I beg to move,

That this House, recognising that the operation of powerful aircraft necessary for effective defence, presents special probems to people living near military airfields, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to do everything possible to reduce the inevitable disturbance and ensure that compensation claims for damage are dealt with fairly and promptly.

While I wish to deal with the terms of the Motion generally, most of my information comes from the area north of my constituency round about the villages of Finchingfield and Wethersfield, where there is an R.A.F. station which is occupied by a U.S. Air Force Wing. Today, is a particularly appropriate time to raise this problem and I am very glad that I have the opportunity of doing so. This morning one has seen in the Press that the U.S. Air Force is bringing over a more powerful jet aircraft, the Voodoo, which is to be used in the airfields situated in our countryside.

I want, at the outset, to make two points quite clear. I think I can say that the people living round these airfields are second to none in their realisation of the importance of adequate defence for this country and of the contribution that these airfields make in the defence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Just because I am picking up some of their grievances does not mean that these people are any less public-spirited and patriotic than other people in this country.

The second point I would emphasise is that this is not an attack on the U.S. Air Force. We have had experience of the U.S. Air Force in this area for a number of years. I know from personal experience and the experience of my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) whose constituency borders on this airfield and of the villagers, that the efforts of U.S. commanders to fit in with the local community and themselves to do what they can to alleviate the disruption that is caused, are first-rate. I would hate it to be thought, after the efforts that they have made, that this is an attack on our having U.S. planes as part of the defence system of our country. Even after that has been said, the problem still exists. I want to deal with two aspects: first, sound; and, secondly, vibration and air pressure. I will deal with the sound aspect first.

It has been calculated that over the next ten years the sound factor in the United Kingdom will double. That will mean that with increased noises from factories, transport and military aircraft we shall have a far worse time with noises coming from the air and coming from these airfields. This will be an increasing problem and one which must be dealt with now and at this stage. There is, of course, no such thing as "ancient sounds" like the "ancient lights" to which we are accustomed. Perhaps, in this connection, I might quote a ruling given by Mr. Justice Luxmoore in 1930. It was:

"… every person is entitled as against his neighbour to the comfortable and healthful enjoyment of the premises occupied by him, and in coming to a decision whether his right has been interfered with and a nuisance thereby caused, it is necessary to determine whether the act complained of is an inconvenience materially interfering with the ordinary physical comfort of human existence …"

He continued:

"it is no answer to say that the best known means have been taken to reduce or prevent the noise complained of."

The Air Ministry should apply exactly the same standards as were given in that ruling and take account of the great inconvenience caused, and the fact that, according to the ruling in a civil court, it should take every possible action to alleviate the problem of noise.

In this area, and around most of the military airfields, one finds a rural community consisting of farmers and those in various industries associated with agriculture. Points concerning agriculture will be dealt with particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd), who will be seconding this Motion. One also finds many retired people, children, old people and those who have spent their lives working in towns and have decided to live in retirement somewhere which is peaceful. Those people suffer most from the terrific disturbance in their lives and the effect which noise from military aerodromes can have on their method of living.

Noise comes not only from aircraft taking off and landing, but also from "revving up" and testing of engines. The noise when taking off is particularly bad because of the wonderful engineering device called an after burner, which comes into use when the plane has taken off. The noise then is not unlike an explosion. If one is working or sitting in a garden nearby such a noise makes life quite impossible. People around Finchingfield have told me that there have been days in the summer when, in good weather, the sound from the airfield has kept them out of their garden and inside their houses, with all the windows closed in an effort to try to keep out some of the disturbance.

The problem of after burners in takeoff can be eliminated, or at least reduced, by making certain that there is a strict routine as to at what height the after burner should be brought into operation and the direction in which the plane should fake off. "Revving up" can also be done in areas where it can cause the minimum damage. Flexible rules must be made for that because the noise from "revving up" varies considerably according to climatic conditions and also according to the height or lowness of the cloud ceiling. Very often if it is a damp day and the ceiling is low the noise is much greater than on a clear day when noise tends to be dispersed up into the sky.

People there have told me that they cannot even use the telephone when a plane is taking off. Those who have put in long-distance calls have had to take additional extensions because for three or four minutes they have been unable to be heard or to hear over the telephone. They find that they cannot even listen to the wireless. With the news of the Test Match coming over the wireless at present I can imagine nothing worse than not being able to hear the results of what is happening at Brisbane.

In time, this noise problem gets on people's nerves. If one goes to a rural area in an effort to get peace and quiet and then finds one's time is continually spent literally jumping when planes fly over, the whole point of living in the area one has chosen—as many of these people have done—for its peace and beauty, is taken away. I am sure that much can be done to eliminate noise during certain periods of the day and to make sure that there are at least regular breaks of reasonable duration in which people do not get continuous trouble. They must have some time when they can get a full rest from this awful noise. I particularly request my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for State for Air to look at the possibility of cutting out the practice of flying at weekends, or at least to reduce it as much as possible when people try to get some relaxation and recreation.

I have mentioned the effect of this noise on elderly people, but the effect it has on small children is equally, if not more, serious. I have seen small children absolutely terrified by planes flying low over their homes when taking off. It is possible to explain to elderly people what is happening, but if anyone can tell me how to explain to a child of two or three years of age that the noise cannot hurt them, I shall be grateful.

I wish to deal with some of the damage done by sonic booms and vibration. This is a very vexed question because, first, if a complaint is made one is asked the identification marks of the plane and, at the speed at which these things go, one does not have a chance of seeing those marks. From various reports I have read, one in the Sunday Times of 31st August, I find that people do not realise just how much damage is being done. In the article in that newspaper it was reported that a spokesman of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research had said that most claims for damage

"are based on people's genuine ignorance of the state of the houses they live in. They hear a bang and start looking for damage and come across all sorts of cracks they never noticed before."

I admit that there is a certain amount to be said for that. If we made an inspection of our houses, particularly if they are old houses, we would find a lot of cracks that we had not suspected; I made such an inspection of my house last weekend.

I admit that in most old houses there is damage which one does not suspect.

The same thing applies to new houses. Council houses near the airfield are showing cracks in the plaster. I do not think that this can necessarily be blamed on to damage done by sonic bangs, because plaster shrinks, but I do not think that it is entirely satisfactory that because some cracks are discovered only after an occurrence such as this, and because there are natural cracks and a normal movement of plaster, the D.S.I.R. and the Air Ministry should ascribe all damage to the natural passage of the years and state that it is not caused by sonic damage.

There was a case last year, which occurred during a good will display by the Air Force. When a plane passed through the sound barrier the ceiling of the village school came down and a window of the rectory in a nearby village was blown out. I admit that in this case compensation was paid very promptly, and for good reason, because about 60,000 people saw the plane passing through the sound barrier, and the matter could not be argued. In view of the fact that there are cases in which this damage has been done and has been admitted, I think that the Ministry ought to look very carefully into the problem of the damage which can be done by high-speed aircraft and should not merely accept the report from the D.S.I.R. to which I referred.

Representatives of the Ministry have been to the constituency to take measurements of the noise factor and the variations in air pressure being caused by planes taking off and landing. I admit—and this may be purely luck—that every time that happens the cloud ceiling seems to be high, or the noise is at an absolute minimum and there seems to be less flying than usual. Moreover, on those occasions the planes seem to take off more slowly and more quietly. If an investigation is to be carried out near an airfield to see what damage is being done it must be carried out over a long period, not merely a visit of a couple of days when extraordinary conditions may give a completely wrong picture.

I referred to the fact that one claim had been dealt with extremely quickly, but there are other claims which the Ministry has been very slow to answer. In some cases it is very difficult to document these claims. For instance, a constituent told me that the china fell from a shelf as a plane was taking off. It is extremely difficult to make a hard and fast case to show that that plane was the cause of the china falling from the shelf and breaking. I think the Air Ministry must look most sympathetically at such claims and err on the side of generosity in dealing with them.

The article from the Sunday Times which referred to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and its findings about the damage was received with laughter and derision in the villages nearby. At a joint meeting of the Great Bardfield, Finchingfield, Toppesfield and Wethersfield Parish Councils the following resolution was passed:

"In view of the unsatisfactory reply by the Secretary for Air to a Question in the House of Commons regarding damage by sonic booms or bangs and similar statements recently published in the Press both to the effect that sonic booms can do little damage to property, and being aware of evidence to the contrary, and glaring recurrences of sonic booms those councils urge the National Association of Parish Councils to investigate the position fully and make such representations to the Minister as will correct the present misleading statements and ensure adequate consideration of and compensation for any future damage from such causes."

That sums up my views as well as those of the people in the area.

May I make a suggestion? The U.S. Air Force has done a wonderful public relations job. By its open days and its films it has been trying to show what is going on and why it is there, to try to get as much sympathy as possible from the local population. Would it be too much to ask our own Air Ministry to do exactly the same? It is the Air Ministry which is responsible for settling these claims, and unless the people who go to investigate the claims and explain what has happened are very carefully chosen, the Air Ministry will become even more unpopular than at present.

The failure of the public relations side and, in some cases, the lack of tact on the part of the Ministry's representatives is driving a wedge not so much between the Air Force and Her Majesty's Government, on the one hand, and the local population, as between the American forces, who are contributing to our defence, and the local population.

Another aspect arises of one of the problems of living near these airfields. It seems that every time a new plane appears it is necessary to resurface the aerodrome because the original surface is not smooth enough to deal with the speed of the new aircraft.

It is not strong enough.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. In some cases it is not smooth enough, either; there is too much tolerance—I think that is the word—to cope with high-speed landings.

These planes, with decreasing wing area, which gives them greater speed, need longer runways, because they have faster landing and take-off speeds. That means that periodically there has to be reconstruction.

Some reconstruction has been taking place on this airfield this year, and it was very much to the credit of the Ministry that the planes were taken away from the airfield and the construction was able to proceed during the day. I hope that this will become a regular occurrence and that we shall not have the dreadful business, which we had about twelve or eighteen months ago, of lorries being able to be driven on to the airfield only during darkness. In that case there was not only the trouble of training flights by the Air Force, but also the trouble of hundreds of lorries travelling along these narrow country lanes, causing complete dislocation of the traffic, terrifying the parents of children coming home from village schools and also causing a lot of damage to some of the bridges, which were not built to carry such heavy traffic. I hope that if this construction is necessary, what happened this summer will be repeated.

Can a definite survey be made of each airfield to make sure that the testing beds, and the area in which planes "rev up" are situated where they will not affect the local population? I know that "revving up" presents special difficulties, but testing should not, as it is now possible to make a test bed sound proof, although it may be expensive. Anyone who has been in a house situated at an angle of, I think, 45 degrees to the out-let of these engines—being tested, possibly, for hours—will know how vitally important it is for the health, for the very existence, of people living within the range of these beds that they should be protected from the noise—

I think that my hon. Friend is wrong in saying that it is possible to make the testing beds entirely soundproof. One can certainly lessen the amount of noise, but it is incorrect to give the impression that there is any scientific solution of the problem of making them completely noiseless.

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that correction. I have obviously misread some information from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. I accept his assurance that it is possible only to minimise the noise, and not completely to eliminate it.

I should also like my hon. Friend to see whether something can be done to compensate people in these areas from what is the equivalent of a planning blight. People living near these airfields suffer a tremendous deterioration in the value of their properties, which are not worth anything like the open market value they otherwise would have. In fact, a number of recent successful appeals for reduction in rateable value shows that the value of these properties has fallen. Would it not be possible to alter the Schedule A assessment on the same ground?

I should like the Ministry to look into the problem of the effect of the noise of these high-speed aircraft from military airfields, in detail, and with sympathy. When it comes to compensation, I hope that my hon. Friend will be prepared to settle claims quickly and generously and, if there is a dispute, to appoint an independent arbitrator. Further, when it is planned to transfer this type of plane to other aerodromes, I hope that the siting, etc., will be investigated extremely carefully before, and well before, the planes move in.

I imagine that we shall have these military airfields with us for a considerable time, and if this noise problem is not looked into most carefully now, some of our communities will, over the next few years, face a very serious situation. We are told that the noise factor will double in the next ten years. It has taken us over 100 years to deal with the smoke problem arising from the first Industrial Revolution, and I only hope that my hon. Friend's Department will now take the lead, so that we do not have to wait for another 100 years before successfully dealing with the noise problem resulting from the mechanical revolution of today.

I beg to second the Motion.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison) has, if I may say so, made a very thoughtful and well-informed speech. My constituents in Newbury have a military airfield on their doorstep, so we have intimate experience of the problems which this kind of development brings, and to which the Motion calls attention.

In 1951, Greenham Common was taken for the construction of an airfield for the use of the United States Air Force. I should like to record four lessons that we have learned in the last seven years. First, a military airfield should not be sited close to a town. Secondly, the soil must have the right character and body to carry the heavy 'planes of today, and the still heavier ones of tomorrow. Thirdly, proper provision must at once be made for living accommodation for the airmen and their families so as to avoid undue aggravation of the housing shortage locally. Fourthly, the Air Ministry must be reasonably fair in dealing with problems resulting from the construction of the airfield, particularly those concerning residents living right up against the airfield, who are bound in one way or another to be adversely affected.

Before dealing with these matters in the context of our experience in Newbury, I should like to say at once that these problems have not been aggravated by our having Americans using the airfield. It is rather the other way. The United States Air Force has gone out of its way to be helpful and understanding of the problems that its presence has created. All through we have good understanding with the Americans. Normally, there have been 1,200 airmen and others at Greenham base, and their behaviour in Newbury and in the neighbourhood has, with very few exceptions, been exemplary—and, where there have been exceptions, they have been dealt with firmly.

The Americans have proved good neighbours and have helped wherever they have seen an opportunity. I have been told of one case where they helped to dig an old lady's garden because she could not do it herself. They have also helped a local children's home and other organisations. In any activity in Newbury where they have felt they could help they have done so, and done so generously. I should like to pay that tribute to them.

I believe that our people realise that, willy-nilly, we are in the front line of N.A.T.O. We recognise that there must be these military airfields; that we have that part to play, and that the obligation—it might be called the privilege—is ours to take our part in safeguarding the freedom of the West. We do not say much about these things, but I think that most of my constituents would agree with what Mr. Nixon said during his recent visit:

"N.A.T.O. has been eminently successful in obtaining the purposes for which it was created. No aggression has occurred in the ten years of its life."

It is, indeed, proving

"… a mighty shield of military strength for the nations of Western Europe and Great Britain."

These military airfields are part of that mighty shield.

May I turn to the four points which I listed? First, there is the necessity to site these military airfields away from towns. The people of Newbury have been proved right in their first thoughts. They were so strongly in opposition to the proposal to use Greenham Common for a big modern airfield that they signed a petition. I presented it to this House in 1951 when the right hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson) was Secretary of State for Air. I do not know that the petition met any better fate than most petitions do when they reach the green baize bag behind your Chair, Mr. Speaker, but I do know that the case that we made at that time was taken to the Cabinet and it went against us. The airfield was sited there.

There are 23,000 people in the towns of Newbury and Thatcham which adjoins it. When we have a military airfield on which operations are carried out on such a scale close to a community of that size very special problems are created, because there are many houses, schools and children living close to the airfield. Indeed, in common humanity the Air Ministry with the full agreement of the Americans—or it may have been the Americans in full agreement with the Air Ministry—decided that the flying use of this airfield should be restricted, first of all, to ninety days in a year. The people of Newbury knew that they would have a respite from noise during part of the year. They could perhaps plan to be away on their holidays when hell was really let loose.

Then last January it was decided to restrict still further the use of the airfield. I do not say that this was wholly in consideration of the peace of mind and quiet of my constituents, but at any rate it happened, and normally during the last year flying has been restricted to between 3 and 5 o'clock in the afternoons with no flying on Saturdays and Sundays. I gather that my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon would like to see that sort of rule applied to his local airfield.

That has been a great relief to my constituents. But it hampers the effective use of this base, and it underlines what I have said about the wrongness of choosing an airfield site so close to a town. Although there are, no doubt, social and amenity reasons why airmen like to be close to a pleasant town like Newbury and not too far from London, I do not think those considerations should weigh, because there is the noise factor and the danger factor, with the possibility of mishap occurring to one of these aircraft while taking off or coming in to land over the town. These factors outweigh any other considerations, and I hope that if there have to be any more military airfields the Air Ministry will keep in mind our experience in Newbury.

The second point is the choice of suitable land—that is, suitable soil and subsoil—for these airfields. On Greenham Common we have a mixture of gravel and clay. There are seams of clay and the whole common is riddled with springs and streams, some of them underground. This was well known to the local people when it was first proposed to use this site for an airfield. I passed that information on to the Air Ministry, but massive excavations have had to be undertaken during the last seven years.

Also there have had to be great in-fillings. Hundreds of thousands of tons of hardcore have been brought from Somerset, a long distance away, to fill up the weak patches in the soil so that there could be laid a 3 ft. apron of concrete to carry the modern heavy bomber. It has not been possible to stifle altogether the springs in the common. They have to find an outlet, and some of my constituents who live near the airfield are concerned about the way in which those springs are now bursting out and threatening to damage their properties. I do not know what the answer to that is, but it is a problem.

Partly because of the unsuitability of this site which has been discovered in actual use and partly because of the unsuitability of the soil and subsoil, this airfield at Greenham Common has cost £7,750,000, of which the Americans have met £4,500,000. It is a very costly airfield. I wonder whether it would have cost as much as that if a different site had been chosen; I do not know.

I have no hesitation in saying that the geological survey, if one was made—and I was assured by the right hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton that one was made—was not nearly thorough enough and the Air Ministry did not know what trouble they were going to run into in trying to make an airfield on that site. I think they had made up their minds before. The Americans said that the airfield should be there, and that was that.

If there are any more military airfields to be created, I trust that a most thorough geological survey will be made and that the Air Ministry will look first at some of the thousands of acres of disused airfields which are still in Government hands. Each year, I look through the Report of the Agricultural Land Commission. I observe that there are several thousands of acres of former airfields which are owned, and in some cases farmed by the Agricultural Land Commission. They are widespread, in such counties as Buckingham, Cambridge, Dorset, Essex, Norfolk and Lincoln. Some of this land was good agricultural land before it was converted into airfields, and now it is splashed with concrete and is not of much use for normal agricultural occupation and profitable working.

I ask the Minister to look carefully at any such sites which are held either by the Agricultural Land Commission or by the Air Ministry. I am thinking not only of military airfields but of other installations like radar posts and so on, which had to be sited in a particular path. If there is a site already in occupation of a Government Department—either the Air Ministry or the Agricultural Land Commission—it should be given priority over another one, even though it may not be technically quite so suitable. If the first one which is already in Government hands will do, the choice should fall on that one in preference to taking more agricultural land. I hope the Agricultural Land Commission and the Air Ministry will move quickly in getting rid of the airfields which they hold but do not now use for the purpose for which they were acquired.

The third point is the provision of living accommodation for airmen and their families who come when these new military airfields are constructed. In Newbury, about 1,200 men are usually stationed there, and over half are married. They naturally bring their families with them. That has created a sense of bitterness among some married couples in and around Newbury who find that they cannot afford the rents for furnished rooms which the Americans have been able to pay. This sets a problem. I would ask that proper married quarters should be provided straightaway when there is an incursion of this kind.

At long last married quarters are to be built to serve Greenham, but it is rather late in the day. It would have been better if the Air Ministry had agreed to a suggestion which I made several times, that some of the small houses, in good condition, adjoining the airfield should be taken over for use as married quarters. Some of the people living there were elderly and could not stand the racket of living close to the airfield and they had to find houses elsewhere. I should have liked the Air Ministry to offer to take over those houses at a fair price for use as married quarters.

An inspection was made by the Air Ministry, but I think that the Americans found that the standard of central heating was not quite what they required, and perhaps the plumbing was not as modern as they are accustomed to. Even so, I do not think that those considerations should be overriding and decisive factors. The people concerned could not live happily in their homes because of the creation of the airfield and they ought to have had the opportunity to dispose of them to the Air Ministry. The Americans should have been told "That is the accommodation available to you. It is not too bad. If you want super central heating, you must install it." There would not have been hardship to anyone if some of those houses had been taken over as married quarters.

My fourth point is the need for reasonableness and fairness in dealing with local residents who suffer nuisance and loss by reason of the coming into being of the airfield. The Air Ministry has not behaved well in settling some of the consequent problems. I know the problems all too well and have made myself a nuisance to successive Secretaries of State for Air. It has been a weary business, and the file of correspondence is large and wordy. In some cases satisfaction has been obtained, but there are some cases still outstanding. That is why I urge that the attitude of the Air Ministry should be fair and reasonable in dealing with these problems, reasonable even to the point of generosity. The fact that there are these problems is not the fault of the unfortunate people who happen to be living round the site chosen for a military airfield. Their difficulties should be met as fairly and as reasonably as possible. There are some bad cases outstanding.

I am glad to say that we have achieved some useful results by setting up the Greenham Common Joint Consultative Committee, and I recommend this kind of procedure to every area where there is a military airfield. In our case it amounts to the getting together of the town clerk of Newbury, the clerk and surveyor to the Newbury Rural District Council and the people living round about; they form a responsible body which can receive complaints and investigate them and then make recommendations. I hope my hon. Friend will agree that that kind of joint consultative committee has been useful.

indicated assent.

There are still some outstanding problems, which have been considered by the Joint Consultative Committee, and it has made recommendations to the Air Ministry. One of the problems concerns the residents who live on the south side of the airfield. They were accustomed to reach their houses across Greenham Common by hard tracks over the gravel. The tracks did not have to carry heavy traffic, and they were serviceable and smooth and easy to run over at any time of the year. When the airfield came into being those tracks had to be closed, and the public road across the common was also closed. There was then no access to those houses across the common. A new public road was built further south, and from 1951 onwards access roads were made by the Air Ministry for those houses. The Air Ministry did not make a good job of the substitute roads. I had an argument lasting many months with my right hon. Friend over this. I have visited the area and I invited my right hon. Friend or my hon. Friend also to see it. I would have given them a good lunch but they were unable to come.

I want to put before the House not my own opinion but the opinion of the surveyor to the Newbury Rural District Council, who is a member of the Green-ham Common Joint Consultative Committee. About one of the roads he writes:

"In 1955 the Air Ministry formed this road and surfaced with gravel, tar spraying and dressing. Today the tar has almost completely disappeared, and one has to examine the edges of the road to discover traces of the tar. Ruts in this track are nine inches deep in places. There is no evidence of any ditch or road drainage, and I feel certain none was carried out originally except for relief channels to take the excess water off the road at two points. Failure of this road was certain from the time of its formation owing to the type of construction on the steep slope rising to the properties. Water from the Common above the road has in times of heavy rain poured into the road and followed it down, overflowing on to adjacent ground at certain points. Neglect to maintain the road has nothing to do with the failure; it is due to inferior construction. It says little for the road for the Air Ministry to blame lack of maintenance as the reason for failure in the first three years of its life. The road in fact started breaking up after the frosts of the first winter. Any independent road engineer would confirm that the type of construction used was absolutely inadequate for the conditions prevailing."

That last phrase is rather damning.

I know that the Air Ministry says that Mr. Hall and the other residents affected agreed in the first instance to the alignment of be road and the proposed type of road and said that a good job had been done when the road was completed. That does not absolve the Air Ministry from further responsibility. This is not the way for a Government Department to behave. Mr. Hall and his neighbours are not road surveyors. Had they known what they know now they would have got a competent road surveyor to advise them; but they did not. I hope the Air Ministry will not try to get out of its responsibilities by saying that these local residents said that the road was all right. It may have looked all right, but it has not worn at all well and is in a very bad state today.

Then there is the road to Heads Hill, to another group of properties, and that is not standing up at all well either. I quote the surveyor's opinion:

"this road which is surfaced with tarmac has commenced to break up, potholes have formed and I am afraid the frosts this winter will accelerate its deterioration."

There are also the tracks to other houses which are breaking up. On my urgent prompting, representatives of the Air Ministry have been down there again this summer to look at the access roads, but unfortunately, nothing was done.

The Secretary of State for Air has agreed this week to another meeting on the spot between his experts and the representatives of the Joint Consultative Committee. I hope that on this occasion the Air Ministry officials will have taken note of what I have had to say this morning and will be given a directive to deal reasonably and fairly with these problems. I know how the official mind works. It is like this, "If we give way in this instance, perhaps a boarderline case, we open the door for further claims from other people." If those further claims are justified, like this set of claims, then the door should be opened. These people, through no wish or desire of theirs, have had their lives disrupted by the airfield. If it is necessary that a few thousand pounds should be spent, we must spend it in fairness, justice and equity to the people round Greenham Common, or, indeed, round any other military airfield where people's lives are upset and hardship caused. I hope that remedial action can now be taken.

We ought to go further and try to do what my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon suggested, and that is to set up an independent authority to whom appeal can be made. I know that this is difficult when one is acting against the Crown, but is it good enough for people who feel that they have a complaint which they have taken up with their Member of Parliament, who over months and indeed years has kept badgering the Air Ministry and gets nowhere, and there is no hearing of their claims to show whether they are justified or not?

For the peace of mind and, indeed, conscience of the Air Ministry, as well as in equity to the people who have these complaints, some kind of independent authority should be set up, which can hold inquiries, as the Minister of Housing and Local Government does with regard to planning inquiries. There should be some body of that kind to whom people could address their complaints and be heard so that the matter can be sorted out and a recommendation made. I know that this is anathema to Government Departments, but an authority of that kind would be helpful and would probably restore public confidence in administration.

It has been a long struggle to get compensation in some other cases. As recently as 1955 and 1956 I was still pursuing the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Transport to get compensation for Mr. Wright of Foxhold Farm, whose farm had been cut in half by the making of a new road to the south of the airfield. Four years after the land was taken the Minister of Transport was still telling me in answer to a Question in the House:

"I will do my best to ensure that payment is completed as soon as possible. Preliminary negotiations are already in hand."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th December, 1955; Vol. 547, c. 110.]

Four years after the poor man had lost his land, his farm had been cut in half and his whole business disrupted, still negotiations "are already in hand". I should jolly well think so. It is intolerable that people should have to stand out for their money, not knowing what they will get.

It is a most unbusinesslike way of dealing. There ought to be a more expeditious and fairer way of dealing with these complicated compensation claims. I have taken these instances from experience in Newbury because they point the need for the Motion which we are discussing.

I have spoken about the severance of a farm which was ultimately accepted as a good reason for compensation payment. The Government's insistence that there can be no compensation for injurious affection in the ordinary case where there is not severance is what worries and annoys the local owners of property most. They find it very hard to accept that principle. I should like to quote the opinion of the town clerk of Newbury:

"I realise that when the activities of Government departments and local authorities cover such a wide field, and when every form of development from an airfield to a council housing estate may depreciate the value of other property to some degree, the Government must maintain this principle. It seems to me, however, that the degree of injurious affection caused by the operation of jet aircraft is so much greater than injurious affection resulting from any other kind of development that it ought to be regarded as a difference in kind rather than in degree, and treated exceptionally. I would have thought that any owner of property within a prescribed distance of a runway ought to be in a position to require the Government to buy his property, and that the experts could prescribe a distance which would not result in impossible burdens on the State, and which would at least secure that airfields were put as far away as possible from dwelling houses."

I know that in the matter of injurious affection of property, which the Government will not recognise generally, there are great difficulties, but I do not think that the matter ought to be shelved entirely. I should like to see an investigation made into the effect of the present rulings based on the principle that so far has been followed to see how much injustice has been done. If it is considerable, then I think that we should have a look at the law and rulings again.

It is relevant to point out that some sectors of Government recognise injurious affection. For instance, the Inland Revenue recognises it through the valuation officer. I have details of the extent to which the gross assessment of houses adjoining Greenham Common has been reduced since the creation of the military airfield. Taking gross values, one has been reduced from £116 to £99, and others from £60 to £55, £125 to £100, £40 to £36, £32 to £28, £37 to £35, £39 to £34 and £19 to £17. The valuation office recognises that depreciation in value does result through the development of a military airfield. The principle is to some extent accepted, and I should like to see it applied in reckoning the basis of compensation for property acquired by the Air Ministry. It should be based on the market value, with no account taken of any depreciation attributable to the creation of a military airfield. I hope that this will come about under the Town and Country Planning Bill.

There are one or two general agricultural points to which I should like briefly to refer. This is nothing to do with Greenham Common. These examples have come to me from other parts of the country. Drainage on adjoining land can be seriously disrupted and flooding caused by the creation of a big airfield. That is a special problem in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. No doubt my hon. Friend will be aware of those problems. It is also a problem that has arisen where guide paths are laid down by setting up what are flare posts on agricultural land leading to the landing point on airfields.

Although I recognise the need for these posts, they seriously interfere with the normal agricultural use of the land. It is difficult to plough round them or to harvest round them. Complaint is made that sums payable in compensation are inadequate. I have no experience of this problem, but I am told that considerable anxiety and dissatisfaction is caused in some parts. I should like my hon. Friend to consider this matter again to see if his Department can come to an agreement with the N.F.U. or a reputable body of that kind to see what rates of compensation should be payable in cases where it is necessary to lay out guide paths and erect flare posts.

One case which I have received through the National Farmers' Union refers to the difficulty that arises when a main electricity supply is interfered with by runways. This case arises particularly in connection with the R.A.F. station at Coningsby. The Electricity Board was about to approve a scheme to supply main electricity to a group of farms on one side of the airfield. There is already a main electricity supply on the other side. But now the requirements of the funnel approach to the airfield debar the East Midlands Electricity Board from running its cable across in the ordinary way. The cable will have to be put underground at very great cost. The question of cost rules out the possibility of a main electricity supply being brought to these farmers on the other side of the airfield. It seems a reasonable suggestion on the part of the National Farmers' Union either that the Air Ministry should pay for the cable to be laid underground or that a local alternative supply of electricity should be provided for this group of farmers on their own. The fact that they happen to live on one side of the airfield should not debar them for ever from having a main supply of electricity. Today electricity is an important factor in the economy of agriculture.

A further point, which comes from Essex, is the effect that these big jet planes have upon livestock, and particularly dairy cows. The dairy cow is normally a placid creature, but she is also highly strung and can be deranged to the state of delivering a still-born calf if she is seriously upset at a critical period. Some dairy herds which pasture close to the airfields used by jet aircraft have shown a heavy incidence of abortion, calves being born before their time. I do not know how widespread this is, but I know of one case affecting a pedigree herd. It is a serious matter.

I do not know the answer, but I, and, I am sure, the House, would like to know the extent of the trouble. Will my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Air ask, through the Ministry of Agriculture, the Agricultural Research Council or a like body to examine this matter to ascertain whether the problem is a substantial one and whether any measures can be taken to deal with it?

There are, of course, many other problems arising from the development of big modern military airfields. One is the attraction of labour away from the farms. I do not think that Parliament can do much about that. What, I hope, may be the outcome of this morning's discussion on the Motion initiated by my hon. Friend is that the Air Ministry will be found to be more helpful to those whose interests are adversely affected by the coming of an airfield into their midst.

We recognise the necessity for this intrusion for reasons of defence and the maintenance of the freedom of the West—we must have these big planes and allow them scope to operate. At the same time, however, we say that justice should be done fairly and promptly to those whose interests are adversely affected. I hope that the Motion will be accepted by the House and by the Air Ministry as a standing instruction to those who have to deal with these problems to deal with them fairly and promptly, even to the point of generosity, rather than trying to niggle so leaving behind an unhappy legacy. We want fairness and justice to be done. We recognise the difficulties and we hope that in future the Air Ministry will be even more prompt and fair than it has been in the past.

I agree with nearly everything that the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd) has said in seconding the Motion, and in particular with his reference to the contribution to flooding caused by the construction of airfields. The hon. Member referred particularly to the counties of Lincoln and Cambridge. It so happens that those are the two counties about which I know most and the problem there is very real. I ask the Government to consider the contribution made by airfields to this problem when any schemes are worked out for financial assistance and encouragement to river boards and local authorities.

I thank the mover of the Motion, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison), for raising this matter. My constituency, Lincoln, is as much concerned as any other in the whole country. The city is surrounded by bomber bases. From time to time they have been American bases. The Americans have come and gone, and they are now Royal Air Force bases. I should also like to say how much I agreed with both the mover and the seconder of the Motion in paying tribute to the way in which the American authorities have understood the problems of their presence among us and the steps they have taken to foster good public relations.

The fact is, however, that on the subject of noise my constituents do not distinguish between American-made or British-made noise. It is the noise that worries them. I, too, have seen children terrified by the noise of jet aircraft over the city. I happen to live in the adjoining county of Cambridgeshire—again, surrounded by airfields. I have reached the stage that either in my constituency in the ancient cathedral city of Lincoln, or at my home in the ancient university town of Cambridge, I often long for the peace and quiet of London.

The problem of noise is complicated by the difficulty of assessing or estimating noise. Loudness is a subjective effect of pressure upon the eardrums, and it varies from person to person. The human being is wonderfully designed by our Creator for the conditions under which we live on earth, and I would not be impudent enough to suggest many modifications at this late stage. However, it is unfortunate that although we have lids with which we can shut our eyes we do not have flaps with which we can shut our ears. That is a basic problem that we have to face, and it is the one modification which I would suggest. The difficulty about embarking upon modifications is that, as both the hon. Member for Maldon and the hon. Member for Newbury have pointed out, many committees exist in the present age. If we were to go through a modifications committee we would all emerge looking like a camel, which, quite obviously, was an animal put together by a committee. We must therefore be content with what we have.

However, we have done more than rest content. With our great ingenuity, we have made instruments which create this terrible noise. Although loudness is a subjective effect of pressure on the eardrums, unfortunately the sound level meter is not subjective. It measures sound pressure from one to one million in a range—one being the threshold of hearing and one million the threshold of feeling. I shall not enter into a discussion of decibels and phons, first, because I should soon be out of my depth, and secondly, because I do not think it would contribute in any way to solving our problem.

I think it has been only within the last decade that this problem of sound has been seriously considered as a problem by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the National Physical Laboratory, and others. Last year, in November, the Secretary of State answered a Parliamentary Question of mine on the effect of sonic booms. He said that in sonic booms the effect was not fully understood, although the D.S.I.R. was working on it. Certain general conclusions had been reached from the 1,400 cases which had been investigated over the past three years. As the hon. Member for Maldon indicated, the investigations showed that sonic booms could cause damage to windows, to glasshouses and to old plaster, but could not cause cracks in new plaster. He was careful to say that the investigation was continuing. Since then over a year has passed, so I hope the Under-Secretary will be able to tell us about some of the work done and the conclusions which the D.S.I.R. have reached.

Certainly, one conclusion which the general public has reached, and I believe that there is a good scientific reason for it, is that a high frequency in aero engine noise brings acute discomfort. We learned that dramatically with the Boeing 707, which produced what was a terrible noise to me and to most people. As I understand it, it is particularly due to its high frequency. Again, there are some people who are sensitive to jet noise and others who are not. In Lincoln, they tell the story of two men who were up by the cathedral watching V-bombers flying over it. One said, "Isn't it dreadful the way these jets drown all the music of the cathedral bells?" The other replied, "I can't hear a word of what you say because these bells are making such a racket."

Whatever the problem, and we know it is a serious one, what are we to do about it? What can we do about the noise of aero engines? The first point is that everything possible must be done when these aeroplanes are on the ground to see that there must always be "detuners"—long stove pipe fittings on the ground for running up the engines. Further, everyone on these military stations must be constantly impressed with the need to reduce noise.

The second point, I suggest, is that it should be the policy of the Government to encourage the development of less noisy aero engines. Of course, if we could design one which produced a solid jet of air without turbulence the problem would be solved, but that is a long way off.

We should begin by encouraging the development of the most silent of the smallest engine with which the public is affected—the motor-cycle engine. I am convinced that if we introduced a financial incentive for silence we should get it. I should like to see the motorcyclist's annual licence graduated accord- ing to the sound level meter. There would always be some young men who would be willing to pay a high rate of tax for the pleasure which they derive from making as much noise as they can. But most motor-cyclists would not be prepared to do so, and I believe that within a few years all but a few motorcycles would be as silent as a Rolls-Royce.

Then, I should like the Government to consider graduating landing fees according to noise. For instance, the Boeing 707 will be right out, as it is too noisy, but coming down from something below that level there could be a sliding scale of charges. It would be difficult, of course, to work, because of the sound level meter and the difficulty of measuring high frequencies. This point is realised. I am sure that in a few years we will be able to devise some method of estimating loudness. When that is done, surely a sliding scale like that could be introduced and manufacturers would soon develop more silent engines.

The third point is that the Services—the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy and the United States Air Force—must not merely sit back and wait for most of the noise problem to be solved by the arrival of guided missiles. One of the benefits of guided missiles which is not generally appreciated is that the stations will be silent. These Services must keep their places in the hearts of the people. It is of the greatest importance in a democracy, and will be increasingly important as they become all-Regular forces. To do so it is up to the R.A.F. to lead the way. The public must see the Service obviously and deliberately work towards a solution of this terrible problem of noise.

I hope the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) will understand if I do not follow the points that he made. I was not able to hear the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison) in moving this Motion, because I was detained at the Old Bailey.

I was glad to hear my Member of Parliament, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd), remind the House once more of the problem which we who live near Newbury have to suffer. I know that all of us who live in that area are more than grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has been saying on our behalf in the last few years, and I should like to add a word of corroboration of what he has said.

I think that everyone in the area of Newbury, English and American, will agree with every word of what my hon. Friend has said. I have, perhaps, a unique way of knowing what the Americans near Greenham think, because I do not go home until the early hours of Saturday morning, first going to Essex on Friday. Travelling from there by car through Reading, usually at about one or two o'clock in the morning, I see standing on the Bath Road two or three American Service men waiting for lifts to Greenham. When I give them lifts to Greenham Common, as I do most often, on Friday night or early on Saturday morning, I hear some of the things which have been said my my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury.

As I see it, it is most important that, everywhere the Americans set up their bases, they should be welcomed. There is only one sure way by which they can be made welcome, and that is if their presence here brings no grievances and injustices to those who live in the area where these bases are situated, and there certainly have been injustices in the area of Newbury. There have been inconveniences and hardships, and, though I will not elaborate on them, because that has already been done by my hon. Friend, I should like to echo what has been said. For those reasons, I support the Motion.

The House will be very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison) for moving his Motion so that we may hear the views of the Air Ministry on this question of noise.

There is a military airfield in my constituency, at Odiham, and I should like to pay tribute not only to a very sympathetic Air Ministry, but also to a very tactful and helpful commanding officer there. When I have said that, I fear that I must make reference to some of the difficulties that arise.

There are many problems in an area where there is the Ministry of Supply air- field, at Farnborough, where there is also Blackbushe Airfield, as well as Odiham R.A.F. Station. The inhabitants who are constantly hearing this noise, and who think that there is a great deal of low flying going on, find it hard to identify who and what it is.

I have a pile of correspondence, larger than that on any subject on which I have constituency correspondence, about times and dates, and so on from the various airfields. I believe that there are no signs that there will be less use of airfields, both civil and military, in the future, and, in these circumstances, as my constituents constantly remind me, it is likely that their problem will get worse and worse.

I am not persuaded at all that there is very much which can be done to help one's constituents in these matters. One does get the most extraordinarily disturbing accounts of what happens in nursing homes, where there are invalids and young people who are woken up at night. Every effort is made, so far as I know, to limit that, and both the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation and the Air Ministry provide some sort of timetable, to show what has to be done, and it is passed on to my constituents. Whether it is a good thing or not I do not know; whether it is better for the unexpected to happen, rather than to wait for the expected, is a matter of opinion. When all has been said and done, the problem remains, and it is extremely intractable.

I want to ask my hon. Friend what really is being done about this matter. I have, slightly, a sensation of punching a pillow when I take up these matters. We have not had any detailed information of the lines which the D.S.I.R., or the Air Ministry, or the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation have in mind for getting on with this problem. I was interested, when I went to Gatwick, to see the bunkers which, I imagine, would be very useful in the throwing of the noise of grounded aircraft upwards and over the houses, but the real problem seems to be in the air, particularly in approach and taking off. I do not know at all the technicalities of these matters.

This is, as I said, an increasing problem and determined steps to deal with it are called for, particularly when it is necessary, in a fully populated country like ours, to have to fly under conditions which affect a large number of the ordinary private residents. I think that in some ways our problem in the Aldershot-Farnborough area may be exceptional, but from what we have heard, and from one's knowledge of these matters generally in the country, I think that it is a vital thing for the Air Ministry or the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, or whoever is responsible, to do something about it urgently.

I may say that it is not quite clear, to me at any rate, who has the responsibility for dealing with this question of noise. If we can get some information of that kind from my hon. Friend I am sure that it will do much to make people less anxious than they are at present.

I am sure everyone will agree that we have had a very useful debate, and I must say that I do not exactly envy the Under-Secretary of State in having to wind up, for he has a very formidable case to answer. I am bound to admit, though, that sometimes when I hear complaints and criticisms about Army camps and Air Force stations I am surprised that some of the people against whom the criticisms are levelled do not start to quote Kipling:

"It's Tommy this, an' Tommy that an' 'Chuck him out, the brute!'

But it's 'Saviour of 'is country' when the guns begin to shoot."

Having said that, and having expressed appreciation of the way in which the case has been put this morning, and when we have exercised all possible understanding, moderation and restraint, the fact still remains that there is here a very serious social problem, and, of course, it is not only the military side of aviation which is creating this problem, there is the civil side as well.

On Wednesday of this week I had the responsibility of leading a deputation from the Borough of Uxbridge, which the Under-Secretary of State very kindly and courteously received, on this very problem of hardship—for it is more than inconvenience—created by the use of the military airfield at Northolt. I made a list of the sort of things which we had to complain about. They match up completely with the list which the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison) had to put forward when he opened his debate.

We had a story to tell of reduction of property values, cracked ceilings, ornaments shaken off shelves by vibration caused by aircraft passing overhead; there was the utter impossibility of leaving babies out of doors in prams in summer because of the noise awakening them and frightening them; there was the loss of amenity in that radio and television programmes were ruined by the sound of aircraft and the disturbance of aircraft passing overhead. There was one case, on the outskirts of London as it was, where two housewives had to dive for cover when an aircraft clipped a branch from the top of a tree at the bottom of the garden.

It is not my intention today to pursue a constituency problem. I know that the Under-Secretary of State is considering what we had to say, and we are looking forward to some statement from him, some hope of a solution of our problem. Rather, I should like to consider one or two things which have been said which have a very general application.

First of all, there is this question of "revving up" and the testing of engines. That is an important point. With respect to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Maldon, I do not think there is any question of the testing of engines on a bed on most of these airfields. I do not think the provision of a test bed on an airfield is usual. Of course, when an engine is run up on an airfield it is usually in the aircraft itself, when it is impossible to put it in a test bed. But I agree with him, and I remember the remark made by the D.S.I.R., that in those circumstances, in a proper test cell, sound can be almost completely eliminated. However, that is a very different proposition from running up an engine in an aircraft. Nevertheless, a good deal has been done in this direction, but I must say that I have not myself heard of any work being done on the military side to equal the research and the general inquiry done on the civil side. It is possible to erect baffles and bunkers. Is that being done on the military airfields? Could we be told to what extent it is being done, and if has not been done, why not?

I wonder what co-operation there is between the civil and the military side, because I feel that the impetus of this sort of work has been on the civil rather than on the military side, and I think that the Under-Secretary of State may find he has a good deal to learn from some of the things which have been done on civil aerodromes. There was this matter of the sonic bangs. I was most surprised to hear the hon. Member for Maldon say that at local air displays aircraft were going through the sound harrier. I should have thought that that would not have been so. It has been ruled out even at Farnborough.

This happened by accident during a display last year.

That is the kind of thing that ought not to be allowed to happen, even by accident.

When new aircraft are tested there is a requirement that they should go over the sea before they go through the sound barrier. I discussed this matter with some of the test pilots, and I was most impressed by the fact that the only criticism that they have to make of this arrangement was that if one of the new aircraft gets into trouble and disintegrates or crashes the possibility is that it falls into the sea and we lose the benefit of the research that has been carried out. That is their criticism of this regulation, but if they tolerate that on the research and development side, which is most important, I should have thought that very specially stringent regulations would be laid down by the Service Department to ensure that there is no accident of the kind that the hon. Member for Maldon mentioned.

The real solution of this noise problem is the silencing of the aircraft engines. There is a possibility that in time we might get some alleviation by the use of aircraft with vertical lift. I do not know whether the Under-Secretary of State for Air can tell us whether that relief is envisaged within the next decade. It may be, however, that the engine power required for those machines is so great that it does not matter whether the aircraft pass overhead or not. The noise will be bad enough even when they go up vertically some miles away.

There is the question of damping down the noise at source. Here again, on the civil side a good deal of research has been done. The engines of the Boeing 707 and the Comet IV will be fitted with silencing devices. I understand that a substantial reduction of the noise level has been achieved. I should like to know from the Under-Secretary whether, on the military side, it is said that it is impossible to accept the slight reduction of power which is inevitably entailed when the noise level is reduced.

Is that the attitude? What research is being done on the military side? Is the problem being taken seriously? We do not hear so much about it. One would have thought it feasible to have some silencing device fitted for non-operational work and the ring removed when the maximum power is required for some other operations. I ask the Under-Secretary to tell us what is being done and to let us know whether the importance of this problem is appreciated on the military side.

Then there is the question of compensation. I cannot see that there is any excuse at all for the delays that have been mentioned. If only a tiny fraction of the effort which is put into research and development of aerodynamics and air engines were put into administration we should be able to assess, complete, and pay out a claim for compensation in something less than four years, which is almost as long as it takes from the drawing board to put an aircraft in the sky. Moreover, if there were adequate compensation for this damage caused by aircraft flying overhead, that in itself would be a considerable discipline upon the Services. We should have some measurement of the amount of nuisance and hardship. I can well imagine that it might in itself mean a reduction of the trouble.

The point was well made by the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd) about compensation payable on account of the placing of approach lights and warning lights, but it does not apply only to agricultural areas. It applies to urban areas. Some of my constituents have these poles erected in their gardens and are paid is. a year. Does the Under-Secretary consider that a suitable compensation for this ugly thing stuck at the bottom of the garden, probably 30 yards from a house? This again should be taken seriously. If it were so taken, it would cause the planners to consider the problem of amenity much more carefully when siting their aerodromes.

On the question of siting, I have a good deal of sympathy with the Under-Secretary's Department. I remember the efforts which were made to find a suitable alternative site for London Airport. It is not only a matter of the soil. It is a matter of the level of the ground. When we need runways of two or three miles long there are not very many places in the country where we can find territory which is as level as is required without any built-up areas in it. Most of the apparently suitable sites examined when Gatwick was being considered showed on investigation that if a runway was started at one level it would finish either in a viaduct or a cutting. The ground either rose or fell, gradually and imperceptibly on first examination, but very considerably on proper survey.

A number of aerodromes which are sited near to towns were built at a time when the aircraft in use and the operational problems involved were very different from those of today. Northolt is a case in point. When Gladiator fighters or Hart bombers were being used the position was quite tolerable, but if on these same sites we are using modern four-engine aircraft, not landing or taking off steeply but, perforce, having to climb gradually or come in on a long low approach, the situation is so different and so bad that we have to accept that air-fields sited near to towns must be moved right out.

Air control is relevant to the debate because we are considering the question of safety as well as of nuisance and hardship caused by noise. I raise this matter again because it appears to me that there is some discrepancy in the policies laid down by the Ministers who are responsible respectively for military and civil aircraft. I understood the Minister who is responsible for civil aviation to say that the necessity was accepted in this country of a unified positive control of all aircraft, civil and military, and that the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation was working to that end.

On the other hand, the Secretary of State for Air said that the solution appeared to be the supplementation of civil control by military control. I emphasise this point, that supplementation is not good enough. It is not supplementation we want but unification. We want something along the lines of the federal system which has now been adopted by the United States of America. There they have one agency for the control of all aircraft, and that is the state of affairs we must demand in this country.

As I have said, the Under-Secretary of State for Air has a formidable case to answer, put from both sides of the House. We are looking forward to hearing what he has to say. I hope the hon. Gentleman will be able to tell us that there will be some improvements. I accept straight away that the problem is not an easy one to solve, but we cannot go on developing more powerful and more noisy aircraft without endeavouring to meet the social problems thereby created. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman will be able to assure us that the necessary effort, research, thought and action will he given to this matter by his Department.

I and my right hon. and hon. Friends and many people outside the House ought to be grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison) and Newbury (Mr. Hurd) for giving us an opportunity of discussing this problem today, since it affects a large number of people. We have had a good debate, and a number of interesting suggestions have emerged which we will certainly examine.

I congratulate my hon. Friends not only on the reasonable wording of the Motion, but also on the statesmanlike way in which they made their contributions to the debate. It is so easy to try to shrug off this problem, or even to export it, but they did not try to do that; they faced the problems which arise as a result of big military airfields in the middle of their constituencies. I hope to deal with a number of points they have raised, not only in debate but also in letters to my Ministry, and also with a number of the other points which have occurred during our discussion.

The Motion asks the House to recognise, in the first place, that the operation of the powerful modern aircraft, essential to effective defence, presents special problems to the people who live near the airfields. Secondly, it calls upon the Government to do everything possible to reduce the disturbance, and, lastly, it requires us to ensure that claims for damage are met fairly, and as promptly as possible. I propose to deal with each of these points in turn and then with the other points that have arisen.

First, I want to make it clear that there is no tendency in the Air Ministry to underestimate the noise that people have to put up with who live near an airfield. Indeed, it is probably the officers and men in the Royal Air Force who are living on an R.A.F. station, perhaps spending many years on or near these stations, who know best the degree of disturbance which arises. Of course, the problem becomes increasingly serious as aircraft become faster, more powerful and heavier. I have every sympathy with people who are affected, and it is no part of my argument, or anything I deploy this afternoon, to belittle the problem.

At the same time, we ought to keep it in perspective. A modern civilisation cannot be developed, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) recognised, without its benefits having this deeply unfortunate concomitant of noise. Those of us who live and work in large cities to some extent become accustomed to noise, but I am not saying that one can become accustomed to the noise of military aircraft.

I was looking up some of the debates which took place at the beginning of last century, when the railways started to operate. It is interesting to recall some of the views then expressed about the noise of those railways. In the debate on the Third Reading of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill, in 1826, the hon. Member for Ilchester, who rejoiced in the name of Sir Isaac Coffin, asked whether the House was aware

"… of the smoke and the noise and the hiss and whirl which locomotive engines passing at the rate of 10 or 12 miles an hour would occasion?"

He went on to say that it would be

"… the greatest nuisance, the most complete disturbance of quiet and comfort in all parts of the kingdom that the ingenuity of man could invent."

Obviously, he did not envisage the arrival of jet aircraft.

Some years later, at a public meeting protesting against the proposed London and Bristol Railway, the then hon. Member for Cheltenham, Mr. Berkeley, said that nothing was more distasteful to him than

"… to hear the echo of our hills reverbrating with the noise of hissing railroad engines running through the heart of our hunting country."

Indeed, he went so far as to say that

"… he wished the concocters of every such scheme, with their solicitors and engineers, were at rest in paradise."

I quote only to show that when civilisation makes a marked advance in the means of transport it is bound to arouse antagonism, difficulty and disturbance.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I only rise to the defence of my distinguished predecessor of over one hundred years ago, who sat for the City of Lincoln. Colonel Sibthorpe used much more offensive words about railways than did those two hon. Gentlemen.

Little did they realise that the industrial prosperity of the country would be founded on our railway system and, incidentally, the prosperity of many other countries, including South America.

Now I want to say something about vibration. There are two problems here; first, from low flying, subsonic aircraft; secondly, as my hon. Friends have recognised, from supersonic aircraft. The possibility of buildings being damaged by vibrations set up by subsonic, low flying aircraft is currently being investigated by the Building Research Station, near Watford, which is part of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

That body has made a number of tests in which it has measured vibration in buildings over which aircraft were flying very low. Preliminary study of the results obtained so far indicates that there is a possibility of minor cracking if the height of the aircraft is about 100 feet, though this will be influenced by the speed, the direction of flight, and the type of aircraft. Much more work is required before any very definite conclusions can be reached. Leaving aside those tests, where the aircraft were flying much lower over buildings than would normally happen, the only damage so far identified as caused or aggravated by subsonic aircraft has been the reappearance of existing cracks in plastered ceilings when the original filling, distemper or paint bridging the crack has been dislodged.

That information is worthless, if I may say so with respect, unless we have an idea of the size of the aircraft the investigators had in mind as passing at a height of 100 feet. Could the hon. Gentleman tell us?

Without notice I could not say what the measurements were made on; I believe on aircraft of medium size, twin-engined aircraft, neither fourengined nor single engined, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman and tell him. We are keeping in close touch with the research that is being done by this body and I do not wish to minimise the problem, although I think that shaking is a great deal less aggravating than is noise.

Now I turn for a moment to the question of supersonic flight and to damage from it. It has been established that aircraft flying supersonically set up shock waves, whose impact is heard on the ground as a bang or boom or sometimes as a double boom or double bang. What is not so generally appreciated by the public is that this is not a phenomenon which occurs in one area. If an aircraft is flying supersonically it will leave a bang below it, and every person in that belt of country will hear the bang as long as the aircraft is flying supersonically.

A great deal of work has been done in investigating these phenomena, but much remains to be done. For the most part, measurements show that the pressures which occur are between I lb. and 2 lb. a square foot, although pressures of up to 5 lb. have been measured. There is evidence, however, that in rare circumstances a type of focusing effect takes place, and in those circumstances pressures very much higher than that occur. A great deal of work still needs to be done on these aspects. Though the possibility of damage from flying supersonically is not great, provided that aircraft maintain sufficient height, that possibility exists. Of course we recognise the disturbing nature of sonic booms even when no damage is caused.

I will now turn to the methods we aim at to minimise the disturbance, and I would briefly remind the House of the procedures followed to control and minimise this disturbance. R.A.F. aircraft are not permitted to fly supersonically over land, as the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Beswick) has said, except with the specific authority of the Air Ministry. When it is necessary for training or other purposes it is carried out over the sea with the aircraft pointing away from the land.

Supersonic flying is all carried out under ground control, and the height of the aircraft is located for position. Should it be necessary to carry it out over land, that can only be authorised for aircraft at or above 30,000 feet. That applies to the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, as well as to the United States Air Force. They all work to similar rules in this matter.

Does that apply also to Ministry of Supply aircraft?

Yes, it does. Most supersonic flying under the control of the Ministry of Supply is undertaken over the sea. It is sometimes essential that development aircraft be tested supersonically over land, but this is only done over 30,000 feet, in quite exceptional circumstances. All supersonic flights by manufacturers' aircraft over land require the prior authority of the Ministry of Supply.

I can speak from some personal experience, and from the experience of my right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Uxbridge. We have all flown supersonically during the last year. In my own case we had to go well to the south of the Isle of Wight. I was in a twin-seat Hunter. Before we started to go through the barrier we contacted Farnborough airfield control and asked for a positive fix of our position. Then the aeroplane was brought gently down to 42,000 feet and we went through.

The great majority of supersonic flights are made over the sea in such a manner as to do no damage to property, but where it is necessary for supersonic flights to take place over land, as in the case of aircraft under development, specific authority has to be given from the Department which is concerned and such authority is given very sparingly.

These rules apply to military aircraft and aircraft under development by Ministries or manufacturers. Their object is to maintain strict control over supersonic flyings over land and to keep these to the mimum consistent with the overriding needs of our defence programme. The importance of strict adherence to these regulations is impressed on all our pilots. With the aircraft of today it is impossible to eliminate altogether the possibility of a pilot breaking the sound barrier inadvertently.

The example which was given by my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon as occurring at Wethersfield is very typical. One should remember that our aircraft are so designed and so powerful that not only can they go through the barrier with their noses down, but when they are on the level and, indeed, when actually climbing. In all these cases, they can break the sound barrier.

It has also to be underlined that the pilot himself feels nothing. Most of us saw a film called "Sound Barrier", in which a pilot was shown taking an early-design aircraft through the sound barrier. He complained of buffetting and being shaken about when he went through. This does not occur at all now. The design of modern aircraft is such, as I know from personal experience, that the pilot merely sees the needle on the mach meter moving but there is no tremor as the aircraft goes through the sound barrier. I have tried to tell the House of the warnings that we give to our pilots, who are making every effort to keep a check on such occurrences. So much for the problem in this aspect.

I now come to what we can do and are doing to reduce the size of the problem. I should like to say a word, first, about the location of airfields, since one way of minimising disturbance would be to put airfields in very lightly populated areas. One cannot be a Member of Parliament with an airfield in one's constituency without understanding why such Members would very much like to export the airfield and its problems to some neighbouring constituency. Everyone has, however, taken a statesmanlike view in the debate today, which is highly creditable.

It is an attractive idea that we should put airfields in remote areas, but a large number of factors must be taken into account when we are deciding where an airfield should be located or at which airfield a squadron or a unit should be based. I will summarise these factors very quickly. They were recognised by the hon. Member for Uxbridge. First, and foremost, come operational considerations. They are of paramount importance. The airfield must be suitably situated in relation to the task that its aircraft have to do. A fighter station must be chosen in relation to the probable direction of the threat which the fighter aircraft will have to meet.

The House will appreciate that a few minutes' flying time nowadays can make the difference between an interception well out to sea and an interception over the coast. As we approach the nuclear age it becomes ever more important that our fighter force should meet and break up a potential attack well over the sea, so we site these airfields normally close to the coast and in the direction of the threat.

The second consideration concerns air traffic, which includes proximity to other airfields both of military and civil traffic. Here, I can deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Uxbridge, who asked whether there was to be positive single control. I ought not to make a pronouncement of a definite character, because a committee is investigating this matter. Certainly, coordinated control is the sort of thing that is going to come. There is a good example of coordinated control between Northolt and London Airport. It is working admirably at present, as the hon. Member for Uxbridge knows.

Next is the weather factor. This factor applies to training schools, which we want in areas where the weather is good, if we are to carry out our task. Next come the economics of the airfield, as has already been recognised in this debate. We must take the taxpayer into consideration. What we are doing in the present year is to develop airfields which already exist. We are not starting afresh, thank goodness, and claiming 500 or 1,000 acres of new land, but are developing the facilities which already exist. When we remember that the capital investment of making a modern airfield may be between £7 million and £8 million we must look at the existing facilities. In making a choice between one airfield and another, we must take into consideration the varying quality of the subsoil, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury said, the length of runway, and whether it can be extended without meeting roads, railways, culverts, streams and the like geographical features.

It is interesting to remember that a Spitfire, in 1940, needed a runway of 1,000 yards and had a wheel load of 4,000 lb. The runways that we now need are 2½ times as long or 2,500 yards, and they have to stand up to wheel loads of 20,000 lb., which is five times as great as only twenty years ago.

Now let me summarise. We have to take into consideration, first, operational considerations; secondly, air traffic; thirdly, weather; fourthly, runways; and, fifthly, a factor which I have not mentioned, buildings, such as barrack accommodation and the housing of people who are based there. This is a matter of considerable importance.

I now come to the subject of this debate, disturbance. Of course, we have to take into consideration the amount of disturbance created. We treat that very seriously. I suppose, however, there has never been an airfield which met all the requirements in full. Obviously, in making the selections we have to work out some sort of compromise. If we cannot put airfields right away from towns and villages we take steps to avoid special disturbance from low flying and night flying, which are the main causes of complaint. In low flying we have specially defined areas.

I shall not go into the question of night flying as that has not arisen particularly in the debate. On approach and taking-off it is necessarily difficult as modern jet aircraft come into operational use because their landing approach is so much flatter and, therefore, they are so much lower over a longer belt of country than their predecessors. A Lightning touches down at 150 knots compared with a Spitfire, which requires half that speed. Therefore, a longer and flatter approach is required. The area over which the aircraft has to fly at relatively low level has very substantially increased in the last two decades.

Moreover, on take-off the engines are normally near or at full power and that is the most noisy condition. Engines of aircraft coming in to land make increasing use of G.C.A. talk-down, for which the glide path inclines at only 3 degrees, which is internationally recognised and has to be kept to. The direction of takeoff and landing is obviously dictated by runways and prevailing wind. We find it possible, in certain cases, to introduce modifications to normal procedure of landing and take-off patterns to reduce disturbance to those living near the airfield. I shall not put it higher than that. At Greenham Common, aircraft, when taking off, turn to the south side to avoid getting too close to Newbury.

It is also possible, in some cases, to concentrate the majority of movements on the runway which causes least annoyance to local residents. Where we can make improvements of that sort we are glad to do so, even at some cost or interference with the flying training programme, but unfortunately, the scope for such modifications is limited if we are not to take risks with the safety of aircraft.

Weekend flying was discussed when I saw the deputation of representatives from Uxbridge concerning Northolt. Night flying, although it has not been raised in this debate, is a constant cause of irritation and causes correspondence to flow in considerable volume from Aldershot, among other places, to the Ministry. As the hon. Member for Lincoln said, actual measurements of aircraft noise are particularly difficult. The approach to them by the individual is subjective and the effect varies in each case. At night and at the weekend, when the normal level of background noise is lower, disturbance from aircraft may seem to be increased. The same is often true in the summer—if we have a hot summer—when people tend to have their windows open more often and to sleep more lightly.

It is essential that aircrew should be trained to carry out their tasks by night no less than by day and some night flying is inevitable at certain stations. We do what we can to see that flying does not go on later than is necessary and it is often possible to limit it to certain specified nights during the week. Such limits are introduced wherever possible, and that is helpful, but, if the flying programme has been held up—perhaps because of bad weather—it may be necessary for flying to go on later, or more frequently, than normally to make up.

Owing to our inclement weather in the summer, I am sorry to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon that he may find an extension of this flying at Wethersfield now. He may find that by raising this matter in the House the effect has not been what we wanted, but the reverse because we have got behind with the flying programme.

My hon. Friends the Members for Billericay (Mr. Body), for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington), Maldon and Newbury dealt with the volume of noise. This question of reduction of noise and research and development on it is one for the Minister of Supply. He has a major programme dealing with the question. It is true that in the first instance that is aimed at civil aircraft, but we are in touch with the work being done. We are taking it extremely seriously and hope to benefit from it. Noise made by the pure jet seems to be the main source of complaint, and to that first attention is being given.

The problem resolves itself into two parts: first, the noise made by aircraft in flight, particularly in approach to landing and take-off secondly—and many hon. Members referred to this—noise made by aircraft engines on the ground either running up before take-off, or on test beds during overhaul. That is very troublesome to local residents.

Before leaving that point, will the hon. Gentleman answer the point I made about silencers on the engines? Do the Service Departments accept the penalty of a slight reduction of power by having silencers, or do they leave the possibility of help from that source on one side?

The present design puts a penalty on reduction of power which we cannot accept if we are to carry out our task of being able to intercept fast in-coming enemy aircraft. It may be that in time with scientific advance we can accept that penalty in certain specified flights, but at the moment we cannot accept it and still carry out our task.

A great deal of experimenting has been done with engine silencing devices. That has been principally in the civil field, but it has proved impossible to fit them to military aircraft. There has been a great deal of research into reducing disturbance caused by the running of aircraft engines on the ground. I have taken the opportunity of my weekly visits to stations to examine some of the forms of baffling. Experiments are being carried out with deflector barriers erected behind the stand on which jet engines are tested during overhaul. That is being done at Wethersfield Airfield, where this special feature will be incorporated. Mobile barriers for use when running up jet engines in aircraft are also being tried out.

Another practical step which is taken whenever possible is to see that new test pads are kept away from inhabited areas and sited so that the noise disperses over open country. This is the case with the test stands now being built at Wethersfield. Attention is also paid to topographical features such as trees, shrubs and bushes which absorb sound. I have asked for an examination to be made of them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury knows, a great deal of care has been taken at Greenham Common, by the United States Air Force, to reduce the effect of noise from aircraft running on the ground. I think that there has been some degree of success in that respect.

I turn to a subject which was raised by many hon. Members, that of compensation. When we buy land compulsorily for an airfield or the extension of an airfield, the owner of the land has a claim for the value of the land taken and also for severance and injurious affection of his adjoining land. Compensation may also be paid where as a result of our construction operations physical damage is caused to a third party's land or buildings. It has been suggested that owners should be compensated for any depreciation in the value of their property resulting from the presence of an airfield in the neighbourhood, even though no part of their land is acquired for the airfield. This is what my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon called a form of planning blight which descends on people living near airfields.

Even with the best will in the world, this raises tremendous difficulties, both of principle and of practical application. There are many other forms of development and of industrial use which are desirable in the interests of the community as a whole and yet can bear no less heavily on private individuals. Certain types of industrial development or the building of high-density housing estates in an area otherwise occupied by expensive property, or the construction of a new road, just as a century ago the new railways crashed their way through the countryside, cause disturbance. Although all these could have an adverse effect on private property values, there would be no entitlement to compensation on the part of any individual affected, apart from any alteration in rateable value.

I think, too, that it is by no means axiomatic that the presence of a military airfield lowers the value of all types of property. Obviously garages and shops, and perhaps restaurants and public houses, benefit very considerably from the presence in the area of an airfield. Their values would tend to appreciate rather than depreciate. A large military airfield, with its great population of Service men and their families, brings some benefit and prosperity to many people who live close by, and it also provides employment. I checked up the figures for Wethersfield, and about 200 people are employed at that base. Although I realise that my hon. Friend also has to look after the farming community, that represents valuable employment in the area. The same position applies around almost all United States Air Force bases and Royal Air Force bases.

As far as I have been able to check the figures around United States Air Force bases such as Greenham Common, or Wethersfield, about £1¼ million is spent each year by the people stationed there. That must be a considerable benefit as it spreads through the community in the surrounding country. It is not generally appreciated that the United States Air Force bases in this country spend altogether £90 million a year; that is to say, the country earns £90 million in dollars from Canadian and United States Air Force establishments in this country.

So that the House may compare that with other dollar earnings, I would point out that our motor industry, which is doing wonderful things in its export programme to the United States and Canada, earns £51 million a year, compared with this £90 million. The figures for whisky, which will, perhaps, appeal more to the Scots, who are not here this afternoon, are £32 million, or one-third of the effect of these Air Force bases. I hope that we shall not forget some of the very considerable advantages to our balance of payments from these bases, even though they are noisy and inconvenient.

Quite apart from the complexities of administration which would be involved in assessing the effects, whether good or bad, of an airfield and its military activities on property values in its vicinity, a scheme of compensation could not in equity be confined to military airfields only. It would have to apply also to civil airfields and to all other types of development and industrial activity. The implications would be almost limitless, and I am quite sure that no Government could contemplate a scheme which would mean that, for any development which took place, the developers, whether a public body or private individual, might find themselves liable to pay compensation to anyone who could show some loss in value of his property in the vicinity of the development. Moreover, if we cut down the number of our airfields and moved out of some of these bases, I do not know whether the taxpayer would not feel entitled to a return of some of the money which had been paid in compensation.

My hon. Friend suggested that we should buy out people whose land had become unsaleable because of what he called blight. I believe he was thinking, in particular, of people surrounding Wethersfield. Of course, this would merely be another means of compensation for depreciation in value, and I am afraid that it is out of the question, for the reasons which I have just given.

We have no power to buy properties solely on the ground of noise disturbance. Indeed, any scheme to do so would be fraught with similar difficulties and objections to that for compensation for depreciation in property values. We buy properties which foul the approaches to runways and are, therefore, a hazard to aircraft using the airfield, and, of course, we pay compensation where it can be clearly established that a person has suffered damage to property or stock which can be attributed to aircraft operations.

On this question of claims for damage, perhaps I could give some facts and figures, because people are apparently disturbed not only about the promptness of payment but also about justice and generosity. Claims for damage by sonic bangs—cracked windows, broken plaster or broken china, which, I understand, has been caused to fall from shelves and mantelpieces—are dealt with entirely on their merits and in the light of circumstantial evidence. We take scientific advice. We first find out whether a bang occurred. Sometimes the bang is reported. If not, we still meet the claim if there is corroboration of the bang. People are not required to identify the aircraft, as one hon. Member suggested, because if one hears a supersonic bang from an aircraft about 30,000 ft. up and many miles away, it is not possible to take the number of the aircraft, and we do not ask that it should be done.

We have to establish whether the bang caused the damage. Where there is firsthand evidence—china falling off a shelf while people are in the shop would be a very good example—we admit the claim without question, provided that the witnesses appear reasonably reliable. We similarly admit claims where, although there is no first-hand evidence, the weight of evidence shows that the damage coincided with the bang.

We certainly give the benefit of the doubt to claimants, and difficult or unusual cases are referred to the Building Research Station, where we have a form of independent advice in these matters. The Building Research Station, being a member of the D.S.I.R., is in no way under Air Ministry control, and I think it provides a valuable and independent opinion. The Station has been extremely helpful in all that it has told us.

In the last two years we have had 824 claims and we have made 221 payments. We have paid over £2,000. About one-third of these payments relate to unidentified bangs. We had 82 claims as a result of a bang which accidentally took place during the open day at Wethersfield and we made 51 payments, totalling £350.

Could my hon. Friend give that total figure again? I do not think that I heard him correctly. Was it £2,000? That seems a remarkably small amount to settle all those claims.

There were 221 payments and the average was just under £10 per claim, which is not an insignificant sum for a cracked ceiling or an ornament falling off a shelf. I have given these figures, because I thought that the House would be interested to put the matter into perspective and to hear what we were doing.

In the five years, 1953–58, 99 claims were received from people living near airfields as a result of low-flying aircraft. That has nothing to do with supersonic flight. I think that these facts perhaps help to put the whole problem in perspective. Of course, the number of complaints, other than claims, is very much higher.

I ought, perhaps, to say a word about supersonic flight. As I will explain, there are special difficulties, and to make the claimants' task easier my Department has taken on all the co-ordination. It does not matter whether the cases concern the United States Air Force, the Ministry of Supply or manufacturers' aircraft; the claims should be addressed to my Department, and the claimant does not have to find out who is responsible. All these claims are investigated by our professional surveyors, and we can call in the Building Research Station.

I apologise for dealing with this matter at some length, but these are intricate problems and they deserve to be dealt with thoroughly. My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury referred to compensation where we were buying land and, particularly, to the speed with which we pay compensation. Here, again, claims have to be examined very carefully, and, if we are to be absolutely fair, it may be necessary for them to be referred to the Lands Tribunal. Any claimant who feels that he is not getting justice can go to the Lands Tribunal, and get its judgment.

I would also say that in the conveyancing of land, the plans and maps have to be most carefully prepared. It is, therefore, not only ourselves who are concerned with the transference of land property, but I will do all I can to speed up consideration of cases. I apologise for the case referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury which, for special reasons, has taken four years. I concede that that is a very bad example, but I think that the House will concede that it is in no way typical of the time taken for settlement.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon mentioned property sited—I think that he had in mind a cottage—close to Wethersfield. As it is an intricate matter, and as the House has other Motions before it this afternoon, perhaps he will allow me to write to him about it. He has raised it today, and in correspondence, so I thought it only fair to refer to it now.

I think that I can deal quite shortly with a number of the other points raised in the debate. The hon. Member for Uxbridge asked whether we were looking to new sorts of aircraft to ameliorate and lessen the noise problem. It may be that the introduction of blown flaps and laminar flow will give some slight amelioration, but I think that it will be many years before we can offer it. Obviously, if we have steeper take off and landing, the noise disturbance over houses will be reduced.

The hon. Member also asked whether we were serious about this problem. I can assure him that we could not be more serious. Noise disturbance is causing us to regulate our flying programme and, in some cases, it delays our training programme. It is, therefore, of very great importance to reduce the noise. In addition, apart from its effect on efficiency, there is the repercussion on public relations, and the attitude of the public to the Royal Air Force in general.

The hon. Member for Lincoln, who is not now present—

My hon. Friend asked me to apologise on his behalf. He had to leave, because he had a train to catch.

I quite understand.

The hon. Member for Lincoln made the interesting proposal of putting a tax on noise. He suggested that, for instance, motor cycles that were noisier should pay more tax. I could not answer on that on behalf of the Air Ministry. I do not know, for example, whether church clocks would come into this category. I remember reading in The Times, only yesterday, a letter complaining of church clocks chiming the quarter hour all through the night. Noise disturbance does not come only from one source.

The hon. Member for Lincoln also suggested landing fees graduated according to the noise of the aircraft. I suggest that that is a matter not so much for me as for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation., and even for the I.A.T.A. He also asked about co-ordination between the Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force, and I can say that that co-ordination is very close indeed.

Another subject to which the hon. Member referred was land drainage. We recognise that the laying down of large areas of concrete for runways, taxi-ing tracks, and so on, will alter drainage characteristics—and this is a special problem in Lincolnshire and East Anglia, where there are large, flat areas of land. We are in constant consultation on this subject with the river boards and drainage authorities. On the whole, we find that the additional run off of surplus water can be dealt with by culverts, balancing reservoirs, and so on, without difficulty. Of course, improvements are found to be necessary from time to time, and we will always look sympathetically at representations on that score.

Both the hon. Member and the hon. Member for Uxbridge asked whether we were paying sufficient attention to disturbance when we erected poles in connection with airfield lighting systems. I can only say that this system was agreed with the National Farmers' Union, and seems to have been satisfactory in the past. I will certainly examine whether there is a case for revision, but it has not caused friction in the past, and I was surprised to hear that the National Farmers' Union is now perturbed. I will also look at the Is. a year payment which, I agree, does seem rather a low rate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury spoke of flying hours, and I was glad to hear what he had to say. I agree that the United States Air Force has been extremely helpful.

The effect of noise on cows was spoken of by my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon, and was taken up by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury, who referred to stillborn calves. It was suggested that a possible explanation was disturbance to the animals caused by aircraft taking off from an air base. While I have every sympathy with the farmer concerned, I cannot, on present evidence, accept that operations from the airfield are to blame for that trouble.

Earlier in the year we sought the advice of an independent veterinary surgeon. He inspected the animals, and while he detected some fibrio-foetus infection in the herd, he did not observe any undue disturbance among them when aircraft were flying overhead. The cattle did not stampede when they were in the field. Since then, no fresh evidence has come before us to support the suggestion that aircraft were to blame.

I should like to thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, and I am only sorry that I cannot deal individually with each and every point. We have had an interesting debate, and I can tell all who have taken part in it that the Motion is acceptable to Her Majesty's Government. I have tried to explain some of the problems facing the Royal Air Force in siting airfields for its own use, and for that of its Allies; and some of the problems arising from operating aircraft for the defence of the country.

I have listened with sympathy to the many complaints that have been raised. We appreciate their force, and are tackling them. I have referred to some of the difficulties with which we are faced in dealing with complaints, and would only add that we try to deal with complaints and claims as fairly and quickly as we are able.

I beg to move,

That, whilst this House deplores all forms of colour bar or race discrimination, it nevertheless feels that some control, similar to that exercised by every other Government in the Commonwealth, is now necessary, and urges Her Majesty's Government to take immediate steps to restrict the immigration of all persons, irrespective of race, colour, or creed, who are unfit, idle, or criminal; and to repatriate all immigrants who are found guilty of a serious criminal offence in the United Kingdom.

I should like, first, to stress what is stated very clearly in the Motion, that this restriction shall apply irrespective of race, colour or creed. I recognise that this subject is political dynamite, and therefore I shall try to handle it with the same care and sense of responsibility that I should observe if it were real dynamite. I also recognise that this country is engaged in trying to build a multi-racial association which, if it succeeds, will be a pattern for the whole world. Therefore, I should like to assure my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department that I shall try to say nothing at all that will increase the difficulties either of the Colonial Secretary or of the Home Secretary, who are particularly concerned with this difficult problem.

I should also like to say that, despite what may have been a misunderstanding from a previous speech that I made or an appearance that I made on television, I myself have no racial hatreds or antipathies. I have no colour bar sympathies, and I do not support those who wish to penalise men because of the colour of their skins. I have no sympathy with that point of view at all.

Having made that point clear, I should like the House to realise that this problem, like real dynamite, will not cease to be dangerous by being ignored. Like real dynamite that accumulates in greater quantities, it could become increasingly dangerous. The size of the problem could become really serious and some foolishly applied or accidental spark could ignite the whole lot. We do our country a grave disservice by closing our eyes to what we know to be a very difficult but serious problem. Next to unemployment, which I regard as the gravest problem facing our country at the moment, this is possibly the most important problem with which we are concerned at home.

May I call attention to the fact that the Motion is restrained, moderate and limited? It asks for action to be taken against three categories of people whom I do not think anybody could defend. The Motion asks for fewer powers to be taken by the United Kingdom Government than are possessed already by every other Government in the Commonwealth. When Mr. Manley was in this country just after the unfortunate riots in Nottingham and Notting Hill he was reported as saying that he would not agree to any steps of this kind. Yet I am credibly informed that in the West Indies each island, and especially Jamaica which he represents so ably, has the power, which it exercises, of keeping out persons from other islands. They exercise restraint and restriction against one another. Therefore, it seems to me rather out of place for Mr. Manley to come here and say that he would force upon us a gospel which he himself is not prepared to accept in the case of his fellow West Indians. It seems to me to be the worst form of colonialism in reverse.

The real crux of the problem is this. Has the United Kingdom, as the mother country, any duty to the rest of the Commonwealth which other members of the Commonwealth say they do not owe to one another? This matter was argued in another place on 19th March with great fervour, and I would commend hon. Members to read the report of that debate. The debate was on a high moral level, though opinions differed sharply.

I want to deal with this problem not so much from the moral issue as from the practical, economic, social and industrial point of view, and ask the House to consider whether the United Kingdom can continue to accept indefinitely unrestricted immigration irrespective of its quality and quantity. At the moment I am asking that the restrictions shall be on a qualitative basis. One right hon. Gentleman opposite wrote an article in the Sunday Press some time ago and said that so lone as immigrants did not represent more than 1 per cent. of our population we had no reason to complain. But if we are going to restrict immigration at some time or other because we recognise how serious a matter it may become, the more immigrants we allow into our country, irrespective of their colour or race, the greater the problem we shall have to deal with and the more their children will feel that they have a right to be here and to invite their other relatives to come. By ignoring the issue now and deferring the decision we shall only be increasing the size of the problem.

I do not know whether hon. Members saw an article in the Economist on 29th November, on page 767, where there are two quotations which I should like to pass on dealing with this point. I ask my hon. and learned Friend to read this article if he has not already done so It states:

"… it is no secret that some departments,"

That is, Departments of State—

"looking ahead at the way the situation may, develop, are considering how reciprocity might be introduced in the treatment of migrants from Commonwealth countries—especially after the Colonies, and notably the West Indies, become independent. They"—

That is, the Departments responsible—

"think that the liberal line—uncontrolled immigration—can be held for a few more years, but not indefinitely. Far from thinking that the British people will get used to colour this school of opinion in Whitehall and beyond feels that when the tide of colour rises to a certain, as yet unspecified, point, the mass of British voters will demand that some check he imposed."

I think that is a fair summary and points the dangers that lie ahead. If my hon. and learned Friend has any comments to make on the assumption that the Economist makes with regard to the various Departments which are considering the problem, I should be glad to hear from him.

The Economist goes on to say that it anticipates, on the most moderate estimate, that there will be by 1978 some 800,000 coloured people in this country.

rose—

Please allow me to continue. There will be plenty of time for other Members to speak. I promise not to take a long time.

The Economist goes on to say:

"The parents will probably still mostly be living in harlemised districts in the big towns, and new arrivals will continue to import the types of behaviour and attitude that disgust or annoy the whites."

The Economist is by no means against a reasonable amount of migration. It goes on to say:

"From the not so distant future a 'coloured teenagers' problem could then loom and it might be alarming."

I am not opposing the hon. Gentleman; I am with him, but I am sorry that he should introduce these quotations about colour. He said that he would not do so. Will he not agree that the strain on the Social Services surely comes more from white immigration than from colour immigration?

Will the hon. Gentleman say how he can determine how many are idle and how many are criminals?

I should like to make my speech in my own way. It is true that it was estimated in another place that only 25 per cent. of the immigrants were coloured. I am asking that there shall be control irrespective of colour or race. But it is useless denying that opinion in the country is most exercised by the coloured immigrant.

The hon. Gentleman is spoiling the case.

No, I am not. I am stating my case fairly. If the hon. Gentleman cannot agree with me, I trust that he will at least listen to me. I have come here to say what I think is for the good of our country.

The Economist finishes up by saying that many local authorities were faced with a difficult problem, that they have got to do more for the immigrants, irrespective of their colour, than they can do for their own people, and that that is causing a good deal of feeling in certain localities.

The Economist concludes by saying that all this:

"… does not justify panic measures."…

I am not asking for panic measures. I am asking for a reasonable consideration of the position.

Why is it that, apart from the social and difficult racial problems that arise, I think that there must be some control of immigration starting with a limitation on the least desirable types? I would remind the House of our basic economic situation. There are more than 50 million people in these islands, and we grow enough food for only 30 million. On the basis of our own food production there are already 20 million too many in these islands. We have no raw materials except coal. Two days ago we discussed the very difficult situation of the coal industry. We have to import 40 per cent. of our foodstuffs and 100 per cent. of our raw materials to keep us fed and employed. These have to be paid for by our exports or we face serious hunger and mass unemployment. That is why it is so important that we should limit the number of immigrants.

Two new dangers are facing us, and especially facing those engaged in the export trade. I fear that at the moment they are only dimly appreciated in the country. The first is that because of what we as white people, the Western world, are trying to do for the Afro-Asian countries in raising their standards of living, we are helping to industrialise them, and by so doing we are setting up new competition against ourselves in world markets. It has been estimated by the United Nations that nine-tenths of the world lives at about one-tenth of our standard of living, and that in these days of automation and semi-automatic machines the labour cost is the most important factor in total cost of production, and if the Afro-Asian peoples are paying only one-tenth of what we are for labour, then their products will destroy us in time in world markets. That will make it more and more difficult for this country to maintain the high standard of living that we are enjoying with the people that we already have here.

In 1954 the United Nations issued a report on the world economic situation, and it was estimated that if there were fair shares between the workers of all countries in the world the average wage would be about 32s. a week. That is the sort of problem that faces us with a population which is already far too large for our own resources. In view of that one fact alone, to allow uncontrolled immigration is just madness.

The other day we had a debate in which contributions were made by hon. Members from both sides of the House who had been to Japan, Hong Kong and India, and they made it clear that competition from newly developing industries in the Far East will cause more unemployment in places like Lancashire. It was also stated that the shipbuilding industry on the North-East Coast was having employment trouble because the Japanese could produce ships more cheaply. Only two days ago we discussed the difficulties of the coal industry caused by the oil coming here from the Middle East. Because of that background it seems sheer madness not to have some control of the number of people coming into these already overcrowded islands.

Another factor even more alarming from the economic point of view is that the countries behind the Iron Curtain are now starting to dump into world markets goods of all kinds at a price far below that at which we can produce them. Our job will therefore be to find work even for the people who are here already without our increasing the number without limit. I was told the other day that the Chinese textile industry is placing certain quality goods in Eastern markets at 10 per cent. below whatever the Bombay price may be, and that the Bombay price is so low that Lancashire cannot live with it.

Our position is difficult enough with the numbers that we have here, and we have a duty to look after our own people. In stating this, I am not doing any injury to other people, because I am merely asking that there shall be done for Englishmen what other parts of the Commonwealth readily do for their own people.

I may be asked what I mean by saying that I would exclude the idle. I would say that those who have been here for two or three years and for one reason or another have not done any useful work at all should be regarded as idle and should be repatriated. I see no reason to object to that. Also, I would not allow anyone to come into the country who had not a job to go to. I am fortified in this belief by what the West Indian Government are doing. It was stated in another place that the Migration Advisory Service in Jamaica had put all over the island very large posters which said as a warning to men and women who were likely to come here:

"Travellers to England. Beware!

Remember there is unemployment in England. Make sure there is a job before you go."

That is what I am asking for. The Jamaican Government are already doing it, and our Government should follow their wise policy and make it a condition, instead of a plea, that no one should come here unless he has a job arranged for him. I understand that the Governments of India and Pakistan have made it almost obligatory on their people that they shall have a job to go to before they come here. I should like the British Government to say that no person shall be allowed here, no matter what his colour or race, unless he has a job to go to.

I cannot believe that any hon. Member, even one with the most liberal ideas, could defend the use of this country as a dumping ground for criminals from any part of the Commonwealth. I suggest that anyone who has a criminal record should not be admitted and that anyone who acquires a criminal record in this country should be sent home. I think that that is reasonable and fair. When I raised this matter some weeks ago in the House I was gratified that no less a person that the hon. Lady the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill), who took part in the debate, said that she would entirely agree with such action. I think that many hon. Members opposite would give support to this proposal.

In responding to a debate at the Blackpool party conference, the Home Secretary promised that the Government would take action to deport the criminals. I should like to ask my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary when that action will be taken. It seems to me that the criminal, whatever colour or race he may be, is doing a great disservice to the men of his own nation by engaging in criminal activities in this country. He gives the decent hard-working, law-abiding people from his own country a bad name which they do not deserve. As a protection to the decent people who come here and do a decent job, those of their numbers who engage in criminal activities should be deported.

The hon. Gentleman has referred to demands made at the Blackpool conference for the exclusion of certain people. Perhaps the hon. Member would clarify the point. The demand presumably related to the deportation of certain criminal elements. In that demand no reference was made to race or colour.

No.

I wanted to get that point clear.

The hon. Member spoke about the harm that is done. The worst harm is that when bad social types are allowed among the coloured population an alibi is given to our worst social types to demand legislation dealing with coloured people.

I entirely agree with that. I gather from my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary that the Blackpool promise related to deportation, not exclusion. If it is right to deport someone with a criminal record, surely it is doubly right to exclude someone with a criminal record. That is a fair comment. If my hon. Friend can see the justice of deporting someone who has acquired a criminal record, then if it is known that someone has a criminal record why allow him to come here? There must be exclusion as well as deportation.

A Government spokesman, the Earl of Perth, speaking hi a debate in the other place a week ago, said:

"At the present time Her Majesty's Government have no power to deport, and the question of legislation—it would require legislation to this end—is under consideration. Such legislation, if decided on, would, of course, apply to all Commonwealth immigrants without distinction of race or of colour."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 19th November, 1958; Vol. 212, c. 681.]

That was a promise made by a member of the Government on behalf of the Government. Can we be told how soon legislation will be introduced? I do not think anyone will deny the seriousness of the matter.

I apologise for keeping the House so long, but the last point that I want to make is about the support in the country for action of this kind. First, I should like to read to the House a report about the views in Newcastle-on-Tyne, an area which politically mostly supports hon. Members opposite, both locally and in this House. This is a report of 17th November:

"Stop Engaging Coloured Men—Say Busmen. Newcastle-on-Tyne Corporation bus workers have decided to ask the City Transport Committee and the management of the transport undertaking to receive a deputation to discuss the future recruitment of coloured workers. The Corporation employs about 1,800 conductors and drivers, and of these about 200 are coloured. A meeting of bus workers decided to ask the Corporation Transport Committee not to recruit any further coloured people until there had been consultations to fix the ratio of white and coloured workers. The deputation will consist of three men and one woman. An official of the Transport and General Workers' Union said today that there was no issue of a colour bar."

I entirely agree with the last statement. The need for control, as felt by the trade unionists in Newcastle, is too obvious to be denied.

My hon. Friend will know about the second piece of evidence to support my claim that there is great demand by the public for action. I have received a very large number of letters, which I have sent to my hon. Friend's Department to look at. I think that my hon. Friend would agree that overwhelmingly they demand that action should be taken. The demands came mostly from areas like London, Birmingham and Coventry, where the problem is most acute.

My last bit of support is this. On 6th September the Daily Express took a public opinion poll, and I agree that it was taken just after the most regrettable incidents at Nottingam. Three questions were asked. The first, in effect, was, "Do you favour any action being taken?" Of those asked, 14·2 per cent, said "No"; 79·1 per cent. said there should be some control; and 6·7 per cent. said that they did not know. What is even more significant is that in London, where I suppose the problem is most acute, 11·2 per cent. of those asked were against action; 81·5 per cent. demanded action of the kind I have suggested; and only 7·3 per cent. said that they did not know. I was surprised to find in my researches that only 3 per cent. of the immigrants of any kind have gone to Scotland. Therefore, the burden of the problem falls on poor old England. [An HON. MEMBER: "A lot of Scotsmen come here."] That is a very ancient problem from which we get a lot of benefit. I am not arguing from a parochial point of view.

This problem is so grave that I wish I could do greater justice to it. I would welcome and do a lot for genuine students, businessmen and professional people from all over the Commonwealth and would much rather see them come here than go to either Washington or Moscow for their ideas. Whilst I have no sympathy for race haters or colour haters, I ask the Government seriously to do something about the problem before it is too late. If they do not, I feel that a generation hence hon. Members on both sides of the House will deeply regret our cowardice in not tackling what I consider to be a very difficult problem. As a result of today's debate, I hope that my hon. Friend will ensure that action is taken early in the New Year.

I beg to second the Motion.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) in raising a subject which I believe to be of greater importance than is generally recognised. In commendably brief form, my hon. Friend made a fairly wide-ranging speech which covered a good deal of the ground which can be covered in this respect. In the short time which I hope to detain the House, I would rather not follow my hon. Friend but prefer to concentrate on one aspect of the problem.

The Motion refers to the idle, the unfit and the criminal, with the request that they should be excluded and that the criminal should be deported to their country of origin. I would have thought that this was a proposition which should be acceptable to anyone; but, like my hon. Friend the Member for Louth in his speech, if not in his Motion, I would go further and deport not only the very few criminals—I am sure that the number is very few indeed—but I would also, as my hon. Friend said, deport those who have shown that they are unfit in the sense that they are unable to earn a living in this country.

We know that many thousands of people have come here from overseas because they prefer to live on National Assistance here rather than in poverty in their own country—men who do not speak English, who are unable to read and write, who have no particular craft and who would be quite incapable of holding down a job even in circumstances of brimful employment such as do not exist today.

Unless my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, who is to reply to this debate on behalf of the Government, has the figure before him, I would be grateful, as, I am sure would my hon. Friend the Member for Louth, if he would obtain for us the number, which I am sure the Ministry of Labour has readily available, of these immigrants from overseas who are living on National Assistance who have, in fact, done so for virtually the whole time that they have been in this country.

We are all grateful to the Governments of Pakistan and India, who have recognised that such people are of no credit whatever to them. They have, therefore, recently imposed a check upon their immigration and will now give passports only to those who can satisfy them that there are reasonable prospects that they will be self-supporting when they come here. There are, however, thousands who have slipped over here before these tighter regulations were introduced. I would wish to see those who still live on National Assistance sent back to their own country rather than maintained here indefinitely at the expense of the British taxpayer.

The Motion uses the words:

"irrespective of race, colour, or creed",

but we cannot discuss this matter in such a general context. We all know perfectly well that the whole core of the problem of immigration is coloured immigration. We would do much better to face that and to discuss it realistically in that context.

As my hon. Friend has said, we have an ageing population. This trend is emphasised by the fact that the majority of our emigration is by youth, or at least people under the age of 40. We have an ageing population and we have an immigrant population a high proportion of which is coloured. At present, we have only 200,000 coloured people in this country. That is only a small fraction, approximately one-half of I per cent., of our population and at that level the number does not raise any great coloured problem here. I do not take the view that those deplorable racial—if that is the correct adjective—riots which we have had are strictly the result of racial pressures. Every large city has a small hooligan population which is only too ready to make trouble of any possible kind, and it took that opportunity in this respect.

The vast majority of coloured immigrants in this country are extraordinarily decent, hardworking, likable people whom one would wish to help as much as possible. As I have said, if their number remained at about the present level of 200,000, we would not have any problem to worry about. That, unfortunately, is not the position. We must face the fact that the 200,000 will become half a million, which will then become I million and will go on increasing. That is something that we must recognise. We must ask ourselves to what extent we want Great Britain to become a multiracial community. If that is our desire and we decide to make it a matter of deliberate policy, well and good, but let us at least consider where we are going and make up our minds whether that is what we want, and not simply drift.

One of the difficulties about discussing this problem is that we are all a little scared of being thought to be illiberal. I frankly admit that that is not a charge which I should like to have laid at my door. I hope that my political instincts will always range me on the side of the minority against the majority, of the individual against the corporation and of the oppressed against the tyrant. Therefore, I could not find any excuses whatever for anyone who believed in a colour bar in any community where black and white have to co-exist. That, however, is altogether different from ohanging the nature of a community, whether by deliberate policy or as the result of fecklessly drifting along because one cannot make up one's mind and because one shirks coming to a decision.

Surely, it is not illiberal—here I quote from the Tablet, although I am not a Catholic—for people to be concerned with preserving their own national character and continuity. A question which affects the future of our own race and breed is not one that we should leave merely to chance. I do not believe that it is sensible to make this island a magnet of attraction for the whole of the rest of the Commonwealth by virtue of our superior wealth and Welfare State and then simply to wait and see what happens. I therefore hope that this question will receive increasing attention from the Government and from informed public opinion throughout. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Louth for raising this subject today.

What I have to say first may be very out of tone with what is intended in this debate, but what I have in mind I must say, because otherwise I shall feet that I have forsaken my duty, having recently returned from the West Indies.

I feel that this debate originates out of what happened at Notting Hill Gate and Nottingham, and try as we will we cannot divorce ourselves from those events, for I am certain that if those incidents had not occurred we would not have had a debate on this issue.

Before I proceed, may I say a word about the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne), who moved the Motion, and the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Lindsay), who seconded it. No one doubts their sincerity in this matter, and I think that that view is more or less shared on both sides of the House, but there is this to be said about the hon. Member for Louth. While he is sincere, he is often misguided and sometimes not entirely accurate, and I believe that by what he has said that has been more or less proved today. I know that the hon. Gentleman has a habit of sitting back and looking innocent and saying, "What have I done wrong?" and pointing out that his Motion deals only with a certain section of immigrants, but if he reads his speech tomorrow he will find an emphasis on coloured immigrants, in which view he was supported by his hon. Friend the Member for Solihull.

The hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Lindsay) said so.

Therefore, we must have that in mind during the rest of the debate, and remember that this is a debate about coloured immigrants. What I am pleased about is that most of my hon. Friends on this side of the House do not agree with the hon. Member for Louth, and, I am quite certain, most of his hon. Friends do not believe him either. I do not think it would be a very good thing if it went out from this House that there was a strong body of opinion here in favour of the restriction of coloured immigrants.

There is in the country.

We will come to that point later. I am now making my own speech, just as the hon. Gentleman asked to be allowed to make his. I shall return to the point later on.

The hon. Member did say that this Motion was not directed against coloured immigration. He will understand if I remind him of what he said on a previous occasion—on 29th October—because many people in the Commonwealth who will read his speech will remember what he said on that occasion. He used these words:

"I refer to the urgent need for a restriction upon immigration into this country, particularly of coloured immigrants."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th October, 1958; Vol. 594, c. 195.]

I think we must debate the Motion in the light of that statement, for the hon. Gentleman has not apologised at all to the Commonwealth for having said that, nor has he said that he has changed from that point of view. I do not think the hon. Member should turn his back like that, because at least we have been questioned in the West Indies about the mind of the hon. Member. No one is more aware than the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Mawby) of the fact that we were questioned about the hon. Member for Louth. We were asked, "Who is this Cyril Osborne? Who is he, and what does he stand for?" and so on. We had to defend the position of the Government, at any rate, in view of what the hon. Member was saying at that time. Therefore, the principle of coloured immigration does come into the debate, and nothing will convince the coloured people throughout the Commonwealth unless the hon. Member changes his mind from the point of view which he then expressed.

As I have already mentioned, we returned a few weeks ago from the West Indies, where we were questioned about what happened at Notting Hill Gate and Nottingham. I do not think we shall ever forget—and I think that the hon. Member for Totnes will agree with me on this matter—the way in which we were questioned about this issue and the rather anxious way in which the people there viewed the picture which had been painted. They still believe out there that the whole country here is up in arms against the coloured people. They have got the whole position out of perspective, and no one could tell them anything else, so that it was our job—and I believe we did our job effectively—to convince the people out there that race riots as such did not occur in this country.

I would have been much happier it the Press had done more to tell these people the truth, but the truth, as they saw it out there, was that these were race riots, because the Press was more or less magnifying the position out of all perspective. Because of these incidents and disturbances, that idea was ever present in the minds of these people. As hon. Members on both sides of the House know, when we visit various parts of the Commonwealth, and especially the under-developed parts, there are always social and economic questions, and the present plight of the West Indies is proving no exception to that rule. I believe it is generally agreed that the conditions of some of the people in the West Indies are most appalling. The unemployment figures out there are pretty high, and poverty is not an uncommon thing. Illiteracy, despite what has been achieved, is most distressing.

Considering these factors, it is not unnatural that when we went to the West Indies we should expect a rather severe question on these matters. On this occasion, we found the form upset because the idea of race riots in Britain was uppermost in their minds. To say that they were shocked is putting it only mildly. We know that that kind of disturbance rarely happens over here today, but to the people of the West Indies it was very serious, and they had become really fearful that some terrible issue, like that of Little Rock, had been brought very near to them. These people have many friends and relatives here, and they could visualise that their own friends and relatives were being made the victims of these disturbances. These fears need not have existed at all.

I have mentioned the Press once, and I will mention it again. It would have been better if the Press had not used the words "race riots" but had merely published the fact that the disturbances were caused by a few wildcats of society out for a good time. It would have been much better if the Press had done that and, had it been done, there would not have been all- these fears and people in the West Indies would not have felt so horrified.

What surprises me about the hon. Member for Louth is his constant change of attitude. I believe that a few years ago—not so many years—he was entirely in favour of importing foreign labour to go into the mines. I wonder what he thinks now in view of what has happened and in view of the statement we had on Wednesday?

Since the hon. Gentleman has asked me a question, perhaps I may be allowed to answer it. The answer is quite simple. What would have been the good of bringing them in and training them at public expense if the miners would not allow them to work?

The hon. Gentleman has changed his mind. He was then in favour of importing miners but is not now in favour of coloured immigration. He must make up his mind where he is.

I agree that I said that we should have them in, but what is the good of bringing them in, giving them training at public expense, when the miners would not let them work?

Is the hon. Gentleman in favour of bringing them in? That is the question.

The hon. Gentleman is missing the whole point we are dealing with at the moment. He is dealing with the control of immigration, and I am dealing with the time when he wanted them to come in. Then the hon. Member wanted them to come in. Now he wants to restrict their coming in.

Surely the hon. Gentleman knows that yesterday there was a pit disaster in which lives were lost? The miners were fearful that foreigners who could not talk their tongue might on that account be a cause of damage to themselves and to miners generally. That was the reason for the opposition.

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention.

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Louth has to make up his mind on this issue. It is no use his having convenient changes of mind. Issues of this kind are rather too serious for that. If he is in favour of some people coming into this country then he has a right to be in favour of all people coming in, and if he is in favour of some people being kept out, he could plead that everyone must be kept out, but he must make up his mind on the issue.

I do not disagree with him that there is a problem. Of course there is a problem. The difference between us is over the method of dealing with it. He talked about controlling immigration. I thought, and my hon. Friends on this side of the House also thought, that the word "control" was foreign to hon. Members opposite and that it is a word which, according to them, only we on this side use. Now, however, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Louth is using the word because it is convenient to him.

There is, indeed, a problem to be faced, but I realised this in 1955. I thank the hon. Gentleman the Member for Louth for reading out that article from the Economist because I may have been responsible for the facts contained in it, because when I came back from Jamaica in March, 1955, I made representations to the Colonial Secretary, as it was then generally felt that people who were coming from Jamaica to this country were people who had no jobs, and that was not true. The truth is that we were getting the best people in Jamaica. It was they who were coming here. They were leaving jobs to come to this country to seek bigger and better opportunities which they felt they would find here. It must not be thought that the people who were coming from Jamaica were outcasts. They were the very best Jamaica could provide.

I made these points when I was in Jamaica. I also told them that unless something were done they would come to this country only to find themselves in the middle of an economic recession when most of them would be unemployed. I told them quite plainly—and there was no other Member of this House who said anything of the sort in anything like the way I told it to them—that if they came to this country and found jobs, as they would be the last to be employed they would be the first to go. I thought it better to tell them the plain truth. That was the issue. That is the kind of thing which should have been and should be done for those people. But no. What happened was this—and I think I had better quote what I said about it in a speech I made in this House in June, 1955. I said this:

"I believe that the real cause of the emigration is the kind of attractive advertisement offering £75 trips to England, and the kind of talk that, when they come here, there will be television sets and all sorts of things, including free accommodation. There is no one to tell them that that is not the case. There is no one to tell them about the climatic conditions here, and about the difficulty of obtaining accommodation. The only attractive picture which they get is that of a trip to England for £75, and they mortgage everything they have in order to get here. I believe that it should be the job of somebody to tell these people of the conditions which they must expect when they come here, to tell them how precarious is our present economic position and how difficult it is to get accommodation."

That is what I said in 1955.

It is still true.

Why not say it then? But let me finish the quotation:

"I believe that that is the only way in which we can solve this migration problem. …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st June, 1955; Vol. 542, c. 1195–6.]

The only way is by telling people the truth about the facts of life in Britain. That is what I said then, and I believe it to be true today.

Hear, hear.

The wide difference between the hon. Gentleman and me is that he seeks to control immigration. I would have an advice bureau. That was the kind of thing I advocated to the Colonial Secretary.

So the hon. Gentleman would control it.

'The hon. Gentleman read that article from the Economist. It shows that what I told the Jamaican people must have had some effect. Those advertisements for trips to England were doing a great disservice to the Jamaican people, because those advertisements did not tell the truth about migration.

The point of difference between us is wide. I still think it would be much better if the hon. Member would withdraw his Motion. I believe that to seek this kind of Parliamentary control over immigration will create suspicion and distrust. I believe that agencies should be set up in all the various parts of the Commonwealth. What is to stop the Federation Government in the West Indies from doing that? They could have representatives of the Federation in agencies where the facts of life in Britain could be told to the people. I believe that is the only way in which we can deal with this problem properly.

This Motion deals with only a small section of the immigrants. I do not understand the hon. Gentleman the Member for Louth. He talked about great economic problems, but he seeks to deal with only a very small section of the immigrants to ease the economic problems. How many immigrants to this country are there? What jobs have they got?

Ask the Newcastle bus workers.

The hon. Gentleman is becoming rather flippant on a rather serious matter. I paid him the tribute of saying he was sincere. Now I rather doubt it. I hope he will think the matter over again and read tomorrow the report of his speech.

We are, after all, dealing with grave issues, and not only for this country. Surely the mother country ought not to offend her colonial people but provide an example to them, and we ought to show that we ourselves are more tolerant than most people who seek to restrict immigration into their countries because of colour. To accept this Motion will be disastrous not only for this country. It will create suspicion and distrust and push in the thin end of the wedge; it will create a lot of disharmony in the Commonwealth, and eventually it will lead to the tearing apart of this great institution, the Commonwealth.

I would remind the hon. Gentleman the Member for Durham (Mr. Grey) that the wording of this Motion does not go so far as he would seem to think, judging from his speech. I agree with his last words. We do not want to refer to the colour question. He suggested that the Motion would open the door to political diatribe, and that the political diatribe is not between us here but between the head of the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth countries.

The majority of the 600 million people in the Commonwealth do not have the same colour of skin as hon. Members sitting in this House. If we make sweeping statements and generalities, the majority of the people of the Commonwealth will resent them. At the same time, we must not close our eyes to the fact that a high proportion of our people do not like to see concentrations of other people, from wherever they come, settling down in specific parts of certain cities and occupying the housing accommodation and trying to obtain jobs in competition with them.

The question of unemployment is very closely related to this immigration. The hon. Member for Durham said that, so far as employment was concerned, it was a case of last in, first out. If there should be under any Government, at any time, serious unemployment in the country, it will be the recent immigrants who will be at the head of the unemployment queues drawing dole paid for by the rest of the country. That is why so many people take the view which was so badly expressed and led by undesirable elements in what have been wrongly called the race riots in Nottingham and Notting Hill. There is nothing new about this situation. It arose many times, for example, in the history of the construction of our railways.

It arose in 1870 and in 1915.

At the time of the construction of the railways it was the custom for Irish and English labourers to form themselves into rival gangs of workers. As the Irish were prepared to accept lower wages, this led to riots with the English gangs. Now we have again coming into the country people who are content with a lower standard of living and are prepared to work for a fraction of the wages which our own people here, through the trade unions, very rightly try to maintain. Therefore, we should not jump quickly to one conclusion about this very difficult problem. We must keep the balance between two strongly held and opposing views.

I remind the House that the Motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) would include people coming from Southern Ireland just as much as people from Jamaica, New Zealand, Canada, or Australia. There is bound to be among all these immigrants a proportion who, for one reason or another, are undesirable when they come into the country and, as they often do, take the place of our own fit and skilled men who have gone out to other countries from our over-populated island.

Is it right that our social services, and among those I include the prison service, should be burdened by such undesirable people? The hon. Member for Durham asked what proportion of these people are criminals. I cannot give the figures, and I do not think that anybody else can give them. The number is, of course, extremely small. But if the hon. Member will examine the calendars at any assize court or quarter sessions he will find several instances of people from some part of the Commonwealth, including Southern Ireland, being charged with serious crimes. As I know from experience, the court before which these people appear has no power at all to deport them.

The other day I had to see my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department about a foreign girl who had shoplifted in Oxford Street, which, of course, was a serious offence. The magistrate recommended her deportation and she was deported. If she had not come from a European country but from Canada, Australia or New Zealand, and had committed a much more serious crime and there was every reason to think that she would commit more crimes, nothing could have been done. That is the kind of case that we have to consider.

If people, whatever their colour, come here and commit serious crimes, perhaps repeatedly on more than one stay in the country, there is no power to do anything at all except to send them to an English prison, at the cost to the taxpayers of a great deal of money. We know also that our prisons are overcrowded and wholly unsuitable for receiving such people. Yet we have to maintain them there. But that is not all. If their crimes are not so serious as to warrant a prison sentence, they are put on probation and our overworked and conscientious probation officers have to take over the additional work.

I have no hesitation in saying that, so far as the Motion deals with that kind of case, the time is overdue when legislation should be brought in to deal with them. It will be remembered that recently the Court of Criminal Appeal has drawn attention to this fact and has said that the matter must be dealt with by legislation. So it must, and I do not think that legislation of that kind would be opposed in any quarter of the House.

Our Health Service costs us a great deal of money. Those who come to the country and become ill after they have arrived are entitled to use the Service. But is there any reason why people who are unfit before they come here should not have some form of medical examination and be refused permission to come if they are likely to become a charge on the medical services and to occupy beds in hospitals which often have a waiting list of inhabitants of this country?

Our social services, in the sense of public relief and matters of that kind, cost us a great deal of money. If unemployment should arise, those services would cost more. Yet I do not think that any hon. Member would disagree that if unemployment came, these immigrants would be the first to be charges on unemployment benefit and assistance relief. The country's purse is not unlimited. We are already spending for the benefit of the inhabitants of this island very large sums of money on various forms of social service, including the provision of hospitals, unemployment relief, public assistance and the prison service. We cannot extend our expenditure indefinitely to include spending on people who come here from all over the world and require these services for one reason or another. It is high time that this matter was brought to a conclusion.

I must try to confine myself to the terms of the Motion. If we go beyond that we shall get into very dangerous waters. I hope that the House will pass the Motion and that the Government will bring in legislation—and the sooner the better—to deal with the matters it raises, and particularly with people who come here and commit crimes or lead a criminal existence without doing any form of work. Although the numbers are small, the dangers which they create are very great indeed.

If I do not follow immediately in my remarks the theme of the speech by the hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty), it is because I want to cut my speech short for the sake of some of my hon. Friends who want to take part in the debate. I will, however, try to pick up some of the hon. and learned Member's interesting comments in the course of my general observations.

It is unfortunate that the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) has moved this Motion. It is only a week since the Government lifted certain regulations on the entry of foreigners into the country. I think that, generally, we welcome foreigners, because past experience shows that we have gained a good deal from people coming here from overseas and bringing with them their skills, their culture and a new colour to our national life.

We are talking of plural societies in the British Commonwealth. We are talking of the need to be leaders in a multi-racial world. If we really mean that, we must show signs of believing in it, and we do not do so by restricting the entry into this country of people from other parts of the world. Indeed, no sooner have the Government made that move towards this liberalisation than we find a Government supporter asking us for the first time to impose restrictions on the entry into this country of members of our Commonwealth family.

Let us see what are the numbers involved. When the hon. Gentleman reads his speech he will find that he referred particularly to the coloured population. There are about 190,000 in this country, of which it is estimated that 100,000 come from the West Indies and 50,000 from India and Pakistan. There are many more British people going from the United Kingdom into the Commonwealth, and in India and Pakistan there are 35,000 or more United Kingdom citizens resident there. We want this movement to go on in our great family of nations.

I must say, because I believe it to be true, that in spite of the pious wrappings of this Motion, we cannot escape the fact that it is closely related to colour and race. As my hon. Friend the Member for Durham (Mr. Grey) has shown by his very able speech, certainly it is taken that way in the West Indies and in other parts of the Commonwealth. I ask the hon. Gentleman whether this Motion would have been moved today if it had not been for the shameful events in Nottingham and Notting Hill, three months ago?

Of course, there are faults on both sides. I have never said that all black men are angels and all white men are devils, but I say this to the hon. Gentleman, that he is certainly mixing in very bad company. The people who are concerned with keeping this emotional feeling alive are those who baited the Jews in days gone by, the Fascists—

rose—

It is a very bad thing that this Motion has been moved. All I am saying to the hon. Gentleman, and he must take it, is that it will be taken in this way. He is mixing with bad friends. I give due credit to him, and I am not suggesting that he has any such sentiments or feelings for that group, but the fact that he has moved a Motion of this kind gives support to people who share that view.

One hon. Gentleman suggested that immigrants included people with diseases and idlers and criminals. The Government have made their position clear. They say it is not so. Indeed, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the debate in another place when a noble Lord, speaking for the Government, Lord Chesham, said this:

"It is sometimes said that there is a health problem, but at the moment certainly we are not aware that there is a serious problem."

He had said earlier:

"By and large, they do not present any particular problem to the police, and they are at least as law-abiding as most other inhabitants of this country."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords; 19th November, 1958; Vol. 212, c. 715.]

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Solihull (Mr. M. Lindsay) talked about the numbers on public assistance. The Government spokesman in another place, the Earl of Perth, on the same occasion said that this accusation was very often made, but that it really did not signify because the facts did not justify it.

We on this side of the House recognise that there are numbers of people who come to this country who misbehave themselves. They are to be condemned for this, but already some Commonwealth Governments are taking the trouble to ensure that emigrants are of good character. For instance, I know that Mr. Manley and his Cabinet colleagues in the West Indies now give instructions for careful vetting of applications for passports from those who want to come to this country and anyone with a criminal record is stopped from coming.

Why do we not do something here?

Because we have always made it a practice not to do so and because this great Mother of Parliaments has established complete freedom and liberty, so we put no restriction on the movement of people. If they are criminal we deal with them in the proper way, judicially. If some get caught in the criminal net we deal with them in the same way as we do with other wrongdoers, irrespective of colour, creed or race.

We on this side are clear on our attitude towards restricted immigration. I think I speak for my right hon. and hon. Friends by saying that we are categorically against it. This country has a special place in the Commonwealth. We are the most industrialised community and we have a direct responsibility for our colonial subjects when they are poor, badly housed or unemployed.

I do not think that we can escape our share of responsibility. I am reminded of the occasion when I went to the West Indies, as Parliamentary Secretary for Overseas Trade, to buy more sugar. Not only did I want to buy more sugar but I wanted to get it at a cheaper price. I remember a friend saying to me one evening, "As a fellow Socialist, do you think you are doing the right thing, coming here asking for sugar at a lower price? You have a Welfare State. Your children are well clothed and they go to school. A good deal of this is provided by the money made out of the sugar grown in our country. Do you not think it is time you paid a little more money for this sugar, so that we can provide the same opportunities for our people?"

We would do well to remember that a great deal of our standard of living is possible because of our association with these backward peoples. So we cannot shirk our responsibility towards them when they, in their turn, ask for some help. It is natural for them to look to this country for the opportunity of building a decent standard of living, just as the miners did when there was great distress here. They came from the Welsh valleys or from the North-East to London to look for work.

Both the Colonies and the independent members of the Commonwealth are in the process of developing a national economic life. They have to be careful not to overburden themselves with too many immigrants at one time. However, this danger will diminish, and their economies will become stronger and more mature. When that happens they will reduce, and, finally, abolish, their restrictions on immigration from one part of the Commonwealth to another so that, as in this country, there will be complete freedom of movement for Commonwealth citizens within the Commonwealth. We ought to aim at achieving this. We ought to be the leaders instead of limiting in any way entrance into this country.

We have been glad to have immigrants come here since the end of the war. I am sure that there are many who would readily pay tribute to the work done by them as nurses in hospitals and as assistants in public transport. In spite of what the hon. Gentleman has said about one section of a trade union branch apparently causing objections to be made, I can tell him that the Transport and General Workers' Union, which represents that branch, is on record as saying that it is against this kind of discrimination. I can tell him, too, that there are shop stewards in large undertakings throughout the country who have said that these men are their partners, that they want them to work with them, and that this is being done happily and successfully.

I am sure the Transport and General Workers' Union will never forget that during the bus strike, in London, the coloured people were as loyal as all others in keeping the union tradition—

Hon. Gentlemen opposite do not call that loyalty.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman this question? Is he really in favour of unrestricted immigration and of known criminals coming into this country?

I have said that our country, in turn, makes provision for checking the movement of undesirables, but if, by an unfortunate error, one of them gets into this country, it is our duty to deal with him, whatever his race, colour or creed, according to the judicial requirements of the land.

I was saying that the trade unions in no way oppose the entry of these immigrants from other parts of the Commonwealth, but one has to note that if there is unemployment this fact causes tension. These matters have to be watched and handled in some way, and so have housing difficulties. These tensions exist and we do well to take note of them, but they would exist in any case. They are a social problem which has to be handled. The Governments of coloured countries know that there is growing unemployment and housing difficulty in this country, and they are anxious that their people should know about it.

I remember Mr. Manley saying on one occasion, "I would like to stop most of them who are coming to your country because they are the craftsmen who can make our country wealthier. They are of the more adventurous kind. We are not anxious that they should go." It ought to shock hon. Members that this poster which I have in my hand can be put up in a Commonwealth country. It says, "Don't go to Britain because there is unemployment". That has been put up all over the West Indies. The Government there are doing their best to stop immigrants coming into this country.

For the reasons that I have explained, we believe in the principle of Commonwealth citizens having free movement all over the Commonwealth. We must set an example of that in this country. The central principle on which our status in the Commonwealth is largely dependent is the "open door" to all Commonwealth citizens. If we believe in the importance of our great Commonwealth, which is still developing and which is creating the foundation of a common society, we should do nothing in the slightest degree to undermine that principle. We stand to gain from it as a British nation as we have done in the past. Much of the life, culture and merriment that these immigrants bring to us is a contribution to our social development.

We stand to gain still more in stature in the Commonwealth community in giving the principal lead to the Commonwealth in this development. Let us not cause doubts about this development, but continue to build upon what we know is good and is accepted throughout the Commonwealth as the British way of life. We hope that it will continue to serve as an example to the rest of the world.

I have spoken shortly, but with a sincerity equal to that of the hon. Member for Louth. My concluding words are that I think the hon. Gentleman has done a disservice to the cause of humanity and to the British Commonwealth.

The right hon. Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mr. Bottomley) has done a public service in making plain the position of his party in relation to this Motion. He did so by saying that the party opposite was categorically against restricting immigration. Equally, I must make it plain that Her Majesty's Government cannot accept the Motion proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne).

We would all agree with the opening phrasing of that Motion, which

"deplores all forms of colour bar or race discrimination."

The second part deals with the control of immigration from the Commonwealth.

A starting point for discussion of that question is that this country is proud to be the centre of an inter-racial Commonwealth which, my hon. Friend agrees, is the greatest association of peoples of all races, creeds and colours that the world has ever seen. As a result of that, we have always allowed any of the people in what was the Empire and is now the Commonwealth to come to this country and to go from it as they please.

That was not due to a deliberate act of policy formally announced and embodied in our law. It is not even a policy which gradually grew up and became established by custom, so far as I have been able to discover. It is simply a fact which we have taken for granted from the earliest days in which our forebears ventured forth across the seas. That, I suggest, is the starting point of our thoughts on this matter.

Both my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. M. Lindsay) made it clear that their anxiety was about the increased numbers of coloured immigrants. I think that it would be hypocritical if we did not discuss it in the context which they clearly had in mind. Coloured people have been coming here from the Colonies ever since the days of Princess Pocahontas. She was a redskin and in her day was known as "La Belle Sauvage". La Belle Sauvage Yard, in Ludgate Hill, is named after her. Many coloured people came here as seamen and domestic servants. For the past 100 years a great many coloured men and, more recently, women, have come as students. I have known many of them as students at the Bar. A high proportion have been students at the Bar, and very great lawyers some of them have made.

Only since the war have we had a somewhat larger number of coloured people comng here than before to earn their living as part of our general working population. Even so, the total number of coloured people from the Commonwealth now estimated to be in this country is only 210,000, out of our total native population of about 50 million. I know that the question of the distribution of that 210,000 coloured people is something of which we should take note—the distribution both by countries of origin and by the places where they have settled here. From the West Indies roughly 115,000, rather more than half the total, have come, and there are 25,000 West Africans, 55,000 Indians and Pakistanis. That leaves about 15,000 others from numerous parts of the Commonwealth.

They are living mainly in the large cities. London has 90,000, Birmingham, 25,000, Manchester, 8,000, Liverpool, 6,400, and Leeds, 6,000. Nottingham, Bradford, Coventry and Cardiff have smaller, but substantial, communities. Those figures are only estimates. We have no system of obtaining regular, accurate statistics, but probably those estimates are not far out. As the right hon. Member for Rochester and Chatham pointed out, until the disturbances in Nottingham and Notting Hill, at the end of August, a major breach of law and order is not known to have occurred, involving—I hesitate to use the word, but it is a word which has been used and one must face it—antagonism between coloured people and our native population.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull said, perhaps rightly, the riots were possibly not the result of racial pressures, but simply that advantage was being taken by naturally lawless people, who are of our own population, picking an opportunity for conflict with those who happened to be of a different skin. To say that that is symptomatic of a feeling in the rest of the population, would be entirely wrong.

The hon. Member for Durham (Mr. Grey) made an interesting speech after having visited the West Indies and, so to speak, having had an advantage I have not had of seeing both sides of the picture. He went further and said that the Press was wrong to have used the expression "race riots". However, those disorders took place and caused natural apprehension in the minds of all of us.

With great respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Durham (Mr. Grey), I think that he was wrong and that they were race riots. Anyone who has seen race riots knows that this sprang from the worst social class in this country against these people, but they were race riots. I do not think that we should use verbiage which obscures the issue.

The impression which I was given was that these incidents were commenced by Teddy boys. Naturally, other incidents followed, but I believe that the incidents were instigated by Teddy boys.

When a gang set out with the idea that the only criterion whether they bash in a man's face or not is that his skin is not white, that is a race riot. We cannot get away from the English language.

So far, I have expressed no opinion about whether that was the right choice of words, and perhaps it would be best to leave it to the two hon. Members to decide that matter of "verbiage," but I think that the spirit behind the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull and the hon. Member for Durham was that, whatever the causes of these riots, they were not symptomatic of any general racial dislike in this country. That is the only point I am trying to make.

I am glad to say that since these unhappy disorders, there have been only the usual minor incidents involving coloured people, and these are incidents which, unfortunately, occur in large cities all over the world and are not part of any colour problem. Unfortunately, even white people sometimes have brawls.

Like that at Blackpool.

I should not have said that that was a brawl. I thought that it was handled in difficult circumstances with great dignity and restraint.

After those incidents at Nottingham and Notting Hill, some of the Prime Ministers and other Ministers from the West Indies came here to see things for themselves. I think that we were able to reassure them on various matters. I had the pleasure of meeting them, as did my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I believe that they went back to their countries reassured about the Government's intentions and reassured that we were anxious to help to solve problems, as far as there were problems to solve. They went back in a realistic frame of mind, however, with the intention of making it clear to their people that there was no point in encouraging vast numbers of them to come here merely to swell the ranks of the unemployed.

I suggest to the House that our unemployment problem is temporary. My hon. Friend the Member for Louth said that we should not be panicked into any rash measures, but that this is a matter which requires careful consideration. I agree with him. Surely it would be wrong to depart from the broad general principle of allowing British people from all over the world to come here merely because of a temporary fear of swelling the ranks of our unemployed.

As a result, perhaps, of what has already been done by the Governments of the Commonwealth, especially those of India and Pakistan as well as those of the West Indies, the number of coloured people coming here in recent months has fallen considerably compared with the number in the previous two years. I will not trouble the House with the figures, because they have already been given.

We should like to be troubled with the figures, especially with those for the West Indies. Let us be troubled with them.

As the hon. Gentleman has asked for the figures, I shall give them to him. I take it that it is the West Indies in which he is particularly interested. The figures for immigrants from the West Indies are: in 1955, 28,000; in 1956, 30,000; in 1957, 23,000; and in 1958, to the end of October, 14,300. That shows a considerable decline. The net inward balance, which is what, I believe, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Rochester and Chatham seeks, for the four months, July-October, was only 4,500 compared with the following figures for the corresponding periods of 1957, 1956 and 1955–12,500, 11,000 and 11,500 respectively.

What I say is, therefore, clearly borne out by the figures—

rose—

I am anxious to give replies to those who have spoken in this debate, and to deal with my hon. Friend's Motion. Perhaps, before I sit down, the hon. Gentleman may again seek to intervene.

Although my hon. Friend moved his Motion in fairly wide terms I hope that he will not think that I am attaching too much importance to the letter and not enough to the spirit of the Motion if I refer to the actual words used. My hon. Friend asks us

"… to take immediate steps to restrict the immigration of all persons, irrespective of race, colour, or creed, who are unfit, idle, or criminal…."

All kinds of immigration controls create their own great administrative problems—as I, perhaps, as much as anybody in this House, have recently had reason to know—but what my hon. Friend has set down immediately give rise to various difficulties, both of definition and of administration. Let us take the word "unfit". Unfit for what? What degree of unfitness? These are very much a matter of opinion.

If my hon. Friend is anxious that there shall be a full medical examination of everybody coming here, I must point out that that is a thing we have never had even for aliens, and that it would also create tremendous problems of skilled manpower at the ports—

Surely the standard of fitness or unfitness should be just the same as that applied to every Englishman who goes to any part of the Commonwealth. He has to provide a clean bill of health. If it is quite practical for other Governments to do it against our own people, why should we not be able to do it to those coming here?

With great respect to my hon. Friend, I am not at all sure that that is right. There are various regulations in various parts of the Commonwealth—and we have some, too—about notifying various notifiable diseases, but that is a very different question from suggesting that there should be an immigration control to exclude those broadly called "unfit".

While I am dealing with this question of health, perhaps I may say that for all corners, whether aliens or from the Commonwealth, the most serious epidemic diseases are already the subject of scrutiny, so to speak, at the ports; particularly small pox, which we are always naturally anxious to keep out of the country, because it is a disease which, if it does get here, spreads rather easily. Further, if somebody—an alien, at any rate—is found to have an infectious condition that is readily apparent, it presents a fairly simple problem. That alien, or the person from the Commonwealth, can be dealt with at once by being taken to hospital, or treated in some way.

If my hon. Friend has in mind T.B. or V. D., may I say that those diseases cannot be adequately dealt with except by X-ray or blood tests taken at the port. To provide for all persons coming to this country medical examinations on a scale sufficient to detect all communicable diseases would call for an elaborate and costly organisation including a full range of diagnostic facilities at every port and detailed examinations which would involve formidable delay in the admission of people to this country. We consider that the needs do not justify anything of that kind.

It is, of course, another matter for the emigrating countries to make any arrangements that they care to make, and, indeed, some of them have made such arrangements, to see that people who are unhealthy and unfit do not come here to try to work.

Could the hon. and learned Gentleman give details of what health arrangements have been made in the native countries before people emigrate? If he will look at the latest Ministry of Health figures of the incidence of tuberculosis in this country, where we once completely conquered the disease, and see who are now occupying the beds, he will get a rude shock.

I should have preferred to have notice of that point. I am not prepared to give details at this moment. The hon. Gentleman can take it from me that this matter is exercising the concern of some of the emigrating countries and that they are taking steps to deal with it.

rose—

I cannot give way; I must get on.

As for restricting the idle, there is a difficulty of definition. When a person arrives at a port how are we to tell whether he is idle or not? I do not think that my hon. Friend would expect me to say much more than that. He knows, as I have pointed out, that people are not encouraged to come here unless there is work for them. But to say that there should be a regular system of Ministry of Labour permits as we have for aliens would go a very long way to breaching the principle of the open door upon which most of us agree.

As to criminals, so far as the West Indies are concerned, the countries of emigration already refuse to allow people with bad criminal records to come here. However, I think that is not so much what my hon. Friend has in mind as the need, which has already been mentioned in the debate and about which a great deal of agreement has been expressed, to deport that small minority of immigrants from the Commonwealth, whether coloured or otherwise, who, by their criminal activities, are not only a nuisance to us but are a disgrace to the vast number of their law-abiding fellow subjects from the various parts of the Commonwealth.

As my right hon. Friend said at the Conservative Party's Blackpool conference, which has already been mentioned, the Government have under consideration the possibility of legislating on that matter. I must point out to the House that it is not a matter that can be quickly or easily decided. Naturally, consultations are necessary with all the other countries of the Commonwealth, and I speak as a lawyer when I say that the legal issues involved are unbelievably complex. I am sorry that I am not in a position at the moment to give the House any further information about our intentions in that respect.

My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull asked about the numbers of those receiving National Assistance. He was referring particularly to coloured people. At the beginning of November—the latest date for which I have figures—6,100 were in receipt of unemployment benefit without any National Assistance supplementation, another 1,500 were receiving unemployment benefit and National Assistance, and 6,700 were in receipt of National Assistance only.

About 15,000 in all?

The total is 14,300.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) said that my hon. Friend's Motion would include Southern Ireland. I am not so sure that he is right. It rather seems to us that if the Motion is to apply, as it seems to, to people in Commonwealth countries only, it would leave the Southern Irish in a better position than people from the Commonwealth.

I do not want to go into legal points about the Southern Ireland Act which was recently passed, but the same problem concerning deportation arises in regard to Southern Irish who come here and commit crimes. They are not Commonwealth subjects—which is so much their loss—but the same problem would require to be dealt with in the legislation.

My hon. and learned Friend is right, and in any legislation of this kind we should naturally have to consider the position of Irish people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Louth suggested that the powers which he would like us to take are those which are already possessed by most of the other Governments concerned. He said that any legislation on which we might embark to control immigration should be on the basis of reciprocity. That gives rise to difficulties. As has been pointed out, India and Pakistan place practically no restrictions on the entry of people from this country, and if restrictions were introduced here on the basis of reciprocity the result would be that, while the entry of West Indians would be controlled, the entry of Indians and Pakistanis would not. I do not know whether that is a result which my hon. Friend the Member for Louth contemplates, but it does not seem to be a very logical solution.

I did not make that suggestion. I was merely quoting from the Economist, which suggested it.

As an argument in reserve—it would not be fair to refer to it as my hon. Friend's last ditch—my hon. Friend invited our attention to the possibility of a long-term solution to the problem. There are now 210,000 coloured people from the Commonwealth here as well as a great many other people from the Commonwealth. My hon. Friend quoted the Economist and pointed out that in twenty years' time, when our own native population will be very much larger than it is now, there will be 800,000 coloured people from the Commonwealth here. Candidly, I do not think that that fact should cause the Government to alter their views and their policy. Incidentally it is a very big change from the figure of 6 million which my hon. Friend quoted in the debate on the Address.

I have attempted to deal with all the points of detail which have been raised. To summarise, we all agree, and are thankful to agree, that none of us in this House would tolerate any form of colour prejudice. We all agree that we are proud of our country's position as the centre of a multi-racial Commonwealth. Both the Government and, I am glad to record, the Opposition Front Bench do not see the necessity for any general control of immigration. The Government are considering very carefully the possibility of legislation to deport criminals, but, as I have pointed out, that gives rise to great complexities.

I was hoping to be called before the Joint Under-Secretary replied, but unfortunately I did not manage to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

I should like to go back to the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne). He referred to this matter as being political dynamite, not between party and party, but between nation and Commonwealth. I do not regard the matter as political dynamite at all. We are responsible men who have been sent here by the electorate to give expression to issues with which the electorate is concerned in our constituencies. Parliament has been long enough in getting round to a subject which affects large numbers of people in every big city. Some of the public seem to think that Parliament has been too long in getting round to it.

During the debate, which has ranged over the generalities of the matter and the position of the people concerned, both coloured and white, it has never been clearly stated what gave rise to the trouble at Notting Hill and Shepherds Bush. I am the first London Member to be called, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and my constituency was concerned in the riots. I know as well as any other hon. Member that we have a great responsibility to the Commonwealth. But we have a greater responsibility than that. Present population trends throughout the world show that the coloured races will exceed the white races in a few years' time in the ratio of no less than five to one. I am including the Chinese, who it is expected before the end of the century will number 2,000 million people.

This will be a formidable problem for the diminishing numbers of the white race throughout the world. Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that there is now a political psychological pull towards the Eastern parts of the world on the political outlook, aspirations and development of nationalities. This pull has to be faced in this context. We in Great Britain have a system of democracy which has grown up for over 400 years. It is well tried and trusted, and it is not easily exportable to other parts of the world, as events have proved. We are an insular people who have been protected by a water barrier for 400 years, and during this time certain institutions have grown up.

One of these institutions is tolerance of other people's ideas, whatever colour, race and creed. But we must face the fact—and it would be idle not to face it—that for the first time Great Britain has a colour problem at home, and the extent to which she measures up to it and the decisions that are made will have repercussions throughout the world. That was the general tenor of the debate as I listened to it. No hon. Member, in any part of the House, is unaware of the issues involved and of the necessity for winning the brown, black and other coloured people over to democratic systems and institutions.

It is not an easy issue. Let us look at it quite clearly. Consider, for example, Ghana where there have been aspirations for freedom and independence for thirty, forty or fifty years. Now, Ghana has its independence and we have seen some factors which are not pleasing. It may be that Dr. Nkrumah understands his own people better than we understand them—I do not know. He has decided that there will be one tribal chieftain instead of the lot and that that one will be him. An opposition will be tolerated so long as he can control it. That has not been the experience of some of us on this side of the House who have been champions of the coloured people for many years. Let us face it, however. That is the position that exists.

There was a well-known, popular song in my younger days which contained the words "Wishing will make it so." Wishing will not solve these problems. The House of Commons must apply the force of its logic and tolerance to these issues wherever they arise, in any part of the world, and particularly in our own country.

Never in the history of one nation has a country faced so great a responsibility as Great Britain faces today. I should think that within our forty dependent territories there are some 80 million people, for whose social, political and moral rights we are responsible. Migration always brings problems to any country. The speed with which any nation can overcome the difficulties of absorbing immigrants is to a great extent dependent upon the immigrants themselves and their ability to fit into the accepted customs and practices of the receiving nation.

Despite this debate, we do not yet truly understand the extent of this issue in this country. The Joint Under-Secretary has admitted that he has no accurate figures of the numbers of immigrants. He does not know the extent of this immigration or how they come in; there is no complete check. Let us see how the figures I have obtained from my researches compare with those given by the hon. and learned Gentleman.

What I said was that we have no precise method of taking statistics. The figures I have given are based on estimates, but we believe that they are approximately accurate.

If we have no precise method of making an estimate, it is time that somebody got down to the job.

My researches show that prior to the war, there were 240,000 aliens in Great Britain. After the war, we had the European voluntary workers scheme by which 57,000 men and 30,000 women entered the country. Then we had the 110,000 Poles from General Anders' army, and in addition, students, prisoners of war and miscellaneous groups who accounted for another 10,000. Whereas in 1931 we had 268,000 people of foreign birthplaces, in 1958 we had an estimated 800,000 and this does not take account of the coloured population which has been coming in in recent years. It can be seen, therefore, that Great Britain has been subjected to an influx of foreigners on a much greater scale than we have previously experienced.

The position of the Irish immigrant has been raised for special consideration because he is not in the Commonwealth. The figures here are really remarkable, and I am informed that there is a turnover of no less than 800,000 Irish immigrants a year. Of these, some 18,000 settle here as permanent residents; the others go back for reasons best known to themselves. The figures for Pakistanis and Indians which I have been able to collect fit in with the figures in general which the Joint Under-Secretary has given. Likewise, his figures for the West Indies are very near to my own figures.

The extent of this coloured problem should not be exaggerated, and I think the Minister stated it quite clearly. On the other hand, it should not be minimised, because the impact of this problem is upon the people who, in general, are least able to ride its effects—the working class. When we have incidents which lead to race disturbances, one's thinking is conditioned by one's relationship to the problem—how close one is to it or how far away from it; whether one lives in Shepherds Bush or in Somerset.

I notice that the hon. and learned Gentleman stated in his reply that he had a personal friend whom he met in his college days, who had qualified as a barrister, for whom he had the highest respect and with whom he got along on very good and generous terms. It is true that not everybody has the qualities of the barrister which the hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned, or possesses the superior education of that particular coloured gentleman. These coloured people, like the English and other white peoples, have their different characteristics and attributes and their different fears, hopes and ambitions, and these considerations impinge upon the section of the people least able to bear the burden that has given rise to some of our difficulties. It is the concentration of people from the Commonwealth in areas where housing is already very difficult that has caused much of the trouble, and has in fact, given rise to about 95 per cent. of the difficulty which has been experienced.

As legislators, we must take a forward look at the possible difficulties in the future. In the main, these people have bought up slum property at not very high prices or have bought the fag-end of leases. It is possible that before a measureable distance of time elapses, local medical officers of health throughout England will put clearance orders on these properties for demolition. If that happens, does the hon. and learned Gentleman realise the situation that will be created? I will tell him the answer. It means that these people will have to be rehoused by the local authority, and, in London alone, there are no less than 170,000 families on the waiting list, some having been there for as long as thirteen years.

I do not want to seem too pessimistic about this problem, but it is my job as Member of Parliament for a constituency with its own housing problem, to take a forward look and see what is likely to happen. These people will be entitled to be rehoused under the law of the land, because their property has been the subject of slum clearance. Let us consider the effect of that, and particularly the effect upon the people in London, because when these troubles come they grow in abundance week after week. I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to consider whether, in the case of future immigrants to this country, and despite the fact that we recognise that these people, in the main, coalesce among themselves and congregate, would it not be better to obtain a more even distribution throughout England? It is their congregating which has caused 95 per cent. of the trouble.

As has been said, there was no real feeling of race hatred or hatred of colour of skin, but there was this built up emotion—which is going on today—due to the constant dread of the people that the immigrants were seemingly better served than the indigenous population. These are facts which we can ignore only at our peril.

These facts are not new, let me tell the Under-Secretary of State. There has been emigration from the West Indies since 1870, and between then and the 'thirties no fewer than 800,000 went to the United States. At this time it is permissible for the Jamaicans to use the United Kingdom immigrant quota to the United States. It was not until the McCarran-Walters Act, which restricted immigration to 800 from the Caribbean, with 100 only for Jamaica, that the flow stopped. Then, of course, the flow started to this country.

It is admitted on both sides of the House that Great Britain shall place no restriction on entry, that we should preserve our multi-racial tolerance and customs. At the same time it would be idle to blind ourselves to some of the difficulties which possibly may arise. I have referred to one, which I think is the main one, housing. Let us look at the others.

First there is employment. The employment situation in this country, in my opinion, has always been based upon an expanding economy. What is to be the situation if we have large-scale unemployment with large-scale immigration? The vast majority of these people are not skilled. From my own researches into the matter I find that 53 per cent. of them are unskilled, 35 per cent. semiskilled and only 12 per cent. skilled. It is upon the general average rate of employability that the burden will chiefly fall.

I do not want to take up too much time, but I have a special consideration to put to the Under-Secretary of State arising out of the race riots in my constituency. Nine young men were arrested. There is no one in the constituency who takes the view that what they did was not wrong, severely wrong, but the sentence they received, boys of 17 years of age, was four years' imprisonment, and there has been considerable feeling in Notting Hill and that neighbourhood against these sentences, and it is still there today, so that even coloured people are going round organising petitions on behalf of those boys.

I wrote a letter on behalf of the parents of those boys to the Home Secretary, asking him to see me about this matter. He replied that it was sub judice and he could not do so. The case was subject to appeal a week ago and the Appeal Bench confirmed the sentences. So far as I know—and I made sure—none of those boys had a previous conviction. Not one of them. It may be that there will be a change of attitude towards this case on the part of the Home Office after time has elapsed. I mention this case only to demonstrate that, despite the fact that there may have been some unsavoury people, some people out looking for trouble, some people out to spread trouble in these areas, there were people who were genuinely concerned about their own position.

I want to refer to an issue which has been put to me. It concerns the Manchester Guardian and some of my constituents. We all know that frequently there is landlord and tenant trouble. We know about the problems that arise between white landlords and coloured tenants, between coloured landlords and white tenants, between coloured landlords and coloured tenants, between English landlords and English tenants, between Irish landlords and English tenants, and between English landlords and tenants from Commonwealth countries.

These are things which are spread by gossip and otherwise through our constituencies. The case I have in mind was a classic one in so far as the Manchester Guardian treated it in a special article. Some of my constituents did not agree with the contents of the article. They sent me a petition on the matter and upon the issue which gave rise to the article. That was all right. I investigated the case personally. I interviewed the coloured family concerned. I interviewed their white tenant, the police, and the neighbours, and I came to the conclusion that the Manchester Guardian article was not right either in fact or in presentation. The tenants in the area wrote to the Manchester Guardian protesting that this was not a true summary of the position and asking the editor to publish their letter. This great Liberal newspaper refused to do it.

These are the things underneath which give rise to feeling. It is not colour, it is not race, it is utter and complete frustration. The Daily Herald first drew attention to this matter when they took up the case and published a leading article headed "Cut it out", which made direct reference to the position in that area. These are responsible people. The tenants have lived in the house for 21 years, but it is understandable that when people from the Commonwealth take a lease they are charged high prices and they must get their money back somehow before the lease runs out.

The result is that we have these cases of crowding more and more people into the available accommodation. Cannot something be done? Surely it is not beyond the guile of a Government Department to frame regulations which provide that where there is a change of tenancy of this character protection can be given to both parties. These are the human things, which have not been mentioned hitherto in this debate, that give rise to these troubles.

To return to the case of the four boys, there are no more loyal people than the Cockneys. They are loyal to our institutions and to the nation, but they are also informed. They read the newspapers and look at television. When they read about comparable cases and find variations in the sentences imposed by the courts they come to think that our law does not provide justice. In one case of alleged rioting which concerned coloured people, one man was sentenced to prison for a year and others were fined. The man who was sentenced to a year's imprisonment had a former conviction in 1948 for shooting a policeman—I will not give his name—and if I know the Public Prosecutor that is a crime with intent to kill. Yet these boys, with no previous convictions, got four years.

These ordinary, Cockney people realise these things. Do not underestimate their intelligence or feelings. It is these things which have given rise to a lot of the trouble which has developed, in particular, housing. If the coloured population were spread throughout the country it would not be noticed. I have travelled in the United States where 11 per cent. of the population is negro. If anybody could be said to be the native, indigenous population, it is the negro of America. The negroes were there before all the whites—[An HON. MEMBER: "The Red Indians."] On comparable terms the negro was there in numbers before a lot of the whites.—[An HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes, the negroes were taken there in boatloads from Africa by the slave trade. [An HON. MEMBER: "By the whites."].

The whites were there first.

Not in the same numbers. We get the same thing in America as affects the coloured people here, and legislation has had to be granted to deal with it. I ask the hon. Gentleman to look at that American legislation, because in my opinion the American negro, except in the South, has reached the greatest stage of emancipation of those in any country. In the North it is amazing to find the positions they occupy on the basis of equal skill, equal ability, equal knowledge and general qualifications, both in industry and the professions. This has been achieved chiefly by good will and by legislation, and the hon. Gentleman should see if some of it cannot be applied here. Also he should try to spread the coloured population, which represents only 4 per cent. of the total. So we could absorb a lot more without any trouble. Although I agree with sociologists who take the view that there is a time when the indigenous population of any country will raise barriers to immigrants, I think we have a long way to go before we reach that position.

If I may, Mr. Speaker, I will refer to the issue I raised previously regarding my constituents in Ellingham Road in order to demonstrate that the people with whom I am in contact take a broad view of these problems. I have here a letter from the Union of Post Office Workers signed by the branch secretary. It relates to one of the boys who was sentenced to four years' imprisonment. I ask the Minister to take note of what he says in part:

"This young man, Alfred Hunt, of 25, Netherwood Road, W.14, had not long returned from Cyprus when he was taken from his bed at the hour of 2 a.m. by the police and charged with rioting. I crave your indulgence for consideration of the following facts as vouched for by his mother, for whose integrity, honesty and sincerity the whole membership is prepared to swear.

Hunt, in common with the eight accused, pleaded guilty only because he was foolishly persuaded to take this course in the belief that by so doing matters would be expedited and the punishment, if any, insignificant. Actually, and contrary to the bias of police evidence, he was in possession of no weapon and had no means of access to one although he admits to being an occupant of the car which toured the district for the purpose of slogan-shouting."

That was the famous case referred to as the nigger hunt.

In regard to the case at Ellingham Road, the petition sent to me is couched in responsible language and from people I have known for a period of nine years. I will not endeavour to raise the matter at this stage, but will reserve the right to go fully into it on a later occasion.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) did not make any suggestion or recommendation for restriction of immigration from any other Commonwealth country and—

I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade for being here to reply to this Adjournment debate, and I would take the opportunity of congratulating him on his appointment to his present office, an appointment which gives great pleasure in all parts of the House. I do not think that he will be wasting his time in coming here while I explain the chinchilla racket and recommend to him the action which I think he should take to protect the good name of the genuine chinchilla breeder while preventing many innocent people from being swindled.

I know that interested parties resent the use of the word "rabbit" in this connection, but really the distinction between chinchilla and rabbit is a distinction without a difference.

The racket is that many current advertisements, and the literature supplied to the people who reply to the advertisements, are calculated to deceive. They suggest, even to the reasonably prudent mind, that investment of about £200 in breeding chinchilla will show a rapid and a large return. They place emphasis on the idea that these animals are extremely easy to breed and to keep. The advertisers suggest that when they have multiplied five-fold the investor will have stock worth £1,000 and that he will easily be able to realise this value in cash if he wants to. They suggest that in any case he will be able to sell the pelts of his rabbits for about £20 a time.

An optimist might calculate that for about £200 down, the investor can expect to be making an income in five years' time of about £2,000 a year, and that, even though that might last for only a further five years or so, at the end of the 10-year period he might reasonably expect an income of between £400 and £500 a year for life. Those are the sort of dreams that these operators are peddling with the rabbits they sell. The dreams are vain and the suggestions are misleading.

They are misleading because the advertisers do not undertake to buy back the rabbits and sell them to other breeders. The very cunningly-phrased guarantees that I have studied in reality guarantee only this: that rabbits breed. The so-called marketing schemes which are so cunningly described are put in such a way that their uselessness to the breeder is not easily discerned.

These advertisements are misleading, because they conceal what was revealed in the United States of America, where this racket has been tried and worked out.

It was revealed that there is no public demand for chinchilla rabbit fur, certainly not to the extent that will be required to support a breeding industry of the size envisaged by these advertisers. It was revealed, also, that pelts bred by small backroom breeders had a negligible value to the trade when they were offered in the market. It was revealed that whatever might be the grade of the fur of the original breeding pairs, the grade of the fur of the resulting herd which has to be sold as pelts cannot be guaranteed. It depends, as with mink, upon the experience and skill of the breeder more than upon the heredity of the stock of the original breeding parents.

These advertisements are further misleading because there is no indication at all that there will be any public demand in the United Kingdom, any more than there was in the United States of America, for chinchilla rabbit fur. Even if the demand were to be stimulated, a supply on the scale advocated by these advertisers would so reduce the price of pelts as to make the industry totally un-remunerative. In the past year, so far as I can make out, about 500 pelts were sold on the market in this country and, even with that comparatively low supply, the best pelts were fetching only between £15 and £20 each.

These advertisements are also misleading because there is no national marketing organisation for chinchilla rabbit fur, and no universally accepted grading system. Therefore, the small, backroom breeder would be under a crippling handicap in trying to market his pelts. The truth is that the only people who are going to make money out of chinchilla rabbits are those advertisers now purporting to sell them as breeding stock. They will go on making money for as long as there are innocent people who are taken in by their advertisements, which are so ingeniously devised. They will go on doing it unless and until they are exposed and stopped.

It is only fair that I should say what action I recommend my hon. Friend to take. I ask him quite simply to institute an inquiry to investigate the allegations I am making, with special reference to the advertisers who are importing American rabbits and selling them in this country on commission. Secondly, I ask him to publish the findings of such an inquiry. Thirdly, I ask him to prosecute apparent frauds. Fourthly, and more constructively, to assess and make known to the general public the genuine potentialities of trade in chinchilla rabbit fur. Finally, I think it reasonable to suggest that he should set up statutory associations to protect the interests of the bona fide chinchilla breeder and of the fur trade respectively.

I have had many pathetic letters since I first publicly interested myself in this question. It is frequently said that a really honest person cannot fall a victim to a confidence trick, but the sort of person who is tempted by these advertisements is not tainted by any kind of dishonesty. My letters come from thoroughly decent people, retired people, old people, professional people, young and ambitious people, and sometimes children whose parents are prepared to back them with a couple of hundred pounds of their savings.

I am all for the principle of caveat emptor. I realise that there is a point beyond which it would be quite wrong and stupid for the Government, or even the House, to attempt to protect the fool from the results of his folly. Nevertheless, I think that there is here a trap which is so cunningly devised that it would take more than common shrewdness to avoid falling into it. I should hate to think that these people were going to get their fingers burned, as I fear some of them may be, and I hope that by discussing the matter this afternoon the House and my hon. Friend will at least be able to give them some warning and sound advice.

I have listened with interest to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford. North (Mr. Iremonger) and I should like to take his three suggestions—that we should institute an inquiry and publish the findings, that we should prosecute any frauds and that we should assess the potentiality of the market for chinchilla—a little later. I want, first, to thank him very much for having given me notice of the points which he intended to raise in the course of his Adjournment debate.

May I tell the House a little about the chinchilla fur industry? The chinchilla is a land rodent and not a rabbit. I should not like to be asked what is the distinction between a chinchilla and a rabbit, but I am sure that there is a distinction. The chinchilla is a native of the Andes, which has been bred on a large scale only in captivity, chiefly the the United States and Canada during the last thirty to thirty-five years. The fur is used mainly for trimming and for wraps; it has not, in general, the characteristics which make it suitable for use in full-length coats. The fur of the chinchilla is very light in colour and not very warm and it cannot be stranded in a way which makes the appearance and feel of a mink coat so attractive. For this reason, the chinchilla is used almost wholly for trimmings and for wraps.

The effect of this is that the demand for the fur has so far been very limited in this country, and during the past year purchases on the London market of pelts from North America, the principal source, have been almost wholly for re-export. Unless, therefore, the market expanded very considerably, the effect of producing large quantities of chinchilla pelts would be to reduce the value of the article very considerably. Those who seek to establish breeding on a large scale in this country expect to be able to popularise the fur for the very limited use to which it can be put, but the effect of this might well be to lower the market value of pelts even if they were of good quality.

The breeding of chinchilla in captivity is a new trade in this country. At present, there is a lively trade in breeding stock, as the hon. Member said, but not much trade—some would say none—in the U.K.-bred pelts out of which wraps and stoles will, some hope, be made. We cannot tell what the future holds in store for the industry of breeding chinchilla for their fur in this country. My hon. Friend has explained that in his view buyers of breeding chinchilla are gravely misled by the over-optimistic claims made by certain people for the opportunity open to the chinchilla breeder. I am assured that there are many reputable people in this business who are anxious to sell the chinchilla which they are raising at a fair price and on honest terms, and I must repudiate distinctly any charge which may be levelled against breeders of chinchilla as a class in this country. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree.

I am sure that prospective buyers and sellers will read my hon. Friend's remarks with interest. In any new and speculative business some fingers must be burned, and I do not think that the fact that risk is involved, as well as patience, hard work, knowledge of the trade and skill, as well as a little luck—the constituents of any business—would justify any judgment by me on the morality of the trade as a whole.

One thought which occurs to me is that if the hopes of breeders are to be realised, the number of chinchilla in this country will grow rapidly, and anyone would be able to ask himself whether, in the event of that happening, the present remarkable prices for breeding animals will be maintained, and, indeed, whether the price of pelts themselves may not be affected.

The information given in this debate will no doubt be very useful to prospective buyers and sellers. My hon. Friend is to be commended on his public spirit in drawing attention to the risks involved for those who have no experience in buying and breeding these animals. The best way of countering publicity which may be thought to give an over-optimistic picture of the prospects of investment is by bringing the light of public opinion on the subject, as is already being done in this short debate.

I think that, in his speech, my hon. Friend recognised that I would not wish to make any judgment on the questions that he has raised. He merely asks for an inquiry to be made. I should like to examine what an inquiry might do. It might, on the one hand, find that the allegations made are false. No doubt this would be a satisfactory result, but I do not think that public concern over this matter is sufficiently great to justify instituting an inquiry for this reason only.

On the other hand, an inquiry might conceivably find that the allegations have substance, and recommend action by the trade or by the Government to correct them. Let me say at once that I do not consider that there is a problem here that the Government would consider introducing legislation to deal with. Although it is outside the scope of this debate, I may say that it would require legislation if statutory bodies were to be set up. But it would be out of order for me to discuss that in any detail.

Action taken by the industry to deal with its own problems is something that the Government feel would best be left to the industry itself, which knows far better than anyone else what the problems are, and what the remedies might be. I understand that there is a good deal of support in this country for the idea of a single system of grading of live chinchilla, which might be operated by the Fur Breeders' Association of the United Kingdom, or by some other body commanding the confidence of all parties. This is a matter for the industry itself—and I should like to stress that. I can, with all respect to my hon. Friend, see no case for a Government inquiry.

The Board of Trade does, however, already possess the power to prosecute, under the Merchandise Marks Acts, in cases where there is prima facie evidence that false or misleading advertisements are applied as trade descriptions to the sale of goods. I can assure my hon. Friend that if the Board considered that such evidence existed, consideration would be given to the possibility of prosecuting under these Acts. The general run of the advertisements that the Board has so far examined offer no such grounds. I have studied them myself and, indeed, have brought a selection with me, in case they were referred to.

It is true that a number display a breezy optimism about the ease of raising a herd of chinchilla, and I have noticed that one, in particular, refers to the progeny of a 1958 world champion. Some authorities whom we have consulted deny that there has ever been a world championship. We have certainly not been able to find any account of such a championship, but I can assure my hon. Friend that further inquiries are being made on this point.

For the rest, the advertisements often imply that a great deal of money may be made easily and quickly, but, as I say, I hope that the debate, and my hon. Friend's initiative in raising the matter, will itself serve to draw the attention of potential buyers to the danger of accepting what these advertisements say without the most careful inquiry and scrutiny. I am sure that traders and breeders alike will be grateful to my hon. Friend for his part in raising the subject on the Floor of the House, and I hope that this short debate may be given adequate publicity so that breeders and public may be aware of the true situation.