospects he has to be prepared to split his family. I am satisfied that those are not conditions which ought to be tolerated and certainly they are not conditions which are conducive to encouraging men to join the Regular Forces.

The Regular Forces can do very little to solve this problem out of their own resources. As everyone knows, the married quarters situation is very serious indeed. I have studied this since the question was first raised, and I find that in the Navy only 10 per cent. of the personnel can obtain married quarters by reason of the fact that the Navy does not normally live on land.

Hear, hear.

I note the applause of my hon. Friend at my statement, but something which has escaped the attention of his Department is just how large is this problem in the Navy. There is a tendency to suggest that it is not so great because there are not so many people in that Service. I hope that, in my simple way, I have disposed of that argument.

There is another matter with which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War is concerned, as is my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Air, and that is when families have been occupying married quarters and it is necessary for them to get out of the premises because the serving man has either died or left the Service. In some cases they cannot do that because there is no, alternative accommodation available, and so an eviction order has eventually to be served to get possession of the married quarters.

The evicted people are then thrown upon the mercies of the local authorities, who generally state, "These people are the responsibility of the Service Departments and we can do nothing for them." That means the family is thrown out into the gutter. That is no way to treat people who have given their lives to the service of their country.

I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I am not here seeking any form of privilege or asking for exceptions to be made, but merely that we should create the conditions which are appropriate to the particular type of life that our Regular Service men have to live. It is not a good thing for Regular Army recruitment or for any of the Services that there should be publicity given to a series of eviction cases of people occupying married quarters, even though the Services have got to regain possession of these premises for those who need them more than those who are being evicted.

I should like now to turn to the position of Her Majesty's Government and of the previous Administration. They have both had to face this problem. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government appointed a sub-committee, of which the chairman was my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. H. Brooke). Here may I say that I am very pleased to see him in his place on the Treasury Bench, where he is sitting in view of his merited promotion. I assume he will now have to relinquish the chairmanship of that sub-committee and I hope his successor will bring to it the knowledge and the enthusiasm which I know my hon. Friend must have done.

That sub-committee has been dealing with a problem which has existed for a long time. The Minister of Housing and Local Government is aware of it and he sent to the local authorities Circular 8/52 in which he asked them to co-operate by making a relaxation in dealing with the problem. It was a well-worded and diplomatic circular, but it has not had any effect, and that is why I am raising this matter today.

I can understand the point of view of the local authorities who have a considerable housing problem on their hands. It is true that my right hon. Friend, through his admirable record, has improved that situation to a certain degree, but the local authorities have people on their very doorstep who can worry them every day, and so they are a little inclined to give those people more attention than the regular service man who is not in a position to come personally.

Will the hon. Gentleman also bear in mind the special position of boroughs, such as Woolwich, which are garrison towns and which obviously cannot cope with the problem of the ex-Service man requiring a house?

The hon. Gentleman is perfectly right. Now I want to read to the House a letter sent to me by the hon. Lady the Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock). I quote this because it shows clearly that this is no party issue and I am glad that it is not. This letter typifies the problem and the atttitude of the Service man leaving the Services. This man writes:

"I have just finished with the Army after serving 21 years Regular service. I applied for a house … and I was told that I could not be considered as I had not lived in the place for the past five years … I am beginning to wonder if it was worth staying in the Army."

That is typical of letters which we all receive. That man has obviously been a keen soldier and an asset to the Army. It is not healthy that men of that calibre should have such a reaction or that conditions should exist to cause such a reaction.

I have another letter here from a local authority which reads:

"In reply to your letter of the 22nd ultimo, I can confirm that service in the Armed Forces is not now awarded points under the Council's points scheme."

There was also a very good letter recently in one of our national newspapers by a member of a local government housing committee which confirms everything I have been saying this morning.

The Government have taken certain action but very little has been done for the men in the Forces and they are still suffering from this problem. There is a saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I am told that it does not apply in Whips' offices and it certainly does not apply to men serving overseas or in the Regular Forces as far as local authorities are concerned; in fact, the more appropriate phrase so far as they are concerned is "out of sight, out of mind." These men are subject to that age-old activity of "passing the buck." From my experience of dealing with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and with local authorities, I am satisfied that this is part of that game, because they can tell these men that they have the Services to look after them.

My right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government is in a predicament because he, quite rightly, believes that the local authorities should have autonomy and that housing should be a local government responsibility. That is a correct attitude, but if there is such rigidity on the part of local authorities that it penalises a certain element in our society which cannot look after itself, something must be done. I would like to have an indication from my hon. Friend that something other than committee work is being done. It is easy to set up a committee to deal with a difficult problem and then it is shelved for several months or even years and everybody's conscience is satisfied. Well, my conscience is not satisfied and I hope that my hon. Friend will say clearly that the sub-committee, of which the hon. Member for Hampstead was the chairman, has not been engaged in a major shelving operation, but that we shall see the same expedition applied to this problem as was shown by the committee which was concerned with Members' salaries.

I realise fully that there are other competitive elements in society who have just as good or even better claims than the people in the Forces. However, they have an opportunity of getting on to the housing lists and some hope eventually of getting houses. That is denied to members of the Forces. It is no good saying that they chose to be Regulars and that therefore they must take what they get. That is an idiotic approach and I am certain that my hon. Friend will not adopt it, although it is adopted by certain people with whom the Armed Forces are not particularly popular except when they are needed, and then they are very popular.

It is essential that the Services should be in a healthy and effective state, and the morale of the troops cannot be good if they are worried by the conditions in which their families are living. I know that that is not the responsibility of my hon. Friend who is to reply to this debate, but it is the responsibility of my right hon. Friends the Service Ministers; but they, in their turn, are told that housing is not their problem. Therefore, ob- viously, we must have agreement and action.

Does not the hon. Member agree that the need for action is still more urgent in view of the thousands of men and their families who will come back from Suez in the near future?

It does not necessarily follow, because in certain respects they may well be involved elsewhere, but the hon. and gallant Member makes a good point and, of course, there will be an accentuation of the problem.

We do not ask for any particular privilege. We are not suggesting that because a man is in the Armed Forces he should have priority. That would not be suggested by members of the Armed Forces themselves. It is admitted that under certain conditions Service men, certainly in the early years of their lives, often have a better time than do civilians. It is a good life, but it is no use having a good life at the beginning and a bad life at the end. We do not ask for privilege or preferential treatment of any kind. What those of us who are concerned with the interests of the Forces demand is that there should be justice. We do not look upon this as a mechanical, military problem, but as a human problem. Members of the Forces are human beings just as much as are their civilian colleagues.

I earnestly hope that my hon. Friend will indicate that he not only recognises the problem but, with his right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, will do something to bring all those concerned together at an early date to produce some action, in order to ensure that those who serve in the Regular Forces of the Crown, who are essential to the basis of all our defence system, should have the same rights and opportunities as their fellows in civilian life.

I am sure that both sides of the House feel indebted to the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Ian Harvey) for raising this important question in such a clear and convincing way. I should like to expand one section of the hon. Member's speech, with reference to the position of ex-Service men who are evicted from married quarters at the expiry of their term of service. I have raised this serious problem with more than one Ministry from time to time and I share the hope of the hon. Member that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government will be able to give us some concrete facts as to what he is doing to overcome it.

The hon. Member for Harrow, East read us a letter. I should like to read a similar letter, one of several which I have had recently from my own constituency which, being a garrison town, is in a special position. My constituent writes:

"On behalf of my five children, wife and self, I take this liberty of appealing to you with the utmost urgency on the question of housing. I am an ex-Regular soldier having served 22 years 75 days in the Royal Artillery. … I am registered for housing purposes with Woolwich Borough Council and the L.C.C. Though registered as above, neither council will assist me where accommodation is concerned until my five children, wife and self are evicted from War Office Married Quarters at the above address.

We (my wife and self) have tramped and cycled hundreds of miles in the London area and suburban districts, spending also a huge amount of money, fares, shoe leather, etc., with no success in any quarter. Therefore, Sir, this is my humble request to consider whether you can help us in our plight and so prevent my family becoming homeless, unwanted and a parted family with 100 per cent. disillusionment in front of us.

Woolwich Housing Department have told my wife and self that they cannot do anything for us, and that we come under the County Social Welfare. My wife and I went to the Social Welfare and were eventually given the address of Ladywell Institution (Workhouse). We were told of the various charges, the way of living, etc. (communal) and eventually advised very strongly to avoid going to such an institution by the acting Senior Officer because it is not a fit place for people like ourselves …"

I make no comment about this, but he concludes by saying:

"After serving my country honourably for 22 years and 75 days my family and I are to be degraded."

This is typical of several letters that I have received in recent months.

Woolwich is in a special situation and it cannot be expected that one borough council can tackle the problem in an area where there are huge barracks to which ex-Service men are brought as their con- tracts expire. Hundreds of them come to Woolwich and they necessarily have to be evicted in due course from married quarters. It is absurd to say that I must persuade the council to do something about this problem.

In fact, Woolwich Borough Council has been more generous than the council which the hon. Member for Harrow, East quoted. Woolwich Council has on its lists and has accepted responsibility for a man whose only connection with the borough was that 20 years ago he joined the Army at Woolwich. Ever since then he has been in India. In spite of that, Woolwich Council takes the liberal view and accepts responsibility for rehousing him. A large number of councils do not go anywhere near as far as that.

It is false to blame local authorities. This is a difficult question on which the Government must make up their mind and have a policy. I want to put one suggestion to the Minister. What about the new towns in this connection? I cannot help feeling that there is a case where the Government have control over the allocation of housing. I should like the Minister to say whether it is not possible to give ex-Service men who are evicted from married quarters some extra possibility of going into a new town.

There is no question that at the moment ex-Service men who have been evicted make great efforts to find houses. I have had the following letter from another of my constituents who has been evicted:

"It might be of interest to you that I visited four new towns before I was released from the R.A.F. In all of them I got the same reply to my inquiries. The substance of the reply was that if I obtained employment from one of the firms which had opened in the new town I would be allocated a house within a limited period of time. This period varied from three months at Stevenage to nine months at Crawley and Welwyn Garden City. I was, however, unable to find suitable employment at a new town and so could not qualify for a house."

It is true that at the moment ex-Service men who have connections with Greater London are admitted side by side with any other citizen to the new towns if they have a job. That is not nearly enough. A man whose family is evicted from married quarters places a special responsibility upon the Government for his rehousing.

There are many tradesmen in the Army. Many who are evicted from married quarters are skilled in a trade. Would it not be possible for the Minister of Labour to take a register of skilled tradesmen in the Army so that automatically they should be registered in the new towns and when they are evicted from married quarters they should automatically have a chance of going into the new towns with a job and thus overcome what is a very serious problem at the present time?

My hon. Friend is putting forward a very interesting argument, but I should like him to deal with the fact that in the case of the new towns as a rule it is a question of transferring from the old areas in which there is overcrowding to a new town and transferring certain industries. Therefore, we have to cater more or less for key workers in those industries before dealing with others. I should like my hon. Friend to deal with that aspect of the problem.

I appreciate the point of view of the new towns, but what I am suggesting is that among the ex-Service men evicted from married quarters there will be many tradesmen who, if registered by the Ministry of Labour earlier, could on their eviction automatically be found work and housing in the new towns suitable to the key industries to which my hon. Friend the Member for Droylsden (Mr. W. R. Williams) referred.

It might be possible to go further and find some system to help ex-Service men who had not had the same chances as civilians for qualifying for homes in the new towns, for the reason given by the hon. Member for Harrow, East, as the timing of their eviction is such a problem for them. If a civilian wants to move into a new town he can choose his time and fix everything, get his house and new job, and then leave his old job. For the ex-Service man it happens the other way round; he has a hard date fixed for the end of his work. It is infinitely more difficult to get a new job and a new house when one's present job comes to an end on a specified date.

For all those reasons the ex-Service man is in a difficult position. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will give an assurance about this difficult matter, which is worrying people in Woolwich. I hope that he will give a satisfactory answer to what has been said.

I had no intention whatever of intervening in the debate, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) and the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Ian Harvey) will pardon me making one or two observations which appear relevant to the matter. There is no need for me, as an old ex-Service man, to say that I have very great sympathy with the case which has been put forward. I believe it is time that local authorities looked at the problem in a practical commonsense way. They should not show bias in one way or another but recognise the simple fact that these meritorious people, who have been away for a number of years, must be rehabilitated in some way or other. Part of that rehabilitation is the provision of houses where they can settle down with their families for the rest of their working lives.

I cannot follow my hon. Friend all the way in what he said. I think what he suggested would create many problems in the new towns if we sought to mix the various issues concerned. I cannot agree that whenever civilians move from one part of the country to another they automatically find new jobs and new homes. One of the big problems today is that we would be able to get workers to go to industries where they are needed if at the same time we could assure them of homes.

What the hon. Member is now saying is absolutely right, but would he agree that if a man is in possession of a home, and wishes to move to another area, there is something to be said for the local authority concerned arranging an exchange and that that is quite impossible in the case of the Service man?

I would only go part of the way with the hon. Member because, obviously, the amount of exchanging of houses is very limited indeed. Perhaps, in a big problem like this, it is quite negligible. The suggestion of my hon. Friend that civilian workers, in a miraculous way, find houses whenever they move from one part of the country to another does not coincide with my experience—

In the new towns?

In the new towns, old towns, or anywhere else. This is not only a problem for Service men but for workers in almost every industry. I should like to get to grips with this problem by suggesting some preparatory work on the part of the ex-Service man himself, on the part of the unit to which he belongs and of the Army as a whole.

In the first place, one has to be careful to see that an ex-Service man is not making application for a new house in 101 different towns. I have seen plenty of evidence when dealing with cases of ex-Service men that a man puts down his name for five or six different towns. Obviously, that is quite unfair because no ordinary civilian is entitled to put his name down except in the area in which he is working and has been residing for a number of years.

I think that within a matter of two or three years from when the man is to come out of the Service the Service authorities ought to interview him. The welfare officer in the unit in which he is serving should approach the man and ask what provision he is making to accommodate and rehabilitate himself and his family. The man should then make up his mind, if he can, as to what area he is desirous of living in at the end of his service. If he goes to town A the Minister ought to enforce—by regulation if necessary on the local authority—that the man should have the same right of having his name on the housing list of that authority as anyone permanently residing in that area.

That would throw such a burden on towns and councils, such as Woolwich Borough Council, which are garrison places as they would have far more than their share of applications.

No, I think my hon. Friend has rather mistaken the position, if I may say so with respect. As a rule he is dead right, and I hesitate to cross swords with him, but I think that on this matter I am fairly sound. I should imagine that, although Woolwich is a place from which people are discharged and to which they may come for the last few years of their service before actually being discharged, normally the bulk of those people come from places distributed all over the country. A number may wish to retire there for sentimental reasons, although I could not find a sentimental reason for remaining in Woolwich.

However, some people have a sort of emotional feeling like that, but I imagine that the bulk of these people would go elsewhere. If I were one of them I would go to Wales, or Droylsden, as places in which I am more interested. There must be an obligation somewhere to put these people on to some housing list and to put them on that list with the full rights enjoyed by everyone else on it. In so far as the hon. Member for Harrow, East has something like that in mind, I agree with him entirely. I cannot see why any local authority or local residents anywhere should take serious exception to a suggestion like that.

The suggestions of the hon. Member are most helpful and sympathetic. He ought to know that military authorities go a very long way, in various instructions to the troops, to make sure that they know what they can do in regard to getting on to housing lists. Whether the men do it or not is another matter. Would not the hon. Member think that a fair consideration would be that every Service man should be entitled to be put on the housing list either of the town of his birth or the town from which he enlisted?

No, dealing with the second point first, I do not think I would want to limit the Service man in that way. My experience is that in nine cases out of 10 during the course of his service in the Armed Forces a man pairs up with a young woman. Possibly he is a Welshman, who meets a girl from Scotland and, for reasons best known to himself, decides to go to Scotland to live. Therefore, the proposition that he should live in the town of his birth is no good to him.

When these ex-Service men are making application to the local authorities during the time they are serving in the Forces, their applications should go to the commanding officer. Not only should the commanding officer take an interest; he should convey the application of the Service man to the local authority of the man's choice. So far as I can see that will have two effects: first, it will ensure that the local authority takes notice of the application and that until the commanding officer is assured of that he will not leave the authority alone; and, secondly, it assures the local authority that a Service man is not registering himself for housing accommodation in various parts of the country at the same time.

I am sure that the House will be most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Ian Harvey) for raising this subject and for dealing with it in such a persuasive and lucid way. He began by saying that he made no apology for raising it, and I do not think that anyone would ask him to do so. This is, as everyone who has spoken in this brief debate has said, a great human problem; indeed, anything connected with homes is a great human problem.

May I say that it was as agreeable to me as it was astonishing to discover that the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew), and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East had on this occasion found something on which they could agree. I never thought that I should see the day when that would happen, but curious things happen in this House. It is probably even more surprising that I find myself largely in agreement with both of them.

I think that my hon. Friend has raised this topic in order to give publicity to the particular cases he mentioned. Before I answer him I should like to answer a point made by the hon. Member for Droylsden (Mr. W. R. Williams), who was born in Wales and represents an English constituency. He made sensible suggestions as to what the War Office ought to do. I should like to tell him what is the system adopted at present.

The position is explained to soldiers, who are advised and helped in making applications to local housing authorities, and unsuccessful applications are followed up. My hon. Friend, who follows all that is happening about the Army Council with great interest, will probably know, from Army Council Instruction No. 273 of 1951, that all the staffs—commands, districts and units—were given the task of assisting soldiers in making applications to local housing authorities.

In March, 1954, an Army Council letter was issued to all commands asking commanders to ensure that all married soldiers should be made aware of the difficulty of the problem, the correct method of application to local housing authorities and the assistance available to them through the officers of the R.A.E.C. District and command staff have the duty to follow up all the applications made by soldiers to local housing authorities which are refused. Cases of hardship or difficulty are referred to the War Office which, in turn, sends them to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. It is our duty then to take up the individual cases with the local authority concerned. To reinforce what I have just said, I would say that if any hon. Gentleman has a case which he thinks is one of hardship he should write to me, and I will make absolutely certain that it is gone into.

