I have a short statement to make. It has come to my notice that our present rules regarding the date from which Members may draw their salaries on election are uneven in their operation. This was demonstrated in the case of the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hilton), who, although elected to Parliament on Thursday, 26th March, could not, under our present rules, draw salary until Tuesday, 31st March, because of the effect of the intervening Easter public holidays.

I have consulted the Chancellor of the Exchequer and, with his concurrence, I now rule that salaries shall start from the day following that on which the poll is held. This rule will apply to both General Elections and by-elections, and will be effective from the by-election in Norfolk, South-West, which polled on Wednesday, 25th March, 1959.

On behalf of the whole House, I should like to express our gratitude to you, Mr. Speaker, for this helpful statement. May I also express our thanks to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose concurrence in your decision we all welcome? Thank you very much.

May I associate myself with what the Leader of the House said? We greatly appreciate the steps you have taken to get rid of an anomaly.

I am obliged for what has been said.

I rise on behalf of my colleagues—a much larger number than those whose names appear on the Order Paper—and myself to raise the question of the release of detainees and restricted persons in Kenya, Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. We shall argue the case on the broad grounds of personal liberty and basic justice which we pride as part of the British way of life. We shall also argue that the steps which we urge are desirable for developing harmonious racial relations in these territories.

I think that it would have been relevant to put the case that the position of the detainees should be reconsidered in view of the treatment which they are undergoing. We have heard in the House this week the tragic story of the 11 deaths at Hola Camp and many of us have been disturbed by the very inadequate reaction on the part of both the British and Kenya Governments, but we do not propose to discuss that matter today. It seems to us to be so grave that it should be the subject of a separate debate with the strength of the full Opposition behind a demand for reconsideration.

I think, also, that it would have been relevant to refer to charges which have reached this country this week from more than one source of pressures exerted by the police on detainees in Nyasaland before giving evidence to the Devlin Commission, but those charges are so serious that we feel it would not be right for us to devote an Adjournment discussion to them. We shall, therefore, limit our case to the broader issues to which I have referred.

There are four groups of detainees and restricted persons covered by the subject we are raising. There are detainees from the Mau Mau troubles who are still restricted in Kenya. There are two groups in Northern Rhodesia, the members of the Zambia African Congress and the officials of the African Miners' Union. There are also those who were detained following the state of emergency in Nyasaland. I shall deal mainly with the position in Kenya and leave it to those of my hon. Friends who are fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, to deal with the other territories.

I wish to argue the case about Kenya on the ground that the practice adopted in the treatment of detainees leaves some of the best men, and some of the men we think are innocent, in detention for the longest period. The method is to round up suspects, put them through a process of screening, exert a moral pressure upon them leading to a confession, and, after that, to place them on constructive work of rehabilitation. During that process they pass through three grades—black, grey and white—and are ultimately released and allowed to go home.

I do not intend to occupy time during this debate in examining that method in detail, but I am doubtful about the reliability of many of the confessions which are secured by that process. It is quite clear that in such circumstances detainees may be tempted to make confessions which would open the path to liberty and enable them to succour their families who have been left in a position of difficulty.

I wish to emphasise the distinction between the two types of detainees who pass into the camps and prisons in this way. A decision would be reached to round up the Kikuyu in the City of Nairobi and the screening process would take place among a great mass of men. But there is another type of African who is brought within this treatment, the African who is known for his political activities. I suggest that an African who has been engaged over a long period of years, quite publicly and openly, in claiming rights for his people is in a very different position from Africans who are rounded up and screened in the way I have described.

I say that because I was in Kenya in 1952 at the beginning of the Mau Mau troubles. I do not think that it is an exaggeration to say that then existed there a condition of political hysteria. I went with my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) and we had to be under military protection night and day. That was because of fear of attacks, not from Africans, but from Europeans.

I think that in the period of ten days while we were there, we were able to break through this suspicion and animosity, but it is an indication of the psychological atmosphere in Kenya at the time. Almost every African who had been active politically—except a small number of Africans selected by the Governor to sit in the Legislative Council, and even one of them was arrested—practically every African who had been prominent in making African claims was arrested and detained.

When men are arrested in that way, the process of screening, of moral pressure. of seeking to obtain a confession, is obviously inadequate in judging whether they are innocent or guilty. Indeed, it will be the man of principle and the man who is innocent who will decline to make the confession of Mau Mau guilt which is urged upon him, and if, as I shall submit, a number of these men are innocent, they would not be likely to become subservient to these pressures, and confess, and pass through all the paraphernalia of rehabilitation leading to release. They are likely to be the men who would, on principle, decline to respond to those pressures. In my submission, the detainees who remain restricted in Kenya—. there are about 1,000—include some of the best men as well as some of the worst associated with Mau Mau. I wish to give three illustrations of that type of person.

The first is ex-senior Chief Koinange. In 1950, I stayed with ex-senior Chief Koinange. He had a long political record. He had been very courageous in asserting African claims. He had protested against the confiscation of African land at the time of the Carter Commission. He was the first African farmer to grow coffee and was recognised as a competent farmer. Nevertheless, his coffee crops were destroyed and he was not permitted to engage in a form of agriculture in which he was an acknowledged expert. When I was there, he was feeling deeply, because he was not allowed to operate a sawmill which he had set up to deal with his timber. Ex-senior Chief Koinange was constructive in his desire for African advance. He had a great enthusiasm for education.

But it was not merely his political record which impressed me so deeply. I have met few men whose character has made a deeper impression upon me than that of ex-senior Chief Koinange. He was deeply a Christian. I found it ironical, as I stood on his farm and saw on one side the land which had been confiscated from him and handed to a European farmer and, looking down the valley on the other side, saw the Christian church of one of the English Christian missions which he himself had built and a playground for the children attending the Sunday school of that church.

If I can be any judge of character at all after living in a man's home for ten days, I would say that he is one of the most beautiful characters I have known. Subsequently, I went to Kenya with my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West, who thought that I was obsessed with the character of this old man. We visited this man together, in prison, and at the end of that interview my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West said, "I can understand the reverence which you feel for this man". He was arrested and was charged with the murder of a rival chief. None of us who knew him thought for a moment that he could possibly be guilty. He was acquitted. The judge rejected the evidence which was brought against him. Nevertheless, he was arrested again next morning. He has been in detention and under restriction for seven years.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies said in this House a few days ago that this man is now 90 years of age. In fact, no one knows how old he is, because he was born before births were recorded. My right hon. Friends the Members for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) and Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) have both made appeals for his release. They know him as I know him, but their appeals have been rejected. On this occasion, I am asking as strongly as I can for a reconsideration of his case. He is now under restriction. He has been released from detention camp, but he has not been allowed to return to his home. When I was last in Kenya, in 1954, I saw that lovely little bungalow among the woods, empty. His farm is left for his wife, who lives in a neighbouring village, to work as best she can. I believe that the best of us on both sides of this House would desire reconsideration of the case of that man.

The second case to which 1 want to draw special attention, and which I mentioned in the question which preceded this debate, is that of Mr. Achieng Oneko. I am aware that at this moment I may appear to be idealising African characters. I know plenty of bad Africans, as I know plenty of bad Europeans. In my dealings with these people I think that I am able to judge between one and another. I do not intend to speak about Mr. Oneko for long, because I think that others will do so. I knew him in this country and I knew him in Kenya.

Again, he is a man of gentle character and great personal charm. He illustrates, in his period of seven years' detention, the point about the confessions, which I have mentioned. There was an extraordinary case in which an official of his detention camp wrote to one of Oneko's friends in this country and urged that friend to appeal to Oneko to make a confession for the sake of his family outside. I was glad, when we drew the attention of the Secretary of State for the Colonies to that letter, which was official blackmail, that the Secretary of State repudiated it and that the official was reprimanded. Mr. Oneko has all along maintained his innocence. Those of us who know him have no doubt about it. He has declined to make confessions which were demanded of him, and so it is that for seven years he has been in detention and is still in the condition of restriction.

The third particular case to which I want to draw attention is that of Mr. Kamau. He is known to my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West as well as to myself. He was associated with us in Kenya in 1952, when we were making appeals to the African people to refuse to take part in Mau Mau or to participate in any kind of violence. Mr. Kamau during those days was one who helped us most. I understand that when he was arrested it was said that his brother was a member of Mau Mau. Mr. Kamau has also been in detention now for seven years, and I am pleading for reconsideration of his case.

The fourth personal case I want to raise is that of Mr. Jomo Kenyatta. I regard him as in a different category from the three whom I have already mentioned. I do not claim for him the same qualities, the same spiritual character that I have claimed in the case of ex-Chief Koinange and Mr. Achieng Oneko. I knew him while he was in this country. One of the most popular hon. Members of this House in his day, my friend Mr. James Maxton, was very closely associated with Kenyatta. Those who knew James Maxton would agree that he would not become a colleague and comrade of someone who was vicious in nature. We found Kenyatta utterly devoted to the cause of African freedom. He had a brilliant mind. He was one of the ablest students at the London School of Economics, where he was praised by the Professor of Anthropology. He wrote his thesis and it was published in book form. He was always good fun.

When I have said all that, I do not pretend that Kenyatta did not love the fleshpots. That is characteristic of many other people, who have not been detained as he has been detained. I am very doubtful about Kenyatta's guilt and responsibility for Mau Mau. I am doubtful because, in the years when he was supposed to be organising Mau Mau, I was in Kenya and was co-operating with him in constitutional, democratic political activities. We were then planning together a great petition to this House of Commons on the land question, a petition, which was signed by 67,000 Africans in Kenya. I find it difficult to believe that if Jomo Kenyatta was at that time thinking of a Mau Mau organisation to murder and massacre the European population he was also conducting propaganda among his own people to ask them to look to the House of Commons and to political and constitutional means.

From what I know of Kenyatta, I am certain that he was not guilty of the worst viciousness and obscenities of Mau Mau. Those things occurred after his arrest, and I do not think that he can be held responsible for them. I think that most of us who read the transcript of his trial did not find it satisfactory, and the fact that Macharia, one of the leading witnesses against him, has been acknowledged as guilty of perjury increases those doubts.

Putting these doubts on one side, Kenyatta was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. During his imprisonment he has shown exemplary conduct, which has won him the full remission. He has undergone the punishment which was imposed upon him. I am aware that the court suggested that he might be detained afterwards, but there was no legal power behind that suggestion. I say that it is un-British for us to keep a mart in detention after he has finished the sentence which has been imposed upon him by the court. When I think of what is happening to Jomo Kenyatta and of what is happening, on the other hand, to Nazi criminals in Germany, who are guilty of far worse crimes than those which have been charged against Kenyatta but who have been released and are now in distinguished positions, I find it difficult to speak calmly of our action in his case.

In all seriousness, I say to the Under-Secretary of State that Kenyatta is a legend among Africans not only in Kenya, but throughout the Continent. He has been made the symbol of their struggle for freedom. If we are seeking to win the co-operation of the African people so that that freedom may be gained without violence, I believe that a gesture which would contribute greatly towards it is to reconsider what is happening to Kenyatta.

Would he be allowed to leave Kenya? Is he to be kept in that isolated village until he dies? Would he be allowed to come to this country? Would he be allowed to go to another African country? I suggest that it is impossible that a man should be restricted in this way for the rest of his life.

I shall be brief in the other references which I make, because other hon. Members will be able to deal with them. The first is a reference to the Zambia African Congress. I want the Under-Secretary to look into this matter again. There was some violence. I ask him whether, when they arrested Mr. Kenneth Kaunda and the other leaders of the Zambia Congress, the police authorities in Northern Rhodesia found in their offices documents to be circulated to members of the Congress denouncing the acts of violence which had already occurred and appealing to the members not to engage in that violence. If those documents are in the hands of the police of Northern Rhodesia, they ought to be produced publicly in the defence of these restricted persons.

The other group to which I want especially to refer are the detained trade union officials of the African Miners' Union. I was shocked yesterday by the reply which the Under-Secretary of State gave to my Question. These men were arrested for participation in a strike in 1956. As the hon. Member probably knows, and as he can see from the Colonial Office records, the Labour Party officially sent a deputation to the Minister of State in this matter. I was one of that deputation. We came away with the strong impression that these men were to be released by the end of 1957. We were told that their detention was to be under monthly review.

When I received a letter from Northern Rhodesia, a month ago, saying that they were still detained I could hardly believe it, and when I had the answer from the Minister this week that 16 of these men have been kept in restriction in isolated villages since November, 1956, have never been tried and do not know the charge against them, bearing in mind that their only guilt is participation in a strike by the African workers on the Copperbelt, I was astounded that this Government or any British Government should be giving that kind of example of the British way of life to the African population in Central Africa.

I will not speak about the Nyasaland detainees, because the Devlin Commission is in Nyasaland and, in a sense, the matter is sub judice. I draw the Minister's attention to a report which I have received from authoritative sources that a number of these detainees are unaware of their right to appeal. They have two rights of appeal. One is a direct approach to the Government and the other is to the Advisory Committee. I am reliably informed that the detention orders do not inform the detainees of their right to make these appeals and that many of them are ignorant of this right. I ask the Under-Secretary of State to look into this matter at once and to put it right.

Finally, let me say this. These detentions are often justified on the ground of security. In my opinion, violence is much more likely to take place in African countries if we deny to Africans the legal rights and liberties which we ourselves enjoy. There are better hopes in Kenya. At the end of this year there is to be a round table conference of the races to work out a new constitution. I suggest that the psychology for co-operation on the African side would be much deepened if these men who are in detention were released. I beg the Minister to think of the grave situation which is developing in Central Africa. Would it not be worth while making a gesture to the African population there which would do something to regain their confidence?

This country has a great reputation for personal and civic liberty. It has a great reputation for legal justice. We have laid down that no man shall be imprisoned without trial and that every man shall be considered innocent until he is proved guilty. These are the rights which distinguish Britain from the Communist countries whose dictatorships we so frequently denounce. What is the value of having these rights in Britain if we deny them in our territories overseas? It is for the good name of Britain as well as for the good of Africa that I make this appeal this morning.

This is not the first time that the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) and I have followed each other in these debates. We can all appreciate his eloquence and sincerity in pleading the case for his individual African friends, although, perhaps, not all of us would agree with him in his estimation of their character, particularly the character of Jomo Kenyatta. I propose to follow him in dealing mainly with the question of the detainees in Kenya.

It is not sufficiently remembered what an enormous proportion of detainees has already been released. I believe that the figures show that about 79,000 men and women have been detained, and that now a little over 1,000 remain in detention. Those released have been released after it had been determined that their fellow Africans considered them no longer a danger to society. It is surely quite clear that no one in Kenya wishes to keep in detention a single soul a day longer than necessary. But we are here considering the obsessed and fanatical residue. These are people whom their fellow Africans do not want among them in their present state of mind. It would be criminal to force people of this kind back into African society.

I believe—I have had a little experience of it—that intimidation is the worst of all injuries to a free society. Mr. Adlai Stevenson defined a free society as one in which it was safe to be unpopular. In Kenya, we have to guard against a state of affairs in which it is unsafe to disobey the orders of a small and ruthless minority. It is clear, for instance, from the experience of Germany under the Nazis, that it is possible for a highly civilised and sophisticated society which has long enjoyed the blessings of one man, one vote, to be terrorised by a minority.

In Africa, the way of the intimidator is far easier. In a country where there is no registration of deaths, murder is much easier, as was shown by the discovery of hundreds of corpses of African victims of Mau Mau which were unearthed in the neighbourhod of Nairobi alone. It is a country where a match can burn alive a man and his family living in a thatched and wooden house. A credulous and superstitious people can be caused argonising distress if their fears of witchcraft and oathing are preyed upon. It is not extravagant to think that the ruthless minority left in detention has among it many people capable of crimes of this kind. Certainly, their fellow Africans believe that many of them are so capable.

It is hard for us in this country to realise what intimidation means. Most of us have never in our lives had to experience it. At the end of the war, I was a member of the Administration in Burma, and the time came when we had to consider elections. Old Burmese officials, men with long service and wide experience, said to me, "These elections, when they come, will be a farce, or worse, because of intimidation". I asked what kind of intimidation. They said that it would be the usual thing, threats of violence, of molesting families, depriving people of their livelihood, and so forth. I said that it would be a secret ballot and that, in my country, any candidate who suggested that kind of thing would most certainly never be elected. They looked at me a little pityingly and say, "Perhaps that is true in your country: certainly not in ours".

I hope that the House will bear with me if I give an example from my own experience of how intimidation works in Kenya. Before the Mau Mau troubles, I built and staffed on my farm a school for African children. It was very popular. There is not among African children the tradition of

"creeping like snail unwillingly to school."

We had an attendance of about 100. Then, one night, there was nailed to one of the doors of the school a dead cat, which was a recognised Mau Mau emblem. The attendance dropped to one, and remained there until I had to close the school. For all I know, that mischief may well have been caused by one man.

Later, I became aware that my Kikuyu Africans were unhappy and frightened, and I could not get them to tell me exactly why. When I said to them, "Why do you not tell me? Surely, you are not afraid of me", they said sadly—perhaps not very flatteringly to me—"No; nobody here is afraid of you, not even the children". Later, I discovered that they were being visited in their homes at night by members of Mau Mau gangs. We moved them all down to within 200 yards or so from my own house, and that trouble stopped. They volunteered to come out with me on patrols and ambushes, and so on, and later they went out by themselves, catching and killing Mau Mau raiders on the farm.

The point I have been trying to make is that intimidation is damnable, especially when it lights upon people whom one knows and of whom one is fond. I believe that it is far worse an enemy of freedom than corruption or a restricted franchise. I believe that to release this obsessed and fanatical residue before their fellow Africans are ready to receive them would be a betrayal as wicked as it would be foolish.

Probably no Member has devoted so much time and energy to representing the colonial peoples as my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway). It is not a job that earns massive popularity, but it means that probably for the first time some of the humblest, poorest and simplest folk under British rule have had a voice in our affairs. I am, therefore, very pleased to follow my hon. Friend.

The hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. Armstrong) spoke about the danger in Colonial Territories of intimidation and terror by a minority. I could not agree more. The basic fact with which we have to deal in these territories is that they are all governed by minorities. The whole of our problem in dealing with colonialism, if we believe in democracy, is how to hand over, stage by stage, our responsibility from the minorities, who now govern with superior means at their disposal, to the majority.

One of the things about which Members who have raised this debate are concerned is the way in which we are acting to lay the foundations for fostering democratic rights and responsibilities, for developing civil liberty, for basing the whole of our policy upon the struggle of the people in these islands to develop democratic institutions of their own and a fairer distribution of wealth among the population in order to have a peaceful and free society. I believe that the only hope is to base our policy upon understanding and sympathy for the majority in these territories and to set an example, based upon our own political history and experience here in Britain, to these people.

Reference has been made this morning to the terrible crimes that have been and are being committed in Africa by Africans, in some cases by Europeans and in some cases in the name of our own Government. I do not propose to make more than a passing reference to the revelations about the Hola Camp, but they should, at any rate, induce a proper sense of humility, especially among those inclined to argue that we must always trust the Government and that the Government are always right, or that the men on the spot are always right. Terrible mistakes, which have been admitted, have been made.

I cannot say much about the next matter to which I want to refer, because it is sub judice, but it may be shown in the courts, in the case of some of those whom the Government have claimed to rusticate in Northern Rhodesia, that the Government have been acting illegally and unconstitutionally for several years. If Mr. Mwenya succeeds in his plea of habeus corpus in the High Court, he may show that the Emergency Regulations of 1956 were ultra vires.

One of the deplorable things in this matter is the issue of wild and smearing propaganda from official Government sources against individual Africans and sometimes against organisations which have no power or chance to reply to the allegations made. I hold no brief for the Zambia African Congress of Northern Rhodesia. I think that it is unfortunate that there has been a political division among Africans in Northern Rhodesia, and I hope that the African leaders there will reconcile their political differences for the benefit of constitutional and political advancement in the territory.

At the same time, I do not know of any evidence, because the Government have not produced any, which would support the banning of the Zambia African Congress, a couple of months ago. A number of sweeping allegations have been made, and there is no doubt that in governing circles the views, ideas and political tactics advocated by the Zambia Congress were very unpopular. But we shall not make progress in these territories by the banning of political parties, by the arbitrary detention of individuals, or by attempting to suppress unpopular views.

Why was the Zambia African Congress suppressed in March? The Under-Secretary of State, in reply to me some weeks ago, said:

"The Governor's decision was based solely on the actual intimidation practised by, and violence planned by, the Zambia Congress."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th May. 1959; Vol. 605, c. 194.]