Having said that, I would say that I have to answer, usually in these Adjournment debates and on Motions, about many facets of housing. A few days ago there was the question of requisitioned houses. Sometimes there is great hardship to the owner of requisitioned property and sometimes to the tenant who has to move. If there are thousands of families who want homes, and there are not sufficient homes to go round, there are bound to be some cases of hardship. It is relatively easy to pick out a case that deserves sympathy and to say that the person concerned should have a house. What is required is to say in which case a person should not have a house.

I think that the local authorities, which I have criticised on many occasions, and which I hope I shall continue to criticise if I think it necessary to do so, have by and large operated their housing lists with scrupulous fairness according to local circumstances. They may not have worked out their points system as we think best, but I know that some local authority housing committees sit late at night discussing what is best and, by and large, they have hammered out systems which give reasonable satisfaction.

The problem which we are now discussing arises in this way. Local authorities are, by statute, responsible for the management and control of their houses, including the selection of tenants. They are required to give reasonable preference to persons who occupy insanitary or overcrowded houses, and also to those who have large families or are living in unsatisfactory conditions. Local authorities have to look at all these cases as well as those of ex-Service men, and they have to adopt some form of selection.

In the early days after the war most local authorities insisted on a residential qualification, partly because of the pressure of the people at home, who said, "We must have houses first." I can say, from my experience at the Ministry, that many modifications have been made giving greater preference to ex-Service men than existed in those days. I do not say that the position is perfect, and I agree with all that my hon. Friend said about ex-Service men.

He said that this question has been in hand for too long a time, and he quoted a circular which my right hon. Friend sent out, and asked what was the attitude of the Ministry. From that circular it is quite clear that the Minister is anxious that ex-Service men should be given an equal but not better chance than the local residents. That is the policy which we in the Ministry want local authorities to adopt. We do not say that ex-Service men should be given preference over local inhabitants; we say they should not be prejudiced by reason of their service. I think that is a fair statement of policy.

In paragraph 2 of circular No. 8 of 1952, issued to local authorities on 31st January, 1952, it is stated:

"Many of these serving men have no established association with any particular district. If, therefore, a rigid residential qualification is imposed by the local authority of the area in which they wish to settle after discharge they would, because of their service, be prejudiced in their applications for housing accommodation. The Minister"—

I underline this sentence—

"is confident that this is a position which local authorities will be anxious to avoid and that they will agree that these applicants should be given equal priority with others for consideration on the basis of relative housing need."

I think that the policy which my right hon. Friend has tried to get over to the local authorities will command general agreement in the House.

My hon. Friend said that not all local housing authorities are following that policy. I will come to that point in a moment. A large number of local authorities have amended their points schemes as a result of this circular, and in written evidence given to the Sub-Committee of the Central Housing Advisory Committee, local authorities have quoted cases in which they have altered their system. The circular has, therefore, had some effect. I think that in most cases, but perhaps not in all, that hon. Members would like, they have responded by waiving residential tests for ex-Service men altogether, or by waiving the normal test provided that the man or his wife has had some previous connection with the area. That type of relaxation is quite common, particularly in London.

What further action can the Minister take? First, we in the Ministry would like any Member to send us the details of difficult individual cases which are not satisfactorily dealt with. It is then our job to get in touch with the local authorities on a friendly basis to see whether we can ask them to right the wrong, if wrong there be. I have never yet—speaking from memory—known of one case in which the local authority has not gone some way towards meeting the wishes of the Ministry, even though the local authority is autonomous.

I do not wish to be controversial, but I have here a note about an R.A.F. case. I do not wish to mention the authority, because I think that would be invidious, but this local authority refused point blank to waive their residential qualification.

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I deal with a considerable volume of correspondence on this matter. I was quoting from memory when I said that though I could quote hundreds of cases where local authorities had acted, I could not remember any case where a local authority had refused.

But I stand corrected about the particular case which the hon. Gentleman has mentioned. If he will send the particulars to me we will have another look at it. Although it might have been turned down the first time, there is no reason why we should not try again. There may have been an alteration in the circumstances or in the composition of the elected representatives, which may be for the better—or possibly for the worse. But my right hon. Friend would like hon. Members to send to the Ministry details of individual cases.

Having sent out a circular which had some effect, but still meeting a number of difficult cases, my right hon. Friend decided that he would like the backing of the Central Housing Advisory Committee before taking any further action. The Committee is a statutory body, which has been set up to advise the Minister. It has a Housing Management Sub-Committee which has been meeting under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. H. Brooke), who has now been appointed Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and whom I should like to congratulate on his appointment. He has rendered great service on that Sub-Committee for a number of years. The Sub-Committee includes among its members representatives of local authorities—Mr. Stamps, the Chairman of the London County Council Housing Committee, a housing manager from Swansea, and others, all of whom are experts in this matter. A unanimous report from the Sub-Committee would carry great weight.

The Sub-Committee has started work on its inquiry. It is collecting evidence from local authorities and organisations representing Service men and ex-Service men, including the Soldiers, Sailors and Air Force Association and the British Legion, and it is also in touch with the Service Departments. I will send to the Sub-Committee a copy of the OFFICIAL REPORT of this debate so that the suggestions made today may be considered. The Sub-Committee is trying to work quickly.

In one of his—I will not say dogmatic statements—but in one of his rather over-emphasised statements, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East said that you go to a committee if you want a thing shelved. I do not think that my right hon. Friend can be accused of shelving decisions about anything. This Committee was not set up so that the matter should be shelved, but rather so that the evidence might be sifted.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead told me this morning that the Sub-Committee held its third meeting yesterday. On that occasion he called the Sub-Committee together, but then had to resign because of his new appointment. I do not think that the House would expect my right hon. Friend to decide what he will do until the Committee has reported. I hope that we shall receive the report in the near future, and I am sure that the conclusions of the Committee will be well worthy of study.

The hon. Member for Woolwich. East (Mr. Mayhew) referred to the difficulties of ex-Service men who were evicted from married quarters and I agree that it is a hardship. He wanted to know if the new towns would give preferential treatment to ex-Service men. The hon. Member for Droylsden dealt with some of the objections to that suggestion. The new towns were designed to meet an entirely different purpose. The London new towns were designed to take people from the London region who cannot otherwise be housed, as an alternative to allowing Greater London to sprawl still further. That is the policy of the present Government, as it was of the previous Government. The first essential, therefore, is that only Londoners should be able to move to such new towns where work is available for them. Any encroachment on that principle would wreck- the original purpose.

Since 1951, arrangements have been made to enable Regular ex-Service men previously living in London, who secure employment in a new town, to be eligible for a house there. I think that my right hon. Friend replied to that effect to a Question put by the hon. Member for Woolwich, East on 6th July. It would be impossible for the new towns to take in a large number of ex-Service men since the bulk of the housing accommodation there must go to people who come from London with their own firms. But if an ex-Service man can find work in a new town he would be considered for a house by the Development Corporations sympathetically.

When the Army welfare authorities interview these men and draw attention to the problems of rehousing, will they also draw the attention of the soldier to the necessity of registering and finding work in the new towns well in advance?

I cannot speak for what individual welfare officers will do, but I will send a note to my opposite number in the Service Departments advocating that the suggestion be carried out. Perhaps it could be included in the next instruction sent out from the Service Departments. I agree that Service men should be warned well in advance of the difficulties and the alternatives. They must be given time to consider these, because if they are told at the last moment they tend to get into difficulties and do nothing because of the shortage of time.

I hope that I have been able to assure the House that my right hon. Friend intends to pursue this matter vigorously, and that, short of taking over the allocations from local authorities—which is a matter to which I cannot now refer—he has done everything which he could be expected to do.

I am obliged to my hon. Friend for the trouble and care that he has taken over this matter, and also for the assurance he has given that the evidence is being sifted. But it would seem from what has been said today that one thing is obvious, and does not require the attention of a committee. It is that so long as the residential qualification applies, the position of ex-Service men is impossible. Will my hon. Friend commend to the Minister that he should negotiate with local authorities to eliminate the application of this residential qualification to ex-Service men?

That is what my right hon. Friend hoped that local authorities would do—

But they have not done it.

Not all of them have done it, but if this Committee, which includes representatives of local authorities will reinforce that suggestion it will place the Minister in a very strong position. I think that the conclusions of the Committee should be closely studied, and I can assure the House that we shall take all steps possible to see that local authorities deal fairly with ex-Service men, who rank equal with local residents.

Today we have had an interesting debate on a problem which affects the whole world—disarmament. Then we discussed the housing of ex-Service men. I want to initiate a debate on the question of Malaya. I believe that the solution to the first problem and to this one can be reached by mutual help and understanding, good will and co-operation. If those attributes can be displayed between the nations of the world and our Colonies, we can solve the problems satisfactorily.

I want to draw attention to the recent negotiations that have taken place with the Alliance. I will come back to that in a few moments. First I want to outline the position in Malaya which led to the demand by the Malays for increased representation in the Legislature. There is no doubt that changes are taking place in the attitude of the colonial peoples towards the mother country. We must have regard to those changes and adapt ourselves to the circumstances, otherwise we shall alienate the sympathy of the colonial people.

As we look not only to Malaya but to the whole of the Colonies, we find that there are pent up forces seeking release. There is an upsurge, a gathering of momentum, towards self-government which cannot be held back. That is the position in Malaya. There is also a keen, and perhaps a growing, resentment against alien domination. Sooner or later these people will achieve their freedom. Sometimes we call it Communism because we do not like it, but we cannot excuse ourselves by calling their demand for self-government by the name of Communism. We cannot ease our conscience by making statements like that. That is the position. Everywhere the Colonies are seething with unrest and frustration.

Colonially, we are living in the midst of events unequalled in our history, and perhaps in the history of mankind. Nationalism in Malaya and elsewhere is marching on. Nothing can stop it. We must not, as sometimes we do, regard this nationalism as a crime. It is not a crime for a man to want self-government. If it is a virtue in Britain that a man should love his country and be patriotic, it is not a vice for the colonial to love his land and want what we want for our country.

It appears to me that we are at the crossroads. There are three roads. One leads back to colonialism, and I am sure that no one wants to travel that way. The whole idea of colonialism has been killed by two world wars. Then there is the road leading to Communism, and the majority of people wish to avoid that. The other road is the road to a speedy freedom—the establishment of a political democracy, with all that that implies in Malaya and in all the other Colonies.

I know that there are people who say that we are trying to go too fast. There is a danger in that; but there is a danger in going too slowly. There is a danger also in standing still. In the earlier debate one hon. Member said that science was marching and that the scientists could not stop it. That is the position in colonial development, and, as statesmen, we must march on. We cannot stop it. We do not tell the scientist that he is going too fast. He can travel faster than sound. He can produce the atomic bomb and the cobalt bomb, but we do not say that he is going too fast. Yet we tell the Colonies who seek freedom that they are going too fast.

A little while ago representatives of the Alliance in Malaya visited this country to discuss with the Secretary of State for the Colonies the constitution which is about to set up a Legislature in Malaya. I am glad that the Secretary of State met the Alliance and discussed the problem, as a result of which they have come to some understanding with the people of Malaya. The Alliance is a body which represents 500,000 Malays and Chinese in the Peninsula of Malaya. The Alliance has achieved almost the impossible. We have often said in this House that the first thing that must happen in Malaya is that the three races—the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians—must get together and that, then there is a possibility of achieving self-government. The Alliance has done that.

The United Malay National Organisation and the Malay Chinese Association which compose the Alliance have brought these races together and done what was almost impossible. The people are now united in their demand for a political democracy. That was the reason why their representatives came to Great Britain. They came not to ask for patronage or for any favour, but to ask for justice and equity.

I should like to thank the Secretary of State for the Colonies for dealing with these representatives as he did. If he had not done what he did there would have been something akin to civil disobedience in Malaya today in addition to the trouble in the jungle; but the right hon. Gentleman made concessions to them—he showed an understanding of their problem.

The problem was that he had promised that in the new Legislature they should have 52 elected representatives—elected by the vote of the people—and that there should be 46 non-elected members so that the elected representatives would have a small majority. They were not satisfied with that. They wanted increased representation. They pointed to their next-door neighbour, Singapore, where it had been suggested that there should be 75 per cent. elected representatives; but they were to have only 52 out of 98.

The Malays, like everyone else, want to move on. I suggest that the Minister should tell them than when their election takes place next year they will elect a Parliament for a period of four years and that at the end of that period he will increase the representation to 100 per cent. The Malays will then elect their own Legislature for the whole of Malaya. If he does that he will have the wholehearted support and warm co-operation of the Malayan people.

There is a real, genuine, nationalist movement arising in Malaya. They want to control the country themselves, and in this regard there are two or three steps we have to take. I realise that the Sultans and the rulers must be consulted, but they must realise that the world moves on and that they must move with it. They have to concede some of their power if we are to have a democratic system in Malaya at all. I know that the Minister will say that they are moving on. They are—but with feet of lead when we want the progress to be fleet of foot.

The men who came to this country representing the Alliance were very reasonable. They spoke with a glow of appeal and conviction, and I think it was that which had influence with the former Colonial Secretary. They have gone back, and instead of agreeing to boycotting the elections and withdrawing their representatives on the other bodies, they are co-operating. I do not want us unduly to stretch the patience of these people. I want them to move on as fast as possible.

I want to say a word about the jungle warfare. That warfare must stop sometime. A solution must be found by some one. Is it too much to ask the Government to tackle this problem now and see what they can do, even if it is a question of negotiating an armistice with the people themselves? I do not think that we are adopting the right attitude. A few hours ago I received a letter. The last paragraph reads:

"As one whose life may be at stake in this game, I do not share their rejoicing."

The first paragraph reads:

"I read in the 'Sunday Times' of 18th July that military and police intelligence officers are worried because of the lack of surrenders this month"

that is, from the jungle—

"The police certainly have cause for worry, particularly as everyone is aware that the lack of surrenders is due to their own incredible action in taking court proceedings against a surrendered terrorist which resulted in his being sentenced to death."

We are asking terrorists to give themselves up, saying that we shall deal leniently with them and then, when they surrender, they are brought before the court and sentenced to death. I do not think that the Minister knows about this, so I would not expect him to give a reply, but we must seek some way out of the problems and difficulties we have in Malaya.

The Malayan people are not bandits. The Malayan people, as I found when I was there, are kindly, hospitable, friendly and co-operative. If we co-operate with them, we shall find that it is reciprocal. If we give them tolerance and comradeship, they will give the same to us. Perhaps we have put too high a value in the past upon trade and commerce, upon tin and rubber, and too little upon the well being of the people. I hope that we shall re-assess our values and give greater weight to the human side. Let us show as much interest in the people and conditions in Malaya as we do in fighting the bandits and in winning the tin and rubber When we reach that stage, we have won Malaya. The idea of the mother country and the colonial child has gone for ever We must meet them now as equal partners.

I want to mention the trade union movement over there. Some time ago I went out to hold an inquiry into the development of the trade unions. Rubber and tin are the two great industries. In 1951 they earned more dollars for us than the whole of the exports from this country. That shows how valuable the peninsula is to us. What have we done for those men with regard to their organisation? We have given recognition—a patronising recognition—to their trade unions. A patronising recognition is not enough. I remember myself, as a young organiser of a union, that years ago the employers gave the same patronising recognition to the union, but there were always difficulties when it came to negotiating wages and dealing with other problems.

It appears to me that we are pushing them on with our left hand and pulling them back with our right. That policy towards the trade union movement is not helpful for Malaya. We have sent out advisers and we should stand behind the advice they are giving. The Malayans want to see us practice what we preach. We send out trade union advisers, but if we are to recognise the trade unions we must recognise them in peaceful times as well as when they are in trouble. I am not satisfied that the conciliation machinery which has been set up is working as it should. I do not want to criticise what some of the conciliators have done, but to me it appears that the confidence of the workers has been destroyed almost before the conciliation committee has met.

Then there are the delays in dealing with the various problems in industry. Last week 10,000 employees of the Singapore City Council went on strike. I do not want to go into the details—I am not fully conversant with them—but the men were asking that a recent award should be dated from last June 12 months. That shows that there has been a long delay in negotiating in the Colony. These delays in negotiating with the trade unions are causing no end of trouble. I would tell the Minister that delays are very often more dangerous and cause more trouble than the original demand made by the union.

I want the Minister to ask the employers out there to give more recognition than they do to the trade unions and to speed up their negotiations with them. I also want him to pass on to his colleagues the difficulties of the employees in Government Departments out there, because I find that the Government Departments are the biggest culprits. We have a naval base there where there is no end of industrial trouble, much of which is due to delays in negotiations. I hope the hon. Gentleman will ask the various Departments to handle these matters much more quickly.

The wage of the rubber workers is about 3s. 6d. a day. When they asked for an increase in wages when prices went up, the wage machine was slow to operate, but when the price of rubber came down and employers wanted a reduction in wages the machine operated very quickly indeed. We can win the jungle warfare, but if we fail in the economic war to raise the standard of the people, we shall lose Malaya. If we do not meet the situation as we ought, we shall drive these people to Communism because their standards will be reduced.

I ask the Minister to see that the Government in Malaya give to the people reasonable wages and hours. They want what we have got. We have Workmen's Compensation, and they are asking for a similar scheme. We have National Insurance. They want that. We have education and social services. They want all these things. We have a tremendous responsibility if we take from Malaya the value of all her rubber and tin without giving something in return by way of these services.

Let Her Majesty's Government deal with the people of Malaya with clean hands and unchallenged authority. The Malayans have a right to expect more than they are getting from us, and we have no right to withhold from them some of the things for which they are asking. They not only want the benefit of social services. They ask for our friendship and comradeship, and if we give that to them, they will give it to us in return.

I am sure that we are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Awbery) for having raised this subject of Malaya so that we can express our opinions and our good feeling for the people of Malaya.

My hon. Friend said that we live in times of great change, and we have certainly had a number of changes recently so far as the Colonies are concerned. We have a new Colonial Secretary. I think it is an agreeable fact that we should be debating Malaya immediately after the resignation of the former Colonial Secretary, for I am bound to say that he has scored some great successes in Malaya. The great changes that have occurred in Malaya may augur well for the future of the world.

The decision to proceed with the new Constitution was a great decision, as was the decision to give an elected majority in the new Legislative Assembly. The decision of the former Colonial Secretary to agree to the suggestion of my hon. Friends that he should see the delegation from Malaya and treat them as an official delegation and discuss matters fully with them was also a great decision for which we give him full credit. We used all our persuasive power with the right hon. Gentleman; he agreed to make that decision, and much good has come out of it.

It was indeed unique that the Opposition should spend so much time dealing with this matter and that there should have bean co-operation between the various Opposition leaders and back benchers and the Colonial Office in order to settle this problem. It was with some difficulty that we got the Colonial Secretary to walk past the winning posit and make the final small concession which brought political peace to Malaya, but we are all very glad that this new situation in Malaya starts off so well.

Malaya has all the problems which baffle the civilised world today. It has a multi-racial society. It has an economic problem, some very great poverty, and it has all the other difficult problems which go with it. My hon. Friend has referred to the notable situation in which there is such close co-operation between the Malayan organisation and the Chinese-Malayan organisation. We welcome that co-operation, and we trust that it will lead to a firm democratic base on which the new society of Malaya will rest.

A great responsibility rests upon this Government. One of the great problems confronting the Colonial Commonwealths, including the Malayans, is education. No country is better able to assist them in that matter than this country, and we should be generous in our offers of help. We should send out educationists of great standing to see whether they can make a plan for Malaya in co-operation with this country, which would take them ahead in education very quickly. We should lend them teachers and offer to train their own teachers.

My hon. Friend referred to the economy of Malaya, and it is certainly true that unless that country has a prosperous economy it is not much use having anything else. We must see that there is introduced into that country a plan for an organised economy on a firm basis. This is a challenge not only to this country but to the whole of the free world. I heard the late Mr. Ernest Bevin once say that America refused to accept the necessity for planning in her own internal organisation, but that as soon as the Americans see the ocean they are ready to plan the world.

I say that great responsibility rests on the free world, and we cannot exclude America. The Americans should take a great interest in Malaya. It would be almost a small gesture on their part to give us a permanent market in rubber and tin at a fair price, which would place the economy of Malaya on a firm basis of prosperity, and it would enable Malaya to have an assured market. That would be a very small thing for America to do, and I think it would be a gesture which would warm the hearts of the whole world towards the American people.

We are in a period when everyone hopes that co-existence is possible. One of the advantages of the House of Commons is that, although there may not be many Members present to address, it is possible to address the world. While I have said a word or two to America on this subject, I think it would be proper to speak to Russia as well. If she has any interest in pursuing the jungle warfare, let her call it off. Let the Communist world recognise that here is a place where co-existence can be established. Let us together establish peace, and let the free world assist in establishing prosperity and advancement in Malaya. In that way, a new focal point of contact between the two conflicting worlds may be established in Malaya.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central referred to the question of the trade union movement in Malaya. I should like to say a few words about the trade union movement in all the Colonial Territories. We have the advantage of an incomparable Civil Service. Our greatest gift to civilisation is our British Civil Service. What is not always appreciated, however, is that our trade union movement has a civil service—a kind of steel framework of administration—of its own. But this administrative ability is missing in some of the colonial areas.

We should do all we can to persuade the British trade union movement to come to the rescue of its sister movements within the colonial areas by giving them the benefit of its experience and the necessary office organisation in order to enable them to build up a solid movement of their own. This is especially desirable in Malaya. I hope that the Trades Union Congress and British working people will give some attention to this matter and help to achieve this object.

It has always seemed to me that we must not only take the necessary action to enable the colonial peoples to achieve political freedom, but must recreate an economic and political understanding between those people and ourselves afterwards. We are a small country, with a population of 50 million. Inside the Colonial Empire we have a population of 65 million. I should like to see brought into existence a kind of political and economic machinery which would enable those 65 million people and our 50 million to become an economic federal commonwealth. The great resources of manpower, and the productive force and industrial and political "know-how" which we could provide would make that unit a very remarkable one.

The Colonial Territories would gain great benefit by continuing to work in close association with us. At the same time as we extend freedom to these various Colonies, we should extend the hand of friendship. I should like to see the Colonial Office develop into a federal Parliament for all the Colonial Territories and ourselves. I am sure that such an association would enable these Territories to advance at a terrific rate in comparison with that which they would achieve if they completely cut the link with us. We have so much to offer them, and they have so much to offer us, that we should make every effort to continue in close co-operation, on the basis of complete equality and absolute freedom.

When the delegation came from Malaya we all had the pleasure of meeting Tanku Abdul Rahman, Dato Abdul Razak and Mr. T. M. Tan, who represented the two sides of the alliance. We found them to be real statesmen, and the fact that they went back resolved to reach an agreement and to settle political differences, if humanly possible—and succeeded in doing so—is of very great historical importance. I hope we shall spare no effort to co-operate and do all we possibly can to further their great efforts in democracy.

I notice that there is no representative from the Colonial Office here this afternoon, but we welcome the representative from the sister organization—the Commonwealth Relations Office. Perhaps the Under-Secretary of State will convey our good wishes to the new Colonial Secretary. I cannot say that I hope his tenure of office will extend beyond the next General Election, but I hope that it will be fruitful with good works.

I only want to add a postscript to the speeches which have been delivered by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Awbery) and my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Proctor). I should like to pay a tribute to the very great service which both those hon. Members have rendered to the people of Malaya. That service is not of recent origin; it has continued over a period of years. Their speeches this afternoon are an indication not only of their interests, but of their great knowledge of the subject.

I am sometimes regarded as an unreasonable critic of the administration of the Colonial Office, and even of the Commonwealth Relations Office. Perhaps I should begin, therefore, by saying that I fully appreciate the difficulties with which the former Colonial Secretary had to contend in Malaya, and I am very conscious of the difficulties which the new Minister will face in that area. There is a double problem. First, there is the jungle war; and, secondly, the multiracial community, which, although it does not sympathise with the war, holds very strongly to its national demands for self-government.

I have never taken the view that the war in the jungle is a genuine manifestation of the nationalist movement. I do not think there is any doubt that it began as part of a Communist conspiracy throughout South-East Asia, finding expression not only in Malaya but in India, Burma and Indonesia. But although that war began with acts of individual terrorism levelled against European managers of rubber plantations, it became greatly extended, and I cannot absolutely absolve the Colonial Office from responsibility. I believe that it was as a result of the policy pursued by the Colonial Office that what began with acts of individual terrorism extended into a much wider conflict.

I think it is very likely that it will be possible to end the war in the jungle by physical means within a reasonable period of time, but when that war does end we must remember that the people of Malaya still have to live together. It is of the greatest importance that the physical conflict should end in such a way that subsequent co-operation between the various peoples will be ensured.

It is on those grounds that I suggest to the Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, who is to reply to the debate, that the time has come when an amnesty should be offered in Malaya, when we should make proposals for ending the jungle war on such terms sand conditions that the bitterness and the hatred that have found expression in that war shall not be continued.

I was surprised by the letter that was quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central. It told of a terrorist who had surrendered, and against whom, after his surrender, court proceedings were taken that ended in a death sentence. I ask the Minister to give us the facts about the surrender terms that are offered in Malaya, because they are in contrast to the surrender terms that are being offered in Kenya.

I put down a Question yesterday to the Colonial Secretary, and in reply the Minister of State for Colonial Affairs, I think for the first time, gave the terms which were offered to the Mau Mau during the "General China" negotiations. I acknowledge at once that I was surprised by the generosity of those terms. They not only said that terrorists in Kenya who surrendered would not be shot at while surrendering, would not be ill-treated after surrender, would not be prosecuted for being in possession of arms and ammunition, but

"would not be executed for crimes committed before the date of their surrender."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th July, 1954; Vol. 531, c. 106.]

I acknowledge that I was surprised and pleased at the breadth of view that found expression in that last provision, and I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman that in Malaya terms shall be offered to the terrorists who are ready to lay down their arms that shall be equally generous to those offered in Kenya during the negotiations with "General China."

I hope that we shall proceed from offering terms equal to those published yesterday to some proposals for an amnesty in Malaya as well as in Kenya, which will mean that the fighting will end not with bitterness, not with hatred, but with an opportunity for some racial co-operation. I say this, bearing in mind that in Malaya as well as in Kenya, if the fighting ends in a different spirit from that, we may find that those who have been engaged in the terrorist struggle in Malaya will go to neighbouring countries and apply their doctrines there, as may so easily happen in the Continent of Africa.

That is the first point I wanted to make My second point is that outside that jungle struggle there is a large population in Malaya, partly Malay, partly Chinese, partly Indian, and in that population one hopes to build a cooperating self-governing democracy. If we are to achieve it we have to be much bolder, even than the Government recently have been in their concessions, in recognising the rights of those peoples to self-government.

I welcome the fact that, as a result of the recent negotiations, there is now agreement that the Malayan people as represented by the Alliance shall take part in the coming election, but I hope, when that election has taken place, and as they are likely to have a large majority in the Legislature, that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central said, there will be no delay in proceeding with full self-government for those people. If, on the one hand, we are fighting the terrorists, we must, on the other hand, have confidence in, and win the co-operation of, the people who are not terrorists in Malaya.

I am receiving disturbing letters from Malaya saying that the younger generation is not only losing confidence in our colonial administration but, what may be more dangerous, is losing confidence in Malaya's own recognised leadership. The young people are not as happy about the acceptance of the recent compromise as the Malayan leaders are and as we in this House have said we are. They are caught up with the movements of colonial peoples throughout the world towards not only political freedom but social and economic freedom. We may give Malaya its self-government, but that will still leave economic control in the hands of great rubber companies and great tin companies that will remain.

So, economic control will remain in alien hands, and we must do something not only to give political rights, not only to encourage the trade union movement, not only to encourage the co-operative movement, but to enable the Malayan people themselves to go forward to the control of their own natural resources so that the wealth they create shall be used for their own development, for their own education, for their own planning and for their own advancement.

If we can hope that the new Secretary of State will approach this problem in that kind of temper and spirit, then there is reason to be confident about the future of Malaya.

It is very fitting that on the day of the Adjournment at the end of the term the question of Malaya should come up for discussion and that it should be the occasion of very graceful tributes by hon. Members of the Opposition to my right hon. Friend who was lately the Secretary of State for the Colonies. My right hon. Friend was, I think, extremely proud of the help he got from Members on the other side of the House, and from the desire of all the peoples in Malaya, of all parties and all classes, to try to achieve a constitution that would have the best chance of working successfully.

The committee, which was drawn from all sections of Malayan society and which reported at the beginning of this year, provided a blueprint of a constitutional change which was agreed on most points by the unanimous vote of the members of the committee. On the question of the numbers of the elected members of the Legislative Council, there was some difference of view. A minority recommended that the majority in the Legislature should be of elected members, while a majority recommended what some of the minority thought was too small a number of elected members.

The members of the Alliance who came over here and saw my right hon. Friend went back to Malaya and at first decided to withdraw from participation in the Government, but I am glad to say that the British spirit of compromise and good sense prevailed, especially in the light of the assurance given by the High Commissioner that the five nominated members would be appointed by the Governor but not in the spirit of being in opposition to the party that obtained the majority. In other words, it would not be their duty in any sense to oppose. In fact, the assurance was given that consultation would take place with the members of the majority party and that people would be selected whose views would not be out of harmony with the views of the elected majority. On this, the Alliance with great political good sense, decided to come back into the constitution.

We can, therefore, say that the constitutional advances have the best chance of receiving the support of a great majority of the people of Malaya. That, as hon. Members have said, is due both to the good sense of the people out there and to the efforts and statesmanship of my right hon. Friend the former Colonial Secretary. I want to join with hon. Members in wishing good luck to the new constitutional advancement. I feel sure that the proof that this is likely to succeed lies in the successful negotiations which have already taken place on subjects of difference.

One outstanding matter remains. Hon. Members will recall that the Alliance wished that an independent commission should go to Malaya and report on the advisability of further constitutional change. The view of the Alliance was that the commission should be composed of members drawn from outside Malaya. That proposal was submitted to the Rulers Conference which met in July and, while not expressing a firm and conclusive opinion, that conference was of the preliminary opinion that perhaps the appointment of an outside commission was not altogether the best means of deciding the question of constitutional change in Malaya. The question has been adjourned to their next meeting and, again, we can count on this matter, like others, being considered in a spirit of political good sense.

The hon. Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Awbery) raised a question about trade unions. Her Majesty's Government entirely agree with him on the importance of the trade union movement, both throughout the Colonial Territories—a point to which the hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Proctor) referred—and, in this instance, more particularly, in Malaya. The figures of the growth of the trade union movement are encouraging. In December, 1949, in the Federation of Malaya there were 169 trade unions with 42,300 members. By June, 1954, the number of trade unions had increased to 214 and the number of members to 106,000. It is true that the figure for 1949 showed a decrease on that for 1948, but hon. Members know the reason for that; the Communists had infiltrated into the trade unions and a new beginning had to be made.

The important thing is the growth in the number of trade unions and their members in the four-and-a-half years since 1949, having regard to the unsettled nature of much of the country and the great difficulties in which the trade union movement necessarily had to operate in those years. General Templer and the authorities have attached the greatest importance to this development of a strong trade union movement and the trade union advisers of the Colonial Service, by their wise advice and leadership, have had great success in this development of the trade union movement.

My point was that the Government Departments are not quick in realising what the Minister wants. I want him to meet the trade unions and negotiate with them. The civilian employees of the three Departments in the naval base there should be recognised and should be treated as an organisation which is recognised by the Government.

The hon. Member may be interested to know—or probably he knows already—that a Whitley Council has been set up in Singapore, and I think that will go a long way to meet the point which he made. The Whitley Council should enable a dispute to be more quickly settled and the two sides to get together to thrash out the differences.

A member of the National Union of Seamen has been appointed as a seamen's welfare officer. No doubt the hon. Member is aware of that development, which should result in an improvement in relations in that industry. In the rubber industry, it is true that when the arbitration tribunal decided that wages would have to be reduced, there was a good deal of bitterness, but I think we can say that relations are now very much improved, and I gather that the hon. Member's information is to the same effect. The Government entirely agree that we have to be on the watch in these trade union matters to see that confidence is fostered, that both sides of industry face their responsibilities in a statesmanlike way and that the necessary machinery exists, both in trade union advisers on the Government side and in the usual trade union machinery, in order that decisions may be reached before there is discontent or lack of confidence arising from delay.

Perhaps I may turn to the case which both the hon. Member for Bristol, Central and the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Fenner Brockway) raised about the man who surrendered. That was an exceptional case. The hon. Member for Eton and Slough mentioned the terms of the Mau Mau surrender. He will have noticed that one of the terms was that nobody would be executed. It is therefore envisaged, obviously, that they might be prosecuted but not executed. There might be prosecutions for offences committed before surrender—I am only reasoning from what the hon. Member told me; I have no outside knowledge—but nobody who surrendered would be executed for an offence committed before surrender.

The following clause says that those who surrendered would be put into detention camps and the Government would decide how long they remained so detained. I assume that while there would be no executions, in some cases there would be a period of detention.

Or there might be prosecutions.

That is not stated.

It looks as though that is possible.

The sentence has been quashed in the case in Malaya and the man will not be executed. I can give the assurance which the hon. Member wanted in this case; the death penalty will not be carried out.

Does that mean that the principle will be accepted generally? Will offers of surrender be made in Malaya similar to those which I read as having been made in Kenya?

The only thing I can do in that connection is to forward the hon. Member's remarks for attention. I understand that the terms of surrender for Malaya have never been published.

I have never seen them.

That is what I understand. I think we might say that the fact that there are steady streams of surrenders subject to the paragraphs which the hon. Member quoted shows that they are satisfied with the surrender terms. After pardon, many of these men join the loyalist forces and fight with them, which shows that they have surrendered with a change of spirit, which of course is the important thing. In getting a surrender we do not want somebody who is surrendering merely to save his skin; we want him to surrender because he is converted to the belief that his previous ideological attitude was unsound.

I think this is as far as I need detain the House today on these matters. It is, as I have said, very fitting that among the many successes of my right hon. Friend the ex-Colonial Secretary the question of Malaya should be discussed today. Again I should like to express my thanks to hon. Members opposite for the very statesmanlike way in which they have approached this problem and for the way in which they have expressed their appreciation of the achievement of the Colonial Secretary.

The subject which I want to raise this afternoon is the decision of the Home Secretary not to renew the residence permit of Dr. Joseph Cort, the American doctor, who has been living here for three years. The burden of my argument is that the Home Secretary reached a wrong decision and reached it in a wrong way.

At the outset, I should like to declare my own interest in this matter, which is simply that Dr. Cort chose to write to me in April about this difficulty. Even after that I did not meet him for some months. I have only known him personally for some six weeks and I have tried, as a Member of this House, to help him. I am always very moved on these occasions when the House of Commons—although perhaps not very full of Members at the moment—turns its mind from great affairs like the one which we have been debating, the question of Malaya, to the personal difficulties of an individual, because this House would not deserve its reputation if it were not able to move from big things to what, to some people, might seem to be small ones.

I should like to say one other thing before I get into my argument. That is, that although, as I have said, I believe that the Home Secretary was totally wrong in the decision he reached, I have nothing but gratitude to him personally and to the Joint Under-Secretary, who is to reply to this debate today, for the personal courtesy which they have shown me throughout, and in going out of their way to offer me every facility to make the best case I could. I am grateful to them for that.

I will not detain the House with the facts of this case, which are well-known, but I should like briefly to trace the story of Dr. Cort's application and what has happened. Dr. Cort is an American. So far as one can make out from the best technical advice one gets, he is a very brilliant doctor. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that, and one does not have to look far to find it, because in 1948 he got a year's Fellowship at Cambridge to study there and subsequently a second Fellowship, and up to recently he has held a Lectureship at Birmingham University. In between his two visits to Cambridge, he went back to Yale to finish his medical training, and while he was there he joined the Communist Party.

I do not think that that needs additional comment from me, but I ask the House not to be too heavy-handed about someone who once, as an undergraduate, became a Communist. There are some Members of this House who have been members of the Communist Party in their time. I think that all that one can say about that is, that when we look at the story of Dr. Cort we find that all his difficulties, in my view, date from the period when he was a member of the Communist Party.

When Dr. Cort came to this country in 1951, he left the Communist Party. He went to Cambridge, and he has been working here ever since. I am sure that the Under-Secretary will correct me if I am wrong when I say that there is no suggestion that while Dr. Cort has been here he was engaged in any political activity, or that there is any other objection to him. I deduce this from the fact that no hint or suggestion has been made by anyone that that is not so, and I cannot believe that if that was the real reason behind the Home Secretary's decision he would not have conveyed it discreetly to some hon. Members on this side of the House who have taken the case up.

When Dr. Cort came to this country he started at Cambridge, and within three or four months he received a letter from the American Embassy telling him to hand in his passport and return to the United States. Dr. Cort wrote and asked, why? No reason was given him and he declined to fall in with those instructions. Shortly after that, a Congressional inquiry was made into Communism in American universities and Dr. Cort was frequently named, and his friends were closely questioned. As a result of that many of his friends lost their jobs and have been dispersed. Dr. Cort felt, and still feels, that were he to return to the United States he would suffer victimisation.

It was only after the United States Embassy had told him to return, without giving a reason, and only after the Congressional hearing that he received his call-up papers. I will come back to the simple question of whether this man is a "draft dodger," to use an American expression, but I think that it is worth noting that his call-up papers came long after other attempts had been made to get him back to the United States in December of last year.

As Dr. Cort failed to respond to the call-up papers he was summoned by the police in Birmingham to make a statement. As a result of that, the Home Office, hearing that he might lose his citizenship, decided that they could not renew his permit to remain in this country. I should like to make one point which is important if the House is to reach a fair decision about the motives of Dr. Cort. This is in connection with the publicity attached to this case.

I can say—and I believe that there is plenty of evidence to support it—that the last thing that Dr. Cort ever wanted was publicity for his case when he was making his application to be allowed to remain in this country. I have a letter from him which was addressed to Professor A. V. Hill, of London University, an ex-Member of this House and a member of the party opposite, in which he said that he wished to be allowed to remain here quietly to carry on his work without publicity to himself or the university of which he was a member—Birmingham University. The University wrote to the Home Secretary or to the Joint Under-Secretary asking whether they would not allow Dr. Cort to remain.

I think it is important, if the House is to get a proper account of this story, to explain that in the early stages there was not a request for political asylum. In the early stages—and this is really the crux of the whole question—Dr. Cort was asking to be allowed to remain here because he wanted to continue his work. At any rate, that is the outline of the story, and I do not believe that anyone would say that these facts were not correct.

Before I get on to the issues which this case raises, I should like to deal with some points which arise out of the Home Office's handling of the case. I do not want to make too much of them, but I think that they are important and I would be grateful if the Under-Secretary would deal with them. In the first place, I was very concerned—and I think that many hon. Members were—at the fact that an alien resident in this country should be interrogated by the British police on behalf of a foreign government, without the Home Office and the Aliens Department knowing anything about it until afterwards.

This seems to me to be a very important principle. The Home Secretary does not deny that the Birmingham police interviewed Dr. Cort and that he himself only learned of it when the report was sent in from Birmingham. I think that the House would be rightly angry if aliens, although enjoying only the temporary protection of this country, were able to be got at by a foreign Government through the agency of our own police, particularly so as no one has suggested that Dr. Cort had been guilty of any offence which comes within the provisions of the extradition treaty. There is no suggestion of that. Although I can understand that if extradition proceedings are commenced the British police may feel that they ought to find out what they can for the sake of the foreign Government concerned, in this case that did not arise.

The second point, and it ties up closely with the question of interrogation by the Birmingham police, is that of the Home Secretary's answer to the House when he was asked to give a general statement on the decision. The Home Secretary, in a written answer to the House, used these words about that interview. He said that he had been asked

"… to explain why he had done so and what were his intentions with reference to his duties under the United States Selective Service Act, he had refused to make a statement."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th June, 1954; Vol. 529, c. 49.]

I suggest that that was a misleading statement by the Home Secretary.

I have in my hand the statement made by Dr. Cort. Admittedly, it was made at the second interview by the police, but it was delayed only because he felt that he ought to take legal advice before making a statement under those circumstances. I believe that the Home Secretary's error was a very unfortunate thing, and it has not helped us to reach a proper decision about the matter.

In the statement Dr. Cort said:

"I should like to make it clear that I am ready at any time to give the Home Office any information which it may desire for its own use and will co-operate to the best of my ability in any request of the British authorities."

I am not saying that it was a particularly good statement, but I think that he did the right thing. When reaching this very important decision about his future, the Home Office made no attempt to interrogate him or to give him an opportunity to make a statement about his position, thereby depriving him of the only hearing open to an alien since no judicial proceedings could have arisen at any stage in the case. I regard that as an unfortunate example of the handling of the case by the Department.

Finally, and much more serious, there is the letter which I received from the Under-Secretary about the general handling of aliens' matters. Writing on 28th May, the Under-Secretary said:

"Except in the case of refugees whose homes are behind the Iron Curtain, the Home Secretary is not prepared to allow foreigners to settle here."

That was a reference to those who had lost, or were about to lose, their own nationality. Although the Home Secretary said later that that was simply a statement of general view and was what usually happened, it seemed to those of us who read that letter that there was a clear division in the minds of the Home Office between refugees from Iron Curtain countries and those from other parts of the world. I cannot refrain from mentioning this handling of the case, although it does not bear on the immediate issue.

The first question that we must dispose of is the simple question of whether Dr. Cort is really somebody who has sought to live here only to avoid his military service obligations. Had I thought that was the case, I should never have taken the matter up; nor do I believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who, in his time, has occupied the Home Secretary's position, would have taken up the case had he been of that opinion.

Dr. Cort registered in 1946 with his age group as an ordinary non-medical person, for he was not then a doctor. He had bad eyesight and a dangerous condition which made it also almost impossible for him to have certain injections, and also the remnants of infantile paralysis. In 1948, he had to register again, and by that time he had contracted tuberculosis. He had no attempt to evade either of those medical examinations, and the result was perfectly clear.

In 1951, before he came to Britain, Dr. Cort registered with the American authorities. I have seen his registration chit, which makes it clear that before he left he wanted to get all that side of his affairs cleared up. He subsequently provided the American authorities with his address in England to which call-up notices should be sent if that were necessary. That was not the action of a man who was going abroad to evade military service. I do not believe that the Home Secretary can himself believe that Dr. Cort was simply a "draft dodger."

The real question is this. Dr. Cort happens to be a good doctor. He happens also—I know him slightly now—to be a very pleasant person. He wants to remain here; he is happy in this country. He is being sent away because the Home Secretary has used his undoubted discretion on the grounds that he is likely to lose his native citizenship. There is nothing against Dr. Cort. He has the support of the highest university authorities and of many others.

We then have to consider why he should be turned away. Last November, when the House was debating the question of aliens, as we do almost every year, the Under-Secretary of State, replying to the debate, laid down what is, I understand, Home Office practice in matters of this kind. The hon. Gentleman dealt with various sorts of visitors to Britain, described the position of a man who comes temporarily but later wishes to reside here permanently, and said:

"They come in for 12 months in the first instance, but if their work and behaviour is satisfactory they get a renewal as a matter of course. In the ordinary way, after four years' approved employment here the conditions are removed and they are able to stay under exactly the same conditions as any ordinary resident."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th November, 1953; Vol. 521, c. 562.]

There are many hon. Members on this side of the House who are doubtful—quite frankly, I am—about this absolute discretion that is given to the Home Secretary, but we are satisfied year after year, when we raise this point, by the very reasonable statements, of the kind which I have read, in which the responsible Minister tells us how he exercises that discretion. It is because I believe that it should be exercised in that way that I think the present decision has been a wrong one.

The real issue between the Minister and myself is that Dr. Cort has asked for certain political factors to be taken into consideration. I deliberately do not use the phrase "political asylum" because that was not the phrase that was used in the first instance when application was made for Dr. Cart to remain. But Dr. Cort says—I think, rightly—that political factors, if there are any, should be taken into consideration.

What are those political factors? The first is the general state of American public opinion. I say this more than deliberately, because I do not want to refer specifically to the American Government in this case. Any hon. Member who, as I do, has an affection and regard for the United States, has watched with concern the development of intolerance in certain places over there in recent years. Most of us believe that in the end the good sense of the American people will put a stop to it. In fact, this very day, perhaps even at this very hour, Senator Flanders, in Washington, is moving a motion of censure on Senator McCarthy for behaviour that is as reprehensible to me as, no doubt, it is to the Under-Secretary of State.

We do not believe that that state of affairs will become permanent, but it is a real fact. There is plenty of evidence that a man who has been a Communist and who has not purged himself in the way that some professional ex-Communists have done is suffering. People lose jobs at universities. Dr. Cort had four jobs in the offing from universities, but they were all withdrawn when his name was mentioned. He has many friends who have lost their jobs. In general, he may feel that the atmosphere at home was by no means congenial to him—in fact, it is the very reverse; and this ought to be taken into account by the Home Secretary when exercising his undoubted discretion.

I am putting the case moderately, because the last thing I want to do is to make it an occasion for an attack on the United States of America. But we would be deceiving ourselves if we did not recognise that this is a real factor and should be taken into consideration.

There is a special case with regard to Dr. Cort which must be considered. There is strong evidence for saying that his was not a genuine call-up. That is to say, his health was known to be so bad that it was impossible for him to have any benefit or value to the United States or, indeed, any other Army. We know that he came over here having registered. We know that the American authorities tried to get him back earlier. I have a suspicion that it was to serve him with a subpoena for the Congressional hearings; and when all that is done, the call-up emerges.

We remember that some famous American gangsters have been got in "jug" in the end on the grounds of Income Tax evasion. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made a good point in asking the Home Secretary to look up the records of his Department to see what excuses have been put up by foreign Governments to get their own nationals extradited from this country. The Home Secretary does not recognise that there is a political factor here. I think he is wrong. He is, at any rate, entitled to his opinion, and as I have said his discretion is absolute.

But this creates many problems, because all a foreign Government now has to do is to introduce legislation or make use of existing legislation to enable it to cancel the nationality of its own nationals and get them back under this process. I believe this is dangerous precedent created by an atmosphere in the United States, which we all regret and which, I believe, the Home Secretary should have tried to avoid by handling the matter more sympathetically.

The real point about this, and the reason why I am interested in it is as I believe my hon. Friends are interested in it, is that it is a good liberal point This country has a wonderful tradition of freedom, and it is not something we have any right to expect but for which we have to fight from generation to generation. I believe that being liberal in this matter is also being realist because it is not only right but also draws attention to the firm basis of our form of Government—that if we treat people decently and give them a chance to change the Government if they like, extremist views will not develop. Experience has shown us to be right.

Obviously, security matters have to be considered, and I should be the last to say that security should not have precedence over this tradition. But there is no security risk in regard to Dr. Cort and none has been suggested. I believe that the House underrates the influence of this country if it believes that our liberal traditions are not respected and highly regarded in other parts of the world. It is because of this tradition that I believe this decision to be essentially a stupid one.

I come to my last word and I ask the pardon of the House for detaining it so long. I come to the outcome of this event because it is on the consequences that the Home Secretary will ultimately be judged. The month's extension given to Dr. Cort has come to an end. I have received a letter from him, and I propose to read an extract from it to the House. Dr. Cort says:

"Dear Mr. Benn,

This is to tell you that Ruth and I are going to Czechoslovakia. We are very grateful to the Czech Government for granting us asylum and making it possible for us to carry on our medical work. We wish to say that we leave with feelings of warm gratitude to the British people who have treated us so hospitably and supported us so strongly in our efforts to remain in England."

When I read that letter from someone I had come to know slightly during the last few months it emphasised the utter absurdity of the Home Secretary's decision, because to my mind here is a man whose only offence was that he was a Communist as an undergraduate. Yet the apparatus of two modern States is turned on him to hound him out and hound him behind the Iron Curtain.

Both these people wanted to work here and both wanted to settle here. They wanted to become naturalised. Because of the nature of their work they were never able to raise a family. They wanted to raise one, and they wanted to go back to their own country which they love, as any ordinary human being would love the land of his birth, and visit their own people when this tide of prejudice had abated.

I greatly regret this decision that they have taken to go to Czechoslovakia. But I cannot find it in my heart to criticise them for going there, because it is one place which is open to them—for all I know the only place—where they can carry on their work and where they can do the job which they are fitted to do. The irony of it is that Dr. Cort's father is a Russian by birth and that he left the Soviet Union as a result of the Revolution. He went to America for freedom, and his child is now being pushed back again by the hamhandedness, lack of imagination and meanness of the people of the Western world.

This is an unhappy story. It is not too late for the Government to change the decision and I hope that the Under-Secretary will not say "No"—because I am becoming rather tired of constantly hearing "No" on this issue. If the hon. Gentleman cannot say that the Government are changing their mind then he had better not allude to it at all. As I say, this is an unhappy story and to the extent to which this country and this Government are responsible for making it an unhappy one, it is one of which the whole House should be ashamed.

I want to associate myself with the arguments put forward so ably and eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn). What my hon. Friend said in his closing remarks about the outcome of this case is completely new to me. It is the first time I have heard that Dr. Cort has decided that he can go only to Czechoslovakia.

I hope very much that when the Joint Under-Secretary replies to the debate he will not attempt to prove from that fact that, after all, Dr. Cort was a Communist all along, because of all the many unreal things which the Home Secretary has said in our proceedings in this House on this case, one that struck me as the most unreal was when he kept on insisting that he was not extraditing Dr. Cort to the United States because he could go where he liked.

To say that a man can go where he likes when one knows that his passport has been made invalid except for the United States, and when one sends him out of a British port knowing that there is probably no other country in the world that will accept him, is nothing short of hypocrisy. As I see it, the only reason why Dr. Cort can have decided to go to Czechslovakia, in view of all that has passed, is because there is nowhere else he can go except to the United States, where he is in fear of prison.

This is not the first time that on the last day before the Summer Recess I have been present in the House for a debate on the administration of the Aliens Order. On at least two previous occasions I sat where the Under-Secretary is sitting now, when I was Under-Secretary myself, and when my day-to-day work in the Home Office consisted largely of dealing with the doubtful and borderline cases under the Aliens Order, under the jurisdiction of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who was Home Secretary.

I therefore think I can say that I understand, and, on the whole, am sympathetic to, all the difficulties which the Home Office inevitably finds in administering this difficult Order. On at least two occasions when I was Under-Secretary I defended the present system of administering that Order, in the sense that I defended the almost complete discretion which the Home Secretary has in the matter. Since I have been in Opposition, I have not joined with my hon. Friends, who, on more than one occasion, have suggested that the discretion of the Home Secretary ought to be restricted by means of regulations or by statute. It seems to me that the nature of these cases is such that any attempt to lay down general rules for the handling of cases which vary so widely could only result in a larger, rather than a smaller number of hard cases and injustices. Therefore, I speak as a defender of the complete discretion of the Home Secretary in this matter.

However, if Parliament gives the Home 'Secretary complete discretion, it follows that he cannot, when challenged on any case, hide behind the rules. It is true, of course, that he operates to rules. In the interests of good administration and reasonable uniformity as between one applicant and another, he operates to rules, but they are self-imposed and are not imposed on him by statute or by Parliament; they are rules imposed by himself for the guidance of his officials and advisers which he himself has not only the right but the duty to waive, or at least to stretch, in suitable cases.

I suppose that in the conditions we have had in the last 20 years, particularly in Europe, there can be few more harrowing human problems than the problem of when and under what conditions to grant a home to the many millions of people who, often through no fault of their own, have been uprooted from one country or another and are seeking to start a new life.

It has been the practice of successive administrations in the Home Office to show as much liberality to the individual who applies to this country as is consistent with the public interest. I believe that this decision which the Home Secretary has taken in the case of Dr. Cort was unnecessary in the public interest and that it was illiberal to the individual. Speaking for myself, I say that it shakes my confidence in the use made by the present Home Secretary of the wide discretion which he has been properly given.

In recent years, and certainly during the time when I was at the Home Office, questions of asylum from political persecution, questions of what to do with Stateless persons, arose almost exclusively in the case of Nazi, or fascist or communist régimes. I do not remember any case occurring when I was at the Home Office—though my recollection may be at fault—of Americans seeking hospitality in this country for political reasons.

The reason why that has occurred is because it is something new to have laws and practices followed in the United States which are so different from our traditions of political liberty in this country. That, I think, applies particularly to the provision of the McCarran Act which imposes as one penalty for certain types of offences deprivation of nationality, which is a more modern way of saying "outlawry," a penalty which I think I am right in saying, has been unknown to British criminal law for many generations past.

It is a real change that this should have happened in America and it is this sort of unforeseen and unforeseeable change which justifies the discretionary system. The lamentable thing is that the Home Secretary, who has the discretion, has failed to adapt himself to the new conditions and circumstances. The Home Secretary professes to think that, in fact, Dr. Cort has brought his troubles upon himself by disregarding the national service laws of his own country. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East has dealt with that, but I really cannot believe that the Home Secretary believes that to be the case.

I am not going to go through all the arguments. I mention only two things which are well known not only to the Home Secretary, but to everybody else in this country who has been interested in this case. Can one really believe that when this man's passport was demanded back by the United States authorities in 1951, in order that it should be made valid only for return to the United States, that that was part of the normal machinery for dealing with American citizens abroad who are required to report for medical examination? Of course not. This is essentially the type of provision which has been used in the case of people who are wanted on political grounds. People who have been losing their passports under the McCarran Act, or other similar provisions which may exist, have been losing them for political reasons and not as part of the machinery of national service law.

Secondly, what has happened to Dr. Cort's colleagues in America is common knowledge. By colleagues I mean those who have been brought before various committees and in connection with whose examination Dr. Cort's name has been mentioned. There was an impressive article in the Observer "recently, setting out the whole story. I hope that the Home Secretary will not say that he knows nothing about this and that none of these unpleasant things have been happening to Americans who, in the past, have been associated with Dr. Cort.

Like the rest of us, he must know that the real reason why the United States wanted Dr. Cort back was not in connection with national service and that the real reason why Dr. Cort is not willing to go is not that he is afraid of being examined and perhaps called up, for that is unlikely. The real reason is that he is afraid of victimisation, official and unofficial, victimisation on political grounds which would be quite unacceptable to British tradition and opinion.

I know that the Home Secretary has said that such disabilities as Dr. Cort might legitimately fear if he returns to the United States do not measure up to the conventional definition of persecution which has been adopted here in the past in connection with the granting of the right of asylum. The Home Secretary has pointed out that we have always required that the danger should be one to life or liberty. I am not disputing that that has been the standard which has been adopted, but the rules to which the Home Secretary works are self-imposed and nobody obliges him slavishly to follow such a definition.

In fact, the very strict definition, which I fully admit my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields and myself followed for the most part when we were in office, was largely imposed upon us by terrible post-war conditions in Europe which led to millions of people suffering some kind of political inconvenience, all of whom would have come here had the gates been open. However much we disliked it, it was the only way of avoiding an influx of aliens into this country which would have caused real political difficulty.

I was always aware that the strictness of this definition caused heart-breaking results in a number of individual cases and I was very reluctant to follow it, though follow it I did because of the enormous numbers involved. I have been told that there are a few thousands of Americans roaming round Europe, many in France, who are unwilling to go back to the United States because they are afraid of something or other. Some of them may be undesirable characters, others may be excellent people. In any case, those people are presumably safe where they are in other countries, and we are under no obligation whatsoever to admit to this country any Americans who have had their passports withdrawn or who have passports which are valid only for return to the United States.

There must be few indeed who are in the position of Dr. Cort in his particular relationship to the National Service Acts, the machinery of which has been used to get him back. Therefore, to have stretched the traditional definition in such a way as to cover the very real victimisation which Dr. Cort fears would be reasonable and quite free from dangers to this country and it would be a humane thing to do.

The Home Secretary recently talked a great deal about the principle of return-ability, the principle that we do not accept an alien here unless, on the face of it, it is possible to return him to his own country. The Home Secretary denied that he was introducing a form of extradition by the back door. I know that he would not admit an alien if he saw that he could not be returned to his own country in case of need. But here we have an alien who has been in the United Kingdom for three years now and, so far as the Home Secretary has ever told us, has been behaving perfectly properly and against whom no objection is made. Another factor is that he is living in this country with a wife who is also doing extremely useful work here, and is not subject to this disability in relation to the National Service Act. The Home Secretary would allow her to stay; that is the indication he gave.

Dr. Cort was returnable to the United States at the time when he arrived here, but his returnability was affected later, entirely by the action of a foreign Government and not by anything he had done in this country. There is no rule of practice or principle which compels the Home Secretary to make him go, whereas every consideration of humanity and, I should have thought, of public decency, suggests that he should be allowed to stay. I think that if the Home Secretary asserts the contrary he will be saying that he is prepared to introduce extradition by the back door when, in point of fact, he could not introduce it under the treaties. Although he has denied that it is a quite inescapable conclusion. He is extending extradition to the case of any country which may include among its penalties the penalty of loss of nationality. I think it is a lamentable thing to allow that to creep in.

Finally, I believe that the very closeness of our relationship with the United States and the fact that we are such friendly countries should have made the Home Secretary particularly anxious to prevent issues of this kind being publicly raised. Once he had taken this wrong decision it was inevitable that they should be raised. They had to be raised, for our self-respect, because it is right that we should examine the operation and administration of the Alien's Order, also because liberally-minded Americans should know that the Home Secretary's lamentable decision does not command the general support of the whole public of this country, and, lastly, as a warning to the Home Secretary that this is not the way we expect to see him exercise the very wide discretion Parliament has given to his predecessors, and so far to himself.

I wish to speak because the scene of these events has been largely the City of Birmingham, because I am one of the hon. Members representing Birmingham and because I want to express the opinion—widely held in the city, especially among the colleagues of these two people—that they have been unjustly and harshly treated and that their treatment certainly does not comply with the traditions of this country. Everybody will be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) for raising the matter. It is true that it relates to the case of just one, or rather two individuals, but there are important principles involved, as my hon. Friend made clear.

Lest there should be any doubt about it, I would say that Dr. Cort has throughout insisted that the military call-up was not a genuine attempt to embody him into the American Army, and from that point of view was completely bogus, but was just an attempt to get him back to the United States. Having seen all the documents in the case, I would say that that conclusion is completely irresistible. It is quite clear that before this man left the United States, in 1951, he complied with all the provisions of the American law in relation to registration. He registered and asked the military authorities, before he left, whether it was in order for him to go. He was told that it was quite in order.

A few months afterwards, as has already been pointed out in the two previous speeches, in 1951, two years before the first military call-up papers were received, Dr. Cort received three letters from the American Embassy asking him to surrender his passport and return to the U.S.A. When he wrote back asking why—this is strange, and I think I can say rather sinister—this information was refused. At that time there was no suggestion about his availability for military call-up, or that he was wanted for call-up; nor was there the slightest suggestion that he had transgressed any of the American laws in relation to it.

It is only two years after this, and after the Congressional Committee into the activities of Communists in Yale University had proceeded on its course, that these papers were served. In Dr. Cort's opinion—and I am bound to say that the conclusion is irresistible—these papers were not served to get him into the Army but to get him back into the United States. Bearing in mind his medical record and the additional fact that, apparently, since early this year Communists are not embodied as doctors in the Army, and all the rest of the history of the case, and the attempt made to get Dr. Cort back in 1951, that is an irresistible conclusion. I therefore suggest—I do not think it is a fact which the Minister has properly considered—that this call-up is a bogus one. Certainly, there is no indication that this man had transgressed against any of the regulations before he left.

What happens to him if he goes back? Other Communists have been subjected to victimisation. We know that some of them are embodied in the Army. Doctors who were formerly Communists have been embodied in the Army and have there been given completely unsuitable work, such as, for instance, shovelling coal and other menial jobs for which, in many cases, they are quite unsuited, not to make a contribution to military service but, in many cases, simply for the purpose of political humiliation.

I will mention two cases of Dr. Cort's colleagues. One, Dr. Thierman, was detained in a military prison for a good many months, I am not sure whether nine or 14, while he was being tried for offences before he had been in the Army, while he had been a Communist in Yale University. Dr. Nugent, another colleague—

I do not want to go into this matter but the hon. Member stated that Dr. Thierman was in prison during this period. Is the hon. Member aware that the doctor was acquitted at the end of the period?

The point is that I am informed that during this period he was in prison. I suggest that when a man in the Army is being tried ostensibly for a military offence, as a matter of course he is kept in the "glasshouse" during such time as his case is being heard. If the Joint Under-Secretary has any information to the contrary perhaps he would tell me, but I think that my information is correct.

In the case in which Dr. Thierman was acquitted, I do not know whether the Minister knows that, according to a report in the "Observer" it was because he was not actually admitted to the Communist Party. That is not the position in this case. Quite a number of his colleagues have been victimised. Not all of them have been in prison, but many have been condemned to losing their employment.

We have not asked the Home Secretary to come to this decision on grounds of political asylum. The precise terms which make political victimisation may not exist here or, if they do exist, it is not politic for the Minister to make a decision on those grounds. We do not ask the Minister to do so. It was not necessary for him to make any decision, except quietly to allow this man to remain here and continue the good work he is doing in this country.

Why should he be refused permission to remain in this country? The only case we have had so far from the Minister is that of returnability; that is to say, that the United States authorities have threatened to take away this man's citizenship, and the Home Secretary is, therefore, afraid that he may, in due course, not be returnable. What is the validity of that argument? One might think that this principle of returnability was a well-established custom so far as the Home Office was concerned. But is it not a fact that the great majority of the aliens resident in this country are not returnable? The principle of non-returnability has not been applied to Iron Curtain countries since the war and long before. Where is this principle which the Home Secretary deems so important that these two young people must be forced to go back to victimisation?

In fact, an entirely new principle has been created. If that be denied by the Minister I ask him to produce any other case where a man has been sent out of this country because the country of origin has threatened him in such a manner. I submit that this is the first case and that a new and a dangerous precedent has been created. In future, it may be necessary only for another country to say, "We threaten to deprive this man of his citizenship" and then the man will be sent out of this country to undergo persecution, or something similar.

I submit that there is no justification or validity in the arguments advanced by the Home Secretary. He has created a new precedent which is opposite to the old precedent. Bearing in mind all those circumstances, the decision of the Home Secretary is to be condemned. It is probably too late to save Dr. Cort and his wife, but I hope that this debate will have some effect upon the mind of the Home Secretary in the future decisions which he may have to make in these important matters which mean so much to quite a number of people resident in this country.

It may be convenient if I go fairly quickly through the facts of the case. My right hon. and learned Friend stated them on 24th June, but I think that they must be brought clearly to the minds of hon. Members. Dr. Cort came here in June, 1951, to take up a research fellowship at Cambridge. In the first place he was allowed to come here for 12 months.

Perhaps I might interpose here to say that the difference between Dr. Cort and the people referred to by the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) is that he mentioned people who came here to do work and that Dr. Cort is a person who came as a student. He got an extension of 12 months to June, 1953, to enable him to continue with that fellowship.

Early in 1953 Dr. Cort applied for a post of lecturer at the University of Bir- mingham, and he was selected for that post. At that time he applied for permission to take up the post on a permanent basis, but, of course, the Home Office was dealing with the matter on the basis that he was here as a research student. There was a little delay, and after some consideration he was granted permission to stay on until 30th June, 1954, but that was strictly on the understanding that this was on a temporary and not a permanent basis. That was the condition on which he received that extension.

Why?

That was a condition. Earlier this year it came to the notice of the Home Office that Dr. Cort's United States citizenship was in danger because of his failure to comply with notices sent by the United States authorities under the Selective Service Acts.

This information did not reach us from the American authorities. It reached us after Dr. Cort had been informed of the position by the Birmingham police as a result of the normal inter-police machinery. It was because Dr. Cort had refused to make a reply to the American authorities but had, in fact, said that he was willing to make a statement to the Home Office that the matter came to the attention of the Home Office at all.

When it came to our attention Dr. Cort was warned that in the circumstances he would not get a further extension. The action to warn him was taken because it is necessary to insist upon returnability. Hon. Members have asked why it is necessary to insist upon returnability. The answer is that it is the only sanction which we possess, as far as immigration is concerned, for the control of aliens. Our only sanction is the power of the Home Secretary to deport. If we do not insist upon returnability that power is lost and the whole principle of aliens policy would fall to the ground. Return-ability is therefore an essential condition for permission for an alien to remain here on a temporary basis.

The hon. Member for Bristol, South-East—and I think the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger)—has referred to other aliens to which this policy of returnability has not been applied, and it was indeed to those that I was referring in the letter which I wrote to the hon. Member. Of course, I was there referring to the refugees who were allowed in after the war—not by this Government, as a matter of fact, but I think when the right hon. Member for Grimsby was in my present office—as part of our contribution to a large scheme to deal with refugees in Europe. That is really an entirely different problem and is not now relevant.

After Dr. Cort was warned that his permission to remain would not be renewed, he prepared a statement in which he said that his name had been mentioned in an investigation of Communist activities at Yale University that it would be unlikely that he would be able to find scientific employment if he returned to the United States; that he would be inducted as a non-medical private, and that he had been advised that there was no legal compulsion upon him to reply to the notice which he had received from the Government of his country. On those statements, the Home Secretary was approached by Professor Hill, by my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead) and by the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East.

As I read it, that statement amounted to a claim for political asylum, and indeed it was on that basis that the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East first of all approached this case. At that stage that was the way in which I think he put it.

I did actually ask the hon. Member to give a general decision on the matter. But I went on to say that if he were not able to grant my request I proposed to develop, subsequently, a case for political asylum.

I would not for a moment say that what the hon. Member said was not correct, but I think that I am right in saying that the statement which had been prepared, and which was the basis of the hon. Member's case, was a claim for political asylum. That was the essence of the case. But even if we were to accept the facts which were included in that statement, the claim does not amount anything like to the standard which has been required for many years past to sustain a claim for political asylum. It falls far short. On that basis, my right hon. and learned Friend decided that there was not a valid case of politi- cal asylum and that the decision that Dr. Cort could not get an extension must stand.

When the Joint Under-Secretary says that this standard has been observed for many years past, is he not referring to the standard observed under the extradition Acts, where the issue was whether some other country had a right, under Treaty, to have some one back, and was the subject of judicial proceedings? In those circumstances, one would expect an extremely strict standard, otherwise it could happen that the Treaty right would be defeated.

I can say that in no case has a claim for political asylum been maintained on facts of the kind contained in that statement, or indeed which are known to apply to Dr. Cort.

Dr. Cort then supplied the Press with a statement saying that the Home Secretary had rejected his claim because the rule under which political asylum can be granted was limited to danger to life. That was the next action that was taken. Of course, if indeed my right hon. and learned Friend had ever said that that was the rule, then I quite agree that all the criticisms that have been levelled against him would be valid, but the plain truth is that that statement by Dr. Cort was completely and absolutely without any foundation whatsoever. That was the first time, so far as I know, that this matter reached public ears.

That was a mistake which Dr. Cort readily recognises. He understood that to be the case from the letter that the Home Secretary had sent to Dr. Hill. He readily recognises that that was a misunderstanding.

I think that the hon. Gentleman might have been a little more generous to my right hon. and learned Friend in the way in which he opened his case, if indeed he now says that that kind of mistake was made, because it was a pretty glaring one.

There were a number of Parliamentary Questions put down, and my right hon. and learned Friend gave a reply on 24th June. It was, in fact, a written reply, and it was written because the Questions were not reached. In fact, they were quite low in order on the Order Paper, but it so happened that they were not reached on that day. My right hon. and learned Friend was ready to answer them orally if a request of that kind was made, but it was not.

The "Daily Herald" on the following day attacked the Home Secretary for having sheltered himself behind the machinery of giving a written instead of an oral reply, and it went on to attack the Home Office for having raised the question to the level of a claim for political asylum. I am answering this in a somewhat polemical way because I think that the facts should be known. These imputations were made against my right hon. and learned Friend and the Home Office, and it is right that the true facts of the case should be brought out now. There were further Parliamentary Questions, which will be within the recollection of hon. Members, and they will also remember that my right hon. and learned Friend did not change his mind.

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I think he will agree that it is important to get these matters right. He will recall that he telephoned me at home to suggest that I put down a Question to give the Home Secretary an opportunity to answer. Although I was sick at the time, I sent a special messenger to the House with an oral Question. I was still sick on Thursday and, therefore, unable to be in the House, and I was very surprised that the Home Secretary had not taken advantage of the opportunity which is always open to a Minister to say, "With permission, I will answer this Question," in spite of the fact that it had not been reached. I think it is a little unfair of the hon. Gentleman.

I am not making any imputation on that score against the hon. Gentleman. I appreciate that he was not here, but there were a great many Questions on the Order Paper, and a number of his hon. Friends, none of whom is very slow about asking for such a concession as an oral statement, were in the House. There was another somewhat important statement made on that day, and it may be that that was the reason. But, in the ordinary event, the Question would have been reached. I acquit the hon. Member of any dis- courtesy in that matter. Indeed, I entirely agree that it was at my suggestion that that was the day chosen to put down the Question.

Dr. Cort asked for an extension of a month for his stay in order to complete his personal arrangements before leaving the country, and that request was granted. Perhaps I should say that no day-to-day touch is kept with aliens in this country, and the first intimation that I have had that Dr. Cort had left the country has just fallen from the lips of the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn).

He has not left yet.

I thought the hon. Gentleman said that he had left.

May we be told where he is going?

The hon. Member was not here when his hon. Friend dealt with that point.

I think I should complete my statement of the facts, some of which are not within the direct knowledge of the Home Office. It has been suggested that the call-up notices were not issued by the American authorities in the ordinary course of their Selective Service Act administration. That allegation has been made on a number of occasions, and I have made such inquiries as I can in the matter. The position is that the call-up was made under the doctors' draft section. The previous call-up notices, to which hon. Members have referred, would have been issued under the general provisions of the American Acts, and this notice was issued under the special provisions of the doctors' draft section.

Under those provisions, physical requirements are much less stringent than for the generality of those called up, as one might suppose. The appropriate regulations prescribe that if a physician can furnish any medical service he is to be eligible for draft, and it is difficult to see why, if a man can be an effective doctor in Birmingham, he should not be as effective looking after American troops.

Is it not a fact that ex-Communists are not called up as doctors in the American forces? Secondly, will the Joint Under-Secretary deal with the point I raised? I never suggested that the American call-up did not comply with the regulations. What I said was that the full history of the case—bearing in mind the attempt to get this man back to America two years before, without any reason being given—casts considerable doubt upon the bona fides of the call-up.

I have made inquiries on this score. Dr. Cort was called up in the doctors' draft. If the position is that he would not have been employed in that draft, all he had to do was to reply to the notices. He did not do so, and it is that failure which is the real cause of the difficulty, which he has created himself. I have examined the information, and I can tell the House that, as a result. I am quite satisfied that this call-up was entirely bona fide and was not made for any ulterior purpose.

Two grounds have been suggested for allowing Dr. Cort to stay here on a permanent basis. One suggestion is that his case should be treated as an exceptional one, and the other is that it should be treated as a case of political asylum.

indicated dissent.

The hon. Member shakes his head. He favours the case being treated as one of political asylum, but the right hon. Member for Grimsby favours dealing with it as an exceptional case. The latter proposal has not been pressed very strongly, because hon. Members on both sides of the House have criticised the arbitrary powers which are given to the Home Secretary under the Aliens Order. I do not complain of that criticism.

It has been the policy of the present Government, just as it was of the last, first, to define very precisely the rules under which the Order will be operated; secondly, to make those rules known as far as possible—indeed, I have done my best to expound them in the House on a number of occasions during the last few years—and, thirdly, to try to apply them strictly. If we were to modify the rules in this way, as I have been invited to do today, in response to political agitation, it would be grossly unfair on those who had not got political agitation behind them, and it would certainly be an end of sound administration.

The point is that this could have been done at the discretion of the Home Secretary before there was any agitation.

Then the right hon. Gentleman would have had to put forward a special case. As I understand it, he is now pressing that this should be dealt with as a special case, because of political feeling that has been aroused.

I am not suggesting it is because of political feeling. I am suggesting that as the Home Secretary has been given discretion precisely because conditions are so variable that no fixed rule can be worked from year to year he should at any rate have shown realisation that there are political conditions in some other countries which did not previously exist but do exist today, and that account should have been taken of that fact. That is all I am asking.

The right hon. Gentleman is putting the case for political asylum. If we are to treat this as an exceptional case we must find some exceptional grounds, and the only exceptional grounds suggested are grounds of political asylum. Those grounds are not anywhere precisely defined. I think that the best I can do is to refer the House to the Refugees Convention which was drawn up at Geneva in 1951. That, of course, is not a definition of political asylum, but it deals with political refugees. It provides that no contracting States shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. That, I think, fairly and accurately describes the basis upon which the right of political asylum has been operated in this country for many years past.

It has been suggested on behalf of Dr. Cort, but, curiously enough, not by him personally, that if he returned to the United States he would be liable to imprisonment because of his Communist activities. There is really no foundation whatsoever for that allegation. There is not a single case in which an individual has been imprisoned because of his Communist activities as yet, or of any similar circumstances whatever. No hon. Member has been able to put forward a case. The hon. Member for Erdington, who, presumably, made such researches as he was able to, was able to cite one case where the prosecution was for a misrepresentation on the part of the individual, namely, that he had not been a Communist. My information is that he was not put in prison awaiting trial but in fact was acquitted when the matter went for trial. That is the only case any hon. Member has been able to put forward that is anything like this one.

That case was the case of a court-martial. Where was the man kept pending the court-martial?

On a point of order. Could hon. Members be asked to allow my hon. Friend to make his speech without so many interruptions, because they take up time and so reduce the amount of time left for the other subjects we hope to debate?

If a Member seeks to intervene and the Member addressing the House gives way, he may do so. There is nothing wrong in that.

Why does not the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. H. Nicholls) learn the rules of order?

I am concerned about the time left for the following subjects.

It is perfectly true that that case was a court-martial, but a court-martial is as much a trial as any in a civil court.

I quite agree that Dr. Cort may be liable to imprisonment for refusing to comply with the call-up notice. That may very well be true, but it is certainly not a ground for claiming political asylum. Nor do I deny for a moment that people with Communist associations in America may suffer various degrees of unpleasantness, as the right hon. Member for Grimsby has suggested, but that is very far short indeed of persecution, and the kind of things which have been suggested, if not by Dr. Cort himself at least on his behalf, are the very greatest exaggeration of anything which could occur.

The hon. Member for Bristol, South-East asked about the interrogation of Dr. Cort by the Birmingham police. My right hon. and learned Friend has already made a statement in that connection in the House. I can perhaps add this: he has considered whether any guidance to chief constables is necessary and he proposes to make some suggestions to ensure that where police inquiries are made to see whether an alien is in a position to answer correspondence, the alien is left in no doubt as to his rights. In view of what has been said, that should be made clear.

The Home Secretary has given this case the most careful consideration. He is perfectly satisfied that the decision which he has taken is one which it was his duty to take. Dr. Cort has never come near to establishing a valid claim to be regarded as a political refugee. The motives which led him to seek publicity and to misrepresent the Home Secretary's attitude must, of course, be a matter for speculation, but it was certainly no part of his desire to improve relations between this country and the United States. It is unfortunate that so many people were successfully misled and have allowed themselves to assume that the case had an importance and raised issues which never really arose at all.

When you were good enough, Mr. Speaker, to allocate an hour of today's Sitting to the topic of road finance. I immediately got in touch with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury by letter, giving him an indication of the line which I propose to pursue and intimating that I should be grateful for his attendance.

My right hon. Friend told me orally that he did not think it was a matter which the Treasury could take, but that it fell properly upon the shoulders of the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation. It is perhaps poetic justice, therefore, that since then my right hon. Friend has found himself Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation. Perhaps I may take this opportunity of asking his Parliamentary Secretary, for whose attendance I am grateful, to convey to my right hon. Friend my congratulations, and I am sure those of the House in general, and our best wishes for a successful period of administration.

We have recently dealt with the final stages of the Finance Bill of the year, founded upon the Budget introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last April, of which the chief feature, I think hon. Members will agree, was the provision for investment allowances for industry—a proposal which met with general approval, although there were, of course, differences of opinion during Committee as to the incidence of this relief. Some hon. Members opposite took the view that the larger industries were benefiting unduly at the expense of the smaller. Be that as it may, there was no difference between us as to the value and the importance of that step.

Production has increased and is increasing, but I suggest to the House that the development of our highways communications is a necessary corollary to it. After all, much of the effort which is made in the factories and elsewhere is wasted when the products have to be transported across an inefficient piece of industrial equipment, namely, our road system.

It is a lamentable fact—and I shall show the reasons for it, which in my view are largely unavoidable—that up and down the country today, North and South, East and West, there is not a single trunk route adequate to the vastly increased traffic now forced to use it. At this time of the year, when as hon. Members we are all looking forward to an escape from our duties for a few weeks, as are many of our fellow citizens, these conditions are aggravated by the summer holiday pressure. It may be that some frustrated motorists waiting at bottlenecks, will if they switch on their wireless sets, catch one or two snatches of this debate.

During this Parliament, Her Majesty's Government have twice accepted Motions calling for increased road expenditure, but have given no indication as to when this will be implemented. I submit, with the greatest respect, to the Parliamentary Secretary that our national reluctance to appreciate the vital part played by roads in industrial production is in sharp contrast to our attitude to other industrial equipment. The provision of new equipment, including buildings, is encouraged, as I would remind the House, by wise investment allowances. Yet the importance to industrial production of essential equipment is surely not conditional on which side of the factory gate it happens to be.

What our out-of-date roads are costing the nation is difficult to compute. I can tell the House one thing. On the trunk routes it is estimated that a motorway would reduce operating costs by as much as £25,000 per mile per year. That is certainly a formidable figure. I call in aid no less a personage than my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, who, on 11th November, 1948, speaking on the Second Reading of the Special Roads Bill, said this:

"… special roads should be allowed to take their place in the capital development queue."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th November, 1948; Vol. 457, c. 1755.]

It so happens that another speaker in that debate was the Parliamentary Secretary, who delivered himself in far less enthusiastic language as to the importance of road transport. It would not be fair to quote him on this occasion because he could not have foreseen then that he would be the holder of his present office, and in any case, "Doe don't eat dog." The fact remains that the Home Secretary called attention to the importance of special roads in our capital development "queue," as he called it, and this was six years ago.

Since then, the Parliamentary Secretary will agree, I am sure, that the queue has shortened and many priorities have now been cleared. I am, therefore, here to submit that the time is ripe for road development to be first in the queue. It has been estimated that when the Government's present road programme reaches its plateau level some four years from now, the total expenditure from Exchequer and local authority sources will reach £100 million a year, and, of course, a vast percentage of that figure will have to be devoted to maintenance. New construction and major improvements will have only a minor share of the total expenditure.

It is expected that at plateau level the total outlay on new construction and major improvement in the present programme will be some £18 million a year. I call attention to that figure because, oddly enough, it is precisely the same figure in cash as we spent for these purposes in the financial year 1938–39, the last full year before the outbreak of the war.

Since then, there has been virtually no expenditure on new road construction, but during the same period vehicle registrations have practically doubled. Thus, when the Government's road programme reaches its maximum, since costs are now 2½ times those of pre-war, it follows that only a fraction of what was done in 1938–39 will be achieved, even allowing for the improved efforts of road construction which are now available.

It would not be difficult to advance arguments, had we more time, to show that the necessary roads in terms of productivity possess an earning capacity. We are often told that the nationalised industries have an earning capacity, but there can be no denying that congestion and delay on the roads cause a waste of time and effort which cannot be overtaken.

I want now to return to the proposition which I made in the House nearly six months ago for a £500 million loan over a period of 30 years for the purpose of tackling this question, and I want to say a word about how this could be serviced. I appreciate that this is a Treasury matter. I shall not take it amiss if my hon. Friend makes no reference to it—it will be on record—but I should have liked someone from the Treasury to come along and pay a little attention to this matter. We had a representative of the Treasury on the Front Bench all day on education on Monday, but it appears that the only time the Treasury representatives flee from a stricken field is when we are discussing something financial. Therefore, I do not blame my hon. Friend if he cannot be forthcoming on this argument as to how we can provide the necessary servicing of a long-term loan for road purposes; that is a Treasury problem and a matter for Treasury decision.

Consumption of all forms of fuel by road users in recent years has totalled just over 2,000 million gallons every year. The total taxation on fuel, motor vehicle duties and the like, including Purchase Tax, amounts to £380 million a year. One penny of the present fuel Tax of 2s. 6d. per gallon yields £8½ million. And so, by providing, through the Consolidated Fund, a sum for road construction purposes equivalent to the revenue produced by 3½d. of the present Fuel Tax, an annual income of £30 million could be produced.

Thus the equivalent of a little over one-tenth of the present tax on fuel would provide a sufficient sum to service a £500 million road development loan which, if issued in blocks as and when the physical construction programme called for funds, and if issued even at the unduly high rate at present of 4 per cent.—although I am sure it could be done on a lower basis—would at its peak require a maximum sum of £29 million for interest and sinking fund purposes.

My right hon. Friend the recent Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation has said that this is a matter of budgetary policy. So it is, and that is why I was anxious to have a gentleman from the Treasury present. But precisely how the Government provide funds for a realistic road construction and improvement programme is, after all, immaterial—we do not mind; but if current revenue fails to deliver the goods, as fail it undoubtedly does, the urgency of the situation demands borrowing.

When I deployed this argument to the House in February, two ugly sisters were produced to horrify hon. Members: inflation and disruption. We were told that these proposals would mean an inflationary action and, said my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary a little later, it would cause great disruption in the money market. The two ugly sisters, thanks to new frocks provided by Dior, in the person of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and beauty treatment from Elizabeth Arden, in the person of the Minister of Fuel and Power, have both gone off to the ball looking really quite glamorous.

Three weeks ago today, on behalf of the gas and electricity industries, we passed a Bill giving them borrowing powers not to the tune of £500 million but to the tune of £900 million. The ugly sisters have become quite glamorous since my hon. Friend pointed to their hideous features while poor Cinderella still sat in rags by the fireside, the poor Cinderella of the highways.

Why does the hon. Member not go to her rescue?

I was just going to say that I am comforted by my recollection of the story of Cinderella, for it ended happily. I am hoping that this may be the case too, because British credit has vastly improved under the wise administration of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is no good making this improvement in British credit if we do not use it. It is there. Let us make use of it.

I cannot, of course, expect more today from my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary. I am most grateful to him for coming here to deal with this subject which is removed considerably from his Departmental duties. I know the speech my hon. Friend will make if only because I have made it myself on more than one occasion from that Box; but we want to go wider than that. The Ministry of Transport can do no more than use the money which Parliament votes. I am trying to get the reserves up to the front line as reinforcements and I say, let us use our improved British credit.

I cannot expect my hon. Friend to do more than give us an assurance that the new Minister, whom I wish well, will give this matter his urgent and sympathetic consideration. He has every consideration for doing so. He has been at the other end of the gun for three years, and if he does not know how to get round the Treasury nobody else does. He is also a young and active Minister and he can confront the Treasury with an ultimatum—that if they do not come across with the money his name will be Walker.

Perhaps my hon. Friend will be able to say that the new Minister will give urgent and sympathetic consideration to this problem as well as the highest priority as soon as the national finances permit. I conclude by respectfully submitting that the situation on this very day makes action possible here and now.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Sir G. Braithwaite) on raising this matter this afternoon, because it is the appropriate season in which to do so with so many motorists setting out on their holidays this weekend. This is a non-party issue. We can blame successive Ministers of different political colour for their failure to provide adequate finances for the arteries of the country. I would share in the congratulations which the hon. Member expressed to the new Minister of Transport. In the past, very much of the roads programme has been shipwrecked on the rocks of the Treasury. Now one of those rocks has shifted from Whitehall to Berkeley Square, and it may be that a channel will be open through which progress can be made.

I should like to deal mainly with one or two aspects of the problem in London, because I think in London in particular the advantages of financing road expenditure through the methods suggested by the hon. Member, namely, a road loan, would be very considerable indeed. I say that because London is suffering in particular at the present time from the failure of the Ministry to permit it to proceed according to its long-term plan. The London County Council produced a 10-year development plan which called for only £4 million per annum. That is not a considerable amount when one considers the size of the Metropolis and its great importance to the country and the Commonwealth.

Unfortunately, however, the Minister has refused to give the all-clear for a programme of works for some years ahead. He has authorised certain commitments for the current year, but he has not given any indication to the L.C.C. or to the Middlesex County Council as to those works which will be authorised over the next few years. As we all know, this development plan covers many long-needed improvements which, if carried out, would not only improve the flow of the traffic throughout the City, but would also add to its amenities.

Among the high priorities for which the L.C.C. has been pressing are the duplication of the Blackwall Tunnel, which is a had bottleneck in the East End of London; for the Hyde Park—Marble Arch boulevard, which would facilitate the flow of traffic from the north to the south and from the south to the north; and the removal of the bottleneck at Notting Hill Gate, which is one of the worst bottlenecks out of London.

Unfortunately the Minister of Transport has refused to say even whether these schemes will ever be carried out or whether they will receive a grant. Yet the waste of the traffic congestion and the slowing down in the flow of traffic is very great indeed. I saw some figures the other day to the effect that at Piccadilly Circus and at Hyde Park Corner in each case 900 vehicle man-hours a day are lost, which is a considerable amount.

The L.C.C. is ignorant of when it will be able to go ahead with its development plan and does not even know whether it should safeguard the improvements. By that, I mean that where it has planned for the improvements, if leases fall in or for other reasons property becomes available which ultimately will have to be acquired in order to carry out the development schemes, unless the L.C.C. obtains the go-ahead from the Ministry that the grant will be available, it is faced with the dilemma of having to decide for itself whether it will spend its own funds without grant for the purpose of safeguarding these improvements.

I can give the House a current instance on which the L.C.C. has had to decide recently. It concerns St. Giles Circus, which is the intersection at Tottenham Court Road, Charing Cross Road and Oxford Street. There a really ridiculous position has arisen. Originally this scheme for making a circus at the junction there was in the second-year development plan of the L.C.C., but the Minister suggested that this was so important that it should be put into the first 10-year plan, and that was done. Recently the Minister has said that he is anxious that the scheme shall be safeguarded. This means that property which has recently come into the market shall be purchased by the L.C.C. so that the improvements can be safeguarded. Yet, although the Minister has expressed that view, he refuses to forecast the date when the work can be done or even to commit himself to making a grant towards those improvements.

I apologise to the Parliamentary Secretary because I have not given him notice of this matter—and I do not expect an answer off-hand—but I would add, that, in regard to safeguarding improvements without Treasury grant, the L.C.C. has had to spend £3 million on acquiring often small sites, where considerable improvements could take place but for which the Council has received no grant. The property is then often frozen. Road works have to be done and temporary paving put down, but major improvements which could be done at a comparatively small additional cost if only a grant were available cannot be carried out.

Unfortunately, London is in the dark about its future. This year, commitments for which Exchequer grants are to be given cover only just over £2 million in London and just over £1 million in Middlesex. The larger part of these commitments is for the Cromwell Road extension, which is a very important and necessary scheme. Apart from that, the only schemes to which London has been so far committed is the small improvements in the Piccadilly-Swallow Street area and the small improvement on Rochester Row.

If only the financing of expenditure on roads could come out of capital below the line rather than out of revenue it would be possible for the Ministry to allow the L.C.C., Middlesex County Council and all road authorities in the county to plan ahead. The great advantage of that would be that it could do so in an overall way and not proceed on an ad hoc basis as is being done at present. I hope, therefore, that we shall receive today from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary a clear answer to the question why the Treasury refuses to accept the suggestion of a road loan. In our debates so far, no real explanation has been given to us. As the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West said, certain excuses have been produced which are no longer valid in view of the action which the Government have taken with regard to the electricity and gas industries.

Something must be done not only in London but with regard to the whole of the road programme throughout the country, and some way of financing the programme must be found. If the Treasury refuses to finance it out of the Revenue, it must give serious consideration to this alternative. Something must be done in London, because London is not only the largest city in the world and the capital of this country but is the centre of the Commonwealth and, as such, should give an example of modernity to the extent which its historical position makes possible.

Instead of that, I am afraid that when a visitor comes here he is impressed by our great historical monuments, by our parks, even by our policemen and our underground railways, but he is shocked at the congestion that he finds on the streets and the slow flow of our traffic and is appalled at the inadequacy of our roads and the slowness with which we are bringing them up-to-date. I am afraid that he will be even more shocked in a few years' time unless something is done. Because of the inadequacy of our road programme, London has become the slowest city in Europe. I ask the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to take back to the new Minister who has recently come from the Treasury our wish that in his new position he will look afresh at the financing of the road programme with a view to increasing it to a level which this country can afford.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Sir G. Braithwaite) and the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) have proved a very good team in opening a debate on roads once again. My hon. Friend gave a broad outline of the need throughout the country and of the effect that delay in meeting his plea will have on road safety and on industry. The hon. Member for Enfield, East pinpointed the case in London. The general case and the particular case seem to me to be undeniable. I hope that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will use all his efforts to see that this case, which is largely the case of his own Department, is presented successfully.

Once again, I would refer to the regularity with which this matter is raised in this House. Parliament, above all else, is a sounding board. Time and again at Question time and during debates this matter is raised and urged, backed up on every occasion with figures which are really significant and with the promise that the outcome would be very well worth while. It is unnecessary to tell the Parliamentary Secretary of the need for this from the road safety point of view. His Department is well aware of it because it has announced it on so many occasions. Quite apart from the loss of lives, the cost of road accidents today runs into more than £100 million a year. It is established that quite a big proportion of road accidents could be prevented if we had a better road system.

This is not the only answer to the problem of road accidents, but it is a big and important part of the answer and one which, I know, has the full support and sympathy of my hon. Friend who is representing the Government on the Treasury Bench. I think it is also accepted on grounds of industrial efficiency. We have had evidence, which cannot be overlooked, that hundreds of millions of pounds a year are added to production costs because of the delay on the roads and the wasted fuel being turned into smoke whilst vehicles stand in long queues because of some of the bottlenecks to which the hon. Member for Enfield, East referred. It is quite obvious that it would be to the good of the country if these improvements could be made in a way which would reach very great proportions. Why is the power not exercised?

In the debate a few weeks ago I acknowledged the fact that the announcement of the then Minister of Transport showed a considerable improvement on former years—three times the amount was being spent as was spent two years ago—but obviously that was not enough. Why do the Treasury appear to be unconvinced? It cannot be because of the strength of the case; that, I am certain, has been pressed on it from all quarters. It cannot be shortage of labour. At one time I thought it might be shortage of labour and materials which was holding back development, but that is not so now.

The statement on 22nd February by Sir George Burt, President of the Federation and Civil Engineering Contractors, has never been denied. His statement really does dispose of the suggestion that there is a shortage of labour and materials. The statement was:

"The civil engineering industry has immediately available the necessary skill and experienced personnel and the latest types of plant to undertake this task of modernising and improving Britain's highway system and it is ready and waiting for the signal to go ahead. Never before has the civil engineering industry been so well equipped and prepared to carry out road construction work on a large scale."

If there were ever a shortage that cannot be so now, unless that statement by Sir George Burt can be gainsaid. If it is ever attempted to say that such an authoritative person is not sure of his facts, nothing short of a national inquiry inside the Department with evidence from all quarters would satisfy me.

So the reason cannot be shortage of equipment, and is only finance. We know that finance is always a big question in any undertaking in business. If it is the case that the need has been made out it is for the Treasury to decide for itself how it gets the money. I see the weakness in asking for something which will cost money, when money is in short supply, if one does not oneself give an answer; and we have had two answers submitted to us in this House.

We have the answer given by my hon. Friend of a £500 million loan for 30 years. No really adequate reason has been given why that cannot be done. If there is an answer to that there is still the scheme put forward by my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke). He has said, "If you do not want to raise a loan let us have finance by under-the-line expenditure." The good that will come from this work will go on for many years and it is not unreasonable that the cost of it should be paid for in future years.

These are the two ways put forward in this House of raising money—either a loan or under-the-line expenditure, and until there has been a really adequate answer why either or neither can be undertaken I feel that we are justified in asking again and again for the Treasury to give support to the Parliamentary Secretary's Department in respect of the case which, I suspect, my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary has tried hard behind the scenes to put to it. All the Ministries, not only the Ministry of Transport, want better roads.

The Home Secretary surely wants better roads to relieve the strain on the police. Surely the Minister of Labour wants better roads. We have a very good case so far as the employment figures are concerned, but the one thing that could cause unemployment is that we might lose our markets because we are priced out of world markets as a result of the cost of transport from the factory to the ports.

The Board of Trade should join in this co-ordinated effort to impress on the Treasury that it really must not be so stiff-necked about this matter, because the success of the Board of Trade depends on our having a successful industry, which, over the next five or 10 years, really depends on preventing chaos developing due to the number of vehicles on the road being in excess of the capacity of the roads to take them.

Once again I add my voice to the appeal to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to go all out, with his new Minister, whom we all wish well, to stand and fight hard with the Treasury on this vital question. I am convinced that if they win they will be very good friends to the Treasury in helping to bring in a greater return to the Revenue through the extra prosperity that will flow from dealing adequately with this question.

I wish to lend my wholehearted support to the proposition of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Sir G. Braithwaite) for this new approach to road finance and to improvements to the roads. He has put forward the argument on the basis that unless there is this new approach and this increased expenditure upon the roads we shall soon reach economic strangulation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr. H. Nicholls) touched upon another good reason why increased expenditure is so very necessary on the roads, a reason which I wish to emphasise, stress and underline; that is, until we spend a greater amount on the roads and adopt some new approach towards the improvement of the roads we shall not save the life and limb which is now being so tragically lost on the roads. I do not mean by that that every road improvement necessarily brings with it road safety. When one considers road improvements from the point of view of making the flow of traffic smoother, it may be that unless care is exercised we shall be making the roads more dangerous.

I hope it will be realised, however, that a good reason for greater expenditure on the roads is safety, and that if it is found possible to finance road improvements by the method suggested by my hon. Friend a great part of that finance will be devoted to road safety measures.

On previous occasions in this House I have had the privilege of suggesting certain precautionary measures, which I think deserve priority, such as non-skid surfaces, refuges and press-button lights. There are others which other hon. Members may think should have greater priority. But the important thing is that we should give these road safety measures a real priority in the expenditure of money on the roads, even though perhaps they seem economically inconvenient to the flow of traffic, for, after all, road accidents are the greatest economic inconvenience from the long-term point of view.

I would follow through the argument which I am endeavouring to put, that a great proportion of the expenditure should be on road safety measures by saying that there should be some form of guardianship of the funds to be expended. There should be a guardian of road safety. I am not sure that the Ministry of Transport is the correct body to look after the expenditure of money on the roads from the road safety point of view. The very name of the Ministry suggests that its objective is to improve the roads for the flow of traffic, to make for an easier and more economic transport system; and in achieving that object it may at times come into direct conflict with the objective of safety on the roads.

There are also other Ministries concerned. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough mentioned the Home Office, which is deeply concerned about road safety matters. The Home Office is responsible for enforcing the traffic laws, and partially for the police who administer them. The Ministry of Housing and Local Government is responsible for the roads under the care of local authorities, and partially for the police forces which are under local authorities. There are also the Ministry of Education, under whose auspices such good work has been done in educating school children, and the Ministry of Health, which must necessarily be concerned with the overcrowd- ing of hospitals by those injured in road accidents. There are more Ministries involved in road safety matters than the Ministry of Transport.

If there is to be this increased expenditure on the roads, I would ask, also, that there be an independent guardian of road safety measures to see that at least a quarter of the money spent on road improvements is directly spent on road safety matters. There is in existence under the Ministry of Transport a body which would fit the bill if it were divorced from the Ministry. I refer to the Minister's Road Safety Committee, which has done such good work in the past. Were that an independent body under a strong and independent chairman whom other Ministries could consult, and to whom other Ministries could represent road safety matters, I think it would bring great benefit.

I would go further and give such a body the power to veto expenditure on road improvement where it did not comply with real road safety measures. I would put the Road Research Laboratory under its care, I believe that with the assistance of that Laboratory, and with this new financial approach of a road loan and increased finance to be applied to road improvement, money could be spent in the best possible way in order to prevent lives from being lost on our roads. The case has undoubtedly been made out time and again, in this House and outside, for the expenditure of money on the roads, not only for economic but for safety purposes. I add my voice once again to those which support that plea.

As usual in all road debates in this Parliament, and even before that, this discussion has been one of great interest. Hon. Members have contributed, as they always do, from their direct experience. It has always seemed to me that there were three, and only three, reasons why we have not had greater capital expenditure upon the roads. One could go back almost to before the war and see that those reasons prevailed then—at least, one or two of them did.

The first, which is a post-war reason, is the fear of inflation. That was a very real fear during the time when a Socialist Minister of Transport introduced what is now the Special Roads Act. That provided for large strategic highways, and it was a good Act when Parliament had finished with it. It is now in the pigeonholes of the Ministry. It has never been implemented.

It was not implemented because the Government which introduced it made financial conditions essential for its success quite impossible. Those conditions no longer prevail, thanks to the wise administration of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The noble Lord is over-simplifying.

When speeches have to be brief simplication becomes a virtue.

But the statement is not accurate.

Thanks to the wise administration of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the inflationary situation has now been held and I think that on that account we can look forward very shortly to a road development programme of a very much larger order than any we have had since the war.

The second reason why we have not had a road programme of substance is a more sinister reason. I am afraid that in the Treasury there still are high civil servants who are infected with this reason. I do not think that that applies to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer because I have never heard him give vent to these views, and I have not heard them from the former Financial Secretary to the Treasury, whom we are delighted to congratulate upon his new appointment to the Ministry of Transport.

However, there are those people in high financial circles in the Treasury who still adhere to the ancient views of people like Lord Runciman, before the war, who said that roads were a kind of industrial activity which should be held in reserve for a situation of unemployment and deflation. I am certain that there are still people about who think in terms of picks and shovels and manpower hauled in from the labour exchange at the last moment frantically digging holes in the ground in order to lay down roads as a means of maintaining full employment and absorbing the surplus money that exists.

For goodness' sake, let those people consult all the high State documents of both parties since the war and digest them, and exorcise from themselves any vestige of feeling of this sort. Since the war both parties have established the main conditions under which full employment is to be maintained and the economic means by which that is to be done. It is apparent now that the reorganisation and improvement of the roads must, and should, go fully pari passu with the development of all other forms of industry and the capitalisation of all other types of the assets of the nation if the public interest is to be fully served.

The third reason why we have not had a road development programme since the war is much the most fundamental. It is because of the petty cash book basis upon which public accounting is done. There is no time now to develop that argument. I have done it on previous occasions. We all know it to be true. The nation extracts its money in taxation from the people and it spends it on capital and on current expenditure. There is, it is true, a great deal of borrowing but that borrowing in the past has been associated with loans, grants overseas—aspects of accounting which, for reasons dating right back to the past have always been so regarded, but the State has only just begun to make an inroad into the provision of loan expenditure for the creation and improvement of the nation's capital assets.

If we look at the below-the-line expenditure in the Budget we find the very large figure of £400 million to £500 million allocated to local authorities for housing purposes. That is the beginning—there are a few other items as well—but that below-the-line accounting method must be expanded far more fully than hitherto if we are to get the kind of road development programme which we want.

The argument immediately comes back from the Treasury, "Oh, you cannot do this for roads, because roads not do earn anything. After all, we are giving the local authorities loans for housing, but people pay rents so money is earned." We have to look much further than that. We have to realise that in so far as the nation develops or improves any of its physical assets which earn an income for the nation, recognisable in money terms, loans are permissible as a means of providing capital. Roads come within that category.

I have some hopes that this theory is becoming acceptable. My hon. Friends and I have done a little work on it and have made such representations as we might. I hope very much—and I have reason for saying that it is a confident hope—that in the next Budget some further recognition will be given to this principle. I have not, therefore, the slightest doubt in saying that in my view a new policy of road development is coming—and coming soon. I hope very much that my hon. Friend will be able to say that the Ministry is fully prepared for this new policy to arrive, and for it to be implemented.

There is no lack of demand. We have only to listen to road debates in this House to hear hon. Members indulging, on behalf of their constituents, in what is loosely called a "dutch auction" in order to get their plans approved by the Ministry of Transport. I am quite confident that the organisation, the machinery, at this Ministry is good enough and skilfully enough devised to be able, when the time comes, to administer this scheme fairly on behalf of all areas.

There is one factor in regard to which I sometimes wonder whether the Ministry is prepared. I always think it a great pity when my children start eating chocolates an hour before they have a whacking good meal. I am inclined to think that a number of road ventures which are now going forward based upon the existing policy may prove very frustrating by the time the new policy comes into effect. Let me quote as one example the kerbing of the roads which is now proceeding. The money allowed is small, the schemes are small. The Ministry of Transport is telling local authorities, "You can only do very simple and inexpensive things." Divisional road engineers, therefore, are going along the roads seeing whether, very cheaply, they can put kerbing on the existing roads.

If we are to get fairly swift provision of new finance enabling the main roads to be considerably broadened the current policy of kerbing these narrow 30-foot stretches is quite fantastic. I should like to ask my hon. Friend whether he will consider this and see whether, in appropriate cases, it cannot be stopped now before the new programme gets under way. Of course, where it is being done on stretches of road which will be duplicated as an arterial highway there is nothing wrong. The kerbs are then put on the existing road in the knowledge that, parallel with that road, a second one-way traffic road will be built in time.

I cannot object to that policy going forward, say, in my constituency—in South Dorset—but I am afraid that it is being done on cross-country roads where there is no question of a dual carriageway. In other cases, what will now occur is that there will be financial provision later to widen those roads so that they may become three-lane instead of two-lane traffic roads. I would ask my hon. Friend to look into that and other policies of the same kind which I could name were there more time, to see whether it would not be wise, in anticipation of the great new scheme for road improvement coming off—as I am sure it will in a year or so—to discontinue some of these current projects.

I should like to end by saying that it will be a great feather in the cap of Her Majesty's Government if, in addition to the splendid works they are carrying out on behalf of the people of this country in every field of economic and social activity, they can add this new policy for making the roads better and safer.

I should like to begin by expressing on behalf of my right hon. Friend the gratification that he will feel at the kind words that have been said on both sides of the House on his accession to his new and responsible office.

I am sorry, of course, that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Sir G. Braithwaite) should be disappointed that there is not a representative of the Treasury here, but I should have thought that during the time that he was a member of the Government he would have realised that the Government always speak with one voice, and that it is completely wrong to ask that, in defending the expenditure of one of the Departments, the Treasury should be represented and should take part in a debate upon a matter of that kind. My right hon. Friend is responsible in his new capacity both for the extent and the limitations of the road programme as it is at the present time, and it is not right that the responsibility should be put anywhere else.

This is really the fourth of a series of debates in which the whole question of the financing from loan of roadworks has been raised. On 15th February my hon. Friend and predecessor came out with a proposal for the floating of a large loan of £500 million. On the next occasion I gave a considered answer to his suggestion, and did not perhaps deal as fully and faithfully as I might have done with the more modest proposals put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr. H. Nicholls) and the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke).

I am a little surprised that my hon. Friend and predecessor should be raising this matter again in rather the same form that he did on the last occasion. The "Economist" on 5th June thought that I had carefully evaded answering the closely reasoned arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough and had chosen the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West as an Aunt Sally that is fairly easy to knock down.

On this occasion I will try to deal with both the alternative suggestions that have been made. On that occasion my hon. Friend suggested that the £500 million should be raised for roads and for roads alone. He said:

"The prospectus issued by the Government, a trustee security, would be a contract, and this money-box could not be rifled or raided. No Chancellor since 1926 has been able to keep his fingers out of the now defunct Road Fund, but no Chancellor could dip his fingers into this loan. …"

If those words mean anything at all, they mean that the Treasury would not be allowed, after raising this £500 million, to use that money for any other purpose than roads. But earlier in his speech my hon. Friend had already indicated that it would take 30 years before that sum of money could be spent. He said:

"… no Chancellor of any party or any Government could allocate the whole of the proceeds of motor and petrol taxation to road works, if only for the reason that it could not be spent even if he did."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th February, 1954; Vol. 523, cc. 1673 and 1675.]

We are, therefore, left with the mediæval conception of a money-box into which a large sum of money is put, but which cannot all be spent until 30 years have passed.

It need not all be raised at once.

That was the alteration which my hon. Friend made in his proposals today, and I am very glad indeed to think that he has apparently been studying the reply I gave on a previous occasion. Speaking on 28th May, I expressed the view that

"To take £500 million out of the money market for this special purpose would quite obviously cause a serious disruption of the money market and would embarrass the Treasury and local authorities in raising funds for all the other purposes of central and local government."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th May, 1954; Vol. 528, c. 860.]

I stand firmly by that.

What about gas and electricity and the raising of £900 million?

I am coming to deal with that point. I cannot answer all arguments simultaneously.

No, but we do not want the hon. Gentleman to forget it.

I understand that even before a loan of £50 million is raised there is careful inquiry and preparation of the money market to ensure that it can be absorbed. If this were not done it would be necessary to offer more advantageous terms than can be obtained by buying existing Gilt Edged securities, and the effect of the new loan would be that the yield of all existing Gilt Edged securities would be adversely affected.

On 9th July my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West was at pains to ridicule my statement. He referred first to the fact that three days after my speech, on 31st May, the Treasury successfully carried out a conversion scheme of £300 million without any difficulty. He was careful to add in the next sentence that this was conversion and that no new money was required; but because no new money was required the comparison has no validity whatever. He then went on to refer to the Gas and Electricity (Borrowing Powers) Act which gives power for the raising of £900 million of new money, to which the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) has again been drawing my attention. My hon. Friend asked the rhetorical question:

"Why should £500 million cause destruction on 28th May and £900 million construction on 9th July? The House is entitled to know."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th July, 1954; Vol. 529, c. 2528.]

I will tell the House. That Act authorises the raising of £900 million over a period of five years as and when required. Again, there is no validity in the comparison whatever.

I now come to a further point in what I said in the statement to which my hon. Friend has taken exception. I was careful to say that not only would it be disruptive of the money market but that it would also affect the power of the Government and local authorities to borrow money for other Government purposes. Let us be quite clear about this. What is being suggested is that this additional sum of money should be raised on the market in order to increase the rate at which road construction is taking place. It has not been suggested in any of the speeches made today—and I entirely agree—that this should he done at the expense of the development, modernisation and extension of industry, of electricity, of gas or of any of the other services which are vital needs in a modern and developing community.

The total savings of the nation are estimated at rather over £2,000 million a year. In whatever way a great programme of road construction is financed, it must ultimately be financed out of the total economic production of the country. If it were proposed, in addition to the existing loan programme of the Government and of local authorities for housing, education, electricity, gas and everything else, to impose a further large programme of borrowing in order to increase the road development programme it would necessitate an increase in the savings of the people of the country.

Since my hon. Friend's speech of 15th February—and I hope possibly as a result of the criticism which I then made of his proposals—other and, I think, more practical proposals for financing the building of roads out of borrowed money have been put forward. They were repeated today, I was interested to note, by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough and by the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South. It has been suggested that if we are to have a sufficient scale of road construction without adding unduly to the burden on the taxpayer, then at any rate part of the construction could be treated as below the line expenditure.

I do not think anyone would argue that there is a complete difference in character between building roads and building houses and that it would never, in any circumstance, be proper to charge road construction below the line whereas it would be proper to do it in the case of housing. I fully recognise that in both cases it partakes of the nature of a capital asset which will, we hope, be of permanent value to the country.

With the economy at full stretch, in 1953, unemployment was lower than in any year of peacetime since records have been kept. It does not seem to be an appropriate moment, therefore, to adopt a method of financing road construction which is, and was frankly admitted by the hon. Baronet on 15th February to be, inflationary in its effect.

I have listened with very great care to the arguments which my hon. Friend has been deploying. Are we to understand that this Conservative Government, having surveyed the whole field of the savings of the people, have come to the conclusion that £900 million of them can be gobbled up in five years by the nationalised industries while the roads, which cater for all industries, are to be left starving? Is that what my hon. Friend has said?

No. If the hon. Baronet would do me the favour, of reading tomorrow what I have said, he will see that I have not said that. What I have said is this—that the total savings of the country are being absorbed each year and are being used by the Government, by local authorities, by industry and in other ways, and that any large additional demand upon the savings of the country, unless there is an increase in the savings of the people and institutions of the Country, can be met only at the expense of some of the purposes for which money is being borrowed at present.

Then the nationalised industries are to get the lot.

It is entirely a matter for consideration as to where priority is to be given. I have not understood any of the speeches today to complain about this. I read the hon. Baronet's speech on the occasion of the Gas and Electricity (Borrowing Powers) Bill, when he was at pains to say that he was not criticising the proposal to enable the electricity and gas industries to go forward with development which is urgently needed both for industry and for the domestic consumers of this country.

My hon. Friend has said something which is rather alarming to some of us. He has said that there is this very high level of employment, that the monetary resources of the nation are fully engaged and that roads will have to wait until the situation is better. That is the old-fashioned Runciman argument. Can he not hold out a hope to the House and to the country that, without giving priority attention to roads, a section of the general economic programme will forthwith be carved out for roads so that they can take their place beside the other enterprises which are going forward and expanding at such a rapid rate?

I give an immediate assurance that the Government consider carefully each year how the economic resources of the country should be allocated between different purposes.

It is quite obvious that the Government at the present time are sympathetic to the proposals that are being made for improving and developing our roads. It was because of that attitude on the part of the Government that my right hon. Friend was able to make the announcement he made on 8th December last year. As and when further resources became available, the Ministry of Transport will certainly see to it that the Government do not overlook the great claims which can be made on behalf of the roads.

In the meantime, £900 million goes to industry.

I was a little surprised that the hon. Member for Dorset, South dismissed rather airily the fact that the roads, unless they are toll roads, do not themselves bring in the money which is required to service a loan.

I suggested that they ought to.

They obviously do not bring it into the Exchequer, which would be responsible for servicing the loan. The argument of the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West was that the servicing of the loan would amount to only £30 million a year which would require only a comparatively small proportion of the existing petrol tax. But the petrol tax, which has been increased by Chancellors of the Exchequer of both parties, is one of the main sources of revenue required for the general expenditure of the country, and if it were proposed to add to the total of Government indebtedness in order to provide for a great extension of roads, it obviously would be necessary to increase the national revenue in order to service that loan.

My hon. Friend has made a provocative remark. Is he really asking the House to envisage that over the 30-year period of this loan the armaments programme will continue at its present momentum? We are looking ahead over a 30-year period; he is arguing for a period of six or 12 months.

No one is able to look a very long way ahead. All I can say is that there has never been a time since the end of the First World War when one could look ahead and feel confident that the revenue of this country was likely to increase more rapidly than the expenditure. I say, therefore, that if it were proposed to finance the building of roads out of a loan, it would be necessary for the Chancellor, in his Budget, to make provision for the servicing of the loan.

The only alternative would be if the motorists of this country had imposed upon them a special additional burden in order to cover the interest upon it. I am not in the least convinced that the motoring community would welcome anything of that kind. In the second place, I think that we are, generally speaking, agreed that it is objectionable that particular sources of revenue should be earmarked for special purposes.

So I say that, while there is no difference of principle which would make it at all times necessarily improper to finance the building of new roads from below the line, there is every reason to think that at the present time it would not be a wise or a good thing to do.

A number of interesting points have been raised today. The hon. Member for Enfield, East spoke about some of the special difficulties of London. He was good enough to say that he had not given me notice of those matters and that he would not expect an answer today. I will, however, look further into them. I am not wholly ignorant of them, but I will certainly not neglect that matter which, I realise, is one of ever-increasing urgency.

Many thanks.

I will also look into what my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South said about the kerbing of roads. I happen to have been inquiring recently into the kerbing of roads, but from a rather different angle.

We in the Ministry of Transport welcome these ever recurring debates upon roads. No one who is at the Ministry can be ignorant of the great need for an improvement in the layout and size of our existing roads, and we accept the desirability of the building of new roads. During the period that this Government have been in office we can point to a very great expansion in our programme. The expansion that was announced on 8th December last year is now getting under way, and I do not despair that if the conditions of the country continue to improve as they have done during the last two and a half years, we shall be able to expand still further the road programme.

I am very glad to have the opportunity before the House adjourns for the Summer Recess of directing attention to some of the conditions in the new forestry villages in Northumberland. In particular, I express my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary for finding it possible to come here this evening to reply to some of the points which I hope to make, because I know that he has done so at considerable personal inconvenience.

I raise this matter in no spirit of hostility to the Forestry Commission. I realise that the Commission, like nearly all State organisations, has its critics: but for my part, while I appreciate the dislike which the advent of the Forestry Commission may have caused to many of my constituents, I consider that the work which it has undertaken is work of national importance which, in due course, will pay the country handsome dividends. Before now I have paid tribute in the House to the enthusiasm and energy of the Commission and its staff.

Tonight, it is not the timber production side of its work to which I wish to direct attention, but rather the personnel, or human or administrative, side, which, I believe, leaves certain things to be desired. In my constituency alone the Forestry Commission proposes to build at least eight brand new villages. It is inevitable that these villages will have a great impact on the whole of the area concerned.

Speaking in a debate on forestry about two years ago, I made a special plea that starting from scratch, as it is, the Commission should do its utmost to see that the villages which it is providing are model villages, that they are a credit to that part of the country in which they are constructed, and that they should be a real pleasure for the inhabitants to live in. Unfortunately, that is not exactly what is happening. I am sure it is the wish of the Forestry Commission to see that the houses which it puts up and the villages which it builds are really attractive, because I have here one of their publications entitled "Britain's Forests— Kielder," which is one of their villages. They say:

"Each village will become, in effect, a focal point for the life of its immediate neighbourhood; for this reason each will have its own church, shops, inn and village hall. Moreover, to ensure that there is from the start some of that communal life without which no village can flourish, not less than 25 houses will be built on each site at the very beginning."

I find nothing to quarrel with in those remarks, and if this policy were being carried out at the present time, I doubt whether I should find it necessary to raise this subject in the House this evening.

However, recently I have visited three of these new villages, that at Kielder, Byrness and Stonehaugh. Each of these villages has now got at least 35 houses already occupied, but so far as amenities are concerned nothing in the way of village halls, clubs or shops has been provided. In Byrness, for instance, 40 houses are occupied and I believe that another 50 houses are being built in the near future. It is miles away from anywhere. Even the school is 10 miles away, and amenities are absolutely non-existent.

At present, the inhabitants of these houses have not got a shop, a club, a "pub," a hall, a telephone kiosk or a stamp machine. I believe that there is not even a letter box. The roads are in such a bad condition that the buses refuse to enter the village, and the children going to school have to go to the main road and wait without any shelter and in danger from traffic for the bus to come along and take them to school 10 miles away. I believe that much the same thing applies to one of the other villages I mentioned, namely, Stonehaugh, and I think it is deplorable that conditions like these should exist. I do not think we should allow the people to remain any longer living as they are doing.

Although the Forestry Commission employees are, for the most part, getting only the minimum agricultural wage, they are having to pay about 16s. a week rent for their houses, with rates of 4s. to 5s. a week in addition. Yet the local council is providing very little in the way of services. There is no refuse collection and no street lighting.

Incidentally, I have been told time and again by the employees that it would be very helpful if arrangements could be made for the rent and the rates to be collected together and paid as one. That is a point which might be worth attention.

If we look at the postal services in these villages, particularly those at Byrness, we find there is no post office, no telephone box and no letter boxes. If a telegram is delivered from the nearest village down the valley it costs the recipient 2s. 6d. a time. I came across a young fellow who had had a 21st birthday and very expensive it was for him! He received three telegrams, and each time one of them arrived he had to pay out another 2s. 6d. Surely the Forestry Commission ought to be able, together with the Post Office, to arrange to provide better services for these villages.

There is another aspect which requires consideration. That is the type of house which is being constructed by the Forestry Commission. I cannot say that they are attractive or in any way original or imaginative. Indeed, the Bellingham Rural District Council is providing far more attractive houses than the Forestry Commission, with all its planners, and with all its organisation behind it. Nearly all the houses concerned are three-bedroom houses, and although many have only recently been constructed they are already cracked in many places, as photographs which I have here show. An inquiry ought to be instituted to find out why cracks are appearing in so many of these houses.

I am told, too, by the inhabitants that the hot water system is entirely inadequate, that the cisterns are far too small and again, as photographs which I will hand to the Minister show, the grates are so constructed that they are up against one of the partition walls. This means that only one person can sit near the fire, which is a major consideration when it is realised that the houses are situated in the hills in a very cold climate.

Another thing which has amazed me is that, so far as I can see, not one tree has been planted in any of these villages from an ornamental point of view. That seems to me extraordinary when it is the Forestry Commission which is responsible for constructing the villages. It really is time that something was done to beautify these homes and villages. Another small point, but worth mentioning because it is indicative of bad planning, is that the paths to the houses in Byrness village have been constructed of large dry pebble stones, along which it is almost impossible to push a perambulator or to clear away the snow common in that area, and it is also difficult to take in coal. Either proper pavements should be laid down or else the paths should be tarred.

Uniform and unimaginative as the houses may be in Byrness village, they are an improvement on those now in existence at the forestry village of Kielder which was opened with great ceremony by the late chairman of the Forestry Commission, two years ago. The pamphlet published by the Forestry Commission made some interesting remarks. It disparaged the existing type of building in Northumberland, because it said:

"The local style of building … has hitherto been of grey, rather dour and forbidding stone."

It would be hard to imagine anything more like a dockyard settlement, or anything more grey and forbidding, than some of the houses in these photographs. It is time, therefore, that the Forestry Commission tried to introduce something brighter and more attractive.

In not one of the three villages to which I have referred have the roads yet been made up adequately. The result is that the local buses refuse to enter these villages and the schoolchildren often have a long way to go to wait for the school bus. It also gives the villages a desolate and drab appearance and it is high time that more attention was paid to these roads.

Furthermore, I understand that the planner-in-chief has greatly discouraged the inhabitants of these houses from constructing their own gardens. That would be all right if in the place of gardens there were neatly cut lawns, but grass and weeds are now growing rampant up to the very front doors of these houses. I can only call the present village of Kielder a blot on the landscape and a real eyesore.

No doubt the Minister will tell me that Rome was not built in a day, that it will take time before these villages are proper, fully developed communities and that the inhabitants must exercise patience. That may be true, but it is equally true that up to the present time the Commission has paid insufficient attention to the human side of these problems. I realise that many of the points that I have raised are small but as the Scots say, "Many a mickle makes a muckle." Certainly, these villages are in a tremendous "muckle" at the present time.

Although these points may be small and only pin-pricks, nevertheless, when added together they are a formidable total. I do not believe that the House can realise the full impact of all these points on the lives of individuals unless they appreciate that for the most part the employees coming into these new villages are people who have been brought out of cities and towns where they have been used to the normal amenities which they are now sadly lacking. With a little enterprise and imagination the Forestry Commission could provide many of these amenities without any great difficulty, and without incurring any great increase in public expenditure.

I do not believe that the uncertainty and discontent which, from my conversation with them, I learned exists among these residents need exist. I believe that discontent could be diminished very greatly if more consideration were given to the administrative and human side. The Forestry Commission must face up to its responsibility. It is not good enough to take these people out of towns and cities and dump them in the wilds and let them get on with the job.

They are living in a hard climate and the cost of living is extremely high there. Owing to the absence of permanent shops, they are having to buy goods and provisions from mobile shops and I am told that the costs are about 2d. in the 1s. higher than in the ordinary shops in neighbouring villages. We must remember, also, that these employees are only receiving the minimum agricultural wage. It is true that in certain periods of the year they get piece work and can do better, but they are receiving none of the "perks" which an agricultural worker so often receives.

There are many small ways in which the Commission could brighten the lives and improve the happiness of these residents if they would like to make the effort. For instance, though they are living in a very cold climate I am told that they have no concessionary rate for firewood. If they do not buy the firewood at the normal market price they are made to put the firewood on bonfires and destroy it in the open. Surely a concessionary rate might be introduced.

Another small point which is indicative of the present pettiness of outlook by the Commission is this: in the Kidder Forest alone there are about 120 million fir trees, but at Christmas the employees have to pay the full market rate for a Christmas tree. Without incurring excessive cost, the Commission might consider giving a Christmas tree to each employee who wants one. Another important question which I have been asked by the employees concerns the policy of the Commission regarding the housing of its retiring employees. Nearly all the houses which are now being built are of the three-bedroom type. What will happen when the Commission has a large number of employees reaching retiring age? Is the Commission considering the building of smaller types of houses or perhaps flats or bungalows to house their retiring employees, or is it content to say goodbye to them and let them go?

If so, where will they go? They are living miles away from any other town or village and it would be very difficult for them to find alternative accommodation. I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about this aspect of the matter. It must be remembered that these people are living in tied cottages far from other habitations.

I must leave the Minister an opportunity to reply to some of these points. There are many others which I might have mentioned, but I hope that by directing attention in the House to the hard conditions and the lack of amenities which are at present facing these pioneers in the new villages, it may be possible to arrange for something to be done to improve their lot.

I know that the Parliamentary Secretary is aware of the type of country in which the Forestry Commission is operating in Northumberland. Perhaps he will urge the new Minister of Agriculture to see whether he cannot find time to visit that area himself and to see these villages. At any rate, I trust that the Parliamentary Secretary will ask the Minister to discuss the matter with the chairman of the Forestry Commission to see whether urgent steps cannot be taken to improve the administrative and human, personal side of the work of the Commission. I ask for more imagination, more initiative and more effort on the part of the Forestry Commission to see that these State employees are enabled to lead a fuller, a happier and a better life.

Perhaps it would not be out of order, as I am probably the last back bencher who will have the privilege of speaking in the presence of our Clerk before he retires, to say that I only wish that the speech which I have made had been a more worthy one. He must have heard thousands upon thousands of speeches, and some people, it may be, would be relieved to hear no more; but I am sure that when he hears the cry, "Who goes home?" for the last time in a few moments, it will be a very moving moment for him.

It is perhaps not inappropriate that the problem to which I have been directing attention is one which arises in an area to which he has often gone in the past for rest and solace after the arduous duties which he has performed in this House. I should like to tell him that he will always be a most welcome and honoured guest in that part of Northumberland in any future visit which he may pay it.

Perhaps I may begin by joining with my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Speir) in adding my personal tribute to Sir Frederic. Mine will undoubtedly be the last voice which he will hear in the debate. At least my speech will be fairly brief, because it cannot go on after 6.30 p.m.—which is a good deal more than can be said for many speeches which he has heard in the past.

I want to assure my hon. Friend that I recognise his strong interest in, and enthusiasm for, the general work in his constituency and, in particular, for the work of the Forestry Commission. He recently exposed me to the rigours of his climate when I paid a visit to his constituency, and I can confirm from personal experience that it is indeed a dour and exposed part of the world even in the middle of a summer—and my imagination predicts what it must be like in the middle of the winter.

I can well understand the importance of having houses where one can get next to the fire so that as many people as possible can do so. I recognise that it is a countryside of great strength and character, and so are the inhabitants who live and work there. I saw, when I was in those parts, a good deal that has been done by the Forestry Commission in the course of their replanting. I also saw the outside of one of these villages, but I had not the time to visit it.

My hon. Friend has expressed criticism of these Forestry Commission villages in very strong terms, both this afternoon in the House, and outside. I recognise his genuine anxiety and concern that these villages should develop into happy balanced communities along the lines which the Commission has indicated in its booklet. I know that the Forestry Commission also welcomes his interest in so far as it can help the Commission in what it is doing, and is constructive.

I ask him to recognise that in the nature of things it will be a long and difficult business to bring about the development of these villages into balanced communities on the lines which he has indicated; and that it will also need, as well as the best efforts of the Forestry Commission itself, the maximum encouragement and support from those in the neighbourhood, like my hon. Friend, who can give support and encouragement and have a great influence on local opinion.

By way of general comment, let me say that the Commission is well aware of the very formidable difficulties involved in creating a new village, and its general policy is, wherever it can, not to build a new village, but to add further accommodation to existing villages so that the Commission's forestry workers can then join an existing community where there is a balanced community, mixed employment and an organic life already existing. That has been particularly successful in Wales and some other places, but in some parts, and this particular part of Northumberland is one, there just is no village existing and the Commission has to start from scratch and build a complete new village.

In the nature of things that means that there will be few other avenues of employment in the neighbourhood to which people engaged in other walks of life can come and join in the new village when it is built. Kielder is just such a part of the world. The Forestry Commission has about 74,000 acres there of which the greater part will eventually be completely afforested. There are already three villages in process of building there—the three mentioned by my hon. Friend. Kielder, Stonehaughshields and Byrness, and possibly two more but not for certain: certainly not so many as eight are now contemplated.

I think it is fair to say that at Stonehaughshields and Byrness the builders have only just finished building the actual houses, so there has not been very long to provide those other services and amenities that my hon. Friend has mentioned. The Commission's policy is certainly to develop a sound, balanced community, and eventually one hopes to get a state of affairs as indicated in this pamphlet from which my hon. Friend quoted "Britain's Forests—Kielder," with a delightful sketch at the end showing the village, with the church in the background, and an elderly gentleman walking gently along, and some people on the green, etc.—judging by the size of the old gentleman's paunch, he must have been there some time to have acquired it. Obviously these developments will take some time to bring about.

The Commission intend to provide a village hall in each village. Already one exists in Kielder and tenders are out for building village halls in the other two villages, so they should be there in the next 12 months or so. There is one shop at Stonehaughshields and one is under negotiation at Byrness. There is a sort of hut place in Kielder. Otherwise they are served by travelling shops. That would not be regarded as a comprehensive provision but it is a start. The site is available for a church, but it is generally accepted that where a community wants a church it must primarily be provided by the community. That presents a problem, because the different denominations will have to club together to have their church.

It is worth mentioning that in Kielder there is a recreation ground now which was provided, not out of Government funds by the Commission, but the Commission made available its heavy machinery to clear and level the ground. The inhabitants got the ground into shape. That is admirable as the sort of development we wish to see. Having made it, the people will no doubt be proud of it and take care of it as well as enjoying playing games upon it.

There are lawns in front of the houses, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there is grass in front of the houses—

Weeds.

And it is intended that the grass shall be cut and the Commission will provide for the cutting of it. If there is a sufficiently general demand for gardens the Commission is prepared to consider making them in front of the houses. The other services will be coming gradually. The Commission will do its best to see that buses, electricity, telephones, schools, postal services, and so on, are provided.

As a final comment, I would say that it is a difficult problem to create a new village in an old country like ours, where we expect such a high standard of services. If we contrast that with the new villages being built in new countries such as Canada and Australia, where people come to live in order to develop some pioneering work, we find that they know that they have nothing else to expect but what they provide for themselves. If they want a church or a village hall, they must build it for themselves. If they want a parson, they must raise the money to pay him. That is accepted as the way life goes on in such places. Here there is more an attitude of expecting all these things to be provided for us, because they are normal in other villages, and this attitude creates special problems for the Commission.

I would ask my hon. Friend to direct his admirable enthusiasm and interest in this matter to supporting and encouraging the Commission, as well as prodding them to do what is required; and to recognise that inevitably it must be a long and patient business gradually to bring these new villages into an organic and balanced community such as we know in our English, Scots and Welsh villages, and which we value so much. I would ask my hon. Friend not to be too severe in his criticism of the Commission, which is confronted with these great difficulties. I will see that my right hon. Friend is fully informed of what I have heard today, and that he gives urgent attention to seeing that the Commission goes along those lines.