In Lusaka, on 16th March, the Chief of Police said that there was a co-ordinated plan by the Zambia Congress in Northern Rhodesia to spread chaos throughout the country. He went on to refer to the arrest of the leaders of the Zambia Congress, like Mr. Kenneth Kaunda, and said that they were free men but would be restricted to areas which were not their own homes.

Since that period not one shred of evidence has been produced by the Government about the alleged plot to spread chaos throughout Northern Rhodesia, nor have any of the leaders of the Zambia African Congress been charged; they have merely been rusticated. Three members only of the Zambia Congress have been charged. One was acquitted and two convicted, but not one of the well-known leaders of the Congress has had the opportunity of presenting his case to a court of law and answering the charges that have been made.

The Under-Secretary knows very well that the political views and tactics advo- cated by the Zambia Congress had a considerable amount of support in Northern Rhodesia, judged by its membership and by the fact that only one-third of the 7,000 Africans eligible to vote under the Constitution bothered to register for voting purposes compared with 80 per cent. of the 20,000 Europeans eligible to vote in Northern Rhodesia. He also knows that he has received a petition from the Northern Rhodesian African Congress, led by Mr. Nkumbula, which has not been banned, that is very similar to the proposals and demands put forward by the Zambia Congress to the Secretary of State in a perfectly proper way before it was proscribed. It merely appears, therefore, that in a state of panic these repressive measures were taken because of the political unpopularity of the views put forward.

I want to draw attention to the position of the leaders of the Zambia African Congress and of others referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough who have not been detained, but who have been put under restrictive orders and rusticated in Northern Rhodesia and other territories. There has been some controversy about this matter here in the House and also in the Press. We have constantly been told about the care being given by the Government to the families of those who have been removed to and restricted in areas that are not their own homes. We have also been told about the legal aid alleged to be available to those who would be charged in court and who might wish to proceed against the Government for damages on account of their detention.

I want to draw attention to a very interesting letter which appeared in The Times of 22nd April, and which has not been answered from official sources. It was written by Mr. Kaufman, a representative of the British section of the International Society of Jurists, which goes under the name of "Justice". He paid a visit to Central Africa on behalf of the Society to inquire into these matters and has brought back some disturbing reports about the situation. In his letter, Mr. Kaufman said:

"I found that the fees charged by Northern Rhodesian lawyers are too high for the average African because of the cost of living, overheads and travelling expenses."

He went on to give an example:

"In a recent case, ten persons were charged with creating a disturbance: six were granted legal aid and four were refused. A distinguished European resident thought it right to undertake the cost of the defence."

They are, apparently, compelled to call upon the generosity of distinguished European residents.

Mr. Kaufman went on to say:

"Further, no provision is made for Africans who may wish to challenge detention and restriction orders or to present actions for damages against the Government."

No provision for legal aid exists and, therefore, those who, like the leaders of the Zambia African Congress, are put arbitrarily by the Government under restriction orders instead of being charged in the courts, have no possibility, save in a case like that of Mr. Mwenya, when an international society decides to take it up as a test case, of resorting to any legal remedy if they feel that they can prove their innocence.

At the end of his letter, Mr. Kaufman states that

"there are still a number of persons who have been restricted—"

he is referring to Northern Rhodesia—

"and without means of livelihood for over two years and who have had to be helped with funds from this country for subsistence and legal assistance."

This is quite irreconcilable with the Answers that have been given to us in this House about legal aid and assistance and the treatment of restricted persons.

Having given notice of the fact to the Colonial Office, I want to know what the Government will do immediately to enable those Africans who are treated in this way by being rusticated to be in a position to take legal action to claim habeas corpus, so that they can have the normal right that a citizen, for example, in the United Kingdom would have to challenge the arbitrariness of the Government.

It is an intolerable situation that over a period of years the Government should abuse emergency regulations to keep under restriction, away from their homes and families, political leaders whom they do not like, but against whom they can bring no evidence—they cannot substantiate the charges—and then, having restricted them to these areas, to subject them to the powerful stream of smearing propaganda that comes from Government sources.

Therefore, I hope that, bearing in mind the mistakes which have been made in other places and this kind of arbitrary detention of persons and the refusal to give to African organisations or individuals the right of reply and the opportunity to answer the allegations or to argue the matter, the Colonial Office will realise that it is actions of this sort that breed resort to violence. We should take steps immediately to see that those against whom the Government cannot bring charges should be released and freed.

Those against whom the Government have evidence of conspiring to spread chaos or to disrupt the Constitution of the country should be charged and given the opportunity to answer those charges in a court of law. Otherwise, it is the Government who are using force illegitimately and it is the Government who will be responsible for inciting others to subvert the Constitution.

I am glad to have the opportunity to take part in this debate initiated by the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway). Several times we have been together in colonial debates, especially on a Friday. Although I do not agree with all that the hon. Member has said, I must say that he always speaks sincerely and has the points at issue very much at heart.

First, however, I must take exception to what the hon. Member said about Jomo Kenyatta. I cannot believe that this man was not one of the initiators of the Mau Mau and I think that that is one of the reasons why the hard core who still are followers of his are wanting his release and hoping that they may eventually join him. I do not know sufficient about the other members whom the hon. Member has mentioned and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will reply concerning them in detail.

There is, however, a point on which I am at issue with the hon. Member. I have listened carefully to what the hon. Member has said. Everybody on this side of the House would agree with him that we must dislike very much the system of detention and restriction of the liberty of the individual without proper judicial process in normal times. As the hon. Member knows, I have spent a considerable time in Indonesia and Malaya under difficult conditions and I have been to Kenya on more than one occasion and have visited many camps. We must all be delighted to know that these camps are now reduced in number from fifteen to four.

The hon. Member questioned the idea of the screening process which takes place. I should like to refer him to paragraph 85 of the Report of the Parliamentary Delegation to Kenya, which, as the hon. Member knows, comprised Members of both political parties. Paragraph 85 states:

"Already by means of the rehabilitation process many thousands of detainees have been released (20,000 last year alone)"—

that was in 1957—

"without any serious incidents in the districts to which the detainees have been returned. This is probably due to the fact that the policy of the Government is to push the detainee down the pipe-line to the exit and then depend upon the verdict of the local community as to whether he should be finally released."

In view of the numbers involved, I do not think that the local community would be quite as happy as the hon. Member suggested to have present detainees returned.

I have myself known restriction and what it is like to be kept in from 6 o'clock in the evening until 6 a.m. next day because of difficulties concerning the safety of the individual. I have also known, particularly in Indonesia, restrictions on areas. I assure the hon. Member that in many cases it is extremely helpful in the protection of those who may be intimidated or who may be shot at if at certain times and in certain areas these measures are adopted.

That was recognised by the Parliamentary Delegation when it said, in paragraph 94, that

"there is a segment of those in detention, the size of which is as yet unpredictable, who may not pass the test of acceptability back in their former home country, at the hands of the local population."

That is one of the things that we fear, and it is feared in Kenya at the present time. Furthermore, the Report, to which it is essential to refer because it is an all-party Report, states in paragraph 80:

"From our own careful observations and inquiries we are satisfied that the Government of Kenya and its officers have done, and are still doing, everything possible to make malpractices impossible, and where they occur to detect them and bring the offender to justice."

We hope that that will be done in the cases to which hon. Members have referred, particularly concerning the Hola Camp. Paragraph 80 continues:

"It would be ungenerous and unrealistic not to recognise this and to say that in both the Administration and the field of law and order, Kenya is fortunate in having the services of men of the highest integrity and goodwill."

Having previously known the present Attorney-General in Malaya, I do not think we can in any way doubt his integrity concerning these matters.

Several hon. Members have mentioned that the number of detainees have been reduced—and we are very glad that it has been—since 1954, when, I gather, the number was about 78,000, down to about 1,000 in May this year, 91 of whom, I believe, are women. These camps have inspections by the district commissioners and by the Minister and I think it is fair to say that they have already once been inspected by the International Red Cross, which has facilities to go there again.

They do not seem to find very much, do they?

Having served in a temporary capacity with the International Red Cross, having been to Geneva, and also having served three months in Indonesia for that organisation, I think that it makes a very thorough investigation, and it is, of course, an entirely impartial body, composed mostly of Swiss and Swedish people. It has carried out investigations in many countries all over the world, and I think its honour and integrity cannot be questioned.

I think that one must remember that it is not exceptional to have this type of power in the emergency which still remains in Kenya. We have also to remember that between 1939 and 1945, we in this country had a great many restrictions. I believe it was said by one lawyer at the time that the War Cabinet "could do everything except give one a baby." At present, when we talk about new Commonwealth countries, we remember that Ghana had its Emergency Powers Bill introduced when there was no emergency. In fact, the Third Reading of the. Emergency Powers Bill was already through before the state of emergency was declared in Kumasi. They have also the Preventive Detention Bill, under which people can be sent to prison for up to five years without any trial at all, in the case of any person who has acted in a way considered to be prejudicial to the security of the State. Although I am not saying it is a good idea, we must be quite realistic and understand why some of these countries which have newly acquired their independence have found it necessary to bring in these powers.

Is the hon. Lady aware that I have publicly denounced what has been done in Ghana in these respects? I denounce it whether it is done by the Soviet Union in the case of Hungary, in Ghana or anywhere else. My criticism is that other people see only one side of the coin.

I quite agree with the hon. Gentleman. As I have said, he is perfectly sincere in what he says, but we must also realise that some of these countries which have newly become independent have found the necessity, in the type of society very similar to that which we are discussing today, to bring in these powers. Therefore, while not defending them, and I have taken the view that we want to get rid of these restrictions, we have the knowledge that these newly-formed countries have found it necessary to do this.

I should also like to say something about the present situation and in regard to the future in Kenya of a new organisation called Kiama Kia Muinzi, which I understand means "Assembly of the People." I think it is most regrettable that of all the people who have been arrested—and I understand that there are 2,520, with 2,137 convictions—94 per cent. are ex-members of the Mau Mau organisation. Therefore, one has to consider this present problem in the light of the fact that there are a number of persons who, as hon. Members opposite have said, have not got rid of the background of Mau Mau. I understand that, of these, 182 have been sent to prison, 96 were sent to prison because they could not pay their fines, while over 1,800 have been fined for being members of this new organisation. Some have not yet been prosecuted, but 329 have been detained and restricted to one particular area.

While we have these societies, and I was in Kiambu in 1957 when this society was already starting, I still feel that those people who want to live in peace must be protected against the activities of organisations of this kind. I understand that the society to which I am now referring also goes in for oaths and a similar type of organisation to Mau Mau. It indulges in publicly singing songs and slogans in adulation of Kenyatta and his colleagues, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. Armstrong) that Kenyatta was a power in Mau Mau and might again be that power in the future.

I should like to consider some of the good things which have come out of these detention camps. I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to give me some figures about the number of villages which have been set up, and which I personally think will be very beneficial to those who have been involved in these unfortunate Mau Mau happenings. These have been particularly helpful to the women. It has made life more easy for them. Also, I should like to know the number of women's clubs which have been formed, which have been most beneficial in supplying the needs for education.

I should like to refer to the camp at Wamaumau which was for the boys connected with Mau Mau. All these have now been sent home, and the camp is being used for boys who are in need of care and protection. We have found how important it was for these boys to have clubs, which is something which was not fully appreciated before. African boys, like boys in this country, like to indulge in physical activities, and I understand that as a result of this camp many boys' clubs have been established. and perhaps the Under-Secretary will confirm that that is so, showing that out of evil has come some good.

I am not going to deal with the point about the Church of Scotland Mission, because I understand that the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) is to speak on that subject, but I have had representations from the British Council of Churches.

I should like to remind the hon. Member for Eton and Slough that he has in Africa a very special influence, and I therefore hope that he will be very careful in future how it is used. I say that for this reason. I visited some of the detention camps and found that quite a lot of people were quoting what he had said in this House. Some of them thought that he had rather more influence than perhaps he has. I pointed out to them that he and I were only backbench Members of this House, and, therefore, were always speaking in an individual capacity. I think that there are a great many English-speaking Africans who feel that some of us in this House, and especially the hon. Member far Eton and Slough, possess rather more power than we actually have. It is a little misleading for some Africans, who seem to think that individual members of this House have more power than we in fact possess.

I will not say very much about Nyasaland or Northern Rhodesia, because, as the hon. Member mentioned, we are hoping to find a solution to the problem there. I am glad to see that the tension is considerably less since the Commission went out, and I hope that the Commission will be successful in arriving at a solution of this very difficult problem. I should like my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to tell me how many people are still detained. The figures which I received in March showed that there were 743 males, five females and one European. We know that since then there have been some further releases, but we should be grateful if we could have the latest figures about detentions. I understand that detainees in these areas are not required to work, and I should be glad if the Under-Secretary could confirm that.

I am quite certain that the House will be very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for initiating this debate today. I am sure that the people of Kenya have equal pride with us in the good name of their country. They are equally keen to see that justice is done to everyone.

I want to deal with another subject which very much affects our relations with certain parts of Africa. You yourself, Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Church of Scotland, will know its long and honourable association with the people of Nyasaland. Indeed, it was in 1891, through the actions of the Church of Scotland, that this part of Africa came under the protection of this country.

David Livingstone is a man whose memory is revered both in Scotland and in Africa, and of himself he said this:

"In the flow of love that Christianity inspires, I resolved to devote my life to the alleviation of human misery."

A book was written about him called "Livingstone the Liberator" and the author of that book said this of him, when he was writing about what was happening in the slave trade, and so on:

"It was surely providential that just at this juncture there should have arrived in Africa a man of such dynamic personality, so equipped in mind and body, so understanding of spirit, so self disregarding, so filled with a passion for justice and right."

That same understanding of spirit, that passion for justice and right, has motivated the representatives of the Church of Scotland in Nyasaland ever since. Those of us who are members of the Church of Scotland know that from our very earliest days as children we have time and time again been told of the people of Nyasaland and of the work of the Church of Scotland there. Our interest has been long and deep in the welfare and well-being of those Africans in Nyasaland.

Last Sunday morning, when I was at church, our minister announced that there would be a petition in the vestibule on this very question of Nyasaland. In all the years in which I have attended the church that is the first time an announcement has been made from our pulpit about a petition being in our vestibule to be signed. It is just a symptom of the very strong feeling in Scotland at present over what the future of the people in Nyasaland is to be.

I do not want to say a word today which will worsen relationships in Nyasaland. Next week there is to be a debate on this subject in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The Church of Scotland has issued a report. It has been in the hands of our people for a long time, because the Church of Scotland believes in having informed opinion.

Another report was issued only last week by Sir Gilbert Rennie, High Commissioner in the United Kingdom for the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. There was a Press conference over this report. Sir Gilbert Rennie, in his pamphlet, calls attention to the appendix to the Church of Scotland report about the 1958 statement of the Blantyre Synod. He says that this statement is "definitely misleading and deceitful." That is very strong language indeed. He asks readers to remember that the affairs of that Synod have been in African hands for many years.

But what does the report of the Synod say itself? These are the words:

"As a Synod whose affairs have been in mainly African hands for many years and who are well-nigh completely independent in control of our own affairs, we feel the keenness of this tragedy of neglect in our national affairs."

It does not try at all to hide that this Synod in Africa, the Blantyre Synod, was one which was in African hands.

Could the hon. Lady say in what part of the Gilbert Rennie report this comment is made?

I would ask the hon. Member to read it, because I have a great deal to say and I have been told that I have not very much time.

I say to Sir Gilbert Rennie that we of the Church of Scotland are very proud indeed—very proud—that the Africans are in charge of their own Synod.

In the Press, Sir Gilbert Rennie was reported as saying that a copy of his report would be placed in the pigeonholes of all Commissioners at the Assembly. I wonder whether he meant this as a threat. The Church of Scotland has nothing whatever to fear from this report of Sir Gilbert Rennie. That body is a fair-minded body and it would wish that any of those who are to take part in the debate next week, and those who are to reach a decision on this matter, should have in their hands all the relevant information. I am sure that in no hole and corner way will he have to try to get his report into the hands of these people.

Sir Gilbert Rennie is also reported as saying that missionaries were not qualified to judge politics in Central Africa, and he added:

"Let the cobbler stick to his last."

Yesterday, there was a correction in one of our newspapers which said that before the word "qualified" he had used the word "best": the "best qualified".

Sir Gilbert Rennie is also reported as saying:

"Many of those passing resolutions in Presbyteries knew extraordinarily little about what was really going on."

I would say that those statements show an arrogance of spirit, an arrogance of spirit which bodes very ill indeed for good relationships in Nyasaland.

As I said at the beginning, we in Scotland have known a great deal about Nyasaland for very many years. Those of us who have been actively associated with our Church have known what has been happening in that country, and those Presbyteries have had the great benefit of the experience of our missionaries who have spent long years of their lives in Nyasaland, and whose desire is to see that the relationships which were once there between Africans and Europeans are restored.

If we turn to the General Assembly report which will be discussed next week we can see, first, a quotation from the 1952 report of the Church and Nation Committee of the Church of Scotland, in which there was a résumé of the movement towards federation over thirty years. That was in the 1952 report. In 1952, in anticipation of the federal scheme, the report said this:

"There is no more important question today in the colonial field. In no part of Africa has the Church of Scotland closer or more intimate relations with the Africans than in these Territories. Economically and politically there is a case for federation, but at present it seems impossible to obtain the approval of the overwhelming majority of the people concerned.…"

There the Church of Scotland was showing that it realised that, economically and politically, there was a case for federation, but it realised that unless the majority of the African people wished it, it would not then be a success.

The report went on to say:

"Africans have seen ' entrenched clauses' ignored or deliberately broken…"

I do not know whether the Under-Secretary of State has read this report. He indicates that he has. All through it one can see that the Church of Scotland has tried to play its part in a way of which we can be proud.

The 1953 report of the Church and Nation Committee says this of the scheme for federation:

"It is a bold and imaginative scheme and may well become the pattern for the governing of a multi-racial State with peoples not only of different races but of varying levels of culture … In the minds of Africans, particularly in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, there is a deep fear of domination of the Federation by Southern Rhodesia and the extension thereby of the baneful effects of the colour bar. It is largely because of this fear that Africans have refused to co-operate … The Church of Scotland must assure the Africans, and especially those under its care, of its constant watchfulness and its sense of obligation to do all in its power to secure the recognition of the right of the African to his own land."

Surely, no one in Britain would think that there is anything at all wrong in those two statements. If we believe in justice we must believe that it was the duty of the Church of Scotland, which knows so much about these affairs, to make its position perfectly clear.

The 1955 deliverance, issued after federation, said:

"The General Assembly notes with interest that, federation having been established in Central Africa, there seem to have been comparatively few signs of active opposition and that already the economic benefits of the new structure of government are beginning to be apparent. At the same time, however, the General Assembly view with misgiving certain trends in the racial policy of the Federal Government and urge that, by every means possible, the anxieties of Africans should he allayed and the ideal of partnership be translated into practice."

All that the General Assembly was doing in 1955 was to urge that the ideals of good relationships and equal partnership should be brought into practice.

The Under-Secretary will be well aware that there are in Nyasaland 2,600,000 Africans and 7,000 Europeans. Later in the same deliverance it was stated:

"Within the last two years the power of the Federal Government relative to the U.K. Government and to the population of Central Africa has grown immensely. Parallel to this has gone a grave deterioration in African goodwill. Efforts to translate ' partnership' into reality have failed to be fast enough or to have sufficient appeal …"

The next comment is very important because it is of these actions that I shall speak in a moment. It is these that have caused the feeling of unrest and worry in the minds of Africans.

The deliverance says:

"The Government of the United Kingdom has made three great concessions which have increased the powers of the Federal Government, cut deep into de facto Protectorate status, and seemed to encourage groups in Central Africa which are critical of the British Colonial Office. These concessions are:—

I. The Joint Announcement of 27th April, 1957, at London.

II. The Constitution Amendment Act.

III. The Federal Electoral Act."

These have caused very great worry in the minds of the people. I do not want to deal with them separately, because each has been debated in the House. Sir John Moffat, Chairman of the African Affairs Board, said, after the decision was taken in the House on 18th February, 1958:

"The African peoples were told in meeting after meeting of the safeguards which the Constitution contained for them. They were told that they would have their own spokesman in the Federal House and—mark this well—that they would elect their own spokesmen. We pledged our word … Must I tell them now that the assurances which I gave in good faith that they would elect their own representatives are false, and that the Federal Government … will see that European voters flood them out?"

When we consider, first, the original fears of federation and this example after example of the strengthening of the powers of the Federal Government at the expense of safeguards to the people of Nyasaland, we must realise that we have a great responsibility in the House for the troubles in Nyasaland at present.

There are steps which the Colonial Secretary could take immediately which would ease the tension in Nyasaland. Because of my great interest in this matter, I have been following very carefully all the statements that have been made on it in the British Press. The Reverend D. Steel, of Linlithgow, in a letter to the Scotsman, said:

"It should be possible for the Colonial Office to make clear to the Governor and to the Nyasaland Government that to proceed with the draft Bill and the communal fine and any other oppressive measures is an affront to the decision of Parliament to send out a Commission and, indeed, to the Commission itself. The Bill should be withdrawn and there should be a moratorium on the collection of the fine until the Commission has done its work and apportioned the responsibility for the present unhappy state of affairs in Nyasaland."

Surely, that would be a simple thing for the Colonial Secretary to do.

The right hon. Gentleman has sent out the Devlin Commission to find the root causes of the trouble in Nyasaland. Surely, he is bedevilling the work of that Commission when he insists upon communal fines being imposed on people whose standard of life is so immeasurably low. The right hon. Gentleman must realise that he is sowing seeds of intense bitterness which might be very difficult to clear away.

Mr. A. C. McAdam, one of our missionaries in Nyasaland, has spoken about the Nyasaland emergency regulations which prohibit the publication of anything that is liable to incite people to violence. He asks why these regulations have not been applied to the only European paper in Nyasaland, the Nyasaland Times. He asks that because the paper published a description of the arrest of Dr. Banda. He quotes from that description I have no time to quote it now, but I am sure that the Minister has read it. He goes on:

"Could any report be more damaging to race relations? I am a white man and ashamed of it. I am a white man and the hatred against me is rising. I am a missionary and I am suspected with the rest now. An African told me the other day that unless I speak with as loud a voice as the Rev. Michael Scott I should pack in. Will the specials and the settlers never realise that Africans are human beings and that there are those of us who love these 'munts'?"

That statement by Mr. McAdam shows the deterioration in relationships in Nyasaland and calls for the deepest thought from the Colonial Secretary about why these relationships have become as bad as they are.

Besides ensuring that communal fines are not collected, I suggest that the Colonial Secretary should make clear the nature of the 1960 conference. The Church of Scotland is afraid that if Dominion status is decided then, even if attempts are made to introduce entrenching clauses, with the example of Southern Africa the fears of the Africans in Nyasaland will not be assuaged. If, at this stage, the Colonial Secretary could make it clear that no matters which are of the greatest importance to these people will be barred at the conference; if he will make it clear that our Protectorate status of Nyasaland will not be thrown away unless all the inhabitants—and I mean all—are willing to give up their Protectorate status, then he might find that there was an immediate lowering of temperature in that country.

As the Church of Scotland report has pointed out, it realises that economic benefits may come from federation—

indicated dissent.

If I had time I would deal with the kind of benefits that have come and how little they have touched the lives of the ordinary African. Even if we accept that there is the possibility of economic benefits, I say to the Under-Secretary of State and to the Colonial Secretary that if these benefits are achieved at the expense of the dignity of human beings, if they mean the loss of political rights, there is no justice in our claim as British people that we are different from totalitarian States.

Man does not live by bread alone. He has the godly gift of a precious soul. That soul, above everything else, must be guarded zealously. In the present sorely troubled state of Nysaland the Colonial Secretary has an instrument at hand. It is an instrument which, if he were to use it properly, could bring about much better relationships. It could restore that faith and that loyalty which has been gradually disappearing since 1953. That instrument is our Church of Scotland, and I earnestly pray that the Colonial Secretary and the Government will use it, and use it immediately.

It is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. Member the Lady for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison), and this morning she has rendered a service in focussing attention upon the problems of Nyasaland. But although there are causes for anxiety there, I am not sure that I agree with her on what they are.

I am, and always have been, a great admirer of the work of the Christian missions. I have seen the fruits of this work in many countries, particularly in Africa. David Livingstone, to whom she paid a tribute, was the boyhood hero of millions of young Britons. I recall that he went to Africa to sweep away misery and slavery, to bring light into darkness. He told us that his mission was to bring Christianity, but it was also to bring trade.

I suppose it is characteristic of his race that he was essentially a practical man who saw that if superstition and savagery were to be swept away, then the environment which made for these things had to be changed. Federation is the best instrument for inducing such change and I am not so sure that if David Livingstone were living today, practical man that he was, he would not have been a staunch advocate of the idea of federation.

The hon. Lady referred to the report of the Church of Scotland Special Committee and to the comments of Sir Gilbert Rennie upon it. She took exception to certain remarks made by Sir Gilbert in his pamphlet. It is pertinent to remember that Sir Gilbert Rennie is not only the High Commissioner of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, a distinguished public servant with long experience of administration in Africa, but he is also an elder of the Church of Scotland. So he is likely to have measured his words doubly carefully in this context. I think it cannot be denied that the report to which the hon. Lady referred, which Sir Gilbert Rennie has criticised, is incomplete in many particulars. Certainly, it does not mention some aspects of the problems which are bedevilling the situation and it produces a far from fair and accurate picture.

The truth is, though the hon. Lady did not say this that the Scottish missions in Nyasaland, in their zeal and desire to carry on the great work which they undertook even before government came to that territory, have long dabbled in politics. It may be difficult in this world for the living church not to dabble in politics. I make no comment on that. Let me say, however, that the Scottish missions opposed federation from the start. The party opposite knew this. It was known when the Labour Government launched the movement towards federation in 1951—

What movement?

The hon. Gentleman knows I have very little time, but I will answer his point if he will permit me to finish my sentence.

That there were African missions was known when the Labour Government launched the movement towards federation in 1951 and insisted upon the inclusion of Nyasaland in any federal scheme embracing the two Rhodesias. The Labour Government knew that there was opposition then. It was made clear in Command Paper 8411, which I have not time to quote, but to which all hon. Members have access. The present Government inherited the situation—

Oh.

I agree that some of my remarks are now embarrassing to the hon. Gentleman—

Not at all.

That is why he is heckling me from a sedentary position, but I will not be deterred and will not be drawn away from the burden of my argument.

Has the hon. Gentleman, first, any evidence that the Labour Government insisted upon the inclusion of Nyasaland in the scheme of federation they were putting forward? Secondly, may I say to him that his inaccuracies reflect upon himself?

On the contrary. The hon. Gentleman, whose knowledge of these matters is fairly recent, ought to know that the British Government, which was responsible then for the two Northern Protectorates, as it is now, took part in talks between 1950 and 1951 leading up to federation, that the inclusion of Nyasaland in the proposals for federation was a condition, that this was accepted and was not questioned at the time.

Will the hon. Gentleman say how it was that the Labour Government always made it clear that a condition of federation should be the consent of the Africans?

The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that our responsibility for the Protectorates still obtains. The Preamble to the Constitution reads:

"Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland should continue, under the special protection of Her Majesty, to enjoy separate Governments for so long as their respective peoples so desire, the said Governments remaining responsible (subject to the ultimate authority of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom) for, in particular, the control of land in those Territories, and for the local and Territorial political advancement of the peoples thereof …

This Preamble is part of the Constitution. As is made clear in the Order in Council, it is legally and morally binding upon Her Majesty's Government. It is a major part of the agreement reached with Southern Rhodesia upon which the Federation is based.

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is deliberately trying to distort the problem—at all events, I assume that he is not—and, therefore, he can only he confused. The question of Dominion status, and whether the Africans should be handed over to a new independent Dominion, is quite different from the condition which the Labour Government laid down preparatory to the discussions in 1950 and 1951, namely, that African consent should be obtained before a Federation was formed, Will the hon. Gentleman please try to stop confusing these two issues?

The only person who is trying to confuse the issue is the hon. Gentleman. He does not wish me to develop my argument, knowing that I am bound to sit down at a certain time.

I want to come to the point of Dominion status and to say something which, I take it, will command the approval of the hon. Gentleman, if he will permit me to proceed. The reason why, in 1951, and subsequently British Governments held that Nyasaland should be included in the Federation was clear. There could be no future worth having for the people of Nyasaland outside federation. At present, Nyasaland's expenditure is subsidised to the tune of £4 for every £7 spent by the Federal Government. If Nyasaland went out of the Federation its expenditure on education and health would be diminished. It would have to cut its suit according to its cloth, and its economic development, which has been rapid in the past few years, would be severely retarded.

If secession were to be followed by the political independence for which some African extremists clamour, no doubt Nyasaland could survive, but not as a Ghana or a Nigeria. because it possesses neither the economic nor the human resources to enable it to maintain and administer a viable, efficient and modern State. There is no question, therefore. about what is best for Nyasaland, though here I entirely agree with the hon. Lady that what we consider to be best for Nyasaland must, in the end, carry the approval of the majority of the people of that territory if our ideas are to have any chance of success.

The hon. Lady—I realise that time was short, and that is why I did not press the matter when she came to it—did not say very much about the considerable benefits which federation has brought to Nyasaland. There is no doubt that the economies of the three territories are complementary and that the main reason why they were brought together in the first place was that together they ensure an economically viable unit stronger and more capable of rapid development than would the three territories if they remained separate.

In the first six years after federation private investment in the territories was five times greater than in the previous six years. That has meant new employment opportunities in a land which has suffered in the past from the great evil, as the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) knows, of migratory labour. African earnings have risen by 130 per cent., and African savings are beginning to manifest themselves. All this is a sign of confidence in the future.

There have been marked improvements also in African standards of living. Since the Federal Government took over its medical services there has been a threefold increase in recurrent expenditure, a fivefold increase in capital expenditure on hospitals and dispensaries, and a sevenfold increase in grants to medical missions. Expenditure on African education, the instrument by which an improvement in the life of the people can be obtained most rapidly—which remains a territorial responsibility—has been trebled. There are 43 per cent. more children in the primary schools today and a fourfold increase in the number of children in the secondary schools. None of this would have been possible, or very little, but for the assistance given to the territory by the richer communities in the Federation.

There has also been a widening of opportunity for educated Africans in the Territorial and Federal Civil Services and in Government. In the sphere of government, though here we may disagree as to whether representation should be on a communal or a non-racial basis, Africans in Nyasaland today have a vote, which they did not have in 1951, and have representatives in the Federal Assembly where they can draw attention to the problems of their people in a way they were never able previously to do.

Frankly, I do not deny that there is African opposition to federation. The hon. Lady was correct in what she said. In some cases that opposition has been carried to the extent of violence. There has also been wilful misrepresentation of the benefits of federation, there has been some outright lying, and there has been considerable intimidation of moderate African opinion.

Mrs. Elspeth Huxley, writing from Nyasaland, in the Sunday Times of 12th April, 1959, referred to the situation in Nyasaland as follows:

"Intimidation by Congress Members has been widespread and ugly, and it has not been eliminated. 'Join us or we will come tonight and beat you up and burn your house ', is the usual form. Mr. C. J. Matinga, one of the Federal M.P.s, has had his house burned or damaged three times."

The question is whether this opposition can be overcome. That presents an immensely difficult task, but it is not an insuperable one. A great deal of hostility springs from ignorance of the benefits of federation, misconception of the intentions of the British and Federal Governments and wrong-headed encouragement from certain elements much nearer home. The initial fault lay with the Labour Government in 1951, when, quite wrong-headedly, it expressly forbade administrative officers to explain the purpose of federation to the local chiefs. There is no doubt that that sowed considerable seeds of doubt in African minds as to the wisdom and rightness of the course which was being proposed. Since then, the issue has been made the subject of party politics here.

In a second article Mrs. Huxley makes the point that

"The distinction between shouting for what you want and seizing it, always a fine one, is finer in Africa than in Europe, and the knowledge of support from Britain, especiallly from those who may form the next Government, has dangerously encouraged extremists and made all nationalists less open to arguments of moderation."

Nevertheless, I do not think that it is beyond our capacity to remove one misconception which runs riot in African minds. There is a widespread belief—the hon. Lady repeated it here today—that in 1960 Great Britain will hand over her residual responsibilities for the two northern Protectorates to the dominant white minority in Southern Rhodesia. I hope that my hon. Friend will make it perfectly clear that there can be no question of handing over those responsibilities until the conditions which are laid down in the Preamble to the Constitution have been satisfied. I hope that he will make it clear that the preservation of federation is far mare important than any question of Dominion status, and that pressure from Salisbury for Dominion status imperils federation. I hope that we shall have clarification on that point.

As the House knows, under the Constitution the Territorial Governments are responsible for education, land and all matters affecting the daily life of Africans. As things are going in Nyasaland—and the new Constitution is promised by April of next year—it is conceivable that within ten years, perhaps much sooner, there will be an African majority governing Nyasaland within the Federation, with an African Prime Minister, a possibility which Sir Roy Welensky himself has recognised.

African extremists, with encouragement from misguided persons inside and outside the Federation, are agitating to take their country outside the Federation and are clamouring for independence. The reason is simple enough. Anyone who knows anything about these men and who has listened to their pronouncements knows that all they want is power and prestige. That is not unknown among politicians, but if they succeeded the cost to the people of Nyasaland, for whom the hon. Lady spoke so eloquently, would be grievous. One thing about the Federation is that there is to be no lowering of standards of efficiency in administration or business. For those who like to be large fish in a small pond, that may be unpalatable. Not all the fault lies on the side of the Africans. Every time white extremists call for partition they reinforce black extremists and conspire to destroy the Federation.

Hope lies in the forces of moderation. I share the hon. Lady's wish, however, that the forces of moderation in the Federation would sometimes display a little more courage. If federation is to be saved, if Nyasaland is to be assured that there is a great future for its people apart from purely material benefits, then it is deeds, not words that are needed. I entirely agree with what Mr. Garfield Todd said recently, that what remains of the colour bar must be broken massively and immediately. Much more must be done, and done quickly, to remove the discriminatory pinpricks. For what may appear as pinpricks to Europeans may often injure and hurt Africans deeply and make nonsense of the idea of partnership.

A great deal can be done in that direction. Looking back over the past few years of the existence of the Federation, and remembering the conditions which obtained in 1951, the advance which has been registered since has been dramatic and exhilarating. Let us not jeopardise it now. By all means let us focus attention on these problems and make it clear that we shall not abandon our responsibility to the people in the two Northern Protectorates, but let us not pursue a course, as some wish to do, which would jeopardise the Federation. Because it stands for a noble ideal, that of partnership between the races, the Federation is probably the last best hope for us all in Africa.

rose—

For how long will the hon. Gentleman speak?

I shall need at least half an hour to reply to all the points which have been made.

That does not leave me long.

The hon. Member did not let me know that he wanted to speak, or we would have been able to make an arrangement.

On a point of order. Surely it is not necessary on an Adjournment debate, or on any other debate, to inform the Government Front Bench if an hon. Member on this side of the House wishes to speak. Statements have been made by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine), which, if I may use a term which is hallowed, were terminological inexactitudes of the position which the Labour Party has taken up over these matters--that is the nearest that one can get to saying that they were downright lies. I wanted a few minutes to rebut what was said by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East, who used to have a reputation in these matters but who has chosen to use smears. Why should I not stand up in my place when I wish to speak, like every hon. Member who wishes to address the House?

It is the custom in an Adjournment debate to call the Minister if he rises to reply.

The hon. Member said that if I had given him notice an arrangement could have been made.

On these occasions, for the convenience of Members, there are generally arrangements about the times at which hon. Members shall speak on certain subjects.

I am sorry that there should have been this difficulty. The hon. Member and I have attended a number of debates on these matters and he has always consulted me about the times for which we should speak.

There are two subjects, that of detention and restriction and that of the wider issues raised by the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) in connection with the Church of Scotland in Nyasaland. T will try to deal with them in turn.

Difficult as it is to isolate them from the broader political issues which, as the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) pointed out, it would not be appropriate to discuss on this occasion, detention, or restriction, without trial is repugnant to all of us in this country. The concept for which we have always stood is freedom to live by no man's leave underneath the law.

At the same time, the first duty of a Government is to maintain law and order. There are situations when those two principles, the duty of the Government and the right of the individual, clash. Such a situation arises where the exercise of the law is paralysed by intimidation, and my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. Armstrong) gave some very interesting instances of intimidation as he saw it practised in Kenya. We all know from our studies of the emergency in Kenya in 1952 and afterwards that there were frequent occasions when a murder was carried out and witnessed by scores of people, but it was not possible to get a single witness to come forward and give evidence, because of the intimidation which then prevailed. Situations when those principles clash also arise when, through their own channels, the Government have prior knowledge of conspiracies which may well lead to rioting or bloodshed, as we had in Nyasaland.

Where there are situations of that sort, with a clash between the principle of individual freedom and the duty of the Government, the problem is which should prevail. If the danger to the life of the community and the happiness of the majority is great, it will be generally accepted that there are situations in which detention is necessary. That is not a feature only of colonialism. As my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devon-port (Miss Vickers) pointed out, detention regulations are in force in other African countries not under colonial government, and we had powers of the same sort ourselves in the war—the 18b Regulation. Where detention regulations are necessary, plainly there must be safeguards against their use and provision for their frequent review.

Let me turn first to the problem of detention and restriction in Kenya. The House is familiar with the reasons for introducing detention regulations there, and I will not go back over the whole story of the Mau Mau emergency. I would, however, just remind the House of the size of the problem. We have come down from over 80,000 detainees to 1,091 at the end of April. That is already a reduction of very nearly a further 1,000 since we last discussed this matter in debate on 24th February when the figure was nearly 2,000.

I think it would be appropriate once again to salute the work of rehabilitation which has made it possible to bring down the figure of detainees to this relatively small figure. The hon. Member for Eton and Slough threw doubt on whether the confessions that had been obtained in the course of rehabilitation were really genuine or efficacious. I am bound to say that, after dealing with 78,000 cases. Those responsible for these matters have been able to form a fairly accurate judgment as to whether what they are getting is genuine or not.

The hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers) pointed out that among the new arrests under the new secret movement many of those arrested had been Mau Mau men who had been released after making their confessions. Does not that show that confessions in those cases are worthless?

Certainly not. We all know about the drunkard who says "Never again" and does it again. What it shows is that there is some virtue in the continuing power of detention. It enables one to protect the community against the dangers which would otherwise fall upon it.

Is it necessary for a detainee to confess before he enters the pipeline of release?

Not when he enters the pipeline. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the pipeline goes through several stages.

I would again emphasise the point which I made in the debate of last February that so successful has the system been that a number of convicted Mau Mau who were serving prison sentences have been taken out of prison and turned into detainees so as to facilitate their return to normal life. Of the few remaining, there are two categories. One in four are not acceptable in their home district. Either it would not be safe for them to go there or the local African authorities there do not want to see them back.

We get, in addition, what is known as the hard core, partly of Mau Mau thugs and partly of those more politically inclined. Plainly it is no good saying in these cases, "You should either release them or bring them to trial." The circumstances for which they are being detained and under which they are being detained were circumstances in which it was not possible to bring a charge because of the danger of intimidation of which I spoke earlier. That situation has clearly not improved. It is more difficult to establish these facts in open court years after the original occasion of the detention.

Surely there is an important point here, because there are many people who have been detained for upwards of six years who are brought to court on charges made against them and are acquitted of those charges.

I do not think that the hon. Member's intervention affects what I said. There were in the early days of the Mau Mau emergency circumstances which made it necessary to detain even if one could not state in open court the charge on which the detention was carried out. I think that the standard which the Kenya Government have set themselves is a fairly simple one. It is that no one is an irreconcilable. But, at the same time, in their view no one should be released while he is not reconciled. I think that we all would agree with the first proposition. As I understand the hon. Member, the second proposition has been challenged today. He said that he would take the risk and would say that even if these men were not reconciled we should let them go back. I hope that I do not misrepresent the hon. Gentleman.

It was certainly the opinion of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Delegation which visited Kenya in 1957 that it would be a long time before some of the irreconcilable elements could be freed, and this principle was accepted by the official Opposition in the debate on 24th February. There might be differences about individual cases, but that some might have to be detained for a long time was. I think, accepted by both parties.

We are in a pretty difficult situation still in Kenya; we are on the morrow of civil war. There has been a resurgence of K.K.M. activity. While some are saying that it justifies taking a risk, I take the contrary view and say that this is not the time to endanger promising developments by injecting back into the life of Kenya elements whose presence would almost certainly give rise to a sharpening of feelings among all races.

I think that the wholesale release of Kenyatta and his associates would alarm many Africans and Asians as well as Europeans. It might destroy all the present prospects of harmony on which we set considerable hope. I cannot, therefore, announce any new policy or am, change in attitude where the release of the existing detainees is concerned. The releases will go on as fast as possible. but the Governor will not release people unless he is satisfied that he can do so whilst safeguarding the Kenya community. While we are all out for rehabilitation and are determined to safeguard the interests of the Kenya community, there is no need to impose needless discomfort on those who have to be restricted. Where possible we have been prepared to alter detention into restricted residence. This has been done for sixteen of those at the Takwa camp, including the persons mentioned by the hon. Gentleman and some of his hon. Friends.

Let me deal for a moment with some of the individual cases to which the hon. Gentleman referred. First, that of Ionic. Kenyatta. I would at the outset deplore the phrases which the hon. Gentleman used in regard to Kenyatta. I have not had the advantage of knowing Kenyatta as the hon. Gentleman has, but I do not think that one can get away from the fact that Kenyatta has been a very direct influence on the whole Mau Mau movement. When we think of the suffering and misery that was brought to the Kikuyu people, it is very hard to take a lenient view of Kenyatta such as the lion. Gentleman takes. Indeed, speeches of this sort can do considerable harm in Kenya, for a revival of the Kenyatta cult could do much to undermine the return to racial harmony which we are trying to foster.

There is one particular point which I would like to take up. The hon. Gentleman referred to Macharia's evidence at the Kapenguria trial and suggested that, because of the more recent perjury, this throws doubt on the validity of the whole Kapenguria procedure. I think it important to note that, at the recent prosecution of Macharia, the prosecution found that six other prosecution witnesses at Kapenguria had not been suborned and had given truthful evidence The trial judge said that three of these witnesses had provided "the most important piece of evidence against Kenyatta." Therefore, if anything, the recent proceedings reinforce the validity of the Kapenguria verdict rather than otherwise.

Where the case of ex-Senior Chief Koinange was concerned, we naturally recognised the problem presented by his age, but the House must recognise that among the Kikuyu his influence is very great. He would be a greater danger today, perhaps, than in the past. He is living quietly and in relative comfort in his place of restriction. I cannot either, I am afraid, at the moment announce any different plans for Oneko. As the House knows, he has gone from detention to restricted residence and is being joined by his family.

Will the Under-Secretary confirm what he has just said, because I have a letter from Mr. Oneko dated 28th April in which he says that his wife has not yet been allowed to join him. Would the Under-Secretary confirm that Mr. Oneko's wife will be allowed to join him?

I said that he was being joined by his wife and family. They may not have arrived, but permission has been given for them to join him.

I come now to Northern Rhodesia, and let me make it clear that no one is under detention in Northern Rhodesia. The only cases concerned are cases of restriction. There are two persons who were restricted as a result of the 1956 incident in the Copper Belt, to which the hon. Member has referred. The hon. Member also reminded the House that there is a habeas corpus writ in respect of one of them. I think, therefore, that the matter must be regarded as sub judice and it would be wrong for me to give a detailed explanation of the reasons for their restriction.

Zambia, as the House knows, is an offshoot of the African Northern Rhodesian Congress. The Zambia leaders were determined to prevent if they could the recent territorial elections in Northern Rhodesia and to persuade all Africans not to take part in these elections.

The Governor was satisfied that they had

"conspired to make use of intimidation, force, violence and restraint against persons in the territory in order to induce or compel such persons to refrain from voting at or standing as candidates for the said election,"

and to commit acts under ten other heads including arson, malicious damage to property, corruption of police and other public officers, acts calculated to bring the Government into hatred and disrepute and acts calculated to promote ill-feelings between different classes of the population of the territory. Those were the grounds on which the Regulation was introduced which made it possible for the Governor to order their restriction.

The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler) asked what evidence there was and how we knew that this had happened. The regulations are in force until July only and, under the Ordinance, the Governor has to appoint a person to inquire into the circumstances leading to the introduction of the regulations and to make recommendations.

rose —

Would the hon. Gentleman allow me to finish what I am saying? Mr. Ridley is inquiring into the matter. Until the report of the inquiry is available the matter is again in a sense sub judice.

Will the Under-Secretary give us the evidence? He has made allegations against the Zambia organisation. Do the Government possess evidence for this? If they do, why is it not available? I have Press cuttings of the speeches of Mr. Nkumbula and others advocating non-violence. Where is the contrary evidence?

If the hon. Gentleman had listened, he would have heard me say that we must wait until the inquiry which has been appointed has reported. It would be wrong for us or the Governor of Rhodesia to produce evidence independently until the inquiry takes place. The inquiry is now in progress.

Will the Under-Secretary publish the report?

I cannot say any more than I have said at the moment.

The hon. Member raised the question of the provision of legal aid for persons under restriction who might wish to challenge the restriction. There is no provision for legal aid for them, but the regulations restricting them are in force only until July. As the inquiry is taking place I do not think there is an., risk of grave injustice on this score.

rose—

I cannot give way to the hon. Gentleman. I have given way a great many times in the debate, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will recognise.

I now come to Nyasaland. Let me first give the figures to the House, because I think the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North has got them wrong. Under the Governor's Detention Order 435 people are detained. Under the 28-day Order 163 people are detained. Three hundred and sixty-four have already been released, and two persons are restricted. Of the detainees 139 are held in Southern Rhodesia. The detainees have a right of appeal against detention, and an advisory committee exists for this purpose. The Governor attends as many appeals as he can. He has heard 155 appeals and the advisory committee has heard 49. Detention orders are reviewed and, as I have said, 364 detainees have already been released. The relatives of detained persons are looked after, and, where necessary, given help.

I come now to the problems of the Church of Scotland.

Has the Under-Secretary any information about when we may expect the Devlin Commission to finish taking evidence and, when it is likely to produce a report?

I honestly do not know. I think it would be wrong for me to appear as though I was jolting anybody, but I hope it will be quite soon.

The Church of Central Africa, Presbyterian, was established by the Church of Scotland in Central Africa and Nyasaland. The link between the two has been maintained by Church of Scotland missions in Nyasaland. It has been the deliberate policy of the Church of Scotland, and I think it is important that we remember this, to encourage the maximum autonomy of the Church of Scotland and to relinquish mission control of both church and schools as much as possible.

The hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North spoke of the early work of the Church of Scotland in Nyasaland in 1891. Some of its work goes back beyond that. The Church came to Nyasaland before the State, and there was for a time what one might call a theocratic government in Nyasaland when the Church of Scotland really administered the country both in the political and administrative sense as well as in the spiritual sense. Its early leaders were men of great stature who have left a deep imprint on the land. Not unnaturally, as the Church of Scotland had been the Government before the secular Government came, there have been disagreements and tensions between Government and Church. The Church had a wide body of experience and its own sources of information and there were from time to time, though by no means all the time, disagreements between the two.

In the early days the main problem for the Church was that of winning people to Christianity and caring for health and education. More recently, through the development of Central Africa and the general approach of Christianity in Nyasaland with the Government taking more and more responsibility for health and education, the Church is itself up against the social and political problems of the modern world which are relatively new in Nyasaland.

Other factors have been at work. There has been a decline in contributions from the Church of Scotland to Nyasaland, and the Church has been faced with increasing competition from other denominations and secular political movements. All these things have led the Church quite openly to take up a position on political matters in Nyasaland. Many men have been drawn into the service of the missions who have a deep interest in the issues which are part of the daily political life of Nyasaland.

From the first the Central African Church, Presbyterian, has been against the idea of federation. No doubt it has studied the problem very objectively, but the conclusions it reached have been hostile to federation. This has been made quite plain both in its publications and in sermons and talks in Nyasaland.

In the process of opposing federation, for reasons which I will not go into in detail today, it has naturally found itself —I will not say in alliance, because I do not think it has been an alliance—but working for a common cause with the African Congress. It has openly campaigned on the issue of federation in churches and schools. I make no complaint about that. But when considering this Central African and Nyasaland problem it is important that we should all realise that the Church is not, as is sometimes the case in our own country, above or outside politics. It is deeply involved. If hon. Members wish, it is one of the parties to the debate. I make no complaint about that at all. It is not for us to define the role of the Church or what part it should play. We consider carefully any advice given to us by the Church, although I would echo the words of Lord Salisbury:

"While everyone must have the highest respect and admiration for the courage and selflessness of missionaries, I must say that I have never taken the view that the clergy at home or abroad are necessarily entirely reliable guides on matters of politics."

All these things will be discussed shortly at the meeting of the Assembly, as the hon. Lady said, and more than one view is likely to be expressed.

The hon. Lady referred to Sir Gilbert Rennie as one of the elders of the Church, and we have three or four in the higher ranks of the Colonial Service. In the short time available to me, I will not go into the incidents she mentioned. They are matters which the Devlin Commission will be looking into.

It is true that the Devlin Commission is looking into them but, even at this late stage, would not the Colonial Secretary take a decision to put a moratorium on these fines, because that would be of some help?

I cannot agree with the hon. Lady. In the first place, we have reached the conclusion that this type of collective fine is best suited to the trouble and the system prevailing in the area, and, secondly, most of these fines have already been paid.

The hon. Lady concluded her speech with what I thought was a moving appeal that the Secretary of State should use the Church of Scotland in Nyasaland as an instrument to help in solving the problems of that country. I would reply to that appeal by saying that the Nyasaland Government believe that the Church of Scotland can help in a major way in our policy of promoting the all-round advancement of the African and the wellbeing and good government of Nyasaland. If the Church does that, its assistance and co-operation would be greatly welcomed.

I wish to raise the question of capital investment in the telephone service. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General for being present to reply to what I have to say. If I have to hurl a few brickbats at his head, he will have the period of the Whitsun holiday in which to recover and, moreover, my real intention is that they should ricochet off him on to the head of the real "villain," who appears to me to be my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

When dealing with this subject, we have to recollect that the war ended fourteen or fifteen years ago and one might imagine a discussion of this kind to be entirely unnecessary at the present time. We have to remember, also, that as a nation we are not very highly developed from the point of view of a telephone service. If we consider the general standard of living in this country in relation to the standard of living elsewhere, and the density of our population, and other factors, and then consider the number of telephones per head compared with the number in other countries, it will be seen that we have a long way to go in the development of a telephone service.

I wish to emphasise that we are not the leaders in the matter of providing a telephone service according to the rate per 1,000 of the population, and in a broad sense we have a good deal of making up to do. I know that there are members of the community who look upon the telephone as the most baneful of innovations—except perhaps that of the Income Tax. Nevertheless, there are very many people who wish to have a telephone, and it is a curious and ironical fact that for a great number of people a telephone is probably the only thing which money cannot buy.

It is an extraordinary state of affairs. If I wished to be unkind, I might say that my right hon. Friend is engaged in the dubious task of organising scarcity. I beg him to desist, because there are right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite who can do that much better than he can. I urge my right hon. Friend to follow the precept of the party on this side of the House and to pursue abundance.

Let me say a word about those unfortunate people who are waiting for telephones. I know that my right hon. Friend will tell us—he would be quite justified in doing so—of the Herculean efforts of the service in the last few years to reduce; he waiting list, and I am aware that the number has come down from 500,000 to 150,000. That, of course, is a very creditable achievement. But the fact remains that there are 150,000 people who have put in their orders but have not a telephone and, therefore, the problem has not yet been solved. A person cannot yet place an order for a telephone and expect to have it installed within a relatively short time.

It would not be too bad were there any real hope of this backlog being cleared up, but that is not the case. I understand that the position will not improve unless this afternoon we are successful in persuading the Postmaster-General and, in turn persuading the Treasury, to give an increase in the capital allocation. I understand, also, that there is a serious prospect that the waiting list will not diminish in the coming years, but will increase.

To me, it seems an incredible state of affairs that fifteen years after the war, in a period in which we have relative freedom for capital expenditure and when we are facing what we hope will be an increase in the standard of living and an increased demand for telephones, the Post Office can only look forward to disappointing its customers to an even greater extent than happens today. That is an intolerable situation. I wish to say why I think the situation is so bad for everyone concerned.

The capital expenditure of the Post Office this year and next year will be less than in the years 1956 and 1957. How can we justify a reduction in capital expenditure for an expanding service like the telephone service? Next year we shall spend even less than we propose to spend this near, against a waiting list which is calculated to grow during that period. This seems to me to be absolute nonsense.

If one looks at the level of capital expenditure in the public sector, one sees a very considerable growth. Another nationalised industry has, during the same period, 1956–57–60, increased its capital expenditure by 50 per cent. and the National Coal Board's expenditure has increased enormously. Various other sectors of public enterprise have also been increased in this respect. On the other hand, the Post Office has had its allocation reduced.

This is absolute economic nonsense. The Coal Board is to have a lot more money to produce coal which very few people apparently require. The railways are to have an enormous amount of money to invest in railways which a lot of people do not want to use, and the Central Electricity Authority is to have an enormous increase in capital expenditure. Yet the one public service for which there is a steady and increasing demand is to have its capital expenditure reduced.

By what process of distorted reasoning do my right hon. Friend and the Treasury justify this absurd state of affairs? It may be that it is Government policy to give money to industries which are run at a loss although being well supplied with capital. The Post Office meets an increasing demand and is, in fact, making a profit, yet it has to be denied even the same amount of capital expenditure that it had in 1956–57. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to answer these questions. It is ridiculous that this situation should prevail.

It is not only a question of telephone users, although they are important, but of the telephone staff and its morale. It is horrible to be in a race driving a car which has some of the brakes on. That is precisely the feeling that any man in the telephone department must have. All those telephone managers and other people must be sick and tired of answering queries from would-be subscribers who want to know why they cannot have a telephone. They have to do this at a time when capital is abundantly available for various other purposes and when there is a need rapidly to stimulate the economy.

The effect of this on the morale of the service is bad. The Post Office is extremely well served by its engineering staff. On the whole, we could not have a more able and devoted body of men than the engineers who operate our telephone service. The engineers naturally feel that they are operating a system with the brakes on. The Government are setting a very bad example as an employer. My right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General is perhaps the major employer of skilled men in any Government Department. A short time ago we had a debate in which it was lamented on both sides that the number of men being trained as apprentices was getting less instead of more. The Post Office telephone service ought to be taking a number of these apprentice workers and training skilled men, but instead of expanding its force to meet the public demand it will, of necessity, have to put the brakes on. That is bad for the country and for the Post Office.

My last point concerns the general atmosphere of the service. In any business it is thoroughly bad to go on year after year with more demands than the business can meet. Not only is it frustrating to the go-ahead people in the organisation, but it provides a bad atmosphere. We ought to be out now, selling the telephone service to people. We ought not to be telling people, "No, you cannot have a telephone." We ought to be saying to people "You want a telephone. You want two telephones." We ought to be telling the people with shared lines, "If you want one you can have a line to yourself." If we are to change from this excess of demand over supply, the whole attitude of the telephone service has to be changed to a spirit of enterprise.

I urge my right hon. Friend to be really firm with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In this case, the Treasury has made a mistake. It is true that, industrially, the pace in this country is not as fast as we should like to see. On that point my right hon. Friend would be justified in going to the Treasury and saying, "However right you think this was in the past, at present we have not enough money to overtake the backlog. Indeed, it will worsen the position in a few years' time." He is entitled to put that point of view, and if he did I think that he would get an extra allocation from the Treasury. I urge that in the interests of the telephone users, the telephone staffs and common sense.

We are grateful to the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. W. Shepherd) for raising this matter. The Postmaster-General is probably grateful too. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman himself is here to answer this brief debate.

I cannot believe that the right hon. Gentleman, with his known business acumen, can be satisfied with the period of looking ahead for which he is allowed to plan, or with the resources put at his disposal. The hon. Gentleman has covered the ground and I can do little more than add here and there to the points that he has made. Let me take first of all the level of investment.

Perhaps the most interesting figure here is that which is given in Appendix B of the Economic Survey for 1959 which, in Table 32, gives the gross fixed investment in the public sector programmes. The total for all programmes, from the National Coal Board to the Central Government and local government sectors, is. for 1956–57, £1,305 million; for 1957–58, £1,418 million; for 1958–59, an estimated sum of £1,449 million and for 1959–60, an estimated sum of £1,607 million. The corresponding figures for the Post Office are £101 million for 1956–57; £101 million for 1957–58; £98 million for 1958–59 and £94 million for 1959–60.

Let me put those figures into percentage terms which will bring them out more clearly. Over the period where the total gross fixed investment is to grow by 23 per cent., the corresponding figure for the Post Office is a decline of 7 per cent. This is quite extraordinary. It is almost unbelievable that a revenue-producing service, a profitable service—although these figures are for the Post Office as a whole, we know that about 90 per cent. of them concern the telephone service—is being deprived of capital. Not only that, but

"capital expenditure by the Post Office is limited by the amount which it is allowed to invest in any one year."

I am quoting from the Postmaster-General's own White Paper, Cmnd. 690, paragraph 2. It goes on:

"This, along with other public sector investment, is determined by Government decisions as to what can he afforded in the public sector as a whole, and in each of its constituent parts, in the prevailing condition of the national economy."

What private business conducting an enterprise of the importance and on the scale of the Post Office would be content to budget year by year? This is unsatisfactory. The Post Office itself is on the record as having said that nothing less than a three-year plan is any good for its purpose. I know that the Post Office endeavours to plan, but its planning is liable to be upset by the fact that the figures for capital expenditure are determined by Government decisions year by year.

Next, I should like to follow the hon. Member for Cheadle on the question of the waiting list. People may have different views about how the figures are to be interpreted and I will not make a detailed analysis of the figures. I content myself with one quotation from Cmnd. 690, Post Office Capital Expenditure, 1959–60, paragraph 15, which reads:

"The Post Office plans to bring service to 370,000 applicants in 1959–60."

That sounds very good, but it continues:

"At expected levels of new demands the number awaiting service at the end of the year will probably be around 137,000 as compared with 140,000 at the beginning of the year."

If I understand the position correctly, over about twelve months it is expected that the number awaiting service will be reduced by only 3,000, taking the new demand into account. I have not done the arithmetic, but it is clear that at that rate it will take many Postmaster-Generals, even under a normal period of office, before we see the end of the waiting list. This cannot be satisfactory.

The hon. Member for Cheadle referred to the effect on staff. I can claim to speak on this point, since for so long I was involved in the work of the Post Office Engineering Union, and I hardly need stress to the Postmaster-General—I am sure that he is fully aware of it—that there is a connection between the level of capital investment and the morale of the staff. If a man feels that he belongs to an expanding dynamic service which is taking in and training new people, he is much more likely to be on his toes than if he has a feeling that the organisation is being held back, not being allowed to do what it ought to do and not taking in youngsters.

I stress this point because I believe it to be of the greatest importance. What has bothered me most has been what I regard as the mistaken policy of cutting down—which is a mild way of putting it —the recruitment of youths in training. This is bad for the Post Office and also bad for the Government, because I recollect, as does the Postmaster-General, that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour, speaking last year in Oxford, made the following appeal:

"I appeal to all firms which are not training apprentices at present quickly to make plans to do so."

The whole burden of his case was that we ought not to let up on this point. Yet here we have one of the important Departments of State at present cutting down in the recruitment of youths in training. This cannot be made up later. If we miss several years we cannot make them up later, because the age composition of the labour force will be badly out of balance.

I return to the point which I made at the beginning. Looking at the Post Office solely as a business enterprise, it is foolish, especially in present circumstances, not to have a bigger capital programme. This is a profitable enterprise. It is not advertised. It is an enterprise which could obtain a greater demand if it went out for it, but it is being deprived of capital. It is not giving to the national revenue the contribution which it could give or, alternatively, it is not working at the economical level which would be possible if it were larger.

If this were a private business the directors of the company would have no more doubt than I imagine the Postmaster-General has that this enterprise needs more capital. Anything that any of us can do to support the right hon. Gentleman in his efforts to get more capital for the development of the telephone service we shall gladly do.

We must not overlook the fact that at present it is the Government's considered policy that the economy needs stimulation, that more purchasing power must be put into the economy in various ways and that investment must be stepped up. Here is a case in which investment could be stepped up with good secondary results in the manufacturing industries which provide all the equipment needed for the telephone service. I look forward with interest to hearing what the right hon. Gentleman says. More power to him in his efforts to get more capital for the telephone service.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd) for raising this subject today and for the moderate and lucid way in which he has developed his argument. I am also grateful to him for the help which he has given to the Post Office since I have been Postmaster-General, with his constructive criticisms in debate and his attention to the affairs of the Post Office.

My hon. Friend has made a number of suggestions. I recollect one suggestion about postmen's uniforms, which I have taken up very late in the day. I hope that we can do something both about the design of the uniform and about the quality of the material. I am also grateful to the right hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards), who is always moderate and lucid in his argument.

We are in a little danger of confusing the terms "capital expenditure" and "capital investment", which are two different things. In our White Paper, "Post Office Capital Expenditure, 1959–60", Cmnd. 690, hon. Members will read in paragraph 2 this description of capital expenditure:

"This means gross additions to fixed assets less the residual value of assets displaced. It includes not only what is spent on the extension of the system but also what is necessary to renew worn-out plant. The total differs slightly from that commonly quoted as the permitted capital investment for the year because the latter includes some items which are not treated as capital expenditure in the accounts (e.g. re-arrangement of plant) and excludes capital expenditure on the purchase of sites and existing buildings."

I make that more as a contribution to the record than to debate, because I want to make it clear that there is a difference between capital expenditure, as shown in the White Paper, and capital investment. I am not in the least frightened of publishing the figures, because "Post Office Capital Expenditure" will be published annually and the House will be kept informed of what is happening.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle said that there is now relative freedom in capital expenditure. As Professor Joad would have said, it depends what you mean by "relative freedom". In the private sector, Imperial Chemical Industries, Unilever, Associated Electrical Industries and the other big corporations can do what they like. Provided that they have the cash, they can spend it. In the public sector, rightly or wrongly, the principle is that we cannot do what we like. The Government decide, first, the level of investment which the country can afford, and in doing this the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to bear in mind the resources of industry, the savings of the people, the Budget surplus and how to make certain that we have a secure £. That amount having been decided —and this was started by the late Sir Stafford Cripps, in his wisdom—the Treasury has to decide how to apportion it between the various competing needs. Many of the Departments have competing needs for such things as hospitals and roads.

If the total is right, how should it be divided? There are hospitals, roads, railways, housing, education, the Post Office, electricity, gas, coal, and all the rest. If the Post Office is to have more, and I, as Postmaster-General, would like it to have very much more, who shall have less? Neither in the contribution from the right hon. Gentleman nor in the contribution from my hon. Friend, both of which, as I said, were moderate, was anything said about who was to have less.

There is a good case to be made for increasing the allocation to all the Departments I have mentioned. I could make out a magnificent case for hospitals. I could make out a perfect case for roads. One has only to try to drive to the House of Commons to see what a good case could be made there. I can make out a wonderful case for education, because education is necessary so that we may keep pace with technological developments. I could make a magnificent case for electricity. I can make a good case for the Post Office. Whether all the arguments can be reconciled is another matter.

I admit to the House straight away that I myself am not happy on two counts. The first count is the definition of capital investment. I have gone into this very closely in the Post Office and I have found that some very curious things have been included in capital expenditure. In my own home, I have a telephone and a main line running from the Post Office. During some alterations recently, workmen cut through one of the wires. It took a long time to find it. When it was found, the Post Office, with characteristic generosity, charged me £10 for putting the wire right. I paid the £10. In the definition of capital investment, that is included as increasing the assets of the Post Office and comes in as capital investment although, in fact, it is only repaid.

As I say, I am not happy about the definition. I have been discussing the matter with the Treasury for six months, and we have virtually reached agreement so that a large section of those items which formerly were capital investment can now be lifted out and will be free from any restrictions. The right hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend will agree that that is a step forward.

The second count on which I am bound to say I am not happy any more than, I suppose, the Minister of Health is happy about hospitals, the Minister of Transport is happy about roads, or the Minister of Education is happy about education, is the total sum allocated to Post Office capital investment. It is a downward trend.

My right hon. Friend is speaking about hospital and roads. I think that we ought to relate the argument to revenue-producing industries operated by the State. Clearly, the amount spent on roads or hospitals is almost unlimited, but we are here concerned with what is required in terms of capital investment to meet the demand for a Government-operated service for industry. We ought to stick to that comparison.

I quite agree, but the point is that the Government system does not stick to that comparison. I should like it to do so. I should like to divide the capital investment allocations between revenue-producing industries and trading industries, on the one hand, and straight expenditure from taxation, on the other, as my hon. Friend says. If I could persuade the Government to do so, I should be glad. I shall do my best. I agree that there is a difference between a revenue-producing concern and one which takes its money purely from taxation.

There is a downward trend in the allocation for Post Office capital investment. I should like to have the downward trend put accurately. In 1956–57, the figure was £101.1 million. In 1957–58, it was £101 million. Those figures are actual out-turn. In 1958–59, the forecast is £98 million. For 1959–60, it is £94.5 million, and for 1960–61 it is £91.5 million. These are September, 1958, prices, constant prices. It is a downward cut. I wish I had the same freedom in the Post Office as I have in my own business. Nothing would give me greater pleasure. But the Government being restricted as they are in this respect, I do not have it.

The amounts for 1959–60 and 1960–61 are not fixed firmly. We are still negotiating. I am still deploying arguments and I shall deploy more arguments. I am reinforced by the contributions in this debate. I shall go into battle with the Treasury, like all the other Ministers. reinforced by the lucid arguments that have been put today. I am quite certain that, as the right hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough said, one cannot run a business like the Post Office or any big business on a year-to-year basis. It is physically impossible to so do. There must be a steady programme, and one cannot turn that programme on and off as though it were a tap. The business will not be efficient if one does.

One of the inconsistencies, as my hon. Friend will, I am sure, agree —this is one of the arguments I shall deploy —is that, if the capital investment on roads is increased and roads are built, the telephone cables which should be laid when the roads are being made must be thought of at the same time. Automatically, investment on the telephones service should be increased if investment on roads is increased. If it is not, if one does not put down the cables when a road is in an unmade condition, one has to come back afterwards, tear up the road and put down the cables. Therefore, one of the arguments I put is that, technically, cables and roads are married and cannot be divorced financially. Otherwise, one has inefficiency. To that extent, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman.

Another important point about the amount of money we receive is that it is not only the cash one receives that matters. What use one makes of it arid whether one receives value for money is important also. I hope shortly to show the House and the country that we have gone to great lengths to produce value for money. We have been working for eighteen months to two years on how we shall construct our buildings such as telephone exchanges, and I think I shall be able to show a quite startling change in value for money.

Another worrying thing is that any cuts which are made in capital investment fall with great severity on the contractors who provide the Post Office with cables, telephones and the like. Post Office engineers are civil servants. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend that they have done splendid work. Without their skill being great and their morale being high, that work would not have been done as it has. We cannot "fire" them at a second's notice, and it is right that we should not. We cannot "hire and fire" as a more normal private company can. They are civil servants. This gives them security and, I think, peace in their hearts and helps them to give efficient service. It is right that this should be so. Those are the advantages.

There is, however, a price to be paid. One has in the Post Office a fairly rigid labour force, relatively rigid, anyhow, compared with other enterprises. Wages amount to almost the same steady charge out of capital investment and, therefore, if there is any cut, it cannot fall an the workmen—in my view, rightly so—but it must fall on the contractors. Therefore, we give our contractors a rather rough time by imposing savage cuts or making increases according to alterations in capital investment. I sympathise with the contractors, but, at the same time, I feel that the Post Office, as a good employer, ought to make sure that its employees, the Post Office engineers, are well looked after.

If we recruit too many people, we are recruiting to a permanent labour force, and this makes our difficulties greater. Officials in the Post Office have a very delicate task in trying to weigh the amount of recruitment necessary against the capital investment which we think we shall have. Great skill is needed. If too many are recruited, we can easily find ourselves in great difficulty unless we resort to this savage dictum of "hire and fire," which I should not like to see the Post Office do. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would not agree that we should take on Post Office engineers on a "hire and fire" basis.

Something was said about the order list. The order list comprises two things. First, there is the waiting list. Secondly, there are those who are in course of being connected with the telephone. The waiting list was about 250,000 three years ago, and it is now 60,000. Whatever argument may be deployed today—I have great sympathy with much that is said—the waiting list has been reduced. My hon. Friend referred to organising scarcity. We have reduced that from 250,000 to 60,000, which does not mean organising scarcity. That is a very harsh phrase which I would not have expected to hear from my hon. Friend. Of the 60,000 now left, although it is a hard core, it changes every year. The number of people who have been waiting for three years or over is no more than 9,000. Therefore, the figure of 60,000 is constantly changing and we should get the matter in perspective.

It is no good saying that people cannot get a telephone. In some areas they can get one tomorrow: in others it is more difficult. In some rural parts of Wales it may be difficult, but in Bournemonth, for instance, one can get a telephone tomorrow. It depends on where one lives largely because of the cable which has been laid. To wire up a telephone in one's own home costs £9, but it costs £85 to lay two pairs of wires to a home and £16 worth of exchange equipment is needed.

As distinct from the waiting list, at the time of the preparation of the White Paper to which reference has been made we envisaged a drop in the order list by March, 1960, of about 3,000 and a rise of about 25,000 by March, 1961, but demand is rising again. The net demand for the last four quarters has been as follows: June, 1958, 72,600; September, 1958, 80,300; December, 1958, 84,700; and March, 1959, 92,000. It is true, therefore, that if the investment level in the Post Office, which is tentative and not fixed, remains as it is now the order list will undoutedly rise. Whether right or wrong, that is a fact.

We have not done too badly from the point of view of additional funds. We received an extra £3 million in 1958–59 and an extra £4 million in 1959–60 for reflationary purposes without which the situation would have been most serious. We are still negotiating the ceilings for 1959–60 and 1960–61 with the Treasury and we will do our utmost to get the figure raised. With the help of the contributions which have been made today, I hope to be able to deploy my arguments more convincingly than I could have done without that assistance.

Another point raised by my hon. Friend concerned the circular issued by the Post Office Engineering Union and others to all Members of Parliament. I should like to say a word about this matter. The Secretary of the Post Office Engineering Union is a former Member of the House. My hon. Friend will remember him in the Parliament of 1945–50 as the Labour Member for Colchester. This is a free country where free speech is the order of the day. He can say what he likes, when he likes and how he likes. I make no objection to that. But just as he has free speech, so have I.

Many of the officials with whom I deal at the Post Office have taken a poor view of the method chosen to draw attention to the Post Office share in public investment. I think that the action of the Union is more likely to harm the case of the Post Office and the Union than to help it, because they are not competitive; they are complementary. Free speech can often do a great deal of harm, as many eminent field marshals have found out.

I remember one man who once burst into speech saying to me, "I told the truth, and that is what you politicians cannot always do". I had my wife with me, and I said, "There are a lot of truths which I can tell my wife, but I do not think that that will promote harmony". It may well be that this outburst of the Post Office Engineering Union has had the same effect. I cannot tell, but I am sorry that the Union saw fit to do what it did.

In the circular which the Union issued there are many exaggerations and omissions. The Union said that the level of investment has been restricted in an arbitrary fashion. That is quite untrue. The investment level was settled after the Government had carefully weighed the needs of the Post Office against those of other public bodies. The circular says nothing about the competing needs, such as hospitals, roads and electricity.

My hon. Friend referred to people on a shared service. The Union says that there are too many people on a shared service. All I can say is that the proportion of subscribers on a shared service in the United Kingdom is less than that of the United States, which has infinitely greater resources than we have. We have had very few complaints. Indeed, I have had some very irate letters from people who have been given an exclusive service because they wanted a shared service either because of its cheaper rental or for the enjoyment, perhaps, of listening to someone else's conversation, especially if the Postmaster-General is speaking. In some parts of the country it is possible to get a telephone on demand. Elsewhere, customers have to wait.

The Union said that the Post Office has not advertised. In fact, we have spent more money on advertising, in the last two years than in the previous three years. Sometimes we advertise without spending money. When I was in the United States I was a guest of the A.T. and T. and the Bell Telephone System. They had a television programme which cost 400,000 dollars per hour. In that programme they got a plug of two and a half to three minutes. When Her Majesty the Queen graciously came to Bristol we got far more than that, free of charge. Advertising does not necessarily involve expenditure. I will not go into other parts of the Post Office Engineering Union's circular.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this matter in a measured and reasonable manner. I see his point of view. Indeed. I share it in some respects. If my hon. Friend can lobby the Chancellor and persuade him in this matter, I should be more grateful than he can imagine. I should like to have just as free a hand in the Post Office as I have normally in private enterprise. If I had a free hand. I would be a very happy man.

I am also grateful to the Opposition for the stand which they have taken in a reasonable way. The Post Office is a great service. Morale is high. Our job is to expand the system if we can and, at the same time, make sure that it is more efficient than the system of any other country in the world. I think that we shall be able to achieve that end, because our system of charging for telephone calls is so simple now that the machine has been set free. Thirty per cent. of the calling revenue in America goes to the cost of recording the call. In Bristol, where we have had this great experiment, less than per cent. is spent in that way. In Bristol, 97 per cent. of the calls that could have been dialled have been dialled. In the United States the comparative figure is 57 per cent.

We are now set to surge forward to a great telephone service. I shall be greatly disappointed if we do not achieve our object.

I should like to draw the attention of the Minister of Education to the inadequacy of his proposals for the expansion of teacher training colleges in Wales, and to try to persuade him to adopt a more flexible attitude towards this most important question at this critical period in the history of training colleges in the Principality. I can assure the Minister that his policy at present is causing no little disquiet and a considerable amount of perplexity and dissatisfaction among the leaders of educational thought in Wales, and among people responsible for educational expansion in the Principality who know the problem from within and whose opinions deserve the fullest consideration.

We are all very familiar with the general background. The Minister was advised that 16,000 extra places in the teacher training colleges of England and Wales were necessary. He decided upon 12,000 extra places. I am not concerned with that decision this afternoon. The general policy decision falls outside the scope of this debate. I am concerned with the application of that general policy as it affects the teacher training colleges of Wales.

Having decided upon a 50 per cent. increase in training college places in England and Wales, it must have appeared reasonable to the Minister to regard Wales as a convenient administrative region and so apply the 50 per cent. principle to the Principality. That, I believe, is where the Minister has gone wrong. On the face of it, I admit that it appears to be a reasonable line of approach. Indeed, the Minister may claim that he has erred, if anything, on the side of liberality, because he has given us between 51 and 52 per cent. extra places. That, however, is neither here nor there.

It is because I do not accept that the Minister's approach is correct that I sought this debate today. I do not want to make extravagent claims about Wales, but it is only right that one should make claims which are true. I wish to state most strongly that our educational expansion is in the best traditions of the Principality. In education, Wales has shown the way on more than one occasion and we hope that she will do so again. Indeed, the story of education in Wales is one of the most romantic chapters in our national history. It has a significance of its own.

We have never had patronage from above and I am proud to say that we do not believe in patronage from above. That is why we do not have many public schools in Wales and the public schools in Wales are really foreign bodies. Educational achievements in Wales have resulted from an urge from below. For 300 years. this urge has been expressing itself in different ways and forms, eventually culminating in the secondary school system in 1889 and the training colleges and University of Wales.

The ordinary people of Wales believed in education. Down to the present day, parents have been, and are, prepared to endure untold sacrifices so that their children might have higher education. It is one of the grandest and most challenging epics of modern times. Only too often, generation after generation of the youth of Wales have had to sharpen the swords of their intellects on the memorial stones of their fathers. I am not exaggerating in making that statement. That is why young men and women flocked to the university colleges and the training colleges of Wales when only two professions were open to them. teaching and preaching.

I have heard Wales described in different ways at different times in this House. Last year, we had a debate on harp strings and Wales was described as the land of song. Recently, we had a debate on Welsh affairs and Wales was described as the land of sheep and cattle. I hope we are not quite as bad as that. Culturally and professionally, up to the Second World War, it would be appropriate to call Wales the land of teachers and preachers. Since the Second World War, the bias is towards teaching.

No one can deny the distinctive contribution which Wales has made both in quality and in quantity to the teaching staffs of England and Wales. The facts are well known. Wales has a population of only 5.5 per cent. of that of England and Wales. Wales supplies 11 per cent. of the teaching staffs of England and Wales. Eleven per cent. of the students of the training colleges of England and Wales come from Wales. This fact suggests at least that the Principality, I am very proud to say, has the gift of teaching. The Minister would be well advised to pay special attention to this fact and give to it the weight which it deserves when making his allocations.

It is against that background that I suggest that the Minister should reconsider his allocation of extra places. We have in Wales a fund of potential teachers. The tradition is there, the keenness is there and the interest is there. Are we to be deprived of the training? The conditions are unusually favourable, yet although we supply 11 per cent. of the teaching staff of England and Wales, we arc offered only 7 per cent, of the extra places.

I should like to make one proposition. It would be reasonable to expect that there should be sufficient training college places in Wales to supply the needs of Wales. That is a very fair proposition to begin with. I believe the corollary to be true also, that pupils in the secondary-grammar schools of Wales should have a reasonable chance of entering a Welsh training college if they so desire. I do not for one moment suggest that all Welsh students should be taught in Welsh training colleges or that Welsh training colleges should be closed to students from England. We do not seek to set up a pedagogic curtain between the two countries. Education of all things should break down the middle wall of partition between countries and peoples. We want a free movement across the border. The principle of interchange of training facilities is understood and conceded. At the same time, I want the Minister to concede that there should be a balance. It is that balance which does not exist at the present time. It could be improved, but the Minister's proposals worsen it. That is what makes the situation not only serious, but irritating.

As I have stated. Wales supplies England and Wales with 11 per cent. of the teachers. In 1957, which is quite a good year from which to take our figures, approximately 730 students from Wales entered English training colleges. If it were our policy to train all these students in Wales, 2,100 extra places would be required in Wales. We are offered 880 extra places. We are not asking for anything approaching 2,100 extra places. What we do say is that the margin between 880 and 2,100 is much too wide and needs reconsideration. We shall not be satisfied until it is narrowed appreciably.

I should like to present the argument from another angle. When the three-year course has been implemented, there will be enough Welsh students in English training colleges to fill the equivalent of five training colleges. Wales is offered the equivalent of two training colleges. That is the extent of the lack of balance. The recommendations of responsible authorities in Wales would be met if these figures could be amended, for example, to the equivalent of 3 ½colleges in England and 3½in Wales.

There is another factor which should be stressed in this context. While it may appear equitable on the part of the Minister to apply the 50 per cent. increase in extra places all round, in fact this is not equitable. Since the war, the number of training colleges in England has been approximately doubled. In Wales, the number has been virtually stationary. If I am wrong about that, I am open to correction.

England is having a 50 per cent. increase on an already 100 per cent. expansion since the war, and Wales is having a 50 per cent. increase on a stationary position. Not that Wales did not seek more training colleges since the war. For over twelve years we have waited for a training college at Cardiff. We welcome the decision at last to establish this college in Cardiff, which is long overdue. It will mean 320 extra places. We do not see why this number should be calculated in the present allocation of extra places in Wales. This is a longstanding debt which the Ministry—not the present Minister—owes to Wales, and we are pleased that it is to be redeemed. Its redemption is long overdue.

I do not see why a bonus should be used to pay off that debt. If it was to be a general bonus all round of 50 per cent., this ought to be over and above the debt which the Ministry owes to Wales. If this were done, and if the 880 places proposed were over and above the building of a new college at Cardiff, it would bring the number of extra places nearer to the recommendations of the W.J.E.C. and the University School of Education.

How do these proposals apply? Having decided to build a new college at Cardiff to provide 320 extra places, the Minister then proceeded to allocate the remaining 560 places throughout the other colleges in Wales. It is a simple and elementary sort of procedure, but a most unsatisfactory one. There appears to be no pattern in the whole thing, and I think that the time has arrived to have a pattern in our national system of education. It would be accepted, for example, that where colleges are situated near the university colleges, there is a good and strong case for the development and expansion of those training colleges, but let us turn to the case of Swansea.

Here is a university town with a training college near the university, the technical college and the Swansea College of Art. Here is a many-sided seat of learning. Nor can the Swansea area be regarded as an area which finds difficulty in recruiting teachers. It is one to be regarded as an exporting area, producing more teachers than it can absorb. Swansea is to have no extra places at all, and it is a university centre. The local education authority has proposed a scheme, which I believe has the blessing of the Minister, though it needs more than the blessing, surely. It should not be held against this town that it is in arrears with its building programme, in view of the fact that it was almost devastated by air attacks during the war. A great deal of building of the highest architectural quality has been accomplished, and it gives no encouragement either to the people of Swansea or of the surrounding areas to be told that the training college is to have no extra places.

I come to my final point. Let us examine the application of this 50 per cent. principle in North Wales, which can be, in one sense, typical of the whole country. Let us see what is to happen in the university city of Bangor in North Wales. There are two training colleges, St. Mary's College and the Normal College. St. Mary's College is to have no extra places at all, while the Normal College is to have 100 extra places. This is a most unsatisfactory decision, which completely fails to measure up to the requirements of the six North Wales counties.

The Normal College has 400 students at present, and, on a two-year course basis, an intake of 200 students a year. The college is to have 100 extra places, which will mean 500 places altogether. Soon, there will be a three-year course, and the college will then have an intake of 166 students, and will yield approximately 166 teachers each year. Therefore, the position is abundantly clear. In this programme of expansion, the college will be able to admit fewer students and to turn out fewer teachers. At best, this is a very strange form of expansion.

In the six North Wales counties, we have two permanent training colleges, the Normal College and St. Mary's College, and one temporary college, the Cartrefle Training College, Wrexham. St. Mary's College is to remain as it is. Cartrefle has, after much endeavour and appeal, been reprieved for a few years, and the Normal College is to have 100 extra places.

What does this mean? At present, the capacity of these three colleges is 770. On a two-year course basis, these three colleges have an intake of 385 students. At present, from all the grammar schools of the six North Wales counties, there are 385 pupils who have a reasonable chance of admission to one of the North Wales training colleges.

Let us look at the new proposals. There are to he 100 extra places provided, so that there will he room for 870 students at the three colleges. On a three-year course bask, this will mean an intake up to 190 pupils, and at present these colleges can take 385. When the Minister's proposals are put into operation, they will he able to take only 290, a decrease of 95 in the six North Wales counties. This is a queer form of expansion, and it is obvious that many excellent candidates will be denied admission in the years that lie ahead.

The local authorities themselves are not satisfied, the University Board is not satisfied, the college authorities are not satisfied, and the parents of the children going to the schools are not satisfied. If it is the attitude of the Minister that many of the teachers will be employed in English schools, and in consequence should he trained in English training colleges, and if he is bold enough to say so, then I must warn him that he is playing with a situation which is very dangerous. We shall not accept that attitude, and shall resist it to the last ditch.

I now come to my final word, and I am sorry to have detained the House so long. Wales has her own peculiar educational problems. We have our own educational techniques, which must add to the treasure of British educational experience and progress. I shall give one example only, that of bilingualism, which is at once a most fascinating and most intriguing educational feature, of which I can say I have quite a number of years' experience. We have in Wales today two training colleges— the Normal College, Bangor, and the Training College, Carmarthen, where excellent pioneering work in this field is being done at present. I am sure that the Minister is aware of that work. It is a feature of training college work which does not exist in England, and I am sorry to say does not exist in Scotland either, but which does exist in Wales, and which of itself makes nonsense of the universal application of the 50 per cent. increase principle.

This experience alone demands special consideration, for success in bilingual techniques will open the door to success beyond Wales, because I can see a change in educational policy in the Colonies taking place, where we must teach people in the Colonies through the medium of their own tongue, rather than impose upon them a foreign tongue, such as English. The experiment in Wales today can help to solve that problem in the future, even as far afield as the Colonies. That is a great and very important consideration and reason why we should have more than the 50 per cent. I can assure the Minister that educationists throughout Wales are watching this debate this afternoon. They will read the Minister's reply with critical interest, and I trust that they will not be disappointed.

My hon. Friend and neighbour the hon. Member for Wrexham (Mr. Idwal Jones) has dealt so thoroughly and eloquently with this problem that there is, perhaps, not very much more for me to say, but I should like to intervene for a short while to express to the Parliamentary Secretary the very strong feeling indeed which exists, in North Wales especially —it exists throughout the Principality, but I can speak more directly for North Wales—about this situation in the training colleges.

We in North Wales have been shocked to be told that the net result of the Minister's proposals, as my hon. Friend has explained, appears to be that when we reach the implementation of the three-year training course in 1960, far from having more accommodation for teachers in North Wales, we shall have less. The information which is given us, as my hon. Friend has said, is that with the three colleges taken together there will be approximately 95 fewer instead of an increase. At Bangor Normal there will be about 50 fewer. This situation is one which cannot be contemplated with equanimity by the teachers in the schools or by the parents whose children hope to train to make teaching their career.

I do not want to say too much about the general background because today we are concerned primarily with the position in Wales. I think, however, that it would be fair just to remind the Parliamentary Secretary that his own record in this matter of teacher training is not entirely unblemished, for he is reported in HANSARD as having said on 6th June, 1957, that the three-year course

"will not, of itself, he accompanied by a significant expansion of the colleges."— [FOR OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th June. 1957; Vol. 571, 1471]

He seems to have forgotten those words, but I copied them out only last night in the Library.

They make me a little suspicious of any complacent remarks he may, perhaps, be inclined to make today, because the Ministry's record in this question of teacher training colleges is not by any means a satisfactory one, and everyone in the profession —I am not a teacher myself but I have studied this with the staffs of some of the training colleges and they have told me —is seriously disturbed at the slow change of heart in the Ministry on this question of the need for expansion in general.

In Wales there appears to me to be no room for complacency at all when one looks at the picture of the number of children in the schools and of the teacher-pupil ratio. It is true that it is somewhat better than that in England, but it is by no means satisfactory as yet. I notice that in the last Report on Developments and Government Action in Wales there was a rather complacent paragraph on this matter. It is true that if we take the overall statistics for primary schools, for example, the Welsh figure is a good deal better than the English figure. When, however, we consider the proportion of sparsely populated areas in Wales we realise that there must be a good many Welsh schools in which the number of pupils per class is small, which would help to reduce the average, and the situation appears to be that the number of pupils in Welsh schools has been somewhat increased, owing to the birth rate. I looked at the figures for teachers in the latest Welsh Digest of Statistics published yesterday. It appears that between 1957 and 1958 the number of teachers in Wales actually declined although the school population increased.

I would in passing say to the Parliamentary Secretary that the education statistics provided in the Welsh Digest of Statistics are peculiarly unsatisfactory in that they are published this month, in May, but refer to the year 1958. The education statistics appear to refer to 1st January, 1958, and, therefore, they are eighteen months out of date, as presented in this form. The teacher statistics refer to 31st March. I would ask the hon. Gentleman to look at this to see if he could provide in the statistical digest published for Wales figures a little later in the year, which would be more useful to people who wish to refer to them.

However, my main point is that we still have in Wales, although not quite so seriously by comparison with England, as in England, far too many classes with far too many pupils. We cannot possibly regard that as other than serious if we are to have what seems to us this inadequate increase in the number of teachers provided.

I looked up the figures for the number of primary classes with more than 50 pupils. The last report shows that there arc 18; not a very large number, perhaps, but far too many, since with 50 pupils in a class it is quite impossible to teach the children. We still have about 650 classes in the primary schools in Wales with between 40 and 50 pupils. In the secondary schools we have only four —which is far too many—with more than 50; 130 with between 40 and 50; and 2,411, according to the latest published figure, with between 30 and 40. That is in the secondary schools.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman must agree, when one looks at those figures, whether as a teacher, as a parent, or as someone like myself who is neither but who has a public responsibility in this matter, that one cannot possibly he happy about a programme of teacher training which is going to do far too little to remedy this situation.

I should like to stress very much some of the general points which have been made by my hon. Friend. I do not, I hope, need to stress that teaching has been a favourite profession of pupils of Welsh schools for many years. I think that that is due to two reasons, both of which, it seems to me, still obtain. One is that in many parts of Wales there are not very many alternative opportunities. There are still many areas in Wales, including some of those with the very best traditions of cultural life, in which there are far fewer alternative opportunities in commerce or in industry than there are in many other parts of the country, and in North Wales in particular —if I may stress this to the Minister—there is a strong feeling that it should have special consideration for teacher training.

It is quite natural that we should have a large proportion of young men and women going into teaching in Wales for this reason, but there is another reason which, I feel, is an even stronger one, and that is that by and large the Welsh make good teachers. They are naturally sympathetic. I think that they are often much better psychologists than the AngloSaxons.

I would stress also what my hon. Friend has said about the great need for more teachers not only in the United Kingdom but also in the overseas territories. The hon. Gentleman may know that I take a very close interest in colonial affairs. I know the acute difficulty which many of the Governments, in East Africa, for example, have in obtaining from this country good quality teachers. I think I can say from experience that, on the whole, Welsh teachers find it more easy to adapt themselves to the social conditions which obtain in some of those countries than do some of our colleagues from England.

In other words, it is a very good thing that we should encourage pupils from Welsh schools to look overseas. I try to do so on occasion. They make particularly good recruits for the overseas service. In addition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham has mentioned, they may have extra, valuable experience in bilingual teaching which the ordinary English teacher does not have. This is another reason why the Minister, far from regarding this as just one segment of the general problem of teacher training in the United Kingdom, should look at it with a little more imagination and recognise that we in Wales feel very strongly about it.

I shall not go into the statistics at length. I know that there have been discussions with the W.J.E.C. and that papers have passed between the Committee and the Ministry, but the net result of the proposals now made by the Ministry is that on the three-year basis there will be only forty more teachers coming out of the training colleges in Wales than come out at present on the two-year basis. I know that the Minister considers, quite rightly, that one has to take into account the university training departments, but I cannot believe that all the additional teachers we ought to have in Wales will come out of those departments, although I know that this is part of the Ministers' argument.

I had hoped to obtain more information before this debate, because in the debate on education on 22nd January, when my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) was speaking, the Parliamentary Secretary intervened and told my hon. Friend that he was taking a number of notes of the points being made and that he would write to him. When I asked my hon. Friend whether he had received the letter and whether he would furnish me with the information, which no doubt had been provided by the Parliamentary Secretary, my hon. Friend said that he could not recall receiving such a letter. The Parliamentary Secretary's secretary cannot recall seeing the letter either. I am afraid that there has been an error of omission. No doubt the information has been sent to the authorities concerned, but it does not appear to be available to us at this moment.

Later in that debate I thought that the hon. Baronet rather brushed aside the Welsh problem by saying that, of course, everybody wants more teachers and that requests were being received from English colleges, Welsh colleges, Church of England colleges, Roman Catholic colleges and so on and that the Government could not please everybody. I appreciate that that may be the Parliamentary Secretary's feeling, but it is not in itself an excuse for not looking again at the particular Welsh problem. For the reasons which I have given, investment in teacher training in Wales is a good investment from the point of view of the Ministry, and a very essential investment from the point of view of the pupils of the grammar schools in Wales.

I know from experience in my own constituency that we have a number of pupils who appear to be of adequate standard but who find great difficulty in obtaining places in training colleges. They ask me to inquire from the central pool in London. One does that as a matter of courtesy, but frankly it does not get one very far.

There is an extremely strong feeling in North Wales that what we are told about there being under the three-year course fewer places available than previously in Wales cannot be accepted. I was glad to note that the Minister of Education in the debate on 22nd January said that he was keeping an open mind on the matter. We are always rather suspicious of open minds in Ministerial circles, but if this means that the representations made on behalf of Wales can be reconsidered we shall be glad to hear today from the Parliamentary Secretary that some addition may yet be made to the provision that has been proposed.

I should like first of all to convey to the House the apologies of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Welsh Affairs that he is not able to be present at the debate because he has to keep an engagement in Liverpool. He particularly asked me to say how sorry he was not to be present. This is the first time that we have had a debate in the House specifically on the question of teacher training expansion anywhere and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wrexham (Mr. Idwal Jones) and the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) for raising the matter because, as they rightly say, it is not a point on which we can feel at all complacent.

As I said the other night in a debate on schools regulations, we must always regard the figures of overlarge classes in schools with a great deal of concern, and the reduction of the size of classes remains the prime object of Government educational policy. As I think the House is well aware, the present expansion programme of 12,000 places for England and Wales was intended to maintain the existing output of teachers from the training colleges after the three-year course was brought into force. The hon. Lady fairly quoted my supplementary answer when I first made a statement on the three-year course in June, 1957. Since that date we have had the rather discouraging figures of the wastage from the teaching profession during that year and we have had the subsequent reports of the National Advisory Council. The figures for 1958 were rather more encouraging. But it was the somewhat discouraging figures of 1957 and the advice which we received from the National Advisory Council that, more than anything else, decided us to undertake this large programme of teacher training.

We had to approach the problem by dividing the total extra number of teacher training places into blocks, such as for the local authorities in England, and the local authorities in Wales, for the Church of England colleges, including the Church in Wales, and also for the Roman Catholic colleges. I think that was the only fair way to do it. We have not divided the extra places exactly in proportion to the number of places which people had before, for that would have been a wrong thing to do. In the days when we argued in the House about controls we used to say sometimes that it was the danger of a rigid system of control that allocations were based on what one had received the previous time.

I make this point because, deliberately and intentionally, we gave Wales a rather larger number of places than she would have received had we allocated them in strict proportion to the existing places. On the basis of 50 per cent. of the existing places Wales could have expected an increase of 750 but she has actually been allocated 880. I know that if one divides 130 by three one gets very little more than 40, as the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East has said. It may not seem much of an expansion programme if, after the three-year course comes into force, we shall have only an extra 40 people a year from the training colleges. But at least Wales can feel that she has had a bigger percentage increase than some other blocks of training colleges. That is absolutely true and it means that when the three-year training course comes into force there will not be a diminution in the number of teachers coming from the training colleges but rather some slight increase.

There is one other point which it is relevant to mention here. The extra 880 places are what, in the jargon of the Ministry, are called standard places. Even before we embarked on this large expansion programme we were trying to secure a measure of crowding-up in existing training colleges, and I am told that one can nearly always admit something like 20 per cent. more students than there are standard places for. So the total of extra students who can be admitted when the programme of expansion is completed should therefore be rather larger than 880 and may be about 1,050.

There is one other feature of the programme I want to emphasise here and now, because it loomed large in our minds. We did not intend this necessarily to be, as it were, a once-for-all, final programme with no programme to follow it. On that point I can say what my right hon. Friend said in the debate on 22nd January:

"On the question of the number of teachers ultimately required, I assure the House that I will keep an open mind."

His next sentence was more definitely encouraging

"If, as we get further forecasts, it is clear that a 50 per cent. expansion is not enough, we will look at the matter again.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd January, 1959, Vol. 598, c. 425.]

I will not go beyond repeating that today.

I was aware of what the Minister said, but the point is that it was unwise, if there is to be further expansion, to start off on a small scale. Here I am thinking more particularly of the Bangor Normal College in which we are naturally specially interested. There, I understand, arrangements for new buildings to meet the proposed degree of expansion are already proceeding, whereas our contention is that instead of 100 extra places there should be 175 extra places. It will be extremely discouraging if, this time next year, whoever is in charge at the Ministry of Education says that we should have had 175 places.

In a minute I will deal with Bangor, which raises a serious and important point. I want to emphasise first that in view of our total of 12,000 places it would have been difficult to allocate a larger figure than 880 to Wales. May I say also that what we were keen to do was to embark on a programme that would be completed by the end of 1962. There is always the danger that, if we embark on too large a programme at any one time, the programme may be only partly completed by the original planned date, and that was one of the reasons why we did not undertake a more ambitious programme last year. We wanted to tackle only projects which we were sure we could complete by the end of 1962.

Now I come to the question of the breakdown of the programme to the exact colleges we chose for expansion. The figures are well known to hon. Members. Cardiff will get 320 more places, Barry 200, Carmarthen 160, Bangor Normal College 100 and Carleon 100. I think the hon. Lady will agree that this is a good thing, since it will enable four of the five colleges to achieve at least 400 places, while Carleon has been advised to plan for further expansion at a later date. We were very keen that the colleges chosen for expansion should be able to reach a size which would enable them to be really efficient educational units.

I will gladly now speak about the cases of those areas which feel they have, on the whole, been treated less than fairly. The facts about Swansea are well known. We may have been wrong, but quite genuinely we have not been confident that Swansea would be able to complete a programme of training college building by the end of 1962. I am not attributing any praise or blame. I have seen the hon. Gentlemen the Members for Swansea, West (Mr. P. Morris) and Swansea, East (Mr. Mort) and we had an extremely friendly and fair discussion. I do not want to utter any words of recrimination and I will only say that we did not have confidence, in view of Swansea's building record, that the job would be done in the time. That was one important reason why Swansea was not included in the programme. As regards Bangor, I know that many hon. Members on both sides of the House feel that North Wales has not had its fair share of the programme. I know that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch), who has written to me, also shares our anxiety about this, and a number of other hon. Members have written to me as well.

It is true that the output of teachers from North Wales will be lower as the result of the expansion programme, but we have always taken the view—and in taking it we have been in agreement with the School of Education—that the Principality must be treated as a whole if the needs of the area are to be met satisfactorily, and we have never had separate figures for North Wales and South Wales. In planning this expansion we have recognised that individual colleges may not be expanded equally, but our prime aim has been to bring as many colleges as possible up to an economic size rather than to spread the increase over a very large number of colleges.

I am glad to be able to tell the House that the two Bangor colleges have already agreed to work in close cooperation. I think this should help St. Mary's, Bangor, to organise a three-year course satisfactorily despite its very small size. I recognise that St. Mary's College, in particular has come off unluckily in the expansion programme. There are one or two colleges in particular in England and Wales where I think it is fair to say, without being invidious, that they have been unlucky in not being included in the expansion programme. St. Mary's, Bangor, is certainly one of these, and we have given assurances to the governors that their case will receive very sympathetic consideration in the event of further expansion.

I know that it is easy to say that and as the hon. Lady pointed out, people are legitimately a little suspicious when Government Departments talk about keeping a case under review. However, St. Mary's, Bangor, is one of the very few colleges of which I would say in this House that I think it has been unlucky not to be in the present expansion programme, and we regard it as having a high degree of priority for sympathetic consideration in the event of any further expansion.

I want to say a final word about teachers in Wales in general. I know that teaching has been a long tradition in Wales. As the hon. Member for Wrexham fairly said, Wales has always specialised in teachers and preachers, and sometimes the two combined—as perhaps one sometimes finds when listening to debates in the House. In planning the Welsh programme, we have regard to a number of factors. First of all, there is the need for replacements, then there is the importance of special facilities for bilingual teaching, and there is the fact of the strong appeal teaching makes to the pupils of Welsh secondary schools, so that a number of Welsh men and Welsh women want to teach in Britain and, perhaps, as the hon. Lady suggested, in rather more far-flung parts of the world as well.

At the present time, on the basis of a total teaching force in Wales of about 20,000, we can assume an annual wastage of about 900, and annual replacements and some provision for expansion would make it seem likely that Welsh local education authorities will have to appoint about 1,000 teachers a year. That is, roughly speaking, the demand in Wales for Welsh teachers.

If we aggregate the annual output of the Welsh training colleges with that of the graduates from the University of Wales who want to enter teaching, the total is about 1,200, of whom about 350 are the output of university departments of education. But I think that, on the present figures one can say that, allowing for improvements in the education service, such as the reduction in the size of classes, it is unlikely that Wales will need more than an extra 1,000 teachers a year.

On the other hand, the training colleges, particularly if they crowd up a little, and the departments of education, are likely to produce together at least 1,200 teachers a year. There should, therefore, be a surplus of about 200 Welsh teachers a year for teaching in Britain and perhaps also for showing their Celtic skill in spreading knowledge in other parts of the world, as well. One can say that the Welsh training plant—if I may be forgiven that phrase—is providing already and will continue to provide a good deal more than the estimated maximum requirements of Wales.

I am sorry about my failure to write to the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas). What happened was that after that debate I received a deputation from Wales on the subject of training colleges—a deputation rather larger than the audience one sometimes has the pleasure of addressing in the House of Commons. We argued this question for several hours one morning, which I enjoyed considerably, and having had the subject out so thoroughly with representatives of North and South Wales, and of the many interests concerned, I overlooked my promise to write to the hon. Member.

In the Ministry we do, of course, recognise that Wales has special needs and special problems and it was for that reason that we allocated Wales a larger share of the training college expansion programme than could have been expected strictly on the basis of the numbers in the present colleges. I cannot go further than I have done this afternoon on the question of any future expansion programme and I can only repeat what my right hon. Friend said in the debate in January.

However, I recognise that, while we have always maintained a policy of planning for Wales as a whole, particular anxiety is felt in parts of North Wales today, and I hope that I may have given some assurance that Bangor St. Mary's College has not been forgotten and that we recognise that the college has been unlucky in not being included in this programme.

Next week I shall be going not to North Wales but to West Wales. I am looking forward to it. Having been in the Ministry of Education for more than two years now, I have no doubt about the extent of Wales' contribution to our national educational life.

My first task is to apologise to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health for delaying his enjoyment of the Whitsun Recess. I know that his interest in this subject is probably as keen as mine and that he will not begrudge the time which it takes him to reply to a debate on so important a medical topic.

It was nearly two years ago that I first raised this question in the House. I think that it was the first debate ever held in this Chamber on the subject of multiple sclerosis. I got a most sympathetic and useful reply from the then Parliamentary Secretary, and I only hope that the answers I get today to my queries will be as useful as where those on the last occasion.

I hope to be forgiven for being slightly repetitive in the matter if, first, I say a few words about the nature of this most intractable disease. It is probably the commonest of all nervous diseases in the country today and the average number of sufferers at any one time is estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000 people. It has an annual death rate of about 1,500. Every year, about 800 die from the immediate causes of multiple sclerosis and another 700 die from the disease as a contributory cause, bringing the death rate to a very substantial figure. This is a problem which, I am sure, everyone would wish to be solved as soon as possible.

When one considers that other diseases which are so much better known to the public receive so much more attention but are much less in their incidence, one wonders why the disease of multiple sclerosis is so little known to the community at large. For instance, I believe that approximately 200 to 300 deaths a year are due to poliomyelitis. That is an endemic disease and one which no sufferer of multiple sclerosis would wish to minimise, but the problem of multiple sclerosis is very much more serious and much more intractable.

I want to give a brief description, so far as it lies within my power, of the effects of this disease. It is one which attacks people in the prime of life. The most common age group in which it is found is between the ages of 25 and 40. While, perhaps, it is slow to take effect, it is a disease which is invariably fatal. It may take as long as twenty to thirty years to run its course and during that time the sufferer can look forward to nothing better than a life of increasing debility and disablement. It is almost characterised by its frequent remissions and onsets, so that the degree of disability is never accurately known to the patient or to his medical advisers. This makes the question of employment incredibly difficult to the sufferers.

Many of the people suffering from the disease find themselves in the chronic sick wards of hospitals, and in the last Adjournment debate which we had on the subject it was said that attention would be paid to the problem of the hospital care of sufferers from the disease. Many of them now find themselves for years in the geriatric wards of hospitals where their only companions, as far as patients are concerned, are the old and senile. This, I think, has a demoralising effect on the people suffering from the disease. If anything can be done to assist the young chronic sick in this way, I am sure that it would meet with the gratitude of all affected.

I think that I can give some useful statistics on the matter, because a survey has been made in the particular hospital group by a very excellent young almoner named Miss Whittaker. She made a survey of the number of chronic young sick suffering from nervous diseases. It was found that five-sixths of the people in these wards suffered from nervous diseases and of one-third of the total most suffered from multiple sclerosis. This gives some idea of the extent of the problem.

The main object of this debate is to bring up to date, I hope, what was said two years ago. At that time I mentioned only briefly the question of research into this very serious disease. The Parliamentary Secretary said:

"The need for further research on multiple sclerosis is fully realised, but it is the intractible nature of the problem rather than lack of funds which hampers progress at the moment. If I can put it more simply, it is lack of bright ideas and not of cash which is holding us back."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th June, 1957; Vol. 571, c. 1671.]

Since then a good deal has happened which brings the question of research into the causes and effects of the disease much more to the fore.

I propose now to refer to a leading article in the Lancet of 28th March, 1959, which, after a lengthy and, I may say, to me, almost completely mysterious article which uses many long words which I do not properly understand, ends with the following crystal-clear statement:

"An expanding vista of research into the pathology of the demyelinating diseases is now opening for any investigator who is prepared and equipped to cultivate the new experimental techniques. Perhaps the Ministry of Health, whose then Parliamentary Secretary, winding up a debate on multiple sclerosis, suggested that 'it is lack of bright ideas and not of cash which is holding us back', may be persuaded to reconsider its view."

That article is of recent date, and what I wish to say now must not in any way be interpreted as an attack on the Ministry. As far as I can ascertain them, the facts are these.

The total allocation for medical research given to the Medical Research Council in the year 1958–59 was £3,137,000. In 1959–60, it will be £3,518,000, a slight increase. But over the last three years the amount allocated for research into multiple sclerosis has remained at the figure of £5,000. Of course, money is not the only limiting factor in this question. It is obviously wrong for a lot of money to be spent pursuing wrong ideas, but now that we have a very authoritative statement by one of our leading publications in medical matters stating that an expanding vista of research is opening up before us on this question of multiple sclerosis, it surely behoves the Ministry, which represents the Medical Research Council, to see that a great deal more money is provided for the purpose of investigating this horrible disease.

I am told that the two excellent centres in this country, Leeds University and the Pathological Department of Guys Hospital, in London, are only awaiting the infusion of money to be able to conduct a great deal more research into this matter. Use of the electron microscope for studying changes in the myelin sheath has made certain fields of inquiry probably very much more fruitful than we thought they would be several years ago. If the Parliamentary Secretary cannot give an undertaking that the amount of money granted for this purpose will be increased, I hope that he will bear this matter very much in mind, because without money we can do nothing.

It is interesting to note that the Multiple Schlerosis Society, about which I spoke at some length two years ago, and whose work is characterised by such humanity in this field, is prepared to spend £35,000 on any likely avenue of research into this disease. Surely if the pennies, sixpences and shillings of subscribers and well wishers of the people who have the disease, or who have friends affected by this disease, can amount to a fairly formidable sum like this, it is not asking too much that the Government should at least come in on a partnership basis and contribute something like the same amount to the benefit of research in the future. The Medical Research Council ought to be given more money for this purpose. It is clear that there is a vista of research which can be pursued and ought to he pursued. More money is needed for this task.

I will not finish this debate without saying that there are other aspects of the disease which are extremely important. Everybody knows the nature of cancer. tuberculosis, and poliomyelitis, and some of the main causes of them. Very few people know what multiple schlerosis do not, nor would any sufferer from this disease, wish for the spotlight of cheap publicity to be turned on this disease. That would be wrong, but, at the same time, there are inestimable advantages to be gained when there is a proper community relationship between public knowledge and the sufferers of this disease. It is partly for this reason that I have brought this matter to the attention of the House again

So much can be done if one knows what the problem is. That is why the Multiple Sclerosis Society was formed. It was formed to give day-to-day assistance in practical ways to sufferers of this disease and to their families who are acutely affected when one of their number is suffering from this disease. It may be that the few words I have to say this afternoon and the Parliamentary Secretary's reply will find their way into the organs of publicity and bring about a closer understanding of this disease and its incidence, and will get some public sympathy for the sufferers of it. It is hard for any society to exist unless its work is well known. I hope, therefore, that there will be some increase of enthusiasm for the work of voluntary bodies who assist these people.

I do not wish to take up too much time, but surely there lies in the heart of every person, and particularly the sufferers from this disease, a hope that in due course something will be done, a cure will be found, same knowledge will be obtained, which will, if not for the person himself, for those who come after solve the terrible problem of this frightening disease. The prospect which faces a sufferer of multiple sclerosis is horrible—a lingering, crippling disease and eventual death. Provided that there are useful ideas to exploit and people capable of working on research on this disease, effort should not be spared to make certain that we do not lose any opportunity to pursue this matter to the full.

I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to encourage in what way he can research into this extremely horrible and frightening disease.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham. South (Mr. Keegan) has done a service on this occasion, as he did two years ago, by drawing attention to the nature of this difficult and intractable disease, the incidence of which he accurately described, the cause of which, unhappily, we do not know and a cure for which has not yet been found. I propose to devote most of my speech to the aspect of research, which mainly interested my hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend referred to the question of hospital services for sufferers from this terrible disease. Patients with multiple sclerosis form a high proportion of the younger chronic sick patients in hospital. As he suggested, it is, clearly, undesirable for them to be nursed, perhaps for many years, in the company of elderly or senile patients. On the other hand, there are comparatively few younger chronic sick, and to gather them into fair-sized groups to be looked after on their own would mean moving many of them far away from their families and homes. My right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Health has asked regional hospital boards to find out how many younger chronic sick patients there are in each of their areas and to consider whether they could be grouped together in one or more hospitals. In this way my right hon. and learned Friend hopes that sufferers from multiple sclerosis, and other diseases which disable patients comparatively early in life, may be nursed in congenial company.

I also read the article in the Lancet about the myelin sheath to which my hon. Friend referred. As a layman, I found it difficult to follow in an intelligent manner, although I think that I have the drift of the argument. A good deal of work on multiple sclerosis is in progress in this country, both under the auspices of the Medical Research Council and otherwise. So far, the treatment of the disease has proved a particularly intractable problem, but some progress has been made in fundamental research into its pathology.

Many studies have been directed towards the identification of a specific casual factor, such as a virus infection or nutritional deficiency, but conclusive results have not been obtained. My hon. Friend will know that Russian research workers have reported the isolation of a virus, closely related to the rabies virus, in cases of disseminated sclerosis and have prepared a vaccine from it. But these workers do not claim that treatment with it has unqualified success. No controlled clinical trials of its value have ever been reported.

We took an interest in this, and in July, 1958, Professor Dick, of Belfast, who had visited Russia and was associated with a Medical Research Council inquiry, sent a letter to the British Medical Journal, jointly with Professor Shubladze, one of the originators of the vaccine, saying that they thought it necessary to reinvestigate and characterise the original isolates of the virus because recent experiments had shown that the strain in current use was similar to rabies virus. In other words, they had some doubts about its efficacy.

Social and geographical studies have suggested a variation in the incidence of the disease. For example, a recent survey shows a striking difference in incidence between two different areas of Scotland. The reason for this is not known, although it has been suggested that racial differences or dietary factors may be involved.

There is no evidence that hereditary factors play an important part, or that any significant change in the overall incidence of the disease has occurred in this country in recent years. The well-known tendency in this disease to spontaneous improvement, which occurs for varying lengths of time—to which my hon. Friend referred—makes it particularly difficult to assess the value of the different remedies and methods of treatment. To date, no treatment has been found which has any fundamental effect upon the progress of the disease.

Promising results were reported from Canada a few years ago, where patients were treated with isoniazid, but they have not been so far repeated in this country. Recent work at Oxford suggests that an immunological disorder may be implicated. Work supported by the Medical Research Council at Guy's Hospital Medical School, and recently reported in the Lancet, on the fundamental structure and biochemistry of the myelin sheath has revealed a promising line of possible research into the fundamental pathology of the demyelinating—awful word—diseases.

At present, the main effort of the Medical Research Council is being concentrated on this fundamental work, in the hope of finding out the exact nature and cause of demyelinisation, that is, the form of degeneration of parts of the central nervous system which leads to the appearance of symptoms of the disease. Work is in progress now on the structure and biochemistry of myelin and its metabolism. It has been shown, by the use of radioactive isotopes, that lipid compounds in the myelin sheath of the nerve remain there indefinitely once they are laid down in the embryo.

Other approaches to the problem include the investigation of the biochemical and pathological changes in the cerebrospinal fluid; the experimental growth of isolated nerve cells in tissue culture; and a study of the factors affecting myelination in the central nervous system of the developing chick embryo. Experimental work is also being undertaken on the production in animals of demyelinisation by means of organic compounds found in certain bacilli.

It is estimated that about £8,000 will be spent during this financial year by the Medical Research Council in supporting work of this kind at Guy's Hospital, at the Institute of Clinical Research, at the Department of Neurology of the Middlesex Hospital, at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, and at Leeds University. It is hoped, as has always been intended, to expand the work at Guy's Hospital.

Another aspect of the problem which may in future be reinvestigated with advantage, now that new techniques of virus research are available, is the theory of virus causation of the disease which may have been inadequately evaluated before modern methods and apparatus were evolved. Research of this nature is being carried out at Queen's University, Belfast. Independent societies, such as the Multiple Sclerosis Society, to which my hon. Friend devoted some part of his speech, have also provided funds for work at King's College Medical School, Newcastle-on-Tyne, on a survey of the disease in North-East England and for further projects here and at other centres.

Research is also taking place with the support of university and hospital endowments and with aid from regional hospital boards, as other centres such as the Middlesex Hospital, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, the Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Leeds University and the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. The Nuffield Foundation has made two substantial grants to the Departments of Neurology and Neuropathology of the United Oxford Hospitals for the investigation of immunological reactions of the central nervous system, of £15,660 to be used over three years, and £10,700 to be used over two years.

It has always been stated that it is the intractable nature of the problem rather than lack of money which hampers progress, and that remains true. I do not want my hon. Friend to think that that is a shield, as it were, for not devoting adequate resources to this work. It is not. Promising lines of research can be assured of adequate support. I want to make that quite clear. It should he noted that part of the fundamental work to which recent reference was made in the Lancet is supported by the Medical Research Council and that it has always been envisaged that this work would be expanded as necessary. In addition, no suitable application for a research grant for work in this field has been rejected by the Council in recent years.

I want to leave my hon. Friend with this thought in his mind: it would be the greatest mistake to suppose that the total effort which is being directed into this intractable and baffling disease is in any sense to be measured by the figure of £8,000 allocated in the Medical Research Council's budget to research projects specifically related to it. In the National Health Service there are many specialists, among them about 70 consultant neurologists, who, every day, are at grips with this problem through their dealings with individual sufferers. It could well be that at any time one of them might by chance or design elucidate a promising line of approach which may provide the vital clue to the cause of the disease. Should such a clue be found, there is no doubt that the appropriate financial support would be forthcoming from official sources to enable it to be effectively followed up.

That, I think, rather than some undertaking in terms of money, when at present we are not quite certain how we might spend it, is the kind of reassurance which my hon. Friend seeks today in the debate, which I hope he will feel has been valuable and has served some of the purposes which he had in mind.

We on this side of the House have listened with interest to the discussion of a vital human problem. Despite the fact that many hon. Members have left for their holiday, I am sure that we are grateful to the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Keegan) for having raised this issue. Too many of us forget about it, because we do not meet the problem very often.

It is typical of the variety of Parliament that I should switch to a completely different subject, namely, the problems in South-East Asia. I want to deal with some aspects as I saw them recently when I was in South-East Asia, and I am grateful to the Joint Under-Secretary of State for being in his place. I apologise to him for probably preventing him from taking advantage of this beautiful sunshine, but I know that he takes his responsibilities seriously and that he will forgive me for having made use of my Parliamentary privilege to try to obtain the last 40 minutes before the Recess to raise some of these issues. Naturally, I cannot expect full answers in such a short debate.

I have travelled through South-East Asia many times, but the last time I was there I was privileged to be a member of an Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation. The hospitality of the Philippines, the Vietnamese, the Cambodians and the Laotians was beyond all bounds. Their courtesy and their kindness was something which we shall always remember. Despite that, I shall have some critical and, I hope, constructive comments to make. I am not to be lulled into mummified silence, and I know that frank, free and honest criticism will be understood as what it is intended to be rather than as carping, malicious criticism.

The House of Commons and the Foreign Office can be very proud of our ambassadorial services in each one of these countries. The excellent information put at our disposal and the kindness and courtesy of our ambassadors in the region was well known to the six of us who were privileged to go from this House and the other place as members of the delegation.

Before I come to the crux of what I have to say, I wish to ask the Foreign Office to do something more to help the people who have to work in those parts. Our officials there work in hot climates—the temperatures are often terrific—in countries which are under-developed, and I have many times found, when I have been there, that British officials seem to have fewer comforts and amenities than do people from any other country who work in this part of the world. Two years ago, when I came back from Saigon, I asked whether there was any likelihood of installing air conditioning equipment in our embassy building there which is above the Saigon Bank, in Saigon. English women and men work there for this country, but the climate is such that their conditions are not comfortable, and the provision of amenities of this kind would lead to greater efficiency with less wear and tear on the health of our people.

I hope that the Foreign Office will give the Ministry of Works a jerk as well. People skilled in building such as architects or, perhaps, just ordinary builders doing construction work go out there from this country. In Laos, the building of a new embassy is now being completed. When the rate of exchange for the kip was altered, the allowances given to our Ministry of Works people there were not adequate to meet their situation. Our people were not in the same position as their opposite numbers from the United States—who seem to be everywhere—in giving hospitality.

It is wrong that these things should be so. Britain has more experience in South-East Asia, China and the Far East than any other country, and we should give our people the same opportunities and conditions as others have, because their quality, we know, is second to none. I have Laos particularly in mind, but I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Baird) wishes to say something about Laos a little later. I am now bringing these human problems to the notice of the House on behalf of the servants of our country who are many thousands of miles from home in climates which are difficult to tolerate, particularly at certain times of the year.

I wish the Foreign Office to exercise its mind about our policy in South-East Asia. Ultimately, I want my own party and the House, I hope, to have a full debate on the whole of our foreign policy in South-East Asia. Years ago, I divided the House against the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation. I do not raise the issue with bitterness, but I regard the establishment of the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation as one of the great mistakes of our foreign policy. It is not a treaty, an organisation or an establishment in the accepted, old concept of international diplomacy. There are only three small nations in it. The nations which canalise their influence in S.E.A.T.O. are the United States of America and, very reluctantly, Britain. Canada had enough sense to keep her skirts away from the Treaty.

When I was in Canada last year I discussed the whole problem of the Pacific with many reliable and well-informed Canadians. They had enough sense not to become involved in this type of treaty which, far from increasing Britain's prestige and, what is more important, the prestige of the so-called free world has, I think—I do not want to be too dogmatic—undermined it.

At the 1954 Geneva Conference we knew why the Treaty was set up at Manila. The Americans did not want that conference to proceed and Mr. Dulles left the conference before it finished. Whatever criticisms I may have of Mr. Dulles, being human. I must pay a tribute to his courage, to his strength of will and to his determination. He is now suffering from an incurable disease and has had to hand over the reins of office. What 1 say now may be taken wrongly in other places, but 1 cannot help that.

It seems to me that there are too many old and sick men in very influential and powerful positions in the world who are unable to grasp keenly the situations that the world is now facing. Mr. Dulles did his duty as he saw it, and I have not the least doubt that he believed he was right. Without being pompous, I say that I honestly believe that his policy was dangerous to world peace when he pushed what he called the "brinkmanship" policy in the Far East and South-Fast Asia.

Through her vast experience in Asia, Britain knows that the whole conception of the South-Fast Asia Treaty is dangerous to the future. We are living in a quivering peace. If hon. Members looked at this Treaty carefully, they would see that it is about subversion. How are we to distinguish between Communist subversion and genuine national movements that attempt to free themselves from national regimes that are now finished and which exploited them?

In this mid-twentieth century world, when there are not Parliaments like ours, how silly we are to try to impose upon the Asians a certain system of democracy. Who decides that a certain system must be the system of democracy that we should have? Where there is not a sophisticated and ancient democracy such as we are proud of here, which we can change through elections and where we can argue, how will it be possible to change Governments? Are we always to call every effort to overthrow a Government in South-East Asia, even by force, a Communist uprising? I cannot agree with that sort of infantile thinking. It is easy to dub a thing Communist when it may be a purely nationalist movement. We have now reached the stage where we must think about these things.

Communiquès were sent out from the fifth meeting of the S.E.A.T.O. at Wellington, on 8th to 10th February, under the chairmanship of Mr. Walter Nash. I have seen them printed in the Library and in the newspapers from time to time. They are platitudinous, because there is no reality in the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation. We were told:

"However, during the past year developments in the Taiwan Straits and elsewhere have demonstrated that the Communists are still prepared to pursue their objectives by violence up to the point where they encounter firm resistance."

There is a grain of truth in that, but it is not the whole truth. This is only one side of the coin.

I was in the United States when the Quemoy incidents took place. I travelled from one end of the United States to the other. The American people were more perturbed, in a way, than the British people about the incidents in Quemoy. The basic people of America are as peace-loving as the British or anyone else in the world. They were perturbed about what was taking place because their system has not the checks over the Executive that the British system of government possesses. I put a Question to the Foreign Office about the policy on Quemoy put forward by the United States of America.

Have not China and Peking shown a sense of responsibility in this matter? China has not threatened to plunge the world into war and disaster by attacking Taiwan. Chou En-lai told me this two years ago when I spent almost six hours with him in Peking. He wants Formosa and Taiwan, but he was not prepared to plunge the world into war for them. Cannot we in this world, where nobody is perfect and where truth is the most difficult thing to obtain, reassess the whole basis of this alphabet of alliances in South-East Asia?

We have S.E.A.T.O., A.N.Z.U.S., M.E.D.O., and N.A.T.O. The very fact that we use the alphabet shows our unbelief in the living flesh and blood of these treaties. We now have a crisscross of treaties and the absurdity of S.E.A.T.O. saying at Wellington that it would have close links with the Bagdad Pact. What reality is there now in the Bagdad Pact?

While the Quemoy incident was on, where was there power as never before? While we were debating in the House of Commons—as it happened, while I was in the United States—there were six "flat tops", as the Americans call them. cruising up and down the Straits of Taiwan with enough power in nuclear weapons on one of them to be greater than all the bombs dropped during the last war. This is the reality of man.

Our eyes are now on the Foreign Ministers' Conference. We must have the summit talks. Whatever else happens, Asia is looking at the Foreign Ministers' talks and looks to the summit talks. The quivering peace in South-East Asia is. in my belief, not helped by the present foreign policy of Britain. I hope that the Americans will not get me wrong about this—I like the American people, have been grateful for their hospitality and have entertained scores of them here —but the British nation has much still to contribute to the world in our steady common sense that we can apply to world problems. We have been acting as W.O. Is. to the American State Department.

I am tired of this activity of the British Government. I sincerely hope that the time will come when we denounce all this "brinkmanship" in South-East Asia, demand that we look at the whole set-up in this alphabet of pacts and get back to what is, for all its imperfections, the only human institution we have—the United Nations—and not build up these subsidiary pacts, which allegedly are built up under the United Nations, whereas anyone who takes the trouble to go to the United Nations and follow closely the debates can see that the lines of debate are clearly marked by the alliances which have been built up.

In my remaining seven or eight minutes, I want to deal with another aspect. An article in The Times of 5th May which was criticised by some people—by the Korean Embassy and others—carried the title "Asia facing all ways" and said:

"Democracy is not winning in Asia today."

There are too many military pacts with too much emphasis on bases and arms and too little emphasis on the rehabilitation of the people and their economy. Here is my quotation from the newspaper:

"Asia is a bag of marbles: shake it up, and any colour may fall on the floor."

Any colour may fall on the floor because, as the writer pointed out, democracy was not winning. It is not winning because we are emphasising the military pacts rather than the economic rehabilitation of the people.

If we shake the bag of marbles and a red one drops out, the British Government have only themselves and the Americans to thank for the build-up of Communism in Far-East Asia. Any analysis of the evolution of Asia since the Second World War points out that the type of revolutionary movements that have taken place there are part of the logical development of the history of Asia. Its peoples, seeing Western films equipment, impedimenta and standards of living are not satisfied. They want to raise their standards of life. In wanting to increase their standards of life, there is a yearning and an urge to change their systems of Government. When that yearning and urge arises, why always dub it "Communism"? Granted that it can be used by Communism, but we have lacked intelligence in acquiescing in this phraseology and the use of "subversion", for instance, in the S.E.A.T.O. Pact.

The economic agencies in Asia overlap. The waste of manpower is pathetic. The Colombo Plan, the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, Truman's Point Four and the Bank for International Reconstruction all mean good will and represent a desire to see the uplift of Asian man. They are crisscrossing and working themselves to death in a climate in which it is difficult to work, and what is the ultimate result? The United States annual investment in South-East Asia in security is in the neighbourhood of 5,000 million dollars or more. What do we get for it? Security? There is no security in South-East Asia for this vast investment. If this money had been put into dams, hydro-electric schemes, hastening the Mekong River basin scheme, subsidising food on a different basis, or helping to get irrigation schemes going, we would have done better.

What are we supposed to have in security? We say that they are our allies, and that they will be strongly with us. How easily men forget. Have we forgotten how Singapore collapsed like a rotten egg at the first noise of Japanese planes, when we were fighting almost alone and the Japanese decided to attack us in Singapore? This was the mighty base of which the Daily Mail said, thirty years ago, in a big headline, "Security in South-East Asia." We spent tens of millions of pounds on it, and it cracked because the people in Asia did not believe in the philosophy of the white man. We are repeating this mistake today.

The Soviet challenge in Asia is not being met at all. Not only are they providing oil research for India and have just put in a steel blast furnace in India, but they are giving loans at 2½ per cent., while we seem to be making our loans to our allies in South-East Asia with strings attached. What is the result of our lending? Here it is, in the per capita amount of food consumed in that area. If we take a compass and spin it over a map of Asia from Afghanistan to Borneo, we find that the amount of food consumed per head in Asia is less than it was in 1938.

This is the policy that is destroying democracy. The Americans know it and the American intelligence service knows is. Ours, which is the best informed in the world, also knows it, and the more we try to point that out, the more we get nods of agreement and shrugs. What we need is a complete reorientation of our policy in that part of the world. As an Indian newspaper said last week, it is

"Goodbye to Kipling and all that, goodbye to the old contemptuously dutiful attitude towards the lesser breeds without the law."

It is as dead as the dodo, both in the Conservative Party and in the Labour Party. Neither party is making that point any longer, though the party opposite believes in it, and perhaps some of them still do, like the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke), who sits opposite me most days, and who wanted a gunboat policy in respect of Suez.

Writing hymns in praise of N.A.T.O. is sheer blasphemy. Why not write one in praise of democracy? Why not write one in praise of S.E.A.T.O. next? Wordsworth wrote one in praise of the Congress of Vienna. Let us get down to concrete things and build up the standard of life, which now, after nearly fifteen years since the war, is lower than it was in 1938. While the so-called Christian still uses the Pacific Ocean to exploit his hydrogen bombs, how can we expect the Asian to believe in his Christian world?

When the Asian appeals to the United Nations when his hair is dropping out, and when he is shifted off the Marshall Islands, the rest of the world does not hear very much about it. One thing we do know is that, reading between the lines of E.C.A.F.E. reports, we see that the economy of Asia is warped for the purposes of the cold war.

Resources in the E.C.A.F.E. region are still unexploited. Here is an adventure for men. Why could not the money we spend on military bases be used on damming mighty rivers like the Mekong. draining river bases, draining and harvesting fens, building roads and highways? In that way we could win the Asians and attain more security than we can get with all our bases.

There is a great lack of capital in that area. There are 1,500 million people living in the arc between Afghanistan and Borneo. Nearly three times more people in that area have to be supported on one unit of cultivated land than are supported on one unit anywhere else in the world; there are three times more people per unit of cultivated land. We are seeing one of the most dramatic incidents in the history of man. Every year in that area there are 25 million more mouths to be fed, but they are getting guns instead of butter—and we hope to win their souls for the free world.

These are, perhaps, emotional phrases which are uttered sometimes, so I turn to some views expressed and which I read this week in a journal devoted to foreign affairs about the art of foreign policy:

"The realist in foreign policy is, first and foremost, a man of action, one who sees foreign policy not simply as a matter for academic discussion, but as something vital to the conduct of national affairs in the world. He advocates a policy based on an honest and informed appraisal of cold facts of international life—"

not influenced by his dreams, not influenced by his wishes and his aspirations. This is exactly what we are not doing.

It is a dream, reflected in some of the speeches we hear from the opposite side of the House, to think that we can split China from the Soviet Union. It is a dream to think that we can do what the Americans are still trying to do—refuse to recognise 600 million Chinese. That is against anything taught to any diplomat who has been trained in the art of foreign policy. It is a dream to think that we can get a viable world if we bypass all those people and ignore the living flesh and blood of 600 million Chinese. It is a dream to expect a counter-revolution from Chiang-KaiShek to succeed. It is a dream to think that in the event of war in South-East Asia Britain and America will get the solid support we want.

We had better wake up. It is wishful thinking and dangerous to try to drag these charming people into the battle of the Great Powers to end the cold war between Russia, America and Britain. Let us, therefore, start again and reassess the situation. Let us get China into the United Nations.

Consider the charming people of Vietnam. I know them in the North and 1 know them in the South. The Bamboo Curtain between the North and the South is harder than the Iron Curtain between East and West. On both sides people live in quivering peace. Now Japan is to give reparations to the South and not to the North. That is against the whole of the Geneva Treaty concept, and it must be looked into.

We have difficulties. Mr. Speaker, in getting some Questions past the Table, because we are told that though Britain is co-Chairman of the International Supervisory Commission the Foreign Secretary merely receives reports of the Commission. That Commission is given reports. I want to praise the work the Commission does. I have met the men and women working for it, who are devoted to their work and who are holding the balance of peace. They include Canadians, Poles, Indians, and some of our people are working with them, and a very difficult and thankless task they have.

We have had cases presented to the Commission of the breaking of the Geneva concepts. Nothing seems to be done. All we have to do, we are told is to receive the reports. It would be interesting some day to obtain them all and see the total of these violations. I have them. On both sides of the Bamboo Curtain there have been violations of the Treaty. In the interests of the public the truth should be told. The eighth interim report of the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam expresses its grave concern about the position.

Could not the co-Chairmen, Britain and Russia, plus the United States try once again to get these people together? It now needs another Geneva Conference for the Indo-China area so that the two sides may be brought together as is suggested in paragraph 13 of that report to consider first the question of war graves, a simple, human question. That might be one way of getting the two sides talking together, as we hope to get East and West talking together.

I am asked either to praise or denounce the Phu Loi prison, but what is the truth? The South Vietnamese did not want to lose face, as they said, but it would have been wise to have allowed the International Commission into the prison. I went there and was allowed to take photographs when slogans proclaiming "Down with Communism" were displayed there. There are flowers growing everywhere, men working—though I did not see much occupational therapy—and the food was much better than could be obtained in the villages. But something happened there. All I can say is that the prison met the requirements of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of detainees.

It would have been much wiser if someone had been allowed to go into the prison at the time and if a British representative, as one of the co-Chairmen with the Russians, had said, "We have a right, under the Geneva Convention of 1954. to investigate the position." The truth then would have been there for the world to see. At any rate, 1 was grateful for the opportunity of visiting the place.

I sincerely hope that too much pressure will not be brought on Laos and some of the other small countries like Cambodia in Indo-China to join S.E.A.T.O. Both sides of the House, Labour and Conservative, had better take another look at our policy in South-East Asia. It needs a clean sweep. At present, we are treading a path which might lead to destruction rather than a constructive building up of mankind in that part of the world so as to lead to peace.

I should like first, to pay a compliment to the work of our diplomats in South-East Asia and especially in North Vietnam which I visited with my hon. Friend the Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) two years ago. There we have a diplomat, Mr. Simpson, the consul in charge of all British affairs in North Vietnam, doing a very responsible job with no official recognition at all. He had a vice-consul at Haiphong, but they were the only British diplomats in the whole of the country.

We have an ambassador in Saigon. Why is it not possible for us to recognise the North Vietnam Government, at least de facto? At the time of the Geneva conference, after the victory of North Vietnam, at Dien Bien Phu, it might have been possible for the North Vietnamese to sweep the French into the sea. They preferred peace and there were negotiations with the North as well as with South Vietnam. It would have facilitated greatly the work of our diplomats in North Vietnam if they had been given some official recognition. It would have meant, of course, that we would have had a de facto chargé d'affaires for Vietnam here as well. Anything which builds understanding and trade between nations is a good thing, and I do not see why it cannot be done.

I want to speak expressly about Vietnam today because I tried recently to ask a Question in the House about the alleged American military build-up in Laos since the Control Commission was withdrawn. The Table referred me to an Answer given by the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on 18th February, when I asked what was the military build-up in Vietnam. In a supplementary question I asked:

"Will the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the Control Commission will he given every facility to visit South Vietnam to see whether or not this Agreement has been broken?"

The answer was:

"We cannot give any facilities to the Control Commission. That must be done by the two countries concerned."

I then said:

"But, surely, the Foreign Secretary is responsible, as Joint Chairman of the Geneva Conference, for the functioning of the Control Commission?"

The answer was:

"That is not one of his functions."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th February. 1959; Vol. 446, c. 365.]

We, along with the U.S.S.R., are joint Chairmen of the Geneva Conference, as a result of which the Control Commission was set up. The Control Commission reports at regular intervals to the joint chairmen. I want to know, therefore, what powers as joint Chairmen we have over the Control Commission. Have we no powers at all, as the Table seems to think in view of that answer? What powers or influence have we over the functioning of the Control Commission? It is important that we should have an answer to that question.

I believe that the situation in South-East Asia is dangerous. If a world war breaks out, it will not be a war immediately between the great Powers, Russia and America. It is likely to start as a local war, and the danger areas of the world, as I see them, are areas such as Vietnam, a small country divided artificially in two, or Korea or Taiwan or Iraq or Algeria. These are the areas where there is danger of a match setting the world aflame and a conflagration arising as a result. Therefore, in the interests of world peace as well as in the interests of the people of those countries, we should be doing all we can to create a more settled atmosphere in those backward areas.

As the House knows, the Geneva Conference met as a result of the wonderful victory of the Vietnam guerillas under the leadership of General Giap and President Ho. At that time the Americans were threatening to use atomic weapons to stop the drive of the Vietnamese to the south. It was our diplomatic intervention which stopped the military intervention of the Americans in Vietnam. Indeed, the only way General Giap and his forces could have been stopped would have been by the use of hydrogen or atomic bombs. Instead, we were able to seize the initiative—we in this country especially, and the Russians—and then the Geneva Conference was called. As a result of the Conference it was agreed between the French, the North Vietnamese, the Russians and ourselves that a Control Commission should go to Vienam, which should function until 1956, when free elections would be held to decide the future government of United Vietnam.

It is true that at that time the French were the responsible Government in South Vietnam. It is true also that since then the French withdrew and handed over their rights and authority to President Diem's government in Saigon. I want to ask the Joint Under-Secretary a question which has not yet been answered but which is important. President Diem's government inherited the authority and the rights of the French in South Vietnam. Did they not at the same time also inherit the obligations of the French? If so, the obligations of the French were to see that the Control Commission was allowed to function freely in the territory of South Vietnam and that free elections were held with the support of both the North and the South in 1956.

Yet since then we have had a history of frustration, coming chiefly from the South, and they have sabotaged any possibility of free elections because they say they were not at the Geneva Conference, and, therefore, have no responsibility for the decisions taken there. If they inherited the rights and authority of the French, did they not at the same time inherit their obligations?

Since the Geneva Conference the situation has gone from bad to worse. My information is that there has been a very substantial American military build-up in South Vietnam. I am also told that President Diem's Government committed many atrocities in prison camps and that many thousands of lives have been lost.

The new Government in Laos has asked the Control Commission to withdraw, and it has withdrawn. I am told on the authority of the North Vietnam Government—General Giap sent a letter to the Chairmen of the Geneva Conference and to the Control Commission —that a substantial military build-up is now beginning in Laos also. Is this true or not? How do we know?

The Control Commission is there to inquire into these charges and to report whether they are correct or not. If the hon. Gentleman reads the various Control Commission reports, he will find that in the majority of cases the charges made by the North Vietnam Government have been substantiated. He will also find that time after time the Control Commission, trying to be unbiased, has reported that it cannot give correct information because the South Vietnam Government have refused facilities to its teams to investigate the charges made by North Vietnam. Is there nothing which can be done about it by Her Majesty's Government? Are we to allow the situation to go on drifting?

I asked a Question about the American military build-up, and I was told that we had no authority over the Control Commission in this matter. I also asked for information about the charges of massacre in the Phu Loi concentration camp, and the Answer which I got from the hon. Gentleman was:

"I have every reason to believe that the figures given by the hon. Gentleman are entirely inaccurate, but if he likes to send me the details I will be glad to look at them."— [OFFIC I AL REPORT, 18th February, 1959; Vol. 600, e. 366.]

I had my figures from the North Vietnam Government. Where did the hon. Gentleman get his figures? It could only have been from the South Vietnam Government. If we read the reports of the Control Commission we have to accept the fact that for every time the South Vietnam Government have been correct, the North Vietnam Government have been correct three or four times The North Vietnam Government have been far more accurate in their charges, which have been substantiated in almost every case.

Why have we not had free elections? We are told that the North Vietnam Government is a Communist Government, and that one cannot get free elections in a Communist country.

Is it not a fact that the North Vietnam Government have said time and time again that they are willing to see that the elections are supervised by the Control Commission, by an enlarged Control Commission if need be, to guarantee genuinely free elections? Why have the elections not been held? Is not the honour of Her Majesty's Government at stake in this matter, because, as Joint Chairman with the Russians of the Geneva Conference, we promised the Vietnamese people that they would have free elections.

I do not want to interrupt the hon. Member, but the debate has now continued for forty-two minutes, and if the Minister is to reply, he will have only ten minutes left.

I have been speaking for only ten minutes, but I am about to finish.

We have an Ambassador in Saigon. Have we no way of representing our point of view to the South Vietnam Government on this matter of free elections and the function of the Control Commission? Have we no influence with our American allies who are the major factor in the situation?

I conclude by saying that our honour is at stake and that it is not enough to give Smart Alick answers about the North Vietnam Communist Government. We want the Control Commission to be given facilities to function properly and free elections to be held as soon as possible.

In opening the debate, the hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) apologised for raising it at the beginning of the holiday. I am, nevertheless, very glad to be here, because I know about his trip and I know that he was a very welcome guest in that part of the world. I was glad to hear something of what he discovered during his trip. I have also had the opportunity of talking to my hon. Friend the Member for Merton and Morden (Mr. Atkins), who, unfortunately, could not be here this afternoon.

The hon. Member raised very large subjects and I do not think that he expects me, in eight minutes, to try to answer completely the very wide debate which he opened. Perhaps I can answer some of the smaller factual points first. He was good enough to tell me in advance that he might be raising some of these matters.

I thank him and the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Baird) for the tributes which they have paid to our Foreign Service representatives abroad. As both hon. Members said they work under difficult conditions, difficult not only politically but physically, and any tribute paid to them is well justified.

The hon. Member for Leek began by talking about buildings in that part of the world. We have been unhappy about the Embassy offices in Saigon for some time, and I am glad to be able to tell the hon. Member that we have now got provision to build new offices, which will be undertaken by the Ministry of Works through its Overseas Building Vote. The Embassy will be built at the Norodom site, where our Consulate-General was before it was destroyed. Planning of those offices is going ahead, although it will be some little time before actual work starts. I am glad to tell the hon. Member that all the offices will be air-conditioned.

The hon. Member also mentioned Vientiane. He probably saw that there we already have some substantial building progress under way. The previous offices were held on rent from the Laotian Government and were very unsatisfactory, and it was inevitable, under the circumstances of the time, that our staff had to live in unsuitable accommodation. The new buildings going up there now will be air-conditioned and I think that that post will be much more attractive when they are finished.

The hon. Member talked about allowances paid by the Ministry of Works. That is a question for my right hon. Friend and I will ask for an answer. The hon. Member said that Foreign Office allowances were not enough to permit our representatives to give the same sort of hospitality which was provided by their colleagues. I will say only that, particularly for those in Phnom Penh, this matter is now being discussed with the Treasury and I hope that it will be possible to make some alterations.

The hon. Gentleman then launched into a great attack on S.E.A.T.O. It is all very well for him to say that the organisation was built up simply because it was an American answer to the Geneva Agreements which the Americans did not like and would not take part in. But the hard fact is that S.E.A.T.O. has been one of the main props which have maintained the Geneva settlement, because it gives a general sense of stability to the whole area. It is not an aggressive pact; it is completely defensive. Whatever the hon. Gentleman may think about it, no effort at all has been made to encourage either Laos or Cambodia or South Vietnam to join it. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary has actually stated that. Indeed, it would be quite contrary to the conditions of the Geneva Agreement which debars them from joining.

The hon. Gentleman said that we were bringing pressure to bear on those countries to join. It is just not true. He then asked how one could distinguish between subversion and a nationalistic movement. Of course it is difficult, but if there is a movement which is aided and abetted from outside and which seeks to overthrow the lawful Government, then it is fair enough to call that subversion. Even the hon. Gentleman would not call the Communist effort in Malaya a nationalistic movement. It was subversion. It is that sort of thing which the S.E.A.T.O. Powers had in mind when they were discussing the matter. They did not set up any organization, as the hon. Gentleman suggested, to deal with subversion. All they said was that they would have another meeting to discuss the matter. There is no organization to counter subversion in the sort of way suggested by the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Gentleman also made a great song and dance about all the money that was going into the military side of things in South-East Asia. It is quite absurd to stress it in this way, as though the Western Powers are particularly concerned with building armaments in South-East Asia. In fact—I am talking about the United Kingdom alone—up to 30th June, 1958, the total amount of assistance given by the United Kingdom though the Colombo Plan in loans and other forms was £123¼ million. In the same period the technical assistance provided by the United States for the Colombo Plan countries throughout the South-East Asian area has amounted to nearly 4,000 million dollars.

These are tremendous figures and are all in connection with economic aid of one sort and another. All this money is channeled through the Colombo Plan. I do not want to go into that matter in detail, but I want to refute the suggestion made that all these organizations were overlapping and that there was resulting inefficiency.

They are in an awful state.

It is not true. As I say, all the economic aid is channeled through the Colombo Plan

The hon. Gentleman talked about the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East. It is primarily not an executive agency for carrying out these things but a planning agency. Therefore, its functions do not overlap the Colombo Plan. The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the Mekong Valley development, which is a splendid thing, and Her Majesty's Government are making a substantial contribution to the Economic Commission for that project.

We got on to the question of the position of this country, of my right hon. and learned Friend as co-Chairman. We in this country have no more obligations than any other signatory to the Geneva Pact. Incidentally, I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman recognised the work of Sir Anthony Eden. It really was a great thing. I must repeat that we have no responsibility as co-Chairman